Restitution

by Rose Edmunds

  ‘You’ll have to speak English,’ I said, trying to quell the rising fear. ‘I can’t understand you otherwise.’

  He had a mad glint in his eye.

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘But I never spoke to you.’

  ‘Well he lied about you, and you didn’t correct him, which is just as bad.’

  He walked over to Stan and jabbed the gun at his head, which oddly didn’t appear to disturb him at all.

  ‘I didn’t correct him because I don’t understand much French.’

  ‘He lied about what you were doing, but you’re in on the conspiracy too.’

  ‘What conspiracy? Do you mean the alien invasion?’

  He lapsed back into rapid French, clearly unimpressed by this suggestion.

  ‘Speak English,’ I repeated.

  ‘The plot to destroy my heritage. This creature,’ he said, pointing at Stan again, ‘lied to me. And now he will die. And you will all die for helping him.’

  Stan appeared remarkably unrattled by his imminent demise, from which I assumed he didn’t believe Lavigueur would shoot. I felt far less certain.

  ‘What plot?’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence by feigning ignorance—I follow the press. You all led me a merry dance—Castle Strnad, Moravia, Zurich, and the lying, thieving douchebag had the painting all the time.’

  ‘Wait a minute…’

  Now the truth dawned on me. Lavigueur was no random nutter—there’d been a specific reason for the venom he directed at Stan. As Stan had known from the beginning…

  ‘Keep him talking,’ counselled Little Amy, whose presence was now strangely comforting.

  ‘His father robbed my grandfather. And now you all conspire to rob me.’

  I struggled to get my head around the conspiracy accusation, since Stan had lied to us too. But Little Amy came to the rescue.

  ‘He reckons you guys knew all along he had the original picture, and were pretending to look for it to create a distraction.’

  I guessed Lavigueur must be the grandson of the Frenchman who’d bought the self-portrait when Stalin disposed of it in the 1930s—the missing link in the chain of ownership and arguably its true legal owner. And, in a chilling flash of insight, I identified him as our mystery enemy. If only I’d done more research into the background, instead of being so delighted to award him the Amy Robinson trophy for Crazy Pearson Malone Partner Of The Year.

  ‘I wasted money on the fool I hired to follow you, but he let these two slip off to Zurich. I couldn’t forgive him for that.’

  And so you killed him, I thought. We’d never stopped to consider why the man from the mirror maze had been killed, or why there’d been no more contact with us after the stranger had enquired at the Alcron. But now the answer to our unasked question stood out in sharp relief. Though too late to stop Tom, Lavigueur had switched his attention to Zurich.

  ‘And then it all turns out to be a ridiculous charade, down to pretending the original artwork was in that bank vault.’

  ‘But we had no idea,’ I protested. ‘Stan lied to us too.’

  If we hadn’t been in such a life and death situation, I would have reflected upon the staggering amount of trouble Stan’s lies had caused. So far, George had given him a pass for his deception, but was he still so chilled about it now as he stood by the intercom, rooted to the spot by fear? The death of the hired heavy proved beyond all doubt that Lavigueur was capable of frenzied irrational killing. And thanks to Stan we were all trapped by this armed lunatic, who by a terrible quirk of fate had shown up now.

  ‘You’re just trying to save yourself, but it won’t work. When I point this gun at your head you’ll say, anything, anything to stay alive. You’ll cry and whine and piss yourself with fear.’

  He was dead right—moments from death, the terror is visceral, as I knew. But we weren’t there yet.

  ‘Don’t worry—he might not kill you,’ said Little Amy, affirming my instincts.

  How the hell do you know?

  ‘Little Claude will try and stop him.’

  Little Claude? Who the heck was little Claude?

  ‘He’s telling him to listen to you, to calm down. Says not to trust Stan.’

  Lavigueur looked around him in bewilderment.

  ‘Did someone say something?’

  ‘He doesn’t realise it’s Little Claude yet—like when you first heard me, you didn’t get where the voice came from. But don’t worry—he will.’

  ‘To be fair,’ Little Amy continued, ‘I shouldn’t call him Little—he’s over six foot, even though he’s fifteen years old. He’s a hunk, to be honest. And right now, he’s your best hope of getting out of here alive.’

  ‘You can hear a voice?’ I asked Lavigueur.

  ‘Why—can you?’ He cast around, as though trying to identify the source.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I know who he is. Listen to what he says.’

  ‘How can you know who it is if you can’t hear him?’ Lavigueur demanded. If nothing else, the voice in his head might distract him from shooting us.

  ‘Not telling,’ I replied. No way would I weaken my position by introducing Little Amy into the equation. I needed to be the strong person in this, not some fruit loop who heard voices—let Lavigueur fill that role.

  ‘Talk about Pearson Malone,’ said Little Amy. ‘Little Claude says they wore him down and drove him to insanity.’

  By all rational standards, the situation was ludicrous, with both Lavigueur and me being guided by figments—but the absurdity didn’t diminish the danger. Lavigueur was angry, unstable and humiliated, believing we’d led him on with an elaborate deception and made a laughing stock of him. My only hope was to reason with him, try to build rapport, and then calm him down.

  ‘Pearson Malone were bastards, weren’t they?’

  This seemed as good a starting point as any.

  ‘Yes—they trained you perfectly.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You’re one of them. I can see through your lies, even if Stan hadn’t told me it was your idea to pretend to track down the painting.’

  He’d told him WHAT? This was outrageous. But worse was to come.

  ‘Yes,’ Lavigueur continued. ‘I phoned Stan earlier and he said you were coming round.’

  I could scarcely credit Stan’s treachery. I’d imagined a cruel twist of fate had been responsible for our paths crossing with Lavigueur’s tonight, but no. In trying to wriggle out of responsibility for his shabby deception, Stan had deliberately put us all in danger. Still, why should I be surprised? Stan was Ed’s uncle, with the same treacherous amoral gene.

  ‘I didn’t expect him to come armed,’ said Stan, sensing and responding to the disapproval ricocheting round the room.

  ‘George’s son was a partner in Pearson Malone too,’ I said, in an attempt to deflect the conversation, ‘but he died. He was a bastard as well.’

  George did not contradict me—he seemed afraid to say anything in case it made the situation worse.

  ‘It was kill or be killed,’ said Lavigueur. ‘Did he commit suicide?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I replied carefully.

  ‘If he loses face he will kill you,’ warned Little Amy, ‘because otherwise he’ll appear weak after huffing and puffing around making all these threats. You need to establish what he wants and give him a way to win without firing the gun. That’s the message from Little Claude.’

  She was no doubt right—he was employing typical corporate finance partner bully-boy tactics, only he’d upped the ante by bringing a gun. He needed a face-saving deal, which had to involve the painting.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked Lavigueur.

  ‘To kill you all,’ he said, brandishing the gun.

  ‘No you don’t—not really.’

  I suddenly felt much calmer. Last time I’d faced down death, I’d been lured into a situation where the main objective was to kill me. Here, the goal was something else, though we’d all be ki
lled as an unfortunate by-product if things didn’t go Lavigueur’s way. Given that, I had an opportunity to influence the situation, and with Little Claude and Little Amy’s help, I began to hope I might just pull this off.

  ‘Now, I totally get how angry you are,’ I said in my best empathetic voice, not that I’d ever majored in empathy. ‘But basically you want the painting.’

  ‘No,’ he replied, to my great disappointment. ‘I want revenge.’

  ‘Little Claude said his father shot himself in despair over his lost inheritance, and that riles him more than anything.’

  I recalled reading about the father when I’d googled Lavigueur. Claude had been fifteen when it happened, the same age as Little Claude was now.

  ‘I get that too,’ I said. ‘But you can’t change what’s past, whereas you can control the future. Shooting us is not the answer to any of this—for a few seconds afterwards, you’ll feel great for avenging your father’s death, but is it worth it? You’ll spend the rest of your life in jail and you’ll never get the chance to become a better person.’

  This fine rhetoric sounded impressive, but I knew how the power of logic withered in the face of strong emotion. And to add to the uncertainty, I suspected a problem with Lavigueur’s current medication might be driving his irrationality. At any moment, a flash of hatred might send us all to our doom.

  ‘How do you know it’s about my father?’

  ‘I’m guessing, but I lost my dad young too, and you never stop mourning how they didn’t get to see you as a successful adult.’

  Or a crazed lunatic, in some cases.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, as if amazed by my insight.

  ‘But though nothing can change the past, you can change the future. Now Stan here has behaved like a complete jerk, and he’s sorry—aren’t you, Stan?’

  Stan sat silently, his arms crossed defiantly.

  ‘He is sorry,’ I reiterated.

  ‘You’ve all behaved appallingly,’ said Lavigueur.

  ‘Yes, and we’re sorry.’

  The time for apportioning blame would come later, assuming we survived.

  ‘And Stan is anxious to ensure all the artworks are returned to their rightful owners, aren’t you, Stan?’

  ‘Just fucking say yes, Stan—it’s all that’s required!’

  Precisely, I thought.

  ‘It seems to me,’ I continued, with the appearance of great authority, ‘as if you have a legitimate claim to the painting—more so than anyone else. Am I right in assuming your grandfather bought it from the Soviet government?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those sales were deemed in the courts to be legal acts.’

  ‘And I’ll bet those same courts will argue his father bought it in good faith. Which would be a travesty of justice!’

  Lavigueur’s temper flared once more as he aimed the gun at Stan.

  ‘My grandfather sold the painting for a song before he fled to Canada. Your father told him he could buy it back at any time for the same price. But after the war, when my grandfather tried to, your father claimed it had been destroyed. Your father is a liar and a renegade.’

  ‘That’s not Stan’s fault,’ I pointed out. ‘He wasn’t even born.’

  ‘It’s the whole family—they’re all lying scum. He continued the lie.’

  ‘And he’s very sorry, aren’t you, Stan?’

  Come on, Stan—please. At that moment, I almost felt Stan deserved to die, but I carried on, ignoring his stubborn silence.

  ‘Now if you read the press coverage, you’ll see Stan is desperately keen to see all the art reunited with its true owners. So…’

  I’d been about to say that Stan would hand over the artwork to Lavigueur, but Stan cut me off.

  ‘I know nothing of any promise my father made to sell the painting back—it’s mine.’

  Stan wasn’t helping any of us. Ironically, his decision to “make amends” had unleashed this whole tragedy, but now he could save all our lives by one benevolent gesture, he’d backtracked in a major way and shown his true colours.

  ‘Little Claude says if Stan offers him the painting, that’ll do it. He accepts he can never fill the emotional void from his father’s death.’

  I wished we could conjure up a Little Stan and rope him into the negotiations, but he wasn’t there. Maybe Little Stan found his adult alter ego so repulsive that he shunned all contact—and who could blame him?

  But Little Stan’s absence didn’t preclude us from tapping into his thoughts. Stan’s childhood had been a lonely one, but now he had a brother. That was his soft underbelly. He had allowed George into his life, to persuade him to make a clean breast of everything to HRMC, even to smarten him up. Despite the tenor of the Globe piece, it had been George, not me, as the main influence on Stan. And logically therefore George would be best placed to persuade him.

  Yet George still stood in the same position, paralysed by fear.

  ‘There’s someone else who has a potential title though,’ I said. ‘Your brother—George.’

  ‘He said he only wanted the one—that was the deal we struck.’

  Suddenly I understood what had driven Stan’s perplexing volte-face on full disclosure—greed. He didn’t expect many people to come forward and claim pieces in his father’s collection, still less to successfully prove their title. Therefore he stood to lose little or nothing by promising to restore the paintings to their true owners.

  At last George seemed to switch on to my strategy, and rebounded with renewed vigour and hope.

  ‘The deal we cut,’ he said in a shaky voice, ‘was on the basis that you made full disclosure to HMRC and tried to ascertain the ownership of the artworks. It doesn’t stop me from going through due legal process. But if you agree now Lavigueur should have the self-portrait, our arrangement need not be disturbed. But should it be necessary to go down the legal route, I will happily give him the artwork in question from my share of the collection.’

  We had Stan in a pincer movement, leaving him with nowhere to go. Whichever way things panned out, he had lost the painting and if George exercised his rights, he stood to lose even more.

  ‘Lavigueur should go through the courts himself,’ said Stan in a last ditch effort to salvage his position.

  ‘In which case I shall file my lawsuit,’ George reiterated.

  ‘But you’re my brother.’

  ‘He’s your brother, Stan,’ I said, ‘and that’s why you will do this for him.’

  Stan finally broke the painful silence which ensued.

  ‘Very well, if it means so much to everybody,’ Stan said. ‘Lavigueur can have it, if no one else is entitled to it.’

  ‘I can’t see how they can be,’ I replied hastily, before any seeds of doubt were sown in Lavigueur’s mind. ‘Claude’s position seems both equitable and watertight legally.’

  I turned to Lavigueur.

  ‘Does that meet your needs?’

  Lavigueur hesitated.

  ‘Little Claude is asking whether he should trust you. And God knows why, but I told him yes.’

  ‘I suppose it’s the best I’m going to get,’ said Lavigueur finally. ‘Perhaps it’s time to move on.’

  ‘Little Claude told him that. See how you guys get the benefit of the best advice from us.’

  This seemed highly debatable. A man who goes round brandishing a firearm is undoubtedly not receiving sound advice, or if he is, he’s ignoring it.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘And George and I will make sure he follows through. So now, if you could leave the gun here, together with details of how to contact you.’

  ‘I’m not leaving the gun,’ he said.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘No police?’ he asked.

  ‘No police.’

  Satisfied on this score, he laid down the firearm, took the pen and paper George provided and wrote down his address.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and even shook my hand, which was uncharacteristically clammy.
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br />   We sat in stunned silence for several minutes, scarcely believing he’d gone. Gradually, as we accepted that by some miracle we’d all escaped unscathed, we began to loosen up again, to breathe deeply and thank a higher power for our salvation.

  ‘An impressive piece of negotiation there, Amy,’ said Tom, breaking the silence. ‘You were very brave.’

  ‘George did a great job too,’ I replied. ‘And you….’ I glared at Stan. ‘There’s a word for people like you but it’s unrepeatable.’

  ‘Anyway, we’re all grateful to you, Amy—even Stan,’ said George. ‘Though you’ve let Lavigueur get away with murder—literally.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t say he’d got away with it at all.’

  Perhaps I was the only one apart from Stan who realised that the painting was only symbolic. Claude still bore the scars from his childhood, and restoration of a physical asset could not erase these. He’d said it was time to move on, but would he be able to? Later on, I expected him to be consumed by guilt for all he’d done in the name of his lost inheritance. And he would have to live with that.

  ‘By the way, what was Mel and Tom’s news?’ asked George.

  ‘Oh, it’s not important now,’ I said.

  Yes, I was turning soft, but life is too short and far worse criminals than Tom and Mel get off scot free for their misdeeds. Just look at all the crooks in the City. Most are never prosecuted and those who are usually end up with a not-guilty verdict. Worst-case scenario is a spell in Ford Open Prison, which provides excellent networking facilities for white-collar criminals.

  Mel didn’t thank me, but the expression on her face said it all.

  ‘Does anyone fancy a drink?’ asked George, still wobbly from the ordeal.

  ‘Not for me,’ I replied, ‘I’ve got something I need to do, but don’t let me stop anyone else.’

  George saw me out to the door.

  ‘Thanks so much, Amy, for everything. I’m mad as hell at Stan though.’

  ‘Thought so. Is this the end then—are you packing him off back to Prague?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I guessed what his answer would be before he said it.

  ‘Stan’s the only brother I’ve got.’