‘I think the difference between the portrait that Mrs Raleigh had and the one that I, in theory, would have, would be that she was basically in a state of undress.’ As she says this, she tightens the sash belt around her waist, emphasising her curves a little more, in case I’d missed them.
‘And you said, I recall, that if you were going as far as exposing your breasts for a portrait, you may as well go all the way.’ I take a sip of coffee as my mouth is getting dry.
‘That’s right.’
‘So, no fur coat, no pulled down dress, just you with an accent on your best features.’
‘Which best features would those be?’ she says, rubbing her shoulder and allowing the robe to slip down very slightly.
‘I think you mentioned your bottom.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. And you mentioned posing on an ordinary chair, as opposed to an armchair.’
‘Or the chaise longue over there. Shall I try a few poses out, just in case you have to talk to anyone about this? It’s always best to be prepared for things.’
‘I think that would be a good idea.’
She stands and walks over to the chaise longue. I get up and follow. She turns to face me and lifts up the sash belt in her hand. ‘Would you mind?’
I pull the belt down. She shakes her shoulders and the kimono falls to the floor. She turns and heads towards the chaise longue. That sexy, swaying walk is really something. She’s right about her bottom being one of her best features, though it isn’t the only one. She lies on the chaise longue and runs both hands through that mane of thick, jet-black hair.
10
L’OPINION D’UN ARTISTE
In the morning, Anjukka wakes before me and is in the shower while my eyes are still shut. It’s a few minutes past seven and she has to get to Holland Park earlier than usual, to catch up on some preparation work for a meeting that Raleigh has at ten o’ clock. Raleigh has an important visitor; some banking guy or other who’s involved with the money for Raleigh’s upcoming big Oman deal.
She comes back into the bedroom wrapped in a dark blue towel and I sit up in her bed and watch her dry her hair, apply her makeup and get dressed. She spends ages on her hair. I wasn’t sure that I believed her when she said that she hadn’t been on a date for two years, but after last night I can see that it was true.
It’s only now that the memory of Tote Bag pops into my mind. I’m still unsettled by that, and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that Raleigh was behind it, but once again, I can’t really imagine why. As Anjukka continues to work on her hair, I get up and look out of the window.
The road outside is covered in various markers to stop motorists parking or even stopping, so there are no suspicious cars or vans. I can see three people walking down the road. One is a guy holding a skateboard under his arm and the other two are a pair of women in smart business suits on their way to work.
I turn back to Anjukka, who’s now in her underwear and attaching the metal clips of her six strap suspender belt to her stockings. She looks great. I really must look into getting her portrait done today if I have any time. I have to get back to my flat for a change of clothing, so I’ll have a quick Google before getting on with the day’s work.
I’m getting ahead of myself, of course. I still have to find Viola so I can get my bonus, otherwise I won’t be able to afford anything. Actually, I have no idea how much a portrait costs or how long it would take, but the concept has taken root in my head now and I just know that I have to have it.
I promise to call Anjukka as I leave and walk down the road where she lives, which is already starting to get very busy. The advantage of this is that I get a cab almost immediately. On my way to Covent Garden, I start to think about Mrs Bianchi and wonder what she’s like. This is assuming, of course, that Novak’s information was good. What sort of woman buys a girl like Viola off a scumbag like Novak? I guess she has to be some sort of major scumbag herself.
I almost call the number that Novak gave me, but decide it’s too early. I take the piece of paper with Bianchi’s address on and stare at it. She lives in a house in Portman Street. That’s virtually around the corner from Seymour Street police station, which makes it almost certain that she was the person who reported Viola as missing. She could even have done it on foot. I’m vaguely aware of the houses in Portman Street; Edwardian listed buildings that are either business premises or expensive flat conversions. This area is dead in the centre of the West End, where your local supermarket would be Selfridge’s, so you’d have to be fairly wealthy to live there.
I get the cab to drop me off by The Royal Opera House and walk down the whole length of Floral Street, checking reflections and executing sudden stops by random shops fronts. By the time I’m down the bottom of Garrick Street, I know I’m clean.
The next time I feel a tail and I’m alone, I’m going to turn the tables on whoever it is and tail them. It’s probably still too early for someone to be following me, and I’d guess that Tote Bag is going to spend this morning convincing her bosses that she’s still worth employing after yesterday’s fiasco, but if whoever set her on me is persistent, she’ll be replaced by someone else, so I have to keep on my toes.
When I finally get back, I dump yesterday’s clothes in the washing basket, fire up the computer and take a long shower. I get a strange feeling that I haven’t done enough yet, but then remember that, strictly speaking, I’m only at the beginning of day two. I must learn to relax more, but it’s difficult.
I sit down with a coffee and look for female portrait artists. I must be entering the wrong combination of works as nearly everything that comes up is to do with photography, boudoir photography in particular, which seems to be an up-and-coming industry.
Eventually, after inserting the words ‘oil’ and ‘paint’, about half a dozen possibles in the central London area appear. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be out in the suburbs and many of them work from photographs, which is not what I want. One or two look quite good, but they’re too reasonably priced; if the artists were that good, they’d be charging a lot more.
Then one in Bond Street catches my eye. Usually this is a place associated with massively expensive original art, but the address says ‘second floor’, so maybe it’s not connected to a professional dealer. I don’t mind spending money on this, but I don’t want the bill to run into millions.
I peruse the site as I dial Mrs Bianchi’s number. It’s almost nine o’ clock and whatever her occupation she should be thinking of getting up by now. If not, it’s just tough. Predictably, though, there’s no response from the number that Novak gave me. If I find out that that fucker’s taken my three hundred for nothing, I’ll be extremely upset. I get a feeling of nausea just thinking about him and his whole putrid attitude, particularly when he was bragging about what Jeremy and his pals got up to with Viola.
I’ll have to go to the Portman Street address and hope I have more luck there. I’m a little annoyed, as I hate making cold calls; the look on people’s faces when they open the door to you and the fact that you have to explain yourself to them while standing in the street. Plus the frequent displays of incredulity that you’re a private investigator. It never fails to bug me.
This artist with the studio in Bond Street is Louisa Gavreau and she specialises in nude portraiture of women, but will also do men. Perhaps men don’t mind being painted nude by a woman as much as women mind being painted nude by a man. Who knows? There’s a gallery of portraits she’s done on her site and they all look pretty good to me, though not all are nudes. There are no prices, though, which is a bit of a pain. Maybe each portrait is priced according to what the client wants. I decide to give her a call to get it out of the way. She answers instantly, which I always like.
‘Yes?’
‘Good morning. Is that Louisa Gavreau?’
‘Yes is it. How can I help you?’
Scottish. Probably Edinburgh. With that surname I was expecting a French
accent. Aged between forty and fifty, at a guess.
‘My name’s Daniel Beckett. A female friend of mine wants to have a nude portrait done and I want to get it for her as a gift. She’d prefer to have a female artist paint her. I’m in your area this morning and I was wondering, if it’s not too inconvenient, if I could pop in and see you for a chat about what has to be done.’
‘In the area this morning are you? Um, I suppose that would be alright. Do you know where I am?’
‘I’ve got your site up in front of me as I speak. The Old Bond Street address?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘Would nine-thirty be OK for you?’
‘Nine-thirty? I can’t see why not.’
‘OK. I’ll see you then. Thank you.’
‘I’m above the Sarah Chaisty Fine Art gallery. You can’t miss it. There are big purple abstracts in both windows. Appalling. Just press my buzzer.’
I decide to walk to Bond Street and stop off at a cashpoint to get out some more bribery money on my way there. If I spend half an hour talking to this woman, I can get a coffee and a snack when I’m finished and be up at Portman Street at about ten-thirty to see Mrs Bianchi, if she still lives there, or if she even exists.
If she does exist and if her proximity to the police station at Seymour Street makes her the person I need to talk to, I can then get on with visiting The Bolton Mayfair. I want to cram as much into this day as I possibly can.
As I walk along Piccadilly, I realise that Bond Street isn’t that far from the hotel. I may walk past it after I’ve sorted this visit out, just to have a look, if nothing else. I can’t have walked down Bond Street for years and there are more fashionable clothing shops than I remembered. There’s still a lot of work going on here, though, and there are skips and scaffolding everywhere.
Suddenly, I get a feeling that there’s someone with me. I cross over the road and look sharply to the left, as if looking for oncoming traffic. There’s a middle-aged man in a cream suit walking away from me on the other side of the road, an elderly woman in a huge fur coat with a walking stick, a girl in a short yellow skirt with five- or seven-inch heels and great legs, a fat guy in an oversized powder blue suit yapping into his mobile in a language that could be Armenian. No eye contact, no unusual or sudden moves. Maybe I’m just getting progressively more paranoid.
The Sarah Chaisty Fine Art gallery is on the left of Bond Street as you walk up from Piccadilly. It’s one of the older buildings here and the front is well-kept redbrick. As Ms Gavreau said, there are two large windows with purple abstracts. I look up to the second floor, perhaps hoping to see her leaning out and waving to me. Ornate cast iron balconies front each window. This must have been a very fashionable address once upon a time, but I’m not sure about now. Shops and galleries moved in as families moved out.
Just as I’m about to press Louisa Gavreau’s buzzer, my mobile bleeps and there’s a message from Anjukka. She’s been in Raleigh’s office, hopefully when no one was around, and has taken a photograph of Rosabel’s portrait. Below are the words ‘Don’t forget!’
It makes me smile. This is all rather insane and rushed, but I want this done for her and she wants it done for me. Neither of us have analysed it; it just feels right. Actions like this take us both a little further from reality, which is fine by me; reality’s overrated.
I make my way up a narrow staircase and Louisa Gavreau is waiting for me on her landing.
‘Mr Beckett? Please come in.’
I follow her down a hallway and we turn left into her flat. I’m surprised. Somewhere in my head, I’d been expecting some clichéd version of an artist’s studio, with paint all over the floor, canvases propped up against walls and wooden easels. This is just like someone’s flat.
‘So what did you think of the art in the window downstairs?’ she asks. ‘Don’t think. Just your immediate impression.’
‘It was very…purple.’
‘My thoughts exactly. Some Russian artist that Miss Chaisty is sweet on at the moment. I think it’s condescending, personally. Perhaps even racist or borderline fascist. If any British artist had come up with such tripe, you can bet your life it wouldn’t be being sold within a hundred miles of Bond Street. Still.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, stupidly.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes please. White, no sugar.’
I sit down on an amazing fake tiger skin sofa. The whole place is entirely decorated with such items. Everything on the wall is pop art and there’s a huge Andy Warhol print of Jackie Kennedy above the fireplace. Looking at the building from the outside, you’d never imagine this interior. Louisa Gavreau is older than my assessment from her voice. Probably in her mid-fifties or early sixties, salt and pepper hair in a pageboy, slim, attractive and dressed entirely in black. No shoes. Tattoo of a green bird on her left ankle.
‘So this is your girlfriend who wants the portrait, yes?’
‘Well, sort of.’
‘Sort of portrait?’
‘Sort of girlfriend.’
‘Birthday present?’
‘Ordinary present.’
‘And she wants a nude; no clothing at all, no subtle draperies, no breasts peeking shyly out of loose-fitting blouses, a total absence of coyness, demureness and modesty?’
‘She thinks that if you’re going to show your breasts, you may as well go all the way.’
‘Quite right.’
‘And she’d like to sit on a chair or a chaise longue.’
‘Well, I’m going to tell you two things, either one of which may or may not put you or your sort of girlfriend off. First, the time that one of my portraits will take. I’m a fast worker and can usually manage something you’ll both be pleased with in two sittings. Each sitting will last a minimum five hours. Having said that, it might take longer and I may need to get the sitter back a few times after the last sitting. It’s unpredictable. The sittings can be spread out if you wish, though it’s better if they’re done as close together as possible. I realise that people work in real jobs, so I’m prepared to work weekends and will do evenings as well.’
‘And the second thing?’
‘The second thing that may or may not put you or your sort of girlfriend off is the price. For what I have just described, I will charge three thousand pounds.’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine? Good. In cash, if you can manage. Cheques reluctantly received. Come in here.’
I get up and follow her into a large room with no windows. She puts the light on. It’s like an art gallery of her work. About half of them are female nudes. All superb, realistic and sexual; far better than I could possibly have imagined from the material on her website. I take a close look at a ravishingly erotic painting of a short-haired, full-bosomed woman who is kneeling down looking into a large wall mirror, so that her body can be seen from the back and from the front. It’s hard to see any brush strokes.
‘You like that one? She complained and complained about that pose, the silly mare. Kneeling down sounds like an easy thing to do, but it’s murder on the calves and the front of the ankles after half an hour. Still, it’s a good effect. She was very proud of her breasts and of her bottom, so I thought it was a clever way of getting them equal attention.’
‘It’s incredible.’
‘Thank you. I don’t put these ones on my site for the sake of my sitters. Many of them value their privacy, for some reason. When I’ve finished a portrait, if I’m pleased with it, I’ll have it photographed and framed. That is what you see in here.’
‘They’re fantastic. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with my sort of girlfriend.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Anjukka York.’
‘Well, I’ll certainly remember that. Here’s my card. Get her to text me or call me and we’ll set up an appointment or appointments. I just hope she doesn’t mind sitting still for hours on end. Many of them do, you know. They complain about it like the one you were just looking at
. I tell them to go and get some of those passport photographs done if they want speed and comfort. It’s the way I work and they can stuff it if they don’t like it. She can bring her own music if she likes, as long as it’s something that I want to listen to as well.’
‘Sure. I’ll let her know,’ I say. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose you have to have some sort of stimulus to alleviate the possible boredom caused by sitting still for so long. I just imagined that the artist and the sitter would have an interesting chat, but even an interesting chat can’t be sustained for five hours.
‘Do you live in different places? You and your sort of girlfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Whose place is this painting going to be in when it’s finished? Yours or hers?’
‘Does it make a difference to what you’ll do?’
‘If it’s for you and it’s something you’ll be seeing every day, I can add a certain erotic undercurrent that you’ll find stimulating.’
‘Well, I haven’t thought about who’ll be having it. Add the undercurrent anyway.’
‘All right. Was it your idea?’
‘Her having a nude portrait done? Not really. It was just something we were talking about. There’s a nude where she works and she was just saying that it wasn’t the sort of thing that she would have had done. Or rather, she would do it in a different way. In fact…’
I get my mobile out and find Anjukka’s message.
‘…she texted me this photograph of it when she got into work this morning.’
‘Well-known nude? Venus Verticoria? Something like that?’
‘No. It was commissioned fairly recently. It’s her boss’s wife.’
‘Can I see?’
‘Of course.’
I hand her the mobile and she squints at the portrait of Rosabel Raleigh. She then produces a pair of half-moon reading glasses and squints again. We walk back into her living room, or whatever it is. Now I can spot a couple of banks of lights on the ceiling that I hadn’t noticed. This must be the room she does her painting in.
Kiss Me When I'm Dead Page 14
