Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘Me?’ he said indignantly. ‘I didn’t get you to do anything of the sort. You offered. It was your idea.’

Well, true. Argyll reckoned he’d better gloss over that one. ‘Whatever,’ he said, ‘I’ve had to bring it back to give to the police. So I want to know where it came from. Just in case they ask me.’

‘Sorry. Can’t say. Frankly, I can’t remember.’

There is something about the word frankly, Argyll thought in passing. It’s a sort of verbal grunt which is an effective shorthand for ‘I’m about to tell a lie.’ A prefix signifying that the sentence that follows should be understood in the negative of its spoken meaning. Politicians use it a lot. ‘Frankly, the economy has never been in better shape,’ which means, ‘If there even is an economy this time next year I, for one, will be very surprised.’ Thus it was with Delorme. Frankly (to use the term in its proper sense), he could remember perfectly well, and Argyll hinted subtly that he knew this.

‘You liar,’ he said. ‘You have a picture in your gallery and you don’t know where it comes from? Of course you do.’

‘Don’t get upset,’ Delorme said in an irritatingly patronizing fashion. ‘It’s true. I don’t know. Now, I know it’s because I didn’t want to know—’

Argyll sighed. He should have known better. ‘Tell me the worst, then,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘I know who delivered the painting. He told me that he was acting for a client. All he wanted me to do — and it was a generous commission — was to organize its delivery. Which I did.’

‘No questions asked.’

‘He assured me there was nothing improper in what I was doing.’

‘Leaving out the question of whether there was anything improper in what he was doing.’

Delorme nodded. ‘That was his problem. I checked in the latest police list of stolen art and it wasn’t there, which is all I was required to do. I’m in the clear.’

‘But I’m not. I’m stuck with the thing.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Delorme said. He seemed as though he might almost have meant it. He wasn’t a bad soul, really. Just not very trustworthy.

‘I think,’ said Argyll ponderously, ‘that you knew damn well, or suspected, anyway, that there was something very dodgy about this picture. You wanted to get rid of it and unloaded it on me. That wasn’t at all nice of you.’

‘Look, I’m sorry. I really am. But I did keep my side of the bargain. I sent those drawings off to California for you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I needed the money. I’m really scraping along here. Dealing with that painting kept the wolves at bay, at least for a bit. It was simple desperation.’

‘You could always have sold the Ferrari.’ Delorme’s penchant for red cars so small you could barely get into them was a weakness well known in the trade. Argyll had never understood it.

‘Sell the — Oh, a joke,’ the Frenchman said, worried for a moment. ‘No, I needed the money fast.’

‘How much were you paid?’

‘Twenty thousand francs.’

‘For transporting a picture? And you’re going to stand up in court and say you never suspected for a moment, your worship, that there was anything wrong?’

Delorme looked uncomfortable. ‘Well...’

‘And, now I come to think of it, you were in an unseemly haste to get that picture out of the country. Why?’

Delorme rubbed his nose then cracked his knuckles, then, just to be sure, rubbed his nose again. ‘Well, you see...’

Argyll looked patient.

‘Come on.’

‘The owner — that is, the man dealing with the painting for a client — um, got arrested.’

‘Oh, God. It gets worse.’

Delorme smiled, a little nervously.

‘Who was this man? Has his name popped into your memory yet?’

‘Oh, if you insist. His name is Besson. Jean-Luc Besson. An art dealer. Impeccably honest, as far as I know.’

‘And when this impeccably honest man was rounded up by the boys in blue your first thought was to get rid of any tangible evidence of a connection with him. Not that you suspected anything at all, of course. Just in case the police turned up.’

More embarrassment.

‘They did,’ Delorme said.

‘When?’

‘About an hour after you collected the picture and took it away. The man wanted it back.’

‘And you denied ever having seen it.’

‘I could hardly do that,’ he said reasonably. ‘Seeing that Besson had said he’d given it to me. No. I told them you had it.’

Argyll stared at him open-mouthed. So much for honour amongst dealers.

‘You what? You said, “I know nothing about it but I do know a shady character called Argyll is at this moment about to smuggle it out of the country?”’

A watery smile indicated this was about right.

‘And you told them about Muller?’

‘He already seemed to know.’

‘Who was this policeman?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Describe him.’

‘Quite young, not a regular in the Art Squad that I know of. Thirties, dark brown hair and quite a lot of it, little scar—’

‘Above his left eyebrow?’

‘That’s the one. Do you know him?’

‘Enough to know that he’s probably not a policeman. Did he show you any identification?’

‘Ah, well, no. In fact he didn’t. That doesn’t mean he’s not one.’

‘No. But the next day he tried to steal the painting at the train station. If he really was a policeman, he’d have just whipped out a warrant or something and arrested me. You were quite lucky, really.’

‘Why?’

‘Because after failing to steal the painting from me, he then went and tortured Muller to death. Then he shot someone else. Somehow I don’t think you would have enjoyed that.’

And, leaving Delorme satisfactorily pale at his apparently narrow escape — which in Argyll’s view would have been no more than he deserved, considering his behaviour — he left to see what he could do about this Besson character.

At approximately the same time that Argyll was being appalled by the potential for duplicity contained in the human frame, Flavia was standing in a queue at Basle airport to change some money and buy a map of the city. She was raring to go. Her blood was up, in fact, and she had only briefly considered the possibility of finding a hotel, having a bath, getting changed and settling down for a meal and an early night. No sooner thought of than dismissed. She had work to do and she wanted to get this done, then go straight to Paris to have another look at this painting. Damned nuisance, but nothing to be done about it.

Her decision to go to Switzerland had been reinforced by the careful perusal of the papers accumulated by the Carabinieri the night before. As Fabriano had said, they were methodical; a model of how to do it. The trouble was, they hadn’t had much time, and getting information via the Swiss police inevitably involved an awful lot of paperwork and delay. Not the fault of the Swiss, just the way it was.

She had toyed with the idea of ringing ahead to Ellman’s apartment to give warning that she was on her way, but decided against. If the housekeeper Fabriano’s report mentioned wasn’t there, that was a pity. She’d have a wasted journey, but it wasn’t a long one, only around fifteen minutes by taxi. When she had arrived at the destination, she stood and examined the street. It was a non-descript line of apartment blocks, all around thirty or forty years old. Comfortable enough, in decent repair and with the streets as immaculate as they always were in Switzerland. A respectable neighbourhood, but not in any way a wealthy one, so she reckoned.

The entrance to Ellman’s block was similarly anonymous but worthy in appearance; clean, tidy, the walls covered in little notes reminding tenants to make sure the doors were firmly closed and the rubbish sacks secured to stop the cats getting at them. Muller himself had lived on the fifth floor, and Flavia took the well-maintained, comfortably carpeted lift to get there.