Ian Hamilton - The wild beast of Wuhan

“ The room?”

“Yes, only one room has its own bathroom; the others share. The Russians landed half an hour ago and the captain wanted your room, but I held it for you.”

“Thank you,” Ava said. She was beginning to think that Torshavn might have been the better option. “Will my cellphone work here?”

“If you have Bluetooth it should.”

“How about the Internet?”

“Not from your room, but you can always use my desktop if you need it.”

“How about food?”

“The restaurant is still open. We serve for another hour.”

Ava filled in the form and gave the woman her passport and credit card. “What kind of food do you have?” she asked.

“Sheep,” the woman said.

“Lamb?”

“No, sheep.”

“That’s all you have?”

“We have run out of everything else.”

Ava had eaten on the plane, not much, but enough to keep her going until morning. “I’m not really hungry, thank you anyway.”

“If you do not mind me asking, what brings you here? We don’t get many visitors who are not fishermen. We certainly do not get attractive young women, and Asian at that,” the woman said with a quick smile.

Is she flirting with me? Ava thought. “I’m here to see an artist.”

“Jan Sorensen?”

“Why, yes.”

“That was an easy guess. He is the only artist we have,” the woman said. “Does he know you are coming?”

“No.”

The woman looked pained.

“Is that a problem?”

“He is a funny kind of man. Keeps to himself, doesn’t mingle, doesn’t even hardly talk. Some of us think it is because he is a Dane and thinks he is too good for us. Others think he is just a bit mad.”

“What do you think?”

“I lean towards mad.”

“He’s married, right?”

“Helga, a down-to-earth Faeroese girl. They have seven kids. She runs the house, runs the kids, and runs him, I think.”

“Where do they live?”

She jerked her head to the right. “Up the hill, on the street that runs along the right side of the hotel.”

“Does it have a number?”

“It has a purple door.”

Ava checked her watch; it was almost ten o’clock.

“They will still be up, if that is what you are thinking. People here eat late and sleep late.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Her room was on the main floor, just three doors away from the lobby. She unpacked her carry-on, shoving the laundry bag into the closet. She thought about having her clothes washed but didn’t think she’d be in Tjorn long enough to get them back in time.

She walked back into the lobby and peered into the restaurant. There were three clusters of men eating what she assumed was sheep and drinking from bottles of what looked like vodka. She imagined they had brought the liquor from the boat. They looked at her with more interest than she liked, and she quickly backed away from the door and headed outside.

It was still drizzling, enough to dampen her hair but not enough to make her really wet. What the hell, she thought, and started up the street.

Sorensen’s house was the fourth on the left. It was a two-storey brick structure, square, solid, with a window on either side of the purple door and three windows in a row above it. The downstairs windows were lit, the occupants shielded by the same type of lace curtains she had seen in Denmark.

The door had a large brass knocker. Ava swung it three times and then waited. The door opened a crack. A pair of bright blue eyes stared at her. A woman’s eyes.

“Hello, my name is Ava Lee. I apologize for dropping in on you like this, but I’m here to speak to Mr. Sorensen about his work. I was given this address by his brother, Ronny, who said it would be all right for me to come.”

The door opened enough for Ava to see who was behind it. This had to be Helga. About five feet tall and almost as broad. She was wearing a floral-patterned muumuu over bare legs and feet that were in sheepskin slippers. Her face was framed by a mass of frizzy light brown hair and her skin was pale and fleshy, with deep wrinkles etched at the corners of eyes that were alert, watchful. “We weren’t expecting anyone.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I would have written but I didn’t have that much time, and I didn’t know how else to contact you.”

“What do you want?”

“As I said, I want to chat with Mr. Sorensen about his work, perhaps buy some pieces. I have a client who has several of his paintings and he’s expressed an interest in buying more.”

“What work?”

“The beach scenes.”

“He doesn’t do those anymore.”

“Then maybe I could see what he has been working on.”

Helga turned her head to look back into the house but didn’t speak.

“We’d pay cash,” Ava said.

“Come in,” Helga said.

From the entrance Ava could see a dining room on the left, its long, empty table surrounded by twelve chairs, the walls covered in paintings. On the right was the living room, which had a wood-slat couch, two chairs, and a coffee table that was as bare as the one in the dining room. Everything was in perfect order, made all the more perfect by the aroma of fresh baking.

“Jan is upstairs; I’ll get him. You can sit there and wait,” she said, motioning to the living room.

More paintings hung there, most of them of the Tjorn harbour and all of which featured a bald man and a woman with bright red nipples. When Jan Sorensen walked into the room, she knew who the bald man was, and she imagined that Helga must have remarkable nipples.

He was only about five foot six and he was fat and soft, not a man used to manual labour or physical exertion of any kind. His eyes were as blue as Helga’s, his skin as fair, and the same lines were etched beside his eyes. They could have been twins if she were taller.

“There was a dealer here from Copenhagen about six months ago. He tried to steal my paintings for next to nothing. Are you with him?” he said aggressively.

Ava stood and offered her hand. “My name is Ava Lee, and I have nothing to do with a dealer in Copenhagen.”

“Then who do you work for?”

So much for easing into this, she thought. “I work for a Chinese collector.”

Sorensen looked baffled. “Chinese? I’ve never sold to any Chinese.”

“They were purchased indirectly.”

He looked at his wife. “I told you that agent was screwing us over.”

“Can I sit?” Ava asked.

“Please,” Helga said. “Can I get you anything? I just baked some muffins, and we have coffee and tea.”

“Coffee would be fine.”

“We only have instant.”

“Perfect,” Ava said.

She sat on one of the chairs and Sorensen sat on the couch facing her. He looked as if he wanted to ask her something, and she prepared herself. But he held back until his wife came back, with one cup of coffee. That’s interesting, Ava thought.

“What paintings did your client buy?” he asked as the cup was placed on the table in front of Ava.

“Some Skagen beach scenes,” she said.

“How much did he pay?”

“It varied.”

“How much?”

Ava couldn’t see how to avoid giving him a number. “On average, about five thousand,” she said.

“Kroner?”

“U.S. dollars.”

“That fucker!” he yelled, leaping to his feet.

Helga tugged at his arm, and for a second Ava was reminded of May Ling Wong trying to calm her husband. There was a strange kind of symmetry.

“He has never paid me more than five thousand kroner — that’s about a thousand dollars!” he said to his wife.

“I know, Jan, I know. Now sit down; you don’t want to scare this young woman.”

He collapsed onto the couch.

Ava looked at the paintings on the wall. How was she going to get from them to Fauvist art? Her decision to walk up the hill had been taken too lightly, she now thought. She normally liked to prepare for meetings, imagining different scenarios and how they would play out. This was all too ad hoc. And now she was stuck.