Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

“My point is as long as I stay here, I’ll triumph. If I flee, I fail. Once I leave the country, I lose leverage and power. I am not even sure any painting is so valuable as to compensate for that loss.”

“You killed a former policeman.”

“Paoloni. An ex-bank guard, a criminal facilitator, a shady character. Not nearly as good at throwing off a tail as he thought he was. He brought the paintings back to his own house, which shows he had no imagination. I was there, waiting outside in the car. I didn’t kill him. That was my dear, loyal, and, for once, careless Maresciallo, who met with surprising and uncalled-for violence when all he was doing was trying to prepare the ground for negotiations.”

“If you want something done well, you’d best do it yourself,” said Blume.

“I’m still not sure of that. My Maresciallo has always served me perfectly. But you may have a point.” The Colonel looked over to the painting and moved closer to it. “Angela, use a light touch, there’s a good girl. I have a good feeling about this portrait. John, make yourself useful and stop standing there like a pointless cuckold. Give her some kerosene.”

Blume shifted his weight in his chair. If the Colonel took another step to the right, he could push himself over the arm of the chair.

He tried to move, but the Colonel leaned in toward him at the same moment and slapped him in the forehead with the side of the pistol.

The Colonel stood back, still pointing the pistol at him, his hand steady, and saying something, his voice booming but muffled and far away. Blume braced himself to receive a bullet, but the Colonel was now sitting down and wiping his forehead with the back of the hand that held the weapon. There was no question of rushing him now. No question of standing up out of this chair. The fumes in the room were choking him.

“I can read thoughts, Commissioner,” the Colonel was saying. “Your intent was in your eyes. I expected you to be more phlegmatic, even a little disinterested in the justice or the injustice of all this, instead you get whipped with your own pistol. More worrying now, isn’t it? If I’m waving yours about, maybe it’s because I am planning on using it, then ducking the blame.”

“The painting you are looking for is not there,” said Blume.

“Well now, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said the Colonel. “Buy time. Always buy time. In this case, I believe you.”

“It’s not there.” Blume wanted to save his breath and not speak, but he needed to speak to save his life. He closed his eyes and focused on getting the right words out. “We can sit here and watch. I can’t do much else. When she has wiped the last canvas down, you’ll see I’m right. I may have bled to death by then.”

“Lean forward,” ordered the Colonel. “And a little to your left. Do it.”

Blume did.

“Not that much blood behind you. Where is the hidden painting?”

“Hidden.”

“Yes, yes. Predictable to the end, Commissioner. Hey, cuckold, where’s the Velazquez?”

“What Velazquez?” said Nightingale. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“John,” said the Colonel. “You and I go way back. Mid-seventies. You know I am capable of killing this woman. Perhaps that would please you, now that you’re finding out what sort of person she is. She came around to your place this morning to confess, didn’t she?”

Nightingale nodded.

“Do you want me to shoot her dead now?”

“No!”

“Weak. You always were weak. You’re not a father. You’re not a husband or a lover or an artist. You’re not a man. Treacy was strong, honest. No, I exaggerate, no point in sentimentalizing his memory. He was not in the slightest bit honest, but if he was here now, he would be lying there dead, or I would be lying there dead. One of us, because he would not have allowed me to talk to him or his woman in this way. I forgot that there is no reason you would know of the Velazquez, but Henry found one. He didn’t tell you that either. Work out where it is. I give you three minutes.”

“A Velazquez, Harry? Look, Harry and I, we used to come across a lot of really stupid stuff. There is so much bad art, you know? Old and black and cracked with a whitish face of some unknown, bourgeois non-entity painted by a talentless hack, and people think it’s an heirloom worth millions. Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean-Trees are older. Rocks are older. No, sorry, I must organize my thoughts.”

“I’ll point the pistol at the dazed Commissioner, if that calms you a little,” said the Colonel.

“Colonel, you remember how we did the double-bluff stings? Harry would do a fine forgery using original paper, careful signatures. Then, when it was quite done, he would paint over it. To make sure we were caught, he had to allow the new paint to be too soft, or he’d use an anachronistic color. But the forgery underneath would be of a relatively important painter only. Or a scuola. We never stretched credibility. It is unthinkable he would hide a Velazquez in this way.”

“John, John, you’re not following. This time he would be hiding it to hide it, not to have it discovered.”

“No, I’m not following. Harry would never have painted over a work by Velazquez.”

“So where would one be, if he had it?”

“Here?” said Nightingale. “Or in a bank vault. I really have no idea.”

With a soft sigh, the Colonel stood up, glancing down affectionately at Blume as he passed by. “Come here, John,” he said, making a coaxing motion with his left hand, keeping the pistol trained loosely on Blume.

Nightingale came over, an uncertain smile on his lips as he continued to explain. “So the dealer thinks he’s discovered an authentic painting, you see, and accepts my suspiciously low asking price for the alleged Bronzino or-?”

“Yes, yes. I know all this stuff. It has nothing to do with this. Now I want you to think about three things I know. Put your hands down by your side, and close your eyes while I tell them to you.”

Nightingale closed his eyes, but they flickered open immediately.

“No, relax and listen. Henry Treacy continued to fuck Angela and neither of them told you until Angela decided to confess this morning, when she had no choice. No, no. Keep your eyes closed. The daughter you thought was yours is his, and he knew who she was from the moment she arrived in the gallery. Now please, don’t open your eyes in surprise when I say she is in some way responsible for his death. Good. And the last thing is that Treacy discovered an original painting by Velazquez, and had you buy it, then hid it from you for years. Can you remember the time he asked you to bid for a painting?”

Nightingale nodded.

“Can you remember how big it was?”

Nightingale stretched out his arms, drew a rectangle in the air. “Not so big. About 170 by 90 centimeters.” He widened his arms, “Maybe a bit more. 200 by 100.”

“Excellent.” The Colonel took a step closer. “Now are you still thinking about what I have just told you?”

“Yes.”

“Including the cuckolding and the deception?”

Nightingale nodded.

“Good. Keep thinking of that.”

The Colonel, standing about half a meter away now, raised his pistol, and shot Nightingale through the ear.

The crack was loud but the room absorbed it quickly. Nightingale fell to the floor with a soft thump, and the thunder outside rolled and rain began to patter loudly on the panes. Blume expected Angela to scream. But the only one who had shouted out was himself, and his voice was drowned by the shot, the thunder, and the rain. Angela already held Nightingale’s head in her arms, but was dry-eyed.

“I never liked him,” said the Colonel, almost as a casual aside to Blume.