Nicola Griffith - The Blue Place

I wanted information, and stepped back, signalling a pause. “Sern chi sao?”

She merely nodded and extended both arms. Double sticky hands.

We moved faster this time, our legs bent lower, circling around the gym in jong tao, a deadly waltz. A woman’s centre of gravity is generally about two inches below her navel, just where the belly rounds. No matter how fast you travel across the floor, that point should move in parallel. I was taller than her but having one’s centre of gravity higher is a disadvantage, so I moved in a lower stance. We were both sweating lightly now, and our breath came faster. Her skin felt marvellously alive beneath mine. We moved back and forth, and my belly warmed, and I knew hers warmed, too, as we revolved around the gym and each other, a planet and its satellite turning about the sun.

Time to let her know which was which, to show her I didn’t much appreciate having my wallet stolen at the scene of an arson and murder. I moved more strongly, breathed in great long gushes, as though my breath alone would move her aside. Her body sheath was dark under the arms. My belly burned hotter. She began to move just a little out of balance. I made a slow biu tze, the shooting fingers, up towards her eyes, with my left hand, and a going under hand with my right. Being out of balance, even so slightly, meant she had either to let me through or speed up to regain the advantage. To speed up meant it would become almost a sparring session.

She sped up.

Differences in skill become more apparent with speed. I harried her round and round the gym, in no hurry, enjoying testing her. She began to spar in earnest. She snapped a punch at my head, which I palmed away easily enough, then launched into a series of battle punches, hoping to drive me off balance. I centred, then stepped right through her with a double circling hand—and in my head, for a split second, moved over both her wrists and dumped her on the floor—but in actuality let the moment pass.

She felt it, felt the moment when I could have thrust the heat of my belly against hers and taken it all, and now the whole character of our sparring changed. I led, she followed. It became a dance, teacher and pupil. I would ask, she would answer.

When we came to a halt, wrists still touching, in the centre of that beautiful gym, her face was as smooth as butter. We bowed to each other. I waited.

“Can I buy you coffee?”

The Beat Bean on Monroe is the kind of place I hate: seamless period decor of the fifties, orange chairs and Formica tables, the goateed servers wearing all black. The confectionery she bought for herself looked dry enough to be forty years old, too; the coffee determined and without grace. I like French roast, myself, but there are few places, these days, that serve it.

She chose the mustard vinyl sofa, I took the distorted design nightmare opposite.

“My name is Julia Lyons-Bennet.”

I wasn’t a bit surprised. “I gather you already know mine.”

She flushed, a quick hard colouring that turned her high, golden cheeks the colour of Madeira. “I hope you found your wallet.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“You want something.”

“I want to know why you were lurking fifty yards from Jim’s house, in the rain, after midnight, five minutes before his house exploded.” It came out as a challenge. She was breathing hard with some righteous emotion and her flushed cheeks made her look quite, quite determined.

“I was out for a walk.”

“That’s about as informative as telling me you were breathing!”

“Like saying the cause of death was heart failure,” I agreed.

“What?”

“Look, Julia, I was out for a walk. Nothing more. I understand that the deceased was a friend of yours, and you must feel terrible, but I had no more connection to his murder than the fact that I was outside his house when it went up. I’m sure the police have already told you that drugs were found on Mr. Lusk’s property, that they believe his death was some kind of message to the drug fraternity in this city.”

“Don’t tell me you believe that garbage!”

“Not particularly. But I still want to know what you want from me.”

“I found out about you. You used to be in the police, but then your father died and left you money. I read your record.”

My record. Lists of deaths, the innocent and the guilty, and she had been paddling about in it. I stood.

“Please. I want your help.” She pushed her coffee cup to one side and lifted a worn pigskin briefcase onto the table. “Can you just spare ten minutes to listen?”

The briefcase was old, worn and comfortable. It spoke of a real person with a real life, real feelings.

“Please?”

Ten minutes is a very small fraction of one’s lifetime. I sat down.

“I run an art acquisitions and security business: buying and selling for corporations, mostly. Sometimes I set up corporate museums; on occasion I advise on the transport and security of travelling exhibitions. Two weeks ago I was approached by a man, a banker. He had a valuable painting, a Friedrich, to ship to France. Discreetly. Normally, of course, I don’t do that penny-ante stuff, but he was referred by a very good client of mine—the man to whom I had brokered the Friedrich in the first place. And so, as a gesture of goodwill, I agreed. In fact, I oversaw the packing personally.” She reached for her coffee, then changed her mind.

“I’m going to order some mineral water. You?”

“Thank you. Yes.”

The water came, we fussed with slices of lemon.

“Now, as you can probably appreciate, I very rarely do this kind of work myself, but I was in the building when the painting was delivered, so I went to take a look at it before it was recrated. It’s a lovely painting, lovely. I watched as my assistants took it out of its old packing case. They barely glanced at the painting, but I did. As I’ve said, it was a lovely painting, Luminous work. I had brokered it to the client I mentioned, the one who sold it to this banker. I wanted to see it again.” In this light her eyes were the rich blue of twelfth century stained glass. “I looked at it, and it made me uneasy. I brokered it two years ago. I know more now than I did then. I looked at this painting and knew it wasn’t a Friedrich. What I don’t know is if it was the same painting I had sold as a Friedrich two years ago.”

“What made you think this one was a forgery?”

“A fake. A forgery is a piece passed off as a previously undiscovered original. I don’t know. The brushwork, I think. It…well, it’s hard to describe, but it didn’t have the precision I associate with Friedrich.”

“You’ve seen a lot of his work?”

She looked troubled. “No. More in the last twelve months than ever before, but the German Romantics aren’t really my field of expertise. I’m much more familiar with work from the last thirty years. My specialty is investment. For small investments, anything under a million, you get the highest returns for contemporary paintings.”

“But you brokered the Friedrich anyway.”

“Its provenance was impeccable. The original seller’s reputation was unimpeachable. I had absolutely no reason to doubt either.”

“But now you do?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that I don’t think the painting I was supposed to be crating to ship discreetly to France was a Friedrich.”

“That’s the second time you’ve described the shipping as discreet.”

She looked surprised. “Art is almost always shipped that way to France. The French government enforces rather punitive tax laws that make it desirable for art owners to be somewhat secretive about their acquisitions.”