Nicola Griffith - The Blue Place

“Ah.”

“What do you mean, ah?”

I shrugged. She would not want to hear that she was aiding and abetting what amounted to smuggling, especially from someone who didn’t even know the difference between a fake and a forgery.

“Anyway, seeing that painting made me very nervous. So I took it over to a friend, an art historian and appraiser. I thought about calling the original client, but decided not to. After all, I didn’t know whether it was a fake or not and, besides, he had sold it for a good profit. It wouldn’t hurt him either way. But I had to tell Honeycutt, the banker, that there would be a bit of a delay. Of course he wanted to know why so I told him I had some doubts regarding the painting’s provenance. He was concerned, obviously—we are talking about a considerable investment for an individual—so I tried to reassure him. I told him how reliable and discreet my appraiser was; how he was doing all this on a rush basis for me; that I had an appointment at eleven-thirty that evening to get the definitive answer, one way or another.”

“An appointment with Jim Lusk.”

“Yes. With Jim. I was supposed to be there at eleven-thirty. But some things came up at work. And I know Jim. He’s…he was…a night owl. He wouldn’t mind if I was a few minutes late. But I was even later than I thought, so I’d parked and was running to his house when I bumped into you.” Her back was pressed flat against the back of her chair, creating an extra two or three inches between us. Probably reliving the look on my face as I had mused on breaking her neck.

I thought about that writhing tiger lily of flame, and the bright stamen at the centre of that flower; the burning, curling Jim Lusk.

“You walked away, his…the house burned, and I saw your wallet. It must have dropped when we collided.” I would give her the benefit of the doubt. “So I looked through it. And I went to the police. They more or less laughed at me. ‘Aud!’ they said. ‘Oh, not Aud! She was one of us!’ The odd thing was, underneath their bluster, they sounded uncertain, as though they thought you just might have been involved somehow. Then one of the uniformed ones came running to the detective in charge, and he sighed, and he told me he was pretty sure, given the new evidence, that this was a drug killing. I said it wasn’t. Jim always found…well, let’s just say that not only did he not take drugs, he found those who did rather amusing.” She shook her head. “I know people say this about their friends and family all the time, but believe me, I knew Jim.”

Ah, but we never really know even our best friends. Even the spouse who snores next to us every night. We can never see behind those glistening eyes, never get beneath the skin, venture inside that shining ivory bowl to the dark dreams and slippery lusts that slide through the crocodile brain without regard for civilization or religion or ethics.

“He was murdered for a reason. If there were no drugs, it was something else.”

“There were drugs. Several kilos of cocaine.”

“Then they were just window dressing,” she said impatiently, “a way to twist the truth.”

“Very, very expensive window dressing.” Which of course played both ways: why hadn’t the firebug taken the merchandise?

She shrugged away the importance of several hundred thousand dollars worth of evidence. “Yesterday, Honeycutt’s insurance adjuster showed up, which is normal for a claim of this size. Honeycutt had said nothing to her, of course, about the question of provenance. He would have been a fool to. I told her that, yes, everything was fine. That I had merely taken it around to the appraiser’s to get a second opinion as a matter of course.”

“You lied.”

“Yes. And I hate that. I resent it. But I did it because I have to consider my reputation. People trust me. It’s my job to be utterly reliable. I can’t afford clients thinking: She was the one who muddled up that Friedrich. I just can’t.”

“Honeycutt won’t say anything—after all, he wants his insurance. The previous owner won’t say anything because as far as you’re aware, he doesn’t know anything. The picture can’t talk because it’s now no more than a few greasy atoms in the stratosphere. So explain to me what your problem might be with this.”

“My conscience.”

We looked at each other in the artificial fifties gloom. Conscience. Such a high-minded kind of word. In my experience, people used the word “conscience” when what they really meant was, Oh god I shouldn’t have done that it was stupid what if they find out ? “Conscience” sounds better to their internal censors. “Conscience is a matter for a priest.”

She gave me an odd look. “You would look good in the old-fashioned clerical garb, the long black coat and dog collar. Those pale, pale eyes, the way you nod intently and sit so still…” She laughed then, a brittle vocal shimmer that tried to hide the loss and bewilderment, tried to turn it all into an amusing game. “So here I am, confessing my sins. But what I want isn’t forgiveness. Or penance. It’s information.”

“You know as much about all this as I do. More.”

“I want you to help me find out who did this to Jim, and why.” Her voice was raw, believable. “You would be paid by my company, Lyon Art. You would be paid well. Not quite as well as your investments, perhaps, but surely it would be better than…than grubbing about in the police gym with nervous rookies. Much more exciting.”

I wondered what excitement meant to her. A frisson, a brief hormonal thrill to flutter the muscles and pull tendons tight for a moment. Excitement is the product of facing something dangerous. I like excitement from danger that is carefully controlled: the bungee jump, skydiving, free diving off the coast of Belize. Danger of the uncontrolled variety has a nasty tendency to lead to people with guns or knives appearing out of the dark and a split second to live or die. Danger is that place where the space between one breath and another decides your fate, where your life and theirs are like two ice cubes sliding down a hot blade and the fulcrum is speed, where survival means the ability to move from one state to another faster than thought. It means suspending consideration and just being, acting and reacting, moving through a world where everything but you cools and slows down so you can glide between the blows and bullets and take out someone’s heart. Danger is desperately seductive.

“No. Thank you. I’m perfectly happy as I am.”

She leaned back in her chair, until the top of her head was almost touching the hideous orange shade on the hanging lamp and strange shadows pooled on her face. “If you’re so happy, why did you resign from the police? Why do you walk the streets in the middle of the night looking haunted by demons? Why do you hang out with dangerous, filthy people in loud, foul-smelling night clubs where no one would even give you the time of day if they knew who you are, knew that your mother is King Harald’s ambassador to the Court of St. James?”

My face is my most useful tool. I made it smile. “Did you practice that?”

Her high cheekbones stood out sharply in the light but the shadow hid her eyes and mouth. “I’m not a trained investigator like you, but Jim was my friend. I’m going to try to find out what happened. I’ll do it on my own if I have to—I’m smart and I learn fast—but you could help me, and I’m willing to pay.”

I know police work and death, I understand the intricacies of diplomacy and the strange sharp angles where performance art and outlaws, tattoos and high society meet and mingle. I also knew what she didn’t: that stalking a professional killer is not a game, not a hobby you can learn at the weekend. Not when the stakes are your life.