Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

The blonde woman was still signalling to her to stand up. She glanced over at Roger, who raised his hand as if to say: Do as she tells you, so she got up from the bed, still keeping her eyes on everyone in the room.

Are they burglars or cops? Have they come to kidnap Roger? Let's see. What did we get up to? Last night we were at that party…

God, how her head hurt. She could not think straight. Perhaps that was because of the mix of alcohol, hashish and pills she had taken at the Roquentins. Besides, the scene before her was so odd that the terror she could feel starting to beat in her chest was still muffled. It looked as if it had all been set up by the God of Art: a combination of the fascinating – the blonde in her camouflage outfit; the ridiculous – Roger and her stark naked, still clammy from their dense dreams; and the absurd – the heavily made-up model in her combat gear. It was like a Cezanne painting in green – cobalt green, military green, turquoise green, green carpet, apple green of the bedroom walls. If she were to die young, thought Briseida, she would choose exactly this green moment.

It was a shame this aesthetic impression faded a little when the blonde woman pushed her towards the men waiting in the dining room.

They pinioned her arms, and pushed her down on to a chair in front of what appeared to be a blank computer screen. Briseida had shouted out as she was being hustled into the room, and had apparently broken some code of silence, because a few seconds later she heard noises and words in Dutch from the bedroom, then more noises in the corridor. But the next words were in English and were directed at her.

'Don't do that again,' Fascinating Eyes Blondie said, bending over her. 'And don't try to stand up.'

She could not have done so even if she had wanted to: two pairs of iron gloves were forcing her down on her seat.

'Here's a glass of water. Drink some if you like. I'm going to press a key on the computer and a person will appear on the screen to ask you some questions. Reply loudly and clearly. Don't avoid any of the questions, and don't take too much time over them. If you don't know the answer, or want time to think about it, say so. We know you speak good English, but if there's something you don't understand, say so too.'

The blonde pressed a key, and the face of an elderly man, bald except for some white tufts above the ears, appeared on the screen. In the top left-hand corner there also appeared an insert of a young woman with tanned brown skin, hair the colour of coal, prominent cheekbones and plump lips, gripped by the shoulders and arms by four gloved hands, and with naked breasts. Briseida realised it was her. They were filming her and sending the images in real time to heaven knows what damned spot on the planet. Diagonally across the screen from this, a timing device ticked off the seconds.

Hallucinatory effects produced by the chaotic consumption of toxic products: that was how Stan Coleman, her unforgettable, wealthy (and asshole) professor of Contemporary Art at Columbia described all the strange things that happened after an orgy of soft drugs. That was what this must be. It could not really be happening to her.

'Good morning. I'm sorry if we've disturbed you, but we need to know something urgently, and we're counting on your generous cooperation.'

The man spoke English with an undeniable continental accent, perhaps German or Dutch. At the bottom half of the screen, his neck and the knot of his tie were obscured by subtitles of what he was saying in French and German. Briseida did not need any more languages to feel terrified.

'We know a lot about you: you're twenty-six, born in Bogota, have an art degree from a New York university, you father is his country's cultural attache at the United Nations… Let's see, what else?' The man bent forward, and for a few seconds the screen became a globe featuring his polished bald head. 'Ah yes, you're engaged on a research project for the university about painters and their collections… this year you have been in the Netherlands to study the objects Rembrandt collected in his house in Amsterdam. And now you're in Paris, with our good friend Roger Levin. Last night you went with him to a party at Leo Roquentin's. All this is correct, isn't it?'

Briseida was about to answer yes when the fairy godmother of computers dissolved the image with an explosion of green flashes and replaced it with another face: a thin woman with her hair cut in a boyish bob, wearing dark glasses. Her subtitles were in green.

'Hello there, I'm the bad cop.' Her accent was more English than the man's, and her voice was more disturbing. Her smile was like a scythe blade. 'I just wanted to say hello. Some place Leo Roquentin has, doesn't he? I think the salon is from the eighteenth century, and the ceiling frescoes were painted by the maestro Luc Ducet and tell the story of Samson and Delilah. In the west wing, in a room with two ceiling roundels, the story of the Flood is depicted, from the building of the Ark to the return of the dove with the olive branch in its beak. We know Leo Roquentin very well… His HD collection is also excellent, especially the Elmer Fludd paintings in the main room. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you take part in the art-shock that was going on in the huge basement underneath the mansion? It was called Art-Chess, and was created by Michel Gros. Twenty-four young people of both sexes, and plastic material… the figures, completely naked and painted in various shades of green, are pieces on a thirty-metre-square chessboard. The guests suggest the moves they should make. Any piece that gets taken is handed over to the guests to do what they like with. You didn't play the game? Of course, your little friend Roger mustn't have told you anything about it. You would have simply seen the paintings upstairs: the art-shock was for a select few. Leo astonishes them with these interactive performances, then offers them irresistible deals with even more prohibited works.'

Was what that woman was saying true? It was certainly true that Roger had disappeared for a long while to talk with Roquentin while Briseida wandered from one corner to another across green carpets, on the billiard table of guests, contemplating the magnificent oils by Elmer Fludd. Then when he returned she had told him he looked a bit nervous. And his shirt collar was undone. An art-shock consisting of a game of chess with human pieces… she said to herself. Why hadn't Roger told her anything? What was going on in the basement of the world, beneath the feet of all those rich people?

The woman paused, and gave another of her unpleasant smiles.

'Don't worry, men are always the same. They like to keep secrets. We women are more sincere, aren't we? At least I hope you are, Miss Canchares. I'm going to leave you with my friend the Good Cop, who's going to ask you some questions. If your replies are convincing, we'll unplug the computer, go home and we'll all be good friends. If they're not, it'll be the Good Cop who'll leave, and the Bad Cop, i.e. me, who will be back. Understood? 'Yes.'

'I'm delighted to have met you, Miss Canchares. I hope we don't meet again.' 'My pleasure,' stammered Briseida.

She didn't know what to think about the woman's warnings. Were they just idle threats? And what about all this fantasy with military uniforms? Were they trying to stir up her atavistic fear of guerrillas? All of a sudden she thought she was in the midst of a carnival, an artistically organised farce. What was the neologism Stan had invented? An imagic, a magical image, a cultural archetype to project our fear or passion on to, because – according to Stan – nowadays everything, absolutely everything, from publicity to massacres, from food aid for Third World countries to torture, is done with a sense of style.