Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

'Tell my brother not to hang up,' he said, turning to Nikki. 'Find out where they all are now. We won't cross anyone off the list until we're sure they're either dead, have been bought, or are up for auction.' 'OK, and don't forget the aspirins.' 'I couldn't forget them even if I wanted to. Thanks, Nikki.'

Bosch shut his eyes when Nikki smiled at him. He wanted to keep her smile as his last mental image of her before she left the room. Once he was on his own, he picked up one of the cordless phones and pushed line two. 'Roland?' 'Hello there, Lothar.'

Lothar pictured his brother speaking from his own office, beneath the ghastly hologram of a human throat he always had on the wall. Lothar still wondered what on earth had happened to the Bosch family. One of the great secrets of the universe would be solved when someone worked out why his father had been a lawyer for a tobacco firm, his mother a history teacher, he himself a policeman and then a security chief for a private art firm, and his brother an ear, nose and throat specialist. Without forgetting little Danielle, who wanted to be… or rather, who already was… 'Roland, I've been trying to get in touch with you for days…'

'I know, I know.' He could hear his brother's nervous laugh. 'I was at a congress in Sweden, and Hannah went to Paris. I suppose you were ringing about Nielle. You've heard, haven't you?… Well, we played a dirty trick on you, and we're both sorry about that. But you have to understand: Stein strictly forbade us to say anything to you. So to explain your niece's absence we made up the story about her becoming a boarder at school. Don't think you were the only one who was deceived though. I only found out about all this less than two months ago… It was Hannah's idea to introduce Nielle to Mr Stein. And Van Tysch took her on as a figure for an original straightaway! It's all happened in complete secrecy. They even told us that if Danielle hadn't been underage, we need never have known about it.' 'I understand, Roland. Don't worry.'

'My God, it's incredible. Well, you'll know that better than me. They have… what do they call it… they've primed her, they've shaved her eyebrows off… At first we weren't even allowed to see her… then they took us to the Old Atelier and we could watch her through a two-way mirror. She had labels round her neck, her hand and her feet. I thought… we thought she looked like a beautiful creature. I think we should be proud, Lothar. But do you know what she's most proud about? The fact that it's her uncle who is protecting her!'

Again his laughter at the far end of the line. Bosch closed his eyes and held the earpiece away from him. He felt a strong urge to break something. But he did not dare cut Roland off.

'Make sure you protect her properly, Uncle Lothar. She's a very valuable work. Can you imagine…? No, I don't think you could. Last week they told us what her starting price was. Do you know what I thought when I heard how much our daughter was worth? I thought: why on earth did I become a doctor and not a work of art as well?… We've been wasting our time Lothar, wasting our time. Can you believe it? She's only ten years old, but Nielle is going to make more money than you or I could dream of earning in our whole lives. I wonder what father would have made of all this. I think he would have understood. In the end, he always gave a lot of importance to the value of things, didn't he? What was it he used to say: "The best possible results from the means available…"' A pause. Bosch was staring at Danielle's portrait on his desk. 'Lothar?' his brother asked. ‘Yes, Roland.' 'Is anything the matter?'

Of course something's the matter, you idiot. The matter is that you've allowed your daughter to become a painting. The matter is that you've let her be part of this exhibition. The matter is I want to tear you to pieces.

'No, nothing in particular,' he replied. ‘I wanted to know how you were.'

'We're very nervous. What's happening with Nielle has got Hannah climbing the walls. And that's logical. It's not every day that your ten-year-old daughter becomes an immortal work of art. I've heard that at the end of next week Van Tysch is going to sign her with a tattoo on her thigh. Does that hurt?'

'No more than your tonsil operations’ Bosch joked half-heartedly. Then he plucked up the courage to say what he had to say. 'Roland, I was wondering…'

He could see her. He could see her lying back in the garden at Scheveningen, with the shadows from the leaves of an apple tree making a jigsaw pattern on her skin. He saw her stretched out in the sun, or talking to him while she scratched the sole of her foot. He could see her at Christmas, wearing a turtle-neck jersey with her golden curls cascading down her back, her mouth stained with cake. She was a little girl. A ten-year-old girl. But the problem wasn't the almost impossible idea that she should become a painting. It wasn't the dreadful fantasy of finding her naked and immobile in some collector or other's house. Any of this would have been depressing enough, but Lothar would never have protested: after all, he was not her father. The problem was the Artist.

Be careful. Don't let him suspect that Danielle might be in danger.

'Roland, I was wondering…' he tried to sound as casual as possible. 'This is between just you and me… But I was wondering whether it might not be better to show a copy rather than Nielle.' 'A copy?'

'Yes; let me explain. When a model is underage, the parents or legal guardians always have the last say…' 'We signed a contract, Lothar.'

'I know, but that doesn't matter. Let me finish. To all intents and purposes, Nielle will still be the original model of the work, but for a short period another girl will replace her. That's what we mean by a copy' 'Another girl?'

Expensive works always have substitutes, Roland. They don't even have to look the same: there are products to disguise them, you know. Nielle would still be the original, and when someone buys her we would make sure it was her who was on show in the buyer's house. But if we substitute her we can avoid her having to be in this exhibition. They are always very difficult. There'll be lots of visitors, and the hours are very tough…'

Lothar was amazed at himself, at his ability to be so revolt-ingly hypocritical. Above all, he was astonished to realise how little he was concerned about the girl who would stand in for Danielle. He himself recognised how desperate this plan was, but it was a choice between his niece and an unknown girl. People like Hendrickje would have opted for being sincere, and openly revealing what was going on, or accepting that Danielle would have to run the risks, but he was not as perfect as Hendrickje. He was vulgar. And vulgar people, as Bosch saw it, behaved in exactly this way: meanly, in a convoluted fashion. All his life he had preferred silence to words, and now was going to be no exception.

'You mean that as parents we have the authority to withdraw Danielle from the work and get them to use a substitute in her place?' Roland asked after a pause. 'That's right.' 'And why would we want to do that?' 'I've already explained. The exhibition will be tough for her.'

'But she's been preparing for it for three months, Lothar. She's been painted in secret at some farm or other south of Amsterdam, and I…'

‘I’m telling you from experience. This kind of exhibition is very hard…'

'Oh come on, Lothar.' His brother's voice had taken on a mocking tone. 'There's nothing bad about what Nielle is doing. If it appeases your Calvinist conscience, Nielle isn't even going to be on show naked. We don't yet know the title of the work or what the figure will be like, but in the contract we signed it stipulates quite clearly that she won't be naked in public. Of course, for all the sketches they made of her she was completely in the nude, but that was in the contract, too…'