Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

Sir Leon and Lady Buzzacott, the Contessa Pallavicini, Inspector Harry Abbott and myself formed the council of war.

Harry did most of the talking and was actually rather impressive. Lady Buzzacott said very little, but listened acutely. Sir Leon spoke when necessary, and took notes. Jennifer Pallavicini was disdainfully cold. She had been cold throughout luncheon, almost ignoring me. I had noticed that, unlike our previous meetings, she was wearing an engagement ring; a great chunk of diamond which must have cost a lot of processed cheese.

Harry began by describing the world of stolen art. The lecture was clearly for my benefit, though it did not stop Sir Leon from making notes in a small leather-bound book. The stealing of art works, Harry said, was a most specialised occupation. Only a very few professional criminals were involved. Their qualifications were not the obvious ones of breaking and entering premises, even though those premises were usually superbly guarded with high technology alarms. The essential qualification was the knowledge of who would be willing to pay for the stolen picture. “The breaking and entering,” Harry said, “can be sub-contracted to run-of-the-mill villains. Naturally those villains seek an inside accomplice, which is why, when the Stowey Sunflowers was nicked, we thought Johnny here was their inside man.”

Lady Buzzacott offered me a dazzling smile, Sir Leon made a note in his tiny handwriting, while Jennifer stared at the ceiling. I stared at her. She really was very beautiful, and somehow the existence of Hans had made her even more desirable.

“Once the painting is successfully stolen,” Harry went on, “the contract labour is paid off. It’s a straight fee; no percentage and no contingencies…”

“His lordship may not know what contingencies you speak of, Inspector?” Sir Leon pointed out in his low voice.

“Like, if the painting isn’t sold, no cash. The contract labour gets its money as agreed whatever happens. Got that, my lord?” Harry hated calling me ‘my lord’, but clearly felt it was incumbent in these palatial surroundings.

“I understand you, Inspector. Please go on.”

He gave me a filthy look as a reward for my own punctiliousness, then heaped sugar into his coffee. “Once the painting’s nicked,” he went on, “it’s taken straight to whoever has agreed to buy it. And that’s the key, you see, because the buyer is usually lined up before the job’s ever done. I mean, no one wants ten million quid’s worth of Rembrandt hanging about their house while they try to find a bloke with a bit of unused space on his living-room wall.”

“Quite,” Sir Leon said in a disapproving tone.

“So the painting goes to the buyer, the final cash changes hands, and that’s the end of the matter. The new owner takes care to keep the picture hidden, and it may never be found until long after he’s dead.”

“And the buyers?” Sir Leon asked. “Who are they?”

“Increasingly, these days, sir, the Nips.”

“But why don’t they just buy at auction?” I asked.

“Because the particular painting they want may not be up for sale,” Harry said, “and because, if the deal’s successful, it’s a lot cheaper than buying at auction. You can probably get a top-flight Rembrandt for a straight million on the black market.”

I still didn’t understand why a man able to pay a million pounds could not satisfy himself at auctions. I said as much, prompting Sir Leon to lay down his gold pen and look at me. “You have to understand, my lord, the nature of a collector’s mind. It is, and I speak with some knowledge, a single-minded passion which is entirely consuming. It might apply to postage stamps, model railways, vintage cars, porcelain, cigarette cards, or” – he paused, and I thought he was going to say ‘women’ – “works of art. Whatever is the object of that passion becomes nothing short of obsession, even, if I might use the words, a form of unreasonable and uncontrollable lust. A man desires, say, a particular canvas by Picasso, and he will not be happy, he will not know any satisfaction, until that painting is in his possession. This form of lust is a disease, my lord, that distorts a man’s perception of reality until he believes that his happiness will be incomplete until he satisfies the desire. In all other respects he may seem a most normal man, but in that one area, so secret and deep, he is unreasonable. You will have noted, my lord, that I have constantly referred to the male gender. It seems that women are not subject to this particular affliction. Have I answered your question?”

He had, and I realised he had also been describing himself. He wanted the Van Gogh, and he would devote his life to finding it. Sir Leon was a collector, a very rich one, and though he might never stoop to criminality, he clearly understood the minds of those who did and was very sympathetic to them.

But he had no sympathy at all for men who would hold a painting to ransom by mutilating it. “And it now seems certain,” Sir Leon said, “that the fragment of canvas was cut from the Stowey Van Gogh.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

Jennifer answered, describing how she had carried the cut corner to New York where the Metropolitan Museum had subjected it to tests. “The pigment and canvas are identical to other compositions he painted in the late 1880s.” Her voice sounded rather despairing, and I realised how much she must have been hoping that the mutilated corner was not genuine. It was not that the painting had been irrevocably ruined by the small excision, but she was anguished by the implicit threat that yet more of the canvas could be cut. She spilt the scrap of canvas out of its envelope on to the table. I picked it up. The paint was rough and striated, like the texture of a sea blowing up in a brisk wind.

“We don’t even know,” Jennifer said, “whether this was the only corner they sent to a collector. Perhaps they’re trying to ransom the painting to a dozen rich men?”

“Maybe.” Harry sounded unconcerned. “But I’ll bet my next month’s wages that they only sent the one fragment. They know how badly Sir Leon wants the painting, which means they’re confident he’ll pay their ransom. Their biggest worry is exactly how to engineer that payment, because they’re frightened of getting caught red-handed. That’s why they’ve given us so much time. They know Sir Leon doesn’t need till the end of August to raise the money, but they need that time to work out a foolproof handover.” He plucked the scrap of precious canvas from my fingers and waved it like a small trophy. “In short,” he said happily, “we’re dealing with amateurs.”

“Amateurs?” I asked.

“We’re not dealing with professional art thieves, that’s for sure, or else the painting would have disappeared long ago. And no professional would ransom a painting, it’s too risky!”

“Do you mean,” I asked slowly, “that these people have kept the painting hidden all this time? Why would they do that? Why wouldn’t they have ransomed it four years ago?”

Harry was enjoying himself. He had his audience, and was relishing his careful reconstruction of an old crime. “Let’s go back four years, to when the painting was first stolen.” He thrust an accusing cigarette towards me. “I reckoned that you nicked the damn thing to stop your mother selling it.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because your mother would have spent the money on preserving Stowey, which you clearly didn’t want. So if you stole the painting, then hid it till she died, you could have kept all the proceeds for yourself. In other words, my lord, I believed you were defending the value of your inheritance by a nasty bit of theft. But I was wrong.”