Gauguin Connection, The (17 page)

“And you’re okay with this?”

“Well, not really. I have someone with me all the time and I’m not used to it. It does, however, make me feel safer. It’s also quite amazing how much extra thinking time I have now that I don’t have to drive.”

“This bodyguard doesn’t speak to you?”

“He does, but I just ignore him most of the time.”

Phillip snorted inelegantly, but recovered quickly. “When did this happen?”

“Colin organised it last night after the attack. We had a huge argument about it at first.”

“I’m sure you did.” I didn’t know why Phillip was smiling.

“He did give me a very valid argument and I conceded. Even though I still don’t particularly like the idea.”

“Who is this bodyguard?”

“A friend of Colin’s.” Phillip did not look happy with my hedging. “Before you get angry with me, I read him and made very sure about him before I agreed to it. I’m as sure as I can be that he can be trusted.”

My boss and friend did not look convinced. “If he’s Colin’s friend, it might be a good assumption that he’s also a criminal.”

“He can be trusted, Phillip. Colin has a vested interest in this case and wouldn’t have brought someone who cannot be relied upon.” I was defending Colin and Vinnie now? What had my uncomplicated life come to?

“So I’m not the only one concerned for your safety?”

“Oh no. Colin was quite vocal. I didn’t have much choice in it.” As I talked, I realised that Phillip’s question was sarcastic and I frowned at him. “Are you being nasty to me?”

He sighed. “No, I’m just worried. I’ve regretted agreeing to help Manny almost from the first day. This was only supposed to be a paper investigation, not anything closely resembling what it has turned into.”

“Let’s not waste time on regrets. It’s unproductive.” I was getting bored with this thread of the conversation. “I still have a lot of the shipping manifests to go through. The sooner I get back to it, the quicker I might find some connections that will help us finish this.”

Phillip stood with a smile. “That is me being dismissed. I will handle Manny. You just make sure that you have that criminal and your bodyguard under control.”

“What about Manny’s friend at Eurocorps? Have you met him?”

“Not yet. I would like to meet him.” He straightened his already erect posture even more. “I would also like for you to meet him.”

“To read him.”

“Yes. I trust Manny to know whether someone is clean, but I would like to make sure.”

“Maybe he could join us tomorrow when we meet with Manny?”

Phillip smiled. “For someone so adept at reading facial expressions, you’re not very good at hiding them. Your distaste at the thought of this meeting is written in capital letters on your face.”

I didn’t have a response except to sigh.

“I’ll speak to Manny and see if Leon can join us tomorrow. You have to be at that meeting, Genevieve. Don’t run out again.”

I shook my head, which brought on a sharp pain, reminding me that I had recently been attacked. “I’ll be there. I want to speak to Manny and also meet his friend.”

“You really shouldn’t be here.” Concern narrowed his eyes. “Go home, Genevieve. Rest.”

“I can’t. There is too much to do.”

“At least work from home. Take the computers. And tell Colin to keep an eye on you so that you won’t overwork yourself.” His eyes widened with a sudden memory. “Your cell phone. I want your number.”

“I never use the phone, Phillip.” At least not until Colin had decided it was acceptable to steal into my life.

“I’m not going to budge on this. I want your number.”

With not a small amount of resentment I wrote down my number on a post-it note and handed it to Phillip.

“Go home. If I come back in ten minutes, I want to see this room empty.” His face and tone of voice brooked no argument. In all honesty, I didn’t want to argue.

“Okay. I’ll go home. Please email me or phone my landline if you find anything new. I really don’t want to use my cell phone.”

Phillip just shook his head and moved to the door. “I’ll let you know what time our meeting is with Manny and Leon tomorrow. Take it easy, Genevieve.”

I watched him leave my viewing room and turned to the monitors. His visit had interrupted my momentum. The ache around my eye and Phillip’s order made it easier for me to get ready to work from home. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. I saved and closed the documents I had been working on, packed my work computer and the EDA computer and walked to the elevators.

Vinnie would be waiting for me in the car in front of the building. When he had dropped me off, he had promised not to move from that spot and I knew that he was not going to break his word. I reached the front door and on a bracing inhale opened it. Vinnie was leaning against my car, tapping away on his smartphone. As if sensing me, he looked up and his whole face lit up with a smile.

“Howdy, Jen-girl.” He pushed away from the car. “What’s up? We’re going home?”

“I’m going to work from home.” I moved around him to the passenger door, scared that he might hug me. His familiarity and openness was disconcerting.

“
Okey-dokey.” He folded his gigantic body into my little city car and turned the ignition. “Tomorrow we’re taking my car. This little toy is far too uncomfortable for me to spend a day in.”

I made a noncommittal sound and settled back into the seat. While Vinnie chattered away about the people he noticed on the street in front of the office building, I allowed my mind to wander. I loved this time of the year in Europe. The beginning of the summer holidays saw the end of serious traffic congestion, shops crowded with bargain-hunting students and parks filled with them carousing. The city would start to empty now as people headed off to seaside resorts. This left me free to go for long runs through the many beautiful parks in Strasbourg without feeling as if I was wading through throngs of people.

I continued to ignore Vinnie’s monologue. We were driving on one of my favourite medieval streets, trees separating the street from the river on the left, historic buildings on the right with happy flowerboxes adorning petite balconies. We crossed the bridge leading to my apartment and I sighed with contentment. The view of the riverside, which was especially spectacular all lit up at night, pleased my sense of the aesthetic.

My street was a few intersections ahead and my mind floated back to the case. I didn’t plan on wasting time at home. As soon as I got there I wanted to get back into looking for patterns and connections with the cruise ships. I had already noticed two interesting things and wanted to follow up on them. I just hoped that the destruction in my apartment that still needed to be cleaned up was not going to be too distracting.

“Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.” Vinnie’s voice interrupted my concentration and I glared at him. He lifted his hands defensively. “Just saying. You’ve been at those computers for the last four hours and barely moved. It’s time you took a break.”

“Go away, Vinnie.” It was the eleventh time I had shooed him away in the last four hours. He had been pestering me to take breaks, drink tea, lie down or stretch my muscles since I opened the computers on the dining room table. He was the worst nagging bodyguard anyone had ever had the fortune to have.

He just gave me a warm smile and walked back to the kitchen. Something mouth-watering was cooking on the stove. It smelled better than any Italian restaurant I had ever been to. He might just live up to his reputation.

I was surprised how non-intrusive I was finding his presence. Though he had the body of a wrestler, he moved with surprising grace. So quietly that I often lost track of where he was in my apartment.

While I was engrossed in my research, he had cleaned up all the broken bits and pieces that had escaped his first clean-up and tried to organise my space. I appreciated his efforts, but was hard pushed not to jump up every time he put something down at a wrong angle. Eventually we had agreed that he would just clean up and I would position everything later. Now I wanted to focus on finding more information, because I had reached a dead end.

This was beyond frustrating. I was going to have to ask for Colin’s help. Again. I had found this pattern and I needed another set of eyes and, to my greatest disgust, expected Colin to take me past my own law-abiding limitations.

“Hello, Jenny.” Colin’s deep voice startled me out of my thoughts.

“How did you get in?”

His lifted left eyebrow was the only answer I got.

“I have a front door.”

“It’s not as much fun.” There was a smile in his voice and Vinnie chuckled in the kitchen. I closed my eyes and took a calming breath. I was not going to let these two men anger me. Colin pulled a chair closer and sat down. As usual he was close enough for me to feel his body heat, but not too close to crowd me. “What’s new?”

“Tell me about art auctions at sea.” I walked closer and sat down next to him, facing my computers.

He looked at me for a few seconds before he answered. “What makes you think I know about art auctions at sea?”

“The question you just asked me.” Really. Did people not realise how much they revealed when they avoided questions? “And the probability that you have run across this in your past criminal activities.”

“Why don’t you just call a spade a spade?”

I was well acquainted with this particular expression. “Are you denying that you have a past in crime?”

“She’s got you there, dude.”

Vinnie appeared next to me with arms full of crockery. “Where are we going to eat?”

“I’ll move the computers to the other side of the table and you can set up on this side.” My computers were arranged in the centre of my long dining room table and were taking up too much space.

“If you could do that now, please. The food is almost done.”

“Nice duds, Vin.” Colin stood up and gave me room to rearrange my workspace.

“Thanks, dude.” Vinnie looked down at the floral apron that he had dug out of a linen cupboard. I vaguely remembered receiving it as a holiday gift from someone. Since I seldom cooked anything that could splatter, I had placed it in the linen cupboard and promptly forgotten about it. The angry flowers on the hard material made me thankful that I had never fully opened that gift. Somehow Vinnie’s size made the flowers look less intimidating.

It took less than five minutes to set the table and be seated with steaming plates of delicious-looking fettuccini. The first few mouthfuls were followed by compliments from Colin and me and beaming smiles from Vinnie. It didn’t take long for Colin to get back on topic. “Art auctions at sea are a tricky business. You see, it is a no man’s land. The admiralty law is in power, but there are a lot of gray areas. No specific country’s laws apply while you are at sea. Mostly, if a forged artwork is sold at sea, or someone is conned at sea, the individual does not have much power. In the last five years there have been many scandals involving art auctions at sea. But still they are mostly swept under the rug. Um, kept quiet.”

“So if a stolen artefact is sold at an art auction at sea, we might never know about it?”

“Exactly.”

“How big is the market for such auctions?”

“Oh, Jen-girl.” Vinnie dabbed daintily at his mouth with a white napkin. “Art sold on the black market is in humungous demand. Colin here is the expert, but even a redneck like me knows about this.”

“Your neck isn’t red. Are you referring to the subculture in America of unskilled, uneducated, inbred communities? You can’t possibly come from such a community, Vinnie. You exhibit none of the typical traits. I know. I read up on that socioeconomic group once.”

There was a stunned silence around the table. Vinnie glanced at Colin before both of them burst out laughing. I looked at them in confusion.

“My bad, Jen-girl.” Vinnie was still chuckling. “I mean, my mistake. What I meant was that someone as unsophisticated as I knows about the high demand for stolen art.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Jenny.” Colin sobered, but the lines around his eyes were still relaxed. “We didn’t laugh at you. Your black-and-white rationality is just so refreshing that it made us laugh. Until I met you, I didn’t realise just how many things we say that mean something completely different.”

“Is that why people laugh at things I say?”

“Possibly.” Colin wanted to say something else, but Vinnie was faster.

“Jen-girl, I would never laugh at you for any other reason. You are the most interesting, intelligent, wonderful woman I’ve ever met. Apart from my mother, of course.”

At that moment I realised that they were feeling guilty for laughing at something I had said. Usually people laughed from shock at something I said and then they would turn away in discomfort. These two men were trying to apologise and make me feel more comfortable. I didn’t know how I felt about it, so I moved back to safer territory.

“I found thirty-three ships singularly owned,” I said. “Twenty-three cargo ships and ten cruise ships. All of these ships are smaller in size. The cruise ships interested me more, so I researched them on the internet. They cater mostly to the affluent. Their cruises offer excessive luxury and are shockingly priced.”

“There certainly are enough billionaires in Russia to afford these cruises,” Vinnie groused.

“But that isn’t the best part.” I was restless with excitement. “All of these companies are owned by the same two entities.”

“No way.” Vinnie leaned back in his chair.

“Who?” Colin asked.

“Kozlevich ZAO owns a ninety-nine percent share of all thirty-three companies. The other one percent belongs to a private holder.”

“That’s strange. Did you find out who this private holder is?”

“Unfortunately not.” It had been a frustrating and fruitless search. “I also don’t know who owns Kozlevich ZAO.”

“What does the ZAO stand for?” Colin asked.

“It is a Russian closed joint-stock company. The shares in Kozlevich are held by a limited number of shareholders.” My brow contracted in a scowl. “I found limited information about the cruise ships Kozlevich owns. Of the ten cruise ships, all of them advertised their art auctions as a coveted activity. These cruise ships are noticeably similar in size, design, routes, offers and marketing.”

“Quite the researcher,
aintcha?” Vinnie looked at me with something akin to awe.

“Were any specific paintings listed?” Colin asked.

“I was just going to start looking into it.”

“This is one of the easiest ways of moving black-market art. Have you thought of what happens to the money gained from the auctions? Who holds the coffers?”

“Not yet,” I admitted reluctantly.

Vinnie pushed his chair back. “Would you like anything else to eat or can I clear the table?”

I looked down with surprise at my empty plate and realised that I had just emptied a very large serving of fettuccini. “Vinnie, this was delicious. Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.” He took my plate and stacked Colin’s on it. “You two can bicker about the case on full stomachs now. I will clean up and find something to do while you two save the art world.”

“Thanks, Vin,” Colin said. “You make a very pretty housewife. Do you want to darn my socks?”

“Fuck off, dude.” Strangely, there was no malice when Vinnie growled at Colin before stomping into the kitchen. I had never witnessed this kind of interplay between males. It had been intensively discussed during my studies and I even knew a few euphemisms related to male bonding rituals. I just didn’t know how to use
them appropriately in conversation and I didn’t want to be laughed at again. So once again, I returned to a safe topic.

“Shall we check for more connections?” I was already moving to my computers and wasn’t surprised to find Colin sitting down next to me moments later.

“Let’s make that list of artworks sold at these auctions.” Colin’s suggestion was sensible and I returned to all the websites I had been to. When I reached for a pen to write down the art pieces, Colin was ready with my personal laptop. I took a shaky breath before I started naming first the paintings and then the sculptures I had found. Having another person work on my laptop was a first for me.

After an hour, I glanced at his progress and was satisfied that he had listed everything neatly. It took us another two hours before we were satisfied that we had exhausted all possible avenues of finding artworks that had been on offer or had been sold at these auctions. We had gone through promotional brochures, forums, shipping manifests and a few art collector websites that Colin directed me to.

Five hundred and thirty-nine works of art were listed. I was impressed. Any reputable auction house would be delighted to auction off so many valuable pieces. Very few of the artworks were from unknown artists. I stared at the computers, seeing nothing. There was a connection calling to me, but I just couldn’t catch it. I inhaled deeply and reached for a Mozart sonata in my mind. It only took seven bars of mentally written music. “Oh my!”

I ignored Colin’s impatient questions next to me, grabbed my personal laptop from him and started hitting the keys. Once I set the search parameters, I leaned back in my chair and waited. Colin was still making unhappy noises next to me, but I couldn’t let him distract me now. I knew something was going to click in my brain. It didn’t take long.

“Look at this!” I leaned closer to the computer screens and suddenly realised that Colin was sitting so close to me that our shoulders were touching. I subtly moved a bit to my right to make more space for him to look at the computer monitors.

“What am I looking at, Jenny?”

“This.” I pointed at the screen with my index finger. “Another connection.”

“Woman, if you don’t tell me right now what I’m looking at, I’m going to pour honey all over the inside of your fridge.”

I swung towards him in horror. “You would never do something so malicious to me.”

“Refuse to tell me what you’ve found and you’ll see just how malicious I can get.”

I started speaking very quickly. “Most of what I read about the art auctions at sea seemed to be very innocent. A few of the forums made me think that the people who attended had no idea that the art sold there might be illegal.”

“Are we sure that all the artworks were illegal?”

“Of course not. I’ve just taken the five hundred and thirty-nine artworks from these auctions that we have listed and searched for connections with the list of miraculously recovered artworks.” My voice was rising with excitement and I pointed at the screen again. “Look. Of the forty-seven miraculously recovered artworks, I have found twenty-nine that were sold at these auctions. Twenty-nine, Colin. Twenty-nine!”

Colin smiled. “We have more lines that we can draw between the boxes.”

I pulled my notepad closer. “First we have to draw another box for the art auctions. This connects to the recovered artworks, which by default connects to the non-existent private investigators. It also connects to the cruise ships, which then connects to Danielle, her boyfriend and Nikolay Chulkov.”

Vinnie’s deep voice started singing from the sitting area. I looked over and saw him lounging in one of my sofas, reading a newspaper. He was singing some song about the hip bone connected to the thigh bone and I frowned at him in irritation. Colin’s chuckle next to me indicated that Vinnie might be making an attempt at humour, so I refrained from asking him to desist from his off-key singing.

I looked at my computer screen. A colourful promotional brochure advertised an art auction on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise. People were so gullible. There were not many products in life that could not be bought again. I changed the window to look at another brochure. More of the same promises and breathtaking photos. I changed the window again.

Colin’s body stiffened next to me so suddenly that I anticipated an attack. “What’s wrong?”