The Brodsky Affair: Murder is a Dying Art (2 page)

The snappy buzz of the door entry system linked to the CCTV camera broke his reverie. A glance at the monitor revealed Anton Petrovitch standing outside. Under his arm, he carried a large black box that he had ordered him to collect from the sub-basement strong room.

“Come in, Anton.”

Anton Petrovitch, wearing a full-length black leather coat belted at the waist, walked in. “I’ve got what you wanted.”

They had known each other since their early days. Berezin had prospered, Petrovitch had not. Berezin had not forgotten how Petrovitch had rescued him from a burning Moscow warehouse twenty-five ago. He now employed him as a chauffeur and personal bodyguard, one of several. Petrovitch had other assets: his attention to detail, and his methodical ability in organising complicated heists Berezin had not met the equal of. Petrovitch knew more about him than any man alive. His trust in him was absolute, and his loyalty could not be questioned.

Berezin looked closely at Anton’s thin body as he walked towards him, and noticed he did not look like a man enjoying the best of health. From his scrawny neck stood tufts of grey hair that ascended to a savage crop to the top of his skull. A grey-blue, puckered scar crossed down his left cheek before coming to a halt at his bottom lip.

Whoever stitched that must have used a blunt needle.

“Your usual box.” Petrovitch, revealing the liver spots on the back of his wrists and bony fingers, pushed it across the desktop.

Berezin grabbed at the box and with a key attached to his waist chain proceeded to unlock it, but refrained from opening it.

Without looking up, he spoke. “Anton, you can go now. I will call you when I need you.”

Anton nodded and stared down at the Caucasian rug. “Thank you, Josef. I’ll be in my office.” He turned and walked away.

Berezin watched him until the door had closed, and then lifted from the box a laminated A3 ring binder. For a moment he paused, looked down at the blank cover, and allowed the feel of the folder to nestle between his fingers.

He opened it and savoured the warm sensation of possessing unbelievable secrets.

The first section contained photographs of his art collection. The second section contained his wanted list – works he needed, had to be obtained, desired must-haves – to adorn his home, his secret inner sanctum, or the storage units deep beneath the buildings. Thirty minutes later, he closed the book and glanced with satisfaction around the office at his clandestine collection, a display that he changed each week.

He stood with difficulty.

Standing had always been a struggle, but with surgical aids he managed. It was not long ago that he’d abandoned his iron boot and swing calliper    for an Indian-designed ankle foot orthoses. Childhood polio had left its scars, not only on his physical body. It had also corrupted his perspective. Every lame step he took imprinted another degree of bitterness in him. Bullied as a child, his later artistic endeavours were laughed at. Women shunned him. The only women he could get were prostitutes, and even some of those rejected him. He swore an oath of revenge on society. But, wasn’t he succeeding in other areas when at his age, most people were heading for life’s scrap-heap?

Staring up at him from the desk top, next to the portfolio, rested the report given to him by his research department. He hoped it would link in with the list and photographs of his most-wanted works.

For next week’s room display, Berezin made a mental note to show the Matisse and the Miró. He stood and hobbled around his current exposition, experiencing an excitement that ranked far higher than his infrequent and struggling orgasms with his paid for women. He emitted a triumphant snort as he looked at his current art display. The world’s police had never found them.

Placed on eye-level easels stood Vermeer’s work,
The Concert
, plus Rembrandt’s
The Storm on the Sea of
Galilee.
He had arranged, with immense precision and detail, for these and other valuable works to be stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA, in March 1990. The Vermeer heist had been designed to lead investigators to a possible collusion between the Mafia and the IRA, precisely as he had intended. Petrovitch also oversaw other periodic thefts across the globe under Berezin’s instructions.

The next two trophies gave him exquisite delight, not unlike the rush a snorted line of coke could conjure. Looking at them, his facial muscles involuntarily twitched.

Mounted next to one easel stood a little known preliminary pencil sketch by Picasso, entitled
Odalisque.
It was a Cubist depiction of his long-term mistress, Geneviêve Laporte. Its former owner, a prominent private collector, had eighteen months previously told Berezin to ‘fuck off’ and called him ‘a one-legged joke’ when he had attempted to buy it.

Berezin had seethed.

This is what he had to put up with all his life. But now, circumstances had changed, and the tables had turned. With quiet confidence, he took his time planning.  The results were as he had wished for.

That collector hadn’t reported the theft the next morning, as he’d been discovered dead in bed. His right foot had been messily hacked off, and a later post-mortem revealed the presence of large quantities of methanol in his body, ingested several hours after the mutilation.

Put on view next to the adjacent easel, opened on the sixteenth page, stood a sketchbook. It was the crown jewel in his collection; thirty-two drawings, again by Picasso, and valued at $15 million. The sketchbook represented the easiest heist he had attempted. Presented in the Picasso Museum in Paris, the sketchbook had been on view in an unlocked glass display case… there one minute, gone the next.

Berezin remained unfulfilled. Art had always drawn him like a magnet. Ownership of the finest works consumed him. It added to his prestige and his self-perception as a man of high culture. Ownership, brought to him with his misshapen form, a sense of peace he could not find elsewhere. Great art did not judge or laugh at him. It displayed a beauty that he lacked. It was the only element in his life that offered him glimpses of tranquility, and a map towards higher states of being. He regarded critics, dealers and gallery owners as
oslayobs
, or donkey-fuckers, who knew nothing of life’s finer aspects.

Using Petrovitch, he went to elaborate lengths to present an acceptable and respected image. But as a plunderer and thief, he had other secret dimensions to his world.

The only person who got close to his hidden exploits was Laura Lenee, and her theft of paintings by Godlevsky. She made the mistake of being identifiable. The Federal Office responsible for art thefts, the Rosokhrankultural, had recently sent photographs of her around the worldwide art market and law enforcement agencies. No such record existed of him. In the past, he’d been chased, shot at, wounded, but had always avoided detection. That had become his maxim.

There was one wealthy collector brought to his notice by a senior researcher.  Alexsandr Molotov, head of the Russian Diamond and Oil group of companies. A well-known hoarder, the report revealed he owned several, now very important Russian paintings by renowned Russian artists believed to be Shiskin, Ropin, Aivazovsky, and possibly Brodsky. What right had this fat shark to own anything of importance, a know-nothing who only cared about names? It was time to alter the status quo. The thought of acquiring this collection again caused his facial muscle to twitch.

It was at times like this that he understood his darker side, accepted it, and had now begun to enjoy it. He was elevating art from those who didn’t deserve it. If they died in the process, so be it.

He reached for the phone and tapped out the number of the only man he knew capable of achieving what he wanted, no matter what he had to do.

Chapter Two

Earls Court, London SW5, the same day

B
elching to a tyre-searing halt, the car driver blasted at the horn…
MAAARP!

Jack Manton leapt backwards onto the pavement.

“You fucking idiot!” shouted a large, bald head from the window.

“Sorry.” Manton waved a weak gesture of apology, adjusted the angle of his large, black hat, and turned his collar back up. He watched the car sprint off, with the driver’s, hand gesturing from the open window, making a vigorous ‘wanker’ sign.

Manton’s thoughts had been occupied with the letter he’d received that morning from the bank, asking him to contact them immediately to discuss his intended financial arrangements.

Of late, his thoughts were dominated by personal survival strategies. Two years back, he’d lost his job when the magazine he worked on,
Art & Antiques
, a glossy monthly, collapsed in a shower of court orders and a bankruptcy notice. He had worked there for ten years, having left Edinburgh University years before that with a First Class Honours Degree in History of Fine Art. This was followed by a Masters, backed up later by an exacting period at the Courtauld Institute, investigating modern Russian painters, until his funds withered away just short of his doctorate.

He’d enjoyed his work reporting on the European art markets, auctions and price variations. His expertise was highly regarded. But, a job didn’t exist for such a narrow field of speciality. He was called on, but not frequently enough to merit an article or column in the newspapers, or a specialist publication like
The Burlington
Magazine
. He knew he couldn’t endure what he called ‘proper work’. But now he realised that a change of viewpoint beckoned ominously. The financial sharks, the mortgagee, and worse still, HM Revenue and Customs inspectors, had him encircled in a glaring cone of light.

A week before his job vanished, he had shot his nine-year old German Shepherd dog, Jonesy. Jonesy had been suffering with severe hip dysplasia and had also been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Standing had become almost impossible for him and he frequently moaned and howled in pain. He had tried to overdose him on pills, but he vomited them up and lost control of all his bodily functions. He had baulked at the thought of someone else taking Jonesy’s life.  That was his responsibility alone. Nobody else had the right to touch him.

He’d put on his walking jacket and took down his twelve-bore shotgun from its cabinet and looked at him.

“Walkies.” Jonesy looked up with an ashamed expression, knowing that he couldn’t walk, as if he knew what was about to happen. His tail had wagged and his head hung forlorn on his front paws. Manton remembered walking out earlier to the field and digging a large hole. When it was done, he had carried Jonesy out wrapped in his favourite blanket. As if to compensate for what he was about to do, he placed him with an exaggerated gentleness next to the grave. He gave him one of his favourite biscuit treats, and while he chewed on them, shot him cleanly through the back of his neck.

That incident had wounded him with a depth of sorrow he hadn’t realised he possessed. Add to that the loss of his job, plus his now crushing financial predicament, he realised that his life and its terms were now flapping about like a newspaper blowing in the wind. His future looked as black as a child’s midnight nightmare. Even Tamsin, his girlfriend, wouldn’t be able to prevent him from plummeting into it, unless he had another major coup soon. That had become his fervent prayer.

With encouragement from her, he had attempted to put his knowledge to profitable use. Using the Internet, he had turned to buying and selling paintings, but only once had he made enough to placate those pressing him to pay up. Not long after he had started, he had found in an obscure Midwest American auction house an unusual landscape work that he’d been certain was the work of Ben Nicholson, depicting St. Ives in Cornwall. The signature had been indistinguishable, but he had shrewdly believed in its authenticity. He’d placed a bid by phone and without much resistance, secured it for $1000. The indistinct signature had made it difficult to identify. Coupled with the obscure location of the work, it had been easy to overlook. Poor cataloguing and research rendered the work unknown by the auction house. As a result, there were only a few hesitant bids, and the painting became his.

After acquiring the work, he had taken it to Christie’s for their appraisal. His guess was correct. They confirmed it as genuine. There had been no hesitation in giving it a conservative estimate of £60,000. It went for £85,000. Not bad for a morning’s work. Most of the proceeds went to paying off creditors, and the small balance left over kept his head above water for another six months or so.

For the third day running, the sun had refused to shine, surrendering instead to a penetrating dampness accompanied by sleeting snow, fluttering down like wet moths and driven by a raw north wind. It pulled and tugged into the long folds of his riding coat, making him wish it would blow harder just to see how cruel it could be. Wet slush leaked through the tops of his shoes. Manton pushed his hands deep into the large pockets, bent his head low, and headed for his local pub, The Blackbird
.

He stopped at Dingo's, the local Australian sandwich bar, as he did whenever he was headed for the pub. He ordered a hot turkey and cranberry sandwich, pushed it into the depths of his pocket, and headed out again into the icy weather. He made his way to a nearby alleyway where he knew Mac would be. Mac had been an army paratrooper in Afghanistan. Mac sat huddled on the ground surrounded by cardboard boxes and the detritus of a homeless life. On his head, he’d balanced several sheets of cardboard and wrapped others around his body to keep out the weather.

“Hi Mac. You okay?”

“I’m fine, but cold.”

“Try this, it might warm you up.” Manton dug out the sandwich and handed it over. The air smelt of cooked turkey, its aroma cut tantalisingly through the damp air.

“You’re very kind. Thank you.”

“See you soon, Mac.” Manton patted him on the shoulder, turned, and made his way to the pub. Giving Mac money would never be an option. It would be drunk away in thirty minutes.
There but for the grace of God… I never understand why I do that.
Maybe, he thought as he walked away, Mac had suffered so much more than he, and that his own future could follow similar lines. If it happened to him, kindness would be a welcome comfort.