3 The Braque Connection (2 page)

He swallowed again. “Do you feel… um…”

“I’ve not been raped.”

Colin’s head dropped into his hands as a trembling breath left him. “Thank God.”

“You were worried.”

He lifted his head, his eyes wide. “No, Jenny. I was terrified. You were on the bed keening and rocking, and I didn’t know if it was a usual episode or because of something much worse.”

“I’m okay.” I caught myself as I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. I wasn’t convinced of what I had just said. “I’m not really okay. When I was a child, my parents tried to put me on various benzodiazepines.”

“Why?”

“For some people they are effective in treating obsessive compulsive disorder and acute anxiety, to name only two. I exhibited those behaviours and my parents wanted to fix it with drugs, but it didn’t work. I suffered from seizures and became more aggressive. Fortunately, that particular period of experimentation only lasted a few months.” I shifted and felt all the aches on my body. It made me angry. “No, I am not okay at all. My body wasn’t raped, but someone violated me, violated us. They took us without our permission, undressed us, drugged us and took us to a different country. In that sense, I do feel raped.”

Colin’s
masseter
muscles bunched as he clenched his jaw. “Yeah. Me too.”

“I want to have a shower.” I wanted to wash other people’s hands off me. I wanted to wash this fear off me.

“Not a good idea.” He looked contrite. “We might be carrying evidence on our bodies. We’ll have to be processed.”

“No.” I shook my head vigorously. “No, no, no. I’m not letting anyone else touch me. No.”

Colin lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Okay. Let’s not talk about that right now. We need to figure out why we are here.”

“Yes.” A rational discussion would help to push the dark panic away. I inhaled deeply to focus my thoughts. “If we were drugged, it must have happened at Rousseau & Rousseau.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t remember anything after your threat to create a spreadsheet with all the reasons why we should not break through the wall.” His lips twitched. “I remember saying something funny in return, but I can’t remember what.”

“You didn’t say anything.” The corners of my mouth turned down with the memory. “You smugly handed me a spreadsheet with reasons why you should break through the wall. You had anticipated my reasoning and were arrogant about that.”

He attempted to hide his smile, but gave in. “God, I’m good. I remember creating the spreadsheet, but not handing it to you. What else do you remember?”

“I fed the papers into the shredder.” An uncomfortable emotion tugged at me. I was feeling guilty about my pertinacious unwillingness to listen to his arguments. “You laughed at me and handed me another copy. That one I put in my handbag. I shut down my computers and we left.”

“Was there anyone else still in the office?”

I thought for a moment. “No. Vinnie had only been there until lunch. Francine had left an hour before us. Oh, wait! Angelique was still in the office. We walked past her on the way out. She didn’t look up when you greeted her.”

Phillip’s personal assistant was a dedicated woman and fiercely loyal. Recently she had been less successful in her attempts to cloak her discomfort around me.

“Was Phillip still in the office?”

My eyes flashed wide open in shock. “Phillip would never do something like this. Why would you even suggest it?”

“He’s friends with Millard,” he said as if that would explain everything. Manfred Millard worked for Interpol, and on request of the president headed our team as we worked to find the man who had tried to kill the president and his family six months ago. Colin and Manny had a history and a deep dislike of each other.

“We should phone Manny.”

“Later. First we need to speak to Vinnie. Don’t argue with me on this one, Jenny. Rather tell me what else you remember.”

“We didn’t see anyone else, only Angelique. We took the elevator down, left the building, found the car where you had parked it and got in.” I frowned. “I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t know whether you even started the car or drove home.”

“Was there someone in the car?”

“I don’t know.” My hands fisted on my lap. My whole life I had worked with single-minded determination to have and maintain full control over my life. Not having any control, not having any memories was causing me severe psychological distress.

“Hey.” Colin reached over and took one of my hands in his. “It will be okay. We’ll find out what happened.”

It was hard to believe him. How could we find out what happened if we couldn’t remember anything? I pulled my hand back, only to experience a blitz anxiety attack when I saw the inside of my forearm.

On the pale skin was a tattoo. There was no scabbing or other signs of healing, indicating that it was not done with a needle. Knowing that this was just a henna tattoo brought only a small measure of comfort. It was an intricate design of curls, twirls and whorls, beautiful only in its decorative purpose. There was no picture. I rubbed the centre of the tattoo even though I knew my skin would be stained for at least a week. I rubbed harder.

“Get it off me. Get it off.”

“Jenny, stop.” Colin took my hands in a firm grip. “I thought you weren’t going to like this.”

“Did you do this?” Before I finished my irrational, impulsive accusation, I was shaking my head. “I know you wouldn’t. Why would somebody do this? What is this?”

Colin exhaled heavily. “I think all of this is a message. Being drugged, kidnapped, taken to my unknown safe house and your tattoo.”

I saw it in his face. He had the same suspicions that had entered my mind. I closed my eyes against these thoughts and wrote a few more bars of the piano concerto. When I opened my eyes, he let go of my hands. “Why don’t you go find some Mozart to put on the sound system?”

The thought of Mozart’s music surrounding me lifted some of the anxiety. “I need my clothes first.”

“I looked through the whole house and couldn’t find any of our stuff. Not your handbag, our clothes, shoes, nothing.”

“What am I going to wear?”

Colin got up and walked to a beautiful dark wood chest of drawers against the wall. “You can wear my t-shirt and sweatpants. The pants will be too big for you, but you can tighten the drawstrings.”

“No, I can’t wear your clothes. I want my clothes. I can’t wear someone else’s clothes. They’re not my clothes.”

Halfway to the chest of drawers Colin stopped and turned back to me. He looked tired. “My clothes are clean, washed and ironed. At the moment, you are wearing a sheet that was washed and ironed in the same way. I know this must be very difficult for you, Jenny, but I need you to work with me, not fight me on everything.”

My shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to handle this. You are the only familiar element in this situation, which makes it easier to fight you. It doesn’t justify my behaviour. I’ll try harder.”

He nodded and turned back to the tall piece of furniture. Two minutes later I was dressed all in black. I had to roll up the legs of the sweatpants, and the soft t-shirt was two sizes too large, the sleeves falling below my elbows. I felt much less exposed and vulnerable. The thick black socks were also too large, but made me feel protected against whatever could be lurking on the floors. I now had the confidence to take in my surroundings. Colin had returned to the chair next to the bed and was monitoring the satellite phone.

The bedroom was spacious and elegantly decorated. The oriental rugs, the heavy wooden furniture and the paintings were the epitome of understated wealth and elegance. Knowing Colin’s masterful skills at forging art, I was not surprised that even a place he only used as a safe house would be tastefully decorated. I took my time absorbing all the details. Above the chest of drawers was a Picasso painting. Whether authentic or expertly forged, it perfectly fitted the theme of the room.

I turned towards the bed and gasped. “You stole my painting!”

Colin looked up from the instrument in his hands and followed my accusing glare. He laughed softly. “I had that before we met, Jenny.”

Above the bed hung my favourite painting. I could never afford the original, so I had saved until I could buy the best reproduction Phillip could recommend. Jacques Braque’s Harbour in Normandy had appealed to me from the very first moment I had seen it. Something about the fragmented forms and geometric shapes resonated with my neuro-patterns. Looking at this painting in Colin’s bedroom, I felt my mind agreeing with the cubist rendition of that scene.

“Did you forge this?” I stepped closer and Colin stood up, looking at the painting.

“Yup. This is one of my best wor…” He leaned in and narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t right.”

“Do you see a mistake?”

Colin’s body language had frozen into an alertness that worried me. It was the kind of physical reaction exhibited moments before an attack, when the aggressor studied his prey.

“Bastards!” Colin grabbed the painting off the wall and angled it toward the light. “This isn’t mine.”

“Whose is it?” I walked to stand next to him. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see what was wrong. It looked like my reproduction, which looked like the original. “What’s wrong with it?”

“These aren’t my strokes.”

“You can see the individual strokes?” I had known Colin had a good eye for art, but seeing this at a glance was a unique skill.

“Of course I can.” He shook the painting. “This is not my frigging painting. Someone stole my painting.”

“Why would someone do that?”

His anger seemed disproportionate to the theft of a forgery. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to replace my forgery with another forgery.”

“Are you sure this is also a forgery? You aren’t maybe being set up for the theft of the original?” That certainly would explain our presence and the loss of days.

“No, this is a forgery and a very good one at that. Not as good as mine though.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. There seemed no rationale behind such an action, except for Colin’s earlier suggestion that this was a message. “Is anything else out of place here?”

“I didn’t look for things like this.” He carefully placed the painting on the bed. “I’ll check the rest of the house while you put on some Mozart.”

By definition, I would believe a cottage to be small. Not in this case. Colin’s safe house had two floors, three bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor. I followed him down the stairs to the living areas on the ground floor. He stopped at each painting, glaring at it first, then inspecting it carefully. I left him at a Rembrandt that truly looked like an original to my untrained eye.

The ground floor had been altered to be a large open space with stone pillars informally creating separate spaces. I easily found the sound system and the selection of CD’s next to it. No sooner had Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major started to fill the cottage than Colin appeared next to me, holding a statue with the sleeve of his shirt. I assumed that was to preserve possible fingerprints.

It was a smooth, cream-coloured lion, worn from many years of touch. Working in an insurance company that often dealt with art cases, I had learned that these kind of statues were usually marble, jade or bronze. This statue didn’t look like it was made from any valuable material.

“Another forged forgery?” I asked. The tension lines along his mouth and eyes worried me.

“No, this is not mine.” He put it on the seventeenth-century side table. “I once had my hands on it, but it never belonged to me nor have I ever reproduced it.”

“There is more to your history with this statue.” I could see it written all over his face.

“This is a Tang Dynasty marble lion.”

“It doesn’t look like marble.”

“It isn’t. It feels like plastic.” Colin’s jaw worked while he stared at the curtains covering the windows. His lips formed a thin line as he turned to me. “This was the piece I was reappropriating when Manny arrested me.”

“Oh. Oh my.” I knew my eyes were wide from shock. “I think it’s time to call Vinnie.”

Chapter TWO

“Now we wait.” Colin placed a cheap-looking cell phone on the coffee table next to the satellite phone and the gun. We were in the bedroom, seated in the wingback chairs.

“Why didn’t you just phone Vinnie?” I had quietly watched Colin remove the new cell phone from its box, turn it on and send an SMS. “And why did you take that cell phone apart?”

“Vinnie and I have a system. I use an untraceable phone to send him a coded message. In this case, I sent him an offer for a penis enlargement drug. Now he knows I am going to phone him in fifteen minutes on an untraceable phone.” He smiled at my confused expression. “In our line of work, in our lives, it is better to take precautions. Phoning Vinnie on his usual line runs the slight risk of someone tracing the call.”

“But all of you are disproportionately paranoid about these things. Francine runs antivirus software on your phones and computers at least twice a week.” Francine was a computer genius who always looked like she had stepped off a Paris catwalk. She was an exotic beauty who had totally disregarded my social awkwardness and resistance to friendship. The fifth member of our unique group, she was also the only female friend I had.

“That is true, but I don’t want to take any chances. Especially since we don’t know how we got here or why we are here.” He nodded at the dismantled instrument. “I took it apart so it cannot be traced. I will phone Vinnie from the sat phone to a brand-new cell phone that will be destroyed after this conversation. That way we stay safe.”

Part of me considered this to be excessive vigilance, but another part of me agreed with Colin. The mystery surrounding our current situation warranted caution. I hated everything about this. Not knowing how we got here, what I had been drugged with, where the henna tattoo had come from and who had touched me constricted my throat.

“I really want to shower.”

Colin took a deep breath. “You’re okay now, right? No episodes?”

“What does that have to do with taking a shower?” I wasn’t going to panic washing this experience off my body.

“Did you look at yourself when you got dressed?” he asked softly, carefully.

“No.” I glanced at my forearm and grimaced. I had purposely avoided inspecting my body—a cowardly attempt to avoid looking at the tattoo. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Lift up your shirt, Jenny.”

My eyes widened and I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is not the appropriate time for sex. Frankly, I’m surprised that you would even suggest this. You’re usually much more sensit… oh, that’s not what you meant.”

His eyes had softened and the corners of his mouth had twitched at my outraged reaction. He turned serious again. “Just lift your shirt, Jenny.”

I took the hem of the T-shirt and lifted it to reveal my abdomen. I groaned with the effort and saw why it had hurt. On my stomach were two large bruises, each the size of a fist.

“Why did I not feel this?”

“Push up your sleeves.”

I swallowed and pushed both sleeves up to my shoulders. My upper arms were black and blue. Some places I could see individual finger marks where a hand had gripped me. I stared open-mouthed at these. On the outside of my forearms, where I wouldn’t normally look, were also dark bruises. I recognised them for what they were. Defensive injuries. I had been so concerned about the tattoo and my pounding headache that I had not noticed these horrid marks. How could I not have felt these bruises that were now sensitive to my probing fingertips?

“Jenny?” The tone in Colin’s voice drew my eyes away from the discolouration on my skin. I looked up. The
procerus
muscle contracted his brow into a frown of concern. “You okay?”

“What happened to me?” The question came out as a whisper.

“I don’t know.” He leaned closer and took my hands in his. “There might be evidence on our hands, in our hair, fingerprints on our skin that can help find the guys who took us. I know you don’t want anyone else to touch you, but your injuries need to be documented.”

“What about you? Do you have bruises?”

“I have a knot at the back of my head. I assume some arsehole hit me. And a few scratches on my arms. Nothing else.”

“So why do I… I must have had a meltdown.” I flinched at the realisation.

“A meltdown?”

“You’ve only ever seen me shut down.” Going into my head was embarrassing, but it was only one type of reaction to external stimuli. “A meltdown is… it’s not pleasant to witness. I also lose awareness of what is around me, but I act out.”

“How?” he asked quietly.

“Everyone is different and every meltdown is different, but it can become very violent, physically aggressive. If indeed I was given a benzodiazepine, it would explain a meltdown.” That had been the result when those drugs had been administered to me before. Restraining me even at such a young age had brought a lot of damage to those attempting to hold me, as well as to myself.

“For what it’s worth, I hope you kicked their arses.” Colin squeezed my hands. “Will you hold out on that shower until after the call?”

I nodded.

“Okay, let’s hear what Vinnie has to say. I’ll put it on speakerphone.” He picked up the satellite phone and dialled. The tinny ringtone sounded only once.

“Dude!” Vinnie’s voice boomed over the phone. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Hey, Vin.” Colin smiled. Me too. Vinnie was not only tall and built like a warrior, he had a personality to match. “We’re okay.”

“Where have you been? We’ve been worried… wait. Is Jen-girl with you? Where is she? Is she okay?”

“I’m here, Vinnie.” I leaned closer to the phone. “I’m well.”

A rush of sound came over the phone. I assumed it to be Vinnie loudly sighing in relief. His often unwanted affection towards me now brought stinging tears to my eyes. Another rustle sounded over the phone, followed by two male voices arguing and an impressive use of expletives. Colin’s shoulders stiffened. He had also recognised the other voice.

“Frey, where the bloody hell are you and what the holy hell have you done with Doctor Face-reader?” Manny always sounded annoyed, his crisp British accent lending it a stronger sense of superiority. What I heard now was anger masking concern. My eyes started stinging again.

“You’re on speakerphone now, dude.” Vinnie’s voice was dark. “The arsehole insisted.”

“You’re the one who phoned me fifteen minutes ago and told me you’d found them.”

“You phoned Millard?” Colin didn’t hide his shock. I was also taken by surprise. Vinnie and Manny had a tumultuous relationship at best. For reasons I didn’t know they continued to antagonise each other, often with personal attacks. Fortunately, I had witnessed in both of them the ability to move past their deep dislike of each other when we had been faced with crises. Then they had worked together. Then, and apparently now.

“None of us have slept in three days, dude. Millard has been turning over all kinds of rocks looking for you two.” Reluctance entered his tone. “He deserves to be in on this call.”

Colin’s eyes widened and he took a sharp breath. He schooled his face into a neutral expression. “Do you know who took us?”

“You don’t get to ask questions first, Frey.” Manny’s tone was clipped. “First you answer my questions.”

“Colin didn’t do anything wrong, Manny.” I couldn’t let them start an inane argument. We had more important issues to discuss.

“Don’t you start with me, Doc. I have quite a few things to say to you once you get back.” He huffed a few times. “Looking into bloody thefts without discussing it with me.”

“Ask your questions, Millard,” Colin said, preventing me from giving Manny an annoyed reminder that it was my job to analyse data and inspect anomalous cases.

“Where are you?”

“England.”

It was silent for a moment. “
Where
in England, arsehole?”

“In the countryside, in the northeast.”

“You’re in your safe house?” Shock added a strained quality to Vinnie’s words. “Dude! How the fuck did he know?”

“How did who know?” I spoke directly into the phone. “Do you know who took us?”

“How did you get there?” Manny asked, ignoring my question.

“We don’t know.” Colin impressed me by stopping the deluge of unanswered questions to give a concise report of everything we had concluded so far. “Jenny has some serious bruising. I think she put up quite a fight, so there might be some evidence under her nails.”

I gasped, brought my fingers right up to my face and stared under my nails. The thought of someone’s skin under my nails made me want to not only shower, but scrub in scorching hot water. I shuddered and mentally wrote another four bars of Mozart’s piano concerto.

“I know someone in Scotland Yard we can trust.”

“Millard, you can’t trust just anyone.” When Colin wasn’t purposefully baiting Manny, he treated him increasingly more often with respect. Like now. “You need to be sure about this person. Someone managed to find out the highly protected location of a place I only use in dangerous situations. If you weren’t… well,
you
, I wouldn’t even trust you right now.”

That was the only compliment I had ever heard Colin give Manny. Coming from him, it was the highest praise he could bestow on anyone. This served to emphasise the dire situation we found ourselves in.

“Rhodes can be trusted. I won’t let just anyone close to Doc.”

Colin glanced at me. “You okay with this?”

“He’s not touching me.” I couldn’t tolerate the thought of another stranger touching me. It took great restraint to not react in revulsion whenever Vinnie hugged me. I trusted Vinnie with my life.

“I’ll be with you all the time. Between you and me, we can do what needs to be done and give the evidence to Millard’s guy.”

I closed my eyes when another shudder shook my body. Allowing myself to focus solely on the half-written mental music sheet, I continued writing the piano concerto. When I opened my eyes to agree, the telephone discussion had moved on.

“What kind of drug do you think?” Manny asked, all business.

“I reckon it was the date-rape drug,” Colin said.

“It’s a benzodiazepine,” I added. “It’s a psychoactive drug, which interferes with forming and consolidating memories of new material. That is why we can’t remember what happened.”

“So Rohypnol is a benzo-thingie?” Vinnie asked.

“Benzodiazepine, yes.”

“Rohypnol is easy enough to buy on the street.” Manny stayed quiet for a few seconds. “Give me your address or co-ordinates, Frey. I’m going to see how soon Rhodes can be with you. We need all the evidence before it metabolises even more.”

“There goes my safe house.” Colin sighed and rattled off the address and the GPS co-ordinates.

For two minutes we listened to Manny make a phone call and confirm with someone the sensitive nature of this case. Once he had received a vow of silence, he gave a brief description of the situation and the address.

“Twenty-five minutes. I’ll tell them. Thanks, Rhodes.”

A few beeps sounded over the phone, probably Manny turning off his cell phone.

“Doc?”

“I’m here.”

“Rhodes will be there in twenty-five minutes. He said you shouldn’t pee until then. Or shower.”

I groaned.

“Frey, we have another problem.” The reserve in Manny’s voice sent a spike of adrenaline through my body. It made me feel cold. “You’re wanted for murder.”

“I’m what?” Colin’s question was lost in Vinnie’s loud expletive-filled expression of shock.

“I knew you were hiding something from me, old man.” Vinnie only spoke softly and slowly when angry. “Dude, I knew this arsehole was up to something. Yesterday morning he suddenly went from concerned about you guys to secretive. I even told Francine that I wished Jen-girl had been here to read the arsehole’s body language.”

“Vinnie,” I interrupted his tirade, “let Manny speak. This could give us insight into why we are in England right now.”

“Oh. Yes. Okay, speak, old man.”

There was a short silence. “One of my old colleagues at Scotland Yard phoned me yesterday when an interesting case came across his desk. When I was looking for you fifteen years ago, we were working in the same department. He was there when I arrested you, so he knew my interest in you.”

“Obsession, more like,” Vinnie said. For years Manny had been looking for Colin, never finding enough evidence to locate or arrest him. Colin had known this and had done his own detailed investigation into Manny.

Colin and Vinnie had been on a job stealing an artefact from a museum when a middle-aged security guard had had a heart attack. He had made an unscheduled walk-through of the museum when he ran into Vinnie. It had been too much for his unhealthy heart.

Colin had sent Vinnie away, phoned Manny and tried to keep the guard alive with CPR. The guard hadn’t made it and Manny had arrested Colin at long last. A few hours after Manny had booked Colin, he was released on orders from Interpol. They had recruited him to work for them on cases that could not be handled the usual legal way.