Killing the Emperors (12 page)

Which left Sarkovsky stuck with Akim Zeka and his family to do his dirty work. They were effective enough, their way, and he was pleased with their complete absence of scruples in the way they protected his property and dealt with a few of his troublesome rivals. The preparations and the kidnappings had gone well, even if they had failed with Saachi and Serota.

‘You not forget, Akim. Tonight important.’

‘Everything ready. Dritan in charge. I will be back in two hours. All will go very well.’

‘No drink?’

‘No drink. I go now, Boss. Be back soon.’ Akim rushed upstairs and out of the building, jumped into his car and drove as fast as he could to the family brothel in Camden Town.

Chapter Eight

The food was mostly cold meat, cheese, and bread, but it came soon and was plentiful and everyone except the baroness fell on it. Still feeling slightly nauseous, she picked at a few bits of cheese, but concentrated on the accompanying reasonably decent claret. Having remembered uneasily that she had once held forth to Sarkovsky on the evils of Surf ‘n Turf, the baroness decided that since he seemed to have gone mad, in the foreseeable future it might be prudent to keep her mouth shut about what she didn’t like. She also resolved to obey instructions with the minimum of fuss.

When they had eaten, they were instructed to look in the hatch, where they found ten sports bags with their names on them. Instructions were to change their clothes quickly and throw what they were wearing in the bath. If their spirits lifted slightly at seeing basic toiletries, they fell when they saw their changes of clothing, but there were no protests.

They reconvened in the living room wearing violently-coloured shell-suits that made everyone except Anastasia look ridiculous. They were hardly relaxed, but the tension dissipated slightly as the wine bottles emptied. Even the hostility towards the baroness had somewhat abated. She had, after all, succeeded in her task.

By now inmates were dispersed more evenly on the sofas and conversation was general. They were too scared of Big Brother to discuss what might happen, so they engaged in cosy chit-chat about the cosmopolitan nature of their world. Anastasia, Charlie Briggs, and the baroness, who had had little to do with this glittering scene, had nothing to contribute to the orgy of reminiscence.

Marilyn
Falucci Lamont, it emerged,
was a legendary patron of contemporary art who gave mega bucks to famous art galleries and museums and had distinguished collections of her own in her various houses. Her diary was constructed around major art events around the world. She had first met Fortune at a Venice Biennale, Pringle in Madrid, and Thorogood in Morocco. Herblock, her long-term adviser, was as peripatetic, flitting around the globe finding new artists for his eager collectors. He had formed relationships with many art colleges, which is how he had come to know and trust Gavin Truss and Hortense Wilde.

The baroness remained silent and listened keenly, but the conversation was too general to give her an opening, so she seized the opportunity of a pause to look at the group with what she hoped was a humble expression and speak to Fortune. ‘Henry, when Jason arrived you were just about to tell me about the art in our bathroom.’

Perhaps forgetting that his dignity was undermined by his lime green shell-suit, Fortune turned towards her and put the tips of his fingers together. ‘Ah, me,’ he said. ‘The bathroom. Yes, what we have…or appear to have…are
a Piero Manzoni, a Terence Koh, and Wim
Delvoye’s sketch of “Cloaca.” Magnificent! And how witty to locate them there!’

‘Would you be kind enough to dilate a little on them for me?’

He looked at her pityingly and sighed. ‘Where to start?’

‘At the beginning. We have plenty of time.’

Fortune picked up his glass, sat back and looked at her over his glasses. ‘It is hard to overestimate the influence of Piero Manzoni. Inspired by Lucio Fontana—of whose work our friend Charlie here recently has been lucky enough to secure a fine example—his ironic questioning of the nature of the art object would pre-figure conceptual art and become an inspiration for the
Arte Povera
movement.’ He took a sip of champagne. ‘I’ll explain about that later.’

‘How kind,’ said the baroness, and reached for the bottle of claret resting on Joleen.

‘Manzoni’s father was a philistine.’ The baroness repressed the desire to say ‘like me,’ and instead put on the fake interested look she had had to acquire many years before for professional purposes. ‘He made tin cans. When he told Piero that he thought his art was shit, Piero conceived a magnificent response with an exhibition of ninety signed cans called
Merda d’artista
, priced by weight based on the then value of gold. Since then, of course, their intrinsic value has soared. Nick Serota got hold of one for the Tate for only £23,000 in 2000. He’d have had to pay more than £100,000 only a few years later.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Marilyn. ‘But that’s less than forty thousand dollars. Chester, I’ve paid much much more for my three tins.’

‘Yes, hon, but you didn’t buy them until a few years later.’

‘You bought three tins of shit?’ asked Anastasia.

‘Sure I did. But two of them were for museums.’

‘What a generous woman you are,’ said the baroness. ‘You were saying, Henry. About Manzoni and…what do you call it?...
Arte Povera
?’

The condescension in his voice went up a notch. ‘Piero’s tragic death in 1963 at only twenty-nine predated a time of economic crisis when in Italy gifted radical young artists rejected the straitjacket of traditional expensive materials like bronze or canvas in favour of openness to, if you like, impoverished alternatives like wood and coal.’ The baroness noted that Fortune seemed to be revelling in the sonorousness of his own voice. ‘Another seminal moment in the development of conceptual art.’ He sighed. ‘I look at the Kounellis room in Tate Modern, and again, I envy Nick.’

‘Thank you,’ said the baroness, noting he seemed to have gone into a jealous reverie. ‘And Koh?’

Fortune put his glass down on Joleen, shut his eyes and clasped his hands together. ‘What a moment it was! Art Basel 2006! I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of Terence Koh and then…aaah!...I was led to his installation.’

The baroness raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘It sounds so simple. Just eighty-eight glass cases, some of which had gold-plated pieces of what he said was his own excrement.’

‘Why eighty-eight?’

‘A lucky number in Chinese culture: the young man is Chinese-Canadian. So, as you can imagine, I thought of Manzoni; I thought of
Arta Povera
; I embraced the irony that is the combination of the poorest and the richest of materials. Collectors fought to buy the installation. Charles Saatchi lost out, but he gave Terence pride of place at his Royal Academy Show the next year.’

‘We were late to Basel,’ said Marilyn. ‘Otherwise, I’d have got it.’ Herblock patted her hand. ‘You got so much else there, sweetie.’

‘Nick has one in the series,’ said Pringle. ‘
A New World Order Lies in this Golden Age
, but apparently what looks like excrement is entirely made of bronze.’

‘Does that make it worth more or less?’ asked Charlie Briggs, who seemed to be finding Fortune’s lecture hard to follow.

‘A good question, Charlie, but hard to answer. The market can be fickle.’

‘What I find touching,’ interjected Gavin Truss, ‘is that Koh has made many hundreds of thousands of dollars from selling gold-plated shit—from what we call his conceptual bling period—but that he also cares about students, to whom he sells it in its natural state for only $150. As he points out, they’re losing nothing, since his shit is worth its weight in gold.’

‘Heart-warming,’ said the baroness. ‘And the sketch?’

‘Wim Delvoye’s sketch of his
Cloaca
,’ said Fortune. ‘The digestive machine he designed that turns food into faeces.’

‘And its point is?’ asked the baroness.

He shook his head at her stupidity. ‘Its point is the pointlessness of life, since there is nothing more pointless than an elaborate machine that reduces food to waste. Mind you, I wonder if by selling the output he undermines his existential point.’ He sighed. ‘Ah, me! These are the unanswerable questions.’

The baroness replaced her glass on Joleen. ‘May I make a few observations, Sir Henry?’

He gave a rather superior smirk. ‘If you have any worth making.’

‘Well, here are a few. Firstly, like Duchamp with his urinal, Manzoni was making a joke, not creating art. It was tough on him that he didn’t stay alive long enough to savour it. I’m sure he deliberately spread the rumour that he might have cheated and that the contents might be other than promised, that is, not what it says on the tin.’ The baroness never worried that obvious jokes had probably been made thousands of times before, so she snorted at her own wit. She was pleased to see that Fortune was looking furious.

‘Manzoni would have loved the very conceptual-art dilemma that a can cannot be opened to see what is inside because if it’s opened, the can will apparently no longer be a work of art. In the same way—as I learned from a recent visit to Tat Modern—Jeff Koons’ hoovers will cease to be art if anyone turns one on.

‘This is, of course, all bollocks. Tins of shit aren’t art. Nor are hoovers and anyone who says they are is either soft in the head, corrupt, or a victim of mass hysteria.’

Fortune was sitting up and expostulating. She gestured at him to be quiet. ‘Secondly, Terence Koh discovered, like many artists who preceded him, that the art world is dominated by people who care only for money, and that it can be taken from them in bucket-loads if you press the right buttons. Gold-plated shit isn’t art: it’s a novelty. The only people who could genuinely like it would be coprophiliacs. Like James Joyce.

‘Thirdly,
Arte Povera
should be translated as poor art, except it isn’t good enough to be poor. Mostly it isn’t art at all. What is art in that ridiculous room in Tat Modern dedicated to the wretched Kounellis, the patriarch of that silly movement?’

‘Silly? Silly? Oh, my God,’ screamed Truss. ‘You’re talking about the D’Offay bequest that includes Kounellis’ magnificent 1969
Untitled
.’

‘The bugger’s too lazy to give any of his stuff a title. Are you talking about the sacks of lentils and various other dry goods? How are they art?’

‘I bought a few of his Untitleds,’ said Marilyn. ‘Weren’t they scribbles on a piece of paper, Chester?’

‘I’m not sure which ones you got, sweetie, but I’m sure they were fine.’

‘They’d better be. They cost more than a hundred K.’

‘You’ve been very quiet,’ said the baroness to Jake Thorogood. ‘How are they art?’

He shrugged. ‘Can’t say I’m a great fan, but whatever floats your boat.’

‘How can you say that?’ said Hortense. ‘I’m sure you’ve praised him in the past.’

‘Very likely, Hortense. I write for a liberal newspaper, so I have to be right-on. But just at the moment, I’m not in the mood.’

The baroness looked at him with interest. ‘You cared about great art once, Jake. I used to read you until you embraced the ugly and talentless. You really lost any scruples you ever had, didn’t you?’

He shrugged again. Complete silence descended on the group. The baroness was contemplating how to get them arguing again when the disembodied voice broke in. ‘Laidee Troutbeck to Diary Room.’

She threw herself into the chair and gazed at the camera. ‘Was the argument what you wanted?’

‘Good argument. You make them angry.’

‘I certainly achieved that.’

‘Who worst?’

‘In what way worst?’

‘You think worst.’

‘Heavens, that’s a big question with such a crew. I’d have to think.’

‘I want answer now. Who worst this night?’

‘An embarrassment of riches, but if you force me, Jake Thorogood annoyed me most. He knows better and he’s not even hiding his corruption from himself.’

‘Bedroom black door. Key on table. Say them choose bed. Now. Lights go after fifteen minutes.’

The baroness left him, walked past the group and unlocked the bedroom. Having surveyed it briefly, she turned round. ‘We have a bedroom that should be to the liking of anyone who admires Tracey Emin, but I can’t say I’m keen.’

The bedroom contained five double beds that looked as if they hadn’t been made for weeks. They were all strewn with the same detritus that had made Emin famous. Neon lights around the room said:
‘
You Had It Coming’, ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’, ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
’.
When she spotted the one saying
‘Just Deserts,
’
the baroness winced.

The housemates surveyed the stained sheets, the bottles, the used condoms and the rest. ‘I’m not sleeping in that filth,’ cried Marilyn.

‘Nor me,’ said Hortense. ‘We can take sofas.’

The baroness signed. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Big Brother says if anyone doesn’t sleep in a bed, there’ll be no food tomorrow. I’m afraid Miss Emin has designed our beds and we must lie in them.’

Herblock took Marilyn’s hand. ‘Will you share one with me, hon?’

Henry Fortune was heard to say sotto voce to Pringle that no doubt he’d want to shack up with Charlie Briggs, but the response of ‘Bubbles, how could you think that?’ seemed sincere.

‘Why don’t you girls bunk in together?’ asked Fortune of the baroness and Hortense, but the look of horror on both their faces put paid to that.

‘I’ll go with Gavin,’ said Hortense.

‘And then there were two,’ said the baroness brightly. ‘So it’s me and Jake and Charlie and Anastasia. Or not.’

‘It might be good for Charlie and Anastasia,’ said Thorogood, ‘but I fear nothing would induce me to share a bed with you.’

‘I feel rather the same way.’

‘Come on, Jack,’ said Anastasia. ‘We’re mates now. I’m going to stick to you like shit to a blanket.’

‘An unfortunate image when you think what we’ll be sleeping on, Anastasia.’

Anastasia laughed merrily. ‘Just call it art, Jack. Now let’s go for it.’

In her violet shell-suit, the baroness tumbled into her disgusting bed feeling that indeed it was true that even the darkest cloud had a vestige of a silver lining. Not everyone felt that, for in a room containing ten people, five proved to be snorers. Still, they had all had so much to drink, that even the normally light sleepers eventually found oblivion and were so deeply asleep that they failed to notice four men coming softly into the bedroom and removing a comatose Jake Thorogood.

***

Pooley was shaving when the seven o’clock news told him a body had been found in the early hours hanging in the undercroft on the South Bank, and that foul play was suspected. Within five minutes he had dressed, kissed his sleeping wife, and was out of the door. He couldn’t raise anyone at the Yard who seemed to know any more about the corpse, but he had a bad feeling.