Killing the Emperors (14 page)
Anastasia went to work with a will. After trial and error, her favoured approach was to dip each breast in paint of a different colour and press the canvas against first one, then the other, and then rub it with both. Since he found it difficult to keep within the constraints of the canvas, Briggs seems more like a dancer on hot-coals than another Michael Flatley, but he became quite interested in the process and kept going back for more paint to smear on his feet.
Marilyn’s sharp elbow proved to be a precision instrument. She chose black paint exclusively and aimed for geometric patterns. Herblock’s knee was less successful, not least because at the beginning he tried to do it standing on one leg and fell over twice. Hortense obviously hadn’t thought her choice through properly. It caused her acute discomfort actually to get enough paint from hand to shoulder blade, and it proved even more difficult to find a way of transferring it to the canvas.
Being shaven, Truss’ choice of head had been sensible, though sometimes he miscalculated the density of the paint and ended up with much of it running down his face before he could bend over to apply it to the canvas. The baroness approached her task stoically, smearing different colours onto her buttocks and then rubbing the canvas up down and across them. Watching her technique gave Fortune courage and inspiration, and he completed his picture quickly, which gave him the time and psychic space to urge Pringle on. ‘No, Jay. Not the tip. Just smear it along the sides and rub it in sideways. That’s it. You’ve got it. You’ve got it. That’s the way.’
***
‘You can’t talk to Ellis about this, Mary Lou.’
‘I know I can’t. He’d have to turn us in if he knew we were looking to getting a private army on to this. Yet I don’t think legal methods are likely to work, do you?’
‘Can’t say I’m very hopeful, especially at the pace at which they’re going. They’ve only just got started on looking for a property that Sarkovsky might own through a company. And apparently there was a long discussion about whether the wheels should be set in motion to ask the security services to track Sarkovsky’s phone. Anyway, there’s no harm in talking to Myles about it. He’ll make his own decisions.’
‘Do you by any chance have an alternative number for Myles? I’ve heard nothing back.’
‘Nope. I barely know him.’
‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? They’ve been an item—well, a sort of an item—for years, but we almost never see him.’
‘I think they both like it that way. It’s a relationship that allows them to do whatever the hell they like and I fancy he’s as secretive and compartmentalised as she is.’
‘I just hope he’s as resourceful.’
‘Me too,’ said Mary Lou. ‘This sucks. This really really sucks.’
***
On his way home, Martin Conroy read yet another of those property articles about what the mega-rich went in for. He had seen several about the new fashion for digging deep under big houses to create an enormous basement for one’s swimming pool, gym, and spa. Apparently now real opulence had become the name of the game, with Turkish baths, Italianate spas, movie theatres, and golf-simulation centres. He wondered if the house in north London that had been bought by the latest Sarkovsky company he had tracked down had been a likely candidate for such improvements. Certainly, enormous sums had been spent until the money suddenly dried up.
Conroy didn’t yet know what overall was the state of Sarkovsky’s finances, but things looked terrible. The bloke must be getting really desperate. He decided to see what builders he’d been using and if they were legit.
***
‘Max Thorogood’s been very helpful,’ said Pooley to Milton, who was slumped, exhausted, at his desk. ‘Turned out he was Jake’s only heir, so what with the solicitor, the accountant, the bank, and his newspaper, I’ve already got an idea of what was going on with him financially. His salary was £80,000, but he had extra income over the past few years in the region of a quarter-of-a-million for consultancy services to Jason Pringle.’
‘And consultancy means?’
‘Shady authentication for Pringle, I suppose.’
‘Well, he’s certainly paid a heavy price. Sarkovsky, if it’s him, is clearly not a forgiving man. And all the information I’m getting about him suggests that even as oligarchs go, he’s a ruthless bastard.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten o’clock, Ellis. We’ve been here for more than fourteen hours. God knows what horrors tomorrow will bring. Let’s go home and get some sleep.’
***
Bizarrely, the shared ludicrous task had for the first time induced some sense of community spirit. Being naked and covered with paint was a great leveller. The baroness briefly revelled in the absence of hate. It was short-lived, for Sarkovsky had decreed that there must be another argument before bedtime. And before she was required to choose the worst.
When Hortense and Pringle, the stragglers, had finished, the baroness clapped her hands and said, ‘Big Brother wants us to decide who has created art.’
‘I have,’ said Anastasia, displaying her smears. ‘If I think it’s art, it’s art. Isn’t that what we’ve been told to believe?’
‘Is it true, Henry?’
‘If she thinks it is, it is.’
‘That’s the kind of fatuous nonsense that has ruined our galleries and art schools,’ said the baroness. ‘If everything’s art, nothing’s art.’
Somehow, the mainly middle-aged or elderly paint-spattered people couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to argue. Duty called the baroness. ‘Is this art?’ she asked, presenting her multi-coloured bottom to the audience.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Hortense. ‘Of course it isn’t. You’re not an artist.’
‘If it was Anastasia’s bottom—leaving the aesthetic out of it—would it be art?’
‘It would have to be selected by a gallery,’ said Pringle. ‘There has to be a filter operated by people who know.’
‘People like you?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Tell me, Jason, if the Mona Lisa was lying outside your gallery in the gutter, would it be art?’
‘Of course. It has been validated and exhibited.’
‘If that had never happened, it wouldn’t be art?’
‘This is puerile,’ said Fortune.
‘This is totalitarian,’ said the baroness. ‘You people have set yourselves up as arbiters of taste, and you made arbitrary decisions that suit you professionally. That is why Charlie—in his innocence—spent five million quid on something that when your world comes to its senses, will be a joke. For that amount of money he could have bought a Georgian country house, roomfuls of beautiful furniture, good silver, fine sculpture, and paintings his children would have been proud of.’
‘Did we really sleep in art last night, Jason?’ asked Briggs.
‘Of course not, it was counterfeit Tracey, not original.’’
‘Do we know that?’ asked Briggs. ‘Maybe Big Brother bought the original.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Hortense. ‘It’s not for sale.’
‘But suppose it had been, and he’d bought it, and created four identical copies. Would the original have been art and all the others not?’ enquired the baroness.
‘Of course,’ said Hortense.
‘Yes,’ said Fortune.
‘Yes,’ said Truss.
‘Everyone agree?’
‘Not me,’ said Anastasia.
‘Or me,’ said Briggs. ‘Now I think about it, it’s all a ginormous con trick.’
‘Like the Olafur Eliasson nonsense for the Olympics London Festival,’ said the baroness.
Pringle produced another signature scream.
‘You are unremittingly ignorant, aren’t you?’ said Fortune. ‘The concept is thrilling.’
‘Rubbish. The fellow’s a fraud.’
Seven shocked faces looked at her, but Anastasia seemed amused. ‘A fraud,’cried the baroness. ‘A hundred carat fraud. He’s been given a million quid to encourage people around the world to breathe. What bollocks!’
‘Oh, dear, oh dear,’ said Fortune. ‘Clearly, you’ve missed the point of
Take a Deep Breath
.’ He shook his head patronisingly. ‘Such an astonishing, uplifting end to the Olympics. He will encourage global connectivity.’
‘Global connectivity my arse. He will encourage global derision for British culture. Only we could be mad enough to hire a Danish charlatan to produce an invisible piece of art and call it a tribute to British culture.’ She slammed her glass down on Trixie. ‘It isn’t even bloody original. Y’all being experts presumably remember our friend Piero Manzoni’s
Artist’s Breath—
those balloons filled with his own breath that he used to flog before he opted for the more lucrative shit.
‘My God,’ she said, warming to her theme, ‘don’t you realise this is a perfect example of emperor’s new clothes? A piece of art that doesn’t actually exist? An artistic equivalent of that wally John Cage’s piece of silent music.’
Hortense Wilde’s face darkened. ‘If you wish to describe one of the musical geniuses of the twentieth century as a wally, I suppose I can’t stop you. You merely show your ignorance. You are, I suppose, in your crass way, referring to his magnificent
4’33
.’
‘His what?’ asked Anastasia.
‘The master’s favourite work,’ said Hortense reverentially. ‘The high-point of his exploration of indeterminacy. A musical counterpoint to Rauschenberg’s
White Paintings
.’
‘Huh?’
‘Rauschenberg was a modernist who exhibited blank canvasses that inspired Cage,’ said the baroness. ‘Cage’s contribution to pretending nothing was something consisted of four minutes and thirty-three seconds when musicians sat there not playing.
‘The silence was performed at various times by anything from a solitary pianist to a full symphony orchestra.’
‘But that’s crazy,’ said Anastasia.
‘Sounds funny to me,’ said Charlie Briggs.
‘You don’t understand,’ broke in Pringle. ‘The sounds the audience make become the music. It varies from performance to performance. Genius. As Rauschenberg’s white paintings could register lighting.’
‘Sounds like this dickhead who’s getting the world to breathe so he doesn’t have to make anything,’ said Anastasia.
‘Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Cage and Eliasson has no imagination,’ said Hortense. ‘In art the progressive is all.’
‘You’re just an old-fashioned cultural Marxist, Hortense, isn’t that it?’
‘’Why is progressive good?’ asked Anastasia. ‘Isn’t good good and crap crap?’
‘Anastasia,’ asked Fortune, ‘do you know what you are saying?’
‘I’m saying that a lot of modern art is rubbish. And that includes what I do myself.’
‘I’m going to ignore that,’ said Fortune. ‘It’s patently untrue. If it were rubbish, Jason would not have exhibited and dealt in it, Jake would not have endorsed it, and I would not have purchased it for public view.’
‘Oh, yes you would,’ said the baroness and Anastasia together. Fortune ignored the baroness. ‘You’re upset, Anastasia. It’s understandable. We’re all under strain. Let’s get back to the Olympics.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ said the baroness. ‘Leaving this Eliasson creature out of it, the art associated with it is an unmitigated disaster.’
‘How can you say that?’ asked Marilyn. ‘That guy Kapoor’s a genius. Don’t you get the magnificence of
Orbit
.’
‘Genius?’ cried the baroness. ‘Anish bloody Kapoor has provided the Olympic Park with a four hundred foot erection of red squiggles—a helter-skelter—that people can climb up. At a cost of more than twenty million quid! Admittedly, it’s paid for by Indian steel billionaires, but we have to put up with the world thinking we think it’s art.’
‘How can you so fail to appreciate a magnificent monument to instability?’ asked Hortense.
‘Very very easily,’ said the baroness, breathing heavily. ‘Kapoor’s become the high priest of fairground art. Look what he did mucking up rooms in the Royal Academy by shooting shells of red wax from a cannon. Oh, yes, and giving another over to distorting mirrors. He’s a funfair sort of guy. That’s why Nicholas Bloody Serota is such a fan.’
Pringle burst into tears. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I just want to be out of here.’
Exhausted, everyone fell silent.
‘Laidee Troutbeck to Diary Room. Now.’
As the baroness trudged off, she wondered if she could cope. She was an optimist, so she didn’t really believe that she would be sending someone to their death. But she was also a realist, who knew it was possible. And she also knew that while she was a woman of strong opinions and a deep sense of right and wrong, she was unhappy being what now appeared to be a hanging judge. She knew equally that the easy way out would be to refuse to choose. But she knew too that this would be a contemptible route. ‘I never expected,’ she said to herself, ‘to be forced into making Sophie’s Choice. But if that’s what’s going on, that’s what I have to do. They may not be children, but I will try to protect the most innocent. And, of course, myself.’
It was two a.m, and Morrison and Sarah were on patrol.
‘I felt bad about Sarah Byrne,’ Milton had said to Pooley earlier that day, ‘but I know what a lazy bastard Morrison is and I knew he’d want time off and I wasn’t going to pander to him. Anyway, we’re overstretched.’
Morrison was indeed aggrieved.
‘He’s got a nerve, expecting us to patrol by the Thames again,’ said Morrison. ‘Aren’t we allowed any time to get over the shock of findin’ a stiff?’
‘I guess it’s regarded as part of our job, Vernon.’
‘I think we should get a special allowance for it.’
‘Like a bonus?’
‘Well, not like a bonus. More like compo. We sure need some extras now they’re slashing overtime.’
As instructed, they walked all the way around Parliament Square, gingerly avoiding the remaining few protestors’ tents. ‘Effin’ layabouts,’ said Morrison. ‘Honestly, some people have no work ethic.’
Byrne let that pass. They crossed the street and began to walk by the House of Commons. Morrison jerked his head in the direction of Oliver Cromwell’s statue. ‘Now there’s a bloke who knew what to do with layabouts. Off with their heads. That’d sort them out. He’d have known what to do with all the wankers cheatin’ on their expenses too.’
‘It’s nice when it’s crisp like this,’ said Byrne.
‘Crisp? Bloody cold if you ask me. We shouldn’t have to be out poundin’ pavements in this weather. All that crap about takin’ us out of cars so we could mingle with the public.’ He waved crossly at the House of Commons. ‘What effin’ public? Everyone’s gone home.’
‘There may be more people on the other side of the river, Vernon.’
‘I don’t want more people,’ he said mutinously. ‘And I don’t want to walk all the way to that bloody Tate Modern. No one will know if we don’t.’
‘It’s our job to do it, Vernon. We should cross Westminster Bridge now.’
‘‘I dunno what makes you such a glutton for punishment, Sarah. Why do you want to look for trouble?’
‘The Sarge said…’
‘I don’t care what the Sarge said. It’s OK for him, nice and snug back at HQ while he orders the likes of us to trudge the streets. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a slave.’ He puffed up his chest. ‘I’m not going any farther without a tea and a sausage sandwich. We’ll go to the cabbie shelter at Embankment and I’ll cross the river then.’
Not for the first time, Byrne fantasised about kicking Morrison right in the middle of his paunch. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but we’d better make it quick.’
No one’s temper was improved by their being refused service at the cabbie shelter, but Morrison eventually got hold of a sausage in a fast-food joint in Villiers Street, and Byrne was able to steer him towards Waterloo Bridge. ‘We’ve got to walk fast, Vernon, or they’ll want to know what’s been keeping us.’ She accelerated. Knowing himself to be in the wrong, Morrison sulked. Wearily, for she was no more a fan of late-night walking than was he, she drew on the old reliable ploy. ‘So did you decide which train to buy, Vernon? You were very conflicted when we talked about it last.’
The monologue went on and on and on, but it allowed Byrne to think about what she had to think about, which was mostly child care arrangements. The division of labour between her mother and mother-in-law was beginning to show fault lines. She wrestled with her choices, as Morrison wrestled with his, until Tate Modern hove in view.
‘You ever been to this, Sarah?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘No.’
‘But I’ve been to the other Tate. Tate Britain. I used to go there sometimes with my school. I really liked it. Specially the Turners.’
Morrison snorted. ‘I’ve seen them too. Good stuff. But I’ll never go again since I went to see the Turner Prize years back.’
‘Because?’
‘Because it was bloody crap, that’s why. Just a bare room with a light goin’ on and off. I think the artist even had the bare cheek to call it
Lights Goin’ On and Off
. If you ask me, he was having a laugh. When I went home I wrote a letter sayin’ that if that was the best they could do they didn’t deserve any of my taxes. That modern art. A toddler could do it. And as for this Tate Modern? Did you know they’re fillin’ it with Damien Hirst’s rubbish? The idea is that during the Olympics foreigners will be shown the best of British art. They’ve even had to reinforce the floors because of all them animals and fish he’s had killed for his so-called art. It’s not right. I mean I know I eat them, but that’s different. It’s natural.’
They left the street and walked towards the building. The area was deserted. Even the large grassy area in front of it seemed unoccupied. ‘Too chilly there for winos,’ said Morrison. ‘OK, let’s walk round it like the Sarge said and then we can get the hell out of it and go back to base.’
It was then they saw the large, rectangular object that seemed to be obstructing part of the entrance. ‘What’s that?’ exploded Morrison. ‘They’re leavin’ their stupid art outside now where anyone can smash it up. For God’s sake, it’s made of glass. Any bloody vandal could take a brick to it. No trouble. Not that it’d be any loss.’
Byrne found her torch and switched it on. ‘Oh, God, Vernon. Look. It’s a naked woman. Floating.’
They surveyed the object. ‘It’s one of them Damien Hirst things, isn’t it,’ asked Morrison. ‘Didn’t he do a dead shark in a tank like this? But this isn’t a dead shark.’
‘It isn’t. It’s a dead woman.’
‘It’ll be a mannequin, won’t it?’
Byrne crouched beside the vitrine and shone her torch up and down. ‘Don’t think so, Vernon. Look. Her mouth’s wide open. And you don’t get mannequins with bunions.’ She shone her torch around the side. ‘Vernon! There’s a card here.’
‘What does it say?’
‘
Hommage
to Hirst. And underneath—
The Physical Impossibility of Creating Art When You’ve No Fucking Talent
.’
‘It’s another one of ‘em. Isn’t it?’
‘’Fraid so,’ said Byrne, her voice quavering. She ran to the grass. While she was throwing up, she could hear Morrison on the radio explaining to their sergeant that they’d found another ‘omidge stiff.’
***
When the reveille began, the baroness immediately sat upright. Anastasia was stretching beside her. Fearfully, she looked vainly for the person she was afraid would be no longer there. ‘Has anyone seen Hortense?’
‘She must be in the bathroom,’ said Truss, looking at the space beside him.
The baroness jumped out of bed and went outside, checked the bathroom and kitchen, called ‘Hortense’ and stuck her head back inside the bedroom. ‘I can’t see her.’
Visibly panicking, everyone tumbled out of bed. It took only a minute before they all stopped looking and collapsed onto the sofas.
‘He’s killed her,’ said Pringle. ‘That’s two gone. Why didn’t we notice?’
‘The drinks must be spiked,’ said Briggs. ‘Or they’re piping some kind of soporific gas into the bedroom to put us under.’
‘We can’t sleep there again,’ screamed Marilyn.
‘We’ll have to, hon,’ said Herblock. ‘It’s that or the Albanians.’
‘So we just go into a gas chamber knowing that if we wake up in the morning, another one will be gone.’
‘The thing is not to panic,’ said the baroness. ‘We don’t know what happened either to Hortense or to Jake. It’s really very unlikely that they came to harm.’
‘She’s right,’ said Anastasia. ‘We’ve got to try to keep cheerful and hope for the best. No point in moping. I’ll get washed now and put the kettle on.’
***
When Pooley rang, Amiss been reading obituaries of Jake Thorogood and further information about the missing all morning. Although everyone agreed he was a fine writer and very knowledgeable about art, the newspapers were divided on the subject of Thorogood. His own paper, of course, had a whole page of hagiography along with a fine piece he had written on Rembrandt some years before. That he had almost completely changed his tune on conceptual art in the early noughties was explained as a road to Damascus experience that demonstrated his intellectual curiosity and his embracing of the new and challenging. More unkind papers hinted that his change of mind might have had to do with his association with the fashionable rich. Suggestions of corruption were only hinted at, for Fleet Street tends not to trash the dead until after what it considers a decent interval—especially if the departed is a journalist—but there were carefully-chosen photographs of him with the rich and famous who had money to burn on art.
Max Thorogood had issued a short, formal statement through his solicitors expressing shock and distress at the news, hope that the other missing people would soon be found, and asking for privacy for his family, whom he had taken away to an undisclosed location to avoid the gathering hordes. Thanks to a tip-off from a policeman, a tabloid had got hold of the current girlfriend, who put on a good performance at being grief-stricken. Since his death was such a hot topic, there was a rumour that some newspapers were rummaging around in his affairs with a view to running exposés. The tabloids were in ecstasy.
***
Pooley found a moment to call Amiss. ‘It’s grim news, Robert. Hortense Wilde’s murdered and it’s another
Hommage
—this time to Hirst.’
‘Oh, God. Not bisected?’
‘No. It was the shark. Not the cow. She was suspended in formaldehyde. Naked. Her husband hasn’t got here yet to identify her, but there was no mistaking her from the photographs I’ve seen. But this is off the record for now.’
‘And then there were eight!’
‘I must rush, Robert. Sorry. I’m going to be interviewing Gervase Wilde shortly. Mary Lou’s phone is off so I’ve left a message just asking her to call you. Can you look after her? She’s already very fragile. Please nurture her.’
He left Amiss in what was now his customary dislocated state, pursuing news on the Internet, desperately wishing his wife worked in an office rather than a classroom and so was contactable, and checking his iPhone every couple of minutes in the hope of a message from Myles. It was a consolation when Mary Lou called. She was as frightened by the news as he was, but her suggestion of lunch promised trouble shared.
***
‘This one’s certainly unusual,’ said the pathologist, who arrived shortly after Hortense’s formal identification by her husband. ‘There are no signs of trauma to the body and she didn’t drown, so my guess is she was smothered. Then they wedged her mouth open so it’d stay that way after rigor set in. Then they popped her into the formaldehyde. She looks pretty good really. Even peaceful. Apart from the open mouth. Like one of those animals you’d see in a modern museum. ’
‘Quite,’ said Pooley.
***
‘I’ve never even heard of Oleg Sarkovsky,’ said Gervase Wilde. ‘What’s he got to do with Hortense? Why would he want to murder her? What harm could she have done to him. She is…was just a scholar.’
‘We were hoping you’d be able to tell us, Dr. Wilde. Sarkovsky is a collector and we’ve reason to believe he’d fallen out with Jake Thorogood and some of the other missing people.’
‘I don’t know Hortense’s world that well, Inspector. I’d go to art events with her sometimes, but we’re both hard-working academics who spend much of our spare time on research into our own specialities.’
‘Can we just talk about the people who disappeared at the same time as she did, Dr. Wilde? I know this is a terrible time for you, but we need all the information you can give us. We need to stop this maniac.’
Wilde seemed shell-shocked, but he tried to focus. ‘Very well. Everything’s a bit of a blur, but take me through the names and I’ll help if I can.’
‘I’ll start off alphabetically. Charlie Briggs.’
‘Never heard of him until he went missing.’
‘Sir Henry Fortune.’
‘Oh, yes, I met Henry quite a few times at private views—especially at Jason Pringle’s gallery. Hortense really admired Henry and Jason, and she’d have gone to exhibitions Henry curated whenever she could. All those years ago, she thought he’d been hard done by in not being given the Tate to run, but she changed her mind when she saw how Nick embraced the forces of progress. The man’s a genius.’
‘She wouldn’t have had any business dealings with Sir Henry?’
‘She gave lectures at some of his events abroad and she had him a few times to give talks to students about what curating is all about. But that would have been that. Not business in any real sense.’
‘Chester Herblock?’
‘She got to know him recently. Through Jason, I think.’ He frowned. ‘I think he asked her to talk to some collector he thought needed advice.’
‘You don’t know who the collector was?’
‘I don’t. Though she did say something about his English being bad and that he seemed very ignorant and uncouth.’
‘So it could have been Sarkovsky?’
‘I suppose it’s possible.’
‘What kind of advice was she giving?’
‘I think Herblock was his art consultant and whoever it was wanted to buy something Herblock thought he shouldn’t. He brought in Hortense to point out the limitations of the artist.’
‘What artist?’
‘I don’t know. There were quite a lot of artists of whom Hortense disapproved. She is...was…an international expert on post-colonialism and masculism in European art.’