Maestra (31 page)

‘As before, then?’

‘As before.’

I ran through my suggestion as to how we should meet, but he didn’t speak again. When I’d finished I let the silence hang for a breath, then said goodbye, using the polite, formal
lei
. I remembered my fear of Moncada, back in Como, but it seemed irrational now. Moncada would soon be Renaud’s problem. I’d be up on the money for the Richter, if it worked, and, besides, at the meeting Renaud would be there to protect me. Or if his affection wasn’t equal to that, he would certainly want to protect his fee for getting the Rothko back.

All I had to do was wait for the picture to arrive from London, hand it over, do the business with the bank codes and it would be finished. Renaud would disappear and I’d be free. I wasn’t about to let myself get sentimental about the thought of him being gone, but there was a part of me, perhaps, that hoped the delivery wouldn’t be too quick. There was nothing wrong in wanting just a few more days.

*

As it was, I found myself quite busy while we waited for the Richter to arrive, dismantling my life in Paris like a film running backwards. I found a specialist art moving company to take my paintings and the antiques; they would be held in temperature-controlled storage in Gentileschi’s name in a depository just outside Brussels. Reluctantly, I gave notice on my flat and called a second set of movers who would come to pick up the rest of my stuff when I was ready and transport it to a rented warehouse space near the Porte de Vincennes. When the guy turned up with the packing cases and bubble wrap, the concierge asked where I was going. I felt that I’d rather sunk in her estimation since taking up living in sin with such a scruffy character as Renaud, who definitely lowered the
bon chic bon genre
tone of the building, but she couldn’t bear not to be up on the gossip. I told her I was going to Japan for my work. It sounded as good a place as any.

‘And monsieur?’

I shrugged. ‘You know. Men.’

‘You’ll miss Paris, mademoiselle?’

‘Yes, I’ll miss it very much.’

Perhaps because she asked that, I persuaded Renaud to become a tourist for a few days. Like anyone who lives in a city, I’d never seen it through a stranger’s eyes. So we went up the Eiffel Tower and out to Père Lachaise to push our way through the crowds of emo-ghosts at Jim Morrison’s grave, to the Conciergerie to see Marie Antoinette’s cell, to the Chagall murals at the Opéra Garnier, to a Vivaldi concert at the Sainte-Chapelle. We went to the Louvre to say
au revoir
to La Gioconda and walked in the gardens at the Musé Rodin. When I’d been a student I’d sneered patronisingly at the Japanese tourists who saw nothing of the art works beyond the perimeters of their Nikons; now they held up iPads to film the city’s treasures, so all they saw with their own eyes was the blank grey of an Apple tablet. Shuffling zombies don’t deserve to see beautiful things. We bought disgusting kebabs at Saint-Michel, smearing them down our throats as we sat on the fountain, mugged for pictures in the Métro photo booth. We even took a
bateau mouche
, eating a surprisingly nice dinner of onion soup and tournedos Rossini as we chugged beneath the illuminated bridges while a slim Algerian girl in a sequined red cocktail frock crooned Edith Piaf. Renaud held my hand and nuzzled my neck and though I could see we must appear as odd a couple as any of the horrors I had seen during my stay on the
Mandarin
, I didn’t mind. I did ask him about the affected monogram which still adhered stubbornly to all his limp shirts.

‘I do them myself, actually. I’m very good at sewing.’

‘How so? Did you do time, on the mailbags?’

‘Funny. My dad was – is – a tailor. He’s still working, even though he’s in his eighties.’

‘Where?’

‘Where what?’

‘Where did you grow up?’

We were eating a
plateau de fruits de mer
at the Bar à Huîtres on the Rue de Rennes. Renaud fanned at the dry ice billowing from the plate and swallowed a green-tinged Oleron with shallot vinegar before he answered.

‘Tiny little town, you wouldn’t have heard of it. What we call a hole in the arse of nowhere.
La France profonde
.’

I peeled a langoustine. ‘So how did you come to do what you do? It’s not the kind of job you can exactly train for. And you know piss about pictures, anyway.’

‘I don’t just do pictures. I told you – I find money that has gone missing. Corporate stuff, mostly, managers who’ve had their hands in the till. I studied business at university, spent a couple of years at an accountancy firm in London.’

‘Ugh.’

‘Exactly. I suppose I fell into this because I wanted to be something else. Like you, Judith.’

‘What makes you think we’re so alike?’ I said it teasingly, fishing for a compliment, I suppose, but he reached through the oyster graveyard and took my hand.

‘Judith. What makes you do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘The sex stuff. Julien’s place, the clubs. That.’

I swallowed my last mouthful of zinc and sea mist and stood up. ‘Get the bill and I’ll tell you.’

I didn’t speak as we walked along the boulevard and when we came to the Rue de Sèvres I found a bench, lit a cigarette, took his hand.

‘You’ve seen my mother? I mean, you could see what she’s like?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, well, usual stuff. I was dumped at my grandmother’s half the time. Drink, men in and out. “Uncles” for a week or a month. Apparently it’s classic, these types. They shack up with the mother, weak, vulnerable, needy, so they can go after the daughter. The kind of thing you see in the papers all the time.’

‘Or like Nabokov?’

‘Nothing so stylish. So there was one, he seemed pretty decent at first, he had a job, truck driver, treated my mum OK. But then he started to wait for me after school, offer me a lift home in his big exciting lorry. It was better than the bus, I was always getting beaten up on the bus, and he’d have sweets. Pear drops – you know, boiled sweets. I still can’t face them. And then, well, he’d suggest we took a little drive. We had these blue school uniforms, short pleated skirt, tie and navy gym knickers underneath. He’d ask me to undo my pigtails and push up my skirt. I thought that if I didn’t do what he said he’d leave my mum, and she would blame me, and she’d start on the drink again. So I let him.’

‘God. I’m so, so sorry. You poor thing.’

I buried my face in his chest, and after a moment my shoulders started to tremble. He stroked my hair, dropped a kiss on the edge of my brow.

‘So what happened?’

My face was muffled in the cheap cloth of his jacket. There was something reassuring, now, about the smell of its gathered sweat.

‘I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I took a kitchen knife, one morning, and I-I –’

I collapsed against him, out of control. I couldn’t stifle it any longer. It took him a good couple of minutes to realise I was laughing.

‘Judith!’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Renaud, were you going for it? His filthy work-callused hands on my dainty pre-pubescent thighs? Oh God.’

I wiped the tears from my face and looked at him squarely.

‘Look, my mum is a drunk and I like fucking, OK? I like fucking. End of. Now take me home to bed.’

He tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite manage it. But when we got back to the flat, and I put on my white cotton knickers and we played a game, he liked that. He liked that a whole lot. Later, he worked a finger up my arse and held it to his nose.

‘You smell of oysters. Try?’

I breathed the scent on his hand and it was true.

‘I didn’t know that happened.’

For real, I didn’t. I licked his finger to taste the clean scent of the sea, inside myself.

26

And then it was Richter day. Renaud was withdrawn and tetchy, mooching round the flat, fiddling aimlessly. He was making me anxious, so I suggested a walk. We trailed around the smart shops in St Germain. I said that he would be able to afford some decent gear soon, but he didn’t smile.

When I asked him what was the matter, he said that he was just nervous about the meeting.

‘You’re not the one who’s going to be sleeping with the fishes,’ I pointed out.

‘Judith, shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘What do you mean? I’m doing what you want, aren’t I? You’re the one who says there’s no risk. For you, at least.’

‘You always have to think you know everything. That you can get by just by knowing stuff, like they taught at your snobby university.’

‘Sorry,’ I answered humbly. I might have added that it takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently, but there wasn’t the time for a philosophical discussion. His face softened, he put an arm round my shoulder.

‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ he reassured me. I could have pointed out that we wouldn’t have got this far if consequences had been an issue for me, but it didn’t seem like the time to mention that, either. I sensed that trying to calm me down was making him feel better, so I asked if Moncada really wouldn’t care about Cameron’s fate.

‘Look. Cosa Nostra distributes information on a need-to-know basis. It’s safer if an operative carries out orders by communicating only with those directly above or below him in the chain of command.’

‘So Moncada will just get on with the job?’

‘Exactly. And his job is to acquire pictures with dirty money and sell them on so that money is clean.’

‘I guess death is just an occupational hazard?’

He kissed me softly on the mouth. ‘Yes, you might say that,
chérie
.’

*

I had arranged to see Moncada outside the Flore at seven. I got there a little early in case I had to wait for one of the always-crowded tables outside. I was astonished, looking back, at how incredibly naive – amateur, in Renaud’s words – I had been when I had gone to him with the Stubbs. For all the suspicions aroused by my research in the hotel in Rome, I’d still been possessed of the confidence of ignorance. Now I knew for sure what Moncada was, I knew that he would be watching me, alert to the potential of a trap. Before, it hadn’t occurred to me to fear him; now, despite the calmness I had affected to Renaud, I was terrified. I told myself that business was business, that even if Moncada knew I had been involved in Cameron’s erasure, my product was still good. But if he thought I was dicking him about? Severed limbs and stabbing was for the boys; they probably had something especially Byzantine for women.

I had dressed casually: flats, a black sweater, a Chloé pea coat, jeans, a silk scarf, a new Miu Miu tote bag containing my computer, my freshly printed Gentileschi business cards and the paperwork for the Richter. I set my phone on the table where he would be able to see that I wasn’t touching it, ordered a Kir Royal and flicked through a copy of
Elle
. Moncada was late. I couldn’t stop glancing at my watch as I tried to concentrate on yet another piece advising me on how to shift those last stubborn five kilos. The only time I’d ever wanted to lose weight, I’d simply stopped eating for a week. That seemed to work fine. Seven thirty. Where was he? Why didn’t
Elle
have an article on why women spend half their lives waiting for men? Even with the heaters, I was getting cold. I was lighting yet another cigarette when I saw him crossing St Germain in front of Brasserie Lipp. I only recognised him by the huge sunglasses, absurd for evening. He pulled out the chair opposite me, set down a black leather briefcase and leaned forward, brushing awkwardly at my cheek, close enough for me to smell his Vetiver cologne.

‘
Buona sera
.’

‘
Buona sera
.’

The waiter appeared. I ordered another Kir and Moncada accepted a gin and tonic. I talked doggedly about the weather until the glasses were set down. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be English.

‘So, you have it?’

I looked down at the creamy quilted leather of my bag. ‘Not here, obviously. At my hotel, very close by. Everything as we discussed?’

‘
Certo
.’

He left a few notes on the waiter’s saucer and we set off for the Place de l’Odéon. Renaud had booked a room, cash in advance, in a pretty pink hotel on the square, the doorway surrounded by fairy lights. It looked enchanting in the dusk. I’d somehow forgotten it was nearly Christmas. The lift was uncomfortably small, and it didn’t help that much of it was occupied by the unacknowledged bulk of Cameron Fitzpatrick’s ghost. Moncada clearly wasn’t a chatty sort, but I felt obliged to keep up a flow of remarks, bright exclamations about the architecture show at Trocadéro and the refurbishment of the Palais de Tokyo.

‘Here we are!’ I chirped when we arrived at the fourth floor. Moncada let me pass through the door first, but immediately ducked behind me to look in the bathroom, then another glance both ways along the narrow hallway before he was satisfied. I had the Richter laid out on the bed, in the same style of cheap art-student case Cameron had used for the Stubbs. I placed the paperwork next to it and took a seat in the room’s only chair, a white Eames-y number.

‘Would you like a drink? Some water?’

‘
No, grazie
.’

He worked his way methodically through the certification before turning his attention to the picture, making a show of studying the provenances thoroughly. I wondered if he liked Richter, if anyone did, really.

‘All in order?’

‘Yes. You seem to be a good businesswoman, signorina.’

‘As are you, Signor Moncada. I see that the Stubbs fetched an impressive price in Beijing.’

‘The Stubbs, yes. So unfortunate, what happened to your poor colleague.’

‘Dreadful. A dreadful shock.’

For a moment I was reminded of the scene in my hotel room at the lake, with da Silva. I mustn’t overdo the concern.

‘Still, perhaps we might do business again?’

‘
Si. Vediamo
.’

While he collected the papers and re-zipped the case I reached into my bag and while I took out my laptop and set it up on the desk I pressed send on the text I had prepared.

‘So.’ I handed over a plain sheet of paper with the passcodes written in biro. ‘As we agreed, one point eight euro?’