The Garden of Unearthly Delights (2 page)

David frowned. ‘Was it simple?’

‘Hardly. When I looked at the photographs the images were unrecognisable. Massively magnified details from Bosch paintings which were impossible to make out, let alone place in the relevant picture. And they were all in black and white, which made it even harder.’

‘Did you tell Basinski how difficult it was?’

‘Of course I did. He merely shrugged and said that if I wanted to clear my debt I’d work it out.’ Reaching into his pocket the dealer drew out an envelope, opened it, and placed a small sketch on the table between them.

It was in extreme close-up, indecipherable to David. Suddenly he saw how something which had seemed relatively simple could actually be fiendishly difficult.

‘This is the first image. Basinski gave me a week to identify all five details,’ the man continued. ‘If I did so, I was lead to believe that my debt would be cleared.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I asked him the same. Basinski said he felt he should give me a chance.
“Think of it as a game,”
he said.
“A game only an expert can play”.’

David frowned, leaning across the table. ‘Didn’t you think it was odd? Surely he would want his money back?’

‘Apparently the money was secondary. Iwo Basinski hates the politics of the art world. A dealer cheated him out of a painting a while back and he’s never forgotten it. I imagine it pleased him to have me wriggling like a hooked worm on the end of his line. A nice revenge.’

‘But it wasn’t
you
that cheated him.’

‘No, but if you feel the need to kick a dog, do you care which dog it is?’

David studied the man across the table, thinking of everything he had heard and read about him. The story was an extraordinary one, but they were far from the end.

‘Did you ask what would happen if you couldn’t pay back the debt?’

‘No,’ the dealer replied coldly, ‘I didn’t dare.’

They paused the interview for a while, eating sandwiches David had brought with him and drinking mugs of coffee. The dealer joked about the dry bread, saying it was like eating a Jiffy bag, and David admitted that he had bought the sandwiches from a motorway garage. Between them, on the table, lay the first image – now accompanied by four more. All of them were indecipherable to David.

*

Moving the detritus of the meal off the table, David flicked on the recorder again. Its busy red eye focused on them instantly.

‘So you had one week to work them all out?’

The man nodded. ‘I can’t tell you the panic. I had many books in my collection at home and in the gallery, and for one misguided moment I thought that I could find the answer on Google. First mistake. I didn’t know which painting the detail belonged to, so the only way to solve it was to look at
every
Bosch painting until I found it. Then repeat that
four
more times.’

‘How long did it take you?’

‘Two days to find the first one.’ the man replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘As I said, my family had left me, and I was at home, sweating over my books day and night. I was demented, had to solve the puzzle. I used a professional magnifying glass we had in the gallery, one that could really expand an image. And, using this, I began by trawling over the triptych of
The Garden of Earthly Delights.
It’s Bosch’s most famous work and I was sure Basinksi would start there.’

‘And did he?’

‘Oh yes, but after that things became more difficult,’ the man replied, his voice dropping. ‘He was teasing me, you see. Probably knew I’d go for
The Garden of Earthly Delights
, which I did. But after that, Basinksi moved away from the triptych and into less familiar waters. For example, there was a detail of only the top half of an owl . . .

‘Quite simple, you’d think. Unless you know that Bosch repeated the owl symbol over and over again.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I have a large grandfather clock in my study, and I used to find its ticking soothing. But during those days that clock began to speed up, I swear it. It ticked and ticked and pushed and pushed me. The sound was behind me, around me, like an echo telling me to hurry, hurry,
hurry.’
He rubbed his eyes as remembering his exhaustion. ‘As the days went by I could hear footsteps passing outside the house late at night and the phone sometimes rang. When I answered, no one was there. It was intimidation and, believe me, I was intimidated.’

‘But you kept looking?’

‘I had no choice. I couldn’t go to the police, I had made my bed and was strapped to it.’ The dealer sighed. ‘But, scared as I was, I found the second and third details relatively quickly – and I was jubilant.’

‘Until?’

‘I stalled on the fourth. I couldn’t find it. I looked at every portion of every Bosch painting – and he painted many – but I just couldn’t see it. And then I panicked and thought that the only way I could calm myself down was to find the
fifth
detail and then go back to the penultimate one.’

David was hooked, listening intently. ‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes, I found the fifth.’

‘. . . And the fourth?’

The man paused, finished his coffee and set down the mug on the table. ‘No, I couldn’t find the fourth. It stumped me completely.’

With the index finger of his left hand the dealer pushed the fourth image towards David.

‘What is it?’ David asked, glancing at the magnified photograph and then back at the man across the table. ‘I can’t make it out. It could be anything.’

‘Exactly. I stared at it. I sweated over it. I looked at it in every way, turned it round. It was a landscape, or part of a landscape . . . or was it? I went back to the books, to the computer, to every bloody catalogue about Bosch’s works. But I had no luck, and I was running out of time fast.’

‘And the pressure was mounting?’

‘Oh yes. I’d even seen one of Basinksi’s men hanging around the gates of my house, and the phone kept ringing, on and off, through the night. If I was in doubt before, I wasn’t any longer. If I didn’t solve the puzzle and absolve my debt, I was in trouble.’

‘So you feared for your life?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ the dealer replied. ‘And then I thought of my wife and son – what if they went after them? What greater punishment could there be than to see the ones you love suffer for what you’d done? I had fourteen hours left and I’d decided that if I couldn’t solve the riddle I’d sign the gallery over to Basinksi. That would have more than covered my debt, but I knew even then that he wouldn’t have agreed. As I said before, it wasn’t really about the money . . .’

David could hear the anxiety in the man’s voice – his hands shook and a couple of times he fiddled with his collar, almost as though he could feel an imaginary noose tightening. His composure had fizzled into despair.

‘…Then I had an inspiration. What if it was a trick
within
a trick?’

David frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘What if Basinski had picked a painting whose provenance had been questioned? A picture that had had doubts over it. Was it a work by Bosch . . . or not?’ He smiled, as though he was feeling relief once again. ‘You should have seen me – I went scrambling through my books, back through the old catalogues, gallery listings. God, I was desperate!
But I found it
. The detail of a landscape that belonged in a painting of St Jerome. A picture which had been under doubt, but was recently authenticated as by the master Bosch.’

David was almost holding his breath with anticipation. ‘How long did you have left?’

‘One hour,’ the dealer replied. ‘Just one hour. I hadn’t slept properly in days. I put the pictures back in the envelope. On each of then I had written the name of the painting to which the detail belonged. All in all, it was a hell of a feat. Not something I would have believed I could have done. But panic concentrates the mind nicely. I had everything to lose – and I’d saved myself.’

‘What did Basinski say?’

The dealer’s smile faded. ‘He said “
Well done
”.’

‘That was it?’

The man paused to recover himself, then continued. ‘I’d been so relieved,. I thought it was over. I thought my debt was paid off. After all, I’d done what had been asked of me. I’d solved the puzzle.’