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Authors: Chris Ewan
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entering the code. The truth is I’d paid attention when Bruno had typed the combination in, you see. Call it a talent or a curse, but I notice these things. Some people have to read every word in a newspaper before they can get on with their day, others have to wash their hands a certain number of times before they can leave their home. Me, if I chance upon a code, I have to commit it to memory.
So I entered the code and I listened to the long, pleasing note of the device disarming itself. Once all was quiet, I returned to the corridor and retrieved my suitcase. Then I wiped down the locking mechanism as thoroughly as I could with a lint-free cloth, shut the door to the apartment behind me and got down to work.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the mood to waste time so I moved directly through the paint-spattered studio space in the main living area to the bedroom at the rear of the apartment. The first thing I noticed when I entered the bedroom was that the slatted window blind had been left partially open, casting bars of daylight across the neatly made double bed in the middle of the room. The second thing I noticed was the discoloured, rectangular patch of space on the whitewashed wall across from me. Above the patch of wall space was a picture lamp but there was no longer any picture for the lamp to cast its light upon. The other walls were bare. There was no painting whatsoever.
For a moment, I stood absolutely still, as if waiting for the painting to materialise before my eyes. Having seen it in the photograph Pierre had handed me, I felt I could even conjure it in my mind, if that would be of any help. But of course it wasn’t, because the bloody thing was gone.
I dropped my suitcase to the floor, with a thud very nearly as dull as my mind. The dimensions of the greying space where the painting used to be told me it was perhaps sixty centimetres wide by forty centimetres high, frame included. And the electric picture lamp suggested the oils were every bit as dark and grotty as I’d imagined. But that was all I could tell because there was nothing else to see. Pierre’s client had been prepared to pay twenty thousand euros for the monstrosity but someone else had swiped it before he’d had the opportunity.
Not that it really concerned me. Thanks to my agreement with Pierre, I’d been paid my fee up front, so I guessed it didn’t matter that the painting was gone. But if that was true, what exactly was bothering me?
Well, Bruno was. I really didn’t like the way he’d manipulated me. Because it seemed obvious now that Victoria was right and it wasn’t his apartment after all – that as soon as he’d watched me drink my coffee and bid me goodnight, he’d come straight to the bedroom, removed the painting, stuffed it into the backpack he’d so conveniently brought along with him and made good his escape. I didn’t doubt that he’d have sold the painting for a healthy profit over the five hundred euros I’d been foolish enough to accept and he’d probably enjoyed a good laugh at how easy it had been to con me too.
The other thing that was bothering me was what Pierre might think. There was no way I was going to tell him about Bruno, of course. I might have been dumb but I wasn’t completely insane, so I wasn’t about to say to the guy who’d hired me that I’d known from the moment he passed me the address that something might have gone wrong. But I would still have to convince him that the painting was already missing by the time I broke into the apartment. We’d worked together for many years, sure, but I was a thief and Pierre was a fence and mutual trust can only ever stretch so far in those circumstances. I’d already pushed things by demanding my fee up front so what was to stop him wondering whether I’d pocketed the ten thousand euros and sold the painting myself to cut him out of the deal?
Problem was, how could I possibly satisfy him that I was telling the truth? It would be like
So I entered the code and I listened to the long, pleasing note of the device disarming itself. Once all was quiet, I returned to the corridor and retrieved my suitcase. Then I wiped down the locking mechanism as thoroughly as I could with a lint-free cloth, shut the door to the apartment behind me and got down to work.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the mood to waste time so I moved directly through the paint-spattered studio space in the main living area to the bedroom at the rear of the apartment. The first thing I noticed when I entered the bedroom was that the slatted window blind had been left partially open, casting bars of daylight across the neatly made double bed in the middle of the room. The second thing I noticed was the discoloured, rectangular patch of space on the whitewashed wall across from me. Above the patch of wall space was a picture lamp but there was no longer any picture for the lamp to cast its light upon. The other walls were bare. There was no painting whatsoever.
For a moment, I stood absolutely still, as if waiting for the painting to materialise before my eyes. Having seen it in the photograph Pierre had handed me, I felt I could even conjure it in my mind, if that would be of any help. But of course it wasn’t, because the bloody thing was gone.
I dropped my suitcase to the floor, with a thud very nearly as dull as my mind. The dimensions of the greying space where the painting used to be told me it was perhaps sixty centimetres wide by forty centimetres high, frame included. And the electric picture lamp suggested the oils were every bit as dark and grotty as I’d imagined. But that was all I could tell because there was nothing else to see. Pierre’s client had been prepared to pay twenty thousand euros for the monstrosity but someone else had swiped it before he’d had the opportunity.
Not that it really concerned me. Thanks to my agreement with Pierre, I’d been paid my fee up front, so I guessed it didn’t matter that the painting was gone. But if that was true, what exactly was bothering me?
Well, Bruno was. I really didn’t like the way he’d manipulated me. Because it seemed obvious now that Victoria was right and it wasn’t his apartment after all – that as soon as he’d watched me drink my coffee and bid me goodnight, he’d come straight to the bedroom, removed the painting, stuffed it into the backpack he’d so conveniently brought along with him and made good his escape. I didn’t doubt that he’d have sold the painting for a healthy profit over the five hundred euros I’d been foolish enough to accept and he’d probably enjoyed a good laugh at how easy it had been to con me too.
The other thing that was bothering me was what Pierre might think. There was no way I was going to tell him about Bruno, of course. I might have been dumb but I wasn’t completely insane, so I wasn’t about to say to the guy who’d hired me that I’d known from the moment he passed me the address that something might have gone wrong. But I would still have to convince him that the painting was already missing by the time I broke into the apartment. We’d worked together for many years, sure, but I was a thief and Pierre was a fence and mutual trust can only ever stretch so far in those circumstances. I’d already pushed things by demanding my fee up front so what was to stop him wondering whether I’d pocketed the ten thousand euros and sold the painting myself to cut him out of the deal?
Problem was, how could I possibly satisfy him that I was telling the truth? It would be like
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