The Flinck Connection (Book 4) (Genevieve Lenard) (6 page)

“You make it sound like he had a lot of women.”

“If I go with the information from articles and interviews, I counted seventeen women in the years after his wife’s death. But I have to make it clear that I don’t trust the credibility of all these reports.”

“I know you more than double-checked this info, Doc.” Manny exhaled loudly in an almost snort. “Seventeen is quite a lot of women to go through. And here we thought he was a civic-minded philanthropist.”

“A real dog.” Vinnie’s top lip curled. “Typical politician.”

“Not all politicians are bad.” I had proof of a handful of politicians in every country who dedicated themselves to improving the lives of their constituents.

“Only ninety-nine point nine percent of them are bad.” Francine’s expression warned me of what was to come. I had spent a few unfortunate lunches arguing with her about this. “Those few honest politicians are as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“Hens don’t have teeth.” Why did I always have to point this out to her?

“I know, right? That is why it is so rare.”

I held up my hand to stop her. “You are digressing from the topic, Francine.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t look contrite, especially not when she winked at me.

“What else did you learn about Savreux, Doc?”

“He hasn’t been connected to any woman in the last two years. Taking his history into account, I thought this might be significant.”

“How?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know yet. Something happened two years ago that caused Savreux to slow down or stop his philandering. It could be important or not.”

“Look into it, Doc.”

“I will. I also want to find more information on his professional life. Without any of Francine’s conspiracy theories, there is a large probability that his death is related to his profession. We know that politicians make many deals with each other to build their networks. Maybe he made a deal with the wrong person.”

“The work he was busy with at the moment was pushing for the treatment of PTSD and fighting the president on this No Secrets law.” Colin steepled his fingers. “We need to know more about this law. From the little I know, his death will give the president a definite advantage.”

“Making the president a prime suspect.” Francine’s eyes were bright with emotion.

“That is leaping to conclusions, Francine.”

“Aw, come on, girlfriend. A political scandal? This is so up my alley and far too much fun to not go there.”

“Doc is right. We need more information. What do we know about this No Secrets law nonsense?”

“It is to stop government officials from embezzling money.” Francine was up to date with most political developments. She had to be to build her elaborate conspiracy theories. “President Godard has been after this since he got serious about politics.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“Right you are, handsome man.” Francine winked at Manny. “He didn’t want a repeat of all those politicians in the seventies and eighties using their positions to steal gazillions from the government and from taxpayers. When he became president two years ago, a lot of people got really nervous that he now had the power to force officials to be more accountable and trustworthy.”

“And this is actually about to happen?” Manny shook his head. “I’m yet to see a transparent government.”

“Ooh, I really hope President Godard gets his way. The scandals coming out will be more delicious than those in the nineties.” Francine shivered with excitement. “I love that the president’s wife is pushing for this as well. She’s my hero. Smart and beautiful. She still practices as a neurosurgeon, she helps her husband in her official capacity and she’s a patron of the Libreville Dignity Foundation.”

“I know that name. Wait a moment.” I looked through my notes until I found the relevant page. I straightened in my chair and blinked a few times. “Minister Claude Savreux was one of the founders of this charity.”

“Bloody hell. Is this a coincidence? What do you know about this charity, supermodel?”

“Not much. I only know about the president’s wife’s involvement. She became a patron of this charity nine years ago. They have done some amazing work, especially for Gabonese women in France and the local women in Gabon. They’re especially involved in education and health, helping these women to get the basics of both.”

It was silent in the team room for a few seconds. Manny looked at Colin. “Would you care to enlighten us now about your mystery phone call and whatever the curator told you that made you think you know who stole the art this morning?”

“Dude!” Vinnie punched Colin on the arm. “You know who did this?”

“I have a suspicion, and I think it’s better if I show you. Do we have the security videos from the Jean Monnet Museum yet?”

“I’ll check,” Francine went to her computer and smiled after a few seconds. “It’s on the system.”

“Good. Give me a few minutes.” Colin ignored Manny’s complaints and walked to Francine. “I’m going to need your help finding another video as well.”

After five minutes I realised it was going to take longer than another one of Colin’s inaccurate estimations of a ‘few minutes’. I went to my viewing room to organise my thoughts on my notepad. Writing things down helped me to process information.

“Jenny?” It was only when Colin touched my arm that I looked up. “Are you okay?”

I followed his glance to the paper on my desk and frowned. Instead of writing down notes about the case, I had taken out empty music sheets and had started writing Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major. The need to write music occurred mostly when I was severely stressed, hence my surprise. I didn’t consider myself particularly troubled at present. But I had to admit the disorganised state of these cases could very well be the cause of my mental distress.

I had only written a page and a half. It would’ve taken me around twenty minutes. I looked back up at Colin. “Why did you take so long?”

“It took Francine a bit longer than expected to find the other video.” Colin was sitting next to me in his desk chair. I hadn’t heard him pull it closer. A week after everyone had moved into the team room, he had moved his workstation into my viewing room. His reason was his inability to share space with Manny for extended periods. “The videos are up in the team room, but we can watch it here if you want to.”

“No, I’d rather not have everyone in my space.”

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“There are too many bits of information and I don’t know if it is connected, or what is connected to what, or how it is connected.”

“We’ll figure this out. We always do.” He squeezed my arm. “Shall we?”

I gave a single nod and followed him to the team room. Everyone was sitting at the round table, fresh coffee and muffins in the centre. Phillip was also present, Manny telling him that Colin had received a mysterious phone call.

“And he’s going to tell us about it now, right, Frey?”

Colin sat down and took a muffin. “The call was from one of my fences. He told me that he had heard of some very hot merchandise on the market. Since he knew I was into high-end art, he thought I might know more about it.”

“I assume he wants to be the one selling those artworks,” Phillip said.

“Most definitely, yes. He wants in on the action. We are talking large sums here, not a little sketch selling for a couple of hundred thousand. These works are worth millions on the black market and he wants part of that.” Colin took a bite of the muffin and reached for a mug of coffee. “It was the artwork he mentioned that got my attention.”

“From the Gardner heist or
today’s?” I asked.

“Today’s heist. It’s always better to sell the art immediately or you’ll have to wait months before moving it.” He gave Manny an insincere smile. “Law enforcement is always slow in getting the word out after an art heist like this. If you can shift the art within twenty-four hours, you’re golden. After that, all kinds of alerts are out and travelling with it might become more complicated. Not impossible, just more complicated.”

“I would like to know how this fence already knows about this morning’s theft.” Manny paused for a moment, thinking. “You received that phone call four hours after the heist took place, at exactly the same time we were informed about it. How the bleeding hell did he hear about it so fast?”

“Good question. And no, I’m not going to ask him. It will make him suspicious and right now I need him to be desperate
for my business, not questioning my loyalty because I ask too many questions.”

“Pity. If you don’t value him too much, we can find something to arrest him for and then interview him while he’s in custody.”

“A ham-handed approach that won’t work, Millard. For this you will need finesse, something you are clearly not familiar with.”

“The video.” The two words came out a bit louder than I had intended. I had come into the team room for that purpose and didn’t want to listen to another digression.

“Firstly, a bit of interesting information.” Francine’s idea of interesting information could be of true interest or it could be a theory about some new world order controlling all the governments and manipulating industry. Hoping it was the former, I waited for her to continue. “Our thief was very smart. He cut the whole block’s electricity. Not many people would notice this at five o’clock in the morning. It also disabled quite a few security cameras in the area that had no battery backup. Really shocking how outdated some systems are.”

“What’s the point of security if it can’t function without electricity?” Vinnie exhaled loudly through his nose. “Amateurs.”

“This Monnet Museum was quite a bit more prepared.” Francine smiled. “Their cameras have good battery backup that enables recording for twelve hours before it needs to be recharged. It is supposed to immediately upload footage from all the videos to their cloud account, but our clever thief scrambled the wireless systems. Also something unlikely to be noticed at that hour of the day.”

I was fast becoming impatient. “Do we have a video or not?”

“We do.” Francine gave her tablet to Colin. “You can do the honours. You know what you are looking for.”

“What are you looking for, Frey?”

“Wait and watch.” Colin’s lips twitched when Manny called him a very unflattering name. He tapped twice on the tablet screen and the large screen against the wall came to life.

“Let me get the lights.” Phillip got up and turned off the lights.

“Just a bit of extra info,” Francine said in an almost whisper. “The museum uses really cool cameras that record with night vision at night and HD colour during the day.”

I decided to not ask her why she was whispering and focussed on the screen. It was divided into six different screens, presumably from different cameras throughout the Museum. Colin fast-forwarded the video until the screen went dark.

“Here is when the building lost power. Give it another second and the batteries will kick in.” Colin was wrong. It took two seconds before the six images filled the screen again. On the second screen in the top row, I spotted movement.

“Stop the video,” Manny demanded. “Now, Frey. Stop this video.”

Colin tapped on the tablet screen and all movement stopped.

“Enlarge the second camera.”

“What about the magic word, Millard?”

“Now, Frey,” Manny said again. Colin smiled, tapped on the tablet and the second image filled the screen. “Holy hell! It’s a woman.”

The silhouette was undeniably female. She was of average height, with a more than average curvaceous figure. She was wearing yoga pants, soft-soled shoes, a tight-fitting jacket with a hoodie, and a balaclava, all in black. Her body language communicated confidence and stealth simultaneously. She wasn’t crouching, arms tightly tucked against her sides as could be observed with most thieves. Her limbs were loose and relaxed, her movements sure. She knew where she was going and knew she was safe.

“A friend of yours, Frey?”

“I can’t be sure, but I suspect it is Sue.” Colin exhaled loudly when he saw Manny’s disbelieving expression. “Can
you
see her face? Well, neither can I. She’s wearing a mask and a hoodie, so how the hell am I supposed to be one hundred percent sure it’s Sue?”

“Have you seen the whole video?” I asked.

“No, just the first few minutes.”

“Maybe she reveals her identity later on. Let’s continue watching.” I seldom made direct eye contact with people. It was an excruciating discomfort for me, but I understood the impact it had. For this reason, I looked at Manny until he lifted an eyebrow at me. “Please don’t interrupt again. I find it much more efficient to watch the whole video to get an initial impression before studying it frame by frame.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Vinnie and Francine’s snorts indicated Manny was being sarcastic, which meant that he was angry. I didn’t care. The video was more important than his good humour.

I turned to the screen and watched Sue walk deeper into the museum. She had the sure-footedness of specially trained operational officers. Despite her poise, there was an underlying tension in her muscles, similar to those of soldiers always prepared for action, always on alert.

She moved off screen and Colin changed to the next security camera to follow her journey through the museum. Not once did she stop anywhere to look at the valuable pieces of art she was passing, but walked directly to the room facing the street. Again Colin changed cameras to give us the view into the room.

She walked straight to the Klimt, looked at it for a second before carefully feeling around the back of the frame. The
trapezius
muscle in her back tensed and lifted her shoulders slightly when her fingers made contact with whatever she had been looking for.

“She’s disabling the magnetic contact alarm,” Colin said. “It is usually set up as a completely separate alarm that screams like hell when the painting is removed from the wall and the contact is broken. The curator told me this morning all the paintings in the Monnet Museum are fitted with these alarms.”

I couldn’t see what Sue did, but her shoulders relaxed and she lifted the painting from the wall. From her small backpack, she took out a folded canvas bag, shook it out and placed the painting in it. We watched her repeat the process with the other five paintings, each time placing the artwork in the bag. The paintings were all of similar size, small enough to make it easy to carry together. She zipped the bag up and carefully hooked her arms through the two thin straps that turned it into an uncomfortable-looking backpack. She walked out of the room with the same relaxed self-assurance. We followed her as she retraced her steps until she disappeared from view.

The room was silent while everyone continued looking at the now unchanging screen.

“What do you think, Doc?”

I thought about what I had seen. “Not once did she check her watch, glance at the cameras, windows or exhibit any form of nervous nonverbal behaviour. She was completely confident in her time frame and the disabled security. Either she had someone there watching out for her safety or she knew that she was not going to be caught. The confidence in her behaviour is congruent with what Colin said.” I looked at him. “Do you still think
it’s Sue?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s her.” The muscles around his eyes contracted the way they did when he was deliberating different possibilities. “I’ve known her for more than a decade. She only
ever does work she considers worthy and only if it’s a specific order. She’s never done any work for herself.”

“Why does this worry you?”

“If this theft is connected to the Gardner heist, and if these two are somehow connected to Savreux’s death, I have great difficulty imagining her being involved in this.”

“Why?” Phillip asked. “Does she like you only steal back stolen goods?”

“Yes and no.” Colin smiled at me, knowing how much I hated it when he gave that non-answer. “As far as I know she has never been involved in anything violent. Her thefts have mostly been retrieval of photos, videos and other evidence used to blackmail her clients. She’s stolen back jewellery, paintings and other valuables when the police were useless in finding or claiming back her clients’ property. But she’s always refused to do any kind of espionage work, outright theft or anything that would violate her ethics.”

“Ethics?” My eyebrows shot up. Then I sighed. Why
was I still shocked to hear that thieves worked according to some code of honour and ethics? After eighteen months with Colin, Vinnie and Francine in my life, this should no longer surprise me. I shook my head to stop Colin when he leaned towards me. “Please, don’t explain. Rather tell me where we could find Sue.”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find her, don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

He smiled and returned his attention to the tablet. He swiped a few times at the screen and a different image filled the large screen. “I got this for you, Jenny. This is footage of a theft four years ago. There was no proof this was Sue, but in this case I knew it was her. I thought if you saw this, you would also agree that it could’ve been Sue this morning.”

He tapped the tablet screen and the security video started playing. It looked like a library in a private home. Tall bookshelves covered three walls, the fourth hidden by heavy curtains, most likely covering floor-to-ceiling windows. A slight movement in the curtains drew my attention a second before a figure stepped out from behind it. Dressed in tight-fitting black clothes, the woman walked to a bookshelf and removed a few large leather-bound volumes.

“It’s her.” I didn’t need to watch and analyse hours of this footage. The way she held her body, her movements and even the way her shoulders tensed when she uncovered the hidden safe, left no doubt in my mind. “It is the same woman from this morning’s heist.”

Colin stopped the video, looking more concerned than before.

“We need her, Frey. Not only to get those paintings back, but to find out who she is working for.”

“You are working on the assumption that she’s working for someone.” I didn’t like conjecture, but I was more distracted by Manny’s incorrect use of ‘who’.

“It’s a pretty safe conclusion, Jenny.” Colin was convinced of this. “I’ve never known Sue to steal for herself. In this second video, she was getting back the last will and testament of her client’s deceased father. The client’s brother had forged another will to make him the sole heir and she had no other way of proving that it was not her father’s last will. Sue only steals for other people.”