The Paris Secret (16 page)

‘My associate made a grave error acting without full authority but he made photocopies of the documents before he sent them on. Be assured I interrogated him fully on the matter on my
return and there is now nothing I do not know about it. It is my job to notice the details.’ He stared at her. ‘Forgive me,
mam’selle
, but I sense you are trying to . . .
trick me in some way. We are on the same side, are we not?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She sighed, feeling defeated.

‘I do not understand what all these questions about the legal papers of the apartment and the intricacies of the anonymous letter have to do with
your
job of making an inventory of
the artworks?’

Flora stared at him, wondering if she could trust him. He was right, after all – they were on the same side. ‘What I’m looking for, Monsieur Travers, is paperwork that can show
how all those paintings came to be in Monsieur Vermeil’s possession. Without provenance, those artworks can’t realize their full market value. In fact, without it, they’re pretty
much unsaleable – no reputable auction house or dealer would touch them – and it appears that some papers, which may or may not have been relevant to this research, have recently been
taken from the desk in the study in Apartment Eight.’

Travers frowned. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘I was rather hoping you were going to tell me the intruders had broken into the apartment
downstairs
– it would make a lot more sense of things. It just seems odd to me that
whoever broke into Apartment Eight would steal some papers and not the small fortune in fine art sitting a few metres away.’

‘I agree. That does sound odd. Do you know what these papers were, that are missing?’

‘I have no idea. All I know is the drawers are now empty. They may have held vital evidence for my research, or they may not, but whatever was in them was important to someone – even
more important than the paintings.’

Travers looked troubled by this. ‘I’m sorry I cannot be of more help.’

She gathered her bag and rose to her feet. ‘It was a long shot, anyway.’

‘Your job is an interesting one,
mam’selle
,’ he said, walking her to the door. ‘You have to be almost a detective, no?’

‘Well, a better one than me,’ she replied, shaking his hand. ‘Right now I’m not sure I could find my way out of a paper bag.’

She was climbing into a taxi to head back to the office, wondering if three o’clock on a Friday afternoon counted as the weekend yet, when her phone rang.

‘I’ve got a name,’ Angus shouted down the line and Flora wondered if he was in a lift, for the connection kept rattling and hissing between them.

‘A name for what?’ she shouted back.

‘The Renoir companion. Last-known owner. It’s a chap called – have you got a pen?’

‘That’s a funny name,’ Flora quipped, prompting sarcastic laughter down the line as she clamped the phone to her ear and rifled in her bag. ‘Just a sec . . . Right, go
on.’

‘OK. It’s a chap called Noah Haas.’

‘Noah Haas,’ Flora repeated as she wrote it down. ‘And what did he say?’

‘Nothing yet. He’s a New Yorker but guess what?’

‘What?’

‘He’s the only guy in Manhattan
not
spending his summer in the Hamptons.’

‘So where is he then?’ But even as she asked the question, she had an inkling of what he was going to say next. Paris.

‘Vienna. I need you to go over there.’

‘
Vienna?
But Angus, I’m up to my eyes over here!’

‘And? Any joy? Did you speak to Lilian?’

She sighed. ‘Yes and her mother-in-law won’t talk to us and there’s no family records from before the war. They lost everything. I’ve just spoken to the family lawyers
and they have nothing helpful to add either. But one thing I did find out yesterday – the historic records for Von Taschelt’s Paris gallery are now held in another gallery in Provence.
I put a call in with them this morning asking for details of sales of any Renoirs made from 1943 onwards but they’ve insisted I send a
letter
, can you believe it, as everything’s
archived.’

‘Jesus. How long’s that going to take?’

‘Piece of string, isn’t it? But I marked it as urgent. I’ll chase them up on Monday.’

‘Well then, that’s even more reason why you need to go to Vienna. We can’t afford to wait around – if we want to get the Renoir in for that sale next month, we need to
get this tied up. Haas could know something that gives us crucial information about his family’s sale to Von Taschelt, and in turn the Vermeils.’

Flora sighed. She knew he was right; they couldn’t just sit around hoping for good news, they had to check every lead. Travers was right too; she did have to be something of a detective.
‘Fine. I’ll fly out in the next few days.’

‘Already done. You’re on the seven-fifty out of Charles de Gaulle tomorrow morning. Haas is expecting you at one p.m. I’ve texted the address.’

She slapped a hand over her forehead. That meant a 5 a.m. start,
on a Saturday
, and she was out tonight (not that she was in any position to start quibbling over details like that right
now). Would she ever get any rest?

‘I’ve gotta go, but call me when you’re out, OK?’ And he hung up.

Flora sighed and stared out of the window, Paris flashing past her eyes in a blur. Much like her life.

‘I don’t know how you can watch!’ Flora groaned, covering her eyes with her hands.

Ines patted her leg. ‘Faith,’ she smiled, her beer bottle clasped loosely in her hand as she watched her boyfriend twist in the air, two metres above them.

The skate park was rammed, hip-hop blaring from the sound system, the day-glo colours of the graffiti sprayed on the walls and sides of the ramps tinged an acid yellow under the spotlights. From
the other side of the space, the wall where they were sitting overlooking the vert ramp appeared to be fringed with legs, heads bobbing to the dubstep as the riders shredded before them.

Tonight was a pro showcase and Hawk competition, and Bruno, as Hawk’s new star signing and home-grown Paris boy, was the local hero. It wasn’t just the riders risking injury on the
course either; the photographers too seemed to have a death wish, swarming between the jumps and leaning over the edges in the split seconds after the skaters sped past, all wanting the perfect,
‘most rad’ shot.

Bruno was soaring again, his hands clutching the board to his feet as he performed a perfect 360-degree aerial turn, landing backwards and zooming straight down the nigh-on vertical ramp and
back up the other side.

Ines laughed and drummed her heels loudly on the wall. ‘He did that for me! I love goofy foot. He knows it’s my favourite,’ she shrieked, before cupping her mouth with her
hands and whooping for him.

Flora turned to Stefan sitting beside her. ‘Do
you
love goofy foot?’ she asked wryly, taking a swig of her beer.

He looked up at her from his iPad. ‘I don’t know what the hell it means.’

‘Riding with the wrong foot forwards.’

‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘I thought that was fakie.’

‘No. Fakie’s riding backwards.’

‘Agh, shit, forwards, backwards, I dunno. It’s all crazy to me.’ He shot her a rare smile.

She glanced down at his iPad. ‘What are you looking at, anyway?’

‘An idea for a feature that we’re working on. I’m just checking out a few websites for the visuals.’

‘You’re working at a skate competition?’ she asked. ‘Oh, come on, Stefan! Even I’ve switched off!’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, but we just had to pull a piece last minute and we need a filler, quickly. I’ve got a call in with New York at midnight. We go to the printers at six in the
morning and I need something we can use fast.’

‘So what are you thinking? Skateboarding’s the new yoga? Graffiti is the new wallpaper?’

‘Urban explorers.’

‘Urban
what
? What are they looking for? Lost polar bears on the Champs-Élysées?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, you’d think! Actually, it’s an underground movement. They find old abandoned and disused spaces in cities – so, like, closed-down metro stations or
derelict gas works.’

‘
Why?
’

He shrugged. ‘They’re explorers but not all frontiers are new. Going back to the past can be like stepping into a new world. Past lives, past stories . . . They never know what
they’re going to come across.’

‘How brilliant!’ Flora said sarcastically. ‘Oh look, a bunch of old pipes!’ She sipped her beer again and watched as another rider kickflipped past them.

‘Hey, don’t be such a cynic,’ he said, flicking the screen quickly. ‘I think they’re on to something. There’s so much that we don’t see in cities,
especially up high or underground . . .’

She remembered the Hermès garden. Xavier Vermeil. Another rash of irritation prickled her skin and she shivered, trying to shake the thought of him off her. ‘Yeah, but what do they
do when they get there? I mean, are they like squatters? Do they occupy these buildings they find?’

‘Of course not. The journey is the destination, right? They’re just finding old treasures and trying to return them to the city but there’s no guarantee of success. Some nights
they can’t get in, others they get busted. Other times it’s a wasted trip because there’s nothing to find.’

‘So much fun, so little time,’ she sighed, sarcasm tainting every word.

‘Hey, what’s up with you tonight? You OK?’

‘Of course I am,’ she replied, a little too quickly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He shrugged, his eyes skipping over her suspiciously, as though her secret was a black stain he could see. ‘I dunno. You just seem tetchy.’

She looked away with a tut, blankly watching a rider do a flip three metres above their heads, but her mind was on Freddie again – wondering what he was doing right now, and with whom. Was
he alone, or out with friends? How many of them knew? How many of them would still be friends when it all came out? The thoughts made her feel jittery and she tried to force calm on her body, but
her nervous system felt wired, her brain working too fast as the adrenalin began to bite. The truth was that she was far from fine. She’d woken up twice last night, each time believing the
charges had been dismissed and feeling crushed when she’d realized that the nightmare was in the waking, not the sleeping.

‘. . . Anyway, some of the hippest architects in the city are looking at these spaces for redevelopment.’

‘What? You mean decommissioned metro tunnels as flats?’ she scoffed.

‘Not flats, no,’ he said patiently. ‘But restaurants, swimming pools . . . Here, look at this,’ Stefan said, sliding his iPad over his lap for her to see some photos.
‘That’s the old Rothschild chateau in Parc de Boulogne. It’s been abandoned since the war. If that was done up, I bet you wouldn’t mind living there.’

‘Well now, that’s different. I’m born to chateaux,’ she shrugged.

His eyes fell to her wry smile. ‘Yeah.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘OK, how about this place?’ he asked, clicking on a vast underground tunnel of vaulted concrete.
‘An old detonator store.’

‘No windows?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘You know how to live.’

‘But check out those high ceilings! Or what about this one?’ he asked, holding up the tablet to show a desolate red-brick mill with blown-out windows, the masonry scarred black from
a fire.

‘Talk about Bleak House,’ she grimaced. ‘Honestly, I still don’t get why anyone would want to go into these places. They must be nutjobs.’

‘Those nutjobs –’ the word sounded funny in his French accent – ‘are professionals from all walks of life, people who see there is more to a city than just shop
windows.’

‘Do you know them? These explorers, I mean.’

‘Only my friend. They explore in small numbers and post online anonymously. They have to – the police would have them for trespassing otherwise.’ He clicked on a new link and
laughed. ‘Ah, now an asylum!’ he nodded. ‘I can see you in there. Large white space, padded walls, bars at the windows . . . every mod con!’

Flora grinned as she joshed him with her elbow. ‘Stop it.’

‘No? Too edgy? You want something more bourgeois? . . . Oh, wait . . . wait . . . I got it. Home Sweet Home, right?’ He showed her the screen again.

Flora felt the smile slide off her face. ‘
No?
Man, I thought I nailed it there!’

But Flora couldn’t laugh or smile or talk. She could only stare at the image of the painting, on the bed, in the empty room.

‘How did you get that?’ she demanded, taking the tablet from him.

Stefan blinked. ‘Duh, you know how. You just watched me. You swipe side to side on the screen . . .’ He grinned, as though she were stupid.

‘No, I mean where did you get this picture from? I have to know, Stefan. It’s important.’

Stefan frowned, realizing she was serious, seeing the joke had ended. ‘Flora, you know I can’t tell you that. What does it matter, anyway?’

‘Because it does.’

Stefan glanced back at the photo of the empty apartment. ‘Do you know something about this place?’

‘
I
can’t tell
you
that!’ she replied testily, digging in her heels. ‘You’re not the only one with confidentiality issues.’

It was Stefan’s turn to look irritated. ‘Fine,’ he said after a moment. ‘All I can tell you about it is my friend. His name’s Antoine and he does stills photography
for us occasionally. He was shooting a story last week and had almost got busted on an expedition at some old munitions factory in St Denis the night before – that’s how we got chatting
about it.’

‘Did
he
go inside that apartment?’

‘Flora, I don’t know—’

‘Would he have sent a letter to the owners?’

‘
A letter?
’ Stefan repeated incredulously. ‘What for?’

‘Notifying them of its dilapidation. Is that something they do?’

He shrugged hopelessly. ‘I-I dunno. Maybe. He said they see themselves as sort of eco warriors.’

‘Where does he live, your friend?’

‘Uh . . . Montparnasse somewhere, I think – I’d have to check.’