The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (16 page)

Isabel persisted. “It was very rude of me.”

Heather Darnt looked up at her, and Isabel felt her eyes again move helplessly to
the birthmark. Now the lawyer looked amused. “You don’t have to apologise. I’m used
to it.”

“The painting …,” began Duncan, in an obvious attempt to move the conversation on.

“Yes,” said the lawyer. “The Poussin.”

She pronounced it
Powsinn
, and Isabel noticed a flicker of amusement cross Duncan’s face. And so did the lawyer.

“Clearly, I mispronounce it,” she said calmly. “I very evidently don’t have your advantages.”

Isabel winced. “We all know what we’re referring to. It doesn’t matter how one pronounces
it.”

The lawyer looked at her with amusement. “Sometimes pronunciation matters a lot.”

Isabel looked away. There were some encounters that started off on the wrong foot
and never recovered. This was one of them.

“The painting,” said Duncan. And then, correcting himself, “My painting.”

Heather Darnt busied herself with removing a paper clip from the top of a sheet of
paper, and then slipping it back into position. Isabel watched her: She’s the nervous
one, she thought. I have no cause to be anxious, nor does Duncan; but
she
does.

“Where is the painting?” Isabel asked suddenly. “Have you seen it?”

The lawyer did not look at her as she answered. “I believe
that the painting is in Scotland. I don’t know exactly where in Scotland, but it’s
still here.” She paused. “Have I seen it? The answer to that is no.”

“So how do you know that it’s in the country? How do you know that it hasn’t been
destroyed?”

The lawyer seemed to weigh these questions carefully. When she answered, she spoke
slowly and guardedly. “I have taken what has been said to me on trust.”

Duncan’s expression changed. He now looked angry, thought Isabel. “On trust from thieves?”

Heather Darnt continued to move the papers in her hands, folding one and tucking it
behind another. “It can be seen,” she said. “We can make arrangements for you to see
it. The insurance company, I think, will want that to happen. It’s standard practice
when there’s a reward.”

Isabel looked enquiringly at Duncan. They had not discussed a possible reward. “Who’s
offering a reward?” she asked. “Are you?”

“No, certainly not me,” he answered. “The insurance company.”

Heather Darnt seemed surprised that Isabel was unaware of this. “It’s very common,”
she said. “That’s how paintings are recovered. By means of the reward.”

Isabel wanted to make sure she understood. “And these people you’re acting for,” she
asked, “they’re after the reward?”

The lawyer answered the question with a nod.

Isabel asked another question. “Who are they? The thieves themselves?”

The lawyer shook her head. “No. They’re people who are in touch with the people holding
the painting.”

Isabel considered this. “What exactly does ‘in touch’ mean?”

Heather Darnt gave her a look that was on the verge of pitying. “What it usually means.
In touch. Speaking to one another.”

“Seeing one another face-to-face?”

The lawyer shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I can’t speak for them.”

But that, thought Isabel, is exactly what a lawyer does, and if I were to be as sarcastic—and
as rude—as you are being, that is what I might point out to you.

She was blunt. “May I ask who’s paying you?” And quickly answered her own question.
“I imagine it’s these people who know the thieves—the thieves’ friends.”

The lawyer said nothing. An eye twitched slightly, but otherwise she remained impassive.

“But the money really comes from the ransom, doesn’t it?” Isabel continued. “A slice
of that ransom comes to you through the intermediary.” She paused. “You profit from
the theft.”

Duncan looked at Isabel nervously. He was about to say something when the lawyer spoke.

“Any lawyer who does anything profits from the needs of another—or from misfortune.”
She spoke slowly and quietly, as if explaining a simple truth to a young person who
was having difficulty grasping it. “How do you think criminal lawyers are paid? Where
do their fees come from?”

Duncan interrupted. “I don’t think this is a particularly constructive line of discussion,”
he said. He gave Isabel a warning glance. “I’d like to talk about how we are to see
the painting. How is that going to be arranged?”

The lawyer turned her attention from Isabel to Duncan. It was a deliberate—and very
obvious—piece of body language. Isabel was now facing a half-turned-away shoulder
and would have had to address that if she had had anything more to say.

“We will arrange a place,” said Heather Darnt. “We’ll give you a time when you’ll
get a telephone call telling you where to go. It’ll be somewhere in Edinburgh.”

We
, thought Isabel.

“And you’ll bring the painting to …”

“Not me. Them. They’ll bring the painting.”

Duncan glanced at Isabel, then looked back at the lawyer.

“Of course,” went on the lawyer, “if there is any question of the authorities being
present, then they—the current holders of the painting—will be aware of that and the
whole discussion will be off. They have indicated that if there is any involvement
of anybody other than yourself and the insurance company, then the painting will be
destroyed. It will be safer for them to do that than to risk … other consequences.”

Duncan gasped. “They’ll destroy a Poussin … just like that? For nothing?”

The lawyer spread her hands in a gesture of resignation. “These people are not aesthetes,
Mr. Munrowe. They are—”

“Art thieves,” interjected Isabel.

The lawyer began to turn back to face Isabel, but clearly thought better of it. “The
world is as it is,” she said quietly, addressing her response to Duncan but evidently
intending it for Isabel. “People may think that we live in a world where moral boundaries
are very clearly delineated, but lawyers know otherwise. Nothing is that straightforward,
is it? For the most part, great concentrations of wealth are in the hands they are
in because somebody, a few generations back, was rapacious.” She paused. “I don’t
wish to be rude, Mr. Munrowe, but I’d like to point out that the fact that there are
certain very well-off families in Scotland—people living in big houses in the country
and all the rest—merely reflects the successful thefts of the
past. The Highland Clearances made some people very rich indeed. That was based on
burning people out of their homes—yes, burning them. Or profiting from the back-breaking
labour of men down the pits or in the steel works. The big Glasgow shipowners—who
built the ships? Who was blinded by the flying rivets? Who died at thirty-eight, forty?
Not the shipowners.”

Isabel lowered her eyes. All of this was true, but she was not sure that it justified
the stealing of a Poussin that was destined for the National Gallery of Scotland.

Duncan could not conceal his embarrassment. “You clearly feel very strongly,” he said.
“And I understand your argument.”

“Do you?” said Heather Darnt sarcastically. “Do you indeed? Well, that’s good.”

Duncan rose to his feet. “I think we’ve covered everything,” he said decisively. “Although
I imagine the insurance company will have something to say about its conditions. They’ll
want to satisfy themselves that the painting is undamaged, and so on. But that, I
suppose, can be sorted out later—after I’ve met with these … these people.” He paused,
looking down at Heather Darnt with an expression that revealed his distaste. “Will
you let me know when I’m to be in Edinburgh to expect—and act on—that telephone call?”

The lawyer stood up. She did not look at Isabel. “I’ll phone you later today and tell
you what day it will be. Expect a call from me at about four this afternoon—maybe
a little later.”

Now she turned to Isabel. “It was good to meet you,” she said.

Isabel tried to raise a smile. The niceties had to be maintained, even in extremis—sometimes
they were all that stood between us and the collapse of civil discourse. “Yes,” she
said. “I enjoyed our meeting.”

How easy it was to lie, she thought, not only about Proust, but about other, more
important things. It was the simplest thing in the world to utter words that bore
no relation to one’s true feelings or intent. That was something that was well known
to tyrants and their spokesmen. They could stand there and say “The people are on
our side” in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. And they did say that,
even as the mob reached their palace gates; even as their henchmen defected and forswore
the cause; even as the bombs rained down on their last redoubts.
The people are on our side
.

Heather Darnt was trying a similar tactic. She was asserting the rightfulness of what
she was doing, whereas it was, for all her attempted justification, manifestly wrong;
perhaps she had succeeded in convincing herself—people did that, repeated an excuse
or a rationale until they believed it. But surely she should have refused to act for
a client who was obviously in league with the thieves; surely she, or any other reputable
lawyer, should have refused to have anything to do with the negotiation of a ransom.
And as Isabel thought this, it occurred to her that the insurance company should do
the same and refuse to pay ransom. If they paid, then the principle would be established
that you could demand a ransom with impunity—and expect to be paid it. Their solution
was to call it a reward, but what, Isabel wondered, was the distinction?

Heather Darnt was shown out to her car and drove off down the drive. When Duncan came
back in, he looked slightly apologetic. “What an unpleasant woman,” he began, and
then checked himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t really—”

Isabel cut him short. “Shouldn’t? Why not? You’re absolutely right: she
is
unpleasant. And …”

He looked at her expectantly.

“And, frankly, I don’t see the distinction between her and the thieves. She’s obviously
in pretty deeply with them. Of course, there’s all those references to clients and
intermediaries and so on, but do you know what I think?”

He was watching her closely. “Tell me.”

She had not formulated this until a few moments ago, but now it seemed to her to be
so obvious: “She’s one of them—one of the thieves.”

As she spoke, Isabel found herself thinking of the power of words. A single word,
a phrase, a sentence or two could have such extraordinary power; could end a world,
break a heart or, as in this case, consign another to moral purdah.

“I think you may be right,” he said. “I did not like her.”

Isabel shrugged. “But that, I suppose, is neither here nor there. If we want the painting
back, then I suppose we do what we have to do: pay the ransom.”

“Well, it’s the insurance company that will be paying. But, yes, that’s what it amounts
to.” He paused, as if engaged in the process of weighing choices. “What should our
priority be? Money, or a beautiful painting?”

Isabel thought:
This is why I’m here; this is why he wants to involve me
. It was all very well being the editor of a journal of applied ethics; you could
deliberate to your heart’s content on the rightness or wrongness of actions, but none
of it was real; not until somebody actually came up to you, as Duncan now was doing,
and said: “Tell me what to do.”

“It amounts to paying ransom,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “No matter how
you dress it up.”

“I know,” he said. “And surely that’s wrong.”

She made a gesture of hopelessness. “Put yourself in the position of a person who
has to pay ransom to get a relative
back from a kidnapper. Think of those people—and there are quite a few of them right
now—who have relatives being held by pirates in Somalia.” It sounded ridiculous to
be talking about pirates in the twenty-first century, but that was exactly what they
were. There were still pirates in the world, just as there were still slaves. We imagined
that our world had gone beyond all that, but it had not.

“Oh, I’d pay,” said Duncan. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Governments,” answered Isabel. “Governments won’t negotiate with terrorists, will
they?”

Duncan said that he understood why they took that position. “If they did,” he said,
“then it would just get worse and worse.”

Isabel nodded. “And art thieves? If we negotiate with them? If we pay the ransom they
demand, then they’ll simply be encouraged.”

He was silent for a while. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said.

She had not intended him to reach this conclusion quite so quickly. And she was not
entirely sure that this was the position at which she would herself arrive.

“I wouldn’t necessarily reach that conclusion,” she said.

He looked at her with interest. “But you implied …”

“I was voicing a general doubt,” she said. “Individual situations may differ. Everything
depends …” She looked at her hands.
I am not being helpful
, she said to herself.
He wants guidance, and I am giving him doubt
.

“You should save the Poussin,” she said decisively. “If that’s what you want, then
there’s no reason why you shouldn’t participate in the business of arranging the ransom.
Artistic value trumps the general social interest in this case, I think.”

He seemed relieved. “I hoped that you’d say that.”

She smiled at him. “I can see what that painting means to you. I understand.”

“I’m glad you do. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me—whether I’ve become excessively
attached to it, but then, when I think it through, I come to the conclusion that great
art really is as important as we say it is. It’s nothing to do with material value—money
just complicates the matter. It’s what art stands for.”

She inclined her head. “Of course.”

The decision made, they were both relieved to be able to allow their conversation
to become more general, more relaxed. Duncan wanted to talk about Poussin, and Isabel
sensed that this was helpful for him.