Silhouette in Scarlet vbm-3 Page 5
By that time it was after one-thirty, so I went to satisfy another basic urge. (I am referring to food.) One of the restaurants fronting Kungstradgården, formerly the royal gardens, would be just the ticket. I would sit on the terrace in my new red-and-green sweater and drink beer and eat smorgasbord and look at the flowers and watch the children play.
All those amenities were available. In the cooler northern climate the flowers that had come and gone in Munich were still blooming their heads off. The lilacs filled the air with scent, and neatly cultivated beds of freesia and roses made patches of colour between the paths where the children ran. But as I sat there poking at my food, I finally came to grips with my problem. That morning I had seen – actually seen and noticed – thirty ski sweaters and two thousand faces. Instead of admiring handsome modern streets and quaint markets, I had been searching for a well-known profile.
Not Leif’s. John haunted me like the ghost of an old murder. I hadn’t seen him for over twenty-four hours. Instead of reassuring me, that fact only made me exceedingly nervous.
His inadequate disguise at the airport might have been a precaution against me. He couldn’t be sure I would not be followed off the plane by half a dozen Munich cops. (I was sorry now I hadn’t thought of it.) However, by the time I reached the currency exchange, he had had me under surveillance for some time, and he must have been reasonably certain I was alone. My jovial hail wouldn’t have sent him scuttling for cover if I were the only person he had to worry about. My first assumption had been correct after all. Somebody was on his trail.
I had expected to hear from him before this. I had left the hotel that morning and walked, aimlessly and slowly, hoping he would seize the opportunity to contact me.
Men had tried to contact me. Two student types, a little Japanese gent draped with cameras, and a well-dressed, sanctimonious-looking man whose nationality was obscure, but whose command of English included some surprising words. None had been John. If he was following me, he was doing it very skilfully. If someone else was following me, he or she was also doing it very skilfully. In the bloom of my carefree youth I used to think I was a match for any number of villains, but I was older and wiser now, and I had to admit I probably wouldn’t spot a specific pursuer unless he was bright blue or wore a clown costume. People are so annoyingly conformist. All middle-aged, middle-sized businessmen dress alike, and students are the most conservative of all; most of the males were sporting beards that summer, and ninety per cent of them, male and female, wore designer jeans and T-shirts. A couple at a table nearby resembled most of the young people I had seen that morning: dark glasses covered the upper halves of their faces, and her close-cropped brown hair and his whiskers were part of the informal uniform they all slavishly followed.
My eyes moved over the other diners. The only thing I could be sure of was that Leif wasn’t among them. His height made him as conspicuous as a clown or a painted Pict. Whatever disguise he might adopt, he couldn’t hide that.
Then my roving eye focused on something that was familiar – a shabby grey sweater and a massive head of grey hair. His shoulders had an obsequious stoop as he addressed a group of older women sitting at a table for six. The women were laughing and shaking their heads.
As if he felt my eyes upon him, the little man straightened and turned. Across the width of the room our glances locked. He bowed and smiled. Balancing his briefcase awkwardly on one arm, he opened it and reached inside. The card he held up, like a picket’s poster, was only too familiar. There I was, in featureless outline, for all the restaurant to see.
I couldn’t be angry; he was so eager and so proud of his work, and so obviously in need of assistance in selling his unusual product. When he gestured at me, at the silhouette, and at the ladies, I nodded, embarrassed but unable to resist the appeal. With an even deeper bow he turned back to the women to make his pitch. They had the unmistakable stamp of happy American widows taking their annual summer holiday. I had seen a number of such parties in Munich. They clung to the bouffant hairdos of twenty years ago, and they always wore nice knit pantsuits. Now they were peering at me through their bifocals, nodding and laughing as the silhouette cutter demonstrated his skill -with me as the model.
I felt like one of those antique advertising posters that have two big hands with pointing fingers indicating the object of interest. One of the ladies waved at me. With a shrug I waved back. The silhouette cutter sat down and took out his materials. He had made his sale.
The brief interlude had distracted and entertained me, but as soon as it was over, I started worrying at the old problem again like a dog with a used bone. Only a few hours earlier, I had determined to ignore all the intriguing little clues that led into trails of meaningless conjecture and possible disaster. It would be my own fault if I followed one of those trails. Nobody was bothering me. Yet, knowing John, I couldn’t believe I was in the clear. He wouldn’t drag me all the way up here and abandon . . . not me, he’d do that in a second . . . abandon the purpose for which he had summoned me. Even his apparent inaction had meaning, and my own inaction might be leaving me wide open to his next ploy.
Naturally I had thought of the most obvious reason for his failure to get in touch with me. The people who had been chasing him might have caught up with him. If they were police, he could be in jail. If they weren’t . . .
I imagined myself calling the Stockholm morgue. ‘Got any surplus bodies today? A man about thirty-five, five eleven and a half, slight, fair-haired – or maybe black, or grey, or bald . . .’
There was bound to be someone of that description lying around. Any large city has its share of murders and suicides and accidents. The extensive stretches of water in Stockholm must be a temptation to despairing lovers, drunken tourists, and exasperated spouses.
I didn’t really believe he was dead. No, he was skulking around somewhere, plotting and planning in a Machiavellian fashion.
I finished my beer and summoned the waiter. As I fumbled for the money to pay the check, I felt a surge of well-being. Indecision is the one thing that drives me crazy. Probably the decision I had reached was the wrong one, but it was better than doing nothing.
On my way out I passed the table where the man in grey was at work. Two of the ladies were giggling over their portraits, and he was engaged on number three. Seeing me, the chubbiest of the girls (I’m sure that’s how they referred to themselves) gave me a dimpled grin and held up her silhouette. It was a masterpiece, subtly flattering, and even more subtly caricaturing her worst feature – multiple chins, pinched mouth, receding forehead. I did not pause to admire it, I just smiled and nodded and went on. The ladies smiled and nodded. People at nearby tables smiled and nodded. The silhouette cutter smiled and nodded . . . And I’m sure any astute reader of thrillers has surely, by this time, caught the implications I flat-out missed. Take the ‘had I but known’ comment as read.
Innocent and stupid and unaware, I ambled into the park and paused to consult my map. Strandvägen, the wide boulevard along the waterfront, looked like the most direct route. And I had better hurry. Museums keep peculiar hours; some are open in the evening, some close at four o’dock.
The long white boats glided over the water, carrying carefree tourists on their way. I wished I were one of them. I wasn’t even sure why I was heading for the Statens Historiska Museum. I wanted to refresh my memories of Viking art objects and take some notes to replace the ones in my lost notebook, but my real reason was far less sensible. The dream kept itching at my mind. I could account rationally for almost all the elements of it, including the anxiety that had led me to visualize a masterpiece threatened with destruction. Any art object John was after had a poor chance of survival; it would probably vanish into the limbo of lost treasures. But I couldn’t explain the chalice itself. Why that, of all the other examples in museums – the Kingston brooch, the golden horns from Gallehus? I wanted a closer look at that chalice, and I needed the address of the private museum that owned it. So
meone at the National Museum of Antiquities would be able to supply that information.
I was only a block or two from the museum when I saw a stationer’s and went in to get a replacement for my notebook. It was then that, with the abruptness of pure illogic, I remembered the name of the place I was looking for.
The clerk was very helpful. He looked up the name and address and showed me where it was on the map. As I might have expected, I had gone in the wrong direction. The Hansson Collection was on Riddarholm Island on the far side of Gamla Stan.
Every large city has places like the Hansson Collection – small, privately endowed museums that are dedicated to a particular specialty and are visited only by experts in that specialty and by compulsive tourists who follow lists of ‘things to see.’ The building in which it was housed had once been a private residence – that of Mr Hansson, I assumed. It was a beautiful seventeenth-century mansion in the ornate Dutch Renaissance style, with rosy-red bricks and carved window frames. I lucked out on the schedule. It was open from one to five. I still had an hour.
I passed through room after stately room, my footsteps echoing, in spite of my efforts to tread lightly. The focus of the place was prehistory. I don’t think I saw more than six people, all of them frozen in rapt contemplation of shapeless stone axes and rotted copper tools. Prehistory is definitely not my field, and I have never had any trouble resisting exhibits of cracked pots, but I must confess to a certain morbid interest in graves. A goodly proportion of the objects displayed in archeological museums come from tombs, but that isn’t the reason why reconstructions of ancient burials are so popular with visitors. I suppose they remind us of the futility of material ambitions and the inevitability of death. ‘As I am now, so you shall be . . .’
Since I didn’t need reminders of mortality just then, I headed directly for the Treasure Room, where the most valuable pieces in the collection were housed – valuable, at least, in material terms. The arrangement had been made not so much for the convenience of tourists as for security. Like our treasure room in Munich, it was built like a vault, windowless and steel-walled.
Reaching the end of the wing, I turned a corner and came to a sudden, shocked halt. I’m sure the exhibit had been deliberately arranged to have that effect. Sensitive tourists of either sex probably shrieked.
She lay on her back, her head turned to one side and her limbs lightly flexed in an attitude of sleep. The brown ribs showed through the flattened chest wall, and one hand modestly covered the sexual area, but there was no doubt she was female; the rounded hips and slender arms had been petrified into a variety of tanned leather. Her head had been shaved. The delicate folds of her ear had been flattened by the earth that held her down, and a strip of woven cloth covered her eyes. They had at least had the decency to blindfold her before they drowned her in the bog and left her there.
I had read about the bodies found in peat bogs, incredibly preserved by natural chemicals. They aren’t mummies, for mummification implies a drying process. This is more like tanning. Some of the bog people, like the man from Tollund, are more lifelike than most Egyptian mummies. The majority of them come from Denmark. This girl – fourteen years old, according to the catalogue – had been found in Halland, on the west coast of Sweden. She had died sometime during the first century AD, a sacrifice to some unknown god, or an executed criminal. It was hard to think of a crime a fourteen-year-old would commit. The catalogue suggested adultery. Fourteen years old . . . Many of the women were married that young. And throughout the centuries, up to modern times, women convicted of adultery often had their hair cut off before they were killed. Only the women. Their male partners in ‘crime’ probably handed the barber his razors and then headed for the local pub to drink a few horns of mead with the boys.
As I went on into the next room, I heard a muffled shriek, as another unwary visitor came on the girl from Halland.
There were two people in the Treasure Room. One looked like a student – beard, jeans, T-shirt. He was leaning over a glass case containing coins and beads.
The other person was a woman, and for a startled second I felt as if I had come upon my doppelgänger, that image of oneself that is the harbinger of imminent death. Like me, she was unusually tall; like me, she had long blond hair. Like me, she wore white slacks. There the resemblance stopped. Her blouse had long, full sleeves and an unnecessary profusion of ruffles around the neck and shoulders. Compared to her mane of shimmering hair, mine was lank and lusterless – like the before and after in a shampoo commercial. Her hips were as straight as a boy’s, but any deficiency in that area was compensated for up above. She must have been wearing a bra. Nobody’s muscles are that good.
The chalice was in a separate case in the middle of the room. My dreaming mind had an excellent visual memory; it had reproduced the major features. The shallow bowl and the wide foot were joined by a band of heavy gold overlaid with exquisitely coiled filigree. A band of the same material encircled the bowl just below the rim. This band and the twin handles were inlaid with garnets and scarlet enamel, set off by the gold strips of the cloisonné in which the enamel was set. The intricacy of the design was incredible. It was hard to imagine how it could have been done without a magnifying glass. Two of these relatively modern devices had been set up inside the case in order to enlarge portions of the filigree.
Colour photography is superb these days, but nothing can capture the true wonder of work like that. You have to see it. As I bent over the lovely thing, I heard the bearded man walk out. The woman was moving methodically around the room, stopping at every exhibit.
The catalogue contained a long paragraph on the chalice. Discovered in 1889, one of the first objects presented by Karl Hansson when he contributed his collection to the city.
Footsteps moved towards me. Without looking up from the catalogue I stepped to one side to give the newcomer a better view. It was her perfume that caught my attention – divine. I couldn’t identify it, probably because it smelled like money as well as musk, the kind of money I’ve never possessed.
Golden locks tumbled over her face as she bent to look more closely at the chalice. I caught only a glimpse of a tanned cheek, but that was all I needed. He heard my breath catch, and that was all he needed. Before I could express myself with the eloquence the situation demanded, he said in a hideous falsetto, ‘Aren’t you the clever little thing! I felt sure you would figure it out.’
I ejected one word – ‘You – ’ before he cut off the noun. ‘I beg, dear girl, that you won’t shout. I believe I’ve lost him, but one can never take too many precautions.’
‘Who is “him”?’ I inquired. I spoke softly. I didn’t want to attract ‘his’ attention either.
A less subtle comedian might have made some stupid joke about grammar. John just brushed the voluminous hair back from his face and grinned. I understood the necessity for the fluffy blouse; he was no weight lifter, but his biceps could never have passed for a woman’s, and his shoulders were broad enough to require camouflage. And, as I studied his pensive profile, I also understood the dark makeup.
‘I see you’ve already had a little set-to with him,’ I said.
Wincingly John touched the bruise on his jaw. There were others around his throat, almost hidden by the ruffles.
‘You needn’t sound so pleased. He caught me off guard. It won’t happen again.’
‘I’ll bet. Who is “him”?’
‘No one you’d care to meet, and no one you need worry about. It’s a private matter. Nothing to do with the present – er – ’
‘Swindle,’ I suggested.
‘Matter. Affair?’ He turned an inquiring, amused blue eye in my direction.
‘You’re not my type,’ I said. ‘Particularly not in that outfit. How you’d have the gall to think I’d fall for your machinations again, after – ’
‘Keep your voice down. I admit I owe you an explanation about Paris – ’
‘And a lot of other things.’
‘There is that one per cent,’ I said apprehensively.
‘There is. And where you are concerned, my heart’s dearest, those odds are too high. I’ll drop in this evening, around midnight. Three knocks, then a pause, then two knocks.’
I started to say something sarcastic, but he looked so ridiculous pawing at his hair, with those preposterous breasts jutting out at an impossible angle as he bent over the case, that my sense of humour got the better of me. I didn’t want him to see me laugh, so I turned and sat down on one of the velvet-covered couches surrounding the pièce de résistance, the case containing the chalice.
‘What are you going to look like next time I see you?’ I asked.
John sat down beside me. ‘Not like this. I’ve already shaved twice today, and my skin is quite sensitive.’
‘You make a very pretty girl.’
‘I knew you were going to say that. What’s your room number?’
‘First tell me what this friend of yours looks like.’
Half a lifetime of eluding the law had made John quick at catching undertones. He turned so abruptly that I jumped. My purse slid off my lap and spilled half its contents onto the floor.
‘Have you acquired a friend too?’ he asked intently.
‘I may have.’
‘Medium height, heavy-set, brown hair and beard, horn-rimmed glasses?’