False Impression (2006) Read online

  Leapman walked out of the door, climbed back up the steps and into the light of Lincoln Street. At the top of the steps, he once again glanced up and down the road. He felt safe. He began to walk quickly down the street, gripping the handle of the bag tightly, relieved to see the cab was still waiting for him on the corner.

  He had covered about twenty yards when, out of nowhere, he was surrounded by a dozen men dressed in jeans and blue-nylon windbreakers, FBI printed in bold yellow letters on their backs. They came running towards him from every direction. A moment later, two cars entered Lincoln, one from each end - despite its being a one-way street - and came to a screeching halt in a semi-circle around the suspect. This time passers-by did stop to stare at the tracksuited man carrying a sports bag. The taxi sped away, minus fifty dollars, plus one squash racket.

  ‘Read him his rights,’ said Joe, as another officer clamped Leapman’s arms firmly behind his back and handcuffed him, while a third relieved him of his gym bag.

  ‘You have the right to remain silent…’ which Leapman did.

  Once his Miranda rights had been recited to him -not for the first time - Leapman was led off to one of the cars and unceremoniously dumped in the back, where Agent Delaney was waiting for him.

  Anna was at the Whitney Museum, standing in front of a Rauschenberg canvas entitled Satellite, when her cellphone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She glanced at the screen to see that Stalker was trying to contact her.

  ‘Hey,’ said Anna.

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘Wrong about what?’ asked Anna.

  ‘It was more than two million.’

  Krantz listened as the clock on a nearby church tower struck twice. She lay still, suddenly alert, ready for a change in routine.

  Within moments she heard the heavy key being rattled in the lock, followed by the door opening and the door closing. She didn’t look up, all part of an established routine. The guard ambled across, placed a glass of water on her bedside table, removed the packet of Silk Cut, and left the room without a word passing between them. She heard the door close and the key turning in the lock.

  She didn’t move a muscle, a hundred-dollar bill in one hand, the doctor’s scissors in the other.

  Twenty-two minutes passed before she heard a key being pushed into the lock and the door opening for a second time. The door closed. The second guard walked more quickly across the room, and placed a cheese sandwich, a diet coke and another packet of Silk Cut on the bedside table. He turned to face the prisoner in anticipation.

  A small fist slipped out from under the sheet, and the fingers slowly uncurled to reveal a hundred-dollar bill. The guard smiled. As he leant across to accept his reward, the note slipped from her fingers and floated to the ground.

  The guard bent down to pick it up, and by the time he rose, a smile still on his face, Krantz was already crouched on the edge of the bed, waiting. He was just about to pocket the money when she grabbed his thick black hair in one hand, and with a well-practised movement sliced open his neck with the aid of the doctor’s scissors in the other. Not the most efficient of instruments, but the only thing she’d been able to lay her hands on.

  He sank to the ground, and lay in his own blood, while still clinging on to the hundred-dollar bill. Krantz leapt off the bed, quickly removed from his chain the one key she needed, ran to the door and locked it. She pulled the bed back, just a few inches, and looked up at the tiny open window. She was about to discover if she had taken one risk too many.

  She ran the three paces from the door, jumped up onto the mattress, mounted the rail on the end of the bed, as if it were a parallel bar, swung herself up to a handstand and, turning like a pole vaulter, thrust her legs through the open window.

  For a moment she found herself stuck halfway in and halfway out. Krantz turned herself sideways, wiggling her hips through the tiny gap, and thrust her arms forward, allowing her shoulders to follow. She ended up clinging on to the window ledge with her fingertips. Never look down, never hesitate. She released both hands, fell the two storeys, landing in a flowerbed, and rolled over as if she were dismounting from a high bar.

  She was quickly up on her feet and running towards the high mesh wire fence that surrounded the hospital grounds, just as the smoker unlocked the door to see what had delayed his colleague.

  Seconds later an alarm went off, and the hospital grounds were flooded with light, like a football pitch during an evening fixture. Krantz was only yards from her goal when she first heard the dogs. Never look back, it only slows you down.

  Krantz leapt for the wire mesh as the first dog sprung after her, but he could only bark his raucous protests as the monkey-like figure deftly scaled the fence, straddled the barbed-wire summit and quickly slithered down the other side. The three guards reached the bottom of the fence, but none of them was willing to take the same route.

  One of them pulled a gun as Krantz began to zigzag across the road. He took a first shot - close, but not close enough, and by the time he pulled the trigger a second time she had disappeared into the forest.

  The young doctor knelt down, in a pool of blood, by the slaughtered guard, searching for the instrument of death.

  He spotted his scissors under the bed, grabbed them and quickly tucked them into a jacket pocket. He looked up to see the smoker staring in disbelief at the position of the bed and the open window.

  Then he remembered. She was an Olympic gymnast.

  9/24

  46

  ONE OF ANNA’S golden rules when she woke in the morning was not to check the messages on her cellphone until she had showered, dressed, had breakfast and read the New York Times. But as she had broken every one of her golden rules during the past fortnight, she checked her messages even before she got out of bed. One from Stalker asking her to call, which made her smile, one from Tina - no message, and one from Mr Nakamura, which made her frown - only four words, ‘Urgent, please call. Nakamura.’

  Anna decided to take a cold shower before she returned his call. As the jets of water cascaded down on her, she thought about Mr Nakamura’s message. The word urgent always made her assume the worst - Anna fell into the half-empty-glass category, rather than the half-full.

  She was wide awake by the time she stepped out of the shower. Her heart was pounding at about the same pace as when she’d just finished her morning run. She sat on the end of the bed and tried to compose herself.

  Once Anna felt her heartbeat had returned to as near normal as it was likely to, she dialled Nakamura’s number in Tokyo.

  ‘Hai, Shacho-Shitso desu,’ announced the receptionist.

  ‘Mr Nakamura, please.’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Anna Petrescu.’

  ‘Ah yes, he is expecting your call.’ Anna’s heartbeat quickened.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Petrescu.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Nakamura,’ said Anna, wishing she could see his face and more quickly learn her fate.

  ‘I’ve recently had a most unpleasant conversation with your former boss, Bryce Fenston,’ continued Nakamura. ‘Which I’m afraid’ - Anna could hardly breathe -‘has made me reassess’ - was she about to be sick? - ‘my opinion of that man. However, that’s not the purpose of this call. I just wanted to let you know that you are currently costing me around five hundred dollars a day as I have, as you requested, deposited five million dollars with my lawyers in London. So I would like to view the Van Gogh as soon as possible.’

  ‘I could fly to Tokyo in the next few days,’ Anna assured him, ‘but I would first have to go to England and pick up the painting.’

  ‘That may not prove necessary,’ said Nakamura. ‘I have a meeting with Corus Steel in London scheduled for Wednesday, and would be happy to fly over a day earlier, if that was convenient for Lady Arabella.’

  ‘I’m sure that will be just fine,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll need to contact Arabella and then call your secretary to confirm the details. Wentworth Hall is only