False Impression (2006) Read online

  Jack jumped in and started the engine, just as a cop came running round the corner. He swung the car in a circle, mounted the sidewalk, drove back onto the road, and headed for St Vincent’s Hospital.

  ‘Good afternoon, Sotheby’s.’

  ‘Lord Poltimore, please.’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling, madam?’

  ‘Lady Wentworth.’ Arabella didn’t have to wait long before Mark came on the line.

  ‘How nice to hear from you, Arabella,’ said Mark. ‘Dare I ask,’ he teased, ‘are you a buyer or a seller?’

  ‘A seeker after advice,’ replied Arabella. ‘But if I were to be a seller …’

  Mark began to make notes as he listened to a series of questions that Arabella had obviously prepared carefully.

  ‘In the days when I was a dealer,’ Mark replied, ‘before I joined Sotheby’s, the standard commission was 10 per cent up to the first million. If the painting was likely to fetch more than a million I used to negotiate a fee with the seller.’

  ‘And what fee would you have negotiated, had I asked you to sell the Wentworth Van Gogh?’

  Mark was glad Arabella couldn’t see the expression on his face. Once he’d recovered, he took his time before suggesting a figure, but quickly added, ‘If you were to allow Sotheby’s to put the picture up for auction, we would charge you nothing, Arabella, guaranteeing you the full hammer price.’

  ‘So how do you make a profit?’ asked Arabella.

  ‘We charge a buyer’s premium,’ explained Mark.

  ‘I already have a buyer,’ said Arabella, ‘but thank you for the advice.’

  9/25

  50

  KRANTZ TURNED the corner of the street, relieved to find the pavement so crowded. She walked for about another hundred yards before stopping outside a small hotel. She glanced up and down the road, confident that she was not being followed.

  She pulled open the swing doors that led into the hotel and, looking straight ahead, walked past reception, ignoring the concierge, who was talking to a tourist who sounded as if he might come from New York. Her gaze remained focused on a wall of deposit boxes to the left of the reception desk. Krantz waited until all three receptionists were fully occupied before she moved.

  She glanced behind her to make sure no one had the same purpose in mind. Satisfied, she moved quickly, extracting a key from her hip pocket as she reached box 19. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Krantz removed all the notes and two passports, and stuffed them in a pocket. She then locked the door, walked out of the hotel and was back on Herzen Street, without having spoken to anyone.

  She hailed a taxi, something she couldn’t have done in the days when the communists were teaching her her trade. She gave the driver the name of a bank in Cheryomushki, sat in the back and thought about Colonel Sergei Slatinaru - but only for a moment. Her one regret was that she hadn’t succeeded in cutting off his left ear. Krantz would like to have sent Petrescu a little memento of her visit to Romania. Still, what she had in mind for Petrescu would more than make up for the disappointment.

  But first she had to concentrate on getting out of Russia. It might have been easy to escape from those amateurs in Bucharest, but it was going to be far more difficult finding a safe route into England. Islands always cause a problem; mountains are so much easier to cross than water. She’d arrived in the Russian capital earlier that morning exhausted, having been constantly on the move since discharging herself from the hospital.

  Krantz had reached the highway by the time the siren went off. She turned to see the hospital grounds bathed in light. A truck driver who made love to her twice, and didn’t deserve to die, smuggled her across the border. It took a train, a plane, another three hundred dollars and seventeen hours before she eventually made it to Moscow. She immediately headed for the Isla Hotel, with no intention of staying overnight. Her only interest was in a safety deposit box that contained two passports and a few hundred roubles.

  While she was marooned in Moscow, Krantz had planned to earn a little cash, moonlighting while she waited until it was safe to return to America. The cost of living was so much cheaper in the Russian capital than New York, and that included the cost of death. $5,000 for a wife, $10,000 for a husband. The Russians hadn’t yet come to terms with equal rights. A KGB colonel could fetch as much as $50,000, while Krantz could charge $100,000 for a mafia boss. But if Fenston had transferred the promised two million dollars, tiresome wives and husbands would have to wait for her return. In fact, now that Russia had embraced free enterprise, she might even attach herself to one of the new oligarchs and offer him a comprehensive service.

  She felt sure one of them could make use of the three million dollars stashed away in a safety deposit box in Queens, in which case she would never need to return to the States.

  The taxi drew up outside the discreet entrance of a bank that prided itself on having few customers. The letters G and Z were chiselled in the white marble cornice. Krantz stepped out of the cab, paid the fare and waited until the taxi was out of sight before she entered the building.

  The Geneva and Zurich Bank was an establishment that specialized in catering to the needs of a new breed of Russians, who had reinvented themselves following the demise of communism. Politicians, mafia bosses (businessmen), footballers and pop stars were all small change compared to the latest superstars, the oligarchs. Although everybody knew their names, they were a breed that could afford the anonymity of a number when it came to finding out the details of what they were worth.

  Krantz walked up to an old-fashioned wooden counter, no lines, no grilles, where a row of smartly dressed men in grey suits, white shirts and plain silk ties waited to serve. They wouldn’t have looked out of place in either Geneva or Zurich.

  ‘How may I assist you?’ asked the clerk Krantz had selected. He wondered which category she fell into - the wife of a mafia boss, or the daughter of an oligarch. She didn’t look like a pop star.

  ‘One zero seven two zero nine five nine,’ she said.

  He tapped the code into his computer, and when the figures flashed up on the screen he showed a little more interest.

  ‘May I see your passport?’ was his next question.

  Krantz handed over one of the passports she had collected from the Isla Hotel.

  ‘How much is there in my account?’ she asked.

  ‘How much do you think there should be?’ he replied.

  ‘Just over two million dollars,’ she said.

  ‘And what amount do you wish to withdraw?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten thousand in dollars, and ten thousand in roubles.’

  He pulled out a tray from under the counter and began to count out the notes slowly. ‘We haven’t dealt in this account for some time,’ he ventured, looking up at his screen.

  ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘but you will be seeing a lot more activity now that I’m back in Moscow,’ she added without explanation.

  ‘Then I look forward to being of service, madam,’ the clerk said, before passing across two bundles of notes neatly sealed in plastic wallets, with no hint of where they had come from, and certainly no paperwork to suggest a transaction had even taken place.

  Krantz picked up the two wallets, placed them in an inside pocket and walked slowly out of the bank. She hailed the third available taxi.

  ‘The Kalstern,’ she said, and climbed into the back of the cab in preparation for the second part of her plan.

  Fenston had kept his part of the bargain. Now she would have to keep hers if she hoped to collect the second two million. She had given a moment’s thought to keeping the two million and not bothering to travel to England. But only a moment’s thought because she knew that Fenston had kept up his contacts with the KGB, and they would have been only too happy to dispose of her for a far smaller amount.

  When the taxi came to a halt ten minutes later, Krantz handed over four hundred roubles and didn’t wait for any change. S