adolescent. She was called Annek. But if she had really been an adolescent, she wouldn't have been worth even five hundred dollars. Her death would not have interested the Ministry of the Interior of a foreign country, or mobilised a whole army of police and special forces, or led to high-level discussions in at least two European capitals, or meant that our positions in the Foundation are on the line. If this had been only a girl, who the shit would have been interested in what happened to her? Her mother and four bored policemen in the Wienerwald district. Things like that happen every day in this world of ours. People die horrible deaths all around us, and nobody could care less. But people do care about the death of this girl. And do you know why? Because this, this’ she shook the photo in his face, 'which apparently shows a young girl, is not a girl at all. It cost more than fifty million dollars.' She repeated the words again, emphasising them with a pause between each one. 'Fifty. Million. Dollars.'
'However much the work cost, she was still a young girl, April.'
That's where you're wrong. It cost that much precisely because it was not a girl. It was a painting, Lothar. A masterpiece. Do you still not get it? We are what other people pay us to be. You used to be a policeman, and that's what you were paid to be; now they pay you to work as an employee for a private company, and that's what you are. This was once a girl. Then someone paid to turn her into a painting. Paintings are paintings, and people can destroy them with portable canvas cutters just as you might destroy documents in your shredding machine, without worrying about it. To put it simply, they are not people. Not for the person who did this to her, and not for us. Do I make myself clear?'
Bosch was staring at a fixed point – he had chosen April Wood's anthracite-coloured hair, and in particular the fiercely drawn parting on the right side of her head. He kept his eyes on it as he nodded agreement.
'Lothar?' 'Yes, I understood.' 'Which means we have to keep an eye on the competition.' 'We will,' said Bosch.
'And there's also the anonymous madman,' Miss Wood sighed, and her thin shoulders hunched. 'That would be the worst of all: a freshly baked psychopath, just like all that Viennese bread. Is there anything else in the forensic report?'
Bosch blinked and looked down at his papers. She's not being cruel, he told himself. She doesn't talk like that out of cruelty. She's not cruel. It's the world which is. All of us are.
'Yes…' Bosch looked several pages further on. 'There is one curious detail. Of course, the analysis of the painting's skin is very detailed: the forensic experts don't know much about the priming process, so they haven't picked up on this. Near the wound in the breast they found traces of a substance which… I'll read you what it says… 'the composition of which, while being similar to silicon, is different in several fundamental aspects…' Then they give the full name of the chemical molecule: 'dimethyl-tetrahydro…' well it's an enormously long name. Guess what it is?' 'Cerublastyne…' said Miss Wood, her eyes wide open.
'Bingo. The report says it must have been part of the painting's priming, but we know that Deflowering did not have any cerublastyne on it. We called Hoffmann and he confirmed it: the cerublastyne cannot have come from the painting.' 'My God,' Wood whispered. 'He disguises himself.'
'That seems most likely. A few touches of cerublastyne would have been enough to change his looks completely'
This news had suddenly made Miss Wood uneasy. She had got up, and was pacing to and fro about the room. Bosch looked at her with concern. Good God, she hardly ever eats, she's a skeleton. She'll make herself ill if she carries on like this… A different voice, also part of him, counterattacked: Don't pretend. Look at the light reflected on her breasts, look at that tight arse and those legs of hers. You're crazy about her. You like her just like you did Hendrickje, perhaps more even. You like her the way you liked Hendrickje's portrait later on. Nonsense, the other Bosch replied. And
… why not say it? the other voice came back. You like her intelligence. Her sharpness, her personality, the fact she is a thousand times more intelligent than you.
It was true, April Wood was a precision instrument. In the five years they had worked together, Bosch had not seen her make a single mistake. Stein called her the 'guard dog'. Everyone in the Foundation respected her. Even Benoit seemed cowed in her presence. He often said: 'She's so skinny her soul is too big for her.' Her record was brilliant. Even though she had not been able to avoid all the attacks on the works during her five years as head of security (it was impossible to prevent them all), those responsible had been found and dealt with, sometimes even before the police had heard about the incident. The guard dog knew how to bite. Nobody was in any doubt (Bosch least of all) that now she would also find whoever it was who had destroyed Deflowering.
And yet, outside their professional relationship, he scarcely knew her. Black holes in space, according to the scientific magazines his brother Roland collected, cannot be seen precisely because they are black, their presence can only be inferred from the effects they have on the other bodies around them. Bosch thought Miss Wood's free time was a black hole: he inferred it from her work. If Miss Wood had managed to rest, everything went smoothly. Otherwise, there were bound to be sparks. But so far, no one had so much as glimpsed what might be hidden in the dark hole that was Miss Wood's time off. Wood without her red pass, Miss Wood outside working hours, Miss Wood with feelings, if such things existed. Could there be a blot on such a perfect character? Bosch wondered about it sometimes.
The truth of it, Mr Lothar Bosch, is that this youngster of hardly thirty, who could be your daughter but is your boss, this soulless skeleton, has completely hypnotised you. 'April,' said Bosch. 'What?'
'I was thinking that maybe Diaz leads a double life. Maybe he has two voices inside his head, one normal, the other not. If he is a psychopath, there would be nothing odd in the fact that he behaved properly with friends and colleagues. When I worked for the police, I had some cases of…'
Mozart rang out from the table. It was Miss Wood's mobile. Even though her features did not alter in the slightest as she took the call, Bosch was aware something important had happened.
'AH our problems are over’ she said as she switched off her phone, smiling in that disagreeable way of hers. That was Braun. Oscar Diaz is dead.' Bosch leapt from his seat. They've caught him at last!'
'No. Two anglers found his body floating in the Danube early this morning. They thought it was the carp of their lives, a Guinness Book of Records carp, but it was Oscar. Well, all that was left of Oscar. According to the preliminary report, he had been dead more than a week
… That was why they wanted to keep his body hidden.' 'What's that?'
Wood did not reply at once. She was still smiling, but Bosch soon realised it was a tremendous rage that was paralysing her. 'It was not Oscar Diaz who picked up Annek last Wednesday.' This affirmation threw Bosch into confusion.
'It wasn't…? What do you mean?… Diaz turned up at the agreed time last Wednesday, chatted with his colleagues, identified himself, and…' All at once he came to a halt, as though forced to brake before coming up against the stone wall of Miss Wood's gaze.
'It's not possible, April. One thing is to use resin to escape the police, but it's quite another to imitate someone so well that you deceive everyone who knows them, who sees them every day, the colleagues who greeted him on… on Wednesday… the security screens… all of them… to be able to pass off as someone you'd have to be a true specialist in latex. A real maestro.' Wood was still staring at him. Her smile froze his blood.
'That bastard, whoever he may be, has made fools of us, Lothar.'
She said these words in a tone Bosch recognised perfectly. She wanted revenge. April Wood could forgive other people being intelligent, just so long as they were not more intelligent than her. She could not bear any opponent to do anything she had not thought of. In the heart of this slight woman burned a volcano of the blackest pride and will to perfection. Bosch understood, with the kind of sudden certainty which sometimes grasps the deepest, most hidden truths, that Wood had slipped her chain, that the guard dog would hunt down her adversary and would not relent until she had him in her jaws.
And not even then: once she had him, she would chew him to bits.
'They've made fools of us… fools of us…' she went on in an almost musical whistle, scarcely separating her two rows of perfect white teeth, the only white showing in the darkness of the room. A white slash on a black background.
Second Step
