Helga tugged at his arm, and for a second Ava was reminded of May Ling Wong trying to calm her husband. There was a strange kind of symmetry.
“He has never paid me more than five thousand kroner — that’s about a thousand dollars!” he said to his wife.
“I know, Jan, I know. Now sit down; you don’t want to scare this young woman.”
He collapsed onto the couch.
Ava looked at the paintings on the wall. How was she going to get from them to Fauvist art? Her decision to walk up the hill had been taken too lightly, she now thought. She normally liked to prepare for meetings, imagining different scenarios and how they would play out. This was all too ad hoc. And now she was stuck.
“Can I speak frankly?” she said, talking to Helga more than her husband.
“Of course,” the woman said.
“I’m going to buy some of Mr. Sorensen’s paintings — the ones hanging here on the wall, if you’ll sell them to me — but they aren’t the real reason I came to see you.”
They both looked at her, faces blank.
“What I really want to know is if Mr. Sorensen has ever dabbled in Fauvist art?”
She had seen photos of cattle getting hit between the eyes with a stun gun. Their reaction wasn’t any different.
Jan slumped back on the couch, his anger replaced by something else. Resignation? Fear? His wife gathered herself more quickly, a determined look settling across her face. “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helga said.
“I didn’t come here to cause any harm to you, your husband, or your family,” Ava said quickly. “I’m not the police and I don’t work for any legal authority. I’m just trying to help a client solve a riddle.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated.
“About five years ago, someone sent a money transfer to your husband for twenty thousand dollars. I believe that money was payment for producing paintings in the style of various Fauvist artists, which were sold as genuine works for considerable amounts of money. Now, I don’t know if the money you received was a down payment or if there were additional payments, but I do know for certain that the payment was made. I have the bank records.”
Helga glanced at her husband. Ava knew the look: her mother had used it often enough with her. It said, I told you so.
“How many paintings did you do?” Ava asked.
Sorensen turned and stared at his wife. She was looking into the dining room. Ava could almost see her calculating how much Ava might actually know. Jan Sorensen wasn’t going to say anything, Ava knew. He was waiting for his wife to assume control.
“Mrs. Sorensen, the people I represent are very wealthy. They believe they’ve been cheated and they’ve hired me to find out what happened and to remedy it. They have no interest in pursuing you or your husband. In fact, they’re prepared to pay you if you’ll assist them in getting to the bottom of this. And not only will they pay you, I guarantee that your husband’s name will never be connected to this affair.”
“How much money are you talking about?” Jan said.
His wife shushed him as Ava leapt in. “Twenty thousand.”
“Kroner?”
“Dollars.”
Jan Sorensen started to speak but his wife shushed him again, and this time accompanied it with an elbow into his side. She stared at Ava, searching for a lie.
“We will pay you, and your husband has nothing to fear,” Ava repeated.
Helga Sorensen plucked at the folds of her dress.
She’s calculating, Ava thought. “Money in the bank and absolutely nothing to fear,” she said.
The woman looked at her husband. Ava knew he had been ready to say yes the moment she said twenty thousand. “My husband and I will need to discuss this,” Helga said deliberately. “That is not an admission of anything, you understand. We just need to discuss this.”
“Do you want me to step outside?”
“No, it will take longer than that. Where are you staying? In Torshavn?”
“No, here, at the fisherman’s hotel.”
“Come by in the morning. The children leave for school at eight twenty. Anytime after that.”
“I’ll be here,” Ava said.
Helga Sorensen walked Ava to the door, opened it, and eased her onto the street without saying another word.
The rain was coming down hard now, and Ava was soaked when she got back to the hotel. Nina was still at the desk. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Better than I expected,” Ava said. “It was worth getting wet. Now I just want to jump into a hot shower.”
“I would do it quickly if I were you. The Russians will finish drinking soon and make a dash for the other bathroom and use up the hot water.”
“I’ll beat them to it, then,” Ava said, heading for her room.
She stripped, showered quickly, towelled herself dry, and climbed into bed in panties and a T-shirt. It had been a long day and now she was exhausted. She thought about calling Uncle and decided it was premature. She had met no-nonsense women like Helga before. She was confident she would be able to cut a deal with the Sorensens, but she wanted to have a dollar amount established and she wanted to have a name before phoning Hong Kong.
She was dozing, barely asleep, when she heard noises in the corridor. She thought about putting tissue in her ears when she heard Nina’s voice. At the same time her door handle turned back and forth. Someone was trying to get into her room.
She walked to the door, and as she did, the handle jerked more violently. She heard men’s voices in what sounded like Russian. She stepped back. Then Nina screamed, a mixture of fear and anger. Ava opened the door, took one step into the corridor, and walked almost directly into Nina.
Three men were to her immediate right, staring at Nina, who in turn was glaring at them and gripping an axe.
“We want to use your bathroom,” one of the men said to Ava in English.
“Get away,” Nina said.
The men were in a tight cluster. They began to separate, forming a semicircle around Nina and Ava. Ava thought they looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. “Nina, back up. Stand next to me,” she said.
As Nina did, the men inched closer. “Please go away,” Ava said.
None of them were that big. One was close to six feet but wiry; he wore a greasy grey T-shirt. The other two were shorter and looked almost scrawny under their thick black woollen sweaters. Even from several feet away she could smell the odour of fish on them. They were grinning at each other and speaking Russian. She saw them looking at her panties. The taller one moved so close that Ava could smell the liquor on his breath.
“What are they saying?” Ava asked Nina.
“I don’t want to repeat it,” she said, gripping the axe tighter.
“Tell me.”
“They’re saying they have never had… never had Chinese cunt.”
“Ah.”
“I’m sorry I said that.”
“Don’t be. I expected it was something like that.”
“I won’t let anything happen,” Nina said, waving the axe.
Ava took another step forward so that she was in front of Nina. “Put that down. I want to look after this without worrying about getting accidently clipped.”
The three men were talking among themselves again. The one to her right laughed and reached out to grab her breast. Ava moved so quickly that his two friends froze as they tried to comprehend why he was on the ground, both hands holding his nose, which was spread across his face and spurting blood.
