Chapter 52
Moving the crowbar back and forth she easily levered away pieces of plaster. The aperture she had opened was arched, more or less the same shape and size as the flap of a mailbox. The wall on either side was made of tufa and every time she hit it, crumbles of orange and yellow grit poured out at their feet, but she was not making much progress.
“Try striking downwards,” said Blume.
“Shut up. And keep the light steady.”
She raked away at the wall with the gooseneck. The plaster and loose cement gave way easily, causing her to sneeze. Within a few minutes she had hollowed out a keyhole-shaped aperture in the wall.
“It’s a narrow niche, a bit like the ones on the outside. There is probably one next to the other side of the door as well,” said Blume. “But this has to be the one we want.”
Caterina hunkered down and clicked her fingers impatiently over her shoulder until Blume handed her the flashlight, which she shone into the narrow space. Then she stood up and made an attempt at dusting herself down.
“It’s there,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“There is a package wrapped in yellow cellophane and some sort of masking tape.”
“Can you reach it?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you pull it out?”
“I thought you might want to do it,” said Caterina.
“You do it,” said Blume.
He held the light as she put both hands in and pulled out the heavily wrapped package, small enough to fit under one arm.
Caterina propped it against the wall and they stood there in the semi-darkness. She allowed herself to lean against his shoulder a little, and felt him lean back into her.
“We can hardly see anything in here,” said Caterina.
Without saying a word, Blume stooped down, picked up the package, and put it under his arm. “I am going to take this back to my house. I will wait for you. Go back to the station, sign in the squad car, collect your own, and come back out to my place,” he said. “But off duty.”
She drove him back in perfect silence. He sat there clutching the package, looking straight ahead.
“See you here in an hour,” was all he said as he got out of the car.
She was back in thirty-five minutes. The package was intact, propped up against the slashed sofa cushions.
Blume sat on the floor of his living room, box-cutter in hand.
“It’s in a carrying box, from the feel of it.” He slashed the blue plastic, and started pulling away reams of bubble wrap, a silicon sheet, white cotton strips, and finally a backing board. Then he turned it around for her to see.
“It’s brown,” was all that came to her. The small work, no bigger than a folded newspaper, seemed to consist of three shades: coffee, tea, and piss. Her disappointment was as enormous as the picture was small.
But he was looking at it with reverence.
“I know you don’t get it, yet, but wait… ” He left the room and returned so quickly with a large art book, that it must have already been ready and open in the next room. “Look. The woman to the left pushing back the red curtain and looking down at the spinning wheel. Now look at the painting. No curtain, no spinning wheel, no color, but look at that pose. It’s a study for the same thing. Look at the canvas, look at the line… I don’t know. I’m not an art expert but I believe this. I believe Treacy. This is genuine.”
“You trust the word of a dead forger?” She did not want to deflate him, but nor did she want to get carried away on a wave of misguided belief.
“I trust his story.”
“Why?” asked Caterina.
“Because he did not write to deceive. He painted to deceive, but even then he left the real lies to Nightingale. I believe he was earnest in his writings. They allowed us to find this.”
“It is all that valuable?”
“Oh God, yes, Caterina. Beyond reason. Once they prove that this is really by Velazquez, it will sell for-I don’t know. Tens of millions of euros easily. It will take a lot of time for it to be proved that this really is his. Especially since Treacy is the source. The notebooks will help. That means I might have to go back on my word to Kristin.”
“Who’s Kristin?” said Caterina.
“A woman at the American Embassy-I’ll tell you some other time.”
“Tens of millions?” It did not seem right that a yellowing rectangle was worth lifetime after lifetime of work by her and her colleagues.
“Yes,” said Blume. “Tens of millions. In a few years, perhaps, once it has been completely authenticated. But take this to the right people, make some promises, they’d spot you an advance of a few million. If you wanted, you could turn this into serious money in two days.”
Caterina sat down. From this angle the picture looked black rather than brown. Blume’s eyes were bright, as if he had a fever. She moved her head and the work seemed to change color again. Now it reminded her of dried old glue on the broken spine of an old dictionary. Blume had sat down beside it and was cradling his arm over the frame, glancing at it sideways, shifting it to catch different light angles.
She decided she did not like it.
“What are we going to do with it?”
“We could both become very rich,” said Blume.
“Our ownership would be challenged. We’re public servants. This belongs to the state. For now.”
“If you find something like this, you get to keep it,” said Blume. “That’s how it works. Use the money to buy lawyers, then more lawyers. Unmanageable wealth in a few years. You’re not into this, are you?”
“No. The Colonel had me convinced for half a day that you could be bought, and then you proved him and me wrong, and I was ashamed,” she said. “But now… ”
“You are afraid.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you not find it tempting?”
“Yes. But it disgusts me and frightens me, too.”
“Great art is for keeping the people down, you know,” said Blume. “That’s what it’s all about. We can’t help but think something is great if it fetches a great price, or if a lot of rich and educated people talk about it a lot. Treacy knew this, but I still think he really enjoyed this find. It’s a sketch for something that came later, became part of the canon. What’s exciting about this is the potential. The drawing in itself… Who knows how good it is?”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” said Caterina.
“It’s the size of the sums involved, isn’t it?” said Blume. “Suppose you and I got, what, fifty million euros each. Think of all the Ikea furniture you bought, the making do with old things, slowly building up your collections of books, that nice carpet that was a big extravagance but you don’t regret. All those years and years on the lowest- paid police force in Europe suddenly blown away. It would retroactively mock all that effort. You could buy a lifetime’s possessions in a single afternoon, using less than one year’s interest on the principal. That’s what I don’t like about the idea of sudden massive wealth. It would invalidate all your earlier struggles, make your life up to now seem pointless.”
Caterina felt her chest relax as he said this. She had not realized how tense she had been. Hearing him say these words was a huge relief, and she was still nodding in happy agreement with his reasoning, when he said, “But sudden affluence, now that is a different matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean imagine getting enough money to buy a larger house, to send Elia to college abroad, go on
