He looked out of the window and went on.
‘Shall we go outside?’ he asked. ‘The vale is bright and sunny today. The fog seems to have lifted. Do you really know who killed Sebastian?’
‘I do.’
‘Then the fog has lifted in your mind as well. It’s appropriate that we go outside. I hope you don’t mind a stroll.’
Five minutes later, they were moving slowly along the walkways, Bhaskar in his wheelchair and Athreya walking beside him.
‘I believe you have called for a gathering at 7 p.m.?’ Bhaskar asked. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I hope to introduce you to Sebastian’s murderer.’
‘Really? I look forward to it. But now, let me tell you what I haven’t told anyone since I let my father into the secret. He carried it to his grave, as did my dear wife Sujata.
‘As you know, I used to deal in antiques and other forms of art. I ran a tidy business for many years in Vienna, a crossroads for art of all forms. Sitting between eastern and western Europe, cheek by jowl with Italy and other cradles of art, a stone’s throw from France and the erstwhile Soviet Union, Vienna saw a lot of art pass through its hands. Even decades after the Second World War, it was not uncommon for a forgotten Nazi treasure to surface every once in a while. The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed another wave of discoveries. In other words, Vienna was just the place to be for someone like me.
‘Sujata and I had decided to return to India soon. Manu was approaching ten, and we wanted him to grow up in his country. We had already delayed our return by three or four years over when we had intended, and so Sujata and Manu moved to India. That was 1993. I was to follow in two or three years. I was not a cripple then.
‘But one day–a single day–in 1995 changed our lives. Forever.’
Bhaskar pulled out his pipe, filled it slowly with tobacco from a leather pouch and lit it. He fell silent as he puffed on it, gradually building the fire in the bowl, his eyes gazing unseeingly past Sunset Deck at the hills beyond. Athreya waited, leaning against a stone bench.
‘It was a fine day that dawned, with no indication that it would wreck my life in so irreversible a manner. Sebastian had gone out to show some pieces to a customer, and I was alone in my shop. What I did not know was that something had happened the night before that would plunge me into hell.
‘The Künzi Brothers, along with their break-in man, Jacob Lopez, had entered the house of Marcel Fessler, a reclusive art collector. Two days earlier, Fessler had anonymously purchased four paintings by the famous Fabian Balsano. Fessler’s agent had purchased four landscapes for an astonishing 27 million dollars.
‘The four canvases were still in their packaging–a long metal tube–when Jacob and the Künzi Brothers broke into Fessler’s house. They were yet to be catalogued and added to Fessler’s list of paintings. The world was not aware that he had bought them, and did not expect to see the four paintings for many years.
‘Reclusive collectors, who purchase art anonymously, often keep them in their private collections, away from the eyes of the world. An item bought by such a collector could disappear, for all intents and purposes, for several years, sometimes for the rest of the collector’s lifetime. It was only when such a collector died did the world come to know about the purchase, and say, “Aha! So he was the one who bought that painting!”.
‘As luck would have it, the only thing Jacob stole before being surprised by Fessler was the tube with the four Balsano landscapes. He had passed it on to the Künzi Brothers, who were outside the Fessler residence.
‘When the alarm was raised, all three thieves fled. Jacob, being of darker skin by virtue of his Indian origin, was recognized, but the Künzi Brothers, who were outside and had a start, escaped unseen. They had made away with the Balsano landscapes, and nobody knew that they had taken them. In fact, nobody knew that the Balsano paintings had even been stolen.
‘So the Künzi Brothers found themselves in possession of some seriously hot property at a time when the police were buzzing around. They had responded very quickly to the alarm. The Künzi Brothers had to find a hiding place, and, as luck would have it, they chose my antiques shop. They apparently threw the tube in through a window, with the intention of retrieving it early the next morning. I was, of course, totally unaware of this.
‘But the next morning, Sebastian, who always rose early, found the tube, and hid it among the rafters of my shop. There was some space between the thick horizontal beams and the slanting thinner ones, and Sebastian kept it there. He later told me that he hadn’t known what the tube had contained, but it had knocked down several antiques, and he had put it away. With my shop crammed from floor to ceiling, there was no place to store a long tube. He had therefore decided to put it on a rafter.
‘But before I came to the shop that morning, he had left to meet a customer and didn’t have an opportunity to tell me about the tube. So, I came to the shop unaware of what had transpired. Hardly had I stepped in when two men entered after me. They were the Künzi Brothers.’
Bhaskar paused again, and they resumed their slow journey down the walkways. Athreya remained silent, letting the older man tell his story the way he wanted to.
‘What happened in the next one hour was sheer hell. The Künzi Brothers shut the door from inside and assaulted me. When I professed ignorance of their metal tube, they thought I was lying. They tied me up and ransacked my shop. But
