“And those activities support you?” She sounded incredulous.
“I’ve a little money. I had an Uncle Thomas who shared my views about the rest of the family, so he left me a legacy.” I poured myself another mug of the wine. It was rotgut, but I was used to rotgut. “What is this, Miss Pallavicini? A cross-examination?”
She stared at me as though she might find a truth hidden behind my eyes. “I wish I knew whether you did steal the painting,” she said after a while.
“I didn’t. Cross my heart and hope to die, but I didn’t.”
She paused, as if waiting to see whether I would be struck dead as a result of my childish words. I stayed alive. “If you didn’t steal it,” she asked, “why would those two men think you might know where to find it?”
“Because they’ve got their wires crossed.” I paused. “I thought that perhaps you or Sir Leon might have sent them.”
“That’s ridiculous!” She was genuinely astonished at the accusation. “They attacked me too!”
“A set-up?” I suggested, but not too forcefully, “to make me think you didn’t know them?”
“You’re an idiot,” she said in utter scorn, but not in her usual hostile manner.
I shrugged, but said nothing. A gull swooped down to
“We need your help, Mr Rossendale,” Jennifer Pallavicini said when the silence between us had stretched too long.
“I’m sailing south,” I said. “I provisioned today, I’ve done my chart work, and I’m going south. I’ll probably call in at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, because a lot of girls hang about the yacht dock there looking for a lift to nowhere, and after that I’m sailing south to an African river I visited two years ago. The villagers there don’t see yachtsmen from one year’s end to the next and they’re as friendly as hell. The approach to the place is a bit bloody, one rusted buoy ten miles off shore and shoals that shift around like a snake in a sleeping bag, but…”
“Please,” Jennifer Pallavicini interrupted me.
“I rebuilt their generator when I was last there” – I ignored her appeal – “and I promised I’d go back to make sure it was still working.”
Jennifer Pallavicini said nothing. I was as tempted as hell to say I’d help her, but only because she was such a beautiful girl. I applied sound feminist principles and made my decision as if she was as ugly as a baboon’s behind. “The answer’s no,” I said. “I offered you my help last month, and you turned it down.”
She opened her handbag and took out an envelope. I thought for a second that she was going to offer me Sir Leon Buzzacott’s autograph on a cheque, but instead she took a photograph from the envelope. She held it out to me.
The photograph showed a pale yellow triangle on a white background. Next to the yellow triangle was a black-and-white measuring stick which told me that each side of the triangle was three inches long. “I’m not really an expert on modern art,” I said, “but if I were you I wouldn’t buy it.”
She ignored my feeble sarcasm. “It’s a corner of a painted canvas,” Jennifer Pallavicini said pedantically, “and our tests confirm that it was almost certainly cut from the Stowey Sunflowers. A letter came with it, Mr Rossendale, demanding four million pounds for the rest of the painting. The letter was posted two weeks ago. The letter stated that if we don’t pay the ransom by the end of August, then the painting will be burned and we will be sent the ashes.”
“Then pay the four million,” I said casually. “It seems a fair enough price for a twenty-million-quid painting.”
“Pay four million pounds to a blackmailer? To a man who will only demand more? Who, once we pay the first monies, will cut a sunflower from the canvas and demand another four million?” She was suddenly and vehemently passionate. “For God’s sake, Mr Rossendale, don’t you understand? The thieves will mutilate it to make their money! They’re barbarians, and they have to be stopped!”
“Hang on,” I said. “A month ago you thought I was the thief. Now you’ve selected a group of barbarians.”
“Maybe it’s whoever you sold the painting to,” she said angrily.
I shrugged and shook my head. “Not guilty.”
“Or maybe it’s you,” she said. “Maybe you think we’ll ransom the painting, then buy it from you.”
“Give me a cheque for twenty-four million,” I said flippantly, “and the painting’s yours.”
“Damn you,” she said angrily, then pushed the photograph back into her handbag.
Behind me a French sloop was ghosting into the harbour. I turned to watch as it dropped its sails and a girl in a bikini went forward to pick up a mooring. Ulf was doing strenuous calisthenics on his foredeck and I saw him straighten up to eye the deficiencies of the newcomer’s boat. There wasn’t much wrong with the girl, not that I could see. I looked back to Jennifer Pallavicini and decided she too would look very good in a bikini. “Why do you need me?” I asked her. “You must have hired ransom experts? Have you told the police?”
“Of course we have. The officer who was in charge of the original theft has been assigned to us.”
“Not Harry Abbott!”
“Detective Inspector Abbott,” she corrected me. “Yes.”
“Bloody hell!” I said in disgust. Harry Abbott is someone who lives under a stone along with all the other nasty things that crawl and creep on slimy bellies in the Stygian dark. He had been the policeman who had tried to pin the theft of the Van Gogh on to me in the first place. He had failed then, but I didn’t fancy him trying again. “What does the bastard say you should do?”
“Persuade you to come home.”
“I wouldn’t go to Paradise on Harry’s recommendation.”
“Which doesn’t alter the fact that you should be doing everything in your power to assist us. You are, after all, the legal owner of the painting.”
“A minute ago,” I pointed out, “you accused me of being the blackmailer.”
“It’s Inspector Abbott’s belief” – her voice made it clear that she did not entirely share his certainty – “that the blackmailers waited till you sailed away before they made an approach to Sir Leon.”
“Why would they do that?”
She shrugged to show that she had no answer. “What I do know,” she said, “is that we need your authorisation for any attempts we may make to recover it. Otherwise Sir Leon could be accused of accepting stolen goods, so we need your permission to negotiate.”
That seemed fair enough. “Does that mean,” I asked her, “that if Sir Leon retrieves it, he’ll have to give it back to me?”
“Of course,” she said defiantly, as though, under those circumstances, she would dare me to take possession.
I smiled at her. “I wouldn’t want it. Where could I hang it? There might be room on the lavatory bulkhead, but it would probably get in the way of the wet locker.”
That small joke went down like a cement balloon. I sighed, went below to the cabin, and tore a page out of a notebook. I found a pencil and scribbled a quick message. ‘Sir Leon Buzzacott and his wage-slaves have my full authority to do whatever they think necessary for the safe recovery of one painting by Vincent Van Gogh, commonly known as the Stowey Sunflowers. This authorisation is signed by John Rossendale, Lord Stowey, Earl of Stowey, and Master under God of the good ship
“There you go.” I handed the note to Jennifer Pallavicini. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Pity you flew all the way here to fetch it. You could have asked me nicely and I’d have posted it to you. Still, it’s very good to see you. Would you like an early dinner before I sail? I do a very good
She ignored my babbling. Instead she tore my note into shreds which, in defiance of Greenpeace’s valiant endeavours, she scattered into the harbour water. “We need your personal help, my lord.”
I leaned back on the thwart. “I’m always suspicious when you call me ‘my lord’. What do you plan to do if I
