Читать книгу The Chase - Vanessa Fewings - Страница 9

Prologue

The Courtauld Institute of Art

The stillness of the Witt Library embraced me as I sat at a corner table, my breaths slow and steady, my thoughts wandering, slipping almost into a trance. I tried to see the events that had transpired through his perspective as though I’d been there with him.

This faceless man who’d seized my every waking thought.

Closing my eyes, my fingers traced the file. I’d combed through every detail of this three-week-old report, a precise translation from French to English by the Police Nationale. As an employee of Huntly Pierre, London’s most prestigious investigative art firm, I’d been permitted exclusive access.

It wasn’t only that I’d been tasked with hunting him down, or his obvious passion for art that seemingly equaled mine, drew me to him. Rather there was an unfathomable connection to this stranger that now consumed my days and nights. Perhaps this was only the inevitable shakiness of a newbie forensic art specialist finding her way through the precarious underworld of corruption.

Though that didn’t explain why he’d visited my dreams as though we shared a deeper connection.

Forcing these nonsensical thoughts away, I tried to focus on the details in the file. I could see this theft had presented our suspect with a technical hitch like no other. There were so many irregularities to plan for when breaking into a private estate at three o’clock on a crisp Sunday morning. I imagined the kind of preparation it would have taken. More than requiring a disciplined mind to navigate through complex innovations in home defense, the job would also have demanded brute force. He’d abseiled into a privately owned, billion-dollar rotunda displaying some of the most priceless masterpieces in existence around its curved wall. The kind most people would never see. The estate was owned by the Burells, who had made their money through the family business. Their private contractor company used the guise of combat support to deploy well-trained mercenaries into war. Their impressive art collection was proof that business was booming.

Resting my hand upon the small samples of evidence collected, I envisioned him wearing black khakis with a tight T-shirt pulled over a sculptured torso. After all, given that the climbing harness he wore would suspend him fifty feet in the air, he’d have to be fit. Peering through his night-vision goggles, without which he’d be in pitch blackness, that sheer drop beneath him was an exhilarating rush that was all part of the allure.

The kind of bravery I coveted.

That’s all this was, surely? A curiosity for the kind of recklessness I’d never dare experience. The kind that brought freedom. A life fully realized without societal constraints.

Until we locked him away, irrevocably.

The evidence proved he’d been on track with claiming his prize, namely a glorious 1566 self-portrait by Tiziano Vecelli, more commonly known as Titian.

A print of the painting had been placed in the file, and I now marveled at Titian’s remarkable technique. He’d immortalized himself on that oil on canvas, masterfully capturing the charisma of an elegant seventy-eight-year-old and highlighting his sharp features in those rich deep shades. Should one look closer, there was a dash of melancholy too. Titian’s black-robed attire was an understated reflection of his modesty, despite his great wealth. That final touch of his right hand holding a paintbrush reflected his brilliance. Hailed by his contemporaries as “The sun amidst small stars.”

I shared the thief’s exhilaration of being so close to such a treasure.

I imagined what he’d felt as he surveyed the room and zeroed in on his target. Adrenaline fueling his descent until he’d paused to run through his options.

Failure was out of the question. He’d come too far.

The hole he’d drilled into the glass ceiling was altering the fine temperature control that protected the other paintings, and had there been any other way in he’d no doubt have used it. That breach had exposed the room to the humid French climate. Though luckily the weather forecast for Amboise had promised no rain.

He wasn’t a complete bastard; because one downpour would have left nothing but ruin.

A jolt of envy hit me that it had been him and not me experiencing all that inaccessible beauty.

Our man was clearly arrogant, well educated based on his grasp of this advanced technology, and already wealthy from previous heists. I sensed he’d been touched by the kind of charm that forged a blunt sense of entitlement. A self-serving desire to own whatever he set his sights on.

He’d not gone for the Saint Veronica by Robert Campin, a strange-looking baptism by Giovanni di Paolo or an overvalued Paul Cezanne. Trying to wrap my head around this fact there was also the consideration of his infamous MO.

He only ever took one.

Our man had researched this space until he knew it intimately and had even been prepared for that emergency generator kicking in after he’d cut the power. Because he’d hacked into their security firm’s database, he knew all about the pressure-sensitive marble floor tiles, finicky laser detectors and the temperature monitor set to go off after five minutes.

He’d burned through a few minutes when he must have looked up at the sky and spotted an enormous squawking raven perched on the end of the glass hole that he’d taken precious time to saw through.

Had he experienced a jolt of fear before returning to the Zen-like calm he must have possessed to do a job like this? Somewhere, I’d read a bird’s eyesight was sensitive to ultraviolet light. Something about visual pigments in their retinal cones. I’d stored this in the “interesting stuff of no current value” corner of my brain.

But for this case it couldn’t have been more vital.

Because there were two things I knew for sure. First, the ultraviolet flashlight strapped to his utility belt, standard equipment for any self-respecting thief, had been on and had caught that raven’s attention. Second, that very bird had dived straight toward the invisible layers of those state-of-the-art motion detectors.

Opening my eyes, my fingers traced the sample of black feathers found at the scene, proving he’d tried to prevent the bird from landing.

The only consolation was the raven had been found alive and happily perched atop a whimsical 1889 still life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh, worth millions.

Though minutes before, there had been the inescapable mayhem of a swinging climbing rope, flying feathers and scrambling hands to rein in the chaos.

Basically, he was fucked.

And he’d still gotten away with a Titian.

Closing the file, my heartbeat quickened with a fierce resolve to see this case closed and have this heist go down in history as the one that got him caught.