Last Chance, page 9
‘If you won’t give an opinion,’ said Uncle Bernie, ‘who can?’
The professor looked exhausted. ‘May I sit down?’
Ian brought over the docent’s chair.
The professor’s assistant found him a bottle of water. He took a sip and composed himself a little. Enough to explain things. ‘No-one can give an opinion,’ began the professor. ‘It is not like the olden days, when the experts were the experts. These days, the experts are the forgers. They have computers and chemists, and printers and projectors. The things they can do to replicate sixteenth-century techniques is inconceivable. It is unrecognisable to the naked eye.’
‘So really, your eyesight is irrelevant,’ said Friday. ‘An opinion is not proof.’
‘And you’re the leading expert,’ said Bernie. ‘So if the director won’t let us do a chemical analysis of a paint sample, then what can we do?’
The minister sighed. ‘We shall have to ask a judge for a court order to take a sample.’
‘Outrageous,’ spat the director. ‘It would be an outrageous desecration of a great work of art.’
‘Why don’t you try another tack?’ said Friday.
‘You think Bernie should give up investigating art crime and go back to being a professional ice hockey player?’ asked Ian.
‘No,’ said Friday, rolling her eyes. ‘I mean that the painting is not the only clue. If we want to know if this forgery allegation is correct, we should look at the allegation itself. The letter.’
‘It’s with Peruggia’s great-niece in Italy,’ said Bernie.
‘Would she let us analyse it?’ asked Friday.
‘I don’t see that she could refuse,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s not a masterpiece. It’s evidence in a criminal investigation.’
‘You should go and see her,’ said Friday.
‘If I drive the professor back to the airport, I can get the late flight to Rome,’ said Uncle Bernie, checking his watch. ‘But I’m meant to be meeting the local agent here – Brianna Okeke. She’s a recent recruit. The governor says she thinks we’ll make a good team.’
‘Really?’ said Ian. ‘Have you done something to annoy the governor?’
Friday and Melanie spent the next two days focused on art. It was easy to forget that they were meant to be on the lookout for criminals. The mystique of the Louvre collection was captivating. Listening to lectures and drawing beautiful artworks all day was a really fun cover ID. They’d spent a whole morning learning about Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. After hours of staring at the painting of a semi-naked goddess brandishing a French flag in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, as she led soldiers across the battlefield in the July Revolution, the politics of the art world seemed unimportant.
Friday and Melanie fit in surprisingly well with the other art students. Roberto, Adam and Sophia were all very talented, but they all had such different styles of drawing, Melanie and Friday’s efforts didn’t stand out as being of a different quality. Melanie had a lovely whimsical style, while Friday was more linear and literal. The others just assumed she was a Cubist and that the clinical style was a statement about man’s existential inhumanity, not a lack of skill. Maybe it wasn’t. Friday began to wonder if she had more talent than she had thought. Art was different when you were doing it for fun, not just a compulsory component of the school syllabus. They weren’t being marked. She could draw what she liked, how she liked, and she enjoyed it.
Late on Wednesday afternoon, Friday and Melanie were sitting in the lounge room working on their sketches of Liberty Leading the People when the porter stumbled into the room. Friday’s first thought was that the poor woman had been stabbed. She was gasping for breath and clearly traumatised.
‘Quick, sit down,’ Friday urged, looking her over for obvious signs of serious wounds – perhaps a carving knife sticking out of her back. The porter was so rude to everyone it wouldn’t surprise Friday if someone did stab her. But there were no blood patches on her clothing or weapons extending out of any visible part of her body. After several moments of heavy gasping, the porter lunged forward and grabbed Friday by the front of her brown cardigan.
‘It’s okay,’ said Friday. ‘Take your time. Say what it is you need to say.’
The porter struggled to control her breathing, ‘I . . .’ she wheezed, then dragged in a deep breath so she could say, ‘. . . hate you.’
‘What?’ asked Friday.
‘She said she hates you,’ said Melanie.
‘What did I do?’ asked Friday.
‘All the other children have telephones, but not you,’ said the porter. ‘No, you make a hard-working woman climb five storeys’ worth of stairs to deliver messages.’
‘You’re in this state just from climbing up stairs?’ asked Friday.
‘I would murder you right now if I had the energy,’ said the porter.
‘They really need a defibrillator in the building,’ said Melanie.
‘There is one down in my office,’ said the porter.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Friday. ‘If someone is going to have a heart attack here it’s going to be at the top of the stairs, not at the bottom.’
The porter made to lunge for Friday again but didn’t get far. It was a very saggy couch and hard to get up once you were down.
‘What was the message?’ asked Melanie.
‘There’s someone on the phone for her,’ said the porter, pointing at Friday.
‘Downstairs?’ asked Friday.
The porter just glared at Friday.
‘Of course, downstairs,’ realised Friday, getting to her feet. It was best to make an exit before the porter recovered herself and made a more effective attack on her person. ‘I don’t suppose you caught who it was?’
‘Uncle something,’ said the porter.
‘Bernie!’ said Friday. ‘Cool.’
Friday went down the stairs much more quickly than the porter had come up them. She was soon reaching over the counter into the porter’s office and grabbing up the phone.
‘Bernie!’
‘Friday, I’m so glad to get hold of you,’ said Bernie. ‘How’s everything there?’
‘Fine,’ said Friday. ‘What did you find out from the great-niece?’
‘I found out that grappa gives the worst hangover,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘She got you drunk?’ asked Friday.
‘She’s a ninety-four-year-old Italian lady,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I got the sense she doesn’t get many men visitors. She seemed determined to make the most of it. She also baked me a lasagne, pinched my cheeks about two thousand times and tried to set me up with her granddaughter.’
‘But you’re married,’ said Friday.
‘But not to an Italian girl,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘So she didn’t think that counted.’
‘What could she tell you about the letter?’ asked Friday.
‘Not much,’ said Bernie. ‘She only found it a couple of weeks ago. The council was installing a new low-flow cistern for her toilet. The workman found the letter hidden behind a loose tile. She realised the significance and took it straight to the police.’
‘Did she have anything to say about the Mona Lisa?’ asked Friday.
‘Well, that actually was interesting,’ said Bernie. ‘The last agent Interpol sent here was Agent Okeke. She refused to try Signora Peruggia’s essi biscuits and asked for decaffeinated coffee. This disgusted the signora, so she pretended to be senile and didn’t tell her anything.’
‘I can believe Agent Okeke would inspire someone to fake senility rather than talk to her,’ said Friday.
‘After three hours of drinking and eating enough cheese to make my gall bladder explode,’ said Uncle Bernie, ‘Signora Peruggia let slip that when she was a girl she had been told a story – that her great-uncle hid the Mona Lisa by getting a friend to paint over it.’
‘What, with house paint?’ said Friday. ‘They painted the Mona Lisa white?’
‘No, Peruggia was an artist himself, and his friends were all artists,’ said Bernie. ‘So he got one of his artist friends to paint another painting over it.’
‘I guess that makes sense,’ said Friday. ‘An art conservator would be able to clean off the top layer and restore the Mona Lisa later. Do you know who this friend was?’
‘That’s the good bit,’ said Bernie. ‘His friend was a Spanish artist . . . called Pablo.’
‘No way!’ said Friday. ‘Not Pablo Picasso?!’
‘The one and only,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Friday. ‘Of course, they would have been contemporaries. Was he in Paris in 1911?’
‘Yes, Pablo Picasso was actually a suspect in the original crime,’ said Bernie. ‘The French police arrested him because they thought he had stolen it.’
‘So if the real Mona Lisa was painted over by Picasso,’ said Friday, ‘where is that Picasso painting now?’
‘No idea,’ said Bernie. ‘The great-niece couldn’t tell me what Picasso painted over the top – whether it was a portrait or a still life or something else. She just knew Picasso did it.’
‘Oh,’ said Friday.
‘Exactly,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘Picasso is one of the world’s most prolific artists. He painted thirteen thousand paintings in his lifetime. I’ve got no idea where to start.’
‘At least, because Picasso was so famous even in his day,’ said Friday, ‘his paintings are all well documented and taken care of.’
‘But finding it will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack if the haystack was split up and put in thousands of galleries all around the world,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Friday, reaching across the counter of the porter’s desk and turning the computer monitor towards herself. She pulled over the keyboard, opened an internet browser and started typing.
‘We know the rough time frame,’ said Friday. ‘The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 and returned in 1913. So it would have been painted over during that time frame.’ Friday looked up Picasso Paintings 1911–1912. ‘There you go, that narrows the field down to two hundred and ten paintings.’
‘That’s better,’ said Uncle Bernie, regaining a sense of optimism.
‘We can narrow it down more,’ said Friday. ‘The Mona Lisa is renowned for being small. Although I find that to be overstated. It’s more small-to-medium. But it is certainly small compared to the average Picasso canvas. His paintings could be positively monumental in scale. So let’s narrow it down by looking for a painting of approximately the same size.’
Friday scrolled through the list on the screen in front of her.
‘There really are not many that are even close,’ said Friday. ‘Everything is bigger . . . wait! There’s one.’
‘What is it?’ asked Uncle Bernie. ‘Please don’t say it was accidentally destroyed in a war.’
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘It’s from his Cubist period. The Musicians. Same size and from the right time period. It’s the only painting that matches. It must be the one.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Bernie.
‘The Museum of Modern Art in New York,’ said Friday.
‘Urgh,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.’
‘Well if it’s there at least you know it will have been well cared for,’ said Friday. ‘That’s good.’
‘But that’s a seriously fancy museum,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘They might not want me to test it either.’
‘Yes, but it’s modern art,’ said Friday. ‘And frankly, it’s not the greatest Picasso. I’m sure they wouldn’t begrudge you one microscopic iota of a paint sample.’
‘I don’t want to botch this,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I’d better fly to New York and see for myself.’
Friday, Melanie and their tutor group were sitting on the marble floor sketching the Venus de Milo. It was ten minutes to nine in the morning. As art students, they were allowed in the gallery half an hour before the general public. This was lovely for them, but it was mainly so they wouldn’t be in the way later in the day when the famous artworks were surrounded by crowds. When the first tourist walked into the room where they were sketching, they wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the floor anymore, so all five of them were hurrying to get as much of their work done as possible before the gallery opened.
The statue of the Venus de Milo was the second most famous exhibit in the Louvre after the Mona Lisa. She was always surrounded by quite a crowd. But the two-thousand-year-old Greek statue was two metres tall and it stood on a plinth, so it was a lot easier for the crowd to see than a small-to-medium-sized painting.
‘She looks like she’s had a difficult life,’ said Melanie as she drew.
‘Who?’ asked Friday, who was concentrating so hard on her drawing she wasn’t sure what Melanie was talking about.
‘The Venus de Milo,’ said Melanie.
‘Well she is two thousand years old,’ said Friday.
‘Yes,’ agreed Melanie. ‘I knew she’d lost her arms. That’s probably the most famous thing everyone knows about the statue. But when you see her in person, her face is so nice – it’s sad to see her armless. It’s like she’s been in a horrible car accident or been attacked by a shark.’
‘A shark wouldn’t bite off two arms,’ said Adam.
‘What?’ said Roberto, looking up from his own drawing.
‘You often hear of a shark biting off someone’s leg or someone’s arm,’ said Adam, ‘but you never hear of a shark biting off two limbs at the same time.’
‘Yeah, I suppose their mouth would be full once they’ve bitten off the first one,’ agreed Roberto.
‘This is a very morbid conversation,’ said Friday.
‘I’m glad she’s got no arms,’ said Sophia. ‘It means we don’t have to draw her hands. I hate hands. You spend ages getting a face right, then stuff up the hands and no-one notices the face.’
‘It’s weird, really, because when in real life do you ever notice someone’s hands?’ said Melanie.
‘It’s probably why people can’t draw them,’ said Adam. ‘Because no-one looks at them enough.’
In the distance they could hear someone walking hastily. The sound carried. They turned to see a security guard half jogging down the corridor towards them. He took a walkie talkie from his belt.
‘I’ve found them!’ the security guard said into the walkie talkie. ‘They’re in the Sully wing, room twelve.’
‘Hold on to them,’ a voice crackled back. ‘He’s on his way.’
Friday was immediately apprehensive. She didn’t like being ‘held on to’. That was the type of thing police did when they wanted to question you, but they didn’t have enough evidence to actually arrest you.
‘Don’t move,’ the security guard called out.
‘We weren’t moving,’ said Friday. ‘We’re just sitting here drawing.’
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ said the security guard. ‘I need you to stay right where you are.’
Friday scowled. ‘You have no legal right to detain us,’ she said. ‘If you’d like us to stay where we are, you should phrase it as a request.’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ said the security guard. ‘I’m just following orders.’
Friday rolled her eyes. ‘And that always worked out in history.’
‘The director is coming,’ said the security guard. ‘You don’t want to make him angrier.’
Now Friday was just flat out curious. The director was angry, again. Part of her wanted to get up and leave just to make a point with the security guard. But a larger part of her wanted to see why the director was in a flap this time.
There were more footsteps coming now. Not running, but definitely an angry cadence.
‘What have you done?’ Melanie asked Friday.
‘Why do you assume it’s me?’ asked Friday.
‘Because it usually is,’ said Melanie.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Friday. ‘To the best of my knowledge.’
‘You!’ called the director. He was still thirty metres away and power walking towards them, but he couldn’t wait the length of time it would take to get to them to start yelling. ‘I will not have these outrageous disturbances in my gallery!’
Now Friday was truly baffled. For the last half hour they’d barely made any noise above the sound of pencils moving back and forth across paper.
‘We haven’t done anything,’ said Friday.
When the director drew nearer, his eyes settled on Sophia. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.
‘Drawing,’ said Sophia. ‘I’m in a six-week program with the Institute du Louvre. You should know, Father. You signed me up for it.’
Melanie gasped.
Friday’s eyes gaped. ‘Your dad is the director of the Louvre?’
Sophia couldn’t bring herself to nod. She grimaced, but that was clearly her sign of assent.
‘And you never thought to mention it?’ asked Friday.
‘Roberto and Adam were there when he dropped me off,’ said Sophia. ‘It wasn’t a big secret.’
‘And you’re in this group?!’ demanded the director. ‘With him?’ He pointed at Roberto.
‘Yes,’ said Sophia. ‘We’re in the same apartment.’
‘We met when you dropped her off,’ said Roberto. ‘Although “met” probably isn’t the right word. We were in the same room when she was screaming at you.’
‘This is an outrage,’ muttered the director. ‘I will be making an official complaint to the Art Institute about this.’ He turned his attention to Roberto. He was seething with barely contained rage. ‘Your father has come to visit you.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Roberto.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Friday.
‘Dad’s banned from the Louvre,’ said Roberto.
‘That’s right,’ said the director. ‘He is not allowed inside the building, or even within the boundaries of the Louvre complex. And yet, he is standing outside the Tuileries Garden, surrounded by a press pack, demanding to see his son.’
‘Why is your dad banned from the Louvre?’ asked Melanie.
Roberto looked simultaneously embarrassed and ashamed. ‘Because he’s Giorgio.’
The professor looked exhausted. ‘May I sit down?’
Ian brought over the docent’s chair.
The professor’s assistant found him a bottle of water. He took a sip and composed himself a little. Enough to explain things. ‘No-one can give an opinion,’ began the professor. ‘It is not like the olden days, when the experts were the experts. These days, the experts are the forgers. They have computers and chemists, and printers and projectors. The things they can do to replicate sixteenth-century techniques is inconceivable. It is unrecognisable to the naked eye.’
‘So really, your eyesight is irrelevant,’ said Friday. ‘An opinion is not proof.’
‘And you’re the leading expert,’ said Bernie. ‘So if the director won’t let us do a chemical analysis of a paint sample, then what can we do?’
The minister sighed. ‘We shall have to ask a judge for a court order to take a sample.’
‘Outrageous,’ spat the director. ‘It would be an outrageous desecration of a great work of art.’
‘Why don’t you try another tack?’ said Friday.
‘You think Bernie should give up investigating art crime and go back to being a professional ice hockey player?’ asked Ian.
‘No,’ said Friday, rolling her eyes. ‘I mean that the painting is not the only clue. If we want to know if this forgery allegation is correct, we should look at the allegation itself. The letter.’
‘It’s with Peruggia’s great-niece in Italy,’ said Bernie.
‘Would she let us analyse it?’ asked Friday.
‘I don’t see that she could refuse,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s not a masterpiece. It’s evidence in a criminal investigation.’
‘You should go and see her,’ said Friday.
‘If I drive the professor back to the airport, I can get the late flight to Rome,’ said Uncle Bernie, checking his watch. ‘But I’m meant to be meeting the local agent here – Brianna Okeke. She’s a recent recruit. The governor says she thinks we’ll make a good team.’
‘Really?’ said Ian. ‘Have you done something to annoy the governor?’
Friday and Melanie spent the next two days focused on art. It was easy to forget that they were meant to be on the lookout for criminals. The mystique of the Louvre collection was captivating. Listening to lectures and drawing beautiful artworks all day was a really fun cover ID. They’d spent a whole morning learning about Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. After hours of staring at the painting of a semi-naked goddess brandishing a French flag in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, as she led soldiers across the battlefield in the July Revolution, the politics of the art world seemed unimportant.
Friday and Melanie fit in surprisingly well with the other art students. Roberto, Adam and Sophia were all very talented, but they all had such different styles of drawing, Melanie and Friday’s efforts didn’t stand out as being of a different quality. Melanie had a lovely whimsical style, while Friday was more linear and literal. The others just assumed she was a Cubist and that the clinical style was a statement about man’s existential inhumanity, not a lack of skill. Maybe it wasn’t. Friday began to wonder if she had more talent than she had thought. Art was different when you were doing it for fun, not just a compulsory component of the school syllabus. They weren’t being marked. She could draw what she liked, how she liked, and she enjoyed it.
Late on Wednesday afternoon, Friday and Melanie were sitting in the lounge room working on their sketches of Liberty Leading the People when the porter stumbled into the room. Friday’s first thought was that the poor woman had been stabbed. She was gasping for breath and clearly traumatised.
‘Quick, sit down,’ Friday urged, looking her over for obvious signs of serious wounds – perhaps a carving knife sticking out of her back. The porter was so rude to everyone it wouldn’t surprise Friday if someone did stab her. But there were no blood patches on her clothing or weapons extending out of any visible part of her body. After several moments of heavy gasping, the porter lunged forward and grabbed Friday by the front of her brown cardigan.
‘It’s okay,’ said Friday. ‘Take your time. Say what it is you need to say.’
The porter struggled to control her breathing, ‘I . . .’ she wheezed, then dragged in a deep breath so she could say, ‘. . . hate you.’
‘What?’ asked Friday.
‘She said she hates you,’ said Melanie.
‘What did I do?’ asked Friday.
‘All the other children have telephones, but not you,’ said the porter. ‘No, you make a hard-working woman climb five storeys’ worth of stairs to deliver messages.’
‘You’re in this state just from climbing up stairs?’ asked Friday.
‘I would murder you right now if I had the energy,’ said the porter.
‘They really need a defibrillator in the building,’ said Melanie.
‘There is one down in my office,’ said the porter.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Friday. ‘If someone is going to have a heart attack here it’s going to be at the top of the stairs, not at the bottom.’
The porter made to lunge for Friday again but didn’t get far. It was a very saggy couch and hard to get up once you were down.
‘What was the message?’ asked Melanie.
‘There’s someone on the phone for her,’ said the porter, pointing at Friday.
‘Downstairs?’ asked Friday.
The porter just glared at Friday.
‘Of course, downstairs,’ realised Friday, getting to her feet. It was best to make an exit before the porter recovered herself and made a more effective attack on her person. ‘I don’t suppose you caught who it was?’
‘Uncle something,’ said the porter.
‘Bernie!’ said Friday. ‘Cool.’
Friday went down the stairs much more quickly than the porter had come up them. She was soon reaching over the counter into the porter’s office and grabbing up the phone.
‘Bernie!’
‘Friday, I’m so glad to get hold of you,’ said Bernie. ‘How’s everything there?’
‘Fine,’ said Friday. ‘What did you find out from the great-niece?’
‘I found out that grappa gives the worst hangover,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘She got you drunk?’ asked Friday.
‘She’s a ninety-four-year-old Italian lady,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I got the sense she doesn’t get many men visitors. She seemed determined to make the most of it. She also baked me a lasagne, pinched my cheeks about two thousand times and tried to set me up with her granddaughter.’
‘But you’re married,’ said Friday.
‘But not to an Italian girl,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘So she didn’t think that counted.’
‘What could she tell you about the letter?’ asked Friday.
‘Not much,’ said Bernie. ‘She only found it a couple of weeks ago. The council was installing a new low-flow cistern for her toilet. The workman found the letter hidden behind a loose tile. She realised the significance and took it straight to the police.’
‘Did she have anything to say about the Mona Lisa?’ asked Friday.
‘Well, that actually was interesting,’ said Bernie. ‘The last agent Interpol sent here was Agent Okeke. She refused to try Signora Peruggia’s essi biscuits and asked for decaffeinated coffee. This disgusted the signora, so she pretended to be senile and didn’t tell her anything.’
‘I can believe Agent Okeke would inspire someone to fake senility rather than talk to her,’ said Friday.
‘After three hours of drinking and eating enough cheese to make my gall bladder explode,’ said Uncle Bernie, ‘Signora Peruggia let slip that when she was a girl she had been told a story – that her great-uncle hid the Mona Lisa by getting a friend to paint over it.’
‘What, with house paint?’ said Friday. ‘They painted the Mona Lisa white?’
‘No, Peruggia was an artist himself, and his friends were all artists,’ said Bernie. ‘So he got one of his artist friends to paint another painting over it.’
‘I guess that makes sense,’ said Friday. ‘An art conservator would be able to clean off the top layer and restore the Mona Lisa later. Do you know who this friend was?’
‘That’s the good bit,’ said Bernie. ‘His friend was a Spanish artist . . . called Pablo.’
‘No way!’ said Friday. ‘Not Pablo Picasso?!’
‘The one and only,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Friday. ‘Of course, they would have been contemporaries. Was he in Paris in 1911?’
‘Yes, Pablo Picasso was actually a suspect in the original crime,’ said Bernie. ‘The French police arrested him because they thought he had stolen it.’
‘So if the real Mona Lisa was painted over by Picasso,’ said Friday, ‘where is that Picasso painting now?’
‘No idea,’ said Bernie. ‘The great-niece couldn’t tell me what Picasso painted over the top – whether it was a portrait or a still life or something else. She just knew Picasso did it.’
‘Oh,’ said Friday.
‘Exactly,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘Picasso is one of the world’s most prolific artists. He painted thirteen thousand paintings in his lifetime. I’ve got no idea where to start.’
‘At least, because Picasso was so famous even in his day,’ said Friday, ‘his paintings are all well documented and taken care of.’
‘But finding it will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack if the haystack was split up and put in thousands of galleries all around the world,’ said Uncle Bernie.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Friday, reaching across the counter of the porter’s desk and turning the computer monitor towards herself. She pulled over the keyboard, opened an internet browser and started typing.
‘We know the rough time frame,’ said Friday. ‘The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 and returned in 1913. So it would have been painted over during that time frame.’ Friday looked up Picasso Paintings 1911–1912. ‘There you go, that narrows the field down to two hundred and ten paintings.’
‘That’s better,’ said Uncle Bernie, regaining a sense of optimism.
‘We can narrow it down more,’ said Friday. ‘The Mona Lisa is renowned for being small. Although I find that to be overstated. It’s more small-to-medium. But it is certainly small compared to the average Picasso canvas. His paintings could be positively monumental in scale. So let’s narrow it down by looking for a painting of approximately the same size.’
Friday scrolled through the list on the screen in front of her.
‘There really are not many that are even close,’ said Friday. ‘Everything is bigger . . . wait! There’s one.’
‘What is it?’ asked Uncle Bernie. ‘Please don’t say it was accidentally destroyed in a war.’
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘It’s from his Cubist period. The Musicians. Same size and from the right time period. It’s the only painting that matches. It must be the one.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Bernie.
‘The Museum of Modern Art in New York,’ said Friday.
‘Urgh,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.’
‘Well if it’s there at least you know it will have been well cared for,’ said Friday. ‘That’s good.’
‘But that’s a seriously fancy museum,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘They might not want me to test it either.’
‘Yes, but it’s modern art,’ said Friday. ‘And frankly, it’s not the greatest Picasso. I’m sure they wouldn’t begrudge you one microscopic iota of a paint sample.’
‘I don’t want to botch this,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘I’d better fly to New York and see for myself.’
Friday, Melanie and their tutor group were sitting on the marble floor sketching the Venus de Milo. It was ten minutes to nine in the morning. As art students, they were allowed in the gallery half an hour before the general public. This was lovely for them, but it was mainly so they wouldn’t be in the way later in the day when the famous artworks were surrounded by crowds. When the first tourist walked into the room where they were sketching, they wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the floor anymore, so all five of them were hurrying to get as much of their work done as possible before the gallery opened.
The statue of the Venus de Milo was the second most famous exhibit in the Louvre after the Mona Lisa. She was always surrounded by quite a crowd. But the two-thousand-year-old Greek statue was two metres tall and it stood on a plinth, so it was a lot easier for the crowd to see than a small-to-medium-sized painting.
‘She looks like she’s had a difficult life,’ said Melanie as she drew.
‘Who?’ asked Friday, who was concentrating so hard on her drawing she wasn’t sure what Melanie was talking about.
‘The Venus de Milo,’ said Melanie.
‘Well she is two thousand years old,’ said Friday.
‘Yes,’ agreed Melanie. ‘I knew she’d lost her arms. That’s probably the most famous thing everyone knows about the statue. But when you see her in person, her face is so nice – it’s sad to see her armless. It’s like she’s been in a horrible car accident or been attacked by a shark.’
‘A shark wouldn’t bite off two arms,’ said Adam.
‘What?’ said Roberto, looking up from his own drawing.
‘You often hear of a shark biting off someone’s leg or someone’s arm,’ said Adam, ‘but you never hear of a shark biting off two limbs at the same time.’
‘Yeah, I suppose their mouth would be full once they’ve bitten off the first one,’ agreed Roberto.
‘This is a very morbid conversation,’ said Friday.
‘I’m glad she’s got no arms,’ said Sophia. ‘It means we don’t have to draw her hands. I hate hands. You spend ages getting a face right, then stuff up the hands and no-one notices the face.’
‘It’s weird, really, because when in real life do you ever notice someone’s hands?’ said Melanie.
‘It’s probably why people can’t draw them,’ said Adam. ‘Because no-one looks at them enough.’
In the distance they could hear someone walking hastily. The sound carried. They turned to see a security guard half jogging down the corridor towards them. He took a walkie talkie from his belt.
‘I’ve found them!’ the security guard said into the walkie talkie. ‘They’re in the Sully wing, room twelve.’
‘Hold on to them,’ a voice crackled back. ‘He’s on his way.’
Friday was immediately apprehensive. She didn’t like being ‘held on to’. That was the type of thing police did when they wanted to question you, but they didn’t have enough evidence to actually arrest you.
‘Don’t move,’ the security guard called out.
‘We weren’t moving,’ said Friday. ‘We’re just sitting here drawing.’
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ said the security guard. ‘I need you to stay right where you are.’
Friday scowled. ‘You have no legal right to detain us,’ she said. ‘If you’d like us to stay where we are, you should phrase it as a request.’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ said the security guard. ‘I’m just following orders.’
Friday rolled her eyes. ‘And that always worked out in history.’
‘The director is coming,’ said the security guard. ‘You don’t want to make him angrier.’
Now Friday was just flat out curious. The director was angry, again. Part of her wanted to get up and leave just to make a point with the security guard. But a larger part of her wanted to see why the director was in a flap this time.
There were more footsteps coming now. Not running, but definitely an angry cadence.
‘What have you done?’ Melanie asked Friday.
‘Why do you assume it’s me?’ asked Friday.
‘Because it usually is,’ said Melanie.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Friday. ‘To the best of my knowledge.’
‘You!’ called the director. He was still thirty metres away and power walking towards them, but he couldn’t wait the length of time it would take to get to them to start yelling. ‘I will not have these outrageous disturbances in my gallery!’
Now Friday was truly baffled. For the last half hour they’d barely made any noise above the sound of pencils moving back and forth across paper.
‘We haven’t done anything,’ said Friday.
When the director drew nearer, his eyes settled on Sophia. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.
‘Drawing,’ said Sophia. ‘I’m in a six-week program with the Institute du Louvre. You should know, Father. You signed me up for it.’
Melanie gasped.
Friday’s eyes gaped. ‘Your dad is the director of the Louvre?’
Sophia couldn’t bring herself to nod. She grimaced, but that was clearly her sign of assent.
‘And you never thought to mention it?’ asked Friday.
‘Roberto and Adam were there when he dropped me off,’ said Sophia. ‘It wasn’t a big secret.’
‘And you’re in this group?!’ demanded the director. ‘With him?’ He pointed at Roberto.
‘Yes,’ said Sophia. ‘We’re in the same apartment.’
‘We met when you dropped her off,’ said Roberto. ‘Although “met” probably isn’t the right word. We were in the same room when she was screaming at you.’
‘This is an outrage,’ muttered the director. ‘I will be making an official complaint to the Art Institute about this.’ He turned his attention to Roberto. He was seething with barely contained rage. ‘Your father has come to visit you.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Roberto.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Friday.
‘Dad’s banned from the Louvre,’ said Roberto.
‘That’s right,’ said the director. ‘He is not allowed inside the building, or even within the boundaries of the Louvre complex. And yet, he is standing outside the Tuileries Garden, surrounded by a press pack, demanding to see his son.’
‘Why is your dad banned from the Louvre?’ asked Melanie.
Roberto looked simultaneously embarrassed and ashamed. ‘Because he’s Giorgio.’
