When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 5 - ALARIC

“I NEVER SET out to do anything illegal—you have to understand that,” Marshall said with a pleading note in his voice. “At school, I used to paint, but one lesson a week wasn’t enough, and my mom couldn’t afford to pay for extra lessons or materials. So I never developed the skills to create my own masterpiece. But I studied hard and managed to land a scholarship to read art history at Cambridge University. And from there, I went to work at Sotheby’s, and then for a small gallery in London.”

“Pemberton Fine Arts.”

There it was again—resignation, but this time with a hint of surprise. “You have done your homework.”

“It’s my job.” Plus the Pemberton gallery was where the second phase of this perhaps not-so-wild goose chase had started off. Beth was employed there too. At least, she had been until she lost her job for being a little too suspicious over the history of some of the paintings being restored by Hugo Pemberton, the gallery’s owner. “We also know you worked for Jago Rockingham.”

“Yes. By then, I’d realised that my talents lay in matching buyers with sellers rather than in authentication or restoration work. And working with Jago took those skills to another level.” Marshall broke eye contact for a moment. “Until the day I met you, I’d always prided myself on being able to spot a genuine purchaser from a fake, but you fooled me. I suppose I should offer my congratulations.”

“It gives me no pleasure to accept them.”

A nod of acknowledgement. “Jago was a real character.”

“Until he got shot.”

“A true tragedy.”

“Perhaps he shouldn’t have aggravated the wrong person.”

“The police said it was a burglary gone wrong.”

“Sure. And you’re just a kind-hearted philanthropist. What did you do? Inherit his client list?”

Marshall sighed. For him, this was the point of no return, wasn’t it?

“I knew where he hid his ledgers. Jago had always been suspicious of computers, and he kept everything written down. Once the police released the crime scene, I simply let myself into his home and picked them up. And I already knew Hugo Pemberton would restore stolen paintings, no questions asked. He believes he’s doing the art world a service, that all great works should look their best, no matter their provenance.”

“He does it for altruistic reasons? Not for the money?”

“Hugo’s a terrible businessman. I once took him a torn Cézanne, and he fixed it for the price of dinner. A ruined masterpiece is worse than a stolen masterpiece, that’s what he’s always said.”

“Good grief,” Emmy muttered.

Alaric had to agree. Pemberton’s ethics were fucked. He’d happily handle stolen goods, yet he hadn’t hesitated to fire Beth and leave her in dire straits financially.

“So you think it would be better for the paintings Hugo restores to continue deteriorating?” Marshall asked. “To be lost forever? At least this way, there’s a chance they’ll eventually resurface for the public to enjoy.”

“How can you talk about public enjoyment?” Alaric asked. “You’ve had a hand in hiding hundreds of stolen paintings from view. Emerald was in a museum before you got involved. Anyone could walk in and see her.”

“It was a dilemma I used to struggle with myself, but to quote Winston Churchill, never was so much owed by so many to so few. Except this time, the ‘few’ in question were works of art.”

Was this asshole serious? They were talking about a criminal enterprise, not the Battle of Britain.

“Six months before Jago’s death,” Marshall continued, “the canning factory in Penngrove closed—the town’s main employer. My mom lost her job along with hundreds of others. She sank into a depression, and the whole town fell into decline. So I sold a stolen Matisse and used my cut of the proceeds to open the Marshall Gallery. It offered four full-time positions plus a sales outlet for local artists, but more importantly, it gave the community back something they’d lost: hope. Every time I negotiated the sale of a piece for Jago, I was able to provide a little more hope to the town that helped to raise me after my father died. You might not condone what I did, but how else could a twenty-six-year-old earn enough money to save a neighbourhood?”

“You kept doing it for decades,” Emmy pointed out.

“And I kept giving. Plus none of the marks I stole from were on the breadline.”

Alaric took a deep breath. Stay calm, McLain. “You stole from the rich, but it was still theft, and we still want Emerald back. She’s a national treasure. The Beckers wanted everyone to see her.”

“Yes, yes, I understand that. But I don’t know where she is. You might not have seen him, but there was another man on board the scalloper with us that day—a representative of the School of Shadows—and he left with me in the RIB while the rest of you were busy shooting. He took Emerald and the briefcase you gave me. Said he’d dispose of the evidence of our involvement.”

“There was only one briefcase with you in the RIB?”

“Yes.”

The School’s man could have tossed one into the ocean, but a last-minute switch was seeming less and less likely in Alaric’s eyes.

“Who was this man?”

Marshall tried to shrug, but the shackles meant his shoulders barely moved an inch. “I don’t know his name. We’d only met once or twice before, and I didn’t care for him much.”

“You never saw him again?”

“After that day, I took a step back from the murky depths of the art world. I’m not nearly as involved as I used to be.”

“But you still have contacts, right? And I bet you still hear things. Tell me more about the School of Shadows.”

“In the beginning, it was an honourable enterprise. The original Master’s goal was to obtain works of art looted during the Holocaust and return them to their rightful owners, or to their heirs if that wasn’t possible. Any other pieces taken were sold to fund the main objective. Five paintings were stolen in the Becker heist—tell me, which do you think was the true target?”

Fuck. How could so many people have missed that connection? For thirteen years, the FBI had believed Emerald was the main prize. She was the most valuable, after all.

“Boudin’s View Over Sainte-Anne-la-Palud?”

The least admired painting of the five stolen and the only one with gaps in its provenance, taken from its spot beside Emerald. Everyone assumed the thieves had snatched it as an afterthought, Alaric included.

“Correct. It’s back with the Steiner family now.”

Focus on Emerald.

“You said the original Master. Does that mean there’s a new Master?”

Marshall made a face. “Unfortunately, yes. He started to get more involved around the time of the Emerald debacle.”

“You don’t sound all that fond of him.”

“He’s not an easy man to work for. Too money-orientated. Always pushing, pushing, pushing on the timescales and quibbling over expenses. He puts profits ahead of justice.”

So what had started as a dubiously admirable venture to return stolen art had turned into simple theft.

“And yet you do still work for him.”

“As little as possible.”

“You arranged the transfer of Red After Dark to Irvine Carnes.”

“Ah, the beautiful Red. I knew how much the senator wanted her.”

Red After Darkhad been stolen in the same heist as Emerald, and the subject of the painting had been Carnes’s mistress. His true love. When Alaric met the former senator, by then affected by a stroke and most likely dementia too, he’d spent much of his time babbling away to her.

“And you facilitated the exchange out of the goodness of your heart?”

Marshall’s brow creased. “Exchange? What exchange? It was a gift. The Master knew the senator was sick and wanted to make his final days happier.”

“The new Master?”

“Yes. A rare glimpse of his altruistic side.”

“Bullshit. He swapped Dominique for Carnes’s endorsement of Kyla Devane.”

“No way.” Marshall’s jaw dropped, and Alaric had to admit his denial was convincing. “That’s interference in an election.”

“Yeah, it is, and I’m sure the Master got paid handsomely for it.”

“I only caught the tail end of the scandal, but Ms. Devane didn’t seem to have the country’s best interests at heart.”

Understatement of the millennium.

“The man who visited Carnes to broker the exchange matches your description.”

Late forties to early fifties with thinning medium-brown hair. Hardly conclusive, though. Millions of men fit that profile.

“No. No, no, no. That wasn’t me. I made an initial call, that’s all. Four or five months ago. I was asked to contact Carnes to see if he was still interested in obtaining the painting. The Master claimed he wanted to show appreciation for Carnes’s service to America.”

“Well, you were involved, which means you were partly responsible for Devane’s surge in the polls.”

Marshall hung his head. “For years, I’ve been telling myself I should retire, but then the theatre roof springs a leak, or the after-school club can’t afford supplies, or one of the seniors needs home help. That’s why I was so keen to make the trip here tonight. I’d hoped that if we could attract outside funding, I could finally get out of the game for good.”

Alaric had spent years imagining this meeting with Marshall. He’d dreamed of revenge, of making the man suffer just a fraction of the heartache he’d experienced. But Marshall wasn’t at all the person he’d envisaged. Yes, he was a master criminal, but his motives hadn’t been entirely selfish. From what Alaric had seen, Marshall lived comfortably but not ostentatiously, and there was no doubting that he’d done a lot for his community. Was he really that different from Emmy and Black? Alaric had long since learned to live with his ex’s murderous tendencies. The good that she did outweighed the bad.

And although the aftermath of the botched Emerald job had hurt, in some ways, Alaric’s life had actually become better for that pain. He’d lost Emmy but found Beth and Rune. He’d been fired from the FBI but gained a quarter-share of a growing company. He’d met Ravi, Judd, and Naz, his business partners at Sirius. And he’d seen the world during his wilderness years.

“So, here we are,” he murmured, half to himself and half to Marshall.

“I’ve always been prepared to go to prison. My whole life has been one inevitable march towards a jail cell. But I’ve achieved what I set out to do—I’ve saved Penngrove—so I’m not sorry. If I had to do it all again, I would.”

And Alaric couldn’t honestly blame him for that.

“You’re not going to prison.”

“I’m not?”

“I’ve seen what you’ve done for Penngrove, so I’m going to offer you a choice. Help us to recover Emerald, and once she’s safely back in the Becker Museum, you’ll go back home and slip quietly into retirement. Decline, and you’ll never see the town again.”

Hell, he wouldn’t even see the sky again. Emmy would see to that if necessary. Alaric glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and she gave the smallest of shrugs. Translation: she had his back, but Marshall’s fate was Alaric’s decision. Black didn’t appear particularly happy with Alaric’s offer, but he always had been a miserable fucker.

“Finding Emerald won’t be easy.”

“Finding you wasn’t easy.”

Marshall chuckled at that. “No, it wouldn’t have been. Where did I slip up?”

“You arranged the videographer to record Irvine Carnes’s endorsement speech, and you forgot to withhold your number.”

“The speech? The videographer was for the speech?” Marshall closed his eyes and blew out a long breath. “I was told that Irvine wanted to record a message for his daughter. Something for her to remember him by. The Master knew my weaknesses, didn’t he? Senator Carnes was…not a friend, exactly, but he was supportive of my efforts to promote creativity among young people. Did you know he attended the opening of the Penngrove library?”

“The Master knows who you are?”

“I don’t think so, but he knows which jobs I take and which I turn down. Once, he informed me via one of his associates that I acted too soft. That in passing up some of the more lucrative opportunities, I listened to my heart rather than my head. His predecessor wasn’t like that, not at all. No, there was no petty sniping in the old days. I’ve never been able to fathom out why the new Master was allowed to take over the School.” Another sigh. “But no matter. It seems we have a painting to find.”

“And a school to close down.”

“You’re going to go after the School of Shadows?”

“Too damn right we are. Their original mission—I can sympathise with that. I think we all can.” Black excepted, obviously. The man didn’t have emotions like a normal person. “But now that they’ve gone from righting old wrongs to stealing for financial gain and meddling in politics, collateral damage be damned, they need to be stopped.”

“I suppose I can agree with that.”

“Do you have any idea who they are?”

Marshall shook his head. “They’ve proven to be better at keeping their secrets than I have.”

“How do you get in touch with them?”

“In the beginning, they’d write to Jago.”

“Write? As in letters?”

“Yes. Old-fashioned letters, sometimes typed, sometimes handwritten. They’d talk of a love for a particular painting, and if Jago thought he could either sell it or procure it, depending on the situation, he’d respond with a coded ad in the New York Daily News. If the Master chose him for the job, then Jago would receive another letter accepting the offer.”

“What happened if the letter got lost in the post?”

“He would place another ad confirming receipt.”

“And now?”

“Now they write to me.”

What the hell? “You’re telling me that with all the modern technology available, they still use the postal service?”

“As the saying goes—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Of course, my responding ads show up on the website now rather than in the newspaper.”

“Where does the Master write to you? In Penngrove?”

“I still have Jago’s old PO box in New York. Mail sent there gets forwarded to the post office in Penngrove, and Janice drops any letters that arrive in the mailbox at my house on her way home.”

Crude…but oddly effective.

“Where do the letters come from? Do you ever check the postmarks?”

“Everywhere from California to Florida to Maine. Sometimes even overseas. Either there are a significant number of people in the School of Shadows, or they travel a lot.”

“So there’s an offer and acceptance. What happens next?”

“If the job is a sale, then I place another ad once a buyer’s been found. Then the School sends a letter with a time and place, and an associate shows up to discuss the handover details.”

“And if you steal a painting?”

“For a procurement… Well, the media does part of the job for me. A high-profile theft usually makes the front pages, and again, the School informs me of a time and place for a meeting.”

“How do you get paid?”

“In cash.”

“Which you launder through the Penngrove economy?”

“It’s much more difficult than it used to be, what with so many people using credit cards nowadays. But there are still opportunities—the gallery, of course, plus I own a bar, a convenience store, a cattle ranch, and a diner—all cash-based businesses. And the locals know I’m always willing to cash cheques if they need a little extra help in making ends meet before payday. There’s also the annual fair, and last winter, I experimented with a temporary skating rink.”

Alaric had to take his hat off to Marshall—the man had basically got an entire town involved in his money-laundering operation. What’s more, the citizens had undoubtedly enjoyed themselves in the process.

But while Marshall’s Penngrove empire was fascinating, it didn’t get them any closer to finding Emerald or the School of Shadows. One step forward, and…that was it. They’d hit a wall. Alaric shouldn’t have been surprised—the School wouldn’t have survived for so long without protecting its identity fiercely.

“What now?” Marshall asked. “I’ll help you, but where do we go from here? Emerald went back to the School, and they’ve never mentioned her again. There’s a good chance they sold her on via another channel.”

“Then let’s ask them,” Emmy said, and Marshall’s head snapped to the left to look at her. His eyes narrowed. Seemed he hadn’t forgiven her for stamping on his foot earlier. Or shooting at him eight years before.

“Didn’t you hear a word I said? I have no idea who they are. The only time I’ve spoken in person to somebody connected with the School is after a job.”

“Then it’s simple. You need to ‘sell’ a painting.” Emmy used finger quotes around the word. “And we’ll come to the handover with you.”

“Unfortunately, it isn’t simple. The School hasn’t asked me to arrange a sale since you nearly killed their man at the Emerald handover. Hell, they didn’t contact me at all for two years following that.”

“What happened after two years?” Alaric asked.

“I received a letter out of the blue. As I said, the new Master isn’t easy to get along with, and I suspect some of his other suppliers refuse to work with him anymore. Those that still do are of a lower calibre. Case in point—the attempted theft at the Medici Gallery in Rome. That was one of theirs. A guard dead, another in a coma, and the perpetrators didn’t get the paintings they came for.” Marshall gave his head an incredulous shake. “Sloppy. Sooner or later, they’ll try again, but I’m not sure things will turn out any different.”

“And you wouldn’t resort to such measures?”

“Of course not! I’m not a barbarian. I always preferred a more creative approach—distraction, not thuggery. Once, my team dressed up as curators and lifted a Vermeer right off the wall. A gallery assistant even held the door open for them as they left.”

“So you don’t carry out the thefts yourself? Who do you use?”

“Mr. Delray, that’s a hard line in the sand for me. One that I won’t cross. Punish me if you must, but I won’t turn in the people I work with.”

“Okay.” Alaric had to admire the man’s loyalty. “We won’t go there. What’s the target at the Medici?”

“They have a Botticelli there.”

“I know the one. But there’s no indication it was ever looted by the Nazis.”

“No, it wasn’t. Its provenance is perfect. But I suspect the Master has a buyer lined up for it, and he’ll make a substantial amount from its sale.”

“Did you get offered that job?”

“I did. But it wasn’t one I felt I could accept, both for logistical reasons and for ethical ones.”

“So where does that leave us?” Alaric muttered. “Why is nothing ever straightforward?”

“Oh, but it is,” Emmy said. “Why are you being so negative?”

Fuck. That was her cunning smile. The one whose appearance usually led to chaos and destruction.

“I’m not sure I want to hear this.”

“All we have to do is steal a painting.”

“You?” Marshall asked. “You would steal a painting?”

“Short-term pain for long-term gain. Is the Master looking for anything in particular at the moment?”

Was it too late for Alaric to stuff cotton wool in his ears?

“There is one job that’s been put out to tender recently.”

“Fantastic. We’ll do it.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I think between us, we’re qualified to nick just about anything. Unless it’s the Mona bloody Lisa.”

“It’s not the Mona Lisa, is it?” Alaric asked.

Marshall shook his head. “But what happens if I don’t get chosen for the task? It’s far from certain.”

“Bid low, but not outrageously low,” Emmy instructed. “And even if the Master picks someone else, who cares? We’ll take the painting anyway. If he wants it, then he’ll have to negotiate.”