44.

■ Paul Raytheon was drinking coffee. He seemed more serious than ever, firm of face and bullish. His laptop was open and cables ran to ports and plastic junctions that should have been screwed into a wall. Beside the computer, and wrapped in tape, were several canisters of butane.

“Good morning,” he said. It staggered belief that he could ever sleep, that his cheerfulness could ever be dampened by unconsciousness.

I stared at the rucksacks around his kitchen. Operation was imminent. A digital camera had arrived along with a printout ascribed NEGATIVE OUTCOME. Any art collector would know that Liska’s work was a target, but according to Paul Raytheon’s spreadsheet, there were still around 20 left from the 58 in her post-mortem stash. If these 20 were hidden or protected, this didn’t bother him.

“I take it you have work to do?” I asked and Paul Raytheon nodded.

“We all have work to do,” he said, “and I want you to come along.”

I wondered if I had an option. I could sense that everyone knew what to do and that they had a part to play, and that was bound to extend to myself.

“You’ve got to help,” said Paul Raytheon — and he didn’t blink. I could barely look at him, he was so awake, so able to cope with the insanity of what he was suggesting. “You’ve got to come with us and help with the next few pictures.”

“We’ll get caught,” I said. “They’re going to be on the lookout.”

“What are they going to do?” asked Paul Raytheon. His eyes instantly pressed a headache into my mind. “Are they going to arrest us all? Who cares? Even if they jail us then to hell with it. We’re not hurting anybody.”

“You wouldn’t like it in jail,” I said, and Paul Raytheon frowned. The steam from his coffee clouded out his spectacles.

“Damn it,” he said, “we’re not going to jail. These are the only paintings left and we’re carrying out the will of a great artist. It can only end with us winning. Everyone will say so what? They’ll see the genius of it. It’s not as if we’re breaking the law.”

“You are breaking the law,” I was going to say — but I am no expert in that area.

I longed for my shoes and a drink, but Paul Raytheon wanted to talk. Among the bones of my memories there had been a beautiful woman, and all that she’d said had been real. It’s impossible to remember what someone has said after they’ve died.

“We’re taking blowtorches again,” said Paul Raytheon. “They’re made from camping stoves. If you cut off the tube and put on this nozzle, it works quite well. The whole canister ejects in about fifteen seconds.”

Paul Raytheon’s laptop chirped to indicate that he had received some news. “Look,” he said, and he waved his arm that I should join him.

Digitally reproduced on the screen was one of the sea pictures that Liska had painted in the summer we’d hiked up the coast and slept in a field. I’d not seen this picture for many months. The veins of colour in the water suggested the vessels of a heart and the painting offered the immediate sense that such a heart was beating all around us. The work was in London, I saw. Rather, you would have to say, what was left of it was in London — for some brilliant artists had attacked it — and two of them had been caught.

“There you are,” said Paul Raytheon, and he read out the description of the event.

I could picture it — the sublimity of arrest, the bodily grace of being lowered into the cells — the battle made not against the banks or the government, but against art — the very heart of human care. In a photograph the artists responsible for the attack were led away by the police. Paul Raytheon enlarged the image with controlling mouse movements. In the picture, two scarecrowish English girls were seen. In the next image were the girls’ chosen weapons, lighter fuel and matches, as well as kitchen knives. The work was just a burned painting now, a dead thing of beauty and it might as well have been removed from the galleries — although it was possible that the remains would stay where they were and become an attraction in their own right. Lunkenite society was more than capable of turning such destruction to profit, by charging admission for people to see the charred remains. They’re just like that. Those art agents would make Narcissus pay to look at himself.

“So you don’t mind being arrested,” I said to Paul Raytheon, and he shook his head.

To be sure, Paul Raytheon looked too smart to get himself arrested. Even back in the gallery when he and Flo had been in disguise, they’d both seemed so organised that such a thing would be impossible.

“How many of you are there?” I asked but Paul Raytheon clicked on the computer and shook his head. “I don’t know those guys but we’re all pretty organised,” he said. “They’d like to catch us but they’ll never get us all.”

“You’ll never get all the paintings,” I said. “All you’re doing is making them more valuable.”

“That’s one less picture in London,” said Raytheon. “Imagine if we do get them all. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Which one are we going for today?” I asked.

Paul Raytheon looked me squarely over. “Number 42,” he said. “I just hope you don’t get sentimental out there, that’s all. We’ve got a job to do, and you’re going to help us do it.”