ELEVEN

Katrinka Pushkin Startles Lestrade

Solveig Nordstrand was tall, voluptuous, blonde, sleek, stylish, posh, self-assured and probably about fifty. Her gallery was filled with people despite the reek of smoke. The fire truck had departed, the police officers had vanished. Most of the smoke had been blown out of the shop by a fan in the front doorway. As we approached, Solveig Nordstrand turned to us pleasantly. She waved a gentle hand towards the milling crowd, and smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘we ought to burn a painting every day, if it brings in such crowds.’

I nodded towards the scorch on the wall. ‘Even that scorch might be modern art, if you called it so.’

‘Hello,’ said my companion. ‘I’m Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend, James Wilson. May I ask you a few questions?’

‘You are . . . Sherlock Holmes?’ she said, smiling – a bit uncertainly now. ‘Are you a journalist, or . . .?’

‘I am working with the police,’ said Holmes.

‘I know you are not Sherlock Holmes . . . but are you a police?’

‘Unofficially.’

‘Then I don’t know if it is right for me to speak with you, if you are not a police officer.’

‘Perhaps you may speak unofficially,’ suggested Holmes.

‘Well . . .’

Holmes pointed towards a picture on the wall. ‘By the way, I very much like your painting of Mount Everest.’

‘Everest!’ I said, staring at the asymmetrical blotch of colour and dark.

‘Thank you, Mr Holmes,’ she said, warming to him. ‘Few people recognize it.’

‘I didn’t recognize it,’ I said, ‘and I’ve been there.’

‘Mount Everest from directly overhead,’ said Holmes, ‘and at sunset, when the colours change and shadows distort.’

‘You have a keen eye, sir!’ She broke into charming laughter. ‘Are you an art critic?’

‘Merely one who observes the world.’

‘You observe it carefully,’ she said.

‘I always take into account the point of view, and the light. Together they are everything.’

She laughed. ‘I like unofficial policemen, Mr Holmes. What do you wish to know? I have no secrets.’

‘Please tell me what happened,’ said Holmes.

She moved a step towards him, and her large earrings swayed. She stood very close to us as she spoke. ‘This morning we opened the gallery, and a few people came through, signing the book, you know, and then browsing. By and by one lady looked puzzled, so I walked to her and introduced myself. She asked about the painting called Massacre of the Innocents, which was a paraphrase of a Bruegel painting. I told her a little about it, and as we were talking, POOF, my Massacre of the Innocents burst into flame. I know it does not sound possible.’ She shrugged. ‘But that is how it was.’

‘Can you recall what you were talking about when the painting burst into flame?’

‘I was just explaining to the lady my theory of painting, how I conceive of what I am doing.’

‘Would you remember the words you spoke?’ asked Holmes.

‘I said that my work is based upon the inversion of negative space, and the conversion of Time into Colour. Just at that moment –’ she shrugged again, and smiled – ‘POP.’

‘Who has handled that painting?’ asked Holmes.

‘The gallery owner has handled it, and I have. No one else.’

‘How many people visited the shop yesterday?’ he asked.

‘A few in the morning, a few in the afternoon, and many invited guests at the evening party.’

‘Do you remember any of the people who visited the gallery yesterday, before the evening party?’

‘A few,’ she replied. ‘The first were two elderly ladies from Sussex. They signed my visitors register. Next was, let me see . . . yes, the Swedish gentleman and his lady.’

‘Swedish?’ said Holmes quickly.

‘Well, yes. He spoke with me in Swedish.’

‘Is this the man?’ asked Holmes, and he slipped the photo of Lars Lindblad out of his pocket and showed it to her.

‘That is him . . . he did not sign my guest register.’

‘Now, Ms Nordstrand, did this man spend much time near the painting that burned this morning.’

‘He did, yes!’ she said, as if remembering in surprise. ‘He stood very close to it, he and his lady friend. For a long while they stood there. I had begun to think they would buy it.’

‘And the lady friend,’ said Holmes. ‘What did she look like?’

‘I remember quite well. Medium height, dark hair, brown eyes, very nice skin. She wore a gold necklace chain with an Egyptian ankh on it, and matching gold earrings. Nice against her black dress. She was foreign. She spoke but little. She had an accent. Russian, I think.’

‘Is there a security camera on the premises that might have recorded her picture?’

‘I can draw for you . . .’

‘Excellent,’ said Holmes.

Solveig Nordstrand took up a sketch pad and a pencil. She thought a moment. Then her hand flew over the blank sheet, darting, jotting, filling in. And in a very few minutes a picture appeared. The woman’s face was quite beautiful. I didn’t say so, but that little sketch seemed to me the best art in the gallery.

‘There, that is pretty close,’ she said.

‘Thank you very much, madam,’ said Holmes.

She half closed her eyes and shook her head. She touched his lapel with her strangely large and beautiful hand. ‘I hope you can find the ones who did this. Such things are not pleasant.’

‘We will do our best.’

She laughed, tilting her head slightly. ‘You know, you even look like Sherlock Holmes – I imagine him to be like you.’

Holmes smiled faintly and said, ‘I didn’t know I was that good looking!’

They both laughed.

Seldom had I seen Holmes in such a sociable and genial mood.

She turned to me and said. ‘I should like to paint you, Mr James Wilson. You have a most interesting face.’

‘You are very kind,’ I said.

‘It is an offer,’ she said. ‘I am sincere.’ Then she turned away and wished Holmes well in his investigation.

Solveig Nordstrand seemed a nicely matured version of those buxom beautiful Swedish movie stars seen in old James Bond films. But her effect on Holmes had worn off by the time we reached Scotland Yard. By then he was again fidgety, nervous, hyperactive. Lestrade immediately summoned us up to his office. His secretary waved us through, and as we passed by her desk I heard her cancel an appointment to make time for us.

Lestrade, seemingly so sober and thoughtful, so reserved and remote, was, in truth, a warm and generous soul beneath it all – just as was his more famous Victorian grandfather. This modern Lestrade, who had kindly undertaken to supervise Holmes’s recovery after ‘the great resuscitation,’ took his responsibility not only seriously but with almost religious devotion. I suppose that ever in the back of Lestrade’s mind was the remembrance that Holmes had given great assistance to his grandfather on crime cases in the old days, and that he thus had helped him to rise in the force, and later had even helped him to find a wife – so perhaps Lestrade felt that he owed not only his own job, but his very life to Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes told Lestrade how we had hurried to the gallery this morning, but had arrived too late.

‘How did you know, Holmes, that Solveig Nordstrand might be in danger?’

‘I was guessing.’

‘Yes, yes, yes – but what made you guess as you did?’

‘I must ponder that,’ said Holmes. ‘But you will be interested to know that Lars Lindblad was in the gallery yesterday, showing great interest in the very painting that this morning exploded and burned.’

‘What!’

‘Solveig Nordstrand identified him.’

‘Lars Lindblad again! But how does this fit with the theft of the Shakespeare letter?’

‘I haven’t any idea,’ said Holmes.

Lestrade rose and walked around his desk, rubbing his chin. ‘But it must be connected – don’t you think?’

‘I cannot see the connection as yet,’ said Holmes.

And now it was Lestrade who showed signs of nervous energy. His hands gestured as he said, ‘Lars Lindblad, Lars Lindblad! His modus operandi has always been to work on one big and profitable thing. He has never piddled with small matters. He doesn’t rob a chemist’s shop one day, Holmes, and set a fire the next. He has always, for forty years, operated on a grand scale. He has never, to anyone’s knowledge, committed a crime for vengeance, for amusement, for political beliefs or for social justice. He has committed crimes only to make very large sums of money. You may count on it, Holmes: that is his motivation here. Stealing the Shakespeare letter fits that profile. Burning somebody’s more-or-less worthless painting does not.’

‘But he was in the shop,’ said Holmes.

‘I understand that.’

‘And this lady was with him,’ said Holmes, handing him Solveig Nordstrand’s sketch of the dark beauty.

Lestrade stared at the sketch with growing amazement. ‘I recognize her, Holmes!’

‘Yes?’

Lestrade rubbed the back of his neck. ‘This woman is Katrinka Pushkin – that is one of her names, at any rate. She is forty years old and looks much younger. She is an operative for Al Qaeda. It is believed she travelled with Osama bin Laden in the days right after 9/11, those days when the US Army was busying itself with the invasion of Iraq. Her name is Russian but her nationality is Egyptian, born in Cairo in 1969 to a Russian father and Egyptian mother. She attended Yale University, then the London School of Economics. She was radicalized in 1999 by a boyfriend named Jalil Akbari, an Iranian she met in London when he worked here as a physician. They both returned to Iran in 2001, and . . .’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘My heavens, it is most unfortunate if Lars Lindblad has associated himself with Al Qaeda.’

‘And what does Ms Pushkin do for Al Qaeda?’ asked Holmes.

‘To the best of our knowledge, she makes purchases, and then routes what she buys through intermediaries in other countries. We also believe she may be a contact for industrial spies in this country. We wish we knew exactly what she does – most of this I have gotten from a friend in MI5.’

‘It sounds very fresh in your mind,’ said Holmes.

‘We were discussing her recently. We suspect she is doing something that we don’t much like, but we don’t know what it is. There is little point in picking her up for questioning until we have at least a faint clue what we are looking for. And now I learn she may be hooked up with a master criminal who has evaded every police force in the world for forty years.’

‘His luck may be running out,’ said Holmes.

‘Yes, yes, I could well believe it, Holmes – now that you have been taken out of the deep freeze and set back in action. Maybe he will now meet his nemesis. I take it you are on his track – and, true to your old form, not telling old Lestrade everything you know!’

‘I’ll make a suggestion, however,’ said Holmes, reaching for the pipe that wasn’t there.

‘What happened to your pipe?’ asked Lestrade. ‘That is the second time you have groped for it. You look quite lost without it.’

‘I stepped on it,’ said Holmes. ‘I have a new one coming.’

‘Ah. Well. You were saying . . .?’

‘You might like to take a look at the Bif Carcanson columns that have been published in Arts Weekly magazine since January of this year. They were written by professor Hugh Blake’s stepson and are suggestive. Yet I cannot make out what, if anything, they really mean. Perhaps you are a cleverer man than I am.’

‘Since you put it that way, I must certainly read them,’ said Lestrade, with a rueful smile. ‘For a hundred years my family have been trying to prove themselves your equal in cleverness – with little success. Since you offer me one more inning, I must not let the home team down by refusing it.’ He laughed, and touched Holmes on the shoulder, as was his habit. And winked at me as we departed.

Holmes and I walked towards home through Green Park.

‘For a while there,’ said I, ‘I was under the impression that you were making great progress. Now, suddenly, I feel rather at a loss. What do you have, Holmes, but a sketch of a woman, a photo of a man, a missing letter, and a series of apparently nonsensical small crimes based on critical attacks in an art magazine?’

‘You have summed it up admirably, Wilson. Perhaps Alexis Gray’s soirée will provide further clues. You said all the family will be there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent! I am more certain than ever that amongst the Gray-Linger-Hideaway-Blake family we may find hints towards a solution to both of our mysteries. For a start, one of that clan must surely know where the Shakespeare letter is located, or know who does know – of that I am convinced.’

‘But wait, then you are saying that one of them is in league with Lars Lindblad?’

‘That seems a sensible hypothesis,’ said Holmes. ‘One or more of them.’

‘But Holmes! Are we not then led to the damning conclusion – to the almost preposterous conclusion – that one of that clan is working with Al Qaeda!’

‘Stranger things have happened. But that conclusion is, I think, premature. Much of this case is dark, Wilson. Very dark. We are walking at night along a gloomy road with only a glimmer of moon to show our way.’

We hailed a cab and soon we were back at the apartment.

‘Perhaps you should tell me, Holmes, what you would like me to do when we get to Alexis’s soirée. We have only four hours. I really have no idea how to go about querying these people. Surely it can do no good to ask them directly whether they know the whereabouts of the stolen letter, or whether they know Lars Lindblad?’

‘That would not be wise.’

‘I am at your service, my friend. What is the plan?’

‘Our plan, my dear Wilson, is to be genial and let them talk. C’est tout. Tiny glimmers of their lives will spill out in their conversation. We will note these. You have read Freud, I presume?’

‘A little.’

‘In The Case of Dora, Freud said something that strikes me as perfectly true . . . I believe I can quote it . . .’

‘Sherry?’ I asked, holding out a glass.

‘Yes, thanks very much.’ Holmes sat down and leant back. His long, thin left arm drooped over the chair arm, his feet were outstretched, his right hand held the sherry glass, half-lifted: ‘He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no man can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.’

I laughed. ‘Believe me, Holmes, I shall watch carefully for the little droplets of betrayal. Cheers . . .’

‘Cheers . . . by the by, is this a formal event?’

‘Marianne said that a coat and tie will suffice.’