The Gauguin Connection

Book 1: Genevieve Lenard

by Estelle Ryan

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Murdered artists. Masterful forgeries. Art crime at its worst.

It's up to a brilliant autistic investigator to keep a ruthless killer from striking again.

World renowned expert in nonverbal communication, Doctor Genevieve Lenard investigates insurance claims. Not murder. So when her boss asks her to help his acerbic friend look into the death of a young artist, her autistic mind rebels against the change.

A straightforward murder investigation quickly turns into a quagmire of stolen Eurocorps weapons, a money-laundering charity, forged art and high-ranking EU officials abusing their power. As if this isn't enough, she reluctantly teams up with an international thief whose knowledge of the art world proves invaluable.

Forced out of her predictable routines, safe environment and limited social interaction, Genevieve is thrown into being part of a team in a race to stop a ruthless killer from targeting more artists.

 

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Release date: August 13, 2012

Print pages: 432

Sample

Chapter ONE

“PLEASED TO MEET YOU, Ms. Lenard.” The stranger held out his hand expectantly. His rumpled overcoat and the dark circles under his eyes gave the impression that he hadn’t slept in days. Even his voice sounded exhausted, despite the crisp British accent. The tightened muscles of his unshaven jaw, his stiff neck and pursed lips sent a very obvious message.

“It’s Doctor Lenard.” I kept my hand to myself. “And you’re not.”

“Not what?” The dishevelled stranger pulled his hand back. His lips moved from a simple disagreeable pucker to a full-on sneer.

“Not pleased to meet me.” I had lost count of how many times I had witnessed the corners of someone’s lips drawn toward the ears to produce a sneering dimple in the cheeks. The vast majority of those expressions had been aimed at me.

“Genevieve, play nice.” Phillip Rousseau’s voice carried enough warning to pull my focus from the angry man. Despite his French background, Phillip pronounced my name in a manner more familiar to English speakers. I had insisted on that. It might be thought as callow, but it was my small rebellion against a pretentious sophistication forced on me from birth.

Phillip had been my boss for six years and none of his non-verbal cues or voice inflections was unknown to me. At present he was annoyed by my lack of sociability. He moved from behind the conference table. For a moment I thought he was going to position himself between me and the other man. Most people couldn’t handle me and some outright avoided me, but somehow I had never managed to rattle Phillip. Or rather, never managed to rattle him too much.

Since my first day in this exclusive insurance company, he had also taken on the role of a buffer between me and the other staff. Something I was sincerely grateful for. I didn’t like working with other people.

My boss came to stand next to me, far enough that I didn’t feel crowded, but close enough for me to smell his expensive aftershave. As usual he was wearing a bespoke suit with a price tag that could feed a medium-sized African family for a year.

The stranger was studying me. My immaculate appearance, all the way down to my matching handbag, was not endearing me to him. Phillip should be glad that I possessed enough restraint to not comment on the man’s lack of grooming in this elegant conference room. At least I had made some effort this morning with my appearance in an attempt to blend in. I doubted the stranger had made an effort in decades.

Ignoring the guest, I lifted an eyebrow at Phillip. “What am I doing here?”

“Okay, everyone, let’s start over. Nicer.” Phillip gave both me and the stranger warning looks and sighed. “Genevieve, this is Colonel Manfred Millard. He is the Deputy Chief Executive for Strategy at the EDA.”

“The European Defence Agency?”

“You’ve heard of us.” A surprised lilt changed Colonel Millard’s statement into a question.

I gave him an impatient look. He was stating the obvious, so I moved on. “What is the EDA doing here, Phillip?”

“Let’s sit down and discuss this.” As the CEO of one of the most prestigious insurance companies in Europe, Phillip was a master in mediation and negotiation. Competencies I admired but had no desire to emulate. At times his unending patience frustrated me beyond my limits and I had a suspicion that today was going to be one of those days. Phillip pointed to the chairs at the far end of the conference table, where folders and piles of documents lay open. Phillip and Colonel Millard must have been here for a while.

I moved to the chair Phillip indicated to me. Both men sat down and Phillip started organising some of the documents into a folder. A photo lying on top of another pile of official looking reports caught my eye. The moment I focussed on it, I knew I had made a mistake. A monumental mistake. The photo was sucking me into its depravity. Into its sadness. Its wrongness.

It was clearly a crime scene photo with markers pointing out things I had no interest in learning more about. A young girl, dressed in loose-fitting pants, a colourful tie-dye T-shirt and a bright-green spring coat spread open under her, was lying on the ground. If it weren’t for the hole in her forehead and the pool of blood framing her head like an evil halo, she would’ve looked peacefully asleep.

My heart was pounding in my skull and my breathing had become alarmingly shallow. Focussing on the simple task of inhaling and exhaling became a near-insurmountable undertaking. The blood surrounding the unfortunate victim’s head kept drawing me back into the photo with a strength greater than the last two decades of training I had forced on myself. I could feel the warm stickiness of the girl’s blood between my fingertips. There had been days that I hadn’t wanted to train my mind, but the thought of feeling like I did at this very moment was what had motivated me to search, study, train and focus. A lot of good it was doing me now. I couldn’t snap out of this.

“What’s wrong with her?” The contemptuous stranger’s voice reached me through the thick muddiness in my head.

“Oh, dear.” I barely heard Phillip’s whisper, but a second later he was next to me, mercifully not touching me. “Genevieve, sit down. Come now. Two steps to your left. Slowly does it. The chair is right behind you. There you go.”

I focussed on my own gasping breaths and Phillip’s calm voice. If I held on for long enough, the black void threatening my peripheral vision might disappear. If I fought it, 

maybe it would not close in on me until the darkness swallowed me and spat me out hours later, unaware of what had occurred.

“I’m going to look in your handbag for your sheets. Stay with me, Genevieve.”

I was genuinely glad that I had confided in Phillip the day my handbag had fallen off the chair, spilling its contents. The embarrassment of that day was nothing compared to what I was facing right now. I heard a rustle in my handbag and then the magical empty music staff paper appeared in front of me. “Here’s a pencil as well. Manny and I will give you a moment.”

Like a man having travelled in the desert for days would reach for a bottle of water, I grabbed the pencil and drew an accolade, connecting four staves, preparing it for the composition for four violins. I loved the elegance of the G-clef and took care drawing it with perfection. I barely heard the half whispered conversation taking place next to me.

“What’s wrong with her, Phillip?”

“She has some form of autism. Writing Mozart’s compositions calms her.”

“Why does she need calming?”

“Manny”—Phillip sounded exasperated—“she saw the photo.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Do you really think she is the best person for this job?”

“Without a doubt. How long have you known me?”

“I don’t know. Thirty years?”

“Thirty-four years this December. And how many people do I trust?”

There was a long silence. “I don’t think you totally trust anyone.”

“I trust Genevieve. There is not an ounce of deceit in her. She’s the only one for this job.”

“How long have you known her?”

“She started working for me six years ago. I met her at the opening of an exhibition. She was standing at a sculpture close to me while I was discussing business with a potential client. Unsolicited she walked up to me and told me that this man was lying to me and most likely was planning to defraud my company. I hired her on the spot.”

“Why have you not told me about her?”

“For what reason? Are you interested in all my staff? The guy who services our coffee machines?”

“No need to get testy, Phillip. Just tell me more about her.”

“Her speciality is reading body language. Whenever we have a claim that seems dubious, we video the interview and she views it. Not once has she been wrong in her assessments. She doesn’t only read people and situations to the point where it feels like sorcery, she also notices patterns. When she’s not viewing footage, she goes through claims and policies, and has picked up seven cases of fraud when our specialists and our extremely expensive software programmes had failed to pick anything up. She has single-handedly saved my company more than fifteen million euros.”

I was a page and a half into the Adagio of Mozart’s String Quartet No.1 in G major. I would need another page and a half to finish this movement, but already I felt considerably

more in control. My breathing had almost returned to normal and the threatening blackness had receded.

Manny’s shocked response to Phillip’s explanation nearly elicited a smile. A few more bars and I would be in control enough to join in their conversation. And savour the fact that the man who had so easily disregarded me now spoke with grudging respect.

“She looks so normal though.”

“Manny, hold your tongue. She’s not deaf. People with a high-functioning form of autism like Genevieve work among us all the time. A lot of people go undiagnosed and never receive the help and support they need. They just become marginalised as strange or eccentric.”

“Are you preaching to me?”

“Yes, he is and he should.” I squared the two sheets of handwritten music and carefully placed it next to me, aligning it to the edge of the conference table. I would finish the last page later.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend you.” The EDA official lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture of surrender. His increased blink rate indicated that he was truly troubled.

“Most people are ignorant about a lot of things. I’ve come to accept it.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“Genevieve, we need your help,” interrupted Phillip.

“Actually, I need your help.” Manny squared his shoulders and jutted his chin. “I have a sensitive problem at work and don’t know who to trust.”

“Your work is defence. How can I possibly be of help? I work with art and insurance.”

“You work with patterns, body language and deception spotting. Those are the skills I need.”

I manipulated my body in such a way that Manny could receive all the signals possible to let him know I was not interested. I pointed my feet to the door, looked askance at him through narrowed eyes and blocked my body with my right hand on my left shoulder in a miniature body-hug.

“Manny, maybe you would allow me to explain the situation to Genevieve?” Phillip’s deep voice brought the tension in the room down a notch. Manny sighed and I unblocked my body. I would never dream of showing Phillip such disrespect.

“Please, explain to her.” Manny sat back, splaying his legs in front of him.

“Genevieve.” Phillip waited until I looked at him before he continued. “Manny and I have been friends for—”

“Thirty-four years. I heard you.”

“I know.” He gave Manny a quick reprimanding glance and continued. “Of the few people I trust—”

“You said that you trust me.”

“That is true. You are the only person I trust implicitly. There are, however, a few other people I trust and Manny is one of those. He’s one of the good guys.”

“Oh.” If Phillip declared Manny a good guy, I would accept that. I wouldn’t have to like it, but accept it I would. My extensive studies had prepared me in many ways for understanding the human psyche and behaviour, and reading all the subtle nuances of non-verbal communication. But until the day Phillip had employed me, I’d only had academic knowledge.

It was Phillip, through tremendous patience, who had introduced me to the more real-life applications of that knowledge, including the confusing concept of good and bad guys. His earlier declaration of unconditional trust in me moved me in a way I had not yet experienced. Being brought up by parents who had been agonisingly embarrassed by me, I had never known acceptance or trust until six years ago. It still jarred me.

Phillip inhaled and exhaled very slowly before he continued. “Manny came to me for assistance and I would like to help him. But to do that I need your help.”

“For what?”

“This case.” He pointed at the files, which had been closed so the offending photos were out of sight. “A girl was murdered four weeks ago. It’s very unfortunate that you had to see the photo, but at least now you know.”

I took a shaky breath and nodded for Phillip to continue when he lifted an enquiring eyebrow. I distanced myself from the story and listened with an objective ear, another skill I had acquired out of necessity.

“Patrolling police officers noticed a large man searching through what appeared to be a pile of rags in an alley.”

“Where did this happen?” I asked.

“Here in Strasbourg. The police officers became suspicious of the man in the alley. So they went closer and that’s when they saw that the pile of rags was in actual fact a dead girl. The man was searching through her clothing for something. The moment he saw the officers, he ran, but they caught up with him. When he realised that there was no escape, he pulled out his gun and shot himself.”

“Then the murder case is closed. What is the bigger problem?”

Manny sat up in his chair and copied Phillip’s neutral tone. “The murderer’s fingerprints identified him as a Russian tourist who had entered Europe through Spain on a supposed holiday. That was three days before the murder. It has since been discovered that he had hired a car under another name. He had all the legal documents for that identity. We followed his progress to France through the petrol stations where he filled up and the hotels he paid for with the credit card under the other name.”

“And I assume that identity theft and credit card fraud are still not the biggest of your concerns.”

“You assume correctly.” Manny looked at Phillip. “She’s really bright, this one.”

Yes, I’m bright. So why are you here? Why am I here? I would much rather be in my viewing room.” I raised my chin a fraction and looked at Phillip. “I did not appreciate the way I was summoned here.”

Manny gave a snort of laughter. The vexed look Phillip gave him sobered him instantly. “The murderer’s weapon is one of the reasons we are here. The gun he shot the girl and himself with was stolen from a Eurocorps cache.”

I lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “That is cause for an internal investigation. By Eurocorps. Why is the EDA involved?”

“I will explain that later.” A frown marred Manny’s tired face and he rubbed his neck a few times. “Eurocorps does have an ongoing investigation into the weapons theft.”

“And you are stressed about this investigation. Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. What is obvious is that you don’t feel very confident about the weapons theft investigation. Using only a limited amount of deductive powers, I dare to conclude that there is an internal problem. You”—I pointed at Manny and narrowed my eyes—“suspect someone in either your agency or in Eurocorps. Most likely someone in a very high position.”

Manny stared at me with shock clearly written on his face.

“I told you she was good.” Phillip’s voice held a hint of pride.

“Eurocorps didn’t even know that the weapon was stolen until the local police entered the murder weapon’s serial number into the system. It set off an alarm, which led to the discovery that a large number of weapons are not where they’re supposed to be.” He cleared his throat. “Even worse, Eurocorps doesn’t even know when exactly these weapons disappeared.”

“They don’t keep track of what they have in their warehouses?”

“Of course they do.” His angry answer bounced off the conference room’s walls. For a moment Manny focussed on a painting on the opposite side of the room. He continued in a more modulated tone. “It would seem that someone ordered the stock-take to be postponed in that specific warehouse.”

“And the only person with the authority to do so would be someone much higher up the chain of command.” I added.

“Exactly. It’s been a very long time since the last check. That means we can only hope that these are the only weapons that were taken.” His answer tapered off as if he regretted sharing this much information.

“I assume that you also don’t know if they were taken all at once or systematically over time.” I accepted Manny’s squinted eyes as an affirmative, albeit angry, answer. I turned to Phillip. “This man does not trust me. And yet both of you want me to get involved in this case in a manner that has not been clearly stated to me.”

“Maybe she’s right.” Manny turned his torso away from me toward Phillip. I was hard pushed to not laugh at the unconscious, yet blatant, display of dislike. “Maybe she should not 

be involved. This is after all hugely sensitive information that requires a high level of security clearance.”

“Who else are you going to ask?” A coldness sharpened Phillip’s question.

Unfortunately, I was familiar with that tone. Phillip didn’t know he used it when he ran out of patience and was about to lay down the law. A law that was expected to be followed unchallenged. One I usually challenged.

“Well—”

“There is no one else, Manny,” interrupted Phillip. “You came to me as a last resort. Don’t think for one minute that I feel flattered that you are here. You are desperate and you have nowhere else to go. You came here because you know that I can be trusted, right?”

Manny nodded, his lips sucked in, totally disappearing from his face.

“If you trust me, you should trust my judgement. I say Genevieve is the only person for this job and that should be enough for you.”

A loaded silence hung in the conference room. It was only through years of training and experience that I knew to wait patiently for the outcome. I used this time to evaluate Manny’s body language and read his internal struggle as clearly as if it were written on a billboard. I knew even before Manny spoke that he was going to accept my help. It was in his body language. Logic also dictated that this was his best option. Yet his visible discomfort with me was reason enough for him to hesitate. Fair enough.

“Fine,” he said with an inelegant sigh. “Tell her the rest.”

The quick appearance of Phillip’s tongue between his lips made me smile. My boss was pleased with himself for winning this round. He turned to me and frowned at my anomalous friendliness. “What?”

“I’m just thinking—”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know.” Most times when he asked he got annoyed with my answers. “Back to the case.”

“I haven’t agreed to be part of this.” I still felt shaken from the photo and my episode. If this case was going to bring back involuntary behaviours that hadn’t been part of my life for more years than I cared to remember, I wasn’t interested.

“Not you too. Just listen to the rest and then you can make a decision. The two of you are worse than dealing with spoiled trust-fund babies. There wasn’t much of an investigation into the murder, since the murderer was in the morgue with his victim. One detective, though, was curious about what the Russian was looking for when he was searching the victim and decided to go through the girl’s belongings with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Why would a comb help?”

“Genevieve,” Phillip answered in the slow voice he used when he was trying to stay patient with my inexhaustible questions, “it is just a manner of speaking. He searched her belongings very thoroughly.”

“He found something,” I stated. The excited lift in Phillip’s voice had been my cue. Why couldn’t people just get to the point? The need people had for a dramatic build-up was a 

source of great frustration to me.

“A strip from a canvas was carefully sewn into the hem of her coat.”

“What canvas?”

“That’s not of importance now.”

“I disagree.”

Phillip closed his eyes for the time it took him to take a calming breath. “It is a strip cut from the right-hand side of the Still Life, The White Bowl.”

“Which artist?”

“Paul Gauguin.”

My mind was racing. The moment all the pieces fell into place I glared at Phillip. “That piece is insured by us, by Rousseau & Rousseau.”

“Yes, we insured that artwork seven years ago for a client who is extremely private about his art collection. Why he never reported it stolen I would really like to find out.”

“Why weren’t you going to tell me about this?”

“I was going to tell you about this once Manny left.”

“Oh.” I suddenly understood and nodded towards the other man who was quietly assessing us. “You didn’t want him to think that you were more interested in the artwork than in helping him solve his insider problem.”

The moment the procerus muscles between Phillip’s eyes pulled both his eyebrows lower and together, I knew I should’ve held my tongue. Manny’s laughter saved me from another sermon on censoring myself. I liked him a little bit more.

“She’s got you there, old friend.” For the first time since I had laid eyes on him, Manny’s facial muscles relaxed. “I don’t blame you for your concern. And just to set the record straight, I did not come to you as a last resort. When that fragment led me to you, I considered it to be a godsend. I know that you have an incredible fraud detection department and that your investigators can teach most law enforcement agencies a few things.”

“How did this land on your desk, Manny?”

I silently applauded Phillip for his question and waited eagerly for the answer. Manny looked like he was arguing with himself. We waited. His brow smoothed as he straightened his shoulders.

“The commander of the Multinational Command Support Brigade at Eurocorps headquarters is a long-time friend of mine. We served together in an investigation division for a few years. I was visiting him and his wife when he got the call about the weapon used in the murder. Eurocorps has been co-operating with the Strasbourg police, but they have gotten nowhere in four weeks. He phoned me last week and asked if I knew an outsider who could help.”

“Why an outsider?” Against my will I was becoming intrigued.

“The storage of light weapons for Eurocorps headquarters’ personnel is also under my friend’s command. That is why he was contacted when the police connected the weapon to Eurocorps. He started looking into it and that’s when he discovered the disappearance of 

weapons. He also discovered that the inventory had been tampered with. It seemed to have been done at random in the last five years. That is when he first suspected someone powerful enough to interfere with our stock-taking system. It’s the only explanation for how it had gone undetected for such a long time. The system is highly secured, accessed by a select few.” He sighed heavily. “Eurocorps just recovered from a scandal three years ago. He didn’t want to draw any attention to a suspicion that might come to nothing.”

“What suspicion is that?”

“Nothing good. The involvement of a Russian murderer, an artwork and a Eurocorps weapon do not point to anything good. Some years ago a clerk working in the budget and finance department of Eurocorps noticed irregularities in the books. He went to the Deputy Chief of Staff Training and Resources and reported what he had seen. Immediately he was escorted from the building and subsequently fired for insubordination. What the deputy didn’t know was that the clerk had copied all the files for himself. He sent them to three major news agencies, pointing the finger at the deputy and a few enthusiastic helpers. This caused an in-depth investigation, proving that the deputy had been siphoning funds from Eurocorps for years.”

“Greed, one of man’s greatest weaknesses.” Humans disgusted me.

Manny nodded. “By the time this came out into the open, it was four years after the deputy chief had left and the EDA was only a year old. It took Eurocorps three years of layoffs and rigorous PR to recover some of the ground it had lost in the public eye. It was shocking how many soldiers had allowed greed to destroy their morals. Leon transferred from the EDA to Eurocorps and was instrumental in rebuilding its reputation.”

“Who’s Leon?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s the Deputy Chief of Staff for Training and Resources at Eurocorps. Major-General Leon Hofmann.”

This was interesting, but I was getting impatient. “The suspicion?”

“When Leon started looking into this weapons theft, he discovered something else. Every time there had been any tampering, at that same period there was a joint EDA-Eurocorps meeting or conference here in Strasbourg. The coincidence of the stock-take manipulation at the same time as EDA-Eurocorps meetings makes both of us wonder if there are insiders on both sides.”

“And if an investigation was to start at one of the agencies, the other might get wind of it.”

“Hence the need for an outsider.” Manny was the only other person, aside from myself, whom I had ever heard use the word ‘hence’. I liked him a fraction more. He cleared his throat and faced Phillip. “I trust you with this.”

Phillip waved away the sentiment. “Are you sure about an insider in your office?”

“Unfortunately yes. The Head agrees with me about this.”

“Who knows that you’re asking for our assistance?” Phillip asked.

“Only Sarah Crichton, the Head of the EDA, Frederique Dutoit, our Chief Executive and Leon. To quote the Chief, ‘I want this annoying case to close as soon as possible’.”

“As soon as possible or as thoroughly as possible?” I had experience enough to know that those two concepts were more often than not worlds apart.

“The Chief wants it closed as soon as possible.”

“And you?” I asked.

Manny took a moment to answer. “I want this bastard caught and locked up for a long time. I despise people who use their positions of power to further their own agendas. Especially when their agendas lead to this.” He pushed the closed folders far away from him. His anger and earlier displeasure at the whole situation won him points in my book. It was indeed a very interesting case and my curiosity was piqued. For a few moments all three of us contemplated the situation.

“Thank you for trusting me with this.” I knew how difficult it could be for people to trust and also knew that I should be honoured by Manny’s trust. Even when it was begrudging. “I need time.”

“You what?” Manny’s eyebrows drew closer and the corners of his mouth pulled down. He looked at Phillip. “She what?”

“Genevieve—”

I got up. “It was interesting to meet you, Colonel Millard.”

I picked up the sheets of handwritten music, slung my handbag over my shoulder and walked out of the conference room. I needed the safety of my viewing room filled with monitors where I could control the speed and frequency of the behaviour of the people on the screens. In the conference room, human behaviour was all too real. I preferred keeping it confined inside the monitors. In real life, people’s behaviour disconcerted me far too much and far too often.

The expensive carpets in the corridor muted the staccato of my medium-sized heels and I was glad that the other office staff seldom frequented this corridor. The last thing I wanted was to produce a social smile and force myself to practice small talk. I needed a moment alone. At least I was honest enough with myself to acknowledge that my behaviour at this moment was pure avoidance. I was running away.

Change had never been easy for me and Phillip’s cantankerous friend was about to throw my safe routine completely off its tracks. I liked coming into the office every day at the same time, spending exactly eight hours in my viewing room and then reversing my morning commute home. The predictability of working with contested insurance claims was safe. Guns, murders and Russians were different. Interesting, but different, and therefore unsettling.

The secured wooden door to my viewing room whooshed silently open when it recognised the swipe of my key card. I entered the safe familiarity of the air-conditioned room.

I wasted no time walking to my viewing station and sat down in my chair. My handbag still hung on my shoulder and I awkwardly pulled my arm from the sling before I placed the bag on the floor next to me. I knew that I only had a few minutes before the door would open and Phillip would follow me in. There was no mistaking the nose-flare, narrowed eyes and other intention cues when I had left. He was going to come into my haven and disrupt my life by demanding my co-operation.

Even though I did not want to work on this case, it wouldn’t take much to convince me otherwise. Phillip was very good at convincing me to do things I didn’t want to do. So, what I needed now was a moment to determine how I was going to do this on my terms. Especially if I was to work with Manny and all the complications his personality type would pose to my uncomplicated life.

For a short while I allowed myself the calming feel of my hands rubbing my upper arms. No sooner had I straightened my shoulders and composed myself when the door silently whooshed open. Phillip walked in, shoulders back, chin lifted and eyes focussed solely on me. Behind him Manny followed, contempt warring with doubt on his face.