False Impression (2006) Read online

  When Anna passed the Tavern on the Green, she once again checked her watch. She would need to pick up her pace if she still hoped to be back at Artisans’ Gate in under twelve minutes. As she sprinted down the hill, she reflected on the fact that she shouldn’t allow her personal feelings for a client to cloud her judgement, but frankly Victoria needed all the help she could get. When Anna passed through Artisans’ Gate, she pressed the stop button on her watch: twelve minutes and four seconds. Damn.

  Anna jogged slowly off in the direction of her apartment, unaware that she was being closely watched by the man in the emerald-green T-shirt.

  6

  JACK DELANEY still wasn’t sure if Anna Petrescu was a criminal.

  The FBI agent watched her as she disappeared into the crowd on her way back to Thornton House. Once she was out of sight, Jack resumed jogging through Sheep Meadow towards the lake. He thought about the woman he’d been investigating for the past six weeks. An enquiry that was hampered by the fact that he didn’t need Anna to find out that the bureau were also investigating her boss, who Jack had no doubt was a criminal.

  It was nearly a year since Richard W. Macy, Jack’s Supervising Special Agent, had called him into his office and allocated him a team of eight agents to cover a new assignment. Jack was to investigate three vicious murders on three different continents which had one thing in common: each of the victims had been killed at a time when they also had large outstanding loans with Fenston Finance. Jack quickly concluded that the murders had been planned and were the work of a professional killer.

  Jack cut through Shakespeare Garden as he headed back towards his small apartment on the West Side. He had just about completed his file on Fenston’s most recent recruit, although he still couldn’t make up his mind if she was a willing accomplice or a naive innocent.

  Jack had begun with Anna’s upbringing and discovered that her uncle, George Petrescu, had emigrated from Romania in 1968, to settle in Danville, Illinois. Within weeks of Ceausescu appointing himself president, George had written to his brother imploring him to come to America. When Ceausescu declared Romania a socialist republic and made his wife Elena his deputy, George wrote to his brother renewing his invitation, which included his young niece, Anna.

  Although Anna’s parents refused to leave their homeland, they did allow their seventeen-year-old daughter to be smuggled out of Bucharest in 1987 and shipped off to America to stay with her uncle, promising her that she could return the moment Ceausescu had been overthrown. Anna never returned. She wrote home regularly, begging her parents to join them in the States, but she rarely received a response. Two years later she learned that her father had been killed in a border skirmish while attempting to oust the dictator. Her mother repeated that she would never leave her native land, her excuse now being, ‘Who would tend to your father’s grave?’

  That much, one of Jack’s squad members had been able to discover from an essay Anna had written for her high school magazine. One of her classmates had also written about the gentle girl with long fair plaits and blue eyes, who came from somewhere called Bucharest and knew so few words of English that she couldn’t even recite the Pledge of Allegiance at morning assembly. By the end of her second year, Anna was editing the magazine, from where Jack had gathered so much of his information.

  From high school, Anna won a scholarship to Williams University in Massachusetts to study art history. A local newspaper recorded that she also won the intervarsity mile against Cornell in a time of 4 minutes 48 seconds. Jack followed Anna’s progress to the University of Pennsylvania, where she continued her studies for a PhD, her chosen thesis subject the Fauve Movement. Jack had to look up the word in Webster’s. It referred to a group of artists led by Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck who wished to break away from the influence of Impressionism and move towards the use of bright and dissonant colour. He also learned how the young Picasso had left Spain to join the group in Paris, where he shocked the public with paintings that Paris Match described as ‘of no lasting importance’; ‘sanity will return,’ they assured their readers. It only made Jack want to read more about Vuillard, Luce and Camoin - artists he’d never heard of. But that would have to wait for an off-duty moment, unless it became evidence that would nail Fenston.

  After Penn, Dr Petrescu joined Sotheby’s as a graduate trainee. Here Jack’s information became somewhat sketchy as he could allow his agents only limited contact with her former colleagues. However, he did learn of her photographic memory, her rigorous scholarship and the fact that she was liked by everyone from the porters to the chairman. But no one would discuss in detail what ‘under a cloud’ meant, although he did discover that she would not be welcome back at Sotheby’s under the present management. And Jack couldn’t fathom out why, despite her dismissal, she considered joining Fenston Finance. For that part of his enquiry he had to rely on speculation, because he couldn’t risk approaching anyone she worked with at the bank, although it was clear that Tina Forster, the chairman’s secretary, had become a close friend.

  In the short time Anna had worked at Fenston Finance, she had visited several new clients who had recently taken out large loans, all of whom were in possession of major art collections. Jack feared that it could only be a matter of time before one of them suffered the same fate as Fenston’s three previous victims.

  Jack ran onto West 86th Street. Three questions still needed answering. One, how long had Fenston known Petrescu before she joined the bank? Two, had they, or their families, known each other in Romania? And three, was she the hired assassin?

  Fenston scrawled his signature across the breakfast bill, rose from his place and, without waiting for Leapman to finish his coffee, marched out of the restaurant. He stepped into an open elevator, but waited for Leapman to press the button for the eighty-third floor. A group of Japanese men in dark blue suits and plain silk ties joined them, having also had breakfast at Windows on the World. Fenston never discussed business matters while in an elevator, well aware that several of his rivals occupied the floors above and below him.

  When the elevator opened on the eighty-third floor, Leapman followed his master out, but then turned the other way and headed straight for Petrescu’s office. He opened her door without knocking to find Anna’s assistant, Rebecca, preparing the files Anna would need for her meeting with the chairman. Leapman barked out a set of instructions that didn’t invite questions. Rebecca immediately placed the files on Anna’s desk and went in search of a large cardboard box.

  Leapman walked back down the corridor and joined the chairman in his office. They began to go over tactics for their showdown with Petrescu. Although they had been through the same procedure three times in the past eight years, Leapman warned the chairman that it could be different this time.

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Fenston.

  ‘I don’t think Petrescu will leave without putting up a fight,’ he said. ‘After all, she isn’t going to find it easy to get another job.’

  ‘She certainly won’t if I have anything to do with it,’ said Fenston, rubbing his hands.

  ‘But perhaps in the circumstances, chairman, it might be wise if I—’

  A knock on the door interrupted their exchange. Fenston looked up to see Barry Steadman, the bank’s head of security, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, chairman, but there’s a FedEx courier out here, says he has a package for you and no one else can sign for it.’

  Fenston waved the courier in and, without a word, penned his signature in the little oblong box opposite his name. Leapman looked on, but neither of them spoke until the courier had departed and Barry had closed the door behind him.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked Leapman quietly.

  ‘We’re about to find out,’ said Fenston as he ripped open the package and emptied its contents onto the desk.

  They both stared down at Victoria Wentworth’s left ear.

  ‘See that Krantz is paid the other half millio
n,’ said Fenston. Leapman nodded. ‘And she’s even sent a bonus,’ said Fenston, staring down at the antique diamond earring.

  Anna finished packing just after seven. She left her suitcase in the hall, intending to return and pick it up on the way to the airport straight after work. Her flight to London was scheduled for 5.40pm that afternoon, touching down at Heathrow just before sunrise the following day. Anna much preferred taking the overnight flight, when she could sleep and still have enough time to prepare herself before joining Victoria for lunch at Wentworth Hall. She only hoped that Victoria had read her report and would agree that selling the Van Gogh privately was a simple solution to all her problems.

  Anna left her apartment building for the second time that morning, just after 7.20am. She hailed a taxi - an extravagance, but one she justified by wanting to look her best for her meeting with the chairman. She sat in the back of the cab and checked her appearance in her compact mirror. Her recently acquired Anand Jon suit and white silk blouse would surely make heads turn. Although some might be puzzled by her black sneakers.

  The cab took a right on FDR Drive and speeded up a little as Anna checked her cellphone. There were three messages, all of which she would deal with after the meeting: one from her secretary, Rebecca, needing to speak to her urgently, which was surprising given they were going to see each other in a few minutes’ time; confirmation of her flight from BA, and an invitation to dinner with Robert Brooks, the new chairman of Bonhams.

  Her cab drew up outside the entrance to the North Tower twenty minutes later. She paid the driver and jumped out to join a sea of workers as they filed towards the entrance and through the bank of turnstiles. She took the shuttle express elevator, and less than a minute later stepped out onto the dark green carpet of the executive floor. Anna had once overheard in the elevator that each floor was an acre in size, and some fifty thousand people worked in a building that never closed - more than double the population of her adopted home town of Danville, Illinois.

  Anna went straight to her office and was surprised to find that Rebecca wasn’t waiting for her, especially as she knew how important her eight o’clock meeting was. But she was relieved to see that all the relevant files had been piled neatly on her desk. She double-checked that they were in the order she had requested. Anna still had a few minutes to spare, so she once again turned to the Wentworth file and began reading her report. ‘The value of the Wentworth Estate falls into several categories. My department’s only interest is in …’

  Tina Forster didn’t rise until just after seven. Her appointment with the dentist wasn’t until eight thirty and Fenston had made it clear that she needn’t be on time this morning. That usually meant he had an out-of-town appointment, or was going to fire someone. If it was the latter, he wouldn’t want her hanging around the office, sympathizing with the person who had just lost their job. Tina knew that it couldn’t be Leapman, because Fenston wouldn’t be able to survive without the man, and although she would have liked it to be Barry Steadman, she could dream on, because he never missed an opportunity to praise the chairman, who absorbed flattery like a beached sea sponge waiting for the next wave.

  Tina lay soaking in the bath - a luxury she usually only allowed herself at weekends - wondering when it would be her turn to be fired. She’d been Fenston’s personal assistant for over a year, and although she despised the man and all he stood for, she’d still tried to make herself indispensable. Tina knew that she couldn’t consider resigning until …

  The phone rang in her bedroom, but she made no attempt to answer it. She assumed it would be Fenston demanding to know where a particular file was, a phone number, even his diary. ‘On the desk in front of you’ was usually the answer. She wondered for a moment if it might be Anna, the only real friend she’d made since moving from the West Coast. Unlikely, she concluded, as Anna would be presenting her report to the chairman at eight o’clock, and was probably, even now, going over the finer details for the twentieth time.

  Tina smiled as she climbed out of the bath and wrapped a towel round her body. She strolled across the corridor and into her bedroom. Whenever a guest spent the night in her cramped apartment they had to share her bed or sleep on the sofa. They had little choice, as she only had one bedroom. Not many takers lately, and not because of any shortage of offers. But after what she’d been through with Fenston, Tina no longer trusted anyone. Recently she’d wanted to confide in Anna, but this remained the one secret she couldn’t risk sharing.

  Tina pulled open the curtains and, despite its being September, the clear, sparkling morning convinced her that she should wear a summer dress. It might even make her relax when she stared up at the dentist’s drill.

  Once she was dressed and had checked her appearance in the mirror, Tina went off to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. She wasn’t allowed to have anything else for breakfast, not even toast - instructions from the ferocious dental assistant - so she flicked on the television to catch the early morning news. There wasn’t any. A suicide bomber on the West Bank was followed by a 320-pound woman who was suing McDonald’s for ruining her sex life. Tina was just about to turn off Good Morning America when the quarterback for the 49ers appeared on the screen.

  It made Tina think of her father.

  7

  JACK DELANEY arrived at his office at 26 Federal Plaza just after seven that morning. He felt depressed as he stared down at the countless files that littered his desk. Every one of them connected with his investigation of Bryce Fenston, and a year later he was no nearer to presenting his boss with enough evidence to ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant.

  Jack opened Fenston’s personal file in the vain hope that he might stumble across some tiny clue, some personal trait, or just a mistake that would finally link Fenston directly to the three vicious murders that had taken place in Marseille, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro.

  In 1984, the 32-year-old Nicu Munteanu had presented himself at the American Embassy in Bucharest, claiming that he could identify two spies working in the heart of Washington, information he was willing to trade in exchange for an American passport. A dozen such claims were handled by the embassy every week and almost all proved groundless, but in Munteanu’s case the information stood up. Within a month, two well-placed officials found themselves on a flight back to Moscow, and Munteanu was issued with an American passport.

  Nicu Munteanu landed in New York on February 17, 1985. Jack had been able to find little intelligence on Munteanu’s activities during the following year, but he suddenly re-emerged with enough money to take over Fenston Finance, a small, ailing bank in Manhattan. Nicu Munteanu changed his name to Bryce Fenston - not a crime in itself - but no one could identify his backers, despite the fact that during the next few years the bank began to accept large deposits from unlisted companies across Eastern Europe. Then in 1989 the cash flow suddenly dried up, the same year as Ceausescu and his wife Elena fled from Bucharest following the uprising. Within days they were captured, tried and executed.

  Jack looked out of his window over lower Manhattan, and recalled the FBI maxim: never believe in coincidences, but never dismiss them.

  Following Ceausescu’s death, the bank appeared to go through a couple of lean years until Fenston met up with Karl Leapman, a disbarred lawyer, who had recently been released from prison for fraud. It was not too long before the bank resumed its profitable ways.

  Jack stared down at several photographs of Bryce Fenston, who regularly appeared in the gossip columns with one of New York’s most fashionable women on his arm. He was variously described as a brilliant banker, a leading financier, even a generous benefactor, and with almost every mention of his name there was a reference to his magnificent art collection. Jack pushed the photographs to one side. He hadn’t yet come to terms with a man who wore an earring, and he was even more puzzled why someone who had a full head of hair when he first came to America would choose to shave himself bald. Who was he hiding from?

&n
bsp; Jack closed the Munteanu/Fenston personal file, and turned his attention to Pierre de Rochelle, the first of the victims.

  Rochelle required seventy million francs to pay for his share in a vineyard. His only previous experience of the wine industry seemed to have come from draining the bottles on a regular basis. Even a cursory inspection would have revealed that his investment plan didn’t appear to fulfil the banking maxim of being ‘sound’. However, what caught Fenston’s attention when he perused the application was that the young man had recently inherited a chateau in the Dordogne, in which every wall was graced with fine Impressionist paintings, including a Degas, two Pissarros and a Monet of Argenteuil.

  The vineyard failed to show a return for four fruitless years, during which time the chateau began to render up its assets, leaving only outline shapes where the pictures had once hung. By the time Fenston had shipped the last painting back to New York to join his private collection, Pierre’s original loan had, with accumulated interest, more than doubled. When his chateau was finally placed on the market, Pierre took up residence in a small flat in Marseille, where each night he would drink himself into a senseless stupor. That was until a bright young lady, just out of law school, suggested to Pierre, in one of his sober moments, that were Fenston Finance to sell his Degas, the Monet and the two Pissarros, he could not only pay off his debt, but take the chateau off the market and reclaim the rest of his collection. This suggestion did not fit in with Fenston’s long-term plans.