It was almost pitch black, but just enough light leaked in around the edges of the drawn drapes to allow me to pick my way. The plaster figures that surrounded me were like angels guarding a crypt. I hoped they’d look out for me, too, while they were at it.
Then my attacker stumbled into a statue and cursed loudly, and I ducked behind a plaster gargoyle the size of a basketball.
“Hey, watch your language!” I yelled.
No response. I reached the work table where I remembered having noticed a flashlight the day before. A lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours...
The previous morning, I was admitted to a stately home in Millionaires’ Row, the wealthiest neighborhood in Ghent. My old nemesis, Inspector Bonte, who’d invited me, hadn’t been happy about it. He and his minions were there to investigate the disappearance of a girl.
“Somers,” he said, as I entered the atelier, “this is Jaak Froger.”
He nodded towards a lanky figure with long gray hair and a beard. Froger didn’t seem to recognize me in my detective outfit, but that’s the story of my life: Nobody pays any attention to private dicks — or butlers, either.
“My pleasure,” I said, sticking out a hand. “I’m Pat Somers: ‘I stay awake so you can sleep.’ ”
“That’s his advertising slogan,” Bonte explained. “He makes more sense in person.”
Froger ignored my hand, and I put it back where it belonged. “I take it you didn’t ask me here to critique my business card, Bonte?”
“Hardly. Mr. Froger is an artist. A sculptor.”
“You’ll have to find me a toga. I don’t pose in the nude.”
“You’re always posing,” Bonte growled.
“Jealous of my Greek profile?”
“Somers, I wouldn’t be jealous of you if you owned your own island in the Caribbean.”
“We haven’t seen each other in a while,” I told the sculptor confidentially. “We need to catch up.”
He looked like some ancient sage or philosopher, lost in a world of Higher Ideals. He stood there with one hand resting lightly on a wooden work table, its surface littered with knives and spatulas and other tools of his trade — and, oddly, the black barrel of a flashlight.
“You ever want to carve up the inspector here, I’d be happy to help. I’ll bring sandwiches, we can make a day of it.”
“All right, Somers, enough chitchat. The girl we’re looking for modeled for Mr. Froger. Her mother hasn’t heard from her in three days, and she didn’t show up here for her session yesterday.”
Froger awakened from his pensive moment and rejoined us in the land of the living. He uncrossed his arms and dug his hands into the pockets of his white smock. He looked like a tramp who’d dressed up as a surgeon but had forgotten to wash his hands.
“Maybe she didn’t like the finished product,” I suggested.
“It isn’t finished,” said Froger, like a politician discussing a bill that was still in committee. He had a Dutch accent.
“Maybe all that posing gave her cramps.”
“For five hundred euro, she can damn well deal with cramps,” said Froger. “I’ve already paid her, and I’m not finished with her yet.”
“So your interest is in finding your muse, is that it? You don’t really much care about the girl herself?”
“She’ll be worth far more as a statue than she’s worth as a girl,” he said, his words as cryptic as Sanskrit.
I glanced at Bonte. “I’d love to go right on chatting with Lord Froger, here,” I said, striking a match against the rough surface of a plaster grotesque, “but it’s like trying to get straight answers out of a block of marble.”
Bonte took my arm and led me outside. Through a dusty window, I watched the Dutch Rodin’s face go blank, as if he were a table lamp and someone had just pulled the plug. His shoulders slumped, his eyes fell closed.
It was misty out, and the garden smelled like a graveyard.
“Jaak Froger’s about to break through, Somers.”
“Ask me, he’s about to break apart.”
“The city’s going to commission him to do a monument for Millionaires’ Park.”
“Yeah? I hope he comes up with something better than those.” I waved at a pair of incomplete figures that glared out from the atelier at us like a couple of juvenile delinquents behind bars.
“They’re supposed to be abstract, Somers. You don’t know about Froger?”
I knew. Jaak Froger’s first success had come with an exhibition in the S.M.A.K., Jan Hoet’s Museum of Contemporary Art. After that, he’d pulled off an impressive stunt, erecting twelve plaster monstrosities along the Graslei in a single night — the city awoke the next morning to their miraculous appearance, as if they’d been delivered from outer space by aliens.
In my opinion, Froger himself was the alien.
I also knew there were collectors who’d paid as much as half a million euros for one of Froger’s plaster tchotchkes. Come to think of it, the plaster cast I’d worn on my broken leg after crashing my Taunus was still lying around my apartment somewhere. It wasn’t all that big, but give it the right title and maybe Hoet would buy it for his mantelpiece, pay me enough that I wouldn’t have to waste any more of my time dealing with the Old Philosopher.
Anyway, I knew about Froger. In fact, I’d seen him, the day before. Him and his muse...
A day earlier, I crossed the atrium and shimmered into the atelier. In amongst the ugly headless statues I spotted a true work of art. She sat like a Roman goddess with a white sheet draped over her shoulders, facing the artist. Jaak Froger stood at an easel, sketching her with broad pencil strokes. I doubted that he generally needed sketches for his misshapen, hulking projects — but with a still life like that in front of me, I would have found some excuse to stand and stare at it, too.
She was simply irresistible. She held her proud chin high, and her red hair seemed to be in constant motion. Froger wasn’t satisfied with his sketch, and he strode up to her and readjusted the sheet to bare one of her shoulders and reveal another ten centimeters of creamy thigh.
I took a seat on a huge plaster head that lay on the floor near the easel.
“What is this, a city map?” I said, examining the sketch.
“If you don’t mind your tongue,” snarled Froger, “you’ll need a city map to find your way home.”
“I thought artists only got moody when the work wasn’t going well.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You apparently get moody when your seduction isn’t going well.”
“Get out of here, James. You’re throwing me off balance.”
“I was born off balance.” I winked at the red-headed model.
“You’re in the wrong room, James. My wife wants a foot massage.”
I tried to read the look on the model’s face. Her head was as motionless as a corpse’s, but the twinkle in her eyes was intended to reassure me. I nodded at her. Then Froger faced her and tipped his head at an angle. He smiled affably, but the girl didn’t react. Froger laid a hand on her thigh and patted it gently to indicate that it was time to take a break. She stood up and strolled off to smoke a cigarette.
“Even a butler ought to know that an artist and his model share an intimate relationship,” Froger told me.
“Would you have an intimate relationship with Margaret Thatcher if she was posing for you?”
“I make statues out of plaster, James, but I’m a man of flesh and blood.” He strode over to his easel, examined his sketch intently, and added a line here and there. If he needed that drawing to make his next sculpture, then I needed to fly to the Bahamas to eat a banana. His real motive was as obvious as Gene Simmons’ makeup.