Page 35 of The Collector
“It does now.”
“I received half of the money up front. The rest I received when I delivered the painting to Peter last Friday evening at Jørgens Smørrebrød Café in Vissenbjerg.” She opened the laptop and turned the screen toward Gabriel. “And this is the man who killed Peter three hours later outside his apartment in Copenhagen.”
“How did you get the video?”
“Click, click, click.”
“And Peter Nielsen’s phone?”
She smiled. “Old-school.”
They went through it once from the beginning. Then they went through it a second time to make certain there were no inconsistencies in her story. The date of Peter Nielsen’s original offer. The nature of the information he had provided in advance. The circumstances surrounding the theft itself. The exchange of money and art at the café on the island of Funen. The man had been waiting there when Ingrid arrived. She reckoned he was in his late thirties or early forties, but Gabriel, after close examination of the video and still shots, concluded he was closer to forty-five, maybe a bit older. He also disagreed with Ingrid’s assertion that he was a Finn or from one of the Baltic states. The eyes and cheekbones suggested his ethnic roots lay farther to the east. His physical movements, in Gabriel’s learned opinion, were those of a professional—a professional whose photograph Ingrid could find nowhere online.
Gabriel asked her to run the photos through the search engines one more time, but once again there were no matches. Then they rewatched the video of the man’s arrival at the café. It occurred at 5:18 p.m., forty-two minutes before Ingrid was supposed to deliver the painting to Peter Nielsen.
“How did you set up the meeting?”
“I believe we’ve covered that ground, Mr. Allon. Twice, in fact.”
“And we’re going to continue covering it until I’m satisfied thatThe Concertby Johannes Vermeer isn’t in this house.”
“Peter and I conducted sensitive business discussions over Signal. And even then we always spoke in code.”
“And remind me, please, who chose the time and place.”
“I did,” she said with a sigh. “And in case you didn’t hear me the first two times, I was the first to arrive.”
“At half past five?”
“Yes.”
“And you brought the painting into the café?”
“I left it in a leather document tube in the trunk of my car.”
“The perfect way to transport one of only thirty-four known works by Johannes Vermeer.”
“I handled the painting very carefully, Mr. Allon. It suffered no damage while it was in my possession.”
“I don’t suppose you took a picture of it?”
“That would have been a bit like keeping the bloody knife as a souvenir, don’t you think?”
Gabriel smiled in spite of himself. “How did you get into Van Damme’s vault room?”
“Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Click, click, click.”
“And the button under the desk that moved aside the bookcases?”
“I pushed it.”
“How did you know where to find it?”
“The same way I knew about the existence of the vault room.”
