Gauguin Connection, The by Estelle Ryan Page B

addresses.” I tapped with my index finger on my temple. “Once it’s in here, it stays. I don’t want the responsibility of it on paper in my home.”
    “Oh. Okay.” The folded piece of paper disappeared into his jacket pocket.
    “Let’s sit down.” I pointed to the chair next to mine and cringed slightly when he moved closer to look at the computer screens. I leaned away from him. “What is your interest in this case?”
    “To stop the senseless murders of artists.”
    I pushed my chair away from him, crossed my arms and glared at him. “Your main motivation for being involved in this is not to stop murders.”
    “What do you know?” He mirrored my body language by also crossing his arms.
    “Every time you talk about it, I see remorse. You are feeling guilty about something. What?”
    He bit down hard and swallowed a few times before he answered. “I feel responsible.”
    “How?”
    “It was only after the seventh time that I became suspicious.” He smiled sadly. “As you know, I exposed forgeries whenever I found one. It was seven times too late when I realised that soon after my reports…”
    “… an artist was murdered,” I finished softly. Guilt and regret were deeply etched on his face. It had no rational basis. “You could not have known.”
    “Maybe not in the beginning. But once I had noticed the murders, I should’ve immediately made the connection and stopped.”
    “Did you stop?”
    “I did. Too late.”
    “Have there been more murders since you stopped pointing out forgeries?”
    Colin frowned and blinked a few times. “Yes.”
    “Well, there you have it.”
    “Are you always this rational?”
    “Yes.”
    I followed his thought process by watching the different expressions moving over his face. The last was relief. “Thank you.”
    “No thanks needed. It’s simple logic.” I pointed at the computer screens. “Let me show you what I have so far.”
    I moved a bit closer to the computers, which put me closer to him. From the corner of my eye I saw him take a sip of his coffee and he moved to place the cup on the table. I stopped him with a quick hand and a voice that came out too stern. “Please use the coaster.”
    Colin’s hand stopped mid-air. With a slight smile he took the coaster I offered and placed his cup on it with care. “Why three computers?”
    “It helps.” Not even Phillip knew that it helped me to have as many things visually in front of me as possible. My auditory memory had never been my strength. It was my visual memory, my visualisation of patterns that awarded me the reputation I had acquired. I was not about to explain this to Colin. In the next fifteen minutes I did, however, explain to him exactly what I had found in the last few days. I told him about the mysteriously recovered artwork and the non-existent private investigators.
    “Then I started checking through all the shipping info,” I said.
    “You have details on shipping?” Colin leaned closer. Again I leaned away.
    “Manny sent me the shipping info for the last five years. It’s an incredible amount of data. It lists all the types of ships, the companies that own these ships, even the manifests for each voyage.”
    “From your earlier frustration, I assume you didn’t find anything?”
    “Of course I did.” The audacity to suggest otherwise drew my eyebrows together. “Just not as much as I hoped.”
    “Okay,” he said slowly, as if careful not to offend me. Again. “What did you find?”
    “When I entered the forty-seven miraculously discovered artworks, three of those were registered on the shipping manifests.”
    Colin’s eyes widened. “Which ones?”
    “A Degas pastel, a Gustav Klimt painting and an Amedeo Modigliani sculpture.”
    “Valuable stuff.”
    “But that’s not the most interesting.” My voice changed pitch as I became excited again with my meagre discoveries. “The Degas was shipped on a general cargo ship from St Petersburg to Rotterdam on 17 August