Page 32 of Undercover Star
"On the seafront?"
"That's the one."
"I remember sitting in this car park in a fierce gale, eating pizza while the rain hammered down," Matisse told him. The smile in his voice was impossible to miss. "The waves were a sight, but we contemplated taking a boat out." He shrugged. "Reason prevailed, I'm sure you're glad to hear."
"Sounds like you enjoyed growing up here."
"I did. At times, I miss it like crazy." He passed the swimming pool and, two hundred yards farther, found a parking space by the side of the road, almost opposite the cul-de-sac Josh wanted to watch. "This good?"
"Pretty damned perfect. If he leaves his house we're likely to spot him."
"Does he have a reason to leave?"
"He may have a job."
"Thieves have jobs?"
"Some of the high-end ones do. It's excellent cover. One of the first guys Paul and I took down taught physics in secondary school. And I remember hearing about another thief—he took jewels from hotel safes, mostly—who was a long-distance lorry driver. Do you know how tricky it is to connect cases all over Europe, to evenrealisethey all have the same MO?"
"What did the kids say when you arrested the teacher?"
"Trust you...." Josh shook his head. "And I have no idea. We arrested him on a job, not while he was in school."
"That's a shame."
"Why am I getting the impression you're finding this cool?"
Matisse looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. "It's stupid."
"You're romanticising," Josh concluded, voice flat. "You think being an art thief is—what? Daring? Exciting? A little anti-establishment?"
"All of that?" Matisse said quietly. "I know it's not romantic, just like there's nothing romantic about being a pirate. Or a music star, for that matter. But if I'd been fourteen, and you'd come into my school to arrest my physics teacher for being an ace burglar...."
"You would have made a different career choice?"
"Not I, no. I was neck-deep in music, even then. But some of my classmates would have found the idea appealing." He leaned deeper into the driver's seat and hitched his knees up until he could rest his chin on them. "I've been reading about art theft since we met. I know it's becoming increasingly violent, because it isn't just about art anymore. Most people don't know, and don't understand. They watchThe Italian Job, orThe Thomas Crown Affair, orOcean's Eleven, or any of the other movies, and they think it's cool."
"What do you think?"
"I think a lot of skill goes into being a high-end thief. A lot of effort and dedication. I can appreciate that, in an abstract way." He turned his head, regarding Josh by the glow of a street light until he felt Matisse's gaze like a burn on his skin. "Does that... offend you?"
Josh opened his mouth to reply in the affirmative, but then he stopped. As Matisse had pointed out, high-end burglaries required a high level of skill, imagination, and brass balls. He couldn't remember the number of times he and Paul had goggled at an audacious heist. Probably as often as they'd laughed their arses off at the predicament some thieves found themselves in when their crazy ideas didn't work out. Or when Paul and Josh got the drop on them.
So what did he find offensive? The lack of consideration for the damage and heartbreak the thieves caused? The disregard for rules that should apply to all parts of society? Or that glorifying thieves dismissed his efforts—his and all his colleagues' efforts—to stop the behaviour?
And then it occurred to him to wonder whether Matisse found it offensive if all his hard work, dedication, and skill was dismissed by people focussing on the way he looked in tight leather or ripped jeans.
The rain wasn't letting up. If anything, the heavens opened even more and the clouds drew lower. All around them, the town was waking. The cough of diesel engines broke through the rattle of raindrops on the Land Rover's roof as delivery trucks and vans began their day, while the first buses started to make their rounds, and a few pedestrians hurried past, huddled under umbrellas.
Helensburgh in the early morning rain made an incongruous backdrop against which he and Matisse were locked into a discussion about ethics and skill. Josh shrugged it off in the end, convinced that stranger things had happened.
––––––––
WITH THE LEVEL OF PATIENCEMatisse displayed, he could have served in the police force. He'd dozed for an hour, when Josh had suggested it, but otherwise hadn't taken his eyes off the entrance to the close and the houses they could see. They took turns stretching their legs, got coffee, breakfast pastries, and newspapers. Matisse propped a notepad against the steering wheel and opened his tablet on his lap. Josh hadn't been able to make much of the setup. Then his jaw had dropped when he saw the keyboard app.
Matisse Vervein was sitting in a car on Helensburgh's West Esplanade, writing music. If his fans knew, no doubt they'd go ballistic. Or turn this quiet town into a circus.
"Question." Matisse interrupted his musings a while later.
