Art of Murder by José Carlos Somoza Read Free Book Online

living human being. Waists bent like hinges, legs raised vertically, backs arched like bridges over rivers . .. None of them moved, or blinked, or took breaths. Their arms imitated petals, from a distance their ankles looked like stalks. He had to approach the security rope and peer very closely before he could distinguish muscles, breasts crowned with the red bud of nipples, genitals that had lost all their hair and their obscenity, genitals as free of sexual associations as the corollas of flowers. Then Braun's nose took over, telling him that each of them was giving off a distinctive, penetrating perfume that could be perceived even above the different smells (not all of them pleasant) produced by the general public crowding into the room, just as one hears a solo instrument above the orchestral accompaniment.
    'Blumen - Flowers.' Bruno van Tysch's collection of twenty flowers. Marigold Desiderata, Iris Versicolor, Rosa Fabrica, Hedera Helix, Orchis Fabulata. The titles were almost as fantastic as the works themselves. He remembered having seen photos of some of these flow ers in a magazine, a newspaper or on television. They had already become cultural icons of the twenty-first century. But never until now had he contemplated them an naturel, all together, on show in that vast room of the Kunsthalle. And of course, he had never smelt them. For half an hour Braun wandered from one podium to the next, slack-jawed with shock. It was an overwhelming experience.
    It was the one painted in scarlet that attracted him most. The colour was so intense it produced a kind of optical illusion: an aura, a stain on the retina, the shimmering effect an extremely hot object produces. Braun drew closer to the podium as if in a trance. He believed he could detect something familiar in the perfume, as penetrating and fantastic as a marketstall of Arab essences. The work was crouching down on tiptoe. Both her hands were covering her sex, and her head was tilted down to her right (Braun's left). She was completely shaven and depilated. At first he thought the work had no features at all, but beneath the intense vermilion mask he could discern the prickle of eyebrows, the swelling of the nose and the bas-relief of a pair of lips. Two tiny breasts indicated it was a young woman. Braun walked right round the podium without spotting any kind of support that would allow the woman to stay on tiptoe for so long. The work was a naked, shaven girl balancing on the tips of her toes.
     
    It was then he thought he recognised the fragrance. The figure in front of him reminded him of the perfume his wife used.
     
    When he got out into the street, still bemused, he tried in vain to remember the title of the flow er that smelt like his wife. Purple Tulip? Magic Marigold?
     
    Even now, he was still trying to identify it.
     
    'Buncher created a collection called "Claustrophilia",' Bosch was explaining. 'Oscar spent a long period of time at the house where Claustrophilia 5 , the model Sandy Ryan, was being exhi b ited. She was the seventh substitute. He was polite with the works: occasionally he talked too much, but he was always respectful. In 2003 he bought an apartment in New York and made that his base, but since January this year he has been in Europe, looking after the paintings in the "Flowers" exhibition. Here in Vienna he was staying in the same Kirchberggasse hotel as the rest of the team. The hotel is very close to the cultural centre. We've questioned his colleagues and immediate superiors: none of them noticed anything strange about him in the past few days. And that's all we know.'
     
    Braun had begun taking notes in a small notebook.
     
    ‘I know where Kirchberggasse is,' he said. His tone seemed to emphasise that he was the only person from Vienna in the room. 'We'll have to search his room.'
     
    'Of course,' agreed Bosch.
     
    They had already searched the place, and his apartment in New York, but he was not going to tell the policeman