In silence, they joined the evening traffic that took them down Ludwigstrasse, with its imposing white buildings, to the upmarket Schwabing district of Munich. They passed boutiques, discotheques, trendy bars with the first nocturnal revelers already gathering outside, talking noisily with one another or shouting into their phones. Their journey ended at a quiet side street near the large park of the English Garden.
Audrey Hepburn parked her Mini in a gap so narrow that Steven suspected he wouldn’t even have been able to fit his bicycle into it. With the newspaper in hand, she climbed out and walked toward a low-built, old-fashioned little house with a tiny front garden. Among the modern buildings with their expanses of glass, it looked as if it had fallen out of another time. There was a bronze plate with elaborate lettering beside the door. Steven glanced at it and then looked in surprise at the woman in the black sunglasses.
“Dr. Sara Lengfeld. Art Detection,” he murmured. “Are you really a detective?”
“First and foremost I’m a qualified art historian,” she replied, holding the door open for him. “And let’s get one thing clear right away: my work is deadly boring. I look through art catalogs as thick as your arm, I surf the Internet, I talk on the phone until there’s steam coming out of my ears, and now and then, for a change, I get to go to an exhibition of enormous old paintings where the museum curator eyes me suspiciously over his shoulder.” Her lips narrowed. “So you can forget all the private-eye nonsense you know from movies and books. And anyway, in this case, I think of myself more as a niece than a detective.”
Without another word, she walked into the little house. Steven followed her, looking around in surprise. The building was much larger inside than it appeared from the outside. On the walls of a softly lit corridor painted a pale orange hung prints by German Expressionists side by side works by Toulouse-Lautrec and modern photographs of nudes. Passing a hallway on his right, Steven saw a small kitchen, and beyond that a bedroom. A door on the left led into a well-lit office that seemed to take up almost half of the first floor. Here, too, there were countless paintings and sculptures illuminated by small halogen lights, giving the room, which had a ceiling almost nine feet high, the look of an exclusive art gallery.
“What is all this?” Steven asked. “The Museum of Modern Art?”
“God, no, only my office.” The young woman smiled. “I know, the rubber plant is missing. But the view makes up for that.”
Steven looked appreciatively out of the large panoramic window, with its view of bushes, trees, and the English Garden beyond. The woman really did have good taste, even if it wasn’t entirely in line with his own. In the middle of the office stood a showy kidney-shaped table from the fifties, piled high with art catalogs, file folders, empty Chinese food containers, and dirty coffee cups. A computer covered with yellow Post-it notes was enthroned among the mess.
“Sorry, I haven’t gotten around to tidying up yet,” Sara Lengfeld said. She cleared a few brochures and art books off the broad leather sofa before sinking down on it with a weary sigh. “It’s been a busy few days.”
Steven sat down beside her and briefly admired her long legs, one crossed over the other. She wore comfortable shoes. Sara had taken off her bright green rain cape and her scarf; her sunglasses stuck in her brunette hair like an extra pair of eyes. She had on jeans and a close-fitting woolen pullover that came down over her hips. Only after some delay did Steven remember why he was there.
“The dead man in the newspaper,” he began hesitantly. “Is he really your uncle?”
She nodded. “My mother’s older brother. We lost touch a long time ago. Until very recently, the last time I saw him he was reading Pinocchio to me.” She smiled wanly. “I’m something of a loner, you see. It runs in the family. Maybe it comes with my work as well.”
“And what exactly do you do?” Steven inquired.
“I look for lost art. Stolen works, art that was looted, paintings thought to have disappeared years ago. Every year six billion dollars’ worth of art is stolen, but most of it turns up again eventually. At auctions, in galleries and museums, in private collections.” Getting to her feet, she tossed Steven one of the big catalogs on the table. “It’s my job to find those paintings. That earns me a percentage of their real value—and usually a volley of furious insults from the supposed owners,” she added with a grin. “See, the people who have the paintings generally have no idea that they’re stolen. When I go into a gallery, the curator makes the sign of the cross three times and puts a laxative in my prosecco.”