After breakfast, Mark went back in the boat. Irene or I would take Schwind to Rock Harbour when the time came. The pilot offered to fly him, but Gundlach snapped at him that he had hired the helicopter and needed it to be kept ready, the pilot should go and make sure that the thing would fly when needed.

Then Gundlach looked around the group. “Let’s talk about this reasonably. I’m the last authenticated owner of the painting. To claim it as yours, Schwind, you would have to have received it from me in some way – how? On the basis of the contract? The contract was worthless. Indeed, where is it? In any case, you surely don’t want to call on the contract in court and then read in the press that you received the painting in exchange for the woman, because the painting was worth more to you than her.”

“The press eats out of my hand. I’ll give them a version of the story that leaves you looking like the bad guy, not me. The contract was unenforceable, I know that now, but if you make an unenforceable contract, you’re not entitled to get back what you gave to fulfill your end of it. You gave the painting to me in the house.”

“Gave? The painting was still on my property, still in the hands of my butler, and had yet to enter your possession. That never happened; the vehicle in which the painting was placed was not in your possession, but rather that of the thief – the lady thief, as we now know, and her accomplice.”

“If you thought the painting still belonged to you, why didn’t you report the loss? Why isn’t the picture on the register of stolen art?”

“Why didn’t I report the loss? I suspected even then that Irene stole the painting. I didn’t want to harm her.”

“How would registering the painting harm her? And if you didn’t want to harm Irene then, why do you want to do it now?”

“I don’t want to hurt her. All she needs to do is to make it clear to the gallery that it’s my painting. In fact, there’s no reason it shouldn’t stay on display at the art gallery. Or you could show it at your retrospective as a loan.” Gundlach turned to Irene. “But you have to put an end to this.”

He gave her a pained look, and suddenly I realized what this was about. Yes, the painting and the money, but something else was more important. Gundlach felt inferior to Irene, as inferior as he had back then, when she left him and he couldn’t win her back. Perhaps he hadn’t ever felt equal to her – a woman who had never given up her resistance, refusal, and spite. Irene was the defeat of his life, and he had to compensate that defeat.