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Be Open.

I haven’t opened the envelope, until now. I’ve left it on my desk, like a warning. A warning not to believe girls who love 1950s films, perhaps.

But today, I opened it. It held a pair of car keys. And a letter.

The letter doesn’t contain apologies, but congratulations.

Claire thanks me for having helped her to pull off the coup she’d been organising for more than two years.

She says this was the only way she could do it. She had to draw me into her web so she could get what she wanted more than anything: a car. But not just any old car. An icon. A unique example of an outstanding series created to belong to all mankind.

She’d studied everything down to the last detail, including her arrest.

The result of her coup is now in my hands, she says. The car is hidden in an underground car park at King’s Cross. The letter contains the address and parking space number. She asks me to look after it for her until she gets back.

She’d wanted to get her hands on that treasure for two years, but didn’t want to share it with Cornelius Kohler. So she thought up that long and complex plan to trick us all.

She met me by chance that day at the cinema – perhaps the only random event in this whole affair. But she knew immediately that I could help her. She knew I wouldn’t have given up, that I’d have looked for her everywhere.

She managed to steal what she wanted. She managed to get the car to safety before Cornelius Kohler found her and locked her in Pompidou Centre. She managed to leave enough clues to make sure she was found at the right time. She managed to get everyone on her trail.

What can I say – a perfect plan.

The letter ends with a wish – she wants to see me when she comes out of prison. She says that she’ll come looking for me. She says she wants the car back, and that we can try to do what we haven’t yet managed to: get to know each other better, see whether there’ll be more time to laugh, or cry, as a couple.

She says I can use the car but mustn’t get too attached to it. She says when she gets out, we can go for a drive together. That way, I’ll understand why she wanted that car so much. I’ll understand what it means too. She says we could have a great relationship. At least, until one of us falls in love with something else.

See you soon -  that’s how the letter ends. The most laconic “see you soon” that I’ve ever read.

So I’ve had an adventure as well. An adventure rather similar to Chandler’s “Long goodbye”. A story that until now I’d only read about, except that my story, rather than “The long goodbye”, should be called “The long arrivederci”.

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They’ve even congratulated me. Who knows why.

Today I went to Scotland Yard. I met my invisible Virgil, the detective I helped with the arrest of my own girlfriend.

He’s a nice guy, after all that. He shook my hand, and said I had what it takes to be a detective. He said that without my help they’d never have done it.

Small consolation.

The detective had two things to tell me. First: that at that very moment the French authorities were arresting Cornelius Kohler. His unchallenged reign over the European art world was now at an end.

Second: Claire Galliard has left me something. She had something to give me, an object the detective promised to give me.

It was an envelope, a little bit too heavy to contain just words.

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You can’t change everything.

Not even Juliette, with her innate ability to get out of any situation, could escape from herself.

Nobody can.

All kinds of things have happened in this story. None of the people I’ve encountered have really been who they said they were. I feel like I’ve been watching a championship game of Transformers.

The investigator who’s been following my affairs all this time was more than just an ordinary investigator. He was a detective from Scotland Yard.

The detective received my report, and called for back-up. He ended his journey right at the point I indicated on the map. He found Juliette, or Claire. He freed her, and then arrested her.

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What to do?

I’ve read the details about a thousand times. I reckon that Juliette’s long description is referring to what she’s managed to find out about her journey after she was kidnapped. I’ve been trying to locate the right place for hours, using Google street view, but I still can’t decipher Juliette’s directions.

Perhaps Juliette is there somewhere. Everyone has to help. Open Street View and try to find out where Juliette’s been taken, following her directions. When you think you’ve found her, send the investigator the coordinates of the location you’ve arrived at.

That’s all we can do for now.

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These days are gone, and I’m not so self assured.

Of the two, I’ll choose the lesser evil. Juliette has sent me an email.
There was no subject.
It just contained a series of meaningless details. You can find the link to the email here.
I’ll tell you one thing: the text of the email ends like this:

help!

Either I’ve ended up in a Beatles song, or I’ve fallen asleep in front of a horror film.

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What Claire did

Clouseau didn’t skip much detail. He listed Cornelius’ crimes.
Thefts of art works. Illegal trade of valuables, aiding and abetting.
I’m not interested in anything about him, other than knowing that Juliette helped him.
The investigator says that Claire Galliard was one of his best thieves for over two years.
I would have preferred to have found out some other way. Although at this point I can believe anything.
Clouseau told me several times to tell him even the slightest detail I can find out about her. 
I don’t know whether I will. Finding Juliette might mean catching a dangerous criminal. But it might also take Juliette away from me for ever, even if she was never mine.

I don’t know what to do.

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A long-awaited return.

Clouseau, the investigator, is back again. He rang me on my private mobile number. He knows all about my electronic conversation with Cornelius Kohler.
He says I mustn’t believe him, and that he has unquestionable evidence that Claire is in his hands. He’s certain.
He says that this charge is enough to send him to jail for a good while, so he can pay for all that he’s done.
We need to find Claire, so they can catch him. He says he needs my help.
How strange. Again, I thought I was the one who needed help.

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Skype and real life #2

Othello was on Skype yesterday evening.
I asked him again about Juliette.
He said he didn’t know her.
I asked him for information about Claire.
The icon on his contact remained motionless for a while, then it became a pencil… he was writing something. The icon stayed that way for a long time. More than twenty minutes. I thought the system had crashed. I thought I’d got lost inside my own head.
When I came back to my senses, there was Kohler’s reply. It was just ten lines long. But his contact was no longer online.
He says that Claire used to work for him, but he hasn’t seen her for a long time. He says he has no idea where she is. He asks whether I know anything, even the smallest thing, about her. He asks me to tell him what I know.
We are back at square one.

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Skype and real life

It’s happened. Even I can’t believe it. We were obviously convincing, but somehow Cornelius has noticed our performance.

It was the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep. Traffic noise was coming from the street. Some drunk guy was shouting in the dark. Suddenly, I received a contact request via Skype. The nickname was “Othello”. While I was trying to work out what Desdemona would have thought about a nickname like that, I accepted the contact and found myself chatting to none other than Cornelius Kohler.  He congratulated me, saying that I had a future as an artist. How strange. That’s what my grandmother used to say.

I asked him about Juliette, and he broke off the conversation.

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Cornelius can’t hear us.

I’ve tried. I took a photo of myself in the shower with 500 minutes written on it and I sent it. It didn’t work. I tried to climb up a tree and I stayed up there for 500 minutes. Nothing. Not even my on-line newspaper wants anything to do with publishing my performance. I’m convinced something extra is needed. I’ve thought about it for a while.
And something came to mind.
Let’s try to inform the journalists. I remembered that, back in the editorial office, we receive tons of notifications from people, and sometimes, when they are interesting, they give us some important tip-offs.
Today, I sent one of these forms over from the office to my computer.
You’ll find it here.
Download it. Try to fill it in. Try to make your performance interesting from the off and send it to the editorial offices of newspapers, TV stations, and websites – both locally and nationwide.
Perhaps this way we’ll manage to stir the waters more and come up with something more interesting for Cornelius.

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