The Same Picture, Different Board

Sanne had put the flask on the windowsill. She held a mug over the empty table, changed her mind and carried it to the desk behind the door. Vera stood with her coat half off. Last time she had been quite ready to put a coffee down beside one of the boxes. Now even the chair with her bag on it seemed to be in the wrong place.

‘That can stay there,’ Sanne said. ‘We just need some room.’

Anouk pulled up another chair. She had not brought the presentation folder; today they needed the pieces already here, and the photographs Sanne had taken when they arrived. The permission Anouk had set out on Saturday was on her phone. Vera had read it again before leaving home at half past nine. Compare the work photographs. Consult the inventory. Share nothing from the private box. It was shorter than her own list of questions.

Hugo brought a large sheet of clean, smooth paper. He had the roll under his arm and put it on the other table before cutting the sheet.

‘From the drawing group. Unused, don't worry.’ Rather than run his hand over the paper, he weighted the clear corners beside it with a book. ‘Do you need me to stay?’

‘No,’ Sanne said. ‘I'll call if we need anything.’

Someone pushed a door shut in the corridor and it swung straight open again. Hugo came back for a wedge. Vera caught Anouk looking at him as though she wanted to ask when he had last been in this room. But Anouk said nothing. Sanne started her computer and drew the screen towards the table.

The first photograph showed a cardboard box, with Sanne's ruler beside it and the date on a slip of paper. Then came the prints: the front of each one, followed by its mounting board. Hardly formal catalogue photographs, Vera thought. Here a chair corner, there Sanne's hand beneath an edge. But every piece was shown in full. Sanne had left the filenames as they were.

‘I photographed them when they came in. In case someone said later that we'd damaged a corner.’ She pulled the first box towards her. ‘My predecessor had an argument over that once.’

Anouk lifted the top mounted print with both hands beneath the board. A low waiting room, benches against the wall. On the screen was exactly the same bench. Vera moved closer without thinking.

‘Do we need to check every one?’ she asked.

‘If we stop after four, we'll know about four,’ Anouk said.

There was no sharpness in it. Vera closed her notebook and looked first.

They began with number one. At Anouk's direction Sanne turned the board over. A large number, two small letters and a mark like a fingerprint. The same letters on the screen, the same broken line under the number. Vera wrote down the number and a tick. For number two they had to enlarge the photograph to see a dented corner. Three and four were Dorus's two photographs. Anouk pointed this out before Vera could ask.

‘He took those. There's no need to make that complicated.’

In number three, a man was partway up a ladder with a cloth over his shoulder. Four showed the same spot without the ladder. Vera could not tell what had happened between the two. She wanted to point to the edge and ask whether that was Bas, but they were here to look at the board in Anouk's hands. Anouk laid it back on the clean surface.

At number nine, Sanne's finger hovered over the mouse.

‘This is the right one, isn't it?’

The back was on the screen. Beneath the large nine, a small line of writing sloped to the right. Anouk read it out: ‘Door. W zero five, first frame. My initials.’

She straightened the piece on the table. A nine. Nothing else.

‘Try the next photograph,’ Sanne said.

She clicked forward. A different front, then the number ten on the back. Back again. The words under the nine. Vera could make them out even in the smaller screen view now. The handwriting stopped just short of a dark patch in the corner. The board on the table had no dark patch.

‘Are we looking at the right box?’ Vera asked.

Sanne looked at the lid, at the photograph taken on arrival, then at Anouk.

‘Yes. Two boxes. Fourteen in each. I haven't moved them from one to the other.’

Anouk turned number nine face up. The open door swung equally far into the room in both pictures. A handcart stood at an angle, obscuring part of the floor. Even the pale patch against the doorpost was the same.

‘It's the same image,’ Anouk said. ‘But this isn't my old board.’

Vera stared at the smooth back as though the writing might appear if she looked long enough. A missing annotation was different from a missing box. Perhaps there had been a mistake, an extra print put at the front by accident. She looked at the rest of the box. No spare corners protruded between the pieces.

‘Let's carry on first,’ Anouk said.

They put number nine aside on the paper, leaving space around it. Ten was less clear. An old mark near the edge was missing. Vera hesitated to put a cross beside it. She wrote a question mark instead, until Anouk asked why.

‘It might just be the light.’

Sanne drew the curtain aside. Pale daylight fell flat across the table. She gave the board a quarter turn without touching the photograph. The corner stayed intact. In the intake photograph it had been bent over and darkened.

They did not have to enlarge anything for eleven. On the intake photograph a brown ring crossed the print's edge and continued over the board, making an almost complete circle. The photograph on the table was clean. So was its board.

‘I know that one,’ Anouk said.

Her voice had changed. Vera looked up, but Anouk was already bent over the screen.

‘I was furious about that. Not with Dorus. With myself. There wasn't enough room and I put my mug down where I shouldn't have.’ She pointed without touching the screen. ‘I remember thinking it was only the corner. Then I lifted it and saw the rest.’

‘So this is a new print,’ Vera said.

‘The whole thing is a different piece.’ Anouk looked at Sanne. ‘You didn't just get a clean photograph. You got a clean board.’

Sanne pushed her chair back. Its legs squealed on the floor. Vera thought she would get up, but she stayed seated, her hands between her knees.

Seventeen pieces still to check. The urge to ring someone was so strong that Vera had already taken her phone from her bag. She put it face down beside her notebook. Twelve and thirteen lacked the little signs of wear in the intake photographs. Fourteen had only the number on the back; on the screen, ‘handkar W07/2 A.M.’ was written beneath it. Handcart. Fifteen, the first piece in the second box, was different too. At sixteen the pencil mark and the small damaged corner matched again.

That brought an unexpected relief. Not everything had changed. She need not eye the whole table with suspicion. Anouk asked her to say the number aloud once more. From sixteen onwards they checked at the same pace as before. Vera did not hurry. At twenty-seven they went back a photograph because she had clicked too far; Sanne caught it before Vera put the tick in her notebook.

By a quarter to twelve, seven pieces lay apart. Nine to fifteen. Their spaces in the boxes were empty. Vera counted the numbers in her notebook rather than the boards on the table and came to seven again.

Sanne went to fetch her mug. She took a sip, grimaced and put it back on the desk.

‘I should have checked the backs.’

Anouk said nothing. She was looking at the gaps in the first box.

‘After the preparation session,’ Sanne went on. ‘I checked the numbers. And the images. He was making seven reproductions to go with the explanatory material. I thought we could put them with the rest once we'd decided how to show everything.’

‘Was he supposed to replace them?’ Vera asked.

‘No. Bring them separately. That's what I asked for.’

She went back to the computer and opened her correspondence. Vera glanced at Anouk, who nodded. Sanne did not search for theft or forgery. She searched for the date of the preparation session. Three messages and an attachment came up.

In the message sent beforehand, Sanne asked for the original set to be left intact and the seven reproductions delivered separately. Vera read it twice. Then Sanne opened the preparation checklist Dorus had returned. Twenty-eight recorded pieces put back. Seven reproductions supplied separately. A date underneath, and his name.

‘I never saw that separate folder,’ Sanne said. ‘I thought it was still in one of the boxes.’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘Not then. We had a meeting about the rent that evening. I knew it was no excuse for not checking, but I didn't.’

Vera wanted to say that Dorus must have switched the pieces here. She had almost begun his name. Sanne rubbed her thumb knuckle and glanced towards the corridor, where someone was rattling keys.

‘Was he here on his own?’ Vera asked instead.

‘Mostly, in this room. I was across the corridor. Hugo came in once about the sockets. I came in a few times myself.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards Hugo could still get in. So could I. It's not a vault.’

Hugo appeared in the doorway just then. He looked at Sanne, then at the table. ‘Everything all right?’

Sanne told him herself. She pointed to the seven prints they had set aside and showed him the photograph of the ring. He took the keys from one pocket, as though they had suddenly become a nuisance, and put them in the other.

‘I haven't touched the photographs,’ he said. ‘Only the boxes, when we needed room for chairs. We put them in that cupboard with the lids on.’

‘I'm not saying you—’ Vera began.

She stopped. Hugo had not been speaking to her. He was waiting for Sanne, who asked when that had been. She added his answer to her own notes. Vera looked at the nine again. The numbers were large enough to see while counting. Anyone content with those would still have counted twenty-eight.

Anouk asked for copies of the intake photographs of these work prints and the relevant preparation messages. Sanne made a new folder containing just those files. No visitor photographs, no entire mailbox. Vera wrote the seven numbers at the top of a sheet, leaving space beneath each. She wanted to record what the differences were, rather than have to say later that everyone had seen them.

Anouk watched as she described the ring on eleven. ‘Not just “coffee stain missing”. Say it crosses both edges in the old photograph. Otherwise it sounds as though someone has simply cleaned the print.’

Vera amended it. At nine and fourteen she copied out the small annotations in full. She described the other damage as plainly as she could. Sanne read the list and changed “tear” at ten to “folded corner”. It had not been torn.

Getting everything safely back into the boxes took another twenty minutes. They returned the seven new pieces to their numbered places. Sanne put a separate note of their findings on top, without writing on any of the boards. Anouk wanted them left here until they knew how the whole return would be managed. She did not take a clean copy instead of the piece she had lost.

Outside, a van stood on the cycle path. Vera had to go round its tail lift to reach her bicycle. Across the road someone was buying a loaf. She realised she was hungry. An entire morning had gone into seven numbers, yet she was not ready to go back to the café.

‘Where do you think they are?’ she asked.

Anouk zipped her coat. ‘I don't know.’

Vera looked up at the room's window. Behind the glass Sanne moved along the table, her cold mug in her hand.

‘I'll ring Tine,’ Anouk said. ‘About the old selection. Before I make any more claims I haven't checked.’

She did not dial at once. First she asked whether Vera could manage Wednesday morning. Vera got out her diary and actually checked, her bicycle between her knees. She had to be back by a quarter to two for Yasmin's break. She wrote half past nine and read the arrangement aloud while Anouk waited for her to turn the page.