Long Time Coming (19 page)

‘My uncle isn’t with us today,’ I said. ‘My name’s Peter Fordham, Mr Cardale. I’m helping Rachel to—’

‘I know what you’re helping her to do.’

‘Thanks to Peter and his uncle, I’ve found out who forged the Picassos, Simon,’ said Rachel. ‘Desmond Quilligan. Your very own father.’

‘Quilligan was no father to me.’

‘Are you going to deny he was the forger your grandfather hired?’

‘I don’t have to deny anything.’

‘Does he get a mention in those papers you’re burning?’

‘Did good old Uncle Miles tell you to destroy any of your grandfather’s papers you still had?’ I put in. ‘Our visit obviously had a bigger effect than we thought if you had to close the gallery to get straight on with it. He whistles and you do his bidding. Is that how it works?’

‘You know nothing about it. Either of you. I’ve had a bellyful of questions and orders. You people and your wretched lawyers.
Sir
Miles Linley treating me like the under-gardener’s assistant. My grandfather. My father. The bloody Picassos. I’ve had it up to here with the whole damn lot.’

‘But why the fire, Simon?’ Rachel persisted, stepping closer to the incinerator. ‘What do you have to burn so urgently?’

‘None of your bloody business.’

‘Something tells me it’s very much my business. Let me see those papers.’

She walked boldly past him, defying him to stop her. For a second, it seemed he wasn’t even going to try. Then something snapped inside him, intent flared in his eyes. He swept the rake into the air and turned towards Rachel. With her gaze fixed on the prize of the pile of papers on the table, she didn’t realize what was about to happen. But I did.

My charge took him off balance and I grabbed the rake as he fell. His shoulder struck the edge of the table, which toppled with him. Rachel cried out and jumped back in alarm. The papers, the empty box, the whisky bottle and tumbler all crashed down, the bottle catching Cardale on the brow as he hit the ground. He grunted and lay where he was.

‘Oh my God,’ Rachel gasped, her hand to her mouth.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, tossing the rake away across the lawn. ‘It’s all right.’ I moved between her and Cardale.

‘What … what was he going to do?’

‘Something stupid. Something very stupid.’

She clasped my hand. ‘Is he … OK?’

As if in answer, Cardale moaned and looked up at us, blinking in shock. There was blood above his right eye, where the bottle had struck him. The bottle itself lay close to his face, the contents
leaking out into the grass. He gazed blearily at it, then back up at us. ‘Oh shit,’ he mumbled. He touched the wound on his brow and winced. ‘Sorry. I … I didn’t mean to…’

‘It looked to me like you meant it,’ I said, stepping cautiously towards him.

He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. He seemed as shocked by what he’d nearly done as Rachel was. And all the rage had left him. ‘It’s not worth any of this,’ he murmured.

‘Amen to that,’ said Rachel, so softly I’m not sure he heard her.

He reopened his eyes and struggled to focus on us. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked resignedly.

‘What I’ve wanted all along,’ Rachel replied. ‘The truth.’

The kitchen at Cherrygarth, like the house itself, was scaled to serve the large family that Geoffrey Cardale, when he originally bought it, may have imagined would one day fill the place. Somehow that had never happened and now his grandson was the sole occupant. Simon Cardale was sitting with us at the wide table that filled one end of the room, looking absurdly childlike with his tousled mop of hair and the Rupert Bear slippers he’d swapped his gumboots for. He had a strip of plaster on his brow and a mug of coffee in his hand, both supplied by Rachel, who’d recognized in the man who’d just tried to attack her with a rake someone who was actually even more vulnerable than she was and had taken pity on him as a result.

The chaos of unwashed dishes in the sink and the fact that the sink in question, along with the stove and all the other fittings, appeared several decades old, reinforced the impression that Cardale was a man whose need for mothering – or nannying, in his mother’s lifelong absence – hadn’t ended with childhood. He knew as much himself, as his shamefaced glances around made clear. The gallery was a front. This was where the reality of his life was laid bare.

‘Thank God you stopped me,’ he said, slurping his coffee. ‘I was … het up. I wasn’t … myself.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘You’re right
and
wrong about those papers.’ We’d brought the unemptied boxes into the kitchen with us. They stood on the floor by the table.
‘Linley told me to destroy everything of Grandfather’s I still had. But there’s nothing about the Picassos – or Desmond Quilligan – in any of those documents. Bills of sale; catalogues; bank statements; business correspondence: it’s all worthless stuff. I knew that. I’ve checked through it several times over the years. Linley wouldn’t listen. “Burn the whole damn lot.” His words on the phone to me last night. He’d guessed who you really were, Miss Banner, and the fact that you knew about Desmond scared him. I’ve never heard fear in his voice before. You know what? It was a good thing to hear. He deserves to be scared.

‘There’s something I ought to explain before we go any further. I don’t know how much Grandfather made out of the Picasso fraud. The bank statements certainly won’t tell you. He had a numbered account in Switzerland where all his illicit income was squirrelled away. I think there were other scams, you see. I think he was always up to something, though the Picassos were obviously his biggest killing. The thing is, though, I haven’t got any of the money. Not a penny. Indirectly, I’ve benefited from it, of course, if you can call Charterhouse and a leg-up in the art world benefits, which I grant you most people would. And then there’s Linley’s investment in the gallery. I’ve made a few bad buys over the years. More than a few. He’s helped me out. The money he’s used to help me out? I’m not kidding myself. He had a share of the Picasso proceeds. There’s not a doubt of it in my mind. He blackmailed Grandfather, using information Isolde got out of Desmond. Grandfather never said as much, of course. But then he never breathed a word to me about any of it.’

‘How did you find out, then?’ asked Rachel.

‘Ardal told me, after Grandfather died. He said it was time I knew.’

‘And how come you didn’t inherit what was left of the money?’

Cardale cracked a rueful smile. ‘Grandfather remarried late in life, Miss Banner. He spent most of his time in Montreux towards the end. My Swiss stepmother inherited everything except this house and the business. How much that amounted to … I have no idea. Swiss lawyers and accountants take Trappist vows. And she’s
married again herself since then. I don’t even get a Christmas card from her now. If you want to chase her for what’s rightfully yours, good luck.’

‘You admit it is rightfully mine, then?’

‘What would be the point of denying it? Desmond Quilligan painted the fake Picassos Grandfather delivered to your family in 1945. Grandfather kept the real ones and sold them to Brownlow. That’s what Ardal told me twelve years ago and I realized at once it was true. I used to tell the other boys at Charterhouse my father was a fighter pilot slain in the Battle of Britain, his Spitfire blown out of a blue sky over Norfolk in the summer of 1940. Sometimes, I even used to believe it myself. And why not? I didn’t want to admit or acknowledge the fact that my mother fell in love with an Irish terrorist, as we’d now call him. Or a Fenian rebel, Grandfather’s preferred description. Desmond Quilligan. The man I was forced to meet and be polite to. My father. As soon as I was free to, I shut him out of my life. I couldn’t do it completely. The Linleys kept in touch with Grandfather.
Aunt
Isolde and
Uncle
Miles. And Isolde always reminded me of Desmond. But I did my level best to forget that the man slowly drinking himself to death in Dollis Hill was my flesh and blood. I was glad when I heard he’d finally succeeded. I was relieved.

‘The question remained, though: why had Grandfather let him near me in the first place? Why had he been so … understanding? Well, Ardal gave me the answer eventually. Because it was the quid pro quo for Desmond forging the Picassos. He wasn’t in it for the money. He just wanted to know me, to be … some kind of father to me. And I wouldn’t let him. I was too priggish and snobbish and self-centred to accept what he tried to offer me. It turns out he wasn’t a bad man. He had principles, unlike my grandfather. And he had love to give. But I wouldn’t accept it. I remember the last time I saw him. December, 1955. I was helping out in the gallery after my first term at Oxford. Learning the ropes, as Grandfather put it. It was late afternoon, a week or so before Christmas, just beginning to get dark. I looked out of the window and there he was, on the other side of the street, staring in at me. He was drunk
and shabbily dressed, a wreck of the man he’d once been. I could have waved for him to come in, or gone out to speak to him. Instead I just … turned my back. And when I next looked … he was gone.’

‘Isolde took all his paintings from the house in Dollis Hill,’ I said. ‘Did you ever see them?’

‘No. She didn’t mention them and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know anything about him, in life or in death. I didn’t even go to his funeral, though I could have done, easily enough. Ardal made sure I knew where and when it was to be.’

‘Sir Miles says they sold the paintings.’

‘So I gather.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘Oh yes. He’d have wanted to be rid of them.’

‘We’re particularly interested in one called
Three Swans
.’

‘I can’t help you. Ardal might have it, I suppose.’

‘You mean Isolde gave him some of the pictures before selling the rest?’ queried Rachel.

‘Gave, no. Ardal bought them. Several, I believe. Anonymously. At auction.’

‘Bought them?’

‘So he told me. Confidentially. I wasn’t to mention it to his sister or Linley under any circumstances.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’d take it amiss. Though you might ask why he’d care how they’d take it since he sees nothing of them. Maybe …’ He frowned. ‘What’s so interesting about
Three Swans
?’

‘It’s the last picture he ever painted, according to his landlady,’ I replied. ‘We think there might be a … message in it.’

‘A
message
?’

‘Where does Ardal live?’ Rachel asked, as keen as I was to deflect a question that might oblige us to explain Eldritch’s part in all this.

‘Majorca. He has an apartment in Palma. Bought it years ago and retired there after winding up his law practice. Nothing grand, so he tells me. The sun’s good for his arthritis. In case you’re wondering, he got nothing out of the Picasso fraud.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘As sure as I can be. You see, when he came and told me all about it twelve years ago, he advised me to go to the police and tell them what Grandfather had done. He repeated the advice when he heard about your mother’s suit against the Brownlow estate. “Get if off your conscience, Simon,” he said. “Put the record straight.”’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Because of Linley’s stake in the gallery. Because I was afraid I’d be dragged down with him. Because it was easier and safer to do as he told me.’

‘Plus you didn’t want your old school chums getting to know who your father really was and what he did.’

‘That’s right.’ He looked directly at Rachel. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know. I was ashamed of my father. And my grandfather.’

‘The police would have been powerless to act anyway without proof,’ I pointed out. ‘Did you have any?’

‘
I
didn’t, no.’

‘It would still have helped our case,’ said Rachel.

‘Hold on.’ I’d spotted, as she apparently hadn’t, the revealing emphasis in Cardale’s answer. ‘
You
had no proof. But did someone else?’

Cardale sighed. ‘Ardal claimed he had incontrovertible evidence that the Picassos were forged by his brother during the Second World War, scuppering Grandfather’s story that Isaac Meridor bought the fakes himself.’

Rachel glanced across at me, a smile playing around her lips. This was more like it. This was what we needed. ‘What kind of evidence?’ she asked.

‘He wouldn’t tell me. He simply said that, as and when I was ready to make a clean breast of it, he’d supply the material that would render any denials by Linley futile. He didn’t seem to doubt I’d be ready sooner or later. It was just a question of time.’

‘He could have come forward himself,’ said Rachel.

Another sigh. ‘He said it had to be my decision, as Desmond’s son. He’s away from it all, on his Mediterranean island. I’m the one
who’d have to face the flak. He encouraged me to do it, but he wasn’t going to force me.’

‘This “material” he has …’

‘I honestly don’t know what it is. But I’m sure he still has it.’

‘Could it be the
Three Swans
?’ Rachel was asking herself the question as much as anyone else.

‘I don’t see how,’ said Cardale.

Nor did I. But it hardly mattered what the material was, so long as it was still in Ardal Quilligan’s possession. ‘Are you willing to go to the authorities with whatever Ardal has?’ I asked.

Cardale bowed his head and slapped the back of his neck a couple of times, nerving himself to take a long-overdue decision. Then he looked up at us and said, ‘Yes. I’ll do it. I’ve had enough. Linley can go hang. The Brownlow estate can … carry the loss. You win, Miss Banner. I’m throwing in the towel.’

‘Thank you,’ Rachel said coolly, with more satisfaction – and probably disbelief – than gratitude.

‘We can’t do anything without the evidence,’ I cautioned.

‘I’d better phone Ardal, then,’ said Cardale, shaking his head in surprise that the time his uncle had predicted would come … had come at last. ‘Before I change my mind.’

Cardale led us through to a drawing-room, furnished and decorated, like the kitchen, in the style of an earlier age. There were newspapers and books scattered around and enough paintings stacked against one wall to suggest the room was used as an overflow for the gallery. There was a deep hollow in the cushion of a leather armchair facing the television, a whisky bottle and tumbler standing ready on a small table beside the chair. The air was frowsty, the light thick.