The Veteran (14 page)

Suzie had a list beside her. How exactly did Sebastian Mortlake identify himself? Did he use just ’S’ or ‘Seb’ or the full Sebastian? Lower case, upper case or a mix? Was there a dot or a hyphen between first and second names, or nothing at all?

Each time Suzie tried a different format and got it wrong the Darcy database rejected her. She prayed there was not a maximum limit to the erroneous formats, followed by an alarm at Darcy that would close down the contact. Fortunately the IT expert who had set up the system had presumed that some of Darcy’s art freaks were so naive about computers that they would possibly forget their own codes. The link stayed open.

At the fifteenth try she got it. The director of Old Masters was seb-mort: all lower case, first name shortened, hyphen, surname cut in half. The Darcy database accepted that seb-mort was on the line and asked for his password.

“Most people use something close and dear to themselves,” she had told Benny. “Wife’s name, pet dog’s name, borough where they live, a famous figure they admire.”

“Seb is a bachelor, lives alone, no pets. He just lives for the world of pictures.” They started with the Italian Renaissance, then the Dutch/Flemish school, then the Spanish Masters. At ten past four on a sunny spring morning Suzie got it. Mortlake was seb-mort and GOYA. The database asked what she wanted. She asked for the owner of storage item D 1601.

The computer in Knightsbridge scoured its memory and told her.

Mr. T. Gore, of 32 Cheshunt Gardens, White City, W.12.

She obliterated all trace of her incursion and closed down.

Then they grabbed three hours’ sleep.

It was only a mile and they puttered through the waking city on Benny’s scooter. The address turned out to be a shabby block of bedsitters and Mr. T. Gore lived in the basement. He came to the door in his old Spanish bathrobe.

“Mr. Gore?”

“I am he, sir.”

“My name’s Benny Evans. This is my friend Suzie Day. I am ... was with the House of Darcy. Are you the gentleman who offered a small old painting in a chipped gilt frame for sale about November last?”

Trumpington Gore looked worried.

“Indeed I did. Nothing wrong I hope? It was sold at auction in January. Not a fake, I hope?”

“Oh no, Mr. Gore, it wasn’t a fake. Just the reverse. It’s chilly out here. Could we come in? I have something to show you.”

The hospitable Trumpy offered them both a share of his morning pot of tea. Since his windfall of more than £5,000 three months earlier he no longer needed to use the tea bags twice. While the two youngsters drank he read the page-long spread in the Sunday Times that Benny had brought with him.

His jaw dropped.

“Is that it?” He pointed at the full-colour illustration of the Sassetta.

“That’s it, Mr. Gore. Your old painting in its brown hessian wrapping. Cleaned, restored and authenticated as a genuine and very rare Sassetta. Siena, about 1425.”

“Two million pounds,” breathed the actor. “Oh, calamity. If only I had known. If only Darcy had known.”

“They did,” said Benny. “At least they suspected. I was the valuer. I warned them. You have been swindled and I have been destroyed. By a man who cut a private deal with this art gallery.”

He began at the beginning, with a last group of hand-ins and a director impatient to get away for his Christmas break. When he had finished the actor stared at the picture of the Annunciation in the paper.

“Two million pounds,” he said quietly. “I could have lived comfortably for the rest of my life on that. Surely, the law ...”

“Is an ass,” said Suzie. “The record will show that Darcy made a mistake, an error of judgement, and that Fanshawe acted on a hunch and came up a winner. It happens. There is no recourse in law.”

“Tell me something,” said Benny. “On the form you filled out, it said as profession “actor”. Is that true? Are you an actor?”

“Thirty-five years in the profession, young man. Appearances in almost a hundred films.”

He forbore to mention that most of these appearances had lasted a few seconds.

“I mean, can you pass as someone else and get away with it?”

Trumpington Gore drew himself up in his chair with all the dignity a tatty old bathrobe would allow.

“I, sir, can pass for anything, in any company, and get away with the impersonation. It is what I do. Actually, it is all that I do.”

“You see,” said Benny, “I have an idea.”

He spoke for twenty minutes. When he had done the impoverished actor pondered his decision.

“Revenge,” he murmured. “A dish best eaten cold. Yes, the trail has gone cold. Slade will not be expecting us. I think, young Benny, if I may, that you have just gained a partner.”

He held out his hand. Benny took it. Suzie placed her own over theirs.

“One for all, and all for one.”

“Aye, I like it,” said Benny.

“D’Artagnan,” said Trumpy.

Benny shook his head. “I were never much good at the French Impressionists.”

The rest of April was very busy. They pooled their funds and completed the research. Benny needed to invade the private correspondence file of Peregrine Slade, having access to all his private emails.

Suzie elected to go into the Darcy system via Slade’s private secretary. Miss. Priscilla Bates. Her e-identity was not long in coming. She was P-Bates as far as the database was concerned.

The problem was her password.

Trumpington Gore followed Miss. Bates like a shadow, in such a variety of disguises that she suspected not a thing. Having secured her private address in the borough of Cheam, it was Benny who by night raided her garbage bin and took away a binliner full of rubbish. It yielded little.

Miss. Bates lived a life of blameless rectitude. She was a spinster and lived alone. Her small flat was as neat as a pin. She commuted to work on the train and underground to Knightsbridge and walked the last 500 yards. She took the Guardian newspaper—they tried ‘Guardian’ as a password, but it did not work—and she holidayed with a sister and brother-in-law at Frinton.

They discovered this from an old letter in the trash, but ‘Frinton’ did not work either. They also found six empty tins of Whiskas.

“She has a cat,” said Suzie. “What’s its name?”

Trumpy sighed. It meant another trip to Cheam. He appeared on the Saturday, knowing she would be in, and masqueraded as a salesman of pet paraphernalia. To his joy she was interested in the scratching post for bored cats, who otherwise shredded the loose covers.

He stood in the doorway, false buck teeth and heavy glasses, and a piebald torn emerged from the sitting room behind her to stare contemptuously at him. He enthused over the beauty of the animal, calling it ‘puss’.

“Come here, Alamein, come to Mummy,” she called.

Alamein: a battle in North Africa in 1942 where her father had died when she was a baby of one. In Ladbroke Grove Suzie logged on again and punched it up. For the Darcy database Miss. Priscilla Bates, private and confidential secretary to Peregrine Slade, was
P-Bates ALAMEIN
. And she had right of access to all her employer’s private e-mails. Pretending to be her, Suzie downloaded a hundred personal letters.

It was a week before Benny made his selection.

“He has a mate on the Arts pages of the Observer. There are three letters here from the same man, Charlie Dawson. Occasionally Dawson hears of things going on at Christie’s or Sotheby’s and tips Slade off. He’ll do.”

Using her cyber-skills, Suzie created a letter from Charlie Dawson to Peregrine Slade for later use. Benny was meanwhile studying the catalogue for the next major Darcy sale. Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, scheduled for 20 May. After a while he tapped the illustration of one small oil on paper, laid on canvas.

“That one,” he said.

Suzie and Trumpy peered at it. A still life showing a bowl of raspberries: a blue and white Delft bowl and beside it several seashells. An odd composition. The bowl stood on the edge of an old and chipped table.

“Who the hell is Coorte?” asked Trumpington Gore. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Not many have, Trumpy. Quite minor. School of Middleburg, Holland, mid-seventeenth century. But a tiny life’s work, barely more than sixty pictures worldwide. So ... rare. Always painted the same sort of stuff. Strawberries, raspberries, asparagus and sometimes seashells. Boring as hell, but he has his fans. Look at the estimated price.”

The catalogue suggested £120,000 to £150,000.

“So why Coorte?” asked Suzie.

“Because there is a Dutch lager billionaire who is obsessed by Coorte. Been trying for years to corner the world market in his fellow countryman. He won’t be there, but his representative will. Holding a blank cheque.”

On the morning of 20 May the House of Darcy was humming with activity. Peregrine Slade was again taking the sale personally and had gone down to the auction hall when Miss. Bates noted that he had incoming mail. It was nine a.m. The sale started at ten. She read the message for her employer and, suspecting from what it said that it might be important, she used the laser-jet printer to run off a copy. With this in her hand she locked the office and scurried after him.

Slade was checking the position and function of his microphone on the podium when she found him. He thanked her and scanned the letter. It was from Charlie Dawson and could be exceedingly helpful.

Slade stuffed the letter in his pocket and walked outside to the table of paddle girls in the lobby. Unless a bidder at one of these auctions is well known to the auctioneer, it is customary to fill out a form as an intending bidder and be issued with a ‘paddle’, a plastic card with a number on it.

This can be raised to signify a bid, but more importantly to identify a winning bidder, who will hold it up for the clerk to note the number. That gives name, address and bank.

It was still early, nine fifteen. There were only ten filled-out forms so far, and none mentioned a Martin Getty. But the name alone was enough to set Slade’s tastebuds watering. He had a quick word with the three lovely girls behind the table and went back to the hall.

It was a quarter to ten when a shortish man, not particularly smart, approached the table.

“You would like to bid, sir?” said one of the girls, drawing a form towards her.

“I surely would, young lady.”

The Southern drawl was lazy as molasses.

“Name, sir?”

“Martin Getty.”

“And address?”

“Over here or back home?”

“Full residential, if you please.”

“The Beecham Stud, Louisville, Kentucky.”

When the details were complete the American took his paddle and wandered into the saleroom. Peregrine Slade was about to mount the podium. As he reached the bottom step there was a deferential tug at his elbow. He looked down. Her bright eyes were alight.

“Martin Getty. Shortish, grey hair, goatee, shabby coat, dressed down.” She glanced around. “Third row from back, on the centre aisle, sir.”

Slade beamed his pleasure and continued his climb to his own Olympus. The auction began. The Klaes Molenaer at Lot 18 went for a tidy sum and the clerk below him noted all the details. The porters brought the masterpieces, major and minor, to the easel beside and below the podium one after the other.

The American failed to bid.

Two Thomas Heeremans went under the hammer and a fiercely contested Cornelis de Heem fetched double the estimate, but still the American failed to bid. Slade knew at least two-thirds of those present and he had spotted the young dealer from Amsterdam, Jan de Hooft. But what was the mega-rich American there for? Dressing down in a shabby coat, indeed. Did he think he could fool the ace he faced, the supreme Peregrine Slade? The Adriaen Coorte was Lot 102. It came up just after eleven fifteen.

At the outset there were seven bidders. Five had gone by £100,000. Then the Dutchman raised his hand. Slade glowed.

He knew exactly whom de Hooft represented. Those hundreds of millions made from foaming lager beer. At £120,000 one of the bidders dropped out. The remaining one, a London agent, contested with the impassive Dutchman. But de Hooft saw him off. He had the bigger cheque book and he knew it.

“At £150,000, any advance on £150,000?”

The American raised his head and his paddle. Slade stared.

He wanted the Coorte for his Kentucky collection. Oh joy. Oh unbridled lust. A Getty versus Van Den Bosch. He turned to the Dutchman.

“Against you, sir. I have £160,000 on the aisle.”

De Hooft did not blink. His body language was almost contemptuous. He glanced at the figure on the aisle and nodded. Inside himself Slade was in a transport of delight.

“My little Dutch Johnny,” he thought, “you haven’t the faintest idea who you are taking on.”

“One hundred and seventy thousand, sir, any ...”

The American flicked his paddle and nodded. The bidding went up and up. De Hooft’s demeanour lost its at-ease attitude. He frowned and tensed. He knew his patron had said “Acquire it” but surely there were limits. At half a million he drew a small mobile from his pocket, jabbed twelve numbers into it and spoke in low, earnest Dutch. Slade waited patiently. No need to intrude into private grief. De Hooft nodded.

By eight hundred thousand the hall was like a church. Slade was going up in modules of £20,000. De Hooft, a pale man when he entered the hall, was now paper-white. Occasionally he muttered into his mobile and went on bidding. At one million pounds sanity in Amsterdam finally prevailed. The American raised his head and nodded slowly. The Dutchman shook his.

“Sold for one point one million pounds, paddle number twenty-eight,” said Slade.

There was a collective exhalation of breath. De Hooft switched off his mobile, glared at the Kentuckian and swept from the hall.