The Wild Beasts of Wuhan (23 page)

“If I get your co-operation, we can work something out,” Ava said, pulling her notebook from her bag. “But I need you to start by telling me about your business and how you got into this forgery game.”

“You’re prepared to forget about these paintings?” he said.

Ava admired his stubbornness. “My sole interest is in recovering the funds that my clients lost buying that Fauvist art. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make that happen. If what you tell me helps, then yes, I am prepared to forget about these paintings.”

“How far back do you want me to go?”

“Start at the beginning.”

He drew a deep breath. “The gallery was started by my grandfather nearly a century ago, and it’s been the family business ever since. Both Glen and I were afforded first-class fine arts educations — there was never any doubt about what we would be doing with our lives. I joined the firm right out of university; Glen apprenticed first at Sotheby’s. My father died suddenly about five years after Glen came on board. That was when we ran into troubles. The inheritance taxes in this country are criminal, and my father had done virtually no estate planning. We were faced with a crippling tax bill. To pay up would have meant liquidating the business. That’s when Glen came up with the idea of having Maurice O’Toole do the Manet. I have to tell you — not that it may matter to you — we agonized over the decision. Glen said we should have Maurice do it and, if we didn’t think it passed muster, we would forget the whole idea.”

“It was good enough to fool the Earl, yes?”

“It’s bloody good enough to fool just about anyone who isn’t trying to determine if it’s a fake. I mean, the colours, the brushstrokes, the canvas, the nails — Maurice was a marvel.”

“And you authenticated it?”

“Yes, we did. Mind you, we did call in several colleagues, who — for a hefty fee — also swore it was genuine. They were mainly taking our word for it, of course, and they gave the painting only what you could call a rough once-over.”

“And it worked so well you repeated the exercise?”

“Twice more, that’s all,” he said, and then quickly added, “I don’t mean to minimize the money involved.”

“Why twice?”

“Those were our retirement funds — about six million each. This business looks attractive enough from the outside, but it’s bloody hard work, and expensive work, because appearances have to be maintained. Then there’s the matter of buying and selling. You know the adage ‘Buy low, sell high’?”

“Even the Chinese understand that.”

“I thought the Chinese invented it,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“They invented most things — why not that too?” Ava said.

“Well, in our business there is no intrinsic value in anything. A painting is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Today Jackson Pollock is a hot commodity, tomorrow he could be a throwaway. Okay, maybe not to that extreme, but you see, here we don’t deal in Jackson Pollock; the core of the business is your run-of-the-mill painter. More risk, less reward. So cash is always tight, and the value of the business — and our net worth — is hanging on the walls. We decided to cash in twice, put the money aside, and then get on with running the business as our father had done.”

“Except Glen didn’t stop?”

“No, he didn’t. But I did. I wasn’t proud of what we had done. I rationalized it, of course, but I was never proud, and I never — I swear to you — never even thought about doing it again.”

“When did you find out that Glen was still at it?”

“Five years ago.”

“When Maurice O’Toole died?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, precisely. Nancy came to see me here at the gallery. Maurice was broke when he died; she had nothing. She said she knew we’d been making all kinds of money from the Derains, the Dufys, and the like. She was looking for a lump-sum payment, a kind of death benefit, from our Liechtenstein account. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. She brought with her the same kind of paperwork you showed me today. It took me aback, I don’t mind telling you, finding out that Glen had still been working with Maurice and that he had a bank account in Liechtenstein. I told her she needed to talk to Glen.”

“She must have, because he sent her a hundred thousand dollars from a bank account in Kowloon,” Ava said.

“Kowloon too? My brother does get around.” Edwin Hughes took off his jacket and stood to hang it on a coat rack next to the Derain Tower Bridge painting. “I told you this one was real, didn’t I?” he said.

“You did.”

“Would you like a tea or coffee? Water?” he asked as he sat down again.

“I’m fine. Can we get back to your brother?”

He sighed. “We had it out, of course. He told me he needed the money. He was already twice divorced and was working on a third, and between the ex-wives and the kiddies and an expensive lifestyle, he had burned through the Modigliani money and a lot more on top of that. He swore to me then that he’d stop, and I believed him.”

“You weren’t worried about him, about the scheme being exposed?”

Hughes grimaced. “We were already joined at the hip, so to speak, through our previous transgressions. Although neither of us discussed it directly, we knew it. And then there was the matter of your Hong Kong clients.”

“What does that mean?”

He grimaced again. “These are Glen’s words, not mine. I’m not a lover of all mankind, but neither am I a racist. Glen tends to wander to the right on most issues. He said — and again, these are his words — that he had found a ‘dead ignorant’ dealer in Hong Kong who was selling the stuff to an ‘even more ignorant’ collector somewhere in China. He said he could have sent them crayon sketches done by a six-year-old and passed them off as a rare find, and they’d believe him. He said there wasn’t a chance in hell the collector would figure things out, and if he did he would have the dealer in Hong Kong to blame. Glen said he and the collector never met, never even communicated.”

“That’s true.”

“And then he promised me he’d stop, but of course he didn’t.”

“How did you find that out?” Ava asked.

“Helga Sørensen,” Hughes said.

Thank God for smart wives
, Ava thought. “What happened?”

“The dealer in Hong Kong died, and Glen decided he’d made enough money and it was time to get out while he still could. He told me later he had thought about hooking up with someone else in Hong Kong, but the fellow there had been the perfect middleman. He didn’t want to trust anyone else.”

“How did he meet Kwong — that was the dealer’s name — in the first place?”

“Believe it or not, Kwong took out an ad in the
Arts Journal
looking for Fauvist paintings. Glen contacted him and the two of them went at it.”

“So Glen decides to pack it in when Kwong dies?”

“Exactly. And Helga’s upset because it’s become their best source of income. She evidently wrote to Glen a few times but he never answered her. So she wrote to the gallery saying that if we didn’t want more Fauvists then Jan could paint something else. When I opened the letter, I felt absolutely betrayed.”

“And you confronted your brother?”

“I did. I decided to terminate our business relationship and, if you must know, our personal relationship. We haven’t spoken in two years.”

“How did you divide things?”

“We didn’t. I had scheduled a meeting with our family solicitor to negotiate a settlement over this business, when I became ill. I was hospitalized for about a week while they muddled around with my heart. The day I came home, Glen had a letter delivered to me. It said that he had signed over his shares in the business to me, that they were essentially worthless anyway, and that he had long since outgrown the Hughes Gallery,” he said, looking pained. “I thought it was cowardly of him to do things that way, and I thought he was denigrating all the good work my father had done and that he and I had done together.”

Ava felt a twinge of sympathy for Edwin Hughes, paralleled by a growing dislike for his brother. She said, “You know, I wouldn’t mind having a coffee now. I take it black.”

Hughes stood. “I’ll get it and a tea for myself. I could use a break.”

Ava waited, checking her watch.
It’s taking him a long time
, she was thinking, just as he appeared at the door with two delicate china cups balanced on exquisite saucers. “Sorry, the water took forever to boil,” he said.

They sipped their drinks quietly, Ava’s eyes drawn almost magnetically to the Derain. “My father bought it in the 1950s for what was a considerable sum then,” he said. “It’s worth much more now, but for years Derain’s value languished. It would please my father no end to find his judgement finally validated by the market. It’s the finest piece the family owns. What a coincidence, eh?”

Ava nodded and then said, “Talk to me about your brother. What kind of man is he?”

“It’s difficult to be objective.”

“Then don’t be.”

“No, I should try,” he said. He leaned back, placed his hands behind his neck, and put his feet on the desk.

“First of all, he is an absolutely great appraiser. He knows his stuff, he really does, and has a fine eye for what’s going to be hot. That’s what’s upsetting to me. If he’d stuck to our knitting, this business could have done well. Instead he went after money, and when he got the money, he lost interest in our venture,” he said. “I mentioned the wives. Well, there were also the houses, the yacht, the wine collection, the useless wealthy friends. I wasn’t paying too much attention. I mean, I saw what was going on; I just didn’t stop to think about how he could afford it.”

“He was stealing,” Ava said.

Hughes nodded. “The money changed him in many other ways as well. Glen was always a bit cocky but he disguised his hubris with a smart sense of humour. Having the money allowed him to let loose the extremes in his character. Plainly said, he didn’t need to be polite anymore, so he wasn’t. He became vain, boastful, and over-the-top arrogant.”

“He doesn’t sound very likeable.”

“I have grown to detest him.”

“When did he move to New York?”

“The week I came out of the hospital. He didn’t visit me there, or at home. He contacted me by letter, saying that London had become provincial and that New York was where the action was.”

“And how has he done in New York?”

Hughes pursed his lips. “I hear things, of course. It seems he’s doing famously. I’m not sure how much of it I actually believe, though. Glen has always been able to impart that aura of success.”

“Maybe he’s gone back to selling forgeries. Maybe he’s found some dumb Russian instead of a dumb Chinese.”

“Who knows? And except for you, who really cares?” Hughes said. “I’m more concerned about the three paintings in these files on my desk. Where are we going with this?”

Ava leafed through her notebook. “Before we discuss that, I’m curious about the painting you sold through Harrington’s. It had to be authenticated by them, didn’t it? Wasn’t that a worry for you?”

“We paid Sam Rice fifty thousand pounds to sign off on it.”

“He worked for Harrington’s?”

“Still does. He runs the whole bloody place now.”

That’s a twist
, Ava thought.

Hughes patted the files. “So, what are your plans for these?”

“I’m going to go after your brother,” Ava said.

“For the Fauvist scheme?”

“Yes, of course.”

Hughes said, “O’Toole’s files should help you in that regard. I’m assuming Maurice kept as careful a record of them as he did of these. The Sørensen paperwork, I have to tell you, was a bit sketchy.”

“I’m not going to use the O’Toole files other than as a way of keeping score.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All they prove is that your brother hired O’Toole to paint them. They dead-end with Kwong. Your brother could take the same position with me that you did: ‘The Chinese can sue.’”

“And why wouldn’t they?”

“I had this same conversation yesterday with a consultant I’m using,” Ava said. “In a nutshell, my client doesn’t want to look foolish. He would never expose himself to the kind of public ridicule a lawsuit of this nature would invite. Glen referred to him as, what, ignorant? Why would he want the rest of the world to think the same?”

Hughes looked down at the files on his desk. Ava reached into her bag and pulled out an additional one. “There are four letters in here, addressed to the Earl of Moncrieff, Harold Holmes, and Jonathan Reiner, and to Frederick Locke at Harrington’s. The letters explain in detail how they came to be in possession of forged paintings. Accompanying each letter will be a complete file, just like those you have in front of you,” Ava said. “Here, you can read the letters if you want.”

She was pleased with them. Each addressed the single painting that related to the letter’s recipient. They were short and to the point — no hint of hysteria, nothing overstated, just a chronological statement of the facts with appendices noted and a line that said the original invoices, photos, etc. were available for viewing if necessary. The letter was signed by Ava. In a postscript she added that she had come across the painting in question as part of a broader investigation. She was passing along the information in the interests of art scholarship and wasn’t seeking any compensation or acknowledgement.

The colour that had re-emerged in Hughes’ face as he was talking to Ava visibly began to drain. His right eye began to flicker again.

“This would destroy me,” he said.

“That is the intent.”

“You said —”

“The question is, how is your brother going to react to the same threat?”

“He would go mad.”

“I don’t want mad. I want fear. Fear of complete destruction of his professional reputation, of public disgrace, of having to defend himself against three powerful, angry, rich, vindictive men. And I’d like to think he couldn’t sleep at night for worrying about going to prison.”

Whatever comfort Edwin Hughes was feeling about the direction of their conversation seemed to vanish at the mention of the word
prison
. Ava could see his body tense. He swallowed, and then took two deep breaths.