A Bed of Scorpions (23 page)

Miranda was at ‘lunch’, so I rang down to Bernie. ‘Will you order me a cab on the company account, to come as soon as possible? I’m going to Aldermanbury, and it will need to wait for me afterwards and take me on.’ I’d pay T&R back, but I didn’t have enough cash to get me to the City in a cab, and I’d promised Jake I wouldn’t use public transport.

Then I called Helena. She was in a meeting. I left a voicemail, and emailed her as well, to drive the point home: ‘I’m on my way over now. We
NEED
to talk. Get Aidan.’ I emailed Jake again too. ‘On my way to Helena (yes, by cab, from T&R’s regular company, don’t worry). Have turned something up. No phone/access to texts or emails, so let H. know when you want us. Sooner would be better than later. For you. P.S. If you wrestled my handbag away from your fellow plods you would have my lifelong devotion. And I would have a way to contact you.’

And I went downstairs to wait for the cab from the safety of the reception desk.

Helena was still in her meeting when I got to her office, but her assistant told me she’d said she’d be as quick as she could, and I was to wait in her office. That suited me. I took one of her legal pads and had roughed out a summary of my ideas by the time she appeared.

She had also done as I’d asked and got in touch with Aidan. Despite what must have been a frantic day at the Tate, my urgency had been conveyed, and he was there within the half-hour. Helena’s meeting ended only minutes later. She was her usual calm self; Aidan was not. He was angry and frightened. Two weeks ago, he’d found his partner dead. Now the gallery was up to its neck in forgery. I’d seen him the day after Frank had died. I’d spotted the first forgery. Someone had attacked me twice. This, said his look, is your fault.

I barely waited until they’d sat down. ‘We’ve been looking at this from the wrong end,’ I said. ‘As soon as the forgery surfaced, the death of Werner Schmidt meant that we looked at him as the most likely source.’ They nodded. ‘But we left out a more important element of forgery.’ I turned to Aidan. ‘Why aren’t there more forgeries than there are?’

He looked blank.

I shook my head at myself. I wasn’t being clear. ‘Not Stevensons. In the world. Why don’t more people forge paintings? It’s not that difficult, is it? Particularly with contemporary art, which is often factory made. Why doesn’t someone produce, I don’t know’ – I waved my hand, as though it would help me grasp a name from the
air ‘Donald Judds by the score? They’re just boxes. If you had the measurements of one, and some plywood, you could probably knock one up in your garden shed.’

He looked contemptuous:
You pulled me out of meetings for this
? ‘And then what do you do? Stand on the street corner and say, “Oi, mate, I’ve got a luvverly Judd for you here. Usually a tenner, but I’ll do it for you for £7.50”? Sam, you know perfectly well, you can’t sell a painting without d—’

He was exactly where I wanted him to be. ‘Without documentation. Werner Schmidt could turn out the most beautiful Stevensons in the world. But without the paperwork, they were worth no more than a poster from the Tate’s shop.’ I turned to Helena. ‘I hadn’t realised until Aidan explained last week, how much documentation each artwork needs. Not just the provenance, the sales’ records, but valuations, customs and transport dockets, duty paid, and so on. You can track a picture forever with paperwork. And if those papers are in order, there is nothing to it: the artwork is, by definition, legitimate.’

Aidan was now seeing where I was going, and looked as though he was going to lose his breakfast. Helena was impassive. Lawyer face. I went on. ‘Myra James is Merriam–Compton’s registrar. She is, as Aidan phrased it, the “paperwork queen”. She could produce any paperwork that was needed. And,’ I suddenly remembered, ‘she and Frank were also the two who knew the Stevenson holdings the best. She was ideally placed to let Schmidt know what was selling well, what would fetch a good price, and then make sure the pictures he produced were backed up by the appropriate documents.
In fact, I can’t imagine how it could have been done without her.’

Aidan crumpled. I can’t explain it, but when I said Myra’s name, he just – got smaller. ‘No,’ he said now. But it wasn’t denial. It was, Please, make this not be true.

Helena continued to look attentive, as if I’d told her that I would be going to the beach for my holiday that year, instead of my usual city-break: an interesting idea. ‘Yes.’ She looked at Aidan. ‘She was with you at the Tate yesterday, Sam said. Was she with you the whole time?’

Aidan pulled himself together and thought. ‘No. There was a problem with a picture that was supposed to come from Germany. Because of the new government indemnity scheme …’ he waved it away; too much detail. ‘There was a problem with a loan, and the picture’s not coming. That’s why we were rehanging that room. The Irish Museum of Modern Art stepped in and offered us a replacement from their collection. Myra stayed while we hung a dummy, for size, to see if it would work, and when it did she went back to the gallery to sort out the paperwork while we redid the rest of the room.’ He realised what that meant, and looked over at me. ‘I don’t know the timings exactly, but—’

‘But she could possibly have had time to follow me down to the archive.’

He nodded. Helena brought us back to order. ‘If, as Jake tells me, Celia Stein was taking pictures which are time-stamped, they’ll be able to say when the dummy picture was hung, and therefore what time she left you.’ She made a note. Oh good, we were on her ‘to do’ list. ‘But I want to focus on why, for a moment. Why would she want to hurt you?’

I noticed that Helena never said someone had tried to kill me. It was always ‘hurt’, or ‘attack’. A rare overt indication of the love I knew that she had for me.

I thought for a moment. ‘Aidan asked Lucy to send me the
JPEGS
of the Stevensons with book jackets in them. Would Myra know that?’

He shrugged. Myra knows everything that happens in the gallery, the gesture said.

‘So she knew that I was looking at eleven pictures, two of which were very possibly forgeries. I emailed my results to you, Helena, but not to Aidan. Would she have seen an email you sent him?’

‘I didn’t email, we spoke.’ Her voice was absent as she thought it through. ‘So as far as she knew yesterday, you very likely knew of something suspect, and since all eleven paintings had book jackets in them, she might assume it had to do with your area of expertise. But before?’

Before what? I felt the way I always do with Helena, like a cocker spaniel scrambling along behind a greyhound which was outpacing me on idle.

‘Sam. Someone knocked you off your cycle on Saturday.’

I put my hand up to my face, where the scabs were healing. So they had. I wasn’t sure I’d ever imagined a week where a hit-and-run became the kind of thing that slipped my mind.

‘What would you have done to worry her before Lucy sent you those pictures?’

I thought back. ‘I emailed back and forth with her regarding the funeral, but only the time of the service, and sending flowers.’ I ticked over what had happened in the days between Frank’s death and the funeral. ‘I had a strange
conversation with her at the funeral, but that was after …’ I touched my face again. ‘The only other time we spoke was when I paid a condolence call on Toby. We had a brief conversation.’ I tried to remember what we’d said. ‘I have no idea what we discussed – the gallery? Stevenson? Frank? It was meaningless chit-chat, the kind you have when you have nothing to say.’

Helena made a note and nodded. She was ready to move down the agenda. ‘Let’s leave Myra for the moment. Where does Celia Stein come in?
Does
Celia Stein come in?’

‘I’m not sure. If it hadn’t been that she approached me the day after Frank died, I’d say now she didn’t. The only way I can make sense of it is that she found out what was going on and went to Frank. Frank would rather have died than—’ I bit my tongue. Frank
had
died rather than let the gallery be exposed as sellers of forgeries. I started again. ‘Or, wait. Maybe she offered him a deal: if he paid her off, then she would keep quiet.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘Jake said she started to have money three years ago, when she bought a big house.’

‘And why did she get in touch with you?’

Aidan spoke now, the first time since I’d named Myra. I’d become so focused on Helena I jumped. ‘Because of me. And your policeman.’ Truly I was going to slosh him for that ‘my’ policeman routine when this was over.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I had lunch with you the day after Frank died. The detective in charge of the investigation is your boyfriend.’

‘How would she know either of those things?’

He was bitter. ‘Because I told her.’

‘What, you rang her and said, “Hey, crazy coincidence, but let me tell you about this woman you’ve never met”? Why would you mention me, much less that I was having lunch with you, or shagging a policeman?’

Give me patience, oh Lord
, said his expression. ‘The Tate thing was Frank’s baby. When he died, I had to take over, and I was supposed to have lunch with Celia to get up to speed. I said I didn’t want to cancel you because of your policeman.’ Just wait until this was over.

I don’t know if Helena saw me clench my teeth, but she jumped in. ‘You told her the day you found Frank dead?’ He nodded. ‘And that day, she rang Sam’s office.’ Another note.

And then, to add to the sense that she had us all under her effortless control, her assistant knocked. A call from the CID: my presence was requested, as soon as possible. Aidan went back to the Tate, and Helena and I took the cab I had left waiting outside. It was going to cost a fortune, but Helena would return to her office after the interview, and I needed to be able to get about. As we wove through the traffic, I tried to remember if I’d ever read a crime novel where the main preoccupation of the person on the run is the cost of the cab fare. I made a mental note to mention it as a new plot twist.

I knew, of course, that Jake worked at Scotland Yard, but I’d never been there. In fact, when we got into the cab and said ‘Scotland Yard’, I realised I had no idea where it was. Victoria, as it turned out. At least my archive adventure hadn’t taken Jake far out of his way yesterday. Even without sirens blaring, it took only three minutes from there to his office. Top Tip for Coppers’ Girls: If you’re going to get
yourself attacked, do it near the bf’s office. Scotland Yard itself turned out to be an ugly 1960s office block down a tiny side street. I looked around as we got out of the cab. There was no reason, short of going to Scotland Yard, for anyone to ever walk down this street. Probably the point.

Helena took charge, bundling me inside, and then through the airport-style security in the foyer – metal detector, bag search, X-ray. We were given tags and escorted upstairs, where we were handed over to a second escort, who walked us down to where Jake and the same two detectives from the previous night were waiting in a meeting room. They hadn’t been introduced last night, and they weren’t now either.

I looked around, curious. Inside, the building looked like it had been decorated by the same people who did airport lounges – strident patterned carpet, sofas upholstered in clashing plaids, and walls finished in yellow wood with shiny varnish. The meeting room we were in had a sub-Scandinavian table and knock-offs of those Scan-style chairs with metal legs. The effect was spoilt by framed awards and citations peppered across the walls: Danish modern meets Quonset hut.

I looked at Helena.
I’d really be much happier if you
carried the ball
, I telegraphed. She pulled out her legal pad, folded her hands on the table, and began. The men listened to her in silence, but after only a couple of minutes one of the two picked up the files and began flicking back and forth, hunting down documentary evidence for her story. The other two sat listening, neither accepting nor rejecting her – my – thesis.

When she finished, the three moved away from the table
and consulted in low voices. Then they returned, and the bigger of the two spoke directly to me. ‘We’d like to go over the two possible assaults on you.’

I didn’t sigh, but I thought about it. Helena’s head never moved, but she shook her head in response to my not-sigh all the same.

We went over it again. And again. And again. They seemed puzzled by my part in the case, but since they never came right out and said so, I didn’t feel it was possible to agree that I was puzzled too. I’d started as Aidan’s friend, and then, somehow, stuff just kept happening to me. I decided that ‘stuff just kept happening’ would not be a useful contribution to their case notes, and kept it to myself.

Finally they stopped. I made a plea for the return of my handbag, and one mumbled about paperwork, but I saw Jake’s almost invisible nod. I’d get it back. They spoke to Helena briefly about the practical details of the forgery side. For a case to be opened, someone would have to lay a formal charge. That would, however, follow automatically if one of the forgeries had been sold to any of the national collections. Finally, Jake took us downstairs, and we stood outside in the drive. Helena kissed me briskly and tap-tapped off to find a cab and get back to her office. And we stood in silence for a moment.

‘We’ll bring Myra in for questioning. Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’ll soon be over.’

Dear God, I hoped so.

‘Where are you going now?’

There was no point in being at the office if I was just going to barricade myself in and tell Miranda to repel all boarders. ‘Home, I suppose.’ I saw his protest and headed
it off. ‘I might sit with Mr Rudiger until you get back.’

That won a grunt and a nod of approval. He looked at his watch. ‘Unless there’s a delay finding her, or her finding a solicitor, I should be home by eight.’

I gave him what turned out to be a fairly watery smile. Next time I got involved with violence and sudden death, I was going to stock up on tissues first.

I’d lied. I didn’t plan to sit with Mr Rudiger, although I had to ring his bell when I got to the house: I still didn’t have my keys. He let me in with no more surprise than Helena had earlier. Memo to self: do
not
play poker with those two.