Fakes and Lies

by Jane A. Adams

  He didn’t know his daughter’s university friends. He’d met a couple of them when they’d visited her at the university, but that three years away had been almost a closed book to him. Sian had spent it growing up and he knew that, in a way, the worst thing that had happened to her was that she should have had to come back and live at home. She’d flown the nest once and she should have been able to keep on flying.

  But what else was to be done?

  His wife’s breakfast had grown cold and he went over to the annexe to suggest she come back and at least have a cup of tea. She was sitting on Sian’s bed, a small pink address book between her hands. He sat down beside her.

  ‘This was in her drawer. It’s got emails and some phone numbers in it. I think it must be university friends. I don’t recognize many of the names.’

  He told her who he had already contacted and how. But that nobody had seen Sian the day before.

  ‘Something’s happened to her, I just know it.’

  He was beginning to think she was right. ‘We go back to the house, you eat something. No, don’t argue with me, you need to keep your strength up. And we work our way through the phone numbers. We’ll take half each. If there’s no phone number then we’ll send an email. If anyone’s heard from her, we’ll find out.’

  She nodded reluctantly and he took the pink book from her, flicked through to see if anything was familiar to him.

  ‘And then if she’s not come back in a few hours we’ll phone the police again and we’ll keep on phoning them until someone takes notice of us.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘How can any place be this quiet?’ Sian asked. The window wouldn’t open, but she pressed her ear against it trying to hear sounds from the outside. Occasionally there were indications of life, footsteps, once the sound of something metal being dragged across hard ground, but that was all. No one had been anywhere near them since the night before and it was as though they were utterly cut off, not just from the world but even from the house itself.

  Bee’s stomach grumbled. Both girls were really hungry now. ‘It’s like they’ve just forgotten about us,’ she said.

  The silence surrounding them encouraged them to explore the room further, assuming that if they could hear nothing then no one could hear them either. They had looked for security cameras, hidden microphones – even though neither of them knew exactly what such a thing would look like – but had discovered nothing.

  The window was small. Even if they smashed a pane they couldn’t hope to squeeze through, and the transom itself was nailed shut. There was an empty built-in cupboard and Bee had become briefly excited when she discovered a wire coat hanger. Surely that had to be useful for something? The two of them had sat on the bed staring at it as though its use would reveal itself and Bee had tried untwisting the coil of wire from around the hook, but her fingers were not strong enough.

  They’d searched the chest of drawers, the only furniture in the room apart from the bed. And they both tried hurling their full weight at the door but it had not even rattled. It looked like an ordinary wooden door on the inside, but they’d come to the conclusion that it was reinforced in some way.

  ‘Someone will come looking for us,’ Sian said, sounding more confident than she actually felt. ‘Mum and Dad will know I’m missing, they will have phoned the police.’

  But where would they even start? she thought. They certainly wouldn’t be looking for a big house in the middle of nowhere.

  They guessed it was somewhere around midday because the light outside was quite bright, or comparatively so; the day seemed very overcast still. Once more they heard footsteps on the stairs, two pairs this time.

  Binnie opened the door and both girls huddled in a corner, afraid he had come to take one of them again. He had a woman with him and she was carrying a tray. She put it down on the bed and then went out again. Binnie grinned at them both and then left, locking the door behind him.

  For a moment or two both girls stood staring at the tray and the door, not quite knowing what to do. There were sandwiches on the tray, and bottles of orange juice and apples.

  ‘Do we eat them?’ Sian said. ‘What if they’re drugged or poisoned?’

  ‘With Binnie around, do you think they need to resort to drugs or poison?’ Bee asked. ‘I’m hungry. I’m going to eat.’

  They both sat down on the bed and examined the contents of the tray. There was also a small blister pack which, when Sian turned it over, she discovered contained painkillers. ‘These must be for you,’ she said.

  Bee took them and examined the packet carefully but it seemed to be just ordinary paracetamol and there was no sign of tampering. She extracted two and took them with the orange juice. Her hand was throbbing horrendously and the bruising had spread from the finger across the back and the palm.

  They ate in silence, both surprised at how much better it made them feel. ‘At least they don’t want us to starve to death,’ Sian said. ‘Is that a good sign?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bee said.

  They stared at one another. In the hours they’d spent together they had discussed every possible permutation that they could think of, but worst of all were the possibilities they didn’t want to think about.

  By early afternoon Naomi’s little flat was looking rather crowded. Alfie had already had a formal meeting with Vin and both had then come on to meet Karen at Naomi’s. Karen was going back with Vin later for a proper briefing but they had all agreed that a couple of hours of pooling resources would be useful.

  Alec had managed to grab a few hours’ sleep, but Vin had not yet been home and the weariness was beginning to show.

  ‘So,’ Karen began, ‘what can you tell us about this Graham Harcourt?’

  ‘According to Companies House,’ said Alfie, ‘he owns an investment company going by the name of AltInvo. Essentially he takes other people’s money and invests in various businesses; they get the profits after he’s taken his cut. It’s not quite a hedge fund, and it’s just on the right side, legally, of becoming a Ponzi scheme. Often these businesses are quite high risk but they are also high return. We’re talking oil, precious metals, art – which is what is relevant to us here – and some more exotic resources. More recently he’s been investing heavily in palm oil, for instance. Essentially, he doesn’t care what the commodity is as long as the return is fast.

  ‘Now there’s evidence that AltInvo is a shell company, and that within that shell company are nested other more specialist businesses.

  ‘As you can imagine, the deeper you dig into the shell, the more layered it gets and the more difficult it is to track down exactly who is doing what or who owns what. I got a list of names, directors of these other companies, but it’s far from complete and I don’t even know that the names are genuine. All I can do is work through them one at a time. The evidence I have seems to indicate that family members are often used to front what look like different companies but are actually the same institution. And of course we’re into the area of offshore tax havens, and we can assume that money laundering is going on.’

  ‘And have you linked Freddie Jones to this?’

  Alfie paused. ‘Yes and no. We know that Graham Harcourt is an art collector and also an art dealer. We know he owns one or two Freddie Jones pieces because he bought them from Scotts. Unusually, alongside a couple of drawings, there’s a large painting. Scotts normally only dealt in Freddie’s drawings but on this occasion they handled the commission for Freddie. Now I’ve not seen this piece, I only have a description of it and it’s described as “a woodland scene in the style of Nicolas Poussin”. Now exactly what’s meant by “in the style of” here is something of a moot point, considering Freddie’s past. But as Scotts brokered the deal we have to assume that, on the face of it at least, this is an original artwork and not a copy – or a fake.’

  ‘You said “yes and no”, and that sounds like a definite yes, so what is your possible no?’

  ‘It seems Fredd
ie Jones did some work for Graham Harcourt, off the books. I found a series of emails that Antonia Scott sent to Freddie, and if you want to know how I got them, Bob Taylor was also copied in. They were emails expressing concern about rumours that Freddie was engaged in a series of commissions for Graham Harcourt and maybe another collector. Bob was copied in because Freddie was not replying to Antonia’s emails and the thought was that Bob might persuade him to see reason. Her major concern was that, as Freddie’s ersatz agent, she was missing out on the commission.’

  ‘And how long was that before Freddie died?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Two, close to three weeks. I’ve brought copies of the emails, but in brief, Bob intervened and suggested that Freddie at least talk to Antonia. After all, she’d been very good to him in the past and he sold a good deal of work through Scotts. Freddie maintained that Antonia’s representation was only for the one painting and that he didn’t owe her a damn thing for the others he had agreed to produce.

  ‘Apparently Bob finally pinned him down and Freddie said he didn’t think Antonia would approve of his customer base. Antonia was, as Freddie put it, “legit and upmarket”.’

  ‘Which seems to imply that whoever he was doing the work for was not,’ Naomi said. ‘Though I thought that, on the face of it, Graham Harcourt was both legit and upmarket?’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? But apparently Freddie saw him otherwise and didn’t want Antonia involved. At least that’s what he told Bob. It was at that point that Bob and Annie contacted me and asked me to look into Graham Harcourt’s affairs. Soon after that, of course, Freddie died, but sometime in the weeks beforehand Bob persuaded him to take the portfolio of drawings to Antonia. I guess it was a kind of sweetener to make up for her missing out on the other deal. Apparently the portfolio was dropped off at the gallery about a week before Freddie died, but Antonia, at that stage, hadn’t seen the drawings. She’d been away in France or Belgium or somewhere and her brother had taken delivery. He was satisfied, but as far as the art was concerned Antonia was the brains of the operation. She had the eye.’

  ‘And that’s why her brother had left them for her to see on the day they were stolen,’ Karen speculated. ‘She was due to meet a new artist. From what we can tell, Antonia turned up at the gallery about half an hour before opening time. She saw a young woman with a portfolio standing outside the gallery; a few people spotted her beforehand and assumed that she was a new artist. In fact a café owner from a few doors down remembers speaking to her. He congratulated her on the fact that Scotts was interested and he remembers that she looked nervous and just smiled at him. But he assumed she was nervous because Antonia had quite a reputation.’

  She’d set up a laptop on the table and now she apologized to Naomi. ‘I’m sorry you can’t see this, it’s pretty interesting.’ She turned it so the rest of the company could. ‘Now this is from the CCTV traffic camera set up in the street just down from the gallery. You see, there’s the young woman with the portfolio. She’s standing around looking nervous, the image of a young artist about to enter the dragon’s den. And here comes Antonia. She speaks to the girl and they both go inside. Now watch. Sorry, Naomi.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ This from Alec.

  ‘What?’ There were times when her lack of vision really made Naomi grumpy.

  ‘This blur, this guy, he comes out of nowhere. He charges into the gallery and only seconds later he and the girl come out, carrying her portfolio and another one. Bloody hell, he was fast.’

  ‘Familiar, too,’ Alfie said.

  ‘While he’s familiar in the sense that we’ve now got another sighting of him, the man we saw at the warehouse, we still don’t have a clue who he is. Or the girl – but she certainly looks like the girl that was in the car, the blue car on Sunday afternoon. Now look at her face as they come out.’

  The man had his head down as though avoiding the cameras, but the girl either hadn’t thought about that or was too shocked even to try. They’d had a clear view of her standing outside the gallery and they had a clear view now of her trying to pull away from the man. She was looking around as though trying to summon help and she looked terrified.

  ‘Again, she seems to be under duress,’ Alec commented.

  ‘And then about ten minutes later the real artist arrives, finds her would-be patron dead and phones the police and the ambulance. And that is about as far as we got. Dead ends everywhere we look. Not a trace of criminality in the Scotts’ dealings, not a trace of irregularity in any of their finances – or at least not as far as our experts can tell. Alfie, have you looked into the Scotts?’

  ‘I have, and I concur. On the face of it, they’re squeaky clean.’

  ‘And not on the face of it?’ Karen wanted to know.

  ‘And not on the face of it, there are times when they sailed pretty close to the edge. When they may well have handled either stolen or misrepresented goods, but you’d probably find the same history in most upmarket galleries. It’s not always possible to establish provenance for a piece and until fairly recently, record keeping was often poor. The internet’s made a big difference. You can see that in the high-profile cases where Jewish-owned art has been reclaimed after years of going from dealer to dealer, collector to collector after the Second World War. Most of the galleries and dealers involved dealt in good faith, because there was no paper trail. It’s only when there are records of original ownership, and when those records can be verified and information about them disseminated sufficiently widely, that connections can be made. And for the most part, this is high-profile art. Big names, well documented paintings. Freddie Jones didn’t get involved with that; he concentrated on “school of” or “follower of” works, so far as we know. Or the lesser known masters with gaps in their catalogues raisonnés. Paintings that were known to have existed but were presumed lost.’

  ‘I’ve something else to throw into the mix,’ Vin Dattani said. ‘You might’ve heard on the news a couple of days ago about a man being found on waste ground, beaten half to death. Well, we’ve identified him.’

  ‘Has he regained consciousness?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘No, not yet. But as sometimes happens when the doctors think someone may not survive, we took fingerprints. Sometimes it might be the only way of finding a next of kin in time for them to say their goodbyes. In this case, we found a match for the fingerprints and he turned out to have a record. His name is Toby Elden. He’s been done for receiving stolen goods on a few occasions, and specializes in stolen antiquities.’

  ‘I know the name,’ Alfie said. ‘It came up in some of my research. But not in connection with Graham Harcourt.’ He paused and flicked through his notes and Naomi got up to make more tea while he was looking. It took him a few minutes but then he said, ‘Right, I’ve got it now. For a brief time he owned a gallery. Eastbourne, heart of respectability. And he sold some of Freddie Jones’s drawings and the odd painting. I’ve not got it here, but I know I do have a partial customer list back at the office. I’ll let you have it, but I’ll also run it by Bob. There’s a possibility he may recognize a name or two on it.’

  ‘OK,’ Vin said. ‘At least we can say some of the threads are being pulled together, even if we don’t know who all of the players are. A shape of sorts is beginning to emerge.’

  There was a murmur of agreement. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Karen and Vin left fairly soon after this because she still had to have her official briefing and now they had more information.

  Alec followed them out, heading for the corner shop to get more milk. Karen promised to call back later and they were going to take the opportunity to have dinner together and a proper catch-up. She’d booked into a hotel for the night.

  ‘So,’ Naomi said, ‘what’s your take on all this, Alfie? And what are you protecting Bob from?’

  Alfie laughed. ‘Not much gets past you, does it?’

  ‘Oh, it does, all the time. But you see, I know a little bit about Bob that
the others don’t. I know that Freddie was his mentor and I also know that when Bob started out he had bugger all. Like a lot of artists, he struggled to make ends meet for the first few years. Oh, he’s successful now, very successful, but that wasn’t always the case, and when you’re hanging around someone like Freddie Jones, well, I just wonder if—’

  ‘If he succumbed to temptation,’ Alfie finished. ‘The truth is, Naomi, I don’t know. And I don’t want to ask. But I’m making the assumption that Bob may well, like the Scotts, have sailed a little close to the wind at times, or have more knowledge of those who did than is really comfortable for him. I know if I asked him straight out he’d tell me, but unless that becomes relevant …’

  ‘Why poke tigers?’

  ‘Indeed. Annie is my friend, my friend of long standing, and I do not wish any harm to come to her or her husband, not even just embarrassment. I owe her, you might say, so if I’m a little careful with the truth it won’t be because I want to interfere with the investigation. Far from it; neither Bob nor Annie would ever stand for that. But what is long past can remain long past, I hope. There are a few of us who have not been tempted to bend the rules when we’re desperate.’

  Alec came back, and the conversation shifted easily to more neutral concerns. But when Alfie was about to leave, Naomi said, ‘I’m bored, you know that? Getting involved, even peripherally, has been good for me. I can help with your research. I’ve been doing some of my own and all I need is a few pointers on what direction to take next.’

  She heard Alec open his mouth to intervene and then think better of it.

  ‘Then we’ll have to have a think about you doing some research for me. I’ll pay you the same rate I usually pay my researchers. Oh, don’t worry, Alec, nothing she can’t do sitting at a table with that laptop – and any bits of tech you haven’t got, Naomi, I probably have.’