The Dali Deception

by Adam Maxwell

  Damien took a packet of cigarettes out of his overalls. He offered the packet to Lucas and Violet, who both shook their heads. Taking one out, he shoved it between his lips and lit it.

  “Does it need to pass close inspection?” he said, directing his question to Violet.

  “Absolutely. No-one can know it’s a forgery, inside or outside of the art world.”

  Damien exhaled smoke and laughed. “In that case we’re going to need the right canvas. Get the paper wrong and we’re fucked from the word go. I can get the paints, that’s not a problem, but the canvas you’ll need to source.”

  “Right,” said Violet. “Not a problem. What do we need?”

  Damien sucked on the cigarette and stared at her. “I’m good. But I ain’t that good. Need to do a bit of research. Give me your number and I’ll text you once I know.”

  Violet grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and scribbled down her number.

  “I knew she liked me really,” Damien pretended to whisper to Lucas. “And it’ll cost you–” he began to say to Violet.

  “–the same as you charge Lucas,” Violet finished his sentence for him. “If you behave yourself and do a good job I might leave you a tip.”

  Damien laughed a cloud of grey smoke into the air. “Oh, it’ll be a good job.”

  “What if you make a mistake?” Violet took a half a step back, away from the smoke Damien was exhaling.

  “What do you mean?” Damien clenched his free hand into a fist once more.

  “Cool your jets, cowboy.” Violet smiled at him. “If I’m going to steal something I don’t want to have to do it twice.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucas.

  “I know what she means. If you’re doing something bigger and you make a mistake you can cover it up. You can paint over it, blend it, you know, that sort of thing.”

  “Right,” said Lucas.

  “But for minimalist stuff like this, you know, Matisse, that sort of thing,” he continued. “You get one chance. The brush hits the canvas and it’s done. So in the unlikely event that I fuck it up...”

  “But if I get you enough canvas…”

  Damien ground the last of his cigarette into a nearby ashtray. “If you get me enough canvas I’ll…”

  “Do us two?”

  “What? Piss off.”

  “Jesus,” said Violet. “Are you sure you can actually do this?”

  “Course I can fucking do it. And if you can nick enough canvas I’ll do you two that are so fucking perfect you could use the signature to cash a cheque in a dead man’s name. Okay?”

  Violet nodded. “When will you text?”

  Damien scratched his chin and stared at her. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  Lucas thanked Damien profusely and, in an entirely obvious attempt to prevent further conflict, ushered Violet out of Damien’s work space as fast as he could manage. When the door was closed, Damien drew two large bolts across it and stared at the back for a moment before wandering over to a set of small drawers and taking a mobile phone from one of them.

  He stared at the phone for a second then started tapping at it. A few moments later he pressed a button to dial and raised the phone to his ear.

  “Hello?” the voice at the other end echoed as if its owner was in a bathroom.

  “Percy? It’s Damien.”

  “Alright mate,” said the voice. “How’s tricks?”

  “Not bad,” said Damien. “Not bad at all. Fingers in pies. You know how it goes.”

  “Yeah. Course,” said Percy. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m right in the middle of something. You after a favour?”

  “Nah,” said Damien. “Think you’re going to owe me one though. Know that bitch you were looking for?”

  The line went quiet for a second. “Violet?” Percy said eventually.

  “Just left the studio. Looks like she’s back in town. And she’s doing a job with Lucas.”

  “And it was definitely her?” asked Percy.

  “Crazy bitch nearly broke my arm and blinded me,” said Damien.

  “Sounds like her,” Percy conceded. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

  Chapter 16

  Violet sat in the passenger seat of the van and touched the screen on the iPad in her lap. It blinked as she opened up the folder which held all the accumulated information about their target and the owner of the painting: Rollo Glass. The head of the Kilchester Bank, and here was his life laid out in front of her. When she could get the thing to work. Violet had been keen to go with paper folders. Traditional. Classic. But Zoe had had other ideas and had furnished them with iPads.

  As Violet saw it, Glass was greed personified. A while ago she had been talking to a friend of hers who explained how the delicacy foie gras was made by force feeding corn to a goose. Rollo Glass’ CV was the business equivalent. At fifty- four years old, Glass had gone into dozens of businesses and, in his financial capacity, force fed them until they were, at least from the outside, the very picture of a money making machine. And then? Sell it and move on.

  It wasn’t a perfect metaphor but it was what Glass’ business style amounted to from Violet’s perspective.

  Outside of work... well, the initial research hadn’t suggested there was a great deal to say about his social life and the weeks’ worth of surveillance they had done backed that up. He was a man of routine and he was a man who worked long, long hours.

  Out of the house at seven, into the office for around seven thirty. Lunch was at twelve sharp. From credit card records Zoe had already hacked they could see the small circle of eating establishments he preferred. All of them were high-end, high-price, ostentatious affairs.

  An hour of troughing and quaffing either on his own or with one of the other executives and he was back to the bank until six thirty. The car would come to pick him up and take him to a restaurant to shovel more slops into his snout and then he would roll out, half-cut and belching, back into the car and home.

  Rinse and repeat.

  As a criminal, Violet didn’t need a moral reason to steal from someone. It was just nice when someone as unpleasant as Glass was brought into view.

  There were worse people in the world, of course there were. But most of them didn’t collect obscenely expensive works of art and hang them on the sitting room wall.

  Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, Violet noticed it was coming up to six twenty five. She fixed her gaze on the revolving door that was the primary entrance to the bank, and her mind started to drift. This was the worst part of the job. The watching. The waiting. It was so tedious but so necessary. Experience had taught her that if you left this surveillance to chance then you were storing up problems when you actually pulled the job. What you didn’t want was the target turning up unexpectedly because you hadn’t taken into account that they went to Karate classes every other Wednesday and not every Wednesday as you thought.

  A thunderous metallic sound shook Violet back into the moment as the sliding side door of the van opened.

  “Evening,” said Zoe as she stepped out of the chill of the autumn night. Violet could hardly see her in her black jeans and bomber jacket.

  “I was wondering when you’d be back. Did you bring some food?” asked Violet, before turning her attention back to the revolving doors.

  “Nah, I forgot, sorry,” Zoe replied with a shrug. “But I’ve got something better than food.”

  “At this stage,” Violet sighed, “nothing is better than food.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes, closed the van door and started unzipping her backpack and removing items that Violet couldn’t quite make out in the gloom.

  “This,” said Zoe to the back of Violet’s head, “is a long range, directional microphone. Really it’s two microphones. One at the pointy end you point at the person you are going to listen to and one at the – erm – arse end that sucks in all the extraneous noise and then cancels that out meaning that, more or less, all you get is the sound of the target.

>   “Which is whatever you point the pointy end at?” asked Violet without looking.

  “Yup,” said Zoe. “And I’m going to fit this up here just behind the driver’s headrest so we should be able to wind the window down a crack, choose our direction and then...”

  “Spies are us.”

  “Damn right,” Zoe nodded. “But there’s more.”

  “I was afraid there might be,” Violet let out a huge sigh. “If only there were more food.”

  “Food’s on me after this,” Zoe replied and then, leaning over Violet, she clipped something small and blank to the corner of the windscreen on the driver’s side. “That is a camera,” she continued, taking the tablet from Violet and tapping the screen. It elicited responses Violet was hitherto unaware a tablet could produce. A live video feed of what was going on in front of them sprang up on the iPad’s screen.

  “See?” said Zoe, clearly very impressed. “Video and audio streams directly on here and there’s a digital copy back at headquarters.”

  “Headquarters?”

  “Well ‘back at the factory unit’ sounds much less glamorous.”

  “Fair point.”

  There was a vrrrrrrrm noise and Violet reached forward and picked her mobile phone out of a cup holder.

  She read the message on the screen then handed the phone to Zoe. “It’s from Damien.”

  Zoe frowned.

  “The forger?” said Violet.

  “Oh yeah, him,” Zoe looked down at the text then reached into her bag and took out a laptop. She quickly powered it up and the rattle of her rapid fire typing echoed around the interior of the van. “So this is the canvas we’ll need, then?” she asked, pausing briefly to hand Violet’s phone back before returning to hammering at the keyboard some more.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to see where we can source it.” Violet sighed and stretched one of her arms, causing her shoulder to make an odd pop noise. “I think it can wait until the morning, though.”

  “You’re alright,” said Zoe, not bothering to make eye contact. “I’ll see what I can find now.”

  Violet shrugged and went back to watching the revolving door.

  “Oh, and there’s more,” said Zoe. “I’ve been digging around in the banker’s finances. And there are discrepancies.”

  “Which is ironic.”

  “Quite.” Zoe continued tapping away at the laptop as she spoke. “Amongst the myriad ways that he tries to avoid tax...”

  “Why am I not surprised?” asked Violet.

  “You don’t get to be rich by giving your money away,” Zoe replied, the light from her screen creating an unnatural pallor on her otherwise youthful face. “Anyway, we could probably use this one to our advantage.”

  “Tell me more.” Violet looked from the tablet in her lap to the revolving door and back again.

  “Well, Glass didn’t want to pay tax on some of the paintings he owns. So through some complex accounting manoeuvre he actually looks like he didn’t buy them. I won’t go in to the details.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Violet.

  Zoe looked up from her search to smile a patronising smile back at her. “I wouldn’t want to confuse your tiny brain with such complex machinations.”

  “Eh? What does that mean?” asked Violet, before turning to Zoe and going cross eyed.

  “So instead of buying them he ‘inherits’ them,” Zoe continued, unperturbed. “And to avoid paying tax on the inheritance he puts them to the tax man as what is known as ‘conditionally exempt works of art’.”

  “Yes!” said Violet and pumped her fist in the air.

  “You don’t know what that is, do you?” asked Zoe.

  Violet shook her head.

  “Well, neither did I, but I did some research and it effectively means that if you are on that list and you don’t pay the tax then you and me and the rest of the general public have the right to go and view the painting.”

  “That can’t be right,” Violet said, surprised.

  “Honestly, I couldn’t really believe it myself at first, but it’s a thing. I phoned up the Inland Revenue and asked them and they said yeah, if we ask to see it then he is legally obliged to let us view the damn thing.”

  Violet stared at Zoe for a second. “You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”

  “No, no, I swear and I’ve been in contact with his secretary,” Zoe went on.

  Violet laughed. “That’s really bloody bizarre.”

  Zoe glanced upwards and pointed to the bank; Violet turned too. Rollo Glass was prising himself out of the revolving doors, his belly threatening for a moment to become stuck there, and then the doors ejected him onto the pavement. There was another man with him, tall and muscular. Probably some sort of security personnel. Zoe adjusted the microphone direction and suddenly the sound of the two men’s conversation crackled out of the iPad’s speakers.

  “…to the opening of that new restaurant across town?”

  “Probably head straight home to be perfectly honest.” Glass spoke with a clipped, upper class accent.

  “No problem, Sir.” The other man was American. Or had been at some stage, Violet thought she could hear Cockney creeping in at the edges as he continued. “Would you like me to accompany you or–”

  “No. No need. Not tonight,” Glass replied before stepping into a waiting car. The other man closed the door and tapped on the roof of the car. It pulled away from the curb and into the evening.

  Violet quickly sent a message to Barry to follow up at the other end.

  “So, where were you?” asked Violet. “His secretary?”

  Zoe nodded. “Yeah, she was a little confused at first but I explained it all to her, told her who to contact at the tax office and all that. Told her I was an art student studying at the university.”

  Violet shook her head in disbelief.

  “Away she goes to check and she calls me back a couple of hours later to say ‘no problem’ and would I like to come and view the painting the day after tomorrow?”

  “Not enough time to set ourselves up for a snatch, but a great little surveillance opportunity nonetheless.” Violet’s eyes were wide and she kept shaking her head in disbelief.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Zoe. “With the damned place being underground it’ll give us an unprecedented level of access. And, well, if I get the chance maybe I might be able to leave one or two little electronic devices behind. We’ll just have to see how that goes. Oh, and while I’m doing that you might want to pay a little visit to Kilchester Museum.”

  “Any particular reason?” asked Violet, hopefully.

  “Of course,” said Zoe, pointing at her laptop screen. “Turns out they have the canvas you need in storage there. I just accessed their computer system and... you know...”

  “And the information you needed just fell out of the internet into your computer? I’ll wager that shit’s illegal, young lady.”

  Zoe let her mouth fall open and placed a hand on her chin. “The very suggestion!”

  “Well,” said Violet, clapping her hands together. “I think that little coup means that dinner is, in fact, on me this evening.”

  “I’m not arguing with that,” said Zoe before beginning to stash all the electronics she had distributed throughout the van since her arrival. Unzipping her bag she panicked for a moment, hunting for her purse, and then looked up to see Violet unzipping it and rifling through in an exaggerated manner. “How do you do that?”

  Violet laughed and threw it back to her. “Misspent youth.”

  Zoe shook her head and shoved the purse into a deeper pocket of her backpack. Violet turned her attention back to her phone and began to text the final member of the crew.

  Katie. I’m back. Did you miss me?

  Chapter 17

  The maitre d’ of the as-yet-unopened Legends restaurant closed his eyes and took a deep, deep breath. The place would never again smell as new as it did at that moment. People talked about the ‘new car smell’ but th
at was so common, so... vulgar. So few people in the world could truly appreciate the ‘new restaurant’ smell. And certainly none of the people who had reservations for this evening. They were just restaurant tourists.

  Changing his perspective, the maitre d’ listened to the silence. There was nothing. He listened closer and could hear the sounds of his breathing, the slight squeak of his brand new, handmade shoes. If he really strained he could hear the faintest chinking noise, talking, and, most importantly, cooking drifting from the kitchen hidden far behind an unseen wall.

  Eyes still tightly closed, he reached out his hand and touched the Egyptian cotton of the tablecloth next to him. Slowly his hand slid to the cutlery, the solid weight of the soup spoon, the fork, and, being careful not to damage his perfectly manicured finger on the serrated teeth, the brand new steak knife. He felt a thrill as he gently ran the pad of his index finger down the edge of the blade, each tooth so sharp it almost tore the flesh.

  Finally, he opened his eyes to gaze upon the centrepiece. There, framed and backlit, were two X-rays of Marilyn Monroe. The fact that both bore her married name, DiMaggio, was a detail he would relish sharing with customer after customer.

  Perfect. He thought.

  “What time are we opening?” a voice with the texture of a pebble-dashed Rottweiler asked.

  The maitre d’ jumped and spun around.

  “We are not yet open,” he snapped and, pointing to the door, “I would politely ask you to leave, Sir.” The maitre d’ dropped his gaze from where he expected the person to be down to where he actually was. Before him stood a man, he could tell by the goatee and moustache that surrounded his mouth. But it was a man who was no more than four and a half feet tall. Making his first mistake, the maitre d’ broke into a grin.

  The man stared up at him and blinked slowly a couple of times. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and he wore a light blue shirt and darker blue waistcoat and trousers with black, dress shoes. He ran his hand over his head; it was shaved bald to the extent that the lights glinted off it.