The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

  He was choking, terrified, his body rigid as Ma Fleet placed the tip of the needle against the side of his neck.

  “Make one move and this will go straight into your jugular,” she said, her voice low. “Now, that might not matter; it might be something to help Kit Wilkes’s recovery. Or it might matter a lot. So before I jab it in your fucking neck, you tell me: Which is it?”

  “I …” He gasped, trying to take in a breath. “I … can … explain.”

  “You will explain, you son of a bitch.”

  Slowly she released her grip, and Fountain groped his way to a chair. He sat down, rubbing his neck.

  “What’s in the needle?” she demanded.

  “Stimulant.”

  “Stimulant?” Mrs. Fleet jerked her head toward Kit Wilkes. “It’s not working, Doctor; he’s in a coma.”

  “I know, I know. But it should have all worked out.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “What?”

  “We planned it. Or rather Kit planned it and paid me to go through with it.” He rubbed his throat painfully. “He asked me to keep him sedated.” His voice was dry and his hands trembling as he reached for the bedside pitcher and poured himself a glass of water. “We made an arrangement. Kit called me as soon as he got off Bernie Freeland’s jet. He said a Hogarth had been found. Freeland had it, and it was worth a fortune. There was something sensational about it, some story attached. He said everyone would be after it.”

  “So?”

  “Kit was going to get it, whatever it took, but he wanted to make sure that no one suspected him of being involved. Especially the Russians. He was being greedy, reckless. He could have made a deal with them, but that wasn’t Kit’s way. I tried to reason with him. Why not go to the Russians? After all, he’d been working with them for months, picking up the slack after Arnold Fletcher had pissed them off. But Kit didn’t want them to get the Hogarth. He wanted that painting to embarrass James Holden, and he was prepared to do anything to get it.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she was listening. “Go on.”

  “Trouble is, Kit always thinks he’s smarter than the other guy.” Fountain coughed and took another sip of water before continuing. “He was determined that no one would know he was involved, so all suspicion had to be taken off him. He had to be put out of the running, so to speak. We agreed to make it look like a drug overdose. Everyone knew Kit was a user, so I sedated him and had him hospitalized.”

  “You’re sure it was Kit Wilkes’s idea and not yours?” Her tone was acid.

  “It was all his idea!” Fountain snapped emphatically.

  “It was a fucking risky idea.”

  “Kit was fixated on getting the painting. I just did what he asked.”

  “And it never crossed your mind to get the painting for yourself?”

  He paused, then shrugged. “I thought about it, but I couldn’t have pulled it off. Kit was the one who had all the contacts. I did what I was asked to do.”

  “How long was Wilkes supposed to be in his ‘coma’?”

  “Until the dust settled. Then I’d revive him, and he’d make a killing with the painting.”

  She was still holding the hypodermic in her hand, tapping it against her palm as she moved closer to the doctor.

  “Kit Wilkes had the Hogarth?”

  “No; Bernie Freeland had it then. Kit was arranging for it to be stolen in New York.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know,” Fountain replied, his eyes closing as he felt the point of the needle against his neck again. “I swear I don’t know! That’s why I was going to give Kit an injection to wake him up. I’ve been injecting him for the last few days, but he won’t come around. He really is in a coma.”

  “You put him there.”

  “He asked me to.”

  Smiling grimly, Mrs. Fleet looked over to the bed. “Well, thanks to you, it appears that Mr. Wilkes is out of the running forever.” She turned to the doctor. “Are you sure you can’t bring him around?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve tried everything!” he said, panicked, still rubbing his throat. “At first I just thought it was a delayed reaction, that he would revive slowly, but he’s never shown any flicker of consciousness.”

  Thoughtful now, Charlene Fleet realized how she could get her own back on her treacherous sibling. She might have lost half a million pounds, but her sister would lose her only child.

  “I’ve tried everything to help him, everything.” Fountain sounded desperate.

  “And no one else knows?”

  Eli Fountain blinked, taking a moment to understand what she was asking.

  “No. I’m Kit’s doctor. Everyone accepted what I told them. The rest was easy. I paid a nurse to swap the blood test results with another patient, so no one noticed anything to contradict what I said.”

  “You know that you’d never practice medicine again if anyone found out what you’d done? Even face a murder charge.”

  “I didn’t want to murder him; I wanted to help him!”

  “You wanted to help yourself, Eli. You wanted your share. You wanted what you always want—money. Only this time you’ve buggered it up. You should have come to me.” Mrs. Fleet went on, her tone now honeyed: “You see what happens when you try to cheat me? I wouldn’t have made a mistake like this.”

  Dazed, Dr. Fountain kept staring at the body on the bed. “I can’t bring him around! I can’t wake him up!”

  “So finish it.”

  He turned to her, eyes bulging behind his glasses, his voice a whisper. “What?”

  “Finish him off.” She passed him the syringe. “Change the injection; no one will know. End it. You could be doing him a favor. After all, he might be brain-damaged, and even if he isn’t and you manage to revive him, it’ll be too late for him to get his painting. Someone else has it now.”

  Fountain was staring at her, terrified, as she continued.

  “I imagine you’ve lost out on a big commission, Eli, but that’s nothing compared to the outcry that would follow the exposure of what you’ve done. Then again, doctors can always bury their mistakes, can’t they?”

  “I can’t kill him.”

  “No?” She passed him the hypodermic and walked to the door, coaxing him into making a choice that would avenge her. “Your decision, Doctor. But if you do get Kit Wilkes out of his coma, think about what would happen. He’s a vicious, manipulative brat who’s made a living out of publicity. You think he’d keep it quiet? He’s lost the Hogarth. You revive him and he’ll want revenge.”

  She paused, goading him with her reptilian smile. “He’ll drag your name into every paper and onto every television show. He’ll make sure you’re pilloried. You’ll never see Park Street again, Doctor, never realize that dream of yours to retire as a rich man.” She sighed with fake sympathy. “If you bring him around, Kit Wilkes will have you put away, locked up for the rest of your life. No more women, no more sexual favors, no more luxury. It’ll be over. He’ll cut your legs from under you, and you know it. But that’s only if he comes around.”

  Fountain glanced at the figure in the bed, then back to Mrs. Fleet.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Who will know? Only me, and what’s one more secret for us to share?” She shrugged. She pointed to the immobile Wilkes. “Don’t risk what you have for that, Eli. Do it and save yourself.”

  Sixty-One

  “PACK IT IN,” TULLY SAID QUIETLY, “WHILE YOU STILL CAN.”

  “That was bloody awful,” was Victor’s response as he pushed his plate aside. “You never could cook, Tully. If that turns out to be my last meal, I’ve been cheated.” He glanced across the table at his oldest friend. “Ma Fleet paid up.”

  “All of it?”

  “All of it.”

  Whistling under his breath, Tully nodded, impressed. “You don’t think she’ll try and get her own back?”

  “She’d love to, but how can she? If anything happens to me, it’ll all come out. She’s angry but
not stupid.”

  “What about her sister? Or Fountain? You think Mrs. Fleet’s going to let them get away with selling her out?”

  “Again, she can’t do anything. Elizabeth has the upper hand, and Fountain can handle himself.”

  Clearing away the plates, Tully flicked on a lamp and sat down, crossing his long legs and resting his head back against the chair.

  “This time tomorrow the exchange will be over,” he said quietly, staring up at the ceiling, his glance tracing the plaster center rose. “I want to come with you.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’ll put it another way. I am coming with you whether you like it or not.” Tully turned his head in Victor’s direction. “You need backup. When you hand over to the triads, you’ll need someone to get Liza Frith away safely. We’ll use my car.”

  “Tully—”

  “You need someone to help you.”

  “I was going to say that I’m using my car.” Victor smiled wryly. “And you’re right; I could do with you there, but it’s too dangerous.”

  “You said it was just an exchange. The girl for the painting. A simple swap.”

  “I lied.”

  Piccadilly, bounded by the famous Circus at one end and Hyde Park Corner at the other, is a center of commerce, of expensive hotels, showrooms, and businesses, that leads to those fashionable streets where artworks are exhibited, exchanged, bought, and sold. Beneath the moneyed gloss, the sweating underside of the art world steams like a dung heap. Along Piccadilly at nightfall, the lamps are lit, the yellow lights of the London taxis move like glowworms in the semidarkness, and the restaurants are full. But the galleries are closed, locked and alarmed for the night.

  In one of those galleries, in the Burlington Arcade, Sir Oliver Peters sat in his office, patiently waiting for Victor Ballam. His staff had long since left, and the clock read nine-fifteen. He swallowed a dose of diamorphine, adjusted his silk tie, and checked his reflection in the mirror. All was done, safely gathered up. The loss of half a million pounds was a body blow to a body that already had been beaten into submission, but in that instant Sir Oliver Peters looked in the mirror and smiled.

  The doorbell interrupted his thoughts. Oliver let Victor in and relocked the door behind him.

  “Did you get it?”

  Oliver nodded and ushered Victor into the office. Under the limpid glow from an antique desk lamp, the little painting gazed back at them. Victor picked up the Hogarth and turned it over. On the back was the same slight tear at the corner, the watermark, and the grime of ages darkening the reverse of the canvas. He turned the painting over again and held it for a long moment under the light, the face of Frederick, Prince of Wales, smiling at him. A pleasant face, even—to some—handsome. But not remarkable. Not a face one would imagine capable of toppling a throne or inciting a killing. And not one killing but many. It was in the end just a man’s face. The proof of the painter’s hubris. The one face William Hogarth should never have painted.

  Sighing, Victor slid the picture into the case he had brought with him, zipped it closed, then looked at Oliver.

  “Thank you.”

  “I couldn’t do anything else. Not if I was to live with myself,” he replied, the gray silk of his tie casting an oyster reflection under his jowls. “Are you sure you can handle this alone?”

  “It’s just an exchange.”

  Oliver shrugged, his tone anxious. “And you believe they’ll go through with it? That they’ll keep their word?”

  “I think so.”

  “How can you be so sure they won’t cheat you?”

  “Because they don’t want the girl; they want the Hogarth. It’s all about cash—currency to keep their business interests running. They’re not interested in the painting, and they don’t know its history.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Positive,” Victor replied firmly. “They’re gangsters, not connoisseurs. If the Russians had gotten the painting, it would have been unfortunate, and if Lim Chang had succeeded, it would have been much more dangerous. These people will just use it to sell to the highest bidder. It’s a trust fund for them. A cash cow.” He paused, studying Oliver carefully. “No doubt some Arab will put it in his safe and gloat over it in secret.”

  “Hidden before and hidden again.” Oliver shook his head. “All those deaths for nothing.”

  “If it saves Liza Frith, it will have at least done some good,” Victor replied, walking to the door and pausing. “I’m sorry I put you under so much pressure. How are you?”

  “As you see.” He smiled faintly.

  “Thank you again for what you’ve done.”

  Oliver nodded, genuinely moved. “In the end, it was the right thing to do. The only thing.”

  Sixty-Two

  IT TOOK VICTOR ALMOST AN HOUR TO REACH THE APPOINTED MEETING place, a place where he had hoped never to return. He pulled up at the knot of trees where he had parked before. Where a huge fire had once burned, a smaller fire now smoldered, throwing haphazard light on the figures surrounding it. From the copse behind, Victor heard the familiar sounds of dogs barking and squabbling but not the hysterical savagery of a fight. He was grateful for that.

  As Victor approached the people with the case in his hand, he heard an owl hooting in the distance. He stopped, caught by a memory. When he was first in jail, he had struggled, fighting panic through days that were intense and blank with inaction. But the nights were the worst. That long stretch of thinking, of brooding, of remembering the trial, the witnesses, the lies that had so unjustly brought him to a prison cell. And then, one night, he had heard an owl hooting. Had almost imagined it passing close over his head, so close that he could hear the soft rhythm of its wings beating, its journey taking him out of confinement to the far, wide woods of Worcestershire.

  “Ballam?”

  Victor blinked, bringing himself back to the present moment.

  “You got the painting?”

  “Yes.” He moved toward the group, and the man with the infected eyes detached himself and came up to him, He put out his hand.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Give me the girl first.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  Amused, Victor smiled. “Don’t be offended, but no.”

  Annoyed, the man gestured to his companions. One of them disappeared into the shadows, then came back into the firelight holding Liza Frith’s arm. She was silent, her head bowed, her dress stained. But she was alive.

  “Tell him to bring her over here,” Victor said, watching as she approached.

  The case began to feel heavy in his grip, the handle burning his skin as he curled his fingers around the leather. But it wasn’t the painting inside—that weighed nothing—it was the weight of all that the Hogarth meant. The deaths, past and present. And in his hand Victor felt the crushing weight, the burden, of blood.

  He wanted suddenly to throw it onto the fire, to watch the face of the Prince of Wales—the image that had been the source of so much misery—consumed in the flames.

  But instead he held out his left hand toward Liza Frith and with his right hand extended the case toward the triad man, who snatched it, pushing Liza toward Victor and opening the case.

  “Good,” was all he said. Victor put his arm around a silent, shaking, and grateful Liza and turned to leave. They’d gone only a yard or two before the Chinese man called out, “Hey! Just a minute.”

  Victor froze. He felt Liza stiffen in his arms.

  “What?”

  “You did well.”

  “You wanted the painting,” Victor said more smoothly than he felt, “and you got it. We had a deal.”

  Rubbing his inflamed eye, the man passed the painting over to one of his colleagues and came toward Victor. In the background the dogs were still barking, the copse a dark hump behind. Every instinct told Victor to run, but he knew he couldn’t escape with Liza in tow, so he waited and watched as the man drew up to them.

  “Is t
here a problem?”

  “There’s a dogfight soon. You want to watch?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?” he asked again. “There’s going to be a sideshow, something you might be interested in, Mr. Ballam.”

  Uneasy, Victor glanced at Liza. “I want to get her home.”

  “Put her in the car and then get the fuck back here!” Victor realized that he wasn’t going to be allowed to go anywhere.

  He walked Liza to his car and helped her in. He put his coat around her and briefly touched her cheek. Her eyes fixed on his, her lips parting for an instant. But she said nothing.

  “I won’t be long,” he promised, sensing he was being watched. “Stay here. When I get back, we’ll go home.”

  Straightening up, Victor followed the man back toward the fire. But they didn’t stop there; they continued walking toward a large tent, both of them ducking under the tarpaulin as they entered. Wary, Victor looked around him, hearing the dogs barking frantically. Remembering Lim Chang and terrified of what might be about to happen to him, Victor felt the sweat slither down his back and moved farther into the tent only when he was pushed.

  “Go on!”

  The fog of cigarette smoke was so intense that for a moment he couldn’t make out the figures clearly, but eventually he could see a group of men surrounding what seemed to be a ring. The dogs were still barking, and the men’s faces turned toward Victor were all Chinese except for one: the face of the man being dragged toward the ring. He was English, heavyset, flushed, sweaty, and terrified. Stripped to the waist and barefoot, he was thrown over the steel enclosure of the ring, four Chinese men entering after him. Then, with speed and terrifying efficiency, they spread-eagled him, tying his wrists to two metal posts sunk into the ground and his ankles to two others. The man was struggling, screaming, wetting himself; then, as his tormentors stepped back, he began sobbing.

  Horror-struck, Victor stared at the man standing next to him. “Who is he?”

  “You don’t know?”