Star Fall

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Tell me,’ said Slider.

  SIXTEEN

  Swindler’s List

  ‘How did you come to meet him?’ Slider asked.

  Duggan almost shrugged. ‘He was Minister for the Arts. We bumped into each other on occasion. You know that after my little bit of trouble I was consulted by the police and the government on various cases – authentication, advising on forgery techniques and so on. I made as much of my contacts as I could, you can bet on it. I didn’t want anyone thinking my copies were anything but copies any more, so I made good and sure everyone knew what I was doing.’

  ‘Can you really copy anything?’ Connolly asked, unable to help herself. ‘I mean, they’re all different styles and everything.’

  ‘Copying is copying,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Once you see how they’ve done it, you can reproduce it. Manet, Van Gogh, Constable, Vermeer, Picasso – they all had their little tricks. My trouble as an artist was always that I can be anyone except myself. I have the talent all right – bags of it – more than most successful artists – but I haven’t the single eye. As soon as I try to paint something for myself, it falls into pastiche. It’s as if I can’t take myself seriously. And when you see the rubbish that’s sold in the galleries, and the damned extortionate prices they charge for something I could do with one hand tied behind my back – well, you see that the whole art world is in fact a great big joke, with the punter and his pocket the butt of it.’

  Interesting though this was, Slider knew a hobby horse when it stepped on his foot, and invited Duggan to dismount. ‘You were saying how you knew Philip Masterson.’

  ‘Right. Well, because of the cooperation with officialdom, I got invited to the occasional bash, as a pat on the head for being a good boy. Had drinkies at Number Ten once. It was at a Christmas party at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that Philip approached me about the painting. Said he had a bit of private business he’d like to put my way, and would I be interested in a commission. I said yes, of course.’ He smiled. ‘Curse of the freelance. You can never say no.’

  Slider had heard the same from Joanna. She had tales of trumpet players who’d do the first half at the Albert Hall then tear across London to do the second half at the Festival Hall, all because they couldn’t say no.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘So we slipped out of the party,’ Duggan said, ‘and he took me across to his office. There was a painting there – government property, of course – but as I said, they have these works of art seeded around all the buildings. I’d been in his office before and noticed it. Quite a pretty piece – “Girl with Embroidered Reticule” – by a sixteenth century Dutch painter, Joest van Wessen. One of the minor masters, if such an expression is allowable. Anyway, he said that his wife had been visiting him in his office one day and she’d fallen in love with it. Her birthday was coming up, and he wanted me to paint a copy of it as a present for her.’

  ‘Had you met his wife?’

  ‘No. I’d never met him outside of business. I knew nothing about his home life.’

  ‘Did he say anything about her?’

  ‘Nothing, except that he wanted to surprise her with this painting, so it all had to be kept a secret. I said thank you very much, named my price, and we shook hands.’

  ‘How did you manage, working in a busy Whitehall office?’ Slider said.

  ‘I didn’t do the actual painting there,’ Duggan said. ‘It would have been too disruptive on both sides. I did the work in my own studio. But he arranged several visits for me so that I could study the painting closely, do some sketches and make notes, and take as many photographs as I wanted. Of course, he wanted it in time for the birthday which didn’t leave me a great deal of time, but I’m one of those people who works better under pressure. I said I could deliver on time, on condition that he paid me on time. People can be amazingly vague about paying their bills once they’ve got the actual goods. Anyway, I took a decent deposit off him, just in case. But he paid up like a lamb, so that was all right.’

  ‘Where did you send the painting to when it was finished?’ Slider asked.

  ‘He came and fetched it himself. It was a pretty good piece of work, though I say it myself.’ Duggan smiled complacently. ‘He seemed very impressed with it, said his wife would love it. I sent him the invoice, he sent me a cheque, and that was that.’

  ‘Did you ever see it in place, in his house?’ Slider asked.

  ‘No. As I said, I had no contact with him outside work. And as a matter of fact, it wasn’t long after that that he got reshuffled out of the Arts and I had no work contact with him either. Valerie Agar was the new Arts Minister, God help us!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘So, what’s all this about? Why are you asking about Philip Masterson, and what’s it got to do with Rowland Egerton?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to work out,’ Slider said. ‘Did you ever tell Mr Egerton about this commission?’

  ‘No,’ said Duggan. ‘Philip wanted it kept a secret, so I didn’t discuss it with anyone.’

  ‘Did you generally discuss your work with Mr Egerton?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Obviously, the stuff I was doing for him. And yes, we’d chat now and then if I had anything interesting on.’

  ‘So how can you be sure you didn’t mention this one to him?’ she said.

  He gave her a frosty look. ‘Because I’m a professional, young lady. The same way you know you haven’t talked about something at work that has to be kept secret.’ He looked at Slider. ‘Why are you asking that?’

  Slider shook his head, thinking things through. ‘Did you ever discuss Philip Masterson with him?’

  ‘Why on earth should I? He wasn’t exactly an interesting person, Anyway, as far as I know, Rowland didn’t know him from Adam. Look, I think you’d better come clean with me. Maybe I could help you if I knew what it was you wanted to know.’

  Slider nodded to Connolly, who produced the photocopied letter in a clear folder and handed it to Duggan. He looked at it, and a faintly puzzled frown crossed his face. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘We found it in a file in Mr Egerton’s computer,’ Connolly said. ‘Is that your signature?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the letter I sent to Philip, all right.’

  ‘Any idea how Mr Egerton came to have a copy of it?’

  ‘None at all. I certainly never gave him one. He must have got it from Philip, I suppose,’ said Duggan. He turned the folder over as if the back of the letter might have the answer. ‘It’s a mystery,’ he said. ‘But why is it important?’

  Slider shrugged. ‘Probably, it isn’t. We have to follow up anything unusual, and this seemed odd, that’s all. Well, thank you for your cooperation.’ He started to rise, and Mrs Duggan, still standing silently by the door, stirred.

  ‘Pat, didn’t you lose that letter?’ she said. ‘The first one, I mean.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Duggan said with a hint of impatience.

  ‘I’m remembering now,’ she went on, ‘that when you came to posting it, you couldn’t find it after all. Didn’t you have to print out another one?’

  Duggan frowned. ‘Did I? It’s possible. I’m not the tidiest of people.’ He waved a hand towards the desk under its snowdrift of papers. ‘I’m always misplacing things. They usually turn up again, though, given time.’ It sounded like an oft-repeated justification.

  ‘That one didn’t. You got in quite a temper,’ Mrs Duggan went on serenely, ‘because you said if you didn’t get the invoice out before that so-and-so got cold you’d never get the money. So I said for God’s sake print out another one and stop your fussing.’

  It was all delivered in a voice so colourless, it was almost deadpan, but Slider could imagine a much fierier scene. He could almost see Duggan throwing papers up in the air in a fury and bellowing at his wife to be more of a help and less of a nag.

  And now a sheepish look came over Duggan’s hairy face, and he said, ‘It’s ringing a bell, my love.
Definitely a bell. I think you’re right. But even if that’s a copy of the missing letter, how could it have got into Rowland’s hands?’

  ‘Did he ever visit you here, in your studio?’ Slider asked.

  ‘God, yes! Any number of times. We used to hang out here and gas.’

  ‘And drink,’ said Mrs Duggan. ‘And get noisy. Good job we don’t have any neighbours to complain.’

  ‘Those days are long gone,’ he said, fixing her with a look. ‘I’m a reformed character now. And Rowland—’ He stopped and went on seriously, ‘Rowland is dead. God, in all this chatter, I’d forgotten. Poor old Rowland. What a rotten thing.’

  Slider got up to go. Connolly retrieved the folder from Duggan, Mrs Duggan opened the door, and the dogs surged in as if they had been leaning against it, and were hooshed out again. ‘No dogs in the studio!’ Duggan bellowed them. ‘No hairs on my paintings!’

  At the door, Slider turned back and said, ‘Just one last thing, Mr Duggan – you said you never met Philip Masterson’s wife. Do you know who she was?’

  ‘Mrs Masterson, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Why, was she someone different?’

  ‘Did he ever mention her name to you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he did. Just talked about “my wife”. He sounded as if he was very fond of her, though. Must have been, to spend that much on her birthday present.’

  ‘How much?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Five thousand,’ said Duggan.

  ‘Not enough,’ said Mrs Duggan, ‘once you’ve taken ma-terials into account.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Duggan lightly, ‘it was fast work. I didn’t labour long over it. Easy come, easy go.’

  ‘That’s your trouble,’ said Mrs Duggan.

  Despite her blancmange-like appearance, Slider was getting the impression she wasn’t nearly the pushover she appeared, and that Duggan didn’t have nearly as much rope as his surroundings suggested.

  ‘Well,’ said Connolly on the drive back, ‘that was a wasted journey. I can’t see it helps us with the murder at all.’

  ‘I’d still like to know what the letter was doing in Egerton’s computer,’ said Slider.

  ‘Sure, we’ve all got loads of rubbish in our computers. And on our desks. And in our drawers. If I was killed in a car smash right now, I bet there’d be some heads scratched over what I’ve got in me handbag. Some poor sap of a detective’d be puzzling himself to an early grave saying, “What in the name of arse does that mean?”’

  Slider wasn’t listening. He was thinking. ‘He could have picked it up from Duggan’s desk during one of his visits there. That could be why it went astray. But the question is, why?’

  ‘Maybe he knew from Bunny that that’s what she was getting for her birthday, and he was interested.’

  ‘Masterson said it was a secret present.’

  ‘Ah, sure God, women always know about these things,’ said Connolly. ‘There never was a secret present that stayed secret.’

  ‘Even so, it doesn’t explain why he’d take the letter. Much more likely that he’d just discuss it with Duggan.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want Duggan to know he knew. Maybe he wanted to compete with a big oul present of his own.’

  ‘Still doesn’t explain.’

  ‘No,’ Connolly admitted. ‘It’s queer, all right.’

  ‘The queerest thing,’ Slider said, ‘is that it wasn’t the letter itself, but a photocopy of the letter. Where would he get that from?’

  ‘That,’ said Connolly, ‘is a real mincer.’

  Slider fell into a brooding silence, and Connolly wisely let him alone.

  Atherton, perched on the radiator in Slider’s room, considered the new information, as far as it went, and then said, ‘Well, if nothing else, we’ve got another connection with Philip Masterson, which is more than we’ve got with anyone else. There’s the altercation at the funeral, and the letter addressed to him in Egerton’s computer.’

  ‘Photocopy of the letter,’ Slider corrected.

  ‘And the fact he was getting the ride off Masterson’s oul lady,’ Connolly added. ‘That’s three.’

  ‘We have no evidence at all that they were having an affair,’ Slider said.

  ‘Still,’ said Atherton, ‘the letter must have been significant to Egerton in some way for him to have preserved it. Maybe he had an interest in that particular painting. He didn’t care for Lavender’s Morisot, so maybe his taste was more towards the representational. His collection, as far as we’ve seen it, wasn’t hot for Impressionism.’

  ‘But when would he ever have seen it?’ Swilley asked. She was propping up one side of the door and Hollis the other, like a pair of gargoyles representing Heaven and Hell. She was golden and beautiful as an angel – a later Disney representation of an angel, but still – and he certainly looked like hell these days.

  ‘He might well have visited Masterson’s office at some point, when he was Minister for the Arts. Or he might have seen an image of it in a catalogue or a book or on the Internet,’ Atherton said.

  ‘I know what the Mona Lisa looks like, but I’ve never seen it in real life,’ Hollis said.

  ‘That’s a bit more famous than this Van Weasel joker,’ Connolly pointed out.

  ‘Or he could have seen it somewhere else altogether,’ Slider said. ‘Those paintings get moved about.’

  ‘We could ask your contact in SCD6 – what’s his name? De Wett? – if it’s been anywhere else,’ Atherton suggested.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having a look at it now,’ Slider said. ‘Connolly, see if there’s an image on the Internet.’

  She went out to her desk and in a very short time called them over. ‘Here it is. From a site about Dutch Old Masters. There’s three Weasel paintings on it.’

  Everyone crowded round to look. It was typically Dutch, with the light falling from an unseen source at one side, the background simple. A golden-haired girl in a yellow robe was sitting at a table covered with a brown plush cloth. Her face was turned towards the artist, and she was holding a piece of paper in one hand, as though it was a letter she had been reading. There was a cream-coloured vase on the table and an earthenware bowl containing red and yellow fruit. The girl’s eyes were brown, very striking with the gilt hair, which was crinkled in front into fine corkscrew curls hanging about her brow.

  ‘It is a pretty piece,’ Slider said. The limited palette of brown and yellow tones gave it a harmony that seemed designed to emphasize the girl’s colouring and beauty. The reticule itself was lying on the table, half hanging over the edge, a flat square bag of deep crimson velvet covered in elaborate embroidery of coloured silks, gold threads and pearls, the bottom of the bag finished off with gold tassels that hung down against the brown plush of the tablecloth. Though not large or prominent in terms of the rest of the picture, it nevertheless caught the eye because of the richness of the embroidery – hence, Slider supposed, the title. The subtext of the picture, he thought, was that this was a love-letter she carried around in the bag and took out to read from time to time.

  ‘You can see why someone might like to own a copy,’ said Swilley. ‘It’s rather nice.’

  ‘Hasn’t got the precision and technique of a Vermeer,’ Atherton remarked. ‘But still.’

  ‘Make a nice prezzy,’ Connolly agreed.

  ‘I wonder what it’s worth,’ Hollis said.

  Slider straightened and sought Atherton’s eye, and found the same thought there. ‘I think perhaps you’d better go and visit Masterson’s old office in the DCMS,’ he said. ‘Have a look at it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Atherton.

  ‘Be discreet.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘As of now, I’m promoting checking Philip Masterson’s alibi to the head of the list,’ Slider announced. ‘Mackay – this committee. Find someone who was on it and check he was actually there. Connolly, contact his secretary, whatever she knows about his movements that day. Hollis, find what officers were on duty on the entrances to the Palace
of Westminster.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  `McLaren? Where’s McLaren?’

  ‘Here, guv.’ He was right behind him, having left his own desk to join the party. His breath smelled of artificial strawberries – he was eating an individual tub of jelly trifle.

  ‘Tracing One Thirty-Five Man. Concentrate on the route between Shepherd’s Bush and Westminster in both directions,’ Slider told him. ‘Take as much help as you need. I want this done quickly. And Swilley, in case he took a cab, get on to all the taxi firms you can find locally and around Westminster, see if anyone took him anywhere on Thursday last.’

  ‘Yes, boss. Are we thinking—?’

  ‘We aren’t thinking anything until we know something,’ said Slider. But of course they were. He was. Things were falling into place.

  ‘It’s nasty,’ said Porson. ‘The last thing we need is more aggro of that kind.’

  ‘It’s still just a theory, sir. We don’t know yet there’s anything in it.’

  ‘Well, what’re you telling me for, then?’

  ‘I just thought I ought to prepare you, sir. If I’m right, there’ll be a media storm.’

  ‘Everywhere you blasted well go there’s a media storm,’ Porson grumbled.

  Slider looked hurt and said nothing.

  Porson went on, ‘Well, keep me informed. The instant you’ve got something. And don’t go plunging in irregardless, like a bowl in a china shop.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I want all your ducks in a row before I go in to bat. This is a whole new kettle of worms you’re opening up.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ said Slider. It was never a good sign when Porson’s imagery started to fracture. Along the fault lines were deposits of deep shit, which could go anywhere in an explosion.

  The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (go figure what that lot had to do with each other, Atherton thought) lived at 100 Parliament Street, one of the grand, elaborate white buildings just along from Downing Street – Parliament Street was in fact the end part of Whitehall. It was the kind of architecture that reminded one of an iced wedding cake, for which reason Slider had named the style ‘gâtesque’.