Altered Images

by Maxine Barry

  ALTERED IMAGES

  ALTERED IMAGES

  Maxine Barry

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  This eBook published by AudioGo Ltd, Bath, 2012.

  Published by arrangement with the Author

  Epub ISBN 9781471302503

  Copyright © Maxine Barry 2001

  Maxine Barry has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  All rights reserved

  Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com

  For my sister Marion, the true artist of the family.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was early May, and almond and cherry trees competed with ancient wisteria and cheerful laburnums to spread colour and bees along the city of London’s Belgravia pavements. A 1968 silver Aston Martin slowed as it approached the discreet entrance to the Greene Gallery. Steered down a narrow side alley, it halted beside a locked steel door, and Lorcan Greene got out, easing his six-foot-two-inch frame from the low bucket seat with a lithe ease that was almost feline.

  As he strode briskly but easily to the side door, the afternoon sunshine lovingly touched the dark blonde of his hair, turning it into the colour of ripe wheat. Inside, he sprinted lightly up a few steps and on to the main floor, where four big windows allowed in the bright, natural light. Large groups of extremely comfortable chairs littered the floor space, along with big flowering ferns. Five huge magnificent abstract canvases hung on the pure white walls, attracting the attention of passers-by.

  The receptionist, Moira, who was infatuated with her boss, looked up, her eyes softening as she recognised him. ‘Mr Greene. I didn’t know you were coming in today,’ she purred, surreptitiously patting the back of her chignon.

  Lorcan strolled towards her, dressed in a slate-grey suit that could only have come from one of the best tailors in Savile Row. His shoes were hand-crafted, black Italian leather, his gold wristwatch Swiss. Green-hazel eyes swept over Moira, noting with approval her well-cut navy blue suit, the neat hair, and discreet pearl stud earrings. The Greene Gallery was known to be a class act, from its address to linen handtowels in the public washrooms.

  ‘I had a call from Basil Armitage this morning,’ Lorcan explained, naming a very rich and well-known patron of the arts. ‘He’s coming in for a private viewing,’ he checked his wristwatch, ‘in about half an hour, so I think a selection of coffees and aperitifs is called for. All right?’

  Moira readily agreed that that would present no problems, and Lorcan turned away, walking through several more hushed rooms, nodding amiably at the smartly-uniformed security guards as he went. Each room was small, temperature-controlled, and had the finest art hung on its walls. As well as human watchdogs, each room was fitted with the latest technological equipment including invisible lasers. Since Lorcan Greene had inherited the rather shabby, slightly run-down gallery from its previous owner, no single work of art had ever been stolen, and he aimed to keep it that way.

  He noticed the Duchess of Avonsleigh in the Landscape Gallery avidly inspecting his newest acquisition—a small but charming Constable. It had a price tag of 1.3 million pounds sterling on it.

  ‘Good afternoon your Grace,’ he murmured quietly from the arched entrance. The elderly woman quickly turned and smiled at him, her wrinkled face lighting up flirtatiously. She quite liked square-jawed men who had a dashing dimple in the middle of their chins, and also rather admired his high cheekbones, strong, straight nose and fine white teeth. Ah, if only she’d been twenty . . . well . . . thirty years younger.

  ‘Lorcan, how lovely to see you again. I was just admiring your latest find. How on earth did you manage to get it?’ she asked curiously.

  Lorcan, accepting the unspoken invitation to dally, stepped smoothly into the quiet room. ‘Ah, now that would be telling,’ he teased, his eyes twinkling. ‘Persuasion is such a . . . personal thing, don’t you think?’

  The Duchess adored being flirted with, but she was also a very astute business woman who ran her husband’s vast estates with a hand of iron, and now she regarded Lorcan with a speculative gleam in her eye.

  Like everyone else interested in the art world, she knew the story of Lorcan Greene’s meteoric rise to fame and riches, for it was romantic and daring, and just the material that modern legends were made of.

  He’d gone to work for old Samuel Goldberg as a sixteen-year-old school leaver with virtually no qualifications, no social standing, and no idea about art. Nobody understood what had prompted the old man to teach him everything he knew and, since the Goldberg Gallery had been no competition for the top London galleries, nobody had really paid much attention.

  But that had quickly began to change, for contrary to all expectations, the young Lorcan Greene, son of an East-End dustman and a barmaid, soaked up the old man’s knowledge like a sponge. It took him less than four years to learn the business inside and out, until eventually Samuel entrusted him with the buying of original works, as well as classics.

  Lorcan’s choice of paintings shook the London art world to its foundations—mainly because they were so innovative, clever, and uncannily spot on. He seemed almost psychic in his abilities to pick out the unknown artists who had ‘it’, the artists whose works would only rise in monetary terms. Consequently, it didn’t take long for the art-buying public and professional speculators alike to realise that the Goldberg Gallery was now the place to buy modern art.

  When Samuel Goldberg died, nobody was surprised either by the depth of Lorcan’s mourning (for he’d come to love the old man like a grandfather), or by the fact that Samuel left him the entire gallery, lock, stock and Salvador Dali.

  Lorcan had wasted no time in spending some of his working capital on the gallery itself, renovating it inside and out. He’d hired new staff, embraced the technological age and within two years had succeeded in putting the Gallery firmly on the map. So now nobody was surprised when hotly-pursued pieces found their way on to the walls of the newly-renamed ‘Greene Gallery’.

  The Duchess was well aware of Lorcan’s reputation as something of a shark at auctions, knowing just the right psychological moment to enter into the bidding and, perhaps even more crucially, when to pull out. He was ruthless in the pursuit of professional private collectors who had pieces to sell, but always played fair, especially with the general public. She also knew that he’d made it a policy very early on always to explain to the unwary and uninitiated the true value of what they had. The result, of course, had been inevitable. In a world of unfair business practices, Lorcan Greene was one of the few art dealers whom people actively sought out when they were selling the odd family piece or two. So it was that the Greene Gallery often had first pickings of the (sometimes breath-taking) new finds.

  Such as the Constable the Duchess was admiring now.

  Not that Lorcan would ever admit to her that he’d acquired the painting by the simple expedient of answering a rather diffident letter from the widow of a merchant seaman, who’d sent him a photograph of the painting. Of course, he hadn’t been able to tell much from that, but it had sent a curious tingle down his spine, telling him that it might just be worth the train trip.

  And his hunches were seldom wrong.

  ‘So, how did you come by it,’ the Duchess pressed again, but Lorcan merely shrugged his shoulders elegantly and spread his hands wordlessly.

  ‘Trade secret,’ he whispered, then smoothly got down to business.

  Not that he seemed to, of course. But he knew that she couldn’t really afford the Constable,
and she knew that he knew. But there was no embarrassment on either side, which said much for Lorcan’s powers of discretion, tact and charm. Instead, very cleverly, he began to steer her towards a cheaper but utterly charming Cezanne, and thus became nearly a quarter-of-a-million pounds richer.

  * * *

  With no classic sports car at his disposal, Detective Inspector Richard Braine, of the Art Fraud Squad, travelled by unmarked police car to Lorcan Greene’s Belgravia apartment. For Lorcan had a second string to his bow, and one that was relatively well known to his acquaintances and those members of the public interested in art fraud. Namely, Lorcan was a celebrated fake-buster.

  The police had first had dealings with him when an unwary faker had attempted to sell him a forged painting, supposedly by Hobbema, the artist famous for his painting of the Avenue at Middelharnis. It had been a very, very good forgery indeed, but it had taken Lorcan only a few minutes to spot it.

  Richard had been the officer in charge and, with Lorcan’s testimony, the forger got five years. Ever since then, whenever Richard needed an expert opinion, it was to Lorcan Greene that he invariably came.

  Greene’s reputation as an expert in this field had quickly grown, and now everyone in the trade, whenever in doubt about the provenance or authenticity of a painting that their own experts couldn’t agree on, came to Lorcan Greene. His fees were high but, so far, he’d never been proved wrong in his assessment of a work of art.

  ‘Richard,’ Lorcan smiled but glanced very discreetly at his watch, as he opened the apartment door.

  ‘You’re just off out,’ Richard Braine said apologetically. ‘Who is it this time? Still the actress?’ Lorcan’s short-lived affairs, Richard knew, were with women invariably of a type—independent, successful, wealthy and sophisticated.

  Lorcan laughed. ‘No, she’s been lured to Hollywood. Come on in. I’ve got half an hour to spare.’

  The flat was beautiful. The large living area was decorated in cream and pale beige, but a single colourful Manet adorned one of the walls, transforming it. An open window offered a panoramic view of the city. Richard sat in a big black leather armchair, saying nothing as the art expert poured him, without asking, a very fine malt whisky, just how he liked it.

  During his time in the squad, the detective knew that he’d picked up more than his fair share of knowledge about art, but he also knew, without rancour, that his expertise was as nothing compared to that of the man he was here to see.

  Lorcan possessed an instinctive, almost mystical, sense of what was right, and what was not. It couldn’t be taught—only perfected. And it was probably what Samuel Goldberg had spotted in him, all those years ago.

  ‘So,’ Lorcan said softly, sitting opposite his old friend and lazily swirling a deep-coloured burgundy in a large glass. ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  Lorcan had, or course, lost his cockney accent a long time ago. Now he not only dressed in style, lived in style, ate, drank and partied in style, he was style. But Richard also knew him as a man who was warm and generous. Lorcan’s parents, for example, now lived very happily in a villa in Portugal. He was, without doubt, the kind of man you could always turn to in times of need.

  Lorcan raised an eyebrow in query, and Richard suddenly grinned. ‘If I said Oxford to you, what would come immediately to mind?’

  Unfazed, Lorcan shrugged slightly. ‘Dreaming spires. Great University. Some great art. Apart from that . . . ’ he shrugged again, and took a sip of the wine.

  ‘What do you know about the Ruskin?’ Richard changed tactics slightly, and Lorcan’s green eyes immediately sharpened with interest.

  ‘The Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Art,’ Lorcan mused. ‘Located on the High, not far from Magdalen Bridge. It’s the University’s Fine Art department. Its head is still, I believe, the very splendid and able Stephen Farthing.’

  Richard nodded, and took a deep breath. ‘I’ve arranged for you to have a “Visiting Fellowship” there for the rest of the summer term,’ he stated boldly, and shot his friend a challenging look.

  Lorcan’s lips twisted. ‘In Oxford, the summer term is called “Trinity Term”,’ he corrected mildly.

  Anybody else would have reacted angrily to such high-handedness, Richard acknowledged with a smile. But Lorcan Greene was not like anybody else that Richard had ever known. He had a deep dislike for art fraudsters and, for a multi-millionaire, he was surprisingly helpful and generous to the police when it came to giving up his valuable time and energy.

  ‘So what’s up?’ Lorcan asked simply.

  Inspector Braine gazed silently into space for several moments and then began to talk in a slow, thoughtful voice. ‘A few months ago we began to hear rumours that somebody, somewhere in Oxford is planning a big coup. We’re not sure whether it’s a theft, or an attempt to sell a forgery. But, according to one of our more knowledgeable informers, we should take a special interest in the Ruskin. Specifically one of the students.’

  Lorcan frowned, as his deep, well-modulated voice, rose a scant octave. ‘Ruskin undergraduates are more interested in pushing back the boundaries of art than anything else. Besides, it would take a very exceptional student indeed to be of use to a serious forger.’

  ‘I know. I’m not so sure that Skeeter Smith, the informant, isn’t leading us around by the nose,’ Richard mused. ‘But on the chance that he’s right, I want you to go down there,’ Richard drawled dryly. ‘Just think what a little added extra cachet it will be for you: a Visiting Fellowship to Oxford University, no less.’

  Lorcan grunted, unimpressed. On the other hand, he did enjoy bringing down the parasites in the art world who preyed so readily on the unwary. ‘All right,’ he agreed, with an apparent reluctance that didn’t fool the policeman for a minute. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Selling the Constable to Sir Basil that morning had been a very satisfactory experience. But bringing an art forger—or art thief—to book, would be infinitely more satisfying still.

  ‘You know,’ he murmured softly, drinking the last of his exquisite wine with relish, ‘I’ve always wanted to get to know Oxford better.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Raymond Verney unlocked the door to an empty, unfurnished flat in London’s East End, and sighed deeply. He glanced at his watch, supposed glumly that the first members of the cast would straggle in shortly, and started pinning several sheets of paper on to the grubby walls.

  He’d been hired by a publishing company holding a summer conference at St Bede’s College, Oxford, to set up a Murder Mystery weekend. Ray was a jack-of-all-trades, and hiring a cast of actors, writing their scenes, and concocting a believable murder mystery had taken him only a matter of a few weeks. It was, however, the hidden agenda that worried him.

  Ray had, in his time, done many things that less liberal-minded people would have considered criminal. But nothing violent—a clever computer swindle or two, a property scam here and there. And since meeting up with a clever forger, the selling on of a dodgy painting or two. Ray knew people who knew people, and prided himself on being a creative kind of crook. He was a portly, amiable-looking man, with white hair thinning into a fringe just above his ears, leaving the top of his head shiny and bald. His eyes were a twinkling, warm, easy-going blue. He spoke with a warmth and sincerity that fooled everyone—at first!

  He’d never been to prison, though he’d come close once or twice, mainly because he preferred to be the anonymous middle-man. But this time it was different. This job was like no other he’d ever tried to pull. And that’s what was worrying him. That, plus the fact that he didn’t trust his ‘client’.

  The man was cool, clever, and quite, quite obsessed. He made Ray very nervous indeed. Especially since he insisted on being in at the kill, so to speak.

  Ray sighed heavily and began to rehearse his welcome speech to the cast of actors due to arrive at any minute, plus an explanation of the murder mystery weekend.

  It was important to Ray that the weekend conference
ran smoothly. Nobody must suspect that all wasn’t as it should be. These actors, for instance, must have no idea that this particular gig would be different from any others they might have previously done.

  To accomplish that, he had to act like a pro—as a proper producer, director and organiser—which would be easy enough for a man of Ray’s talents. He’d even written the perfect plot to cover the real felony that was going to take place within St Bede’s hallowed halls.

  The conference itself, of course, was strictly legitimate, and the delegates would be encouraged to play Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes to their hearts’ content.

  It was what was going on behind the scenes that worried Ray. For this time he was not going to be in the background. If something went wrong, it was going to be Ray Verney’s head on the chopping block.

  But the pay-off was so huge it was worth the risk. And the scam itself was so simple, so easy, that he wasn’t seriously worried. This plan was one of Ray’s best, right down to the finest detail.

  And when he’d heard that the Art Fraud Squad had caught a sniff of something, he’d even fed that stool pigeon Skeeter Smith a false lead about the Ruskin School of Fine Art. No, he’d left nothing to chance. Even so . . . he was worried. He’d be glad when it was all over and he need have nothing more to do with his client ever again.

  The door opened, making Ray jump. ‘Er, is this the Murder Mystery rehearsal?’ a pretty blonde asked warily.

  ‘That’s right. I’m Ray Verney, the producer. And you are?’

  ‘Julie Morris.’

  ‘Right.’ He ticked her off his list. ‘You’re playing one of the suspects. Not the killer or victim I’m afraid.’

  And so it began. One by one the struggling, hard-up actors and actresses arrived. Tall, sandy-haired Gordon Fleming, was cast as the policeman. Geraldine Smith, a well-preserved redhead, was to play the wife of one of the murder victims. The oldest of the suspects, fifty-year-old Norman Rix, was pleasantly greying and still handsome at fifty, while John Lore, a dark young man, was signed up as the first murder victim.