by Ian Hamilton
She called the Fletcher and enquired about a room. They were only too happy to welcome her back, she was told. She felt as if she had hardly left.
“I’m staying at the Fletcher Hotel in Kensington,” she told Locke.
“Do you want a ride? My car is nearby.”
“The tube will do fine. I’ve bothered you enough today.”
“Bothered is hardly the word I would use,” he said. “Emotionally ravaged is more like it.”
“I’m sorry. I know this must have been upsetting.”
“The consequences are just beginning to sink in. It’s one thing to discuss forgeries in the abstract. It’s quite another to have them staring you in the face when you know all the participants and are imagining how everyone is going to react. I’m not going to sleep well, I can tell you that.”
“If it’s of any comfort, this should be over soon,” Ava said.
“How soon?” he asked.
“Hopefully I’ll see Edwin Hughes tomorrow, and if that goes as planned I’ll be onto Glen Hughes right after.”
“Can you call me?”
“When it’s completely finished, not before.”
“And you’ll bring the files here?”
“I promise,” Ava said. “And you won’t discuss this with anyone, not even your shadow, until then?”
“I promise.”
Ava extended her hand. Locke took it and shook it vigorously. His eyes bored into hers, looking for doubt. She stared back and then smiled. She trusted this one.
“I’ll walk you down,” Locke said.
When they reached the street, he hesitated at the door. Ava looked around and saw a sign for the underground. “There’s my transportation,” she said, and walked towards the tube station before he could speak.
She took the train to Kensington High Street. It was past eight o’clock when she got there, and when she walked up the steps, she saw that for once it wasn’t raining. She went to Marks & Spencer and bought a tuna sandwich — confirming first that the tuna was albacore, not skipjack or yellowfin — and a bottle of white burgundy.
An hour later she was sitting in T-shirt and panties at her computer, the half-empty bottle of wine next to her, reading about the Earl of Moncrieff. She had already googled Holmes and Reiner, and the Earl was just as formidable. She could only imagine how horrific it would be to have all three gunning for you. She hoped the Hughes brothers had as much imagination as she did.
She opened her email. Maria was elated at Ava’s reaction to the possibility of her mother’s visit. Ava blinked, surprised that her girlfriend had read so much into what she had thought was guarded support. She sat back in her chair. Maybe Mimi is right, she thought. Maybe it’s time to make a commitment.
Her father had also written to her. The first part of his message made her smile. A détente had been reached between Bruce and Jennie Lee because he had bribed his wife. He had given her a choice: maintain the hostility and he would catch the first plane back to Hong Kong as soon as they landed in Toronto, or make things work and he would spend an extra week in Richmond Hill.
His response to her question about why he needed to talk to her about Michael wasn’t so clear. Michael has some financial problems that he’s trying to work through. I’m not sure it’s going well. I’ll talk to him when I get back to Toronto tomorrow. I don’t want to say anything more than that until I know all the details.
She checked the time. It was still the middle of the night in Hong Kong. Normally she didn’t email Uncle, but she didn’t want to wait up to call him. So she wrote, Call Wong May Ling. Finalize a financial arrangement. I think I’ve finally found some information about who did this, information that we can use to get some of the Wongs’ money back. I’ll call you in the morning, my time.
Ava climbed onto the bed with the files she intended to take to Edwin Hughes in the morning. She went through each of them in detail, making sure that the spelling and grammar were accurate in the letters she had prepared. It seemed trivial, but she wanted nothing to detract from the professionalism she intended to impart. This time she was going to be prepared. This time Edwin Hughes wasn’t going to shuffle her out the door.
She turned on the television and found herself watching an old episode of Prime Suspect. She had seen all of the shows when they came out, and then had bought the DVDs. She made Mimi watch them with her, though she was too embarrassed to admit that she identified with Helen Mirren’s character. It wasn’t Jane Tennison’s persistence, smarts, indifference to chauvinism, or toughness that appealed to Ava’s sense of herself; it was the fact that no matter how many people were around, Tennison was essentially alone — and she was okay with being alone.
Ava fell asleep on top of the bed, the television still on. She woke at four, cold and needing to pee. She turned off the TV, went to the bathroom, and then crawled under the duvet.
When she opened the bedroom drapes the next morning at seven, she blinked in surprise. The sun was shining, and the people outside were wearing dresses and short sleeves. She quickly made a Starbucks VIA instant coffee, downed it, brushed her teeth and hair, put on her running gear, and headed downstairs.
The weather was glorious, the smell of flowers wafting across the High Street from Kensington Gardens. She did three full laps through the Gardens and Hyde Park, the longest run she’d had in months. As she jogged back to the hotel, her thoughts turned to Edwin Hughes. She remembered him sitting behind his desk, his brown leather wingtips resting on the Sørensen paperwork as if it was so much garbage. She remembered him calling for the girl in the red dress — Lisa was her name — to tell her the meeting with Ms. Lee was over, and would she kindly escort her from the premises.
By the time Ava got back to the hotel, she was wired. She put on the blue-and-white pinstriped Brooks Brothers shirt, her black linen slacks, and her alligator heels. She pulled her hair back as tightly as she could, fastening it in place with the ivory chignon pin. She completed the look with a light touch of red lipstick, some mascara, and her Annick Goutal perfume. She slipped on her Cartier Tank Française watch and her gold crucifix, stood back, and looked at herself in the mirror. Dressed for battle again, but this time with more purpose.
It was nine thirty, four thirty in the afternoon in Hong Kong. She phoned Uncle.
“I was waiting,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I was getting organized for my meeting.”
“Your email pleased me.”
“I think we have a pathway to some kind of resolution.”
“How much can you get back?”
“I don’t know yet, but they have money, these people.”
“Who are they?”
“Two brothers: their names are Edwin and Glen Hughes. One of them may have had nothing to do with this at all; I’m just not one hundred percent sure yet. I’ll know in a while.”
Ava heard his dog yapping in the background and then the voice of his housekeeper, Lourdes, telling it to be quiet. He was still at his apartment. “I have been back and forth on the phone with May Ling all day.”
“And?”
“We have an agreement,” he said.
She thought his tone sounded strange — flat, tentative. Not many things excited Uncle, but money usually did. And this could be a lot of money.
“Was she pleased with the developments?” she asked.
“More than pleased, I would say. She wanted to call you, of course, and I told her you were completely out of reach,” Uncle said. “Pleased or not, though, she still negotiated very hard.”
“What did we end up with?”
“Twenty percent.”
It was a substantial discount from their usual fee of thirty percent, but given the amount of money involved, it was still a healthy commission. “Good . . . Why doesn’t that seem to please you?”
>
“As I said, we talked all morning. She is a smart woman, May Ling. Once she knew we had a chance to recover the money, she knew we would not walk away so easily. As much as she wants to appease her husband, the businesswoman — the Wuhan woman in her — could not keep from haggling.”
“I understand,” Ava said.
“That is when Wong Changxing got involved.”
Ava froze. “How?” she said.
“He was evidently listening to my negotiations with May. When she kept pushing for fifteen percent, he interrupted and told her that twenty percent was fine.”
“She told me she’d keep him away from this,” Ava said.
“It was probably unrealistic of us to believe her,” Uncle said. “They are close, those two. They spend every minute of most days together. She would have found it hard not to share, especially when she knows how much it means to him.”
“This is a problem for me, Uncle,” Ava said slowly.
“When we were in Wuhan, I agreed with you. Now I do not. After my talk with May I called Changxing directly. He apologized for stepping into the middle of the negotiations. He said he overheard May talking to me earlier in the day, and he persuaded her to tell him what was going on. He seemed calm, not like he was when we were in Wuhan. He wants his money back, he said, nothing more than that. He said he was so emotional in Wuhan because we were the first people they had told about the treachery. He got carried away.”
“And you believe him?”
“I do,” Uncle said.
Ava had never told Uncle she didn’t trust his judgement. She wasn’t sure she ever could. “If you are certain,” she said.
“I am.”
( 25 )
By the time she reached Church Street, the Wongs were gone from her mind. Let Uncle handle them, she thought.
She got to the gallery at quarter to ten, so she walked across the street and stood in the entrance to a bakery, which gave her a clear view of the gallery’s front door. At five to ten Lisa arrived, the short red dress replaced by a twin in black. She is a magnificent-looking woman, Ava thought.
She waited for Edwin Hughes. At quarter past she thought about calling the gallery to see if he was there already, and then thought better of it. Be patient, she thought.
At ten thirty Hughes drove past in an old-model Jaguar. He found a parking spot on her side of the street, about twenty metres past the bakery. She watched him get out of the car, cross the street, and walk into the gallery. He was wearing a navy-blue suit with broad white pinstripes. It takes a confident man to wear a suit like that, Ava thought as she watched Hughes walk with long, easy strides, his back straight, his six-foot frame giving off an aura of dominance.
She gave him ten minutes to get settled and then crossed the street, the file folders pressed against her hip.
A bell tinkled when she opened the door. She hadn’t noticed it the last time — just another sign of how inattentive she had been. The bell brought Lisa out from the back, a smile on her face that instantaneously disappeared when she saw Ava.
“I don’t think he’ll want to speak to you,” she said, drawing near.
“Not his choice, I’m afraid,” Ava said.
“Ms. Lee, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t permit you to go back there.”
“Lisa, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Lisa, this doesn’t involve you. I need to speak to Mr. Hughes and I’m going to do exactly that. Please don’t interfere.”
“This place is filled with cameras and alarms,” Lisa said in rush. “I can have security here in five minutes.”
“If that’s the case, then let Mr. Hughes call for security if he doesn’t want to talk to me. Same result, yes? I’ll get thrown out. But you can stay out of it.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Very, and equally determined.”
Lisa looked down at Ava. “Go. He’s in his office in the back.”
The office door was open. Hughes had the same brown wingtips planted on the desk but was turned sideways, talking on the phone. Ava stood quietly until he felt her presence. He kept talking. She walked into the office and sat in the chair across from his desk.
He turned, looked at her, and then did a double take. “I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up the phone. His feet dropped to the ground with a thud. “Now what the hell do you want?” he said.
“We’re going to have a talk, and this time you’re going to listen.”
“We are going to have no such thing. I want you to leave the premises.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Absolutely nothing. I just find you annoying in the extreme. You came here before with frivolous charges concerning my brother and tried to implicate me in the matter. I didn’t like it then, and I’m not about to sit and let you make a repeat.”
Ava shrugged. “All right, then we’ll change the subject. How about we talk about the fake Manet you sold to the Earl of Moncrieff?”
He didn’t move. His eyes never left her, and she watched them morph from confusion to doubt and then detected the first signs of panic. “Or how about the Modigliani you sold to Harold Holmes?” she continued. “Or the one that Jonathan Reiner bought at a Harrington auction. Tell me, what did you do? Pay off the evaluator at Harrington’s?”
“That’s nonsense,” he sputtered.
“You mean about the evaluator?” Ava said.
“That and the rest of your fantasy,” he said. “I’m going to call security. This conversation is over.”
She threw her files onto his desk. “I found Maurice O’Toole’s records,” she said. “He was meticulous. Invoices, photos, dates, shipping slips, cancelled cheques. I have them all. I think you’ll find them neatly arranged.”
He stared at the files with the look of a man who has just been told his wife is having an affair with their teenage son’s best friend, and here were the photos, graphic and unmistakable, to prove it.
“This time I’m not leaving the office,” Ava said.
He reached for the documents, read them once, twice, three times, his face draining of colour. People’s reactions to shock interested Ava. It is easy to keep up a pretence for a short while, but eventually the brain takes over, and as it absorbs the horrible reality it begins to relay messages to a mouth that gapes, to glands that bleed sweat, to skin that sags, and in Hughes’ case, an eyelid that twitched.
He closed the files and looked at her. “Interesting material,” he said coolly.
“I thought so.”
“I am slightly perplexed, though. I thought your interest and your client’s interest lay in some supposed Fauvist art forgeries. Isn’t this a bit of a diversion?”
“They are linked.”
“I fail to see any connection.”
“Your and your brother’s marks are all over these frauds. I need to know if the same is true for the Fauvists.”
“Good God, girl, we’ve been through this. I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with that crazy Fauvist scheme. That was Glen and Glen alone.”
“The truth?”
“Absolutely,” he said eagerly.
“Is it the reason you and he split?”
“Yes, among others, but it was the primary reason.”
“I want you to tell me everything you know about it.”
“And then what? You’ll make these disappear?” he said, waving at the files. “Or am I going to have to pay you to make that happen?”
“We’ll talk later about what you need to make happen. In the meantime, talk to me about your brother and the Fauvists.”
“Why should I do that?” he persisted.
“These other three paintings don’t have to be an is
sue unless you choose to make them one,” she said.
His phone rang. “Lisa’s extension,” he said to Ava.
“Talk to her.”
He picked up the phone, listened, and then said quickly, “No, everything is just fine. Ms. Lee will be here for a while longer. If we need anything, I’ll ring through.” He hung up the phone and looked at Ava. “I did hear you correctly before Lisa phoned? You’re prepared to forget about these paintings?”
“If I get your co-operation, we can work something out,” Ava said, pulling her notebook from her bag. “But I need you to start by telling me about your business and how you got into this forgery game.”
“You’re prepared to forget about these paintings?” he said.
Ava admired his stubbornness. “My sole interest is in recovering the funds that my clients lost buying that Fauvist art. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make that happen. If what you tell me helps, then yes, I am prepared to forget about these paintings.”
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“Start at the beginning.”
He drew a deep breath. “The gallery was started by my grandfather nearly a century ago, and it’s been the family business ever since. Both Glen and I were afforded first-class fine arts educations — there was never any doubt about what we would be doing with our lives. I joined the firm right out of university; Glen apprenticed first at Sotheby’s. My father died suddenly about five years after Glen came on board. That was when we ran into troubles. The inheritance taxes in this country are criminal, and my father had done virtually no estate planning. We were faced with a crippling tax bill. To pay up would have meant liquidating the business. That’s when Glen came up with the idea of having Maurice O’Toole do the Manet. I have to tell you — not that it may matter to you — we agonized over the decision. Glen said we should have Maurice do it and, if we didn’t think it passed muster, we would forget the whole idea.”
“It was good enough to fool the Earl, yes?”
“It’s bloody good enough to fool just about anyone who isn’t trying to determine if it’s a fake. I mean, the colours, the brushstrokes, the canvas, the nails — Maurice was a marvel.”
