Long Time Coming (10 page)

‘Listen to me, Swan.’ Cardale stared him down for a second. Then: ‘It’s really very simple. What do Meridor’s widow and daughter know about art? Nothing, I assume. It’s certainly what he said to me on one occasion. “My family have no appreciation
whatsoever of the paintings I collect, Cardale.” His very words. Would you agree
?
’

‘Well …’

‘
Would you?
’

Swan shrugged. ‘Yes. Mrs Meridor is a simple woman. And Esther is … charming but frivolous.’

‘Exactly. So, neither would have been any the wiser had Meridor chosen to impress his friends and business associates in Antwerp with
fake
Picassos, would they?’

‘Fake?’

‘Copies. Pseudo-Picassos. Clever simulacra of the real thing.’

‘You’re suggesting …’

‘We commission forgeries of the whole set and return those forgeries to the Meridors, who, with luck, will never notice the difference. It’s no great matter if they do, though, because in that event we simply throw up our hands in horror and express astonishment at our late friend’s duplicity. Meanwhile the real Picassos are acquired by buyers willing to pay what they’re worth. In point of fact, I already have a buyer in mind who’d be happy to pay rather more than they’re worth. The transaction would be handled by various discreet intermediaries to ensure it could never be traced back to us. Such arrangements can be made, take my word for it. You and I would split the proceeds fifty-fifty. I confidently predict we’d both be wealthy men.’

Swan leant across the table and lowered his voice. ‘How wealthy?’

‘The bank agreed a conservative valuation of three hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. They’d fetch half a million on the open market for certain. More, if Picasso’s stock continues to rise as it has recently. He’s stuck in France. If we’re really lucky, he’ll fall foul of the Nazi authorities and get himself executed. Artists are worth much more when they’re dead. So, you see, the sky’s the limit.’

Swan sat back and absorbed the scale of the prize at stake. He took a last draw on his cigarette and stubbed it out, then lit another. ‘Half a million pounds,’ he said quietly.

‘At least.’

‘A quarter of a million each.’

‘As I said, old man: strictly fifty-fifty.’

‘What about the forger?’

‘He’s good, believe me. Quite good enough.’

‘I meant how much will we have to pay him?’

‘I’ll look after his recompense.’

‘Really?’ Cardale was becoming altogether too reasonable. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘We won’t be offering him money. It wouldn’t do any good. He’s above such things. But I have something he wants. That’s my contribution. Yours is to go and fetch him.’

‘Fetch him from where?’

‘Ireland. His name’s Desmond Quilligan. He had, presumably still has, artistic aspirations of his own. But the truth is that his talent lies in mimicry. He’s a brilliant copyist, quite brilliant. I’ve seen him work. There’s no question he can do this. Unfortunately, he fancies himself as some kind of Irish patriot. He fought in the Easter Rising when he was just a youth and he’s still a member of the IRA. Currently interned by the Free State government. Apparently, de Valéra doesn’t want his old chums in the movement endangering the country’s neutral status.’

‘If Quilligan’s in prison, how—’

‘Interned, not imprisoned, Swan. Important difference. He can get out any time he signs a pledge renouncing violence. That’s what you have to persuade him to do. Then bring him here and we’ll set him to work.’

‘How the devil am I supposed to persuade him to abandon the cause if he’s the dedicated Irish patriot you say he is?’

‘By offering him something – possibly the only thing – he values more highly than an independent united Ireland.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘His son.’ Cardale gazed past Swan towards the house. ‘Desmond Quilligan is Simon’s father.’

Now I knew why Eldritch had gone to Ireland in 1940: to recruit the forger whose help he and Geoffrey Cardale had needed to pull off their lucrative art fraud. Only Cardale had been able to profit from that fraud in the end, of course. Eldritch’s return from Ireland had been delayed by the small matter of thirty-six years. Though as to precisely why, he was still not saying.

‘I’m tired,’ he complained as he polished off his second large Scotch in the Ritz bar. ‘I’m not used to leading such an eventful life. I’ll order some supper on room service. You can … enjoy the evening without me.’

Eldritch’s fatigue sounded to me like an excuse for not disclosing a single fact more than he wanted to. I didn’t bother to argue. It was all coming out, little by little. I just had to be patient. Meanwhile, I had a secret of my own to console me.

I considered contacting one or other of my old business friends who were based in London to suggest meeting later that evening. But I thought better of it. There’d have been too much explaining to do. So, I contented myself with dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Haymarket and a film afterwards at the cinema opposite.

It was gone eleven when I returned to the Ritz. It was raining by then and the hotel doorman was assisting some dowager into a taxi, umbrella protectively hoisted. From the other side of the street, where I stopped in surprise, it was possible to be deceived by
the damp, jostling shadows of cars and passers-by. But I wasn’t. I didn’t have the slightest doubt that the raincoated figure climbing the steps behind the doorman and slipping quietly into the hotel was Eldritch.

It was reassuring, in one sense, to know I couldn’t rely on anything he said. It made holding out on him a whole lot easier, to the point where it almost seemed like a necessary act of self-defence. I still had to make it to the Royal Academy without him knowing where I was going, or why, of course. But, in the event, my plans for doing so were never tested. I emerged from the bath next morning to find a note had been slipped under my door.
Stephen: I have to go out for a few hours. Meet me in the Red Lion, Duke of York Street, at noon. E
. Somehow, without even trying to, he’d wrongfooted me.

I felt ridiculously furtive as I entered the Royal Academy a few minutes after its doors opened for the day. The galleries were largely empty, staff heavily outnumbering paying public. I headed straight for the Picasso room. The attendant I’d spoken to the day before wasn’t there. He’d been replaced by a stern-looking woman with her hair in a bun. Approachability wasn’t her forte. I gave her a nod that went unreciprocated and started a slow wander round.

I was at the first corner, contemplating Picasso’s ingenious rearrangement of the physical features of a horse and rider, such that it wasn’t possible to say which of them was actually in the saddle, when I heard a sigh from behind me that I knew instinctively hadn’t emanated from the attendant.

I turned to see a young woman in jeans, trainers and a short light mac sitting on the buttoned-leather ottoman in the centre of the room, a satchel looped loosely over her arm. She sighed again as she gazed around at the paintings, apparently oblivious to my presence. She had long, dark, almost black hair, tied back in a ponytail, and large, dark, soulful eyes. I’d have said she was about thirty. She’d have attracted my attention even if the room had been crowded. There was something fragile as well as beautiful about her. Or perhaps the fragility
was
her beauty. Nothing in her looks
was out of the ordinary. Yet that she was out of the ordinary was immediately apparent.

I walked slowly over and sat down a foot or so away from her. She cast me a fleeting glance. I sensed dismissiveness. Perhaps she thought I was some kind of art gallery pick-up merchant. I chanced my arm. ‘I’m told you come here often.’

A second, less fleeting glance. ‘I’m not interested,’ she said, as if I’d made a sales pitch for a new brand of lipstick. Her voice was low and firm, American-accented.

‘You should be.’

‘For God’s sake.’ She grasped the strap of her satchel, stood up and made to walk away.

‘You’re related to Isaac Meridor, aren’t you?’

That stopped her. She looked round. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Was he your grandfather?’

She coloured slightly. ‘Yes.’

‘Eldritch Swan is my uncle. Want to talk to me now?’

We had the tea-room virtually to ourselves. She’d taken off the mac by the time I got back from the counter with our coffees, revealing a collarless white shirt and a blue quilted waistcoat. Her make-up was minimal. There were no rings or bracelets. She seemed to be engaged in an attempt to look much plainer than she really was. She begged a light for a cigarette and emptied two sugar sachets into her coffee, her wide-eyed gaze fixed on me throughout.

‘I’m Rachel Banner,’ she announced. ‘My mother married a New Yorker. I’ve lived in the city most of my life. I work at the UN. I’m on unpaid leave at the moment, trying to resolve a few personal problems. Most of them come back to those paintings we were just looking at. And therefore your uncle.’ Her tone was candid yet challenging, pitched somewhere between confession and accusation. It was clear she didn’t believe in letting herself – or anyone else – off lightly. ‘What’s your story?’

‘Stephen Swan. Career in the oil business currently on hold while I help my uncle make up for his past transgressions.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘A lawyer acting for an anonymous client has asked Eldritch to find proof that Brownlow’s Picassos were stolen from your family. I’ve been assuming that client was your mother, their rightful owner. But something in your expression tells me that may not be the case.’

‘It absolutely isn’t. My mother’s done her level best to forget the Picassos since her lawsuit against the Brownlow estate failed.’

‘I see.’

‘That’s more than I do, Stephen. Where’s your uncle been all these years? I reckoned he must be dead.’

‘He’s been in prison.’

‘Honest?’ She smiled. ‘Well, that’s something, I guess. What did he do? Murder someone?’

‘I don’t exactly know. But he’s just got out, after thirty-six years.’

‘Well, that’s almost as long as he deserved to serve, for cheating my mother out of her inheritance. But, does that mean he never got any of the proceeds?’

‘It does.’

‘Better and better.’

‘Listen, Miss Banner, I—’

‘Call me Rachel.’

‘OK. Rachel. You ought to know I had no idea about any of this until my uncle was released from prison. Like you, I thought he was dead. That’s what my father always told me.’

‘It figures. He was probably ashamed of him.’

‘Yes. He probably was.’

‘You should be too.’

‘Would it help if I said I was?’

‘No. Nothing would help. Except restitution.’

‘Well, maybe if we could—’

‘Do you know how much they’re worth? All told, I mean. Those eighteen paintings.’

‘Millions, I imagine.’

‘Yeah. That’s right. Millions, whether its dollars or pounds. And you’re telling me your uncle is trying to
prove
he and Cardale stole them from my family? Why doesn’t he just own up? Then we could
reclaim them and he could go back where he belongs: prison.’

‘It isn’t as simple as that.’

‘No. It never is, is it?’ For the first time since we’d started talking, she looked away, drawing exasperatedly on her cigarette.

‘Eldritch was arrested long before the Picassos were copied, Rachel. Technically, he didn’t steal them. Geoffrey Cardale did that all on his own.’

‘I know Cardale stole them. Every member of my family knows that. And we tried to prove it as soon as we found out. We employed a small army of well-paid investigators to prove it. Without success.’

‘None of them knew what Eldritch knows.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and faced me again. ‘This … anonymous party … is offering some kind of a reward if Eldritch finds proof that will stand up in court, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course. It had to be about money. How much? No.’ She raised a hand. ‘Don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know. I don’t think I could bear to. Do you know why I’ve come here almost every morning since I flew in? Let me tell you. So you understand. When my grandfather died, Mom and Grandma were suddenly hard up. All those paintings, those other paintings that were valuable in their own right, plus all the diamonds he was carrying, all his portable wealth, was at the bottom of the ocean. Within days, Germany invaded Belgium, cutting off access to his bank accounts. As a Jew, his savings were forfeit. There was nothing left. Except the Picassos, of course. Mom and Grandma just had to scrape by until the war ended. Then they could sell the Picassos. Well, they got them back in 1945 right enough. And they tried to sell them. Only trouble was, they turned out to be fakes. Good ones, it’s true. Good enough to deceive anyone who wasn’t an expert. But fakes nonetheless. Cardale said he was horrified. He had no idea. Grandma believed him. She burnt them in disgust. The whole lot. They were destroyed before I was born. I never saw them. I never saw the real ones either until recently. Now I like to
take every opportunity to look at them, to sit in front of them, to imagine how life would have been if Cardale hadn’t defrauded us.’

‘How would it have been?’

‘Different, that’s for sure. Better, I can’t help thinking. For starters, my mother would never have married my father. He offered her security, which she badly needed after the Picasso safety net collapsed under her and Grandma. But it wasn’t worth it. He had his own business, which wasn’t anything like as stable and profitable as he’d pretended. It went bust. He hit the bottle. Then he started hitting Mom. And me. And my kid brother, Joey. Mom divorced him in the end. But the end was a long time coming. Then Joey went off to Vietnam. He came through without a scratch. Not a scratch you could see, that is. But inside … there were plenty. He lives with Grandma now.’

‘Your grandmother’s still alive?’

‘Yeah. She’ll be ninety this year. Pretty fit, if mentally fuzzy. She went back to her old home in Antwerp after Mom got married. That’s where Joey is now. He said he couldn’t settle in the States after the Army had finished with him. I don’t blame him. A lot of the time, I don’t like it there much myself.’