The Picasso Scam Read online

  At the door I turned to her and said: ‘Annabelle, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I can sometimes obtain tickets for concerts at the town hall. Cancellations. Normally they are booked up a year in advance. Would you like me to give you a ring the next time any are available?’

  She opened her mouth in mock horror and said: ‘Inspector Priest! I hope they don’t fall off the back of a lorry!’

  This woman could make me laugh. It was getting better all the time. ‘’Fraid not,’ I said. ‘I ring my opposite number at the town hall and he nips down the corridor to the booking office. Then I have to send him a fat cheque. Shall I see what he can do?’

  She leant on the edge of the door for a long while before she answered. Then she shook her head slowly. ‘I think you’re very kind for asking, Charles, and I’m grateful. But I don’t think I want to just yet. Do you mind if we leave it for a while?’

  Ah well. Good old flat-footed Inspector Plod had cocked it up again. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and said: ‘That’s OK. I believe that’s what our American cousins call taking a raincheck.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s just say we are taking a raincheck.’ She said it kindly, as if she meant it.

  Wilf Trumble let me in and poured me a beer. Betty went into the kitchen to serve the casserole.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ Wilf asked. ‘You’re grinning like a butcher’s terrier.’

  I had a sip of beer and grinned some more. After a while I said: ‘I’ve just seen a friend of yours.’

  ‘Who might that be?’

  ‘A certain Mrs Wilberforce,’ I told him.

  His eyes lit up: ‘What do you think of her?

  ‘I think she’s a bit of all right.’

  ‘She is, isn’t she? Are you seeing her again?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I protested. ‘I saw her on a professional basis to give her some crime prevention advice. I don’t chat up every woman I meet. I can be civilised when I try.’ Then I asked him how long her husband had been dead.

  ‘Peter? About a year, no, maybe going on for two. He was a smashing bloke. It was a great loss to us all when he went. No edge to him at all. You’d never believe he was a bishop. Not like some of the daydreamers we get.’

  It was slow to register. It crept over me like a shadow creeping up an ivy-clad wall. ‘Did you say he was … a bishop?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? Annabelle’s husband was Peter Wilberforce, Bishop of Leeds. You must have heard of him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ I exploded. ‘I just asked the Bishop’s wife for a date!’

  Wilf nearly choked on his beer. ‘I hope you didn’t blaspheme,’ he spluttered.

  Betty invited us to go through and eat. Her famous casserole was well up to standard. Wilf took great pleasure in telling his wife what he knew, so out of politeness I filled them in on more or less what had happened.

  Betty said, ‘I know Wilf thinks I’m an old busybody, but I think you and Annabelle are made for each other. You liked her, didn’t you? Help yourself to some more.’

  I helped myself. I tried to sound uninvolved but appreciative. ‘I think she’s an extremely attractive lady, but I suspect she’s just a teeny bit out of my league.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ snapped Betty. ‘She’s flesh and blood like everybody else. And she’s been mourning for far too long. It’s unhealthy.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Wilf. ‘A fortnight should be plenty long enough.’

  Betty glared at him. ‘If you go first, I’ll be eyeing up all the widowers at the ham tea,’ she declared.

  I changed my mind about the casserole. It wasn’t just up to standard, it was exceptional.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gilbert Wood is my superintendent. Our careers can be compared to the early American rocket experiments. His kept going up, but mine just cleared the launch tower before toppling over and flying horizontally. A few people thought I ought to be in his seat, but I wasn’t one of them. We got on well together, worked as a team, with lots of mutual trust. It was more than that, though, we were good friends. I called into his office to tell him about the Chinaman and that I wanted Wednesday off.

  ‘Another day off, Charlie? You had one two years ago. You realise you’ve only five months and twenty-nine days’ holiday left now?’

  ‘And a half. I only had half a day off two years ago. And if it turns out to be business on Wednesday I’ll be putting in for expenses.’

  Gilbert looked interested. ‘Might it be business?’ he asked.

  I told him about the Rudi Truscott call.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Sounds promising. Beamish is a super place. Doesn’t half take you back. The kids couldn’t believe we lived like that. God, there’s a dentist’s surgery just like the school dentist had. Scares you silly.’ He gave a shudder at the memory of it. ‘What does this Truscott do?’ he asked.

  ‘He was a lecturer at the art school. He taught me when I was there. And Vanessa a few years later; but then he started making a reputation as a faker of old masters.’

  Gilbert was about to speak but I held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘I said he was a faker, not a forger. Legally, there is a difference.’

  ‘Is he any good?’ Gilbert asked.

  ‘He will be,’ I told him. ‘He sells to dealers. What they do with them is their business, but there’s probably a few Rudi Truscotts hanging in the galleries of Europe that are attributed to more famous names.’

  ‘Sounds right up your street. Let me know what happens.’

  ‘What about the Chinaman?’ I asked him.

  He thought for a second, then said: ‘I’m not happy.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would be, but we’ve no information that they will try it on, just my instinct. If we grab them before they get near him there should be no danger.’

  ‘Then it will be a lesser charge and it might not stick.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I argued. ‘They’re only nematodes. It’ll be a shock to their systems to get arrested before they do the job.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Gilbert laughed at the thought of it. ‘Scare the shit out of them – and we are supposed to be in the crime prevention business. But don’t let them get near the Chinaman.’

  I took the A61 through Leeds and then Harrogate and Ripon to avoid some of the tedium of the motorway. It’s a rich, pastoral landscape up there; a different climatic zone to what I was used to. The scenery was fashioned by the meanderings of lazy rivers and the action of the plough, not gouged and bulldozed by glaciers. The people are different too, old money and new money, rubbing uneasily shoulder to shoulder. This is Yorkshire’s Cocktail Belt, and you can keep it.

  Eventually I had to join the A1, that conveyor of salesmen’s cars on their ceaseless, brainless dash to the next appointment. I made it to mine. I wonder how many didn’t.

  The Shepherd and Shepherdess was easy to find. It’s a big pub but standards, thankfully, have not been diluted too much. Rudi was already there, sitting in a comer, facing into the room. He is a small man, with a tidy little beard. He was a lot greyer than when I last saw him. So was I. I bought myself an orange juice and lemonade and joined him.

  ‘Hello, Rudi. You brought me a long way.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. I’m grateful. I didn’t know who else to turn to.’

  The sentiment was the same but he didn’t seem as distressed as he had done on the phone. I had a feeling that I was being set up. Before we talked about his problems there was something I needed to know: ‘Have you heard from Vanessa lately? Any idea how she is?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. She left me for some sort of property developer. Pots of money. They got married.’

  That was about as much as I already knew. ‘Sounds like her type,’ I said, as if I couldn’t care less. Rudi didn’t want to eat but I did, and I enjoyed making him wait and pay. I had a chicken and sweetcorn pie with a salad. It was acceptable. Rudi wouldn’t talk in the pub.

  ‘Don’t you th
ink you are being just a little melodramatic?’ I asked him. He didn’t think he was, and insisted on us going into the open-air museum before he would talk. We rode on an old tram just like the ones I used to go to school on when Dad was stationed in Leeds. I stood and hung on a strap, even though we were the only two on it, because I’d always wanted to, but couldn’t reach them when I was a kid.

  ‘OK, Rudi,’ I told him, ‘the tram’s not bugged, so let’s have it.’

  He thought for a while, as if he didn’t know where to begin. Then he said: ‘You know the Art Aid exhibition?’

  I knew it. It was the latest of a plethora of fundraising events held on behalf of the Third World. Ten paintings by some of the greatest artists who ever lived were travelling the globe. They had toured the USA for a year and were now in Britain. They had just had a week in Leeds and had moved on to Newcastle. Shortly they would be heading for Europe. The art world was showing that anything rock music could do, it could do better. It was five quid a time and punters were queuing round the block to see them.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I saw them three times. Mind you, I only paid twice – the third visit was a perk of the job. I fiddled an invite to a private showing. That visit cost me half a week’s wage.’

  Another long pause. Then he went on: ‘At the beginning of the American tour I received a commission to copy four of the pictures. They’re not my normal school, but I accepted. I had to go out there, all expenses paid. They had to be perfect, not just the brush strokes and the canvas, the underpainting and the composition of the paints had to be exact.’ He looked at me and his face glowed with pride. ‘Charlie, they were the best work I ever did.’

  ‘They were copies, Rudi.’

  ‘They were exact copies. Don’t you remember what you once wrote when you were a student of mine? You said that every hundred years all works of art should be destroyed, so that the new generations of artists could recreate them, instead of constantly striving for new styles.’

  ‘Bollocks! I said no such thing.’

  ‘Yes, you did. And you were so right.’

  ‘Then I was being controversial. I was struggling to be a clever sod like all the other students.’

  ‘No, Charlie, you were better than most of them would ever be.’

  ‘So what’s the problem? Didn’t you get paid?’

  ‘The problem is I did get paid,’ he said. ‘Normally I make about a thousand pounds a picture. They paid me forty thousand, plus expenses. The extra money was for my silence, or else.’

  I whistled through my teeth. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Rudi?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that my pictures are touring the world raising money for charity.’

  I thought about it for a while, then I said: ‘Are you sure? Have you checked them?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I daren’t go near them.’

  We got off the tram and strolled towards the reconstructed miners’ cottages. They had peggy tubs and mangles. The doorsteps were sandstoned and the fire grates black-leaded.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ I repeated. ‘You got your money and they got the copies. How do you know you weren’t commissioned by the legitimate owners?’

  ‘Because … because I deal with galleries all the time. We talk the same language. These people were different. It started out OK, but when the pictures were done they changed. They sounded … threatening … violent. They scared me.’

  ‘If they paid you they must have been satisfied with the goods. If the silly pillocks who own the originals can’t tell the difference, why worry? Let’s all just live happily ever after.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll let me live happily ever after. I think they’ll want me out of the way. I know too much.’

  ‘Do you know who they are?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it was all arranged over the phone.’

  ‘Accent?’

  He shrugged: ‘Sounded North of England to me.’

  ‘Did you paint them in America?’

  ‘No, Britain. I just did the research there.’

  ‘Which four paintings did you copy?’ I asked.

  ‘The Van Gogh, the Gauguin and the Monet. I did the Picasso, too, but it got damaged. I don’t think that will have been switched.’

  ‘Portrait of Isobelle Maillot.’ I smiled at the thought of her. ‘One of my favourites.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rudi, ‘I remembered you when I painted her. You had a thing about Picasso’s women.’

  ‘I still have,’ I told him. ‘And his genius. To paint faces like he does and still make them look incredibly beautiful is amazing.’

  And then a pleasant thought struck me. Was it my imagination, or did Isobelle Maillol bear a resemblance to Annabelle Wilberforce? Apart from having an extra eye, of course.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m not sure. Get the paintings authenticated, or find where the originals are. Preferably put somebody behind bars for a long time. I don’t think you can do much, really.’

  ‘I can get the experts to look at them,’ I said, ‘but we both know what they’ll say. They won’t admit to losing enough paintings to pay off half the national debt.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ said Rudi, eyes blazing with indignation. ‘And then the world will be looking at Rudi Truscott’s paintings, but he won’t get the recognition.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. I thought about what he’d said so far. It didn’t amount to much.

  ‘How did you deliver the paintings and how were you paid?’

  ‘I received a phone call. I’d to leave my studio unlocked and get lost for four hours. When I returned the paintings were gone and the money was there.’

  ‘Forty thousand pounds cash?’

  ‘Yes, plus a couple of grand expenses. Then I received another call telling me to keep my mouth shut. He said he might have more work for me in the future.’

  ‘Where is your studio?’

  ‘Just half of the kitchen in my cottage.’

  I sighed and rolled my eyes heavenwards. ‘You’re not being very helpful, Rudi. Do you have an address?’

  ‘I … I’d rather not say. And I’m thinking of moving.’

  ‘Have it your own way. So where can I get in touch with you?’

  ‘You can’t. I’ll ring you.’

  ‘OK. Give me a month. Ring me a month today. Don’t expect too much, though. Now I’m off to look at the rest of this museum.’

  He hesitated, then he said: ‘Charlie, I’m sorry about Vanessa. I did love her, you know.’

  ‘So did I, Rudi. So did I.’

  I watched him wander up the hill towards the exit, then I strolled towards the gift shop to see if I could find something really tacky for the office.

  ‘How many fs in peace and quiet?’

  ‘There’s no f in peace and quiet.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling the wife.’

  Sparky and Tony were in a good mood. I’d have to take a day off more often. When Gilbert Wood was free we all trooped up to see him. I didn’t want to tell the story twice. When he’d heard what I had to say he was silent for a while. Then he said: ‘Will the experts be able to tell if the pictures are the real ones?’

  ‘It’s a grey area,’ I told him. ‘They can do forensic tests, same as us, but the real picture is the one they say it is, irrespective of who painted it. They’ll never admit that theirs is a copy.’

  ‘Well, it proves one thing,’ said Gilbert. ‘Anyone can produce this modem rubbish. What about Truscott? Do you think his life is in danger?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he might be worth taking out a policy on.’

  ‘So if they were switched, it was done in England,’ said Sparky. ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘They were guarded like the Crown Jewels,’ said Gilbert. ‘There were more people with guns than we had at D-Day.’ He thought for a while, then went on: ‘Our only involvement
was the Traffic boys. They escorted the convoy through our patch and handed over to the city police. They were in a sealed van, so at least we would appear to be in the clear.’

  ‘Where did the pictures come from?’ asked Tony.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘There were two shows in the north prior to Leeds, at Liverpool and, Oldfield, but I don’t know which way round.’

  ‘And the helicopter,’ remembered Gilbert. ‘We had the chopper watching over them. First time we’d been able to get the bloody thing for weeks. Will you tell the organisers that their paintings are crap, Charlie?’

  ‘Ooh, yes please, that should be fun,’ I said.

  The Museum of Modern Art in New York jetted Dale T. Schweckert over by Concorde. He leapt straight into a taxi at Heathrow and asked to be taken to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. Louis Vouillarde flew over directly from Paris in a private plane. Bunty I’Anson-Piggot, from the Tate Gallery, drove up in her Austin Metro. She was the last to arrive. I had hoped that I might gain an insight into the working techniques of an art expert, so I did the long drive north again. Unfortunately they all insisted on working in private, so we didn’t see how thorough they were. Their conclusions were as predicted: the paintings were genuine and we had put them to a great deal of expense and inconvenience. They graciously accepted that we had acted with the best of motives.

  Afterwards I collared Schweckert. I envisaged a language problem with Vouillarde and I feared Ms I’Anson-Piggot might kick me to death with her Doc Martens. Schweckert wouldn’t budge in his judgement. It was evident that the Monet was a Monet because he said it was, not because it was painted by a man called Monet. I pointed him in the direction of the taxi rank and drove home.

  There was a message waiting for me from Tony Willis. The Mountain Bike Gang had showed up on Saturday morning. We had been looking for them every day through the week without any luck, but now we were barbecuing with charcoal again. I phoned him and got the lowdown. They were outside the post office at nine a.m. when the takings were checked in. They just pedalled around in circles on their bikes and rode away afterwards. Tony had been there himself and it looked suspicious to him. We both agreed that Monday morning was highly likely for a snatch. He had followed them for a while but lost them when they took to the old railway track. All the arrangements for surveillance and arrest had been made. Tony had decided to go to town with the planning and turn the event into a training exercise. He saw a low probability of things getting nasty, and it would be experience for the younger troops. It would also get everybody on the job early on a Monday morning.