Picture You Dead

16

Tuesday, 24 September

As Daniel Hegarty led Weasel down into the living area, Natalie looked up. ‘Ah, Jimmy,’ she said with a raised eyebrow. She was one of the few people to call him by his real name, because even though she’d never cared for him, considering him a bad influence on her husband, she felt ‘Weasel’ was a bit harsh. ‘Nice to see you.’ Her tone of voice and her body language said anything but.

Standing up, she said wearily, ‘I’ll take the dogs out then I’m off to bed.’ She shot a dubious frown at the package under Weasel’s arm. ‘Working for DHL are you now?’

‘Haha! Dan reckoned it was Amazon!’

‘Well,’ she said with a frown, ‘whatever it is, I hope it’s not hot.’

Weasel shook his head. ‘Nah, the owners don’t know it’s gone.’

She shot her grinning husband a cautioning glance, then called the dogs and took them out and down the steps to the garden below.

Weasel sat at the kitchen dining table and began unwrapping the package while Hegarty poured his visitor a Coke, and the last drops of the red wine in the bottle for himself. As he sat down opposite him, he noticed Weasel’s nicotine-stained teeth, his nails bitten to the quick as usual, and the biro markings all over the back of both his hands. Names, phone numbers, symbols, some faded, some fresh. It was a habit Weasel had back in his school days and had never lost. The man smelled rank, and faintly of tobacco. ‘So?’ he asked.

Weasel raised a hand to his pocket. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

‘Only outside.’

‘No worries, I’m trying to quit – take a look at this!’ Weasel extricated a small, ornately framed painting from the packaging. It depicted a thin man with a big nose, almost as furtive-looking as Weasel himself. Dressed in a crimson robe, with a small velvet hat, his face caught a thin shaft of light in an otherwise dark space. ‘Il Ladro!’

‘The Thief?’ Hegarty hazarded a translation from the Italian.

‘Yeah, very good, so you’ve not lost your touch, eh?’

‘You sure it’s not a self-portrait?’

‘Haha, you might be one hundred years old to get that plaque outside, but I ain’t five hundred years old – even though I may look it! This picture, Il Ladro, is documented as being painted by the Italian artist Caravaggio in 1605 – five years before his death. It was in private ownership for several hundred years, changed hands several times, then a rich Viennese merchant banker acquired it in 1927. He and his entire family were exterminated in the gas chambers during the Second World War, yeah?’

‘OK.’

‘The picture has been recorded as missing, possibly destroyed, on the Art Loss Register. Only it hasn’t been, it’s been stacked against a wall, along with a bunch of Canalettos and a whole lot of other insanely valuable paintings, in the stately home of a totally gaga aristo, just outside Burwash in East Sussex – Burwash Park.’

‘Stacked against a wall – a picture like that?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the aristocracy for you. Anyhow, they have a big damp problem, so they shifted all the paintings stacked against the wall into storage. My mate Larry, who’s a damp-proofing expert, was called in to help out. He spotted the picture and thought we might be clever with it.’

‘Clever in what way?’

‘You do a copy of it that’s undetectable from the original. We return the copy and we keep the original. The last Caravaggio sold was valued at a hundred and seventy million dollars!’

‘Are you living in fucking dreamland, Weasel? The moment you try to list this for sale, you’re going to get squashed like a cockroach.’

Weasel gave an oily grin. ‘Nope. I’ve been doing some business with a Chinese billionaire who’s obsessed with Caravaggio. He’ll pay massive money, which I can split with you, yeah?’

Hegarty frowned.

‘You told me once, you can do a copy of pretty much any painting that’s undetectable from the original, yeah? You’ve done that loads of times, haven’t you?’

Hegarty studied the painting carefully.

‘You’re a genius, mate. Reckon you could do this?’ Weasel asked.

The master forger drained his glass, and debated whether to open a second bottle, but thought better of it. Instead he focused on the painting. ‘I’d have to invest quite a bit of cash,’ he said.

‘How much?’

‘The big cost will be buying a canvas from that period – something from around 1605. I’ve got an antiques dealer mate in France who can source me paintings from pretty much any period – there are old religious paintings that he can pick up for me from sale rooms. Something of this period’s likely to cost between five to ten grand.’

‘No probs,’ Weasel said, then surprised him by pulling a thick wad of £50 notes, bound by elastic bands, from each of his inside breast pockets and placing them on the table. ‘There’s twenty grand, should cover your basics, yeah?’

Hegarty picked up one wad, counting through it hastily. ‘These real?’

‘What do you take me for? I’d never stiff me old mate. These are from my client as a token of good faith.’

Hegarty wasn’t sure Weasel knew the meaning of those words, but said nothing.

‘What you reckon?’

‘I’ll need time.’

‘How much?’

‘You want a pukka job? No possibility of any comeback?’

Weasel nodded. ‘Totally.’

‘Then I’ll need around two months.’

Weasel winced. ‘That long? You can’t do it any quicker?’

‘Not if you want two Caravaggio originals for the price of one.’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘Why so long?’

‘Well I’ve got loads of work on. Then I’ve got to source that canvas. Once I get it over here, I need to remove the painting on it. Then I paint lead white over the canvas which has a dual effect – first it’s what Caravaggio would have used, and secondly it has the big advantage of blocking any X-rays that might be done. Then I’ve got to obtain some period clothing fibres from the kind of apron Caravaggio might have worn back in 1605 – I’ve a couple of contacts, one in the Brighton Museum who might be able to help. Then I’ll need time to do the painting – and weave a few of the period fibres into it. When I’m done with that, making sure I’ve got Caravaggio’s brushstroke technique correct, I’ll need to leave it by a wood-burning stove for at least a couple of weeks to get the craquelure. Then I’ll take it to my mate Billy the Brush’s house – he’s another forger and he smokes sixty fags a day – and leave it there for a while to get a good patina. After that I’ve got to work on the back, faking the markings that are on the original. Then we need a suitable frame – that’s the easy bit.’ He shrugged.

‘Yeah, should be OK, those building works are going to take a while. Yeah.’ Then Weasel hesitated, looking anxious. ‘I need a gasper.’ He stood up, went out through the patio doors and sparked up a cigarette.

Hegarty remained at the table for some moments. He stuffed the thick bundles of banknotes into his pocket, then continued studying the painting. It was a challenge, but hey, he’d copied Caravaggio before. He stood up and went through into his studio, where he had a stacked shelf of books on the pigments the old masters used.

One of the easiest ways a forgery could be detected was through spectroscopic analysis of materials. Modern oil paints would easily be picked up this way, which was why, when he was making a forgery he intended to be undetectable, he mixed his paints using the original pigments the artist would have used in that period.

He smiled. This Caravaggio would be no problem. And potentially a very nice earner.

Just as he went back into the living room, Weasel came in from the balcony, reeking of fresh smoke. ‘What do you think, mate? Do we have a deal?’

Hegarty nodded, feeling the satisfying bulge of the banknotes in his pocket. ‘We do.’