Picture You Dead

46

Thursday, 24 October

The two detectives walked up the steps to the grand, white front door, noticing the pair of CCTV cameras on either side of it. Before they’d even reached the door it swung open and a surly man, the height and width of a double fridge, filled most of the space inside the frame.

He was dressed all in black, with a mandarin-collared suit jacket, wet-look black hair and a coiled earpiece. It sometimes seemed to Norman Potting that there was a secret organization that cloned door heavies. All these types looked the same and dressed the same. And all had attended the same charm school.

‘Your ID?’ he asked in a way that particularly annoyed Potting.

The detectives displayed their warrant cards and received just the faintest reluctant nod in response. Both of them noticed, standing a few yards behind him, another security guard who must be his identical twin, both of them wearing gold bracelets and rings.

‘Mr Piper will see you for fifteen minutes. Exactly and no more,’ he said.

Potting moved confrontationally up to the guard until they were just inches apart and retorted, jabbing a finger at him, ‘Mr Piper will see us for however long we decide, not you or him. Understood?’

The man spun on his booted heels without replying and led them along a corridor hung on both sides with, even to Norman Potting’s untrained eye, clearly old and fine paintings. Velvet Wilde trailed behind, looking enraptured at them, aware of the footsteps of the man’s twin close behind her. ‘This is incredible!’ she said when she caught up with Potting. Then for his ears only she added, ‘When I went to that art expert’s house, George Astone, last month, I thought I’d seen something amazing, but it’s got nothing on this. I’m not an expert but I do know a little bit about art, and there is serious stuff here.’

Their escort stopped in front of a pair of oak-panelled double doors, rapped then swung round to face the detectives, giving Potting a particularly hostile look. ‘Enter please.’ He opened the doors.

There were offices and there were offices, Potting thought. And the room he now entered eclipsed pretty much any he had ever seen. It was a simply vast gallery beneath a domed stuccoed ceiling. The walls were lined with large, magnificent ancestral-style portraits of men in military uniforms, and there was a railed minstrels’ gallery running all the way around the room, with further paintings above that.

In the centre of the room was an enormous antique desk on a circular Persian rug. Potting recognized the man seated at it from having googled him earlier, and his uncanny resemblance to Clive Owen was even stronger in the flesh. A Dalmatian sat each side of the desk, both dogs so motionless Potting thought at first they must be statues, until getting closer he saw they were moving, their eyes watching him. The room smelled of old, polished wood and a faintly musky aroma that he guessed came from the two diffusers on the desk.

Piper’s mouth extended into the hint of a smile, but the rest of his face did not move. ‘Officers,’ he said. ‘How may I be of assistance?’ His voice was sharp, bordering on acidic, and he made no attempt to stand up. His grey eyes held a toxic gaze.

Both Potting and Wilde were disconcerted by the complete lack of movement of his facial muscles. And there was something else about his face, which neither of them could immediately put a finger on, that was equally disturbing. As Piper’s lips formed the words, it felt to Potting almost like he was looking at a hologram rather than an actual human being.

‘We appreciate you are a busy man,’ the DS said. ‘We would just like to ask you a few questions. I’m Detective Sergeant Potting and my colleague is Detective Constable Wilde from Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

Piper raised an arm and indicated to the two tall-backed chairs in front of the desk. ‘Have a seat. Can I offer you tea or coffee? Or would that involve you in hours of paperwork afterwards, since you people are not permitted to accept gifts?’ It was impossible to tell whether he was being humorous or not.

They shook their heads. ‘We are fine, thank you,’ Potting said as they sat down, noting the vast surface of the desk was almost completely bare, apart from the computer monitor and the diffusers. ‘Actually we don’t have to declare gifts of a value less than twenty-five pounds. Or is your coffee very special?’

There was no reaction from Piper. Potting glanced at his tablet. ‘Does the name Charlie – Charles – Porteous mean anything to you, Mr Piper?’

‘May I ask why it should?’ he replied, again the only facial movement being his lips.

‘Mr Porteous was a highly respected art dealer,’ Potting said. ‘As you may perhaps remember from the news, he was murdered in October 2015.’

‘I don’t recall. I am usually abroad in October, through to the spring.’ He touched his face. ‘The damp English winter isn’t kind to my skin, but I’ve had to return on business.’

‘Did you ever have dealings with Mr Porteous?’ Wilde asked.

Piper replied, impassively, ‘The art world is a large place, with a great many dealers. I personally only do business with a very small number of them, those who I trust implicitly.’

‘Would that mean that Charlie Porteous was a dealer you did not trust?’ Potting pressed.

Piper stared back at him levelly. ‘Why should it?’

Potting shrugged, a little thrown by the reply. ‘Did you ever have any social interaction with Mr Porteous?’

‘No.’

Potting waited for Piper to say something more but he didn’t. ‘Do you remember anything about his murder? Did any associates of yours in the art world talk about it, or perhaps speculate who might have killed him and why?’

‘No.’

Piper stared at both of them hard, with his weird, cold eyes. For some moments he drummed a rat-a-tat-tat beat on the top of his desk with his manicured nails, then he opened his arms expansively and pointed at some of the pictures around the walls, before zeroing in on one. ‘Recognize this person?’

It was a head and shoulders portrait of an arrogant-looking man, with hair that looked too young for his aged face, and dressed in a red tunic with gold braid. The background was dark and sombre.

Potting and Wilde shook their heads.

‘It is one of three portraits of General Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, painted by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1812. It was stolen from our National Gallery in 1961 by a bus driver called Kempton Bunton and not returned for four years. He claimed to have taken it as a protest against the introduction by the BBC of licence fees. But there has been speculation ever since whether this was his real motive – and whether during that time one or more perfect copies were made of this painting.’

‘What are you saying?’ Velvet Wilde asked. ‘That is a copy?’

‘No, I’m not. It might be, or it might be the original. Sometimes with clever forgers it is impossible to tell. But this is not my point – I appreciate this painting for the beautiful work it is regardless of provenance. I love the history it represents.’ He fell silent for a moment then continued. ‘I see you both looking at my disfigured face. Maybe you are wondering what happened, but as you are detectives, I will credit you that you already know. Yes?’

He waited. They both nodded.

‘What happen to me changed my life and my thinking. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards. From that moment when I began to recover from my assault, I turned to the past to try to understand. I have little interest in current news, the past is where I live my life.’ He raised his arms and pointed around the room. ‘These great people and the past great artists who preserved them for us so we can still see them today. This is the world I consider my manor, not the twentieth or twenty-first century.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to have to bring intrusive twenty-first-century technology into your world, Mr Piper,’ Potting said. ‘But the reason we are here is that one of the persons we believe murdered Charlie Porteous had your number on his phone and we need to know why. Can you explain that?’

Piper stared coldly back at both of them for a few moments, then simply said, ‘No, I cannot.’

‘And you definitely never had any business dealings or social interaction with the late Charles Porteous?’

‘What part of the word no don’t you understand?’ Piper’s body language was impatient. ‘Who is this person who has or had my number in his phone contacts list?’

‘We don’t know that,’ Wilde said. ‘We were hoping you might be able to help us identify him.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘Your accent – you’re from Belfast?’ he questioned, abruptly changing the subject.

‘I am. Have you been there?’ she smiled, attempting to soften him a little.

‘My brother was there, in the army, during the Troubles. He was blown up by a parcel bomb, lost both his eyes and both his arms.’

There was an awkward moment of silence. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘It was a bad time.’

Piper did not respond and sat drumming on the desk surface again. ‘Is there anything else I can help you officers with?’ he asked, finally.

‘Does the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard mean anything to you, Mr Piper?’ Potting asked.

Piper gave him a withering look. ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Is Luxembourg small?’ He stared at them in silence.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not an expert on art.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Do you have any of Fragonard’s works in your collection?’ Potting continued.

Both detectives noticed the minutest hesitation before Piper replied. ‘That would be a dream for any art collector, Detective Sergeant Potter.’

Potting stood, not bothering to correct him, and Wilde followed his cue. ‘We won’t take up any more of your time, Mr Piper. Thank you.’

Piper said nothing, he just gave a faint nod of his head in acknowledgement.

The doors opened behind them.