A Coffin For Two

14

I took my nephews to St Andrews next morning, in the back of my dad’s beloved and exceptionally low mileage old Jag, with Jonathan on a booster seat and Colin in his car seat attachment. I called Auntie Mary’s to ask if Jan wanted to come too, but she said that the supermarket was at the top of their agenda.

I took them into the castle, and showed them the bottle dungeon, and the mine and counter-mine, telling them the same tales of John Knox and the wars of the reformation that Mac the Dentist had told their mother and me, but leaving out any mention of the Cardinal’s body hanging in the great window, or of burning martyrs down yonder on the Scores.

We wandered down towards the old course. There, on a whim, I took Jonathan into Auchterlonie’s and bought him his first golf clubs, a junior three wood, seven iron and putter, smiling at the realisation of the pestering they would cause my dad after I was gone.

Finally, having shown them the ruin of the cathedral, told them more spooky stories, and treated them to multi-coloured ice creams from Janetta’s, we headed back over the hill to Anstruther, leaving enough time for Colin to be sick before lunch.

‘You’ll keep Christmas free then,’ said my dad quietly as I said goodbye, to him and to Wallace, at Auntie Mary’s front door, with Jan waiting outside in the Fiesta.

‘Sure I will.’

He gave me a hug. ‘No fuss, remember. Good luck with the new business.’

‘Did you get the renewed message from Mac about quiet weddings?’ Jan asked, as we headed out of town. ‘I did from Mum.’

I nodded.

‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘What else? I’ve told Ellie to book the village hall for the afternoon as soon as we know the date.’

Jan beamed across at me. ‘That’s my boy. Who do they think they’re messing with, eh!’

As we skirted Kirkcaldy it started to rain. ‘First I’ve seen in four weeks,’ I said. I tilted up the glass roof, and breathed deeply to enjoy the smell of the moistened dust by the roadside, and of the dampening fields.

‘D’you miss it?’

‘I’ve made a point of not thinking in terms of missing. Thanks for arranging last night, though. I really enjoyed it.’

‘Did you and Ellie sit up late?’

‘Late enough. She’s sorted, okay. Has she been talking much to you?’

Jan laughed. Her rich, deep laugh. ‘Do you mean has she told me about her illicit nookie? Oh, yes. But don’t you worry about it. She’s grazing, darlin’, that’s all. Just grazing.’

I looked across at her in surprise, but her eyes were on the road.

‘So,’ I said at last. ‘Where are we meeting BSI’s first client?’

‘At his house. He lives in Milton Bridge, just outside Penicuik. He faxed me a map showing how to get there.’

‘Mmm. So what does he do for a living, this Mr Gavin Scott? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.’

Jan shook her dark head. ‘Your clients have been mostly lawyers till now, so that doesn’t surprise me. The header sheet on the fax he sent me came from Soutar’s, the advertising agency in Leith. I’ve got a small agency on my client list, so I was able to check him out.

‘Soutar’s is the biggest in the business north of the border, and Gavin Scott is managing director. The chairman is a Tory life peer, but Mr Scott is the main man. He and his wife, also a director, own all the shares. He bought the business for a song ten years ago when it was on its uppers, and he turned it around. He’s in his early forties, very well respected and very rich. According to the Insider magazine top people survey the Scotts drew down?300,000 between them in salary last year, and the same again in dividend.’

‘They’re not short of a pound then,’ I muttered. ‘I should have flown first class. Is there any other background on them?’

‘Only that he’s a member of the Scottish Arts Council. He was appointed last year.’

Gavin Scott’s map was clear and accurate. It led us straight up the driveway of Westlands, as the sign at the entrance named the property. The house itself wasn’t all that big, but there was a stable block to the side, and beyond a paddock, in which a woman and a girl, wearing Barbour jackets, were exercising steaming horses in the rain.

My new client answered the door himself. Jan had been intending to wait in the car, but I insisted that she came with me. Apart from anything else, I had never met this man; a witness might be handy.

‘Mr Blackstone, Ms More. Come away in.’ Gavin Scott was a stocky bloke, an inch or two shorter than me but thicker in the chest. He had wiry black hair, flecked with grey at the sides, and eyes that shone with a real intensity. My instant impression was that he made me feel comfortable.

‘Bugger of a day, isn’t it,’ he said as he showed us through a panelled hall and into the sitting room. I looked around. As in the hall, much of the wall space was taken up by paintings, a mix of portraits and landscapes, oils and water-colours, all of them looking like originals, and if I was any judge, expensive.

Scott jerked a thumb towards a window at the end of the room, through which we could see the paddock. ‘You must think my wife and daughter are mad, out riding in the rain, but the horses need the exercise.’

A thermos jug and three cups lay on a low table. Our host poured the coffee and offered biscuits, which we declined. ‘Thank you for acting so quickly, Mr Blackstone,’ he said, as we settled into the yellow velvet upholstery. ‘Once I’ve decided to do something, I’m the sort of bloke who wants it to happen yesterday. Your ad was a godsend. It came just at the right time.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to tell you a bit about myself, and about my associates?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘No need. I’ve checked you out. I have a friend in the police force, DI Michael Dylan. After Ms More explained your background, I asked him. For reasons which will become obvious, I didn’t give him details of why I was asking, but he gave you a glowing report. Two glowing reports, in fact; both on you and on Ms Phillips.’

I concealed my surprise. I knew Mike Dylan, all right. I thought he was a bampot, and until that moment I had believed that he held the same opinion of me.

‘Mike said that Ms Phillips’ sister is involved with Miles Grayson. Is that right?’

‘Dawn? Yes. She’s an actress. She and Miles have just finished a movie together. They’re off in the States now, starting work on another.’ I wondered which had impressed Scott more, Dylan’s OK or our vicarious connection with the mega-rich and famous.

‘Very good. Now, to business. Take a look at these.’ He stood up and walked around behind the couch on which Jan and I were seated. We turned, watching him. Behind us stood a tall easel, and on it was what we took to be a big landscape-style picture covered by a white dust-sheet.

‘Behold,’ said Gavin Scott, dramatically. He switched on a single spotlight set into the ceiling, and whipped off the sheet with a flourish.

Jan and I gasped, in unison. The colour of the picture seemed to explode into the room. It showed a golden desert stretching into the distance. In the background were the white skulls of four horses, with in their midst the unmistakable skeleton of a giraffe. A woman stood in the middle distance, dark-haired and laughing, yet somehow transparent, as if the reflected light of the desert sand was shining through her. Everything caught the eye, but in the foreground, as if he was marching out of the picture, was the dominant figure: a toreador, wearing a blue hat and carrying a red cape. His uniform was full of sparkling colour, but it was his face more than anything in the rest of the picture which grabbed the attention. He wore a smile, yet it was the saddest smile I had ever seen. His eyes were bloodshot and the left one was lightly hooded. From it, a single tear ran down his cheek.

Jan and I rose together from the sofa, as if in respect for the work. We stared at it, both of us philistines when it comes to really fine art, but open-mouthed nonetheless.

‘What is it?’ I was able to gasp, eventually.

‘That, Oz … I can call you Oz, yes? … is the big question.’ Scott replaced the dust sheet. I was glad. I had heard the legend that men who looked at Michelangelo’s statue of David were likely to be driven mad by its beauty. Until that moment, I had found the concept laughable.

Jan and I settled back into the couch opposite our client. ‘Earlier this year, in late June, in fact,’ he said, ‘my wife Ida and I, and our daughter, were on holiday in Begur, in Northern Spain. I believe it’s near where you’re based, Oz.’

‘That’s true,’ I agreed, ‘though I’ve never been there.’

‘We were visiting friends, an old agency client and his wife, who live there full-time. We played a bit of golf at the Pals club, where David Foy, my chum, is a member. One day when we were there we met an English bloke. We bumped into him again by coincidence in Begur, a few days later, and then a third time, at the golf club.’

He paused, as if to let us absorb what he was telling us. ‘On the third occasion, he looked as if he was leading up to something. Eventually, he came out with it. He told us that a very exclusive dinner party had been organised for the next evening, at a very exclusive restaurant in a place called Peretellada.

‘He said that apart from the host there would be seven seats, and that every place would be filled by informal invitation. We asked him if he was going, but he said no, that it was miles too rich for his blood. It was for high rollers only, he said, because at the end of the night, there was to be an auction. A single lot, the nature of which would not be revealed until after the dinner had been served. He said that if anyone rather than an invited guest turned up, the dinner would be cancelled and the auction would not take place. Then he asked David if he would like the last seat at the table.’

He smiled. ‘David’s the perfect host. Without a moment’s hesitation he said that he couldn’t possibly accept unless I was invited too. The guy went out and made a phone call, then came back two minutes later. I was in.’

Scott picked up the jug and refilled our cups. ‘We didn’t tell our wives where we were off to, just that it was the local boys’ club. Instead we sent them and our daughter off to eat in a swank beach-front place at Llafranc, and headed out ourselves, in full evening kit. The restaurant in Peretellada was a very posh affair, inside a big medieval hall.’

I nodded. ‘I know the one you mean,’ I said. ‘I tried to go in there in shorts once. Never got past the door.’

Scott laughed. ‘I can imagine. Anyway, the dinner was in a private room. Our host was waiting for us in the cocktail bar, with champagne. He was an Englishman, and he introduced himself as Ronald Starr, “with two Rs” he said. The six other guests were from all over Europe. There was a Dutchman, a German, an Italian, a Belgian, a Swede, and a Swiss. Starr introduced us all. When it came to me he said that I was a late entrant, and that I had been allowed in because I was Scottish, and not English.

‘Once the niceties were over with, he led us through to our dining room. The picture was there, just as you see it now, covered up on an easel.

‘We made polite conversation over dinner, all of it in English, since that was our common language. No one spoke much to Starr, other than to be polite. I think that we had all decided by this time that he was in the property business, and that the picture would be of a villa he was trying to sell to the drunkest bidder.

‘For that reason no one drank much. We all finished dinner as quickly as was decently possible, all of us keen to see what the hook was, then get out of there. Pity, really, since it was a bloody good meal, and all the better because someone else was paying.’ He paused, with a grin.

‘Finally we all said, “Bugger the coffee and petit fours, let’s get on with it.” Starr nodded and said, “Fair enough.” He stood up and walked round to the easel, stood beside it and said, “Gentlemen, you have all been invited tonight to give you the opportunity to bid for a painting entitled, ‘The Toreador of the Apocalypse’, a hitherto unknown original work by Salvador Dali. The picture has always been in private hands, and I am here as the agent of the owner. There is no provenance, other than the signature, and naturally that will be reflected in the price expected. You may have ten minutes to examine the work and satisfy yourself as to the signature and to the quality. After that bidding will commence.” And then he whipped off the sheet and turned on the lights.’

‘What happened?’ Jan gasped, literally on the edge of her seat.

‘The German, the Swede and the Belgian each took one look, thanked Starr for dinner and left. I think David Foy would have gone too, but I was hooked. I know art, I was our creative director before I became full-time MD. I’ve studied Dali too. The signature looked absolutely authentic, and the sheer blinding quality of the work backed it up.

‘After ten minutes, Starr tapped the table and we sat down to bid. Bids were in dollars. He opened at one hundred and fifty thousand. The Dutchman nodded, but backed out as soon as the Swiss said a hundred and eighty. I came in at two hundred. There was no one else. I felt David Foy tugging my sleeve, but I ignored him.

‘The Swiss was a fat, arrogant, super-rich bastard, the sort who’d have paid a quarter of a million dollars just for a story to tell the folks back home. He wouldn’t have known a Dali from a Donald Duck. We went to three thousand in steps of twenty thousand. I had stopped thinking by then. He hadn’t. He kept adding more tens, just for the hell of it. Until he bailed out at my bid of four hundred thousand dollars, US. Two hundred and sixty thousand, in sterling.’

I whistled softly. I had never been in a room with that much painting before, other than in an art gallery.

‘I didn’t tell Ida till the next day. Then I had to. We didn’t have two hundred and sixty grand in personal cash; our big dough is in property or pensions. So I had to make it a business purchase, and for that I needed Ida’s name alongside mine to authorise a banker’s draft, and have it DHL’ed out to us.’

‘How did Mrs Scott react?’ I asked, anticipating the answer.

‘She went crazy. We were bound for the divorce court, till she saw the picture, which had been locked up overnight at Peretellada. Then she was okay. She came with me next day, to meet Starr at the Hotel Aiguablava, pay him and collect it. We sent half our luggage back by courier and brought the Dali home in the back of the Range Rover. As soon as I was back in Scotland I got hold of a couple of my painter chums from the Arts Council and asked them if they would authenticate it for me as a Dali. That’s where the real problem began.’

Scott looked at me, earnestly. ‘I know my stuff, Oz. The technique is right, the canvas is old enough. Instinct and experience tell me that’s a Dali. More than that; it’s a bloody masterpiece. The trouble is I can’t find anyone with the balls to agree with me.

‘The so-called experts say that absolutely everything Dali did is catalogued, apart from doodles on napkins or on the back of menus. They say it’s impossible for a great work of that type to have existed in secret. They say that Dali was an egomaniac, and that everything he did was for his own greater glory, or that of his wife, Gala. That’s her in the picture, by the way, the ghostly woman: She’s a recurring figure in most of his mature work.’

He paused again. ‘The art historians did tell me something though. Something that worries me. Dali gave up painting after Gala died. But there’s a rumour that before he died himself, he signed blank sheets of paper, and canvasses with backwash on them.

‘So far, there’d been no trace of any turning up, but the best guess that I’ve been given is that this is the first, that somewhere out there is a genius forger, and that the only genuine thing about “TheToreador of the Apocalypse” is Dali’s signature.’

Scott stood up and walked back round to the easel. He removed the dust-sheet again, and again the work leapt off the canvas at us. He pointed at the bottom right-hand corner. ‘Look at the signature. Look at that big “D”, distinctive, almost like the thistle in the Scottish Nationalists’ party crest. Look at the structure of it; it’s a work of art in itself.

‘I want you to go back to Spain and find out the truth for me, Oz. I have to know whether it is a terrific forgery, and I’ve been conned, or whether I’m right and it’s the real thing.’

He smiled. ‘If it turns out that it is a fake, then its value will be written down to zero, and the business will have incurred a capital loss. It won’t be a total loss, since we can offset it against capital gains elsewhere, but I hate to think what I’m going to tell the shareholders at the AGM. Ida and I still own forty per cent of the company, but if I’ve blown a quarter of a million of their dough the majority could fire me.

‘On the other hand, if the Toreador is authentic, as my heart tells me it is, and you can prove it, then potentially, I’ve made millions, and I’ll be a hero.’

Scott looked at me earnestly. ‘So, do you accept the commission?’

I nodded. ‘Certainly.’ I reached into my document case, and produced two sheets of A4. ‘This is a letter of engagement, setting out our terms. If that’s okay, please sign both copies and keep one for your records.’

He scanned them quickly, then picked up a pen from the coffee table and signed them both. He reached into his back pocket and produced a folded cheque, and a business card, which he handed over together with my copy of the agreement. ‘There’s three thousand, on account. My ex-Directory number here, and my mobile number are written on the back of the card. Keep me posted, regularly.’

Scott stood up. ‘I have something else for you.’ He reached out and picked up a long buff-coloured tube which I had noticed, standing upright by the fireplace.

‘I’ve had the picture scanned and copied in colour. It’s in here, along with a list of the names of the other people at the dinner, as far as I can remember them. I can’t imagine that they’ll be much help though.’

I took the tube from him. ‘Can you give me a description of Ronald Starr?’ I asked.

He scratched his chin. ‘Nondescript is the best I can do. British, almost certainly English, middle-aged, medium height, medium build, dark hair going to grey, navy-blue blazer, grey slacks, white shirt, dark tie with a golf club crest.’

‘How did you know it was a golf club?’

He smiled. ‘It had fucking golf clubs on it, didn’t it.’

‘Touche,’ I said. ‘There is one other thing. Can you remember the name of the English bloke who made the introduction in the first place?’

Scott nodded at once. ‘His Christian name, yes. He told us his surname, but it’s gone, completely. But his first name I know for sure. He was called Trevor.’