Crucified

Chapter 11

The next morning, after another peaceful night, Jack woke up feeling refreshed and energised. After a quick shower he went into his office and spent the morning looking at videos about forgers and ordering books from Amazon, along with The Third Man DVD. At 11 a.m. he wandered down to the empty kitchen, dressed in old jeans and a T-shirt, as he was expecting Marius to drive them to collect the larger pieces of furniture for the loft.

Maggie got back from her run with a sleeping Charlie in his pram to find Jack eating a bacon and egg sandwich and wondering where the hell Marius was.

‘Oh, yeah. I forgot to say. He had a problem with his van. He’ll call you when it’s fixed. Sorry.’

‘Oh, right.’ Jack pretended to be disappointed, thinking he could go back to his office to watch more videos.

‘And me and your mum are interviewing some cleaners this afternoon,’ Maggie added.

‘Daisy had eight puppies last night!’ Penny shouted from the hallway, closing the front door behind her. She came into the kitchen, taking off her coat. ‘Ah, they are cute, Jack. You should have seen Hannah’s face light up at the sight of them.’

‘No way,’ Jack said as he forced his breakfast plate into an already full dishwasher. ‘There’s quite enough going on here without getting a puppy.’

Penny wasn’t quite ready to give up though. ‘It’s a Labradoodle. The poodle side means they are very clever. Mind you, the Labrador side can mean they’re also boisterous.’

‘I don’t care what breed it is. We are not having one. You need to make sure Hannah knows it, Mum. No umming and ah-ing or she’ll talk you round.’

‘I’m afraid Jack’s right,’ Maggie said.

Jack wrapped his arms around her. ‘You see, we agree on something. I’ll disappear when you two start interviewing the cleaners unless you need me to do anything.’

Maggie hugged him back. ‘You can make me a nice cup of coffee.’ She surprised him by adding in a whisper, ‘Then I’d like to sit with you in your office and watch one of those art fraud videos.’

He grinned. ‘You go up and I’ll bring your coffee.’

Janet Williamson was in the prison infirmary when the alarm went off, signalling an emergency in cell block four, cell fourteen. She quickly picked up her medical bag to accompany the male nurse and prison officers onto the wing.

They found Rodney Middleton face down on his bunk bed, as she knew they would. Janet waited for the male nurse to examine him. Middleton appeared comatose, his eyes wide open and staring, while his body was stiff.

‘He’s OD’d on God only knows what,’ the nurse said. ‘His pulse is very low. We need to get the doctor.’

‘He’s not on duty until this afternoon,’ Janet told him, moving to Middleton’s bedside as the nurse turned him onto his back. She removed a vial of naloxone from her bag then, gently moving the male nurse aside, bent over Middleton, broke the seal and squeezed the contents into his nasal passages.

‘Come on, Rodney,’ Janet spoke quietly and calmly. ‘There’s a good lad, just breathe in. You’re going to be all right. Come on, big breaths. There you go.’

Rodney jerked upwards, blinking rapidly, and then fell back against the pillows. Janet checked his pulse and blood pressure as he slowly began to regain his senses.

‘Back with us, Rodney? How are you feeling now?’

‘What happened? What the fuck happened to me?’ he gasped.

Janet turned to the male nurse. ‘I’ve spoken to Doctor Zardari about making naloxone a stock drug. It was lucky I had some on me. We had so many ODs at Holloway.’

With the emergency over, they headed back to the infirmary.

‘I’ll report it to the doctor when he gets here. And someone will have to talk to Rodney to find out what he’s been using. He’s prescribed some heavy-duty painkillers, so he could have stored them up to get high. Or maybe he’s being passed something at visiting. Sneaky bastards, all of them. All we can do is make sure he swallows his meds, so if you’re on duty handing out the tabs to that wing, check his cheeks and under his tongue. I’ll check who he’s got visiting him.’ The male nurse nodded his understanding before leaving Janet to write up her incident report. Once she was alone, she closed her eyes and sighed heavily. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the sachet with ‘1’ written on it. ‘Come on Janet, come on,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Think of New Zealand.’

Jack stood outside Boots on the phone to Maggie explaining that he was hanging around for a bit as the baby formula she wanted had just been delivered, but they had to book it into stock before they could sell it to him. She spoke quickly, explaining they were busy interviewing the third applicant for the cleaning job and the fourth had just arrived, with two more expected soon.

‘I thought we’d cracked it with the first woman, but when I told her that I was a doctor and you were a detective, she legged it. Actually legged it. Anyway, no need to hurry back. I’ll be busy for at least another couple of hours.’

It took half an hour for Jack to drive to the old school. Just as he reached the open barrier, a large white van drove past him. As he parked, he could see Adam pushing a heavy-duty trolley carrying a huge frame wrapped in a tarpaulin.

‘Good timing, Bro. Help me with this and be careful you don’t damage the canvas. I’ve been waiting months for one this size.’ Together they lifted the frame off the trolley and hefted it into the old drill hall. ‘Careful,’ Adam warned as they eased it along the corridor and through the double doors then laid it on the floor. Adam carefully pulled back the tarpaulin to reveal a painting of a battle scene with cannons and dead horses strewn among the soldiers, torn flags and wagons. The paint was cracked and chipped in some places, showing the canvas beneath. The heavy gilt frame was broken and had missing corners, but Adam seemed thrilled, pacing around it, clapping his hands.

‘You have no idea how long I have been trying to find a canvas this size and the right age. It’s perfect. Now help me turn it over to check out the back.’ Together, they gently eased the canvas over to lie face down on the tarpaulin. Adam got down on his hands and knees to inspect the back of the frame, looking closely at the rusted nails hammered in to hold the canvas in place.

‘It’s perfect,’ Adam gushed. ‘Bloody worth the wait.’ He went over to the trestle table and came back with a scalpel which he used to ease off a section of cracked paint.

‘There’s an even older painting underneath. That’s the reason it’s cracking so badly. It’ll take me hours to get it down to the bare canvas.’

‘Did you get this from the same framer’s shop in Portobello Road?’ Jack asked.

‘You must be joking. This has taken Christ knows how long to track down. I’ve found a few that were almost perfect, but they weren’t the right size. No, this is the one I’ve been waiting for. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I’m back in the UK.’

‘This dealer knows his stuff then, does he?’ Jack asked.

‘He certainly does. And this cost me a good few quid, I can tell you.’

‘He looked like a bit of a thug to me.’

Adam frowned, becoming edgy. ‘Who are you talking about?’

‘That dealer in the frame shop, the one I first saw you with.’

Adam shook his head, smiling. ‘He’s just a delivery man, not the owner. He wouldn’t be around on Saturdays, more than likely he’d be at his gallery or abroad.’

‘What’s his name, this owner?’

Adam narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s with all the questions, Jack? What are you fucking after? You going to shop me?’

‘No. And I could ask you the same question... what are you fucking after?’

Adam gave a sly smile. ‘You never know.’ The tension between them disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

‘I’ve been watching loads of documentaries. I’ve even got my wife interested. Did you know this about Picasso? Sometimes, when he was presented with a copy of his work and he thought it good enough, he’d sign it.’

Adam laughed. ‘Yes, he’s one of the easiest to copy. His later works are the best. So, who else have you been researching with your wife? Did you mention anything about me?’

Jack slightly flushed as he nodded. ‘She was not that pleased about it at first, but I mean, it’s not like you’re on a wanted list.’

Adam nodded, now focusing on carefully removing the rusted nails from around the frame. ‘Making a painting look like the original — that’s the easy part in a way,’ Adam mused. ‘It’s really all about the materials. You’ve heard of Wolfgang Beltracchi? A real genius as forgers go. But he got sloppy. He’d run out of zinc to make white paint. So he went and bought a cheap over-the-counter tube and got caught.’

‘How?’ Jack asked.

‘Because when it was tested, it contained titanium, which had not been used as a white pigment since 1914. It blew his provenance because the artwork he was forging was supposed to have been painted in the 1920s. It was about to be sold for two and a half million when the inconsistency emerged. Lesson learnt, eh?’

‘So, artists like you, do you get a percentage of the sale price of the fakes?’ Jack asked.

Adam looked up, smiling. ‘I get a big cut, but he must get God only knows how much more. And it’s tough to say no to a job, because he’s got you by the balls.’

‘Surely he can’t threaten you or he could be exposed too,’ Jack said.

Adam shrugged. ‘It doesn’t always work like that. He’s a top dealer with galleries all round the world. His partner’s a good artist actually but a very frustrated one as his work doesn’t sell. They’re a bit like Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell as a duo. Anyway, I’m sick of him controlling me. Some days I’d like to fucking strangle him, or better still, stick a paintbrush down his throat.’

Jack decided to be more careful when questioning Adam. He seemed quite at ease explaining about art frauds, but quickly changed the subject or became angry whenever Jack asked about the other people involved in his ‘business’.

Adam carried on minutely inspecting the canvas. ‘Wow, wait a second.’

He carefully lifted a section of cracked oil paint from one side of the painting. ‘Well, look at this Jack. It’s a crucifixion. See, that’s part of the cross.’ His bad mood suddenly gone, Adam came and put an arm around Jack’s shoulder. ‘This is going to be my crowning glory. I’ve been working towards it all my life, and just when I thought I would never find the perfect materials, this came along. You have no idea how it makes me feel... all the years of practice, perfecting my work, will culminate in this one. It’s going to be faultless.’

Adam turned away abruptly and went across the drill hall to a small, hard-backed chair stacked with large art books. He carried one over to the trestle table and started flicking through the pages. He waved Jack over.

‘See this? It was stolen in 1965 from the altar at the cathedral in Palermo. It was never recovered, and the empty space where it had hung was a constant reminder of the loss until, many years later, they commissioned this, a copy, which is still hanging there today.’ He turned the page to show the copy, and Jack stared, unable to see the difference. Adam slammed the book closed and went and put it back on the chair. ‘I am going to find the original, Jack,’ he said with a wink.

Before Jack could say anything, Adam’s mobile rang, and he turned his back on Jack to answer it, waving a casual goodbye to Jack as he did so.

As Jack returned to his car, he could still feel the afterglow of Adam’s intense excitement. He realised he had never felt that way about anything in his own life. But he desperately wanted to feel that joy for himself.