Picture You Dead

53

Saturday, 2 November

‘Happy days, boss!’ Robert Kilgore said, standing in Piper’s office and presenting him with the clumsily wrapped package. ‘As you Brits say!’

Piper, his face revealing nothing, as usual, took a pair of scissors from a drawer. He carefully removed the brown paper, cut through the gaffer tape securing the bubble wrap, and finally lifted the picture clear.

Kilgore beamed as his boss studied the front carefully, then turned it around and examined the back. Then the front again. Even though it was virtually impossible to read anything in his expression, Kilgore saw what he interpreted as the shadow of a flicker of doubt.

Then Piper brought it close to his face and sniffed.

An instant later he slammed it down on his desk. ‘This is a forgery,’ he said. ‘This is a fucking forgery!’

Robert Kilgore had seen his boss angry plenty of times over the past fifteen years he’d worked for him, but he’d never seen him as angry as this. He was like one of those fireworks that kept firing exploding bombshells into the air, each one bigger and louder than the previous.

Piper stood, apoplectic, behind his desk, the debris of bubble wrap and brown paper strewn around him, as he held up the painting again. ‘It’s a fucking forgery!’

‘This is what Archie Goff removed from the Kiplings’ living room wall, sir.’ It was partly due to his Southern breeding and partly due to the sheer coldness Piper exuded that he rarely, in all these years, used his boss’s first name. And Piper only used his last name when he was angry. He was seriously angry now.

Piper shook his head. ‘No, Kilgore, it’s what that toe-rag, Goff, told you he’d removed from the Kiplings’ wall. I know that Antiques Roadshow expert, Oliver Desouta, I’ve bought pictures from his gallery, and I called him on Monday morning, to ask him his opinion – what he really thought. He told me that while he would need more time to fully establish its provenance, that he was as certain as he could be, with his forty years’ experience of the art world, specializing in French old masters, that it was the genuine article. Didn’t you fucking smell it?’

‘I did not, sir, no. It was all wrapped up, as I brought it to you just now.’

Piper shook his head, all the explosions fired from his shell now, and sat back down, a dangerously simmering husk. ‘We bailed him out because he was recommended, you told me, as the finest house burglar in the county.’

‘That is correct, sir.’

‘So does he think we’re a bunch of monkeys? Does he seriously think he can walk off with the original and pass off Hegarty’s forgery to us without us noticing? Do I look stupid, Kilgore? Do I look like someone who just rode into town on the back of a truck?’

‘I wouldn’t say so, no, sir.’

Piper thrust the painting at him. ‘Smell it!’

Kilgore took it, held it close to his face and sniffed. And immediately noticed the faint reek of varnish. He nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Yep?’ Piper retorted. ‘That’s all you have to say?’

‘No, sir, I reckon you are right.’

‘You reckon? Bobby, we’ve been royally stiffed by a low-life scumbag dickhead. I don’t know what’s going on in his head – clearly not much if he thinks he can get away with this. You have his contact details? His address? Phone?’

‘Both,’ Kilgore said.

Piper stabbed a button on his desk intercom. Moments later the twin guards came into the room. He gave them their instructions.