Still Waters

Sixteen

Carl Vincent was seventeen days shy of his twenty-ninth birthday; old enough still to be a DC, almost too old if you considered that he was bright, quick, good at what he did. Of course, it didn’t help that Vincent was black. In Leicester, a city with a famously large Asian population where he had served for most of his career, it had been less than convenient that he was quite the wrong shade of black, the kind whose origins trace back to the Caribbean, rather than Bangladesh or Pakistan.

Strangely, one thing that didn’t seem to have stood in the way of Carl Vincent’s promotion was the fact that he was gay. It had not been a factor simply, because, until he had transferred the thirty or so miles further north, nobody inside the Job had known. From his first posting, Vincent had established a routine which kept his private life precisely that. On those rare occasions when he visited a gay club, he was careful to ensure there were no other officers present; the one time he was spotted and later challenged, Vincent passed off his visit as work, an undercover checkup on an informer, and his explanation was accepted. He had never had a relationship with another officer; he abjured cottaging; he was not a member of the Lesbian and Gay Police Association. There was nothing in the way he walked, stood, or spoke that was in any way effeminate or camp.

But almost immediately after he had joined Resnick’s team, something occurred, a murder case they were working on, which necessitated him declaring his sexual preferences and then, more or less at Resnick’s suggestion, coming out to the whole squad.

There was a nasty irony, he thought, behind the fact that the only officer who seemed to have problems accepting his gayness was Mark Divine. An irony compounded when it was Vincent who arrived first on the scene of Divine’s attack and fought off his assailant; Vincent who covered Divine gently with a soiled sheet and held him, albeit briefly, in the cradle of his arms.

For this day’s meeting, Vincent had chosen a loose, lightweight wool suit the color of pale sand and a dark blue shirt shading toward black. He wore no tie. Fashion-conscious, Skelton would have observed: trendy. That way inclined, his sort, if you catch my drift.

Jackie Ferris had opted to travel by train and divided her journey between reading printouts from the Electronic Telegraph about a hundred and sixty-one paintings that had gone missing from the Ministry of Defence collection and the new Stella Duffy. Of the two, the Duffy had quite the best sex.

She had been to see her read once, Stella Duffy, a bookshop somewhere in Covent Garden. All red hair and floating white cotton. When one of the audience had asked her if she was worried about reactions to the lubricious love scenes, her response had been to tell the story of her mother in New Zealand, who after reading Calendar Girl, had informed her that she was going to come back to earth as a lesbian because clearly they had more fun.

Well, Jackie thought, discarding her cup of complimentary Inter-City tea, it was a point of view not to be sneezed at.

Resnick had dispatched Carl Vincent to meet her at the station; he picked her out right away, a brisk figure in a brown and white button-through dress and broad-lapeled linen jacket, soft leather briefcase tucked under one arm.

“DI Ferris? DC Vincent. Carl. Local CID.” He held out a hand and grinned. “Welcome to the city.”

“Thanks. Jackie Ferris, detective inspector. Arts and Antiques Focus Unit, attached to the Yard’s Specialist Operations Organised Crime Group. Not that I’m trying to pull rank.”

“Absolutely not.”

“And I usually get roses.” She was smiling broadly.

“I’ll bet. But for now it’s a lift to the Castle Museum. The boss thought it’d be easier to talk there than in his office.”

“Fine,” Jackie said, Vincent steering her toward his car. “Give me a chance to look at their Bomberg.”

“Sorry?”

“David Bomberg. I looked up the Castle’s holdings. They haven’t got a lot of modern stuff, but he’s worth checking out.”

Vincent held open the passenger door. “Don’t know that much yet, I’m afraid.”

“But you’re learning fast.”

“I hope so.”

“Good.”

Resnick had arrived at the Castle twenty minutes early and walked slowly around the grounds. On the southern parapet, he stood looking down at the canal: kids fishing, a man in a bright blue leisure suit cycling, couples taking a short cut to the supermarket or to Homebase, the sedate movement of a red and yellow barge through gray-blue water. In all probability, she had been dead by that point, the young woman whose body had floated toward the far lock and had never yet been identified, her blank, almost featureless face rising momentarily to the surface of Resnick’s consciousness.

How many were there whose deaths still sought proper explanation and resolve? How many women in water, ditch, or hasty grave, their bodies spilled out at the sides of roads or in the stairwells of deserted buildings?

A hundred and ninety nationwide? Two hundred?

Half a dozen in his immediate area alone, and close enough in cause and means to think there might be a connection between them. But not his business, not any more. Serious Crimes: their affair. Turning, Resnick cleared it from his mind and watched as one of the uniformed attendants opened the gate on to Lenton Road and Vincent drove through.

“Teacakes,” Jackie Ferris enthused. “Place like this, there’s got to be teacakes.”

Not any more.

They sat in the far corner of a surprisingly bright and spacious room, the café recently revamped with fresh paint, trendy but comfortable chairs, and overpriced but tasty gateaux and pastries. The waitress, young and alert, made her way purposefully between the three of them and a pair of retired ladies in serious hats.

“As scams go,” Jackie said, “it’s near classic. Basically simple and with the beauty of covering all the bases.” Her first bite told her the apricot Danish was as delicious as it looked-she was in her element. “The perennial problem with selling forgeries, no matter how well they’re executed, is attribution. Obviously, copying a piece that’s already in a known collection is pretty much a waste of time. Choose an artist who has no reputation at all and there’s little to gain. So …” pausing for effect and to try her English Breakfast tea, “… the smart move is to paint in the style of someone who’s bankable but not really famous, choose the kind of subject they would have worked on at a certain stage of their career and then provide it with unimpeachable authentication.”

“Doesn’t sound so easy,” Vincent said.

“What they do is perpetrate a second forgery. Or set of forgeries. The archives at the Tate, for instance, are recognized as the main source of documentation for twentieth-century art. These people have gained access to the archives, not difficult in itself given the right accreditation, and somehow altered the information to include references to the forged painting.”

“Highly specialiszd,” Resnick observed.

“Absolutely. Whoever’s responsible for this, they’re very careful, very good. And they know their art history backward.”

“What kind of things do they fake?” Vincent asked. “What kind of documentation do you need?”

“The clever thing-and that’s why none of this was picked up on for, oh, five, or six years, possibly more-is that they’ve run the whole gamut. Forged letters from relatives or patrons, sometimes by the artists themselves. References in critical monographs. Additions made to catalogs. In at least two instances, they’ve had a whole catalog specially printed, purporting to come from a show which when you check back never took place. And the way information technology’s developing, a number of these fake additions have already found their way onto CD-ROM.”

“But we’re not talking Picasso here,” Vincent said. “So who?”

Jackie Ferris shrugged. “Ben Nicholson. Some of the Abstract Impressionists. Joan Mitchell and Adolph Gottlieb, for instance.”

Resnick signaled the waitress for another filter coffee. “The ring behind this, there must be at least three, then. Someone to forge the paintings, someone else to handle the fake documentation, and a third party to sell the paintings.”

“Exactly. Though in theory, each of those three could be more than one person.”

“You mean,” Vincent said, “they could have different painters slaving away in their attics or wherever, copying different artists.”

“And more than one dealer, yes.”

“You think that’s likely?” Resnick asked.

Jackie Ferris wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and told herself she didn’t really need a cigarette. “On the one hand, we don’t consider it likely more than a small nucleus is involved; anything larger and something would have leaked out sooner. But because of the range and number of pieces, more than one dealer is a strong possibility. A small consortium, maybe. Two or three.”

“Names you fancy?” Resnick asked.

Jackie smiled. “A few.”

“Edward Snow.”

“Absolutely.”

“Thackray?”

“Possible. But less likely.”

“This stuff in the archive,” Vincent asked, “I assume you’ve vetted all the staff?”

“With the proverbial fine-tooth comb. No, we’re positive it’s an outsider.”

“And this has only happened at the Tate?”

A quick shake of the head. “The British Council and the V amp; A, too, though on a much smaller scale.”

“An operation of this kind,” Resnick said, “all the preparation involved, expertise, it can’t come cheap. What kind of profits are we talking here?”

“A Ben Nicholson watercolor, quite small, could easily fetch up to twenty thousand pounds. One of Mitchell’s large canvases, especially since she died, find the right buyer and you could be looking at twice that.”

“And how long would one of these forgeries take, the painting itself?” Vincent asked.

Jackie Ferris laughed. “Someone who knew what they were doing. Seriously skilled. Maybe a six-day week. Now can we take a walk outside so I can smoke?”

Below them, a few bikers were already enjoying a pint on the cobbles outside the Trip to Jerusalem; to the east, the flat roofs of People’s College gave way to the more ornate buildings on the edge of the Lace Market, and beyond those, the sails of Sneinton Windmill showed white against the rising red brick and dark tile of terraced houses and the clustered green of Colwick Park.

“What I’m not quite clear about,” Vincent asked, “is exactly how you see Grabianski fitting into all this. I mean, a couple of stolen paintings, that’s what he’s trying to get shot of. He’s not a forger, he’s a thief.”

“And people like Snow and Thackray, show them an opportunity to make serious money, and they’ll deal in whatever they can get. Selling a couple of Dalzeils to some collector who just wants to tick them off and keep them in his vault, that’s easy money. Most likely helps to finance the rest.”

“Grabianski, though …” Vincent persisted.

“Look,” Jackie Ferris laid her hand on his arm, “we’ve tried getting close to Eddie Snow before. It’s never worked. Send in someone undercover and Snow smells them out before they’ve as much as shaken hands. Your Grabianski’s already inside. We just have to keep him as close as we can. You do. At the very least, he can help us pull Snow in for receiving stolen goods. And who knows …” a quick smile lit up her alert face, “… if we’re lucky, we might get more. Okay?”

“Okay,” Vincent smiled back. “Why not?”

“Whatever it is that’s worrying you,” Holly said, moving her hands over Grabianski’s body, “I’m glad I don’t have it on my conscience. Right across these shoulders, here along the neck, you’re seized up as anything.” She pressed down hard with her thumbs. “Feel that? I can hardly shift it at all.”

Grabianski could feel it okay. Bright little shafts of pain biting into his upper body. But as for something worrying him, surely she had it wrong. Aside from the fact that since he had taken Eddie Snow to the security vault and shown him the paintings, he had not heard a thing. It’ll take a while, Snow had said, setting things up. I’ll get back to you soon as I can. And Resnick-nothing would convince Grabianski that the detective inspector had made the trip down to London merely to tease him with the possibility of picking him up for lifting the Dalzeil paintings. No, he knew Resnick: just didn’t know yet what he had in store for him.

“Are you sure you’ve been doing those exercises I showed you?” Holly asked, driving a thumb into the space between collar-bone and shoulder-blade.

“Ummph,” Grabianski mouthed into white cotton.

“Every day?”

“Uum.”

“Well, when we’re through I’ll show you another one for the lungs. Forefinger and thumb together, big breath, throw your arms wide, and come forward hard on your bent front leg. It’s good to do in front of an open window.”

Do that in front of an open window, Grabianski was thinking, and I just might throw myself through.