The Gilded Seal

Razi sat back resignedly and began to slowly crack his knuckles in turn. ‘About ten years ago. At the time, people said I overpaid, but a Gauguin is a Gauguin, whatever the period.’

‘And you never doubted its authenticity?’

‘Never.’ Razi was adamant, his hand movements becoming more animated. ‘Its provenance was beyond suspicion. The documentation proved it. I can supply you with copies of everything.’

‘So the existence of a second work has taken you by surprise?’

‘Absolutely.’ Razi gave a vehement nod.

‘The seller is a major Japanese corporation.’

‘It’s always the Japanese these days.’ He shrugged. ‘The economy’s not what it used to be. Russia, on the other hand – now that’s a market.’

‘Have you ever come across a forgery yourself?’

‘Not that I can recall.’ He gave another shrug.

‘And yet you buy and sell a lot of paintings, don’t you?’

‘It depends on what you mean by “a lot”.’

‘Lord Hudson said that you were a good client of his.’ She opened her file and consulted one of the typewritten pages inside. ‘I counted fifteen purchases and twenty sales in the past three years from Sotheby’s alone.’

‘Is that file on me?’ Razi’s tone hardened.

‘Parts of it, yes.’ Jennifer flipped the cover shut. Although it wasn’t exactly standard procedure, she’d brought the file in with her precisely to see how Razi would react when he saw it. So far, he seemed more offended than concerned.

‘Am I a suspect, Agent Browne?’ He drew back and glared at her.

‘No more than I am, Mr Razi,’ Jennifer said in a conciliatory tone. ‘But if we’re going to get a result, we need to have a fuller picture of you and your business. After all, this could have been done by a client or a supplier. Someone who bore a personal grudge and wanted to damage your reputation.’

‘I have no enemies.’ Razi shook his head firmly. ‘I left them all behind in Iran. Here, in America, I am with friends. Many, many friends.’

‘What about Herbie Hammon?’

Again she saw a flash of impatience in his eyes.

‘Herbie and I are … are very close.’

‘Close enough for you to break his arm?’ she pressed, thinking back to the paramedic’s deposition she’d read in the file while she’d been waiting. ‘Close enough for him to sue you for assault?’

‘The case never went to trial.’ His humourless tone belied his easy smile. ‘It was a simple misunderstanding. I never meant to hurt him…’ A pause. ‘Are you married, Agent Browne?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ he repeated. Jennifer found herself bristling at his tone, which implied she’d provided the answer he had been expecting. Was she that easy to read? ‘Well, Herbie and I are like a married couple, and married couples argue. Things are said and done in the heat of the moment. But they don’t mean anything. The important thing is that we always kiss and make up in the end.’

There was a long silence as Jennifer waited to see if he would continue. If nothing else, the mention of Hammon’s name seemed to have thrown him. It was an angle worth following up on, even if Razi wasn’t prepared to volunteer anything more himself.

‘Mr Razi, is there something you’re not telling me?’ she asked eventually. ‘Something that might have provoked someone out there to try to get at you?’

‘I’ve already said no,’ he said with a simple shake of his head. ‘Why, do you…?’ He glanced accusingly at the file on Jennifer’s lap and then snatched his eyes back to hers.

Jennifer remained silent. The truth was that she had more questions now than when she had walked in. Like why had Razi driven past his gallery twice before finally sprinting inside? Or, more to the point, what had prompted him to carry the revolver that she had glimpsed strapped to his right ankle as he’d made his way downstairs?

These were hardly the actions of a man who supposedly had no enemies. But then again, as the existence of two identical Gauguins had shown, in this world, appearances could sometimes be deceptive.

TEN

Alameda, Seville

19th April – 5.15 p.m.

The wooden gate creaked open, ripping the police notice forbidding entry in half and revealing a small courtyard. Tom stepped in warily, the walls of the two-storey building rising on all sides to frame a small slab of sky overhead, grey and sullen.

The ground was littered with broken tiles and shattered terracotta bricks. The dog turd on the large pile of sand to his left had been stepped in, the crumbling imprint of a ridged sole still visible. A pile of wind-blown rubbish had drifted into the far corner where Tom thought he could make out the fluorescent glow of a discarded condom. He shook his head angrily. Rafael had deserved better than this. Much better.

‘This way.’

Marco Gillez shouldered past him and strode into the middle of the courtyard. Tom paused to secure the gate behind them before following, fluttering his T-shirt against his body to cool himself. It was warm for this time of year, even for Spain.

Gillez was wearing an outfit that looked as if it had been lifted from a bad fifties musical – blue flannel trousers worn with a pastel green jacket and cream shoes that were in need of a polish. He had a long, pale face and small muddy brown eyes that were separated by a large nose that narrowed to an almost impossibly sharp edge along its ridge, casting a shadow across one half of his face like the arm of a sundial. His ginger hair and goatee had been dyed black, the resulting colour a dark mahogany that changed hue depending on the light.

‘There –’

He pointed with a dramatic flourish at an open doorway; his fingernails were gnawed right back, the cuticles sore and bleeding. Tom looked up and saw two holes on either side of the door frame, dark rivulets of dried blood running from beneath them to the ground. White chalk marks had been drawn around the outline of the bloodstains, forming a large, looping line like an untightened noose.

‘Cause of death: asfixia,’ Gillez continued as he consulted a file produced from a small brown leather satchel, his voice coloured by a heavy Spanish accent. ‘The weight of the body suspended on the two nails made it impossible to breathe. It only took a few minutes.’ He ran his hand over his goatee as he spoke, smoothing it against his skin as if he was stroking a cat.

‘That’s why the Romans used to nail people’s feet too,’ Tom added in a dispassionate tone. ‘So they could push themselves up and catch their breath. It prolonged the ordeal.’

‘So it could have been worse?’ A flicker of interest in Gillez’s voice. ‘He was lucky?’

‘He was crucified, Marco,’ Tom snapped. ‘Nailed to a doorway in a yard full of dog shit and used rubbers. You call that lucky?’

He turned away and stared angrily at the open doorway. The small part of him that had voiced a faint voice of hope that Rafael could not be dead, that this must all be some terrible mistake, was suddenly tellingly muted. This was where Rafael’s life had ebbed away, retreating a little further out of reach with every agonised breath. He almost wished he’d taken Dominique’s advice and stayed away.

There was a long silence. Gillez, his jaw clicking as he exercised it slowly from side to side, appeared to be waiting for Tom to say something.

‘Would you like to see the photos?’ he asked eventually, thrusting the file hopefully towards Tom.

‘No.’ Tom turned away in distaste, a brief mental image forming of Gillez as a child, pulling the legs off a crab and watching it struggle at the bottom of his bucket. ‘Just tell me what it says.’

Gillez gave a disappointed shrug and turned the page.

‘Rafael Quintavalle. White male. Age fifty-six. Found dead on the Domingo de Resurrección – Easter Sunday. Homicidio. The coroner estimated he’d been here two to three days. He was identified by his step-daughter.’

‘Eva?’ Tom asked in surprise. ‘She’s here?’

‘You know her?’

‘Used to.’ Tom nodded with a sigh.

‘She’s a wild one,’ Gillez said with a whistle. ‘It says here the FBI arrested her for diamond smuggling.’

‘That was a long time ago. What else does it say about Rafael?’

‘He was last seen at the Macarena procession on Jueves Santo – Holy Thursday. At least two people claim they saw him going for confesión in the Basilica de la Macarena just before the procession set out.’

‘Confession?’ Tom gave an incredulous frown. ‘Are you sure?’

‘That’s what it says.’ Again Gillez thrust the file towards him.

‘What does it say about his apartment? Did the police find anything there?’

‘It had already been searched by the time they arrived. They were too late.’

‘I was too late,’ Tom murmured to himself.

‘You knew him well?’ Gillez, fanning himself with one of the photographs, sounded intrigued.

‘Rafael and I did a couple of jobs once,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In the early days. I don’t know why, but we clicked. We’ve been friends ever since.’

He paused, thinking back to when he’d left the CIA, or rather when they’d decided that he’d become a dangerous liability that needed silencing. Rafael had been there for him when he’d gone on the run, had helped set him up in the business, introduced him to the right people, Archie amongst them. He thought back to their friendship and the good times they’d shared. All that was gone now.

‘Rafael was old school, a real character. He taught me a lot about the way the game was played. He taught me a lot about myself. I trusted him. He trusted me. In our business, that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘They say he was a good forger.’

‘One of the best,’ Tom agreed. ‘He’s got two in the Getty and three more in the Prado. And they’re just the ones he told me about.’

‘But he’d retired?’ Gillez sounded uncertain.

‘That’s what he told me.’ Tom shrugged. ‘But retired people don’t get crucified.’

Gillez nodded at this, as if he’d come to the same conclusion. Tom locked eyes with him.

‘What is it?’

‘Aquí.’

Gillez stepped towards the small well and pointed at the stone step leading up to it. More white chalk marks had been drawn on the floor and the stone.

‘We think he set fire to something before they killed him. A small notebook or something like that. Then he cut himself.’ His eyes shone excitedly, his razor-edged nose quivering as if he’d picked up a scent. ‘The index finger of his right hand was covered in blood.’

‘He wrote something, didn’t he?’ Tom guessed breathlessly. ‘Show me.’

ELEVEN

Lexington Avenue, Upper East Side, New York

19th April – 11.25 p.m.

‘The thing is, Special Agent Browne… I’m awful busy.’

If Jennifer had heard those words once since leaving Razi that morning, she’d heard them ten times.

Each visit she’d made had played out the same way: an expectant smile from the gallery owner that had wilted the moment they realised she was not a potential client. Then a slow, deliberate nodding of the head to feign interest in her questions, their eyes glazing over all the while. Shortly thereafter came hesitation, and a sudden distracted interest in a painting that needed straightening or a chest requiring a polish – anything to play for time. Finally, an excuse along the lines of the one that had just been given.

‘Mr Wilson, this won’t take long.’

With a weary sigh, Wilson took his spectacles off, folded them carefully and placed them on the desk in front of him. His pinched features and fussy, slightly arch movements, suggested to Jennifer the type of person who insisted on cataloguing their CDs not only by year of recording, but also by conductor.

‘Very well.’

‘Do you know Reuben Razi?’

‘Is that who this is about?’

‘You do know him then?’

‘I know of him. He’s a buyer. In this business that gets you known.’ He gestured at the paintings carefully arranged around the walls of his gallery, as if to indicate that he too was well known in the art world. ‘But I’ve never met him. He isn’t really involved in the art scene here in Manhattan.’

‘He’s a competitor of yours.’

‘Competitor is such a vulgar word,’ Wilson said, his top lip lifting off his square teeth as he wrinkled his nose. ‘We’re partners, really; partners in a shared cultural enterprise. We’re not like those sharks on Wall Street. We don’t take lumps out of each other any time someone swims too close. Our business is a bit more civilised than that.’

Jennifer bit her tongue, wanting to pick Wilson up on almost every point he’d just made, but knowing she’d only make things more difficult than they already were. Besides, she wasn’t sure whether she was annoyed because she disagreed with him, or because of his pompous, self-satisfied manner.

‘But it is a business. At the end of the day, surely you’re all in it to make money?’

‘We’re in it for the art,’ he corrected her tartly. ‘The money is just a happy coincidence.’

Judging from his immaculate hand-made suit and glittering Cartier wristwatch, it was a coincidence that Jennifer sensed Wilson was taking full advantage of.

‘Would you say Mr Razi is a well-respected member of the Manhattan art community?’ she probed.

‘Of course.’ Wilson nodded, perhaps just a little too emphatically, she thought.

‘You’ve never heard of him falling out with anyone?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ he said, with a firm shake of his head. ‘In fact, I heard he can be … quite charming.’ Wilson bared his teeth with what she assumed was an attempt to look charming himself. She stifled a smile.

‘Did you hear about a fight that he was involved in a few months ago?’

‘I don’t listen to gossip,’ Wilson sniffed disdainfully.

‘It was picked up by the press. A man had his arm broken. An attorney here in Manhattan, by the name of Herbie Hammon. Have you any idea what they were fighting about?’

‘I don’t follow the news either,’ said Wilson with a perfunctory shake of the head. ‘All doom and gloom and celebrity tittle-tattle. I suggest you go and ask Mr Hammon yourself.’

‘I have an appointment to see him later today,’ she said with a thin smile, noting a rolled-up copy of that day’s New York Times peeking out from his trash can. ‘It’s strange – not a single dealer I have spoken to today seems to have heard of that fight, or have an opinion as to what it was about.’

‘It must have been a private matter.’ Wilson perched his spectacles back on his nose and peered at her impatiently. ‘Personally, I find people’s lack of willingness to speculate on the causes commendable rather than strange.’

This was going nowhere. Jennifer decided on a change of approach.

‘Have you ever been a victim of fraud here, Mr Wilson?’

‘Fraud?’ The question seemed to take him by surprise and his watery grey eyes blinked repeatedly.

‘Artistic fraud. Has anyone ever tried to sell you a forgery? Have you perhaps bought one without realising what it was at the time?’

‘What sort of a question is that?’ Wilson asked haughtily, stepping out from behind his desk and drawing himself up to his full five feet six – still a few inches shorter than Jennifer.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I take it you haven’t been working in the art world long?’

‘Less than a year,’ she admitted icily. His condescending tone was beginning to rile her, although she comforted herself with the thought that he was probably like this with everyone. Part of her couldn’t help wondering, however, if he would speak to a man in the same way. Probably not.

‘It shows.’ He took up a position close to the door as he spoke, Jennifer taking this as a rather unsubtle attempt to bring their conversation to an end. ‘A bit more experience would have taught you to tread more carefully when using f-words.’

‘F-words?’

‘Fake, forgery, fraud. Bring them up in the wrong context and you’ll find yourself on very dangerous ground.’ His tone was growing increasingly strident, almost angry.

‘I wasn’t suggesting…’

‘People’s reputations are on the line. Reputations that have taken years to establish. An accusation is made and pfff –’ he snapped his fingers ‘– it’s all gone. But what if you get it wrong? By the time you realise your mistake, lifelong relationships have been destroyed, trust shattered. Forgery is the paedophilia of the art world. Once the suspicion is raised, you’re presumed guilty even when proven innocent. It’s a shadow that never leaves you, poisoning everything you touch. So you need to be either very brave, or very sure that you’re right, before you cry forgery in this city.’

‘Even so,’ she said with a frown, ‘given the sums involved, I would have thought that forged works appear on a fairly regular –’

‘I’ve already told you,’ he snapped, his hand hovering over the door handle, his cheeks flushed, ‘none of us do this for the money. It’s…’

‘For the art, I know.’ She completed the sentence for him unsmilingly. It wasn’t the first time today she’d heard that familiar and infuriating refrain.

TWELVE

Alameda, Seville

19th April – 5.25 p.m.

Gillez led Tom round to the other side of the well. There, hastily daubed against its weather-stained stone base, were three letters, or at least what appeared to be letters, arranged in a triangle. At the top an F, to the left a Q, to the right an almost indistinct N.

‘Any ideas?’ Gillez asked hopefully, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

Tom shrugged.

‘Not really,’ he lied.

The triangle was Rafael’s symbol, an oblique reference to the mountainous region of Northern Italy his family came from and from which his name derived – Quintavalle literally meant the fifth valley. The top letter was who the message was addressed to. F for Felix. The Q was who it was from. Quintavalle. As for the N, Tom was certain that it wasn’t an N at all but an M that Rafael had been unable to complete before his attackers pounced. An M for Milo, to tell Tom that that was who was about to kill him.

‘Did you find a small gambling chip anywhere? Mother-of-pearl, inlaid with an ebony letter?’

‘What?’ The confused expression on Gillez’s face told Tom they hadn’t. Not that surprising, on reflection. Murder was probably not something Milo would want to advertise.

‘Show me the photos.’ Tom demanded icily.

‘I thought you didn’t want to…’

‘Well now I do,’ Tom insisted, his earlier reluctance forgotten.

With a shrug, Gillez pulled a handful of black-and-white photos out of the file and handed them over. Tom leafed through them slowly, his face impassive, trying to divorce the pictures of the carcase that had been strung across the open doorway from the living, feeling person he had once known. It was an impossible task and Tom knew that from now on both images were condemned to an unhappy marriage in his mind, each intimately bound up with the other.

He looked back to the inscription written in his friend’s blood. He had not given much thought to the events up at Drumlanrig Castle since he had learnt about Rafael’s fate. In fact, he had called Dorling on his way to the airport to excuse himself, temporarily at least, from the investigation.

Now, however, the image of the black cat nailed to the wall and its parallels with Rafael’s agonising death came sharply back into focus. Milo was clearly involved in both cases and wanted him to know it. The question was why.

He looked up sharply, the noise of approaching sirens interrupting his thoughts and prompting an instant, almost instinctive reaction.

‘Are they for me?’

‘Of course not,’ Gillez laughed. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Especially not to you.’

Tom stared at Gillez for moment and then cuffed him across the face. The man’s head snapped back as if it was on a spring. A small cut opened up on his right cheekbone.

‘Yes, you would,’ Tom said stonily. If there was one thing he had learned to rely on, it was Gillez’s pathological dishonesty.

Gillez glared at him angrily, his hand clutching his face.

‘Don’t you trust anyone any more?’

‘Cut the bullshit, Marco. How long have I got?’

Marco’s shoulders slumped into a sullen sulk.

‘It’s not my fault. They still want you for that Prado job. I had to give them something in exchange for the file.’

‘Don’t try and pretend you did me some sort of a favour,’ Tom snarled. ‘This was all about you. It always is. What did they catch you at this time? Bribing a judge, sleeping with the mayor’s wife? Something that made it worth selling me out for, in any case. How long have I got?’

‘One, maybe two minutes,’ Gillez admitted, still massaging his cheek. ‘They’re locking down the whole area. They don’t want you slipping away again.’

‘Then I’d better make this look convincing.’

Tom stepped forward and punched him in the face, breaking the sharp ridge of his nose with a satisfyingly loud crack. Gillez screamed and clutched his face, the file dropping from his hand, blood seeping between his fingers and dripping on to his pastel jacket and cream shoes.

‘You don’t want them thinking you let me get away, do you?’ Tom shouted as he scooped the file off the floor. The anger and frustration of the last twenty-four hours had found a strange release in the sharp stab of pain across his knuckles and Gillez’s animal yelp. He went to hit him again, but then drew back as the sound of approaching feet and muffled shouts of ‘Policía!’ reached him. Spinning round, he darted through one of the open doorways and up the stairs just as someone began pounding on the heavy gate. He was glad he’d taken the time to lock it behind them.

He continued up the crumbling staircase until he arrived at a flimsy metal door. Kicking it open, he emerged on to the flat roof. The city stretched out around him, slumbering in the dusty heat, the surrounding rooftops of burnt terracotta forming stepping stones across which, if he was quick, he could make his way to safety.

From the courtyard below came the sound of the gate splintering. Gillez’s plaintive cry echoed up the stairwell. Tom’s Spanish wasn’t fluent, but he knew enough to understand what he was blubbing.

‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! It’s me, Sergeant Gillez. He’s upstairs. Someone get me a doctor. The bastard’s broken my nose. I tried to stop him, but he had a gun. Shoot him. Oh, my nose. Somebody shoot him, for God’s sake!’

Despite everything, Tom smiled. Cops like Gillez gave most criminals a good name.

THIRTEEN

South Street, New York

19th April – 3.17 p.m.

The sound of sirens echoing down Broadway’s steel canyon reached Jennifer several blocks before she turned on to South Street and saw the reflection of the blue strobe lights in the glass walls looming around her. New York was one of the few cities where sound travelled faster than light.

As she drew closer, she could see that a small crowd had gathered at the foot of the one of the buildings, straining to see what was going on from behind a hastily erected set of weathered blue police barriers. As she watched, the crowd parted reluctantly to let two paramedic teams through, before snapping shut hungrily behind them.

‘Stop here,’ she instructed her driver, who tacked obediently right and eased to a halt about fifty yards from the building’s entrance.

Jennifer stepped out. A local news channel was already broadcasting from across the street, presumably tipped off by one of the cops that they kept on the payroll for just this sort of eventuality. And given the manpower that the NYPD was already lavishing on the scene, the networks wouldn’t be far behind.