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Max watched Gemma walk away. He wondered whether she swung her arse in that rolling manner for him. She still took his breath away. Her long flowing hair falling down her back, her dress clinging to her body just enough to be tantalizingly sexy, and best of all those exquisite calf muscles.
She was such a confused soul. Spoilt and self-centred on the one hand, and yet generous and insecure on the other.
He wondered why she half turned and took her sunglasses off in that mock-coquettish manner. Maybe she wanted to be sure that he was still watching her.
Max marvelled at the main reception of the Hôtel de Paris as he walked across the multicoloured marble floor. It was twelve o’clock in London, according to one of the clocks above the concierge’s desk.
They built things beautifully in the eighteen hundreds. The high ceiling, the aged mirrors lining the walls and the glass atrium that flooded the whole area with natural light.
He looked at the old ladies sitting on the delicate Louis XV chairs and wondered what they did all day. They made him think about his mother. Was she sitting around in some hotel in Spain? Maybe she’d moved on? After all, she wouldn’t have bothered to let him know. As usual, he cast her from his thoughts as quickly as she’d invaded them.
Max stopped in front of the wooden revolving door to let a woman in an apron come past. She was carrying a huge bunch of red and yellow roses, all perfectly coming into flower. Some guy must have been caught swimming outside the ropes, he thought to himself.
As he waited, he admired the magnificent bronze of Louis XIV on horseback, waving his sword around with an air of imperious egotism. The French had probably been all right, Max mused, until they had a revolution and became ridiculous socialists. Since then, they’d been nothing but trouble.
Max nodded to the doorman, bid him ‘bonjour’ and stepped into the revolving door. It was a beautiful February day in the Casino Square, but the fresh, cold air made him reach for his coat buttons. He was a bit early and he knew he only had a couple of hundred metres to walk.
He had time to nip into the casino. Just to have a look around. No harm in that, although he knew he’d win if he had a crack. No one would know. It could pay for dinner. But a sign at the foot of the steps said: Ouvert tous les jours à partir de 14 h. Maybe that was a good thing.
Max’s mind flashed back to his last ‘gambling’ dressing-down on the Embankment in London from his then immediate superior Colin Corbett.
Max had been leaning on the black railings watching the seagulls, opposite Vauxhall Cross.
‘Do you have any idea why we’re having this conversation here, and not in that building?’ Corbett had asked, pointing across the river.
Max felt like saying, ‘The weather?’ but thought better of it.
‘Well, I’ll tell you why. We’re here because I have to decide whether we let you go, or stay with you. And I’ll be honest with you. Your file doesn’t make particularly good reading. So I didn’t want this conversation on the record. For your sake, Ward.’
Corbett was referring to the incident in Saudi Arabia that had led to Max being sent back to London in disgrace.
‘My file?’
‘Your file. History’s repeating itself, isn’t it?’
‘No. What are you talking about?’
A squat Filipino woman walking a Yorkshire terrier had shuffled slowly past them. Corbett had instinctively shut up until she was out of earshot.
‘Thrown out of Eton for gambling. Thrown out of Saudi for gambling. Any pattern revealing itself there?’
‘I was trying to make some contacts.’
‘We’re not idiots, Ward. Don’t think we don’t know what happened. You let some card game compromise your work. And we had to bail you out of there.’
‘I told you, I was trying to make a few contacts.’
‘No. You weren’t. You got sucked in like a mug. Because you have a weakness. Just like your father …’
‘That isn’t fair. He was a bookmaker.’
‘He shot himself, Ward. Because he lost all his money.’
‘That’s cheap. Very cheap,’ Max had said, watching the seagulls float on the air above the Thames. He hadn’t known whether to smack Corbett in the face or just walk away. A seagull had perched on the railings a couple of feet away from them.
‘They have a knowing look, don’t you think?’ Max had asked, buying time to compose himself.
‘Fuck the seagull. Do you actually want this job? According to Nash, not that much.’
Max had paused, as if making up his mind. In truth, he was trying to control his anger.
‘My father made a big sacrifice to send me to Eton. I wish he hadn’t, because it killed him, one way or another.’ Max’s voice had wavered. ‘So of course I want this job. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This bloody job is all I have to show for his sacrifice.’
Corbett’s face had betrayed his relief. It was exactly what he’d needed to hear. Passion. And maybe the beginnings of regret. If he was to justify hanging on to him, he needed to believe that was what Max was feeling.
‘You’re going to have a couple of very boring years riding a desk. Step inside a casino and all bets are off.’
Max turned away from the casino and crossed the road to admire the fountain. Not just any fountain, either. Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror.
His mind flickered to the dacha outside Moscow. Corbett being shot in cold blood. If nothing else, this mission could at least destroy Pallesson.
Wrestling his thoughts back to the present, Max admired the way the mirror reflected both the sky and the casino. As he watched his own reflection, he noticed someone standing on the steps behind him. When he turned around, the guy walked off towards the harbour. He didn’t look back.
Max loved the adrenalin of being out in the field; loved the feeling of being on his toes. Being alert. Ready to react to anything. All the more so because it was such a rare occurrence these days, though he was certain nothing would happen in Monte Carlo. Or at least nothing he couldn’t cope with.
He walked around to the other side of the square. There was a policeman standing in the middle of the road doing nothing, as far as Max could see. Nice work if you can get it. The policeman took a long look at him, as if he’d read his thoughts.
Max glanced at the clientele of the Café de Paris as they sipped their coffees. A man on his own with a newspaper open on the table seemed to be looking at him. Or was he looking at the leather document holder?
Finally, Max left the square and headed downhill towards his destination. He stopped just around the corner by the Zegg & Cerlati watch shop to see if anyone was following him. The watches were mesmerizing: Zenith, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breitling, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe. They were all stunning. But one particular watch by Vacheron Constantin caught his eye. The 1907 Chronomètre Royal was a watch that Max had always thought was perfectly him. It looked classic, unembellished, but distinguished. He loved the eleven Arabic numerals in black enamel and the burgundy-red twelve, all set against a white face inside rose-gold casing. And definitely a brown strap, not black. Max looked at the price. Thirty-five thousand euros. That was about right.
After a while, Max realized that he was being scrutinized by a woman inside the shop. She beckoned for him to enter. He still had time to kill, so he went inside.
Gemma arrived at the end of the long, empty white marble tunnel. Instead of turning left into the hotel spa, she turned right, out into the street, and set off down the hill towards the harbour. She pulled up the hood of her coat, but resisted the urge to look back towards the hotel. Max would be long gone by now.
After fifty metres she walked past the Théâtre Princesse Grace. At the bottom of the hill she took the first steps on her left towards the water, then doubled back on herself along the seafront. All the big fuck-off yachts were moored next to each other along the harbour wall. Gemma was familiar with a few of them. There were a couple belonging to the Formula 1 crowd, a medium-size vessel from an oligarch’s ever-growing fleet, plus the flagship of a minor Saudi prince, which she’d been aboard more than once.
Gemma walked past Clementine, Paloma and Lady Nag Nag – a joke, the cost of which didn’t make it any funnier. The yachts were registered in Georgetown, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Douglas, though the one she was heading for was registered in Montenegro.
Two crew members in immaculate white shirts and blue shorts were waiting for her at the end of the walkway. Gemma knew the form. She handed her shoes to one of them before she boarded. A third member of staff offered her a hot hand towel. Not for her own comfort, she suspected, but more in deference to her host’s OCD.
He was waiting for her beyond a large set of double glass doors. It was a bit too cool for sitting around on deck.
‘Gemma.’ Alessandro Marchant beamed gushingly. ‘Great to see you. Like the refurb? My new designer helped me.’
Gemma was relieved to see there were crew everywhere. At least he wouldn’t be able to try it on, as he had done when her husband Casper and she had been staying with him in Corsica.
The ‘refurb’ had obviously cost a fortune, and had clearly been done by someone who’d had a taste bypass. They’d had one idea in their mind and stuck with it. Gold.
‘My chef is cooking lobster for lunch.’
My this, my that … He hadn’t changed.
Gemma was disgusted by her husband’s craven submission to Alessandro Marchant and, even worse, the creepy Pallesson. So dark and vile was Pallesson that no one even applied a first name to him. And when he said jump, Casper leapt.
After they first got married, when she’d challenged Casper about it, he got very agitated and ranted that he would have no hedge fund, and she would be living in a council house, if it wasn’t for Pallesson and Marchant. Now the whole subject had become off limits.
When she drank too much, she invariably brought the subject up. And threw in the likelihood that any money Casper was handling for them would almost certainly be bent. If he’d had too much – which increasingly seemed to be the case – he became abusive. Their marriage was falling apart. It was hardly surprising that she needed Max.
‘Champagne?’ Marchant asked expansively.
‘Coffee.’ It was a statement, not a question. She had to toe the line with Alessandro, but only up to a point.
‘So what else brings you down here, Gemma?’ Alessandro asked as he lay back on a sofa that had been made all but uninhabitable by a plague of cushions. He knew there would be a cover for her bringing him the memory stick.
‘I’m here with a girlfriend. We’re looking at an interior design job. It’s going to be amazing.’ At least, that was what she’d told Casper.
‘You should use my girl,’ Alessandro interrupted. ‘She did all this.’
‘Yes,’ Gemma replied, with the minimal amount of appreciation. ‘Probably not quite what we’re looking for though.’
‘You must both come and have dinner tonight.’
Gemma’s stomach tightened. Monaco was too small for her layers of deceit.
‘We can’t, sadly. Hooked up with our client, I’m afraid. Obviously not allowed to say who. Oh, before I forget, your memory stick. Casper said he’d kill me if I lost it.’
2
Monaco
Max thanked the sweet girl who had tried every gambit in the book to sell him the Vacheron Constantin and stepped gingerly back out on to the pavement. The two guys digging up the road stopped and looked at him. He told himself not to be paranoid and walked another fifty metres down the street. He could feel the cold flushing his cheeks.
He was glad the Restaurant Rampoldi was right there. The Sass Café would have been his choice, but it was closed at this time of year. And Rampoldi was very cosy. There were only a couple of other diners inside, so he had no problem getting the table right at the back of the restaurant. The owner, who looked like he’d had an eventful life, showed him over to it.
Max liked the simplicity of the place. The starched white tablecloths; the black-and-white cartoon prints of fat, jolly waiters. The unashamed stuffiness.
He quickly flicked to the red wines when the sommelier brought the wine list. And he was impressed. They had two of his favourites.
The 1997 Solaia made by the Antinori family was, in Max’s opinion, the finest wine to come out of Tuscany for a long time. He was amazed they had it. The production had been small and it was hard to find outside Italy. At eight hundred euros a bottle it was expensive, but rightly so. Yet how could he ignore the Château Lafite Rothschild 1990? Such an understated wine. He loved the clever combination of delicate and yet powerful and intense flavours. They also had the 1982 and 1986 vintages, but they were, as far as Max was concerned, for ignorant tourists. Any idiot could buy the most expensive wine on the list. So he went with the Solaia.
Under normal circumstances, such wine would have caused ructions had it appeared on his expenses. But he’d been told to look after his guest, so look after him he would.
Max knew Jacques Bardin would be getting on a bit, so when an old boy, probably in his seventies, with thin eyes above a beaky nose, wire-framed glasses and a long, scruffy tweed coat walked in, he was sure it was his man.
Jacques hesitated a moment to talk to the jovial maître d’ by the door. He declined the offer to take his coat, then headed over towards the table. He was much frailer than Max had imagined.
‘Monsieur Bardin?’ Max smiled formally as he stood up to greet his guest. Jacques simply bowed his head in acknowledgement and sat down.
‘A little red?’ Max asked, trying to put his guest at ease.
‘Thank you,’ Jacques said, again nodding his head. He took a sip as soon as the waiter had poured, and smiled. The waiter showed him the bottle, but he didn’t comment on the wine or the year, which surprised Max.
‘Très bon,’ was all he said.
There was a slight silence, which Max filled awkwardly.
‘Hope it wasn’t too much bother to get here?’
Jacques pursed his lips. He never told anyone where he lived. ‘It was no trouble.’ He helped himself to some bread. Clearly, this put an end to the subject.
Max took the hint. Jacques was not a conversationalist – or, if he were, not with strangers.
‘Tryon is sorry he couldn’t join us. He was most intrigued by your communiqué.’
Jacques took another sip of his wine and contemplated the young Englishman in front of him.
‘Tell me a little of this Tryon, please?’
Max now occupied himself with his wine glass to buy himself some time. ‘Well, obviously, I can’t say too much. But he is my immediate boss. Though he’s based in London, he keeps an eye on what’s going on around the world. He is the overview, let’s say. Out of interest, how did you come to contact him?’
Jacques thought about this question for a moment, as if it were a trap, and was silent. Max didn’t fill in the silence. He wanted to draw the old man out. Eventually, Jacques answered.
‘I have a friend in French Intelligence – through my work. When this problem got out of hand, he gave me Tryon’s number.’
‘And that is why I am here. To sort out this problem. But I need you to explain it all to me.’
The prospect clearly did not appeal to Jacques. He sipped his wine, tore off a piece of bread and then drank some more wine.
‘I was a forger,’ he finally volunteered.
‘Unusual profession,’ Max interjected.
‘I was brought up to it. It was all I knew. When I was a child, I swept the floor of a great man’s studio. He was a genius. And he took me under his wing. Han Van Meegeren. You have heard of him?’ Max nodded.
‘Everyone said he hated people. And passed on nothing. But he taught me everything.’
‘How many paintings have you forged?’
‘Hundreds,’ Jacques answered matter-of-factly.
‘So how does that work? How do you pass them off ?’
Again Jacques paused and thought about his answer.
‘Can you help us?’
‘Yes. But only if you tell us everything. We’re not the police. We don’t care how many paintings you have forged.’
Jacques seemed to accept this.
‘The forger has to deceive the so-called experts who pretend to know everything. I think Van Meegeren was more interested in fooling them than making money. I just did it because I was fortunate to be chosen by him. You pick an artist and create a work that he might have painted. So Van Meegeren created an entire period of Vermeers and managed to fool the idiots that they had discovered a whole lost period. During the war he fooled Göring into thinking that he was buying great masterpieces. And then the idiots threw him into prison for collaborating with the Nazis.’
Max kept nodding. He knew about Van Meegeren. It was Jacques he wanted to know about.
‘So how did you pass off your forgeries?’
‘By creating provenance. It is one thing to create a new painting. It is another to place it. So I would forge invoices, letters, magazine articles, pages from auction catalogues – anything that would place the painting in the past. You would be surprised by some of the people who have helped me. If you own a large château, and you can’t afford to put a new roof on it, what could be easier? Go to some Parisian expert and tell him you’ve discovered a great work in your loft. Just pretend it must have been in the family for generations and no one realized.’
The memory seemed to cheer Jacques up. A philosophical smile spread across his face and he took another sip of wine.
‘How come you got into copying paintings for Pallesson? It doesn’t sound like you needed the money.’
The smile left Jacques’s face as quickly as it had appeared.
‘There is no art to copying paintings. No creativity. Any idiot can do it.’
‘Why do it then?’
‘Pallesson. He’s a clever bastard. He caught me.’
‘How?’
‘He bought a Jan van Goyen that I created. Usual subjects – boats, windmills … The painting was perfect. But I made a mistake with the provenance. I forged a magazine article that referred to the picture, amongst others. Only for some reason the magazine wasn’t published the month I chose. Pallesson checked it out, which was bad luck, and then traced the picture back to me.’
‘What did he do about it?’
‘He said I had to copy some paintings for him. All Dutch masters.’
‘Which you did?’
‘I had no choice. He said bad things would happen to my family if I didn’t.’
Max nodded. That was Pallesson all over. First you find a way of compromising someone. Then you blackmail them.
Max smiled. ‘As I’m sure Tryon has told you, art forgery or copying are not really our business. So why have you come to us? And why now? Why not before?’
Jacques tore another piece from the roll in front of him. He ate it slowly, considering what to say next. While he was thinking, the maître d’ sidled up to their table and asked if they were ready to order. Jacques had the menu open in front of him. Max was pretty sure he hadn’t looked at it; or the label on the wine bottle, for that matter. Which was strange for a Frenchman.
Jacques asked the maître d’ about the specials and went for the carré d’agneau. Max chose the eggs florentine followed by oysters. He had no truck with the bollocks that oysters didn’t go with Solaia. While the maître d’ refilled their glasses, Max casually took the Vacheron Constantin brochure out of his top pocket and pushed it across the table.
‘These are beautiful, don’t you think?’
A look of concern spread across Jacques’s face. He didn’t reply.
Max had figured out that Jacques’s near vision had deteriorated.
‘Jacques, why don’t you tell me what the problem is, exactly?’ Max asked bluntly.
The confidence and control that Jacques had up until this point been trying to exude rapidly evaporated. He suddenly looked vulnerable. He drank some wine and paused. Max waited.
‘It’s my daughter, Sophie,’ he said at last. ‘She is a very talented artist. And recognized, unlike me. She has a great future. She has work hanging in Paris, London, Milan, Amsterdam …’
‘So what does she have to do with Pallesson?’
‘I should have told Pallesson that my sight was gone. Finished. But I was too frightened of the consequences. Sophie helped me. I didn’t want her to be involved, but she saw that I was struggling and how distressed I was. And then he tricked me. He worked out that she had helped me. Now he is blackmailing both of us. He says he will finish her career. That is why I come to you now. Can you protect her?’
Jacques’s shoulders were stooped as he stared at the tablecloth. Max felt sick for him. His mind cast back to Pallesson trying to compromise him at Eton. And blowing Corbett’s head off. He had to destroy him before his evil spread any further.
Max stretched his hand across the table and placed it on the old man’s wrist. But compassion wasn’t the foremost emotion churning in Max’s stomach.
‘Jacques, when did you send him the copy?’
‘A week ago,’ the old man replied. Which meant that Pallesson could make the switch any time.
‘You’ve come to the right people,’ Max said. ‘We’ll trap him. We’ll finish him.’
He was going to nail the bastard, if they weren’t already too late.
‘So how long will it take Sophie to make a second copy of The Peasants in Winter? We’re against the clock,’ Max asked.
The waiter had cleared the table and served them with coffee. Now they were talking specifics, Jacques seemed much happier.
‘Five days. It shouldn’t take her longer than that. She has the work in her head. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that she made the first copy. It’s ironic, really.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, Pieter Brueghel the Younger was a great painter. Certainly better than his brother, Jan, in my opinion. But he did sometimes copy the work of his father. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the case with The Peasants in Winter. He wasn’t quite as subtle as Pieter the Elder, which makes Sophie’s work a little easier. But it didn’t stop him being a great artist. And it didn’t stop him getting the recognition he deserved.’
Max picked up the undertone and switched the conversation back to Bruegel the Elder, who happened to be one of the few artists Max knew anything about.
‘Was their father one of the greats?’
‘Certainly.’ Jacques nodded, taking another sip of his wine. ‘He painted some great art. The Massacre of the Innocents is my favourite. Such movement, such detail. His style at its best, if you ask me. He could paint timeless landscapes, but at the same time he filled them with real people going about their lives.’ Max could feel Jacques coming alive. Energy was suddenly emanating from the tired old man.
‘What about The Bird Trap?’
Jacques hesitated and pursed his lips.
‘I’m impressed. You know your art?’
Max smiled bashfully and shook his head. ‘Only a little, I’m afraid. And The Bird Trap is pretty much all I know about Bruegel the Elder.’
‘Well, that is a good start. The winter landscape, c’est magnifique. The shades of colour are truly incredible. The figures on the ice are exquisite. The painting is so alive. But …’ Jacques said, pointing his finger at Max, ‘Bruegel’s students made any number of copies of The Bird Trap. They were commercial. And yet history has not condemned him,’ he said indignantly.
Max looked at the old man. He’d got himself into a mess. Just as Max’s father had, and ultimately it had finished him off. Irrespective of what Jacques had been up to, Max was coming to his rescue.
‘The canvas you asked for,’ Max said, pulling his thoughts back to the present while he lifted a painting from the leather holder under the table.