Fakes and Lies

PROLOGUE

The gallery was halfway up the hill on the High Pavement heading out of the city of Mallingham. It was double fronted, with two deep bay windows that curved either side of the Victorian tiled entrance way. The entrance itself was recessed, the heavy wooden door only partly glazed. It was not on the main thoroughfares and it was a good ten minute walk from the city centre; the inference was that if you went there, it was with the intent to buy and with full knowledge of what the place might have in stock. It was not a location frequented by the dilettante or the time waster and it had in part built its reputation on discovering new talent, building and encouraging that talent and then profiting from the increased prices when those artists became well known. Its client base, both the sellers and the buyers, were known to be loyal.

Today Antonia Scott was expecting a visitor, a new artist her brother had dealt with and who was due to bring work for Antonia to see, hoping for her final approval. Matthew Scott might be the more astute business partner but Antonia was very much their father’s daughter in terms of her artistic knowledge and ability to predict which of their potential clients might bring the most money into the business in future. Scotts had survived for almost seventy years, grandfather, father and now twin siblings curating and agenting and dealing, and on that Wednesday morning the future looked very healthy.

Antonia, arriving to open the gallery a half hour before her scheduled meeting, was not surprised to see the young woman standing outside holding a portfolio. She had a carrier for canvases at her feet and looked nervous and harassed, the wind blowing her blond hair across her face. The artist she was expecting was not actually due yet but in Antonia’s experience new artists were always early.

‘Good morning,’ Antonia said. ‘You must be Jenny. Come along inside out of the wind. I think we might get some snow. Spring is taking its time this year.’

She bent and unlocked the metal grille and pushed it up over her head, then trotted forward between the deep bay windows to the big black door and unlocked that. The young woman hoisted her portfolio and carrier and followed her.

‘Matthew’s told me so much about you. He is very excited and I’m sure I will be too. You understand that the final decision always rests with me? But I don’t anticipate any problems. From what I’ve seen of your work so far I’m very impressed, so I’m sure this will just be a formality.’

She swung the door wide and invited the younger woman to step through first. The shop alarm had begun to beep a warning and Antonia turned her attention to that. ‘The light switch is on your side, that’s it on the wall just beside the door.’ The light came on and Antonia began to input the code to shut off the alarm. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’m sure we’d both like a nice cup of tea.’

Fifteen minutes later, when Jennifer Colombi actually arrived, she found the door open. She stepped inside and called out, ‘Miss Scott, I’m sorry I’m a little early, but I just …’

The words died. Antonia Scott lay on the floor just a few feet inside the shop. Blood had flowed out from beneath her and when Jennifer knelt and touched her hand she was sure that the fingers flexed and that Antonia was still alive. Several things went through Jennifer’s mind at that point. That she needed to get help, that the person who attacked Antonia Scott might still be there, and finally that she was utterly terrified.

To her credit, Jennifer managed to make the phone call to the ambulance and the police before finally breaking down, and when the paramedics arrived they found her crying and trembling on the pavement and very much in need of treatment for shock. Since Antonia Scott was by then very, very dead they were able to give Jennifer their full attention, so that by the time the police arrived the young artist was least coherent. Not that she could tell them very much.

She had arrived for an appointment about fifteen minutes early and had found the woman she was supposed to meet lying on the floor. No, she had gone no further into the shop and yes, she had touched Antonia on the hand and called her name. At that point, Jennifer confirmed, she was sure that the woman had still been alive. She was sure that her fingers had twitched and she had been equally sure that there was nothing she could do and that more experienced and expert help was required.

‘So I ran outside and called the police and the ambulance,’ she told the officer. ‘I kept watching the shop just in case anyone else came out. I was terrified in case the killer was still in there.’

‘And you heard no one else inside the shop?’

Jennifer shook her head and then said, ‘But I wasn’t really listening. I wasn’t really taking anything in apart from the body lying on the floor. There was so much blood. I wanted to know if she was still alive, if I could help. I thought … I thought she might still be alive but I didn’t know what to do.’

‘You did the right thing,’ the officer told her. ‘You got yourself out and you called us and called the ambulance.’

The DI left her sitting in the back of the ambulance. The paramedics wanted to take Jennifer to hospital to get checked over, but already the colour had returned to her cheeks and she was pretty sure that the girl would be OK when she got over the shock. She wondered if Jennifer would remember anything else. One of the paramedics followed the DI and asked if they could take the girl away. Inspector Morgan glanced back once at the young woman and then nodded her head. ‘You may as well. I’ll get someone to come and chat to her later but I doubt she can tell us much.’

DI Karen Morgan went back to stand in the shop doorway, watching the CSIs as they went about the task of examining the body and the scene. The crime scene manager glanced up.

‘What can you tell me?’ Karen said.

‘That she was facing her killer, that there seem to be no defensive wounds and that the death blow was a single stab wound, up through the diaphragm and into the rib cage, probably nicked the liver too. There’ll be more blood inside the body cavity than there is on the floor. Whoever did it knew what they were about.’

‘Any signs of theft?’

‘Nothing obvious, and a shop like this is sure to have a detailed inventory. You know about Scotts, do you?’

‘Know about it in what way?’ Karen asked.

‘Oh, nothing criminal. But their reputation for finding new artists, for predicting the next big thing.’ The crime scene manager shrugged. ‘My youngest is at art college; her ambition is to be hung here, in this gallery. Sees it as the first step towards London and places … well, wherever artists want to be these days. It’s family run – Antonia Scott and her brother. I think the grandfather is still around but I’m pretty sure the father died a few years ago.’

Karen nodded. It was good to have some local knowledge. ‘The brother’s on his way, I believe.’ She wandered back out again. There was very little she could do until the CSIs had finished. The ambulance had already gone. A small knot of onlookers had gathered across the street and Karen recognized a couple of local journalists chatting to one of the constables. She smiled grimly, knowing they’d get nothing out of PC Elwood; he was rumoured to be so tight-lipped he didn’t even talk to his own wife.

It must be theft, Karen Morgan thought. Why else would you attack a gallery owner? Though if the crime scene manager was right, the accuracy of the stab wound was something to be considered. Most opportunist thieves (and for that matter those who were stealing to order) would be more likely to bash someone over the head, take what they wanted and run away rather than face a murder charge if they were caught. It seemed excessive and also, if the woman was facing her assailant, then it was someone she did not feel threatened by. Or didn’t have the time to feel threatened by. It could have happened very fast. Either way, a stab wound like that meant getting in close and personal.

A month later, and Karen Morgan was still puzzling over the killing of Antonia Scott. By early March the case had definitely gone cold; not that it had ever warmed up. Karen Morgan glared at the folder on her desk and then moved on to more pressing things. The inventory of the shop had indeed been detailed, and according to Antonia’s brother only one thing seemed to be missing, a small portfolio containing a series of drawings and oil sketches from the estate of a man called Frederick Albert Jones, who had died a couple of weeks before Antonia Scott had been murdered. Freddie Jones was an artist they had represented; he was also a known forger.

ONE

Patrick was alone in the studio when the doorbell rang. The owners of the house, Bob Taylor, in whose studio he was working, and Bob’s wife, Annie Raven, were both out. Patrick was used to fielding phone calls and dealing with emails but it was quite unusual for anyone to come ringing the doorbell. Even more unusually, he hadn’t heard a car pull up and Bob Taylor’s house was almost a mile down a long track. It was not somewhere you got to by accident.

Patrick went back through the house and opened the front door. A young girl stood there, looking very nervous. He judged her to be about nineteen, somewhere around his own age. She looked upset.

‘Are you lost?’ Patrick asked. Then, realizing that perhaps this was not the most useful question, he began again. ‘Hello, who’re you looking for?’

‘Um, this is Bob Taylor’s house? I wanted to see Bob.’

Patrick frowned. This was unexpected and he wasn’t good at dealing with the unexpected. ‘Does he know you’re coming?’

‘No, no he doesn’t. Is he here?’

Patrick fervently wished he was. He shook his head. ‘Don’t know when he’ll be back; maybe you could wait in your car.’ He looked around wondering where the car was. She must have come in a vehicle.

She shook her head impatiently. ‘I left it back down the main road, didn’t realize it was this far up. It’s only a little car, not very good with the mud and the ruts. Can I come in?’

‘I don’t even know who you are. I can’t just let you in.’

‘I don’t even know who you are,’ she retaliated. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Beatrix Jones,’ she said. ‘Though people usually call me Bee, or Trixie, or just about anything apart from Beatrix.’

Patrick laughed. ‘We’ve got the same last name,’ he said. ‘I’m Patrick Jones.’

She nodded. ‘I thought you might be. Bob said he’d got a new studio assistant. You might have heard of my dad. His name was Frederick, Freddie. He was an artist. Bob was a friend of his. He died a little while ago and that’s why I want to talk to Bob.’

Patrick looked at her properly for the first time. ‘I didn’t know Freddie Jones had a daughter,’ he said. He studied her carefully. She was actually very pretty, he thought. Mixed heritage, he guessed, with caramel skin and slightly crinkly hair that was a rich golden brown. She had startlingly green eyes and he realized also that she looked cold, shivering in just a thin corduroy jacket with her hands thrust into the pockets.

‘You better come in,’ Patrick decided. ‘You look frozen and I know Annie wouldn’t want me to leave you on the doorstep in the cold.’ He realized he was making a big hash of this but meeting strangers wasn’t really his thing and he often did make a big hash of it.

He stood aside and then led her through to the kitchen. He’d just finished making coffee when Annie arrived back, much to Patrick’s relief, and to his even greater relief Annie seemed to know the girl slightly.

Annie fussed over Bee for a while and reassured Patrick that he’d been right to make their guest feel welcome.

‘I’d best get on,’ Patrick said. ‘Bob left me jobs to do I’ve not finished yet.’

Annie waved him back into his seat. ‘Those can wait,’ she said gently but firmly. Patrick sat down again, feeling a little puzzled. Bee smiled at him; she still looked cold despite Annie having wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She was holding a mug of warm coffee between her hands and Patrick suddenly realized that this was more than just chill, that Annie had already recognized something frozen within the girl. Something that needed defrosting – urgently.

‘I’m not sure what time Bob will be back,’ Annie told her, ‘but if we can be any help …?’

Patrick blinked and looked doubtfully at Annie, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do, then he nodded. Annie and Bob had helped him when he’d really needed it so he would definitely do what he could for this girl because that was just the way it was in Bob and Annie’s house.

‘Your dad painted the Madonna that Bob’s got here, didn’t he? It’s absolutely gorgeous.’ The painting in question had been attributed to a sixteenth-century master but Bob Taylor was pretty sure that it was the work of Freddie Jones. He’d been asked to look into the attribution about a month before, just a few days after Freddie had died.

She nodded. ‘Yeah, that was probably one of Dad’s. I’m never quite sure. I’d go into the studio and there’d be all these things and some of them would be his and some would be genuine and … sometimes he could remember what was what. Sometimes he’d be asked about stuff that he might have done twenty years ago and it would be all, Well, yeah, I might have done it, but I don’t remember any more, and he probably didn’t. He was getting a bit, like, absent, if you know what I mean.’

‘Bob was really sorry to hear about his death,’ Annie said. ‘I know he regarded Freddie as a good friend. I believe he was Bob’s mentor a long time ago.’

Patrick looked at her in surprise. Bob was certainly his mentor now but he found it odd to think that Bob had needed support himself when he first started out.

‘I didn’t even know that Freddie was my dad, not until about five years ago. I pestered Mum for ages to tell me and she finally did. It came out in an argument. I think she was just so angry with me for going on about it all the time. But she settled down and she even phoned him for me, said I wanted to see him. No strings – they decided that years ago. He put money in a bank account for me, but my mum didn’t like to use that. She said it should stay there until I decided what I wanted to do about university. Thankfully, she didn’t really need his money so … We were really lucky like that.’

‘And so you went to meet him. That must have been interesting?’ Annie smiled gently. ‘He was quite a character.’

‘I thought he was nuts,’ Bee said frankly. ‘I couldn’t believe my mum had ever been in love with him. I mean, he was so old.’ She smiled. ‘He seemed really old anyway, until I got to know him. Then I realized he was just a two-year-old pretending to be an adult.’

Annie nodded. ‘From what little I knew of him,’ she said, ‘that sounds about right. He was never very good at the responsibility thing.’

‘No, my mum always said it was fun while it lasted but there was never any future in it. When she fell pregnant it was a shock to both of them, but she wanted to keep me. Freddie apparently said that he’d make a terrible father but promised to help out financially as much as he could, and that’s what they agreed. Then Mum died a year ago, and Freddie was all I had. I even took his last name, did the deed poll and everything. Mum’s idea.’ She shrugged almost apologetically. ‘She thought it would be better if I looked like I belonged somewhere, said it would make life less complicated, but I think she just wanted to let me know it was all right to be with my dad. That we had her blessing, you know? And then he went.’

Annie reached out across the table and took Bee’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was in my early teens when I lost both of my parents. I remember how it felt.’

They were all silent for a moment and then Annie asked, ‘So what brings you here to Bob? What can we do for you?’

Bee took a deep breath and looked from Annie to Patrick as if what she was going to say next would be very difficult and she wasn’t sure what she hoped their reaction would be. ‘You’re both going to think I’m crazy, or upset, or in shock because I’ve lost both my mum and my dad within a year, but really I’m not. You see I think my dad was murdered.’

Patrick knew he looked shocked but Annie’s only reaction was a slight critical raise of one eyebrow.

‘What makes you think that?’ he asked. ‘I thought your dad had a heart attack. Bob said he drank and smoked even though the doctors had told him not to.’

‘And that’s all true,’ Bee agreed, ‘but, you see, he told me … he told me his life was in danger. He told me there were people out to get him. The next thing I know he’s dead. The police don’t believe me of course, nobody does. In fact I’d stopped believing me too. I thought what they told me was true, that I was just upset and imagining things, and friends of Freddie’s – of Dad’s – always told me that he was a bit, well, imaginative. You know, like making things up.’

‘But something’s happened to make you think there’s more to it?’ Annie asked.

The girl nodded slowly. From out of the pocket of her jacket she took a folded piece of newspaper and smoothed it out on the table top. ‘It was this,’ she said. ‘This happened.’

Annie turned the paper around so that she and Patrick could both see. ‘It’s about Antonia Scott’s murder,’ she said. ‘That was a terrible tragedy, an awful thing to happen. Antonia was such a lovely woman. I heard the police thought it was a theft gone wrong.’

‘Something was stolen,’ Bee said. ‘But I bet you don’t know what it was.’

‘No, I have no idea. The murder was on the news, of course, and Bob phoned Antonia’s brother to give his condolences and see if there was anything we could do to help, but that’s all we know. So what was taken?’

‘It was a portfolio,’ Bee told her. ‘Dad dropped it off at the gallery a few days before he died. It was a portfolio of Freddie’s work.’

TWO

Bob Taylor arrived about half an hour after his wife. He recognized Bee immediately and expressed condolence for her father’s death. ‘He was a good friend,’ Bob said. ‘I’d known him for years, of course. I knew your mother too.’

Bob helped himself to coffee and then came and sat at the table. Bee repeated the story that she’d already told Annie and Patrick. Patrick could see Bob considering carefully and wondering how to respond to her. Eventually he said, ‘I agree it is something of a coincidence, Antonia’s murder and the theft of the portfolio, though from what I’ve heard the police are still treating it as a robbery. Other things might have been taken, you know.’

‘Coincidences do happen,’ Annie said gently. ‘Just because something bad happens to two people in the same time period doesn’t necessarily mean those two events are connected.’

Patrick blinked. It felt as though Annie was being unusually restrained and unsympathetic, after her first efforts to comfort this near stranger who had come so unexpectedly to her door. Tears began to well in the girl’s eyes and Patrick looked to Annie to see what she would do but Annie was leaning back in her chair, as though keeping her distance. She sipped her coffee, her expression neutral. Annie caught Patrick’s look and shook her head gently, and Patrick bit back his first instinct, which was to object to her caution and seeming indifference. It seemed obvious to him that Freddie’s death and Antonia Scott’s must be linked, but he trusted Annie and her judgement so he kept quiet.

‘I take it you’ve spoken to the police?’ Bob asked.

‘I’ve tried. They think I’m crazy, or grieving, or just in the way. They say my father had been ill and died of a heart attack, and that’s that. They say, like you just did, that it’s just coincidence that some of his work was stolen. Antonia’s brother told them that the portfolio had been left quite close to the door because Antonia was going to go through it that morning. He’d left it next to one of the print racks so she’d know where it was, so the police just say it was probably the first thing the thief saw. That the thief took a