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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.

‘Is it the right age?’

‘Apparently. No idea who the artist is, but it’s 1600s. Don’t suppose he’d have been too happy if he’d known when he painted it that you were going to strip his paint off one day.’

Jacques shrugged his shoulders and turned it over to look at the back of the canvas. He seemed satisfied.

‘And the pigments?’

‘Exactly as you requested.’

Max met Gemma in the American Bar at the Hôtel de Paris. Gemma had arrived back first and taken the small table in the corner looking out on to Casino Square.

‘Shall we go to the casino this evening?’ Max asked as he drew up a chair. He was feeling elated. Revenge was going to be sweet.

‘And gamble?’

‘Well, you could. Maybe a little blackjack? Stick on twelve if the dealer has sixteen or less.’

‘You and your risk-assessing brain, Max. Always calculating the odds.’ In fact, she was working out what chance there was of running into Marchant with him.

‘Disappointing, this bar, don’t you think? Very plain. No imagination. No feel to it. How was your meeting? Productive?’

‘Yes. I think so. Drink?’

‘Bit early for me. I’ll have a cup of tea, please.’

Max caught the eye of a waiter who was busily doing nothing.

‘Monsieur, vous avez du Earl Grey? Et je voudrai également un grand whisky s’il vous plaît, Du Grouse, et une petite bouteille d’eau gazeuse.’

‘You’re quite sexy when you speak French,’ Gemma said from behind her newspaper.

‘I’d be even sexier if I could write it properly.’

This was a sore point for Max, Gemma knew, but she didn’t feel like hearing yet again how Pallesson had trashed him going to university. She put her hand on his thigh and rubbed it.

‘Tell me about your meeting.’

‘Well, anything I tell you would have to be erased from your mind. As for my mind, it’s currently contemplating something else,’ he whispered, reciprocating rather more daringly with his own hand.

‘Are you sure you had lunch with an old man? You seem to be—’

‘How was your massage?’ he interrupted.

‘Intimate. Very intimate. Anyway, I thought we were going to explore?’

But Max was having none of it.

‘We could go upstairs and explore,’ he said, downing his Scotch.

Gemma again made the mistake of walking out of the bathroom without tying her dressing gown. She may have got away with it that morning, but not now.

Max pushed aside her long hair and kissed the back of her neck. He felt a familiar response as her body shivered. Though he’d learnt most of his foreplay tips from the sex column in GQ magazine, over the years Gemma had taught him how to turn her on. Today, though, Max was in a rush. He was bursting.

As he pulled her closer to him, she could feel him rubbing against her La Perla-clad bottom.

Max had bought her the underwear a week before, after they’d shared a few glasses of champagne at the Harrods caviar bar. He’d tried not to show his shock when the shop assistant asked him for the best part of three hundred pounds in return for the small swatch of black lace. Now, as he pulled off her dressing gown, he could see it was money well spent.

‘Someone’s come back horny,’ Gemma whispered. ‘Who did you meet, again?’

His response was muffled as he carried on kissing and nibbling at her neck. His left hand reached round and unclipped her bra. She stopped asking questions and knelt on the bed in front of him.

Max just wanted to lose himself in an old-fashioned quickie.

‘My God. Something’s woken you up.’ Gemma was totally in his grip. Max was squeezing her bum as hard as he could. He was feeling uncontrollably selfish.

‘That wasn’t very gentlemanly,’ Gemma teased as Max collapsed on the bed next to her. ‘You don’t deserve it, but there’s a present for you under your pillow,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘Now that you’ve finished.’

He ran his hand underneath the crisp linen pillowcase and felt a small box. He flipped it open and found himself looking at the Vacheron Constantin watch. He was now wide awake.

‘Gemma! How did you know? This is …’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Like it?’ He kissed her on the nose. ‘I love it. But how …?’

‘Oh, a little bird told me. Rather a sexy little bird, actually. If you hadn’t flirted so much with her, she might not have remembered.’

‘You shouldn’t have. You spoil me.’

Gemma stroked Max’s arm and put her head on his shoulder, looking away from him.

‘I wish you had swept me up and given me security, Max,’ Gemma said, surprising Max with such sudden intensity.

Having been given such an expensive gift, Max felt guilty as his brain rapidly calculated what giving Gemma security would cost. And then wondered if Casper would find the watch on Gemma’s credit-card bill. Probably not. It would get lost amongst everything else.

‘You wish I were Casper?’

‘No, of course not. But you do understand why I married him, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do,’ Max said as he looked at the watch.

‘You know I love Casper. In a way. We should probably have had children. That was my fault. I wasn’t sure at the time and it’s probably too late now. In more ways than one. But I can’t bear the thought of having nothing again, Max. Does that make me a bitch? Being here with you?’

‘No. Of course it doesn’t. If you don’t hurt Casper, how could it?’

Gemma didn’t really register his answer. Her mind was doing what it always did when the present was threatened by the past: desperately trying to rationalize the status quo.

‘Max, you wouldn’t marry me even if I wanted you to. If I left Casper. Would you?’

‘I’m not the marrying type, Gemma. The stay-at-home reliable husband …’

‘Not all women are like your mother,’ Gemma interrupted. ‘You don’t have to run away from all of us.’

Gemma had no idea how cruel her remark was. Max had never told her how or why his father died. So he couldn’t be angry with her now. He stood up from the bed and poured himself a large glass of Scotch.

‘Enough of this,’ he said lightly. ‘I want to take you out wearing my beautiful watch. At least if I run away from you tonight, I’ll be able to time myself.’