The Art of the Matter

The seller was the estate of a lately departed German nobleman who had once been an SS tank officer in Holland during the war. This unhappy coincidence had always cast a shadow over the issue of how he came by his Dutch collection in the first place, but the old Graf had always protested that he had acquired his Dutch Masters before the war, and had beautifully forged invoices to prove it. The art world is nothing if not flexible.

But the estate was represented by a firm of Stuttgart lawyers and it was with these that Peregrine Slade had to deal. A German lawyer in one hell of a temper is seldom a pretty sight, and at six feet and five inches senior partner Bernd Schliemann was pretty formidable when happy. The morning he learned the full details of what had happened to his client’s property in London and the offer of £150,000, he moved into a towering rage.

‘Nein,’ he roared down the phone to his colleague who had gone over to negotiate. ‘Nein. Völlig ausgeschlossen. Withdraw it.’

Peregrine Slade was by no means a complete fool. The empty lavatory, eventually penetrated by a male colleague after half an hour, started the suspicions. The girl gave a good description of the only man who had come out. But that made two descriptions, both completely different.

Charlie Dawson had been stunned when taxed with his part in the matter. He had sent no letter, never heard of any Martin Getty. His e-mail letter was shown to him. Identification showed it purported to come from his word processor, but the installer of the entire Darcy system admitted that a real wizard in the cyberworld could forge that provenance. That was when Slade knew for certain that he had been well tupped. But by whom, and why?

He had just issued instructions for the Darcy computer system to be turned into Fort Knox when he received a curt summons to the private office of the Duke of Gateshead.

His Grace may not have been as noisy as Herr Schliemann, but his anger was as intense. He stood with his back to the door as Peregrine Slade responded to the command to ‘Enter.’ The chairman was staring out of the window at the roofs of Harrods 500 metres away.

‘One is not happy, my dear Perry,’ he said. ‘Not happy at all. There are a number of things in life one does not like, and one of them is being laughed at.’

He turned and advanced to his desk, placing splayed fingertips on the Georgian mahogany and leaning slightly to fix his deputy with baleful blue eyes.

‘A chap goes into his club and a chap is laughed at. Openly, don’t you see, dear old bean.’

The te

rm of endearment was like a dagger in the sun.

‘And you blame incompetence,’ said Slade.

‘Should I not?’

‘This was sabotage,’ said Slade and offered five sheets of paper. The duke was slightly taken aback but he fished spectacles from a top pocket and read them quickly.

One was the phoney letter from Charlie Dawson. The second was a sworn affidavit that he had never sent it, and the third a statement from the best computer expert available to the effect that a near-genius in computer technology could have created it and inserted it into Slade’s private e-mail system.

The fourth and fifth papers were from two girls in the saleroom that day, one detailing how the supposed Kentuckian had introduced himself and the other describing how he had vanished.

‘Have you any idea who this rogue could be?’ asked the duke.

‘Not yet, but I intend to find out.’

‘Oh, you do that, Perry. Do it without delay. And when you have him, ensure he spends a long time behind bars. Failing that, ensure he is spoken to in such a manner that he will never come within a mile of us again. In the meantime, I shall try to pacify the board – again.’

Slade was about to go when His Grace added an afterthought.

‘After the Sassetta affair, and now this, we need something pretty spectacular to restore our image. Keep eyes and ears open for such an opportunity. Failing that, and a resolution of this impersonation business, the board may have to consider a little . . . restructuring. That is all, my dear Perry.’

When he left the room the nervous tic near Slade’s left eye, that always flared when he was under extreme stress or in the grip of powerful emotions, was flicking like a panicky Aldis lamp.

JUNE

Slade was not as lost for thoughts as he had pretended. Someone had wreaked immense damage on the House of Darcy. He looked for motive. Gain? But there had been none, except that the Coorte was now going to another auctioneer. But would a rival do this?

If not gain, then revenge. Who would have such a rage against him, and enough knowledge to guess that an agent acting for Van Den Bosch would be present in the hall with a big enough cheque to hike the Coorte to such ludicrous levels?

His thoughts had already settled on Benny Evans, who would have had both. But the ‘Martin Getty’ he had stared at was not Benny Evans. Yet he had been briefed. He had sat silent until that single picture came under the hammer. So . . . a fellow conspirator. A mere hireling, or another with a grudge?

On 2 June he sat in the chambers in Lincoln’s Inn of one of the most eminent lawyers in England. Sir Sidney Avery laid down the brief and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Your query is: did this man commit an offence in criminal law?’

‘Precisely.’