‘The painting in question was handed in by a complete nonentity. He had no idea what it was or he would never have brought it in. It was in a simply appalling state, so dirty the painting beneath the grime was almost invisible. And it was seen by a very junior valuer. Here is his report.’
He distributed copies of the valuation at £6,000 to £8,000 that he had himself prepared, pecking away at the computer keys in the dead of night. The nine board members read it glumly.
‘As you will see Mr Benny Evans thought it might be Florentine, circa 1550, by an unknown artist and of modest value. Alas, he was wrong. It was Sienese, circa 1450 and by a Master. Under all that grime he just did not spot it. That said, his examination was clearly rather cursory, even slipshod. However, it is I who now offer my position here to the board.’
There were two who pointedly stared at the ceiling but six shook their heads.
‘Not accepted, Perry. As for the slipshod young man, perhaps we should leave him to you.’
Peregrine Slade summoned Benny Evans to his office that afternoon. He did not offer the young man a seat. His tone was contemptuous.
‘I don’t have to explain to you the nature or extent of the disaster that this affair has visited on the House of Darcy. The papers have had a field day. They have said it all.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ protested Benny Evans. ‘You must have got my report. I put it under your door. All that about my suspicion it might really be a Sassetta. About having it cleaned and restored. About consulting Professor Colenso. It was all there.’
Slade icily proffered him a single sheet of headed paper. Evans read it without comprehension.
‘But this isn’t mine. This is not what I wrote.’
Slade was white with rage.
‘Evans, your carelessness is bad enough. But I will not tolerate mendacity. No-one who attempts to offer me such pathetic lies has any place in this house. You will find Miss Bates outside. She has your cards. Clear your desk and be gone within an hour. That is all.’
Benny tried to have a word with Sebastian Mortlake. The kindly director listened for a few moments, then led the way to Deirdre’s desk.
‘Pray punch up the report and evaluation file for the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of December,’ he said. The machine obediently regurgitated a sheaf of reports, one for Item D 1601. It was what Benny Evans had just seen in Slade’s office.
‘Computers don’t lie,’ said Mortlake. ‘On your way, lad.’
Benny Evans may have had no A levels and little knowledge of computers, but he was no fool. By the time he hit the pavement he knew exactly what had been done and how. He also knew every man’s hand was against him and that he would never work again in the art world.
But he still had one friend. Suzie Day was a cockney, not a classic beauty, and with her punky hairstyle and green fingernails there were some who would not have appreciated her. But Benny did, and she him. She listened for the hour it took him to explain exactly what had been done and how.
What she knew about fine art could have filled an entire postage stamp, but she had another talent, the precise opposite of Benny. She was a child of the computer generation. If you drop a new-hatched duckling into water, it will swim. Suzie had dipped her first forefinger into cyberspace with computer games at school and found her natural environment. She was twenty-two and could do with a computer what Yehudi Menuhin used to do with a Stradivarius.
She worked for a small firm run by a former and reformed computer hacker. They designed security systems to protect computers from illegal entry. Just as the best way to get through a padlock is to ask a locksmith, the best way to break into a computer is to ask someone who designs the defences. Suzie Day designed those defences.
‘So what do you want to do, Benny?’ she asked when he was finished.
He might have come from a back street in Bootle, but his great-granddad had been one of the Bootle Lads who went to the recruiting booths in 1914. They ended up in the Lancashire Fusiliers and in Flanders they fought like tigers and died like heroes. Of the 200 who went, Benny’s great-grandpa and six came back. Old genes die hard.
‘I want that booger Slade. I want him dead in the water,’ he said.
It was that night in bed that Suzie had an idea.
‘There must be someone else out there as angry as you are.’
‘Who?’
‘The original owner.’
Benny sat up.
‘You’re right, lass. He’s been swindled out of two million quid. And he may not even know it.’
‘Who was he?’
Benny thought hard.