Jan and I gasped, in unison. The colour of the picture seemed to explode into the room. It showed a golden desert stretching into the distance. In the background were the white skulls of four horses, with in their midst the unmistakable skeleton of a giraffe. A woman stood in the middle distance, dark-haired and laughing, yet somehow transparent, as if the reflected light of the desert sand was shining through her. Everything caught the eye, but in the foreground, as if he was marching out of the picture, was the dominant figure: a toreador, wearing a blue hat and carrying a red cape. His uniform was full of sparkling colour, but it was his face more than anything in the rest of the picture which grabbed the attention. He wore a smile, yet it was the saddest smile I had ever seen. His eyes were bloodshot and the left one was lightly hooded. From it, a single tear ran down his cheek.
Jan and I rose together from the sofa, as if in respect for the work. We stared at it, both of us philistines when it comes to really fine art, but open-mouthed nonetheless.
‘What is it?’ I was able to gasp, eventually.
‘That, Oz … I can call you Oz, yes? … is the big question.’ Scott replaced the dust sheet. I was glad. I had heard the legend that men who looked at Michelangelo’s statue of David were likely to be driven mad by its beauty. Until that moment, I had found the concept laughable.
Jan and I settled back into the couch opposite our client. ‘Earlier this year, in late June, in fact,’ he said, ‘my wife Ida and I, and our daughter, were on holiday in Begur, in Northern Spain. I believe it’s near where you’re based, Oz.’
‘That’s true,’ I agreed, ‘though I’ve never been there.’
‘We were visiting friends, an old agency client and his wife, who live there full-time. We played a bit of golf at the Pals club, where David Foy, my chum, is a member. One day when we were there we met an English bloke. We bumped into him again by coincidence in Begur, a few days later, and then a third time, at the golf club.’
He paused, as if to let us absorb what he was telling us. ‘On the third occasion, he looked as if he was leading up to something. Eventually, he came out with it. He told us that a very exclusive dinner party had been organised for the next evening, at a very exclusive restaurant in a place called Peretellada.
‘He said that apart from the host there would be seven seats, and that every place would be filled by informal invitation. We asked him if he was going, but he said no, that it was miles too rich for his blood. It was for high rollers only, he said, because at the end of the night, there was to be an auction. A single lot, the nature of which would not be revealed until after the dinner had been served. He said that if anyone rather than an invited guest turned up, the dinner would be cancelled and the auction would not take place. Then he asked David if he would like the last seat at the table.’
He smiled. ‘David’s the perfect host. Without a moment’s hesitation he said that he couldn’t possibly accept unless I was invited too. The guy went out and made a phone call, then came back two minutes later. I was in.’
Scott picked up the jug and refilled our cups. ‘We didn’t tell our wives where we were off to, just that it was the local boys’ club. Instead we sent them and our daughter off to eat in a swank beach-front place at Llafranc, and headed out ourselves, in full evening kit. The restaurant in Peretellada was a very posh affair, inside a big medieval hall.’
I nodded. ‘I know the one you mean,’ I said. ‘I tried to go in there in shorts once. Never got past the door.’
Scott laughed. ‘I can imagine. Anyway, the dinner was in a private room. Our host was waiting for us in the cocktail bar, with champagne. He was an Englishman, and he introduced himself as Ronald Starr, “with two Rs” he said. The six other guests were from all over Europe. There was a Dutchman, a German, an Italian, a Belgian, a Swede, and a Swiss. Starr introduced us all. When it came to me he said that I was a late entrant, and that I had been allowed in because I was Scottish, and not English.
‘Once the niceties were over with, he led us through to our dining room. The picture was there, just as you see it now, covered up on an easel.
‘We made polite conversation over dinner, all of it in English, since that was our common language. No one spoke much to Starr, other than to be polite. I think that we had all decided by this time that he was in the property business, and that the picture would be of a villa he was trying to sell to the drunkest bidder.
‘For that reason no one drank much. We all finished dinner as quickly as was decently possible, all of us keen to see what the hook was, then get out of there. Pity, really, since it was a bloody good meal, and all the better because someone else was paying.’ He paused, with a grin.
‘Finally we all said, “Bugger the coffee and petit fours, let’s get on with it.” Starr nodded and said, “Fair enough.” He stood up and walked round to the easel, stood beside it and said, “Gentlemen, you have all been invited tonight to give you the opportunity to bid for a painting entitled, ‘The Toreador of the Apocalypse’, a hitherto unknown original work by Salvador Dali. The picture has always been in private hands, and I am here as the agent of the owner. There is no provenance, other than the signature, and naturally that will be reflected in the price expected. You may have ten minutes to examine the work and satisfy yourself as to the signature and to the quality. After that bidding will commence.” And then he whipped off the sheet and turned on the lights.’
‘What happened?’ Jan gasped, literally on the edge of her seat.
‘The German, the Swede and the Belgian each took one look, thanked Starr for dinner and left. I think David Foy would have gone too, but I was hooked. I know art, I was our creative director before I became full-time MD. I’ve studied Dali too. The signature looked absolutely authentic, and the sheer blinding quality of the work backed it up.
‘After ten minutes, Starr tapped the table and we sat down to bid. Bids were in dollars. He opened at one hundred and fifty thousand. The Dutchman nodded, but backed out as soon as the Swiss said a hundred and eighty. I came in at two hundred. There was no one else. I felt David Foy tugging my sleeve, but I ignored him.
‘The Swiss was a fat, arrogant, super-rich bastard, the sort who’d have paid a quarter of a million dollars just for a story to tell the folks back home. He wouldn’t have known a Dali from a Donald Duck. We went to three thousand in steps of twenty thousand. I had stopped thinking by then. He hadn’t. He kept adding more tens, just for the hell of it. Until he bailed out at my bid of four hundred thousand dollars, US. Two hundred and sixty thousand, in sterling.’
I whistled softly. I had never been in a room with that much painting before, other than in an art gallery.
‘I didn’t tell Ida till the next day. Then I had to. We didn’t have two hundred and sixty grand in personal cash; our big dough is in property or pensions. So I had to make it a business purchase, and for that I needed Ida’s name alongside mine to authorise a banker’s draft, and have it DHL’ed out to us.’
‘How did Mrs Scott react?’ I asked, anticipating the answer.
‘She went crazy. We were bound for the divorce court, till she saw the picture, which had been locked up overnight at Peretellada. Then she was okay. She came with me next day, to meet Starr at the Hotel Aiguablava, pay him and collect it. We sent half our luggage back by courier and brought the Dali home in the back of the Range Rover. As soon as I was back in Scotland I got hold of a couple of my painter chums from the Arts Council and asked them if they would authenticate it for me as a Dali. That’s where the real problem began.’
Scott looked at me, earnestly. ‘I know my stuff, Oz. The technique is right, the canvas is old enough. Instinct and experience tell me that’s a Dali. More than that; it’s a bloody masterpiece. The trouble is I can’t find anyone with the balls to agree with me.