“I don’t see how me receiving his royalties is any more conspicuous than the transfer of a hundred and fifty grand from his account to mine.”
Baxter smiled, cynically. “My client tells me you’re a painter, Mr. White — and a very good one too. So good in fact, that nobody would be shocked to discover somebody paying a hundred and fifty grand for some of your collection.”
“No!” Danny turned to Bob again. “Don’t you dare use him to flatter and bamboozle me. You instruct him to do as we agreed!”
“If we could all just calm down a second,” Baxter appealed, so reasonably it was eerie. “Once news gets around that your paintings are valued in six figure sums you’ll literally be printing your own cash, for a year at the least.”
“And I suppose it’ll be tax deductible for you, won’t it?”
Baxter shrugged his shoulders.
Danny looked down at the holes in the threadbare carpet, slowly shaking his head in anger before looking up again. “I’ll have to confer with my friend.” He flicked his head for Judith to join him back in the kitchen. “So what do you think?” he whispered to her.
“I thought we were supposed to be punishing him for what he’s done to that poor girl?” she exclaimed indignantly, while straining to keep her voice down. “To me it seems he can’t lose. He’ll be able to claim tax back if he’s bought your paintings, and by artificially creating such a lucrative art market, he may even go on to sell them at a profit. Which means you get less than you originally asked and he ends up even richer. How’s that making amends? I mean, who’s blackmailing who here? On top of that, he’s dragging you into the mire with him. Your name will be synonymous with his forever.”
Danny put his hands to his head, before dragging them down his face, stretching his eyes and alabaster skin with his fingers. He sighed.
“You’re right, he mustn’t get everything his own way. But me and Fin need that cash or we’re screwed. I’ll compromise and meet them half way: three hundred and sixty grand.”
“It’s seven hundred and sixty grand or nothing Danny. You’re the blackmailer for God’s sake, not the other way round.”
They marched purposefully back into the lounge, interrupting Bob and Baxter’s whispering huddle on the couch.
“Err,” Danny went to speak but Judith raised her voice over his.
“It’s like this, fellas: Danny’s been more than reasonable already. Anyone else would have bled you dry. So it’s seven hundred and sixty grand or he’s going straight to the police.”
Baxter looked to Bob, before plucking another already written cheque from his case. Along with this he arranged some paperwork out on the coffee table to be signed: receipts for the purchase of paintings at seven-hundred and sixty thousand pounds — a figure which, it was now obvious, they’d been willing to pay all along. Once Danny had signed everything, Bob clapped his hands together.
“Ok! Let’s have a gander at some of your paintings then Daniel.”
Swept along by these events, Judith found herself following the men downstairs and climbing into the back of Baxter’s beige Jaguar with Danny, who gave directions for the Southside. After a few miles, Danny said, here, and they pulled up next to some garages, behind a concrete high-rise apartment block, as wide as a football pitch is long. Everybody climbed out and huddled in the drizzle, while Danny lifted one of the rusty metal doors, revealing at least a hundred paintings, leaning against one another like unwanted deck chairs. Bob immediately strode across to a six-foot high, seven foot wide canvas propped up against the back wall. Painted in a classical style, it was a study of Ingrid, lying asleep in a white silk nightgown, on top of a bed.
“You’re welcome to everything except the sleeping scene,” Danny shouted, urgently.
“No, that’s the best one. I’m having it in honour of our deal,” Bob countered, triumphantly.
“Oh no…I’m not letting you steal everything from me!”
Bob affected a perplexed look. “How’s seven hundred and sixty thousand pounds theft?”
“I shouldn’t be giving you anything…I’m already sparing your liberty!”
“Can’t you see I’m giving you an opportunity to get out of all this with your dignity intact? Danny, you’re a good man, and I don’t want to see that destroyed. If people like you turn out bad, what hope is there for the rest of us? You’re not a blackmailer, you’re a painter. Now sell me some friggin’ paintings!” Bob smiled slyly.
“Take it...take anything you want.”
Danny handed Bob the garage key and marched off. Judith thought it best to leave him be and pottered about for a couple of minutes, until the others were distracted enough for her to slip away unnoticed — she certainly had no intention of getting into a car alone with them.
CHAPTER: 10
When Judith arrived back at the apartment, Fin had just returned from the clinic, where he’d provided his fourth consecutive, opiate negative urine sample. But there was no Danny as yet. It wasn’t until well past six that he eventually came home, carrying a large pile of property agent’s print-outs. Among these he found the location for his college — a semi-derelict, granite-stone crofter’s house, up on the west coast, near Gairloch. Situated in the shadow of a mountain, the dwelling was of modest size, but there were ten acres of land on which to place mobile classrooms, and, a spacious byre (cowshed) that could easily be renovated to shelter students. More importantly, it was going for just one-hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, leaving plenty of cash to make the overall project viable.
By December, Danny had regained weight and looked a lot healthier, so the White’s rented a trailer home up at Gairloch, where, together with some of their unemployed friends, they renovated the cottage and transformed the byre into comfortable accommodation for twelve people. At weekends they returned to Glasgow. Here, Judith joined them, distributing leaflets to tracksuited gangs on concrete housing schemes, which were in the process of being demolished and replaced with a mixture of privately owned and socially rented beige brick houses, similar to those popping up in Danny’s old neighbourhood. They were usually subjected to drunken sarcastic remarks for their trouble, often downright abuse and, just once, outright aggression. The most intimidating experience, though, was the night a black Range Rover with tinted windows kept appearing, cruising slowly behind them. It turned out that the occupants were foot soldiers of Rex McLeod, the most feared man in the city. They’d obviously had reports of three strangers approaching youths on housing schemes and so naturally assumed they were either drug dealers, trying to establish new patches, or undercover police officers. Fortunately, Danny knew their boss – having painted portraits for him – and so managed to reassure these bull necked, shaven headed characters that they were neither.
Danny reckoned that Rex McLeod was a “paternalistic, communitarian gangster”. Known as The Big Man, he’d made his money robbing banks in the Sixties and Seventies, but nowadays relied mainly on other people doing truck heists for him — truck heists which provided cheap goods for folk who couldn’t afford them otherwise. If Danny, Fin and Judith had been dealers, they’d have been punished not because they were competitors, but because Rex detested drugs and lamented the damage they’d done to his city. Truth be told, when he wasn’t raising money for drugs charities, he’d be either informing on pushers or having their legs broken.