He nodded. ‘Forging it.’
Weasel broke into a grin. ‘Brilliant, mate, well brilliant!’
Despite his annoyance at being disturbed this late, Hegarty realized he was pleased to see his old pal. ‘Want a drink?’
‘Better stick to something soft, I’m driving. Not like the old days when we drove around pissed all the time, is it?’
Hegarty opened the door wider, then realized Weasel was already inside the house.
15
Tuesday, 24 September
‘Finished!’ Harry Kipling announced, carrying the painting down into the conservatory for Freya’s inspection. ‘Take a look at this beaut!’
He’d been working on it all last night and tonight, obediently following Daniel Hegarty’s instructions of bit by bit, with cotton buds and nail polish remover.
And he could see from Freya’s expression, as she yawned, putting down the bunch of essays she was reading through, that she was impressed.
As was he.
The painting was quite stunningly beautiful, and from the small cracks all over, it certainly appeared to be genuinely very old. The canvas depicted two elegantly dressed lovers picnicking in a forest, with the sun breaking through a swirl of tree branches above them, an idyllic lake behind them, the woman holding up a pink parasol. To their left was a Doric plinth on which sat a winged statue of Cupid.
‘Wow!’ she said.
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he replied.
‘Is there a signature?’
‘I’ve looked and can’t see one.’
She studied it carefully. ‘I can’t either. What about taking it to an auction house to see what they say? Gorringe’s in Lewes are meant to be the best around here.’
‘That’s a good thought, but I’ve had another. I’ve just googled and there’s an Antiques Roadshow coming to Sussex next weekend!’
It was one of their favourite TV shows.
‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘At Lancing College.’
‘What do we have to do to get an entry?’
‘Nothing! I looked on the website. It seems you just turn up and join the queue for the specialist in what you have!’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all. That’s how they do it. What do you reckon? We could take it along and show it to the paintings expert.’
Freya shrugged. ‘Let’s go for it, why not? If it’s a fake or a copy or just a piece of tat they’ll tell us, right?’
‘My thoughts exactly.’
16
Tuesday, 24 September
As Daniel Hegarty led Weasel down into the living area, Natalie looked up. ‘Ah, Jimmy,’ she said with a raised eyebrow. She was one of the few people to call him by his real name, because even though she’d never cared for him, considering him a bad influence on her husband, she felt ‘Weasel’ was a bit harsh. ‘Nice to see you.’ Her tone of voice and her body language said anything but.
Standing up, she said wearily, ‘I’ll take the dogs out then I’m off to bed.’ She shot a dubious frown at the package under Weasel’s arm. ‘Working for DHL are you now?’
‘Haha! Dan reckoned it was Amazon!’
‘Well,’ she said with a frown, ‘whatever it is, I hope it’s not hot.’
Weasel shook his head. ‘Nah, the owners don’t know it’s gone.’
She shot her grinning husband a cautioning glance, then called the dogs and took them out and down the steps to the garden below.
Weasel sat at the kitchen dining table and began unwrapping the package while Hegarty poured his visitor a Coke, and the last drops of the red wine in the bottle for himself. As he sat down opposite him, he noticed Weasel’s nicotine-stained teeth, his nails bitten to the quick as usual, and the biro markings all over the back of both his hands. Names, phone numbers, symbols, some faded, some fresh. It was a habit Weasel had back in his school days and had never lost. The man smelled rank, and faintly of tobacco. ‘So?’ he asked.
Weasel raised a hand to his pocket. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Only outside.’
‘No worries, I’m trying to quit – take a look at this!’ Weasel extricated a small, ornately framed painting from the packaging. It depicted a thin man with a big nose, almost as furtive-looking as Weasel himself. Dressed in a crimson robe, with a small velvet hat, his face caught a thin shaft of light in an otherwise dark space. ‘Il Ladro!’
‘The Thief?’ Hegarty hazarded a translation from the Italian.
‘Yeah, very good, so you’ve not lost your touch, eh?’
‘You sure it’s not a self-portrait?’
‘Haha, you might be one hundred years old to get that plaque outside, but I ain’t five hundred years old – even though I may look it! This picture, Il Ladro, is documented as being painted by the Italian artist Caravaggio in 1605 – five years before his death. It was in private ownership for several hundred years, changed hands several times, then a rich Viennese merchant banker acquired it in 1927. He and his entire family were exterminated in the gas chambers during the Second World War, yeah?’
‘OK.’
‘The picture has been recorded as missing, possibly destroyed, on the Art Loss Register. Only it hasn’t been, it’s been stacked against a wall, along with a bunch of Canalettos and a whole lot of other insanely valuable paintings, in the stately home of a totally gaga aristo, just outside Burwash in East Sussex – Burwash Park.’
‘Stacked against a wall – a picture like that?’
‘Yeah, well, that’s the aristocracy for you. Anyhow, they have a big damp problem, so they shifted all the paintings stacked against the wall into storage. My mate Larry, who’s a damp-proofing expert, was called in to help out. He spotted the picture and thought we might be clever with it.’
‘Clever in what way?’
‘You do a copy of it that’s undetectable from the original. We return the copy and we keep the original. The last Caravaggio sold was valued at a hundred and seventy million dollars!’
‘Are you living in fucking dreamland, Weasel? The moment you try to list this for sale, you’re going to get squashed like a cockroach.’
Weasel gave an oily grin. ‘Nope. I’ve been doing some business with a Chinese billionaire who’s obsessed with Caravaggio. He’ll pay massive money, which I can split with you, yeah?’
Hegarty frowned.
‘You told me once, you can do a copy of pretty much any painting that’s undetectable from the original, yeah? You’ve done that loads of times, haven’t you?’
Hegarty studied the painting carefully.
‘You’re a genius, mate. Reckon you could do this?’ Weasel asked.
The master forger drained his glass, and debated whether to open a second bottle, but thought better of it. Instead he focused on the painting. ‘I’d have to invest quite a bit of cash,’ he said.
‘How much?’
‘The big cost will be buying a canvas from that period – something from around 1605. I’ve got an antiques dealer mate in France who can source me paintings from pretty much any period – there are old religious paintings that he can pick up for me from sale rooms. Something of this period’s likely to cost between five to ten grand.’
‘No probs,’ Weasel said, then surprised him by pulling a thick wad of £50 notes, bound by elastic bands, from each of his inside breast pockets and placing them on the table. ‘There’s twenty grand, should cover your basics, yeah?’
Hegarty picked up one wad, counting through it hastily. ‘These real?’
‘What do you take me for? I’d never stiff me old mate. These are from my client as a token of good faith.’