“These are clever men.”
“That leads me to Mr. Kwong. I know very little about him other than that he was a dealer whom the Wongs trusted.”
“He was a ceramics dealer, and not half bad at it. He wasn’t big time but he knew his stuff and had a decent enough clientele, nearly all Chinese, of course.”
“So how did he get into paintings?”
“The Wongs asked him.”
“He knew how much about the area?”
“From what I can gather, hardly anything. The Wongs seem to have been his only clients for paintings.”
“So how could he locate and buy all those works?”
“Now that is the question, isn’t it?” Torrence said, emptying the bottle into his wineglass. “How did he indeed?”
“Have you given it any thought?”
“A bit, and it seems to me he probably just tapped into associates here who referred him to some people in Europe or the U.S. It isn’t that big a world, our art world. All he had to do was contact some of the major dealers and galleries, tell them he had a client who was interested in buying Fauvist works, and ask them to let him know if something came on the market. There’s always someone interested in selling.”
“How would he finance those purchases?”
“He didn’t, I would imagine. He probably had some kind of commission arrangement.”
“But he did the invoicing.”
“He wasn’t dumb. The last thing he would want to do is let his client know who he was buying from, and vice versa. You can be sure, though, that no painting arrived in Wuhan until it had been paid for.”
“How did the real paintings get mixed in?”
“Kwong was obviously buying from a number of people, some of whom just happened to be honest. There’s no way he was dealing with just one group or gallery.”
“Could he have somehow orchestrated the fakes himself?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“There’s the matter of the real paintings, and the questionable ones — I haven’t ruled them out as real too. If he was reasonably certain he could cheat the Wongs without their figuring it out, why would he bother to send them a genuine Matisse and Dufy? It doesn’t make sense to me. No, I think your man Kwong got in over his head. He was only too happy to be a scout for the Wongs and to take a commission from the other end. I’m sure he looked at the provenances supplied with the paintings, but that’s about all he did. I’d also bet that he was doing business with some supposedly reputable companies, and that he was prepared to take their assurance at face value.”
“Like which companies?”
“The real paintings were bought from three separate galleries, two in France and one in New York. First-rate firms. The questionable ones are more of a mixed bag. I recognize some of the names attached to them, but not all.”
“The fakes?”
“Nearly all of them bought from individual collectors, sometimes through agents and some through galleries. The paperwork was always complete and always bogus.”
“How would he have been able to contact all those people, or they him?”
Torrence threw his head back and then shook it as if it needed to be cleared. “My guess — actually, my opinion — is that none of it was random. There’s no way that all those fakes could have found their way to Wuhan without some orchestration. I think you’ll find that Kwong was working with an agent. So rather than hunting down Fauvist works himself, Kwong entrusted that job to the agent. You find that agent and you’ll be on your way to finding your perpetrator.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t. There’s nothing in the paperwork I saw that hints at one person. All the bills of sale are from a myriad of individuals and galleries and addressed to Kwong.”
“You do know that all the records from his business have been destroyed?”
“Yes. It doesn’t leave you much to go on, does it.”
“I have a few ideas,” she said.
“Like what?”
She shook her head. “They’re not important,” she said. “Let me go back to the fakes for a minute. If someone was going to organize this kind of fraud, they would need a painter, or painters, yes?”
“They would indeed, unless they scoured the world looking for fakes that already existed. But given the consistency in the quality of work I saw, though, I would think most of them could have been done by one person.”
“One, or more?”
“Given the time frame over which it took place, it could have been one. It would have been more secure that way. And they were all Fauvist works, and these forgers do tend to specialize.”
“So this agent, he just contacts an artist and says, ‘Paint me a Monet’?”
“Something like that.”
“And in this case you think an agent commissioned an entire range of Fauvist paintings from a forger or forgers and then passed them along to Kwong with dummy paperwork?”
“I think that’s probably the case.”
“What would the artist get paid?”
“I have no idea. It might depend on whether or not he had to sign it. Remember what I told you earlier: if the painting isn’t signed, it isn’t a forgery. So I imagine there would be a premium attached for a signature.”
“These forgers, how easy are they to locate?”
“Well, they don’t have a union or anything, but within the art world there are certainly some who are known. Elmyr de Hory was one — he did Monets, by the way. Then there was John Myatt, who did versions of Matisse and Dufy. David Stein did Picasso and Chagall. And then there was Hans van Meegeren, who managed to do more than a passable imitation of Vermeer.”
“You’re using the past tense.”
“They’re all dead.”
“How about current artists?”
“Not my field.”
“Who could I talk to?”
“We have a chap in London, Frederick Locke, who’s very good at this kind of thing. He’s the one I referred the Wongs’ questionable paintings to.”
“Would he speak to me?”
Torrence said, “I don’t see why not. I’ll make a call for you.”
“Thank you.”
He looked at his watch. “We seem to have talked away a lot of the afternoon. Is there any way I can interest you in extending your stay to dinner?”
“I’d love to, but it will have to be another time,” she said. “I have some other business I need to attend to.” She took out her business card and passed it to him. “My cellphone number is on the back, my email address on the front. Could you call me after you’ve contacted Frederick Locke? It’s just about the start of the workday in London, so you might be able to reach him in the next hour or so.”
“You move quickly.”
“I have a definite time frame.”
“Have the Wongs decided what to do with their paintings? They seemed quite upset when I left, him in particular. You know, we would still be very happy to sell the genuine paintings for them. Would you let them know that?”
“Sure, but I don’t think they have a clue about what they want to do,” Ava said. “When will you know about the questionable paintings?”
“It could take a little while. Frederick is meticulous.”
(9)
Ava grabbed a cab and asked the driver to take her to the office of the Hong Kong Inland Revenue Service on Gloucester Road, at the far end of Wanchai.
Hong Kong arguably had the world’s most efficient tax system, imposing a flat corporate rate of 17.5 percent and a flat personal rate of 16 percent. When the Chinese took over and turned Hong Kong into a Special Administrative Region, they were smart enough to leave the tax system in place. The few people Ava knew of who had tried to avoid paying were soon brought to heel and severely punished by a system that was rigorous, incorruptible, and invasive.
Ava paid the driver and walked into the building. She presented her business card to a woman in uniform at the information desk in the front lobby. “My name is Ava Lee. I’m an accountant representing a Canadian firm that has done business in Hong Kong with a company called Great Wall Antiques and Fine Art. My client has become embroiled in a tax dispute with the Canadian government involving several transactions with Great Wall. We unsuccessfully tried to contact someone at that business, and now I’ve discovered that it’s closed, the owner is deceased, and its records have been destroyed. So I was hoping someone here could help access the company’s tax records so we can clear up this problem.”