So what do I have? she thought. “Sweet bugger all,” she said softly to herself.
She was close to packing it in. But she also knew she couldn’t give up until she had exhausted every lead. She decided to find out more about the brothers, something she should have done before. She phoned Frederick Locke.
“This case I’ve been working on, it’s led me into some complicated areas. I was hoping you could help,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“London.”
“You do get about.”
“I came here to see a man named Glen Hughes and instead found myself talking to his brother, Edwin.”
The line went silent. “Holy fuck,” he said finally.
“Is that good?”
“Are you telling me you think the Hughes brothers might be involved in this scam?”
“One of them anyway, maybe both.”
“You don’t know who they are, do you.”
“Only what I read online about Glen.”
“They’re huge. In our business they don’t come much bigger, outside of museums and national art galleries and leading international auction houses. Are you sure about all this?”
“No, I’m not, Frederick. That’s why I’m calling you. I thought you could tell me a bit more about them. For example, when I met with Edwin this morning, he said he and his brother had parted company.”
“Yes, that’s true. It was all hush-hush when it happened but it eventually leaked out. By the time it did, no one thought twice about it.”
“What was the cause?”
“No one actually said.”
“Were there rumours?”
“Some. There was talk of a financial falling-out. One of the brothers — I think it was Glen — was supposedly playing outside the sandbox, so to speak.”
“What is he doing now?”
“Running a business in New York as a private consultant to collectors,” Locke said, confirming Edwin Hughes’ claim.
She was writing while he spoke. Almost unconsciously she found herself underlining the words two years. “Frederick, it was that Jan Sorensen, the Sandman, who pointed me in the direction of Hughes.”
“So you found him?”
“Obviously.”
“And?”
“He painted a good number of the fake Fauvists.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have a signed statement from him.”
“Good God.”
“And he told me that Maurice O’Toole did the others.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Locke said. “I did some more research after our last chat and the boy did have that reputation. I spoke to someone who told me that Mr. O’Toole was a whiz with Matisse and did very passable Monets and Manets.”
Manet wasn’t on her list. She added the name.
“So, Ava, where does this leave you?” Locke asked.
“I’m not quite sure. I don’t have what you would call hard proof of anything. Even Sorensen’s statement isn’t supported in any concrete way other than that the paintings exist, and Edwin Hughes seems immune to threats of lawsuits or bad publicity. He tells me his brother will be an even tougher case.”
“Remember what I told you about our business being filled with hard men? Well, they don’t come much harder than the Hughes brothers.”
“I sense that.”
“So what to do?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” she said. “I need to do some more thinking. But look, thank you for the information. You’ve been very helpful. If I have any more questions I hope you won’t mind me calling.”
“Not at all. My days are quite repetitive and can be a bit of a bore. Call me whenever you wish.”
Ava closed her phone and looked out the window, down at the High Street and across to Kensington Gardens. The sky was clearing and people were walking without umbrellas. She decided to try to get in a run before the weather changed one more time. She quickly changed into her tracksuit and left the hotel.
Ava crossed the street, entered the Gardens at Exhibition Road, and then loped across the Serpentine to West Carriage Drive. She ran north from there until she reached the jogging path. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens ran seamlessly into each other, separated only by the Serpentine. The total area was more than six hundred acres, just smaller than Central Park in New York, and the jogging path was five kilometres long. She normally would have done one full lap after the initial two kilometres or so she had run to the starting point. Today she needed to burn off frustration, and one lap wouldn’t cut it.
As she ran, she replayed the past few days. She told herself it was time to call Uncle, May Ling Wong, and her travel agent and head on home. Ava was halfway through the second lap when a scrap of conversation she’d had with Helga Sorensen came to mind, along with something Frederick Locke had just said to her. She headed back to the hotel.
When she got back to her room, she wrapped a towel around her shoulders, pulled out the Chelsea-Kensington phone-book, and looked up George McIntyre, the lawyer she had dealt with on her last trip to London.
The receptionist put her on hold. Ava hoped he remembered her and would take the call.
“Well, well. Is this the Ms. Lee who gets phone calls from the Prime Minister’s Office?” McIntyre said.
“Yes, Mr. McIntyre. Thank you for remembering me, and thank you for taking my call.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was afraid not to?”
“No.”
“Well, rightly so. I’m just surprised to hear from you and curious as to why.”
“I’m calling on business.”
“Roger Simmons again, or has Jeremy Ashton been acting up?”
“No, different. I’d like you to do something for me, for a fee, of course.”
“And what is that?”
“There is — was, rather — an Irish painter by the name of Maurice O’Toole. He died about five years ago. He was married to a woman named Nancy, who died about three years ago. They had no children but there had to be an estate. Could you possibly find out for me if there was one, and if so, who inherited it?”
“That’s all the information you have?”
“That’s it.”
“What part of Ireland? That does matter.”
“Dublin.”
“It may take a little time.”
“Can you get back to me today?”
“Ms. Lee, you are always in such a rush. The last time you were here we papered an agreement in a matter of hours when it normally takes days.”
“I’ll double your fee if you can get me the information today.”
“You don’t know what my fee is.”
“I don’t care. I know it will be fair.”
“All right, let me work on it.”
“Thank you so much. You can call me on my cellphone or at my room at the Fletcher Hotel.”
Ava jumped into the shower and took her time washing her hair. She spent another ten minutes drying it. When she came out of the bathroom, her room phone was blinking. It was George McIntyre, asking her to call him back.
“The person you want to talk to is Helen Byrne,” McIntyre said. “She inherited everything Nancy O’Toole had. She lives in Donabate, a large village or small town — whichever you prefer — on the Irish coast about twenty kilometres northeast of Dublin.”
“That is remarkably fast work.”
“Not really. They’re very well organized over there; all it took was one phone call. A colleague in a Dublin firm, an old schoolmate of mine, found Nancy O’Toole in the death register and the law firm that handled her estate, all while I was still on the line.”
“Do you have an actual address for her, a phone number?”
“Write this down,” McIntyre said, giving her the information.
“Is she a relative?”
“I wasn’t told.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. McIntyre. How much do I owe you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Please, I insist on paying you.”
“No, I would rather have you owing me a favour.”
“And I would rather pay.”
“Your owing me a favour is worth more to me.”
“Done,” she said.
Ava hung up the phone and threw on a clean black Giordano T-shirt. She picked up her cellphone, checked the incoming call list, and saw a Chinese area code. May Ling Wong.
She sat on the edge of the bed and dialled Helen Byrne’s number. If this didn’t work out, then Ava’s next calls would most certainly be to Uncle and May Ling.
“Ms. Byrne, my name is Ava Lee. I’m calling you about Nancy O’Toole and Maurice O’Toole.”
“Do I know you?”
“No, you most certainly don’t, and I apologize for calling out of the blue like this.”
“What kind of name is Lee?”
“Chinese.”
“You don’t sound Chinese.”
“I’m Canadian.”
“I have a brother who lives in Canada, in Hamilton.”
“Hamilton is quite close to the city I live in.”
“What is it you want with Nancy?” Helen said with some force.
“I understand you inherited her estate.”
“I’m her sister. We were close all our lives.”
“It must have been difficult, her dying so young and so soon after Maurice.”
“Cancer is a terrible thing.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Now you still haven’t told me what you want with Nancy.”
“It’s actually Maurice I’m more interested in.”
“That useless piece of shit?”
“Yes, him.”
“I never understood what my sister saw in him, never. He didn’t work a day in his life, just painting, smoking, and drinking. He didn’t womanize, thank God, but I always said that was because no other woman wanted anything to do with him.”
“Still, your sister obviously loved him.”
“She did that.”
“And he did make some money.”
“Oh, the last few years weren’t so bad for that. He left her comfortable, though a lot of good it did her. She died of lung cancer, poor girl, and she never smoked a day in her life. It was second-hand smoke, the doctor said, that killed her. I always thought it was Maurice’s way of reaching out to her from the grave.”
“I’m not fond of smokers myself,” Ava said, trying to find some common ground.
“Well, they’ve passed all these new laws here. You can hardly smoke anywhere outside your own house.”
“Canada is the same.”
Helen paused. “What is it you want with Maurice, then?” she finally asked.
“I’m trying to trace some paintings he did for a client of mine. I was wondering if he left any records behind and if Nancy kept any of them, maybe passed them down to you.”
“I’ve got a shed full of it.”
“Pardon?”
“My garden shed is stuffed with his boxes and things.”
“You’re serious?”
“Nancy couldn’t bear to part with his things after he died. She hung on to it all. She lived here with me and kept it in the shed. I just haven’t bothered getting rid of it.”
“Do you know what’s in those boxes?”
“Paper.”
“What kind of paper?”
“I have no bloody idea. It could be anything. Maurice was a real pack rat — he never threw anything away.”
“Ms. Byrne, is it possible that I could stop by to take a look at those papers?”
“You’d come all the way from Canada for that?”
“Actually I’m in England right now.”
“Still, that’s an awful lot of trouble for Maurice’s leftovers.”
“Ms. Byrne, this is quite important to my client. He has some art that he thinks was painted by Mr. O’Toole, and he wants it confirmed. I am prepared to pay you for any assistance you can provide.”
“How much are we talking about?” she said swiftly.
“How about a thousand dollars?”
“We use euros here.”
“A thousand euros then.”
“All right, Ms. Lee, bring the cash with you and you can poke away in Maurice’s boxes to your heart’s content.”
“I’m going to try to catch a flight out of here this afternoon.”
“Do you have my address?”
“I do.”
“We’re about fifteen kilometres from the Dublin airport. Any taxi driver will know where Donabate is.”
“Do you mind if I drop by when I get in?”
“As long as you bring the money, you can come at midnight if you want.”