She pulled down another box and opened it to find an almost exact duplicate of the first, except instead of Derain, there were tabs for Braque and Dufy. The Dufy file was as complete as the Derain. Ava removed the lids from two more boxes and found more of the same. Drops of water began to fall on her head and on the files. Great, she thought, looking up at a small leak in the ceiling. Ava thought about asking Helen if she could take the boxes into the kitchen and work there, and then thought better of it. She didn’t want the woman standing over her shoulder as she looked through them, and she knew she was going to have to make copies — lots of copies.
She made her way back to the house. Helen was standing in the kitchen with a bottle of beer in her hand. “Back so soon?”
“We need to talk,” Ava said. “I can’t work in the shed. What I’d like to do is take the boxes to my hotel and work there. It’s going to take me a day, maybe longer, to work through them, and I have to take notes and make copies.”
“What hotel?”
“I don’t have one yet, but give me a minute and I will.”
Helen nodded.
Ava called her travel agent in Toronto. “I need a hotel in Dublin, Ireland. I want a suite, something with a proper work area. Book it for two nights.” She turned to Helen. “So you’re okay with this?”
She shrugged and Ava saw she was doing her own calculations. “Look, we can do a different kind of deal, you know.”
“What are you thinking?” Helen asked.
“I’ll buy the files from you.”
“Now why would you do that?”
“I’ll be wanting to have some of the original documents rather than copies. Instead of doing this piecemeal, why don’t we strike a deal for the lot?”
Helen sipped her beer, her eyes suspicious. “Have you found something in those boxes, I mean, something valuable?”
“Ms. Byrne, you can go through each and every box before I take it away.”
Helen winced. “Not bloody likely. So, okay, assuming you want to buy them all, what kind of price are we talking about? I mean, you were willing to pay a thousand euros just to look at them.”
“Another thousand.”
“Ten thousand sounds better.”
“Ms. Byrne, without me that paper is junk,” Ava said.
“Five thousand.”
“I’ll give you two.”
Helen nodded. “When can I see the money?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Then the files stay here until then.”
“Please, Ms. Byrne, don’t make me waste my evening. Let me take at least a couple of boxes tonight. The balance can stay here until you get your money.”
Ava’s cellphone rang. She listened, said “Thanks,” and then turned to Helen. “The Morrison Hotel on Ormond Quay. Do you know where that is?”
“Centre of Dublin.”
“That’s where I’ll be. Come by tomorrow anytime after eleven with the rest of the boxes and I’ll have your money for you.”
(21)
Ava’s suite at the Morrison gave her a jolt of deja vu. It had the same bold, bright minimalist look as the Fletcher Hotel — black-and-white furnishings with bright red cushions and duvet cover. But instead of looking down on Kensington Gardens, the view was of the River Liffey flowing slowly by.
She had the bellman put the boxes on the floor in the sitting area and dropped her carry-on in the bedroom. When he left, she took off her still-damp clothing and hung it in the bathroom to dry. Then she opened the Double Happiness computer bag and took out her notebook. She wanted to review her notes, try to create some kind of timeline, before attacking the files.
Her phone rang and May Ling Wong’s number appeared on the screen. Ava looked at her watch. It was past midnight in Wuhan.
I can’t avoid her forever, she thought. “Ava Lee.”
“May Ling.”
“It’s late for you.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I called Uncle and he said he hadn’t heard from you. It’s been some days now and I’m curious as to how you’re doing.”
“I don’t have much to report.”
“But you’re still looking — that must mean something.”
“It means I’m still looking.”
“I’m going to assume that’s positive.”
“It isn’t anything right now,” Ava said.
“Where are you? Physically, I mean?”
“Ireland.”
“Why?”
“Auntie, please let me do my job. I promise you, the moment I have something to report, I’ll call.”
The line went quiet. “Ava, I asked you not to call me Auntie,” she finally said.
“I’m sorry, May. I forgot.”
“Uncle said you were difficult to reach and reluctant to talk about the job at hand. I thought he was exaggerating.”
“He wasn’t.”
“I thought after our chat in Wuhan that we had built a trust.”
“May, this has nothing to do with trust, or friendship, or anything other than the fact that I refuse to speculate on how well things are going and when it will end. It’s better for you and better for me that way. You don’t have unrealistic expectations, and I’m not burdened.”
“Ava, if — and I repeat and emphasize the if — if you do find something I want you to promise you’ll let me be the first to know. I don’t want to hear it from Uncle.”
“I can do that,” Ava said.
“Then I’ll hear from you.”
“You will.”
Ava hung up and dialled Uncle’s number. If May Ling had been talking to Uncle, Ava assumed he was still up.
“ Wei.”
“It’s Ava. May Ling just called me.”
“She phoned here four times today. I finally spoke to her tonight. She said she wanted to talk to me about our agreement. I think she was just testing, seeing if we were encouraged enough to ask for one.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her it was too soon to discuss it.”
“Thank you.”
“Is it too soon?”
“Yes. I don’t have enough to go on.”
“I thought London was going to be helpful.”
“Not yet. I handled it badly and now I need to find another reason to go back.”
“What is your plan?”
“I’m working on one. By tomorrow I might know.”
“Call me then, one way or another. This is taking up a lot of time, and I sense you are getting frustrated. Sometimes we just have to walk away.”
As Ava hung up she felt a pain in her stomach. She had gone all day without eating, and now she was ravenous. She reached for the room service menu and ordered potato and haddock soup and a steak sandwich made from aged Hereford.
She opened her notebook on the coffee table in the sitting area and reached for the first box, the one with the most recent records. She worked steadily for an hour, stopping only to answer the door when room service called. She opened every file folder and looked at every scrap of paper, taking nothing for granted. Helen Byrne wasn’t wrong: Maurice O’Toole had been a hoarder. He kept not only bills and receipts related to his paintings but receipts for every household expense, bank statements, and copies of the cheques he had received. He would have made a good bookkeeper, Ava thought. What surprised her was how few sales he had made. In addition to the Derain he faked during that period, he had sold only ten of his own paintings, and they netted him less than the one Derain.
The second, third, and fourth boxes were more of the same. It had taken her close to four hours to go through the paperwork, and all she had when she was done was the same information Helga Sorensen had given her, though more detailed, and she had the photos of the paintings. But it was still only Glen Hughes’ signature on the letters requesting works “in the style of,” and there was no hint of any impropriety.