False Impression (2 page)

By 6.40 am,
Fenston had showered and dressed. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror;
he would like to have been a couple of inches taller, and a couple of inches
thinner.
Nothing that a good tailor and a pair of Cuban shoes
with specially designed insoles couldn’t rectify.
He would also like to
have grown his hair again, but not while there were so many exiles from his
country
who
might still recognize him.

Although his
father had been a tram conductor in Bucharest, anyone who gave the immaculately
dressed man a second glance as he stepped out of his brownstone on East 79th
Street and into his chauffeur-driven limousine would have assumed that he had
been born into the upper eastside establishment. Only those who looked more
closely would have spotted the small diamond in his left ear – an affectation
that he believed singled him out from his more conservative colleagues. None of
his staff dared to tell him otherwise.

Fenston settled
down in the back of his limousine. ‘The office,’ he barked before touching a
button in the armrest. A smoked grey screen purred up, cutting off any
unnecessary conversation between him and the driver. Fenston picked up a copy
of the New York Times from the seat beside him. He flicked through the pages to
see if any particular headline grabbed his attention.

Mayor Giuliani
seemed to have lost the plot. Having installed his mistress in Gracie Mansion,
he’d left the first lady only too happy to voice her opinion on the subject to
anyone who cared to listen.

This morning it
was the New York Times. Fenston was poring over the financial pages when his
driver swung onto FDR Drive, and he had reached the obituaries by the time the
limousine came to a halt outside the North Tower. No one would be printing the
only obituary he was interested in until tomorrow, but, to be fair, no one in
America realized she was dead.

‘I have an
appointment on Wall Street at eight thirty,’ Fenston informed his driver as he
opened the back door for him. ‘So pick me up at eight fifteen.’ The driver
nodded, as Fenston marched off in the direction of the lobby. Although there
were ninety-nine elevators in the building, only one went directly to the restaurant
on the 107th floor.

As Fenston
stepped out of the elevator a minute later – he had once calculated that he
would spend a week of his life in elevators – the maitre d’ spotted his regular
customer, bowed his head slightly and escorted him to a table in the corner,
overlooking the Statue of Liberty. On the one occasion Fenston had turned up to
find his usual table occupied, he’d turned round and stepped straight back into
the elevator. Since then, the corner table had remained empty every morning – just
in case.

Fenston was not
surprised to find Karl Leapman waiting for him. Leapman had never once been
late in the ten years he had worked for Fenston Finance. Fenston wondered how
long he had been sitting there, just to be certain that the chairman didn’t
turn up before him. Fenston looked down at a man who had proved, time and time
again, that there was no sewer he wasn’t willing to swim in for his master. But
then Fenston was the only person who had been willing to offer Leapman a job
after he’d been released from jail. Disbarred lawyers with a prison sentence
for fraud don’t expect to make partner.

Even before he
took his seat, Fenston began speaking. ‘Now we are in possession of the Van
Gogh,’ he said, ‘we only have one matter to discuss this morning. How do we rid
ourselves of Anna Petrescu without her becoming suspicious?’

Leapman opened a
file in front of him, and smiled.

Nothing had gone
to plan that morning.

Andrews had
instructed cook that he would be taking up her ladyship’s breakfast tray just
as soon as the painting had been dispatched. Cook had developed a migraine, so
her number two, not a reliable girl, had been put in charge of her ladyship’s
breakfast. The security van turned up forty minutes late, with a cheeky young
driver who refused to leave until he’d been given coffee and biscuits. Cook
would never have stood for such nonsense, but her number two caved in. Half an
hour later, Andrews found them sitting at the kitchen table, chatting.

Andrews was only
relieved that her ladyship hadn’t stirred before the driver finally departed.
He checked the tray, refolded the napkin and left the kitchen to take breakfast
up to his mistress.

Andrews held the
tray on the palm of one hand and knocked quietly on the bedroom door before
opening it with the other.

When he saw her
ladyship lying on the floor in a pool of blood, he let out a gasp, dropped the
tray and rushed over to the body.

Although it was
clear Lady Victoria had been dead for several hours, Andrews did not consider
contacting the police until the next in line to the Wentworth estate had been
informed of the tragedy. He quickly left the bedroom, locked the door and ran
downstairs for the first time in his life.

Arabella
Wentworth was serving someone when Andrews called.

She put the
phone down and apologized to her customer, explaining that she had to leave
immediately. She switched the open sign to closed and locked the door of her
little antiques shop only moments after Andrews had uttered the word emergency,
not an opinion she’d heard him express in the past forty nine years.

Fifteen minutes
later, Arabella brought her mini to a halt on the gravel outside Wentworth
Hall. Andrews was standing on the top step, waiting for her.

I’m so very
sorry, m’lady,’ was all he said, before he led his new mistress into the house
and up the wide marble staircase. When Andrews touched the banister to steady
himself, Arabella knew her sister was dead.

Arabella had
often wondered how she would react in a crisis.

She was relieved
to find that, although she was violently sick when she first saw her sister’s
body, she didn’t faint. However, it was a close thing. After a second glance,
she grabbed the bedpost to help steady
herself
before
turning away.

Blood had
spurted everywhere, congealing on the carpet, the walls, the writing desk and
even the ceiling. With a Herculean effort, Arabella let go of the bedpost and
staggered towards the phone on the bedside table. She collapsed onto the bed,
picked up the receiver and dialled 999. When the phone was answered with the
words, ‘Emergency, which service?’ she replied, ‘Police.’

Arabella
replaced the receiver. She was determined to reach the bedroom door without
looking back at her sister’s body. She failed. Only a glance, and this time her
eyes settled on the letter addressed ‘My dearest Arabella’. She grabbed the
unfinished missive, unwilling to share her sister’s last thoughts with the
local constabulary. Arabella stuffed the epistle into her pocket and walked
unsteadily out of the room.

A
nna jogged west
along East 54th Street, past the Museum of Modern Art, crossing 6th Avenue
before taking a right on 7th. She barely glanced at the familiar landmarks of
the massive v§ sculpture that dominated the corner of East 55th Street, or
Carnegie Hall as she crossed 57th. Most of her energy and concentration was
taken up with trying to avoid the early morning commuters as they hurried
towards her or blocked her progress.

Anna considered
the jog to Central Park nothing more than a warm-up and didn’t start the
stopwatch on her left wrist until she passed through Artisans’ Gate and ran
into the park.

Once Anna had
settled into her regular rhythm, she tried to focus on the meeting scheduled
with the chairman for eight o’clock that morning.

Anna had been
both surprised and somewhat relieved when Bryce Fenston had offered her a job
at Fenston Finance only days after she’d left her position as the number two in
Sotheby’s Impressionist department.

Her immediate
boss had made it only too clear that any thought of progress would be blocked
for some time after she’d admitted to being responsible for losing the sale of
a major collection to their main rival, Christie’s. Anna had spent months
nurturing, flattering and cajoling this particular customer into selecting
Sotheby’s for the disposal of their family’s estate, and had naively assumed
when she shared the secret with her lover that he would be discreet. After all,
he was a lawyer.

When the name of
the client was revealed in the arts section of the New York Times, Anna lost
both her lover and her job. It didn’t help when, a few days later, the same
paper reported that Dr Anna Petrescu had left Sotheby’s ‘under a cloud’ – a
euphemism for fired – and the columnist helpfully added that she needn’t bother
to apply for a job at Christie’s.

Bryce Fenston
was a regular attendee at all the major Impressionist sales, and he couldn’t
have missed Anna standing by the side of the auctioneer’s podium, taking notes
and acting as a spotter. She resented any suggestion that her striking good
looks and athletic figure were the reason Sotheby’s regularly placed her in so
prominent a position, rather than at the side of the auction room along with
the other spotters.

Anna checked her
watch as she ran across Playmates Arch:

2 minutes 18
seconds. She always aimed to complete the loop in twelve minutes. She knew that
wasn’t fast, but it still annoyed her whenever she was overtaken, and it made
her particularly mad if it was by a woman. Anna had come ninety-seventh in last
year’s New York marathon, so on her
morning jog
in
Central Park she was rarely passed by anything on two legs.

Her thoughts
returned to Bryce Fenston. It had been known for some time by those closely
involved in the art world – auction houses, leading galleries and private
dealers – that Fenston was amassing one of the great Impressionist collections.
He, along with Steve Wynn, Leonard Lauder, Anne Dias and Takashi Nakamura, was
regularly among the final bidders for any major new acquisition.

For such
collectors, what often begins as an innocent hobby can quickly become an
addiction, every bit as demanding as any
drug.
For
Fenston, who owned an example of all the major Impressionists except Van Gogh,
even the thought of possessing a work by the Dutch master was an injection of
pure heroin, and once purchased he quickly craved another fix, like a shaking
addict in search of a dealer. His dealer was Anna Petrescu.

When Fenston
read in the New York Times that Anna was leaving Sotheby’s, he immediately
offered her a place on his board with a salary that reflected how serious he
was about continuing to build his collection. What tipped the balance for Anna
was the discovery that Fenston also originated from Romania. He continually
reminded Anna that, like her, he had escaped the oppressive Ceausescu regime to
find refuge in America.

Within days of
her joining the bank, Fenston quickly put Anna’s expertise to the test. Most of
the questions he asked her at their first meeting, over lunch, concerned Anna’s
knowledge of any large collections still in the hands of second – or
third-generation families.

After six years
at Sotheby’s, there was barely a major Impressionist work that came under the
hammer that hadn’t passed through Anna’s hands, or at least been viewed by her
and then added to her database.

One of the first
lessons Anna learned after joining Sotheby’s was that old money was more likely
to be the seller and new money the buyer, which was how she originally came
into contact with Lady Victoria Wentworth, elder daughter of the seventh earl
of Wentworth – old, old money – on behalf of Bryce Fenston nouveau, nouveau
riche.

Anna was puzzled
by Fenston’s obsession with other people’s collections, until she discovered
that it was company policy to advance large loans against works of art. Few
banks are willing to consider ‘art’, no matter what form, as collateral.
Property, shares, bonds, land, even jewellery, but rarely art. Bankers do not
understand the market, and are reluctant to reclaim the assets from their
customers, not least because storing the works, insuring them and often ending
up having to sell them is not only time-consuming but impractical. Fenston
Finance was the rare exception. It didn’t take Anna long to discover that
Fenston had no real love, or particular knowledge, of art. He fulfilled Oscar
Wilde’s dictum:

A man who knows the price of everything and the
value of nothing
.
But it was some
time before Anna discovered his real motive.

One of Anna’s
first assignments was to take a trip to England and value the estate of Lady
Victoria Wentworth, a potential customer, who had applied for a large loan from
Fenston Finance.

T
he Wentworth
collection turned out to be a typically English one, built up by the second
earl, an eccentric aristocrat with a great deal of money, considerable taste and
a good enough eye for later generations to describe him as a gifted amateur.
From his own countrymen he acquired Romney, West, Constable, Stubbs and
Morland, as well as a magnificent example of a Turner, Sunset over Plymouth.

The third earl
showed no interest in anything artistic, so the collection gathered dust until
his son, the fourth earl, inherited the
estate,
and
with it his grandfather’s discriminating eye.