Illegal Action (21 page)

51

Y
our call is being forwarded to the voicemail service…

Peggy had already sent a text message—
RETURN TO LONDON URGENTLY
.
RING ASAP
—and had phoned half a dozen times to no avail. What had Liz said in her message?
I’m going to Ireland with Brunovsky in his private jet to see this new picture that’s turned up. We’ll be back this evening but I’ll ring again when we get there to let you know where we are.
But no call had come, so where were they?

Normally, this was just the sort of problem Peggy enjoyed solving but she wasn’t enjoying herself now. The possibility that Liz was in danger was making her heart thump uncomfortably as she worked. She began by checking back through all Liz’s reports to see if there was any mention of the location of this supposed new picture, but all Liz had said was that it was owned by a Miss Cottingham who lived near Cork. Peggy had great faith in the Internet as a starting point for puzzles and she was pretty sure that she would be able to find Liz within a few minutes. Googling “Cottingham + Ireland” produced only the useless information that Lewis Cottingham was the architect of Armagh Cathedral. Liz had said the old lady owned a large country house, but a trawl through landowners and tourist sites turned up nothing useful. The Irish telephone directory listed only four Cottinghams in the entire country—three in Dublin and one in Belfast, none of them obvious owners of large country houses, none of them likely candidates for the perpetration of an art fraud.

Airports next, thought Peggy, trying to keep calm. Where would a small plane land? They were heading for somewhere near Cork, so probably Cork airport. But it could be Kerry. Or even Shannon—if they had a helicopter standing by they could reach almost any point in southwest Ireland within half an hour. There were thirty-six airports in Ireland and even when she had discounted the twenty-one with unpaved runways, that still left fifteen possibilities.

At this point Peggy telephoned the office of the Garda Siochana in Cork and found herself speaking to a soft-spoken man named O’Farrell, head of Special Branch. She told him that she needed urgently to contact a colleague who was on her way to visit a country house somewhere in the county, owned by an old lady. “I don’t know the name of the place, and was hoping you could help.”

O’Farrell gave a gentle laugh. “Ireland’s full of old country houses inhabited by almost equally old ladies.”

“I’ve got the owner’s name,” she said eagerly. “It’s Cottingham—a Miss Cottingham. But I can’t find her in any directory.”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell, but then, I’m not a student of the Irish gentry. Let me ask around. I’ll get back to you.”

What next? thought Peggy, drawing what felt like her first breath for half an hour. “When in doubt,” her Anglo-Saxon tutor at Oxford had once told her, finding her half in tears when stuck with a particularly tricky passage in
Beowulf
, “the answer is to move on.” So now Peggy did.

The news in the message from the Danes that she had shown to Brian, that Greta Darnshof was not who she claimed to be, would in other circumstances have thrilled Peggy. Now it frightened her. The Danes had run Greta Darnshof’s name against a programme intended to help expose identity theft and they’d hit the jackpot. At first the search had come up negative—the Danes had focused on 1964 when Greta claimed to have been born, and 1965. But when they widened the search they found Greta Darnshof, a five-year-old girl, died with her mother and father in a car crash in 1969, thirty kilometres from the town of Horsens. About six years ago someone else had assumed her identity and three years later, the new Darnshof had moved to Norway. Herr Beckendorf was convinced this was his Illegal and now she was living in London, dead thirty-eight years yet miraculously reborn as the editor of
Private Collection.
Neither the Danes, the Germans nor Peggy knew what her mission was, but it was looking increasingly likely that it had something to do with Brunovsky.

Peggy rang the office of
Private Collection
in Hanover Square. “Miss Darnshof is unavailable,” said a tired, Sloaney voice over the phone.

“Will she be available later on?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” said the voice, this time audibly suppressing a yawn.

“Well, is she in town? I’m an old friend from Denmark,” added Peggy, wishing she’d thought of this in time to add a slight accent. “I’ll ring her flat—unless you think she’s gone to Ireland.”

“I don’t know if it’s Ireland, but she was flying somewhere.” The Sloane seemed to wake up at last, and regret her indiscretion. “What did you say your name was?”

“Thanks very much,” said Peggy, and after this non sequitur put down the phone, suddenly feeling sick at the thought of Greta Darnshof in Ireland. If anything happens to Liz, she thought with sudden helpless anger, I hope they hang Brian Ackers up from a lamp post on Millbank.

Why didn’t Liz ring? She must have landed by now. Perhaps she couldn’t find a private place to make a call, but Liz would always find some way to keep in touch. She tried to still the racing thoughts in her head, stretched both arms out and took a few deep breaths to keep her circulation flowing. Pushing her glasses firmly up her nose, she reminded herself that sometimes the answer was so obvious you ignored it. What obvious thing had she missed?

Suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, she remembered that even a private plane had to file a flight plan. A few phone calls got her to Northolt, then a brief argument, another call to the airport police, and eighteen minutes later Peggy was staring at the faxed copy of Brunovsky’s itinerary. Then she rang O’Farrell of the Garda again.

“You say Shillington airport?” he said when she’d explained. “That would make sense. It’s new, about thirty miles west of Cork. Small but with a long enough runway to take private jets. It gets a lot of use from the money that’s been coming into Cork by the coast. Do you want me to send someone there to pick her up?”

And then Peggy looked at her watch and with a sinking feeling realised it was too late. Liz would have landed by now. Brian Ackers had told her to play it low-key with the Garda. “We don’t want to cause an unnecessary international incident,” he’d said. She decided to disobey him.

By the time she had given an astonished O’Farrell a version of what she thought was going on, he had agreed to send two officers to meet Michael Fane, now en route to Heathrow, when he landed at Cork airport. Then they would take him to…where? Peggy hoped that by then she would have been able to make contact and would know where Liz had gone.

She thanked O’Farrell, agreed to keep in close touch, hung up, then picked the phone up again.

Your call has been forwarded to the voicemail service.

52

W
e will be landing at Cork in twenty minutes.” Michael Fane did up his tie and ran a comb through his hair. It wasn’t that he was expecting the Garda officers meeting him to be particularly spruce, but they’d be looking to him to lead and he was determined to be authoritative.

He wondered if they would be armed. I hope so, he thought a little nervously, recalling Brian Ackers’ warning. Brian had kept stressing the possible danger Liz might be in, yet seemed perfectly happy to be chucking Michael into the middle of it.

Not that Michael could complain. When Brian had summoned him, he had assumed, despite Liz’s assurances, that he was going to be reprimanded for his surveillance of Ivanov. Brian had looked furious—red in the face, his eyes darting about unnervingly. But Michael quickly discovered that Brian’s agitation had nothing to do with him, and he was so relieved that at first he didn’t take in what he was being told to do.

“You’re to go to Ireland right away,” Brian said at once. “Liz went there early this morning—we don’t know exactly where she’s gone yet. Take the first flight you can get to Cork. Peggy Kinsolving has talked to the Garda. Keep in touch with her and she’ll arrange for them to meet you. If there’s any trouble, you’re to defer to them, but otherwise they’ll look to you for direction.”

“What do I do when I get there?”

Brian looked at him as if he should have known. “Find Liz,” he said shortly. “Wherever she is, locate her and bring her back. I don’t care who she’s with or what she’s doing, you’re to remove her at once and return with her to England. Is that clear?”

It couldn’t be much clearer, thought Michael, though he could see an obvious problem. “What if she won’t come? I mean, she usually gives the orders, not me.”

“For the time being, you report directly to me. When you find her, tell her you are just a messenger, conveying my orders.”

Thanks a lot, thought Michael, but he was excited by the challenge. As he left he almost missed the tall, slim figure standing in Brian’s secretary’s office, looking through the window down into the inner atrium. As the man turned, Michael saw that it was his father.

“Hello, Michael,” said Geoffrey Fane.

His father was his usual elegant figure in pinstripe suit and silk tie and Michael, seeing him there in his boss’s office, felt the familiar feeling of inferiority and anger swell up. I don’t know what you’re doing here, thought Michael, but trust you to show up just when I’ve got something real to do at last. Here you are to muscle in on it and spoil it.

But just as the fog of all the usual emotions started to settle, he stopped long enough to cast a sideways look at Geoffrey, who was just standing there looking at him. He suddenly seemed to Michael—there was no other way to describe it—forlorn. And then, for reasons Michael could not have described or explained or even halfway understood, he saw in this bogeyman figure of a father something he had not seen before, something that had nothing to do with the figure he had created in his mind, something that instead seemed entirely, unexpectedly
human
.

“Dad,” he found himself saying, “I’m in a bit of a rush. I’ve got to go to Ireland.” And he paused, wondering where these words were leading, until out of nowhere new words came to him and he said suddenly, “When I get back, maybe we could have lunch.”

Geoffrey Fane looked so surprised that Michael started to regret his impetuous proposal. “Yes,” his father finally said, “I would really like that.” And he smiled, but uncertainly, awkwardly—something Michael had never seen in him before.

“I’ll ring you when I’m back,” said Michael confidently.

He basked in that feeling now, as the 737 dipped one wing and the Irish coast disappeared from view. The prospect of this trip no longer seemed so daunting. It would be an anticlimax to get sent out with such urgency, only to find there wasn’t a problem at all; part of him secretly hoped to see some action. It would be nice to have something to tell his father.

53

J
erry Simmons was driving them in an enormous black car which had been waiting at the tiny little airport where they had landed. A Mercedes-Benz S600, the safest car in the world, Brunovsky had boyishly declared. He wasn’t talking about road accidents. The way the back doors clunked as Jerry closed them suggested that the side panels were armour-plated. Why on earth hire an armoured car in rural Ireland? wondered Liz.

Now Brunovsky was studying some spreadsheets he had produced from his briefcase and was clearly not in conversational mode, so they travelled in silence. Liz was concentrating on the route, trying to memorise the names on the fingerposts at each crossroads. Simmons was driving fast but carefully through the thin Atlantic rain that spattered the windscreen, relying on his satellite navigation system to direct him.

At first Liz found it quite easy to keep track of where they were as they drove west through a succession of building sites and roadworks, but then, as they turned north, away from the coast and its influx of new money, she began to get confused. Gradually the villages became smaller, the roads narrower and more twisted and the cottages older. The few people they passed stared at the bulletproof limousine negotiating their narrow streets, and two pigs nonchalantly forced them to a halt on a mud-covered track on the outskirts of a town.

At last Simmons turned off a valley road and, carefully steering through a gap in an ancient iron boundary fence, drove on to a gravel drive. On either side was parkland, studded by huge oaks, with a dozen scraggy sheep grazing on the lush grass. Ahead, through gaps in the sentry lines of towering lime trees, Liz could see a vast grey stone Georgian house. Two enormous pilasters flanked the entrance, with wide stone steps leading up to the front door. Above the attic windows a balustrade ran the width of the house, and as they drew nearer, a side wing of Victorian brick came into view.

Simmons pulled the car to a halt on the gravel in front of the house, and got out to open the doors. As Liz stepped out she looked up into the chauffeur’s eyes, and they held hers meaningfully for a moment before he looked away.

What was that about? she wondered as she followed Brunovsky up the steps. The door was answered by a tall, thin old man in a frayed black jacket covering a dingy jumper, his face mottled purple by weather or drink. “Will you come in?” he said in a voice full of Ireland, and they walked into the hall. Four impressive Corinthian pillars soared up to the roof and a staircase swept up to a landing in an arabesque of stone. But the paint on the pillars was peeling like loose onion skins, and most of the floor’s tiles were cracked. It was cold, even colder than outside, and the strong smell of damp was as pungent as the salt air in a seaside town.

Liz walked behind Brunovsky into the drawing room, a long salon running across half the width of the house. She paused inside the door to take in the room—the ceiling decorated with plaster friezes of cherubim, family portraits on three of the walls and in the fourth long, vertical windows looking out over the terrace and overgrown formal gardens. Her attention distracted, she did not notice the young woman in a nurse’s uniform standing in front of the fireplace until she spoke. “Welcome,” she said. “I am Svetlana.”

“
Zdravstvujte
,” said Brunovsky, shaking her hand and they exchanged a few words in Russian.

Noticing Liz’s surprise the woman spoke in English. “Miss Cottingham is slightly indisposed today, though I hope she will join us later.”

“Is Harry Forbes here?” asked Liz. With Marco gone, he was the intermediary in this deal, if that’s what it was going to be.

A woman’s voice behind her said, “He is not well.”

Liz turned to see Greta Darnshof standing in the doorway. Her leonine blonde hair was tied back in a tight bun, and she wore a severe grey suit. In the cold light her fine-featured face seem hard, almost fierce. Greta advanced towards Brunovsky, ignoring Liz. She said, “I left Harry in the hotel. Everything has been prepared.”

Prepared? thought Liz. I thought we were here to see a painting.

“Come into the library,” said Greta.

She was speaking directly to Brunovsky, and Liz decided to use the opportunity to find a phone. In response to her question, Svetlana led her towards the back of the house, past a small sitting room, a cloakroom and finally the larder, until they came into an enormous kitchen. There among rows of copper pots hanging from hooks on the wall, opposite an enormous ancient Aga, its once white enamel stained caramel by years of cooking, hung a wall phone on a rickety bracket.

But when Liz picked up the phone there was no dial tone. Puzzled, she turned to the Russian girl and said, “It’s not working.”

Svetlana shrugged. “Sometimes it fails. We are quite remote here.”

“I’m sure. Do you have a mobile I could use?”

“No,” said Svetlana.

Since Greta’s unexpected appearance, Liz had begun to grow suspicious. This seemingly straightforward day had developed disturbing possibilities. Now this. How could this woman look after an invalid, if that’s what Miss Cottingham was, without a phone? Liz’s mind was whirling with questions. Was she deliberately being kept incommunicado? Whatever was going on here, she wasn’t going to show any disquiet to this woman. “Doesn’t matter,” she said cheerily. “Can you show me the library now?”

There was no sign of Brunovsky or Greta in the library, and Svetlana left Liz alone there. It was a windowless circular room in the centre of the house, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with musty books. A wrought-iron staircase leading up to a walkway gave access to the higher shelves and a domed glass roof provided the only light. In one corner Liz saw the painting, mounted for viewing on a large easel, only half-illuminated by the weak light from the dome.

Liz was struck again by how closely it resembled the Pashko Brunovsky had bought. She looked at the thick strokes of its surface, then her eye was caught by the stain in its upper right corner. It was little more than a streak, which if she hadn’t known about the burst pipe would have struck her as the accidental swipe of a paintbrush. The pipe must have been rusty, otherwise why should a water stain be coloured? Intrigued, she looked intently at the mark and realised she could make out small granules—of what? Paint! This wasn’t water damage at all; this was paint. She listened for a moment, but heard no sound in the house; leaning forward she sniffed deeply, her nose almost touching the stain, and smelled the faintest aroma, a smell of lacquer, of glue, of aerosol spray.

Walking round the easel to the back, she saw that the canvas had been wrapped around a large wooden frame, its edges tacked down. In one corner a postage-stamp-sized piece of canvas flapping loosely gave Liz an idea. Rummaging in her bag, she found her nail scissors, and very delicately she snipped a sliver from the loose canvas and put it carefully into the inner pocket of her bag. No one here would notice, but back in London the Art Squad should easily be able to determine if the canvas was really a hundred years old.

“Usually people like to look at pictures from in front.” She jumped at the sound of the familiar voice, and, stepping round the easel, saw that Dimitri had come quietly into the room.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked with genuine astonishment. Had he seen her snipping off the bit of canvas? Probably not. He was smiling at her, though there was no warmth in his face.

“How could I resist the news of another Pashko?” he said, advancing towards Liz and kissing her formally on both cheeks. She noticed his leather jacket was spattered with rain. “And you are an extra bonus.”

“Have you just arrived?”

Dimitri nodded. “I have driven from Dublin.” He pointed to the painting behind her. “What do you think of it?”

Not bad, considering it was painted two weeks ago, Liz wanted to say, but wary now, not sure why Dimitri was there, she said only, “It’s very like
Blue Field.
”

“Unsurprising,” said Dimitri. “They were painted within months of each other.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Dimitri looked at her, slightly quizzically. “It is impossible to be precise about the dates. But certainly it was the same year.”

Did he really believe this? She was not an expert, she couldn’t know for sure, but the circumstances around the painting’s rediscovery, the picture itself, all suggested it was a crude fake.

She said, “What I don’t understand is who is negotiating for the owner. I thought she had a nephew.”

Dimitri watched her appraisingly. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “But why all these questions, Jane?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “Let’s go and join the others.” Something in his tone had changed; when he walked to the door and held it open, pointedly waiting for Liz, she realised it was the same autocratic note she had heard recently in Brunovsky’s voice. As if they were in charge, directing her. Or were they just being Russian?

In the drawing room Brunovsky and Greta were sitting on a long high-backed sofa at the far end of the room. Liz was surprised to see Jerry Simmons in the room too, sitting awkwardly on an Empire chair in the corner, leaning forward with his hands between his knees. “Come and sit down here, Jane,” said Greta, and patted the cushion next to her.

“Are we waiting for Miss Cottingham?” asked Liz.

“You could say that,” said Greta, and again she patted the cushion, this time more emphatically.

“I think I’ll take a walk around,” said Liz, pointing towards the terrace and gardens.

“In this rain? That’s not a good idea.” Greta’s eyes were tense, focused on Liz, who in turn looked at Brunovsky. He seemed a million miles away, thoughtful and detached from the people around him. When Liz turned to Dimitri, he gave a slight smile and she noticed that he was now standing between her and the door.

Okay, she thought, perhaps I won’t go for a walk after all. But she wondered, as she sat down on the sofa next to Greta, just what they were really waiting for.