Next of Kin (24 page)

There was a tap on the door and he snapped out of it but didn't look up, assuming it was some customer checking to see whether they were still open or not and who would go away when it was clear that no one was there. He had turned off most of the lights at the front of the gallery, but some of the lamps around his desk were still on and were probably sending a ghostly signal to the street outside.

The door rattled again and he raised his head irritably, standing up to get a better look at who was out there.

‘We're closed,' he shouted out, seeing a man in a hat and overcoat standing on the darkened street outside. ‘Come back tomorrow.'

‘Mr Montignac?' called the voice from outside. ‘Owen, is that you?'

His heart skipped a beat for a moment, wondering whether Delfy had sent someone to convince him of the urgency of his repayments but the outline of the figure—regular height, regular build, smartly dressed—not to mention the politeness of the question was enough to convince him that this wasn't the case. He looked around nervously all the same, wondering whether it would make sense to slip out the back door.

‘Who is it?' he shouted, trying to think of a reason why anyone would be calling on him at this time of night.

The voice called out a name but it was drowned out by a passing car so he stood up from his desk and walked cautiously through the gallery towards the door. The street light outside was broken, which made it difficult for him to make out the visitor's face.

‘It's Gareth Bentley, Owen,' he said as the gallery manager came into sight; he bobbed his head back and forth enthusiastically, removing his hat and grinning pleasantly. ‘We met last night, do you remember?'

Montignac nodded his head, recalling the young man who had shared his taxi home the night before. The eagerness of the boy. His desperation to escape from an enslaved existence. The way his eyes had lit up in excitement at even the possibility of being offered a job. He'd spent so much of the day worrying about the fifty thousand pounds and the meeting with Stella that Gareth had slipped his mind entirely.

‘Of course I remember you,' he said, unlocking the door and opening it, a spider welcoming a fly into his web. ‘Come inside, why don't you?'

FOUR

1

THE APPOINTMENT WAS FOR
eleven o'clock and Montignac arrived at the dilapidated office building ten minutes early but didn't go to the door just yet. Instead he hovered on the street outside, smoking a cigarette in the bright August sunlight until, wary of being spotted by someone looking down from the window above, he moved quickly down a side alley and out of sight. He felt uncomfortable here, a noisy part of London he normally never visited, where poorly dressed children rushed past him on the street and where the smell of cooking emanating from the closely packed houses was overwhelming.

The initial contact had come through a young man who had visited the Threadbare the previous afternoon with a collection of watercolours he was interested in selling; they were rather good, Montignac had thought, and he had therefore been forced to turn them down as they would only seem out of place among the other masterpieces on display in the gallery. To his surprise, the young man didn't seem particularly disappointed by his failure to sell the pictures and Montignac asked him a few questions about the technique he had employed in one of them which made it quite clear that he hadn't painted them at all and didn't even understand some of the terms that he was using.

‘There's a lot of galleries on this street, isn't there?' asked the vendor, who identified himself as Tom Sweeney.

‘Well yes,' said Montignac, resisting the urge to laugh. ‘That's what Cork Street is all about. It's the commercial centre of London's art world.'

‘The security must be top notch around here then,' said Sweeney.

‘Well not really,' he replied. ‘There's never really any trouble. We don't have many bobbies coming down to check on us anyway.'

‘And that gallery next door,' said Sweeney. ‘I read that they'll be housing some Cézanne paintings there soon?'

‘For a brief period, yes. There's a rather good restoration team who work out of the Clarion and they're going to be working on the paintings before they join a national tour. Are you an admirer?'

‘Sure,' he replied, with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. ‘Isn't everyone?'

Montignac narrowed his eyes, recognizing a fishing expedition when he saw one. ‘Can I ask you a question, Mr Sweeney?' he said and the young man nodded. ‘Who actually painted those pictures you're carrying?'

Sweeney opened his mouth to protest but then seemed disinterested in pursuing the deception. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I was just asked to bring them here and see whether you would be interested in them, that's all.'

‘Interested in the paintings?'

‘Interested in assisting a collector.'

Montignac paused for a moment to consider this before leading him through the gallery to his desk and indicating that he should sit down. ‘I'm always happy to help out a serious collector in any way that I can,' he said quietly.

‘My employer is an extremely serious collector,' said Sweeney.

‘And who is your employer?'

‘If you don't mind, I'd rather keep that private for now,' he replied.

‘Of course. But why don't you tell me what it is I can do for him? Are these his paintings?' he asked, nodding at the watercolours which Sweeney had placed on the floor now, leaning against Montignac's desk. ‘Is he an artist as well as a collector?'

‘I couldn't tell you. I've never seen him with a paintbrush in his hands and to be honest I doubt it,' he replied with a slight smile, as if the idea of his employer engaged in something like that struck him as faintly ludicrous.

‘Perhaps he'd like to come down to the gallery himself some day and look at our pieces,' suggested Montignac.

‘Actually, he's already been here,' said Sweeney. ‘He spent a few hours here during the week. I believe he made a thorough assessment of all the work on display.'

‘I see,' said Montignac, racking his memory to recall whether or not there had been any suspicious or noticeable people present in the gallery recently but he could remember no one out of the ordinary.

‘From what he told me he was quite surprised by what he discovered here.'

‘In what way?'

‘The fact that everything you seem to sell is, in his words you understand, utter rubbish.'

Montignac smiled and gave an unembarrassed shrug. ‘We specialize in that, Mr Sweeney. But you'll also find that this is among the most expensive and profitable galleries on Cork Street. Is your employer interested in a private viewing perhaps, so that he can purchase a few pieces himself? Their values do stand an excellent chance of escalating over future years.'

‘No, I don't think so,' said Sweeney, shaking his head. ‘I don't think he'd sully his collection with the work from here. No offence, of course.'

‘None taken.'

‘No, I believe he's more interested in the gallery next door to yours. The Clarion.'

‘It's an excellent gallery,' said Montignac, nodding his head appreciatively. ‘But of course only half the Clarion's floor space is taken up with pieces that are actually for sale. The rest is made up of visiting exhibitions and, of course, the restoration room.'

‘We're aware of that.'

Montignac nodded, unsure where this conversation was going. ‘I'm sorry,' he said eventually, when it was clear that Sweeney wasn't intending on enlightening him any further for the time being. ‘I don't see where I fit into this. The Clarion is a different gallery entirely to the Threadbare. We're not connected in any way.'

‘Are you sure about that, Mr Montignac?'

‘Perfectly sure,' he replied. ‘Separate owners, separate businesses.'

‘They seem to have a more physical connection, don't they?' asked Sweeney. ‘These aren't detached buildings after all.'

Montignac nodded. ‘That's true,' he said. ‘In fact the galleries to our left and right were part of one large building which was knocked into three smaller units decades ago.'

‘My employer noticed the staircase on the upper floor of your gallery,' said Sweeney, nodding up to the mezzanine level above. ‘There's a doorway up there, I believe.'

‘To our storeroom, yes.'

‘Wouldn't it be connected to the galleries on either side?'

‘There are thin walls between them, yes. But no doorways. There's no way through to each gallery if that's what you're getting at.'

‘The plans of the buildings show that there's a small attic running across the top.'

‘Well yes,' admitted Montignac. ‘There's a roof panel into the—' He hesitated and inclined his head a little, looking at the young man with renewed interest.

Sweeney reached into his pocket and wrote down an address on a piece of paper and held it up for Montignac to see. ‘Can you remember this?' he asked.

‘Yes of course.'

‘Do you know where it is?'

‘I'm sorry, no.'

‘But you could find it.'

‘I expect so.'

‘Excellent,' said Sweeney, crumpling the piece of paper up and putting it back in his own pocket. ‘My employer keeps one of his private offices there. He'd be very interested in meeting with you. Perhaps tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock?'

Montignac considered it. ‘We are quite busy here at the moment,' he said.

‘I think it might be to your advantage,' said Sweeney. ‘More profitable than, perhaps, an evening spent at the roulette tables in the Unicorn Ballrooms.'

Montignac narrowed his eyes and stared at him. ‘What do you know of that?' he asked.

Sweeney stood up and collected his watercolours. ‘Like I say, Mr Montignac, it might be considerably to your advantage to meet with my employer. Can he expect you at the appointed time?'

Montignac declined to answer but Sweeney appeared to take this as an assent for he smiled, gave a quick nod, and left the gallery with his paintings under his arm. Montignac sat there for quite some time considering the matter, wishing that he could remember a man who had been looking around the gallery earlier in the week and investigating the staircases and different floors but despite his misgivings he knew that he would keep the appointment. He had nothing to lose after all.

He knocked on the door at the appointed time and it was immediately opened by Sweeney, wearing, Montignac noticed, the exact same suit of clothes he had worn the previous day.

‘Mr Montignac,' he said, opening it wide and ushering him inside, and not sounding in the least surprised that he had come. ‘We're delighted you could make it.'

‘Strange place for an office, isn't it?' he asked, for the street where they were situated was in one of the less salubrious areas of London and certainly not one where one would expect to find a serious art connoisseur.

‘My employer has several different offices,' he explained. ‘Sometimes he needs to use one of the more discreet ones for meetings such as this. Follow me please.'

Montignac trailed after him along a musty, filthy corridor and shivered slightly in distaste. The naked light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling was host to an enormous, vacant cobweb while the paint was in an advanced state of peeling from the walls; rotten floorboards were visible through a ripped carpet. They moved in silence, going up three flights of stairs before coming to a door, which Sweeney rapped upon.

‘Come in,' said a voice from inside and Sweeney opened the door, standing back to usher Montignac inside and then closed it behind him again, standing guard outside as he left the gallery manager and the buyer alone together.

‘Mr Montignac,' said the man, stepping around from behind the desk cheerfully. ‘I'm delighted you could come. Please, take a seat.'

Montignac shook his hand cautiously and tried to recall whether he had seen him before in the gallery but his face was unfamiliar to him.

‘I'm a little in the dark as to what I'm doing here, Mr…?'

‘The name's Keaton,' said the man. ‘And it's not actually
Mr
,' he added with a shrug. ‘But we'll let it go for now. I suppose you young people think that titles are something of an anachronism in this day and age.'

Montignac shrugged. ‘I think it's generally only those who don't have a title who hold them in contempt,' he suggested.

‘I think that's a very perceptive analysis,' said Keaton pleasantly, sitting down behind his desk. ‘I'm sorry I can't offer you anything to drink,' he added. ‘We don't keep any comforts here, I'm afraid. If we were in my normal office I could give you a rather nice Glenfiddich but I wanted to meet you in private. I've heard a lot about you, Mr Montignac.'

‘More than I've heard about you then,' he replied, taking the time to study the man sitting opposite him. He was in his mid-fifties with thinning dark hair and a strong, aristocratic jawline. Immaculately dressed, Montignac could see a pair of cufflinks creeping out at the ends of his jacket sleeves encrusted with what he knew immediately to be diamonds. He imagined that the man looked as pristine at the end of every day as he did at the start.

‘I try to be kept informed about interesting people,' said Keaton. ‘And you seem to me to be just such a fellow. I'd be right in saying that you read history of art at university, wouldn't I?' asked Keaton.

‘That's correct.'

‘Cambridge, wasn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘I was at Cambridge myself many years ago. Reading law.'

‘Indeed.'

‘And now you run a gallery.'

‘For four years now, yes.'

‘And how do you enjoy it?'

‘It's fine,' he said, shrugging his shoulders in a non-committal way. ‘The lady who owns it allows me a great deal of autonomy.'