The Veteran (18 page)

“Entitled
The Game Bag
,” Slade said clearly. “What am I bid? Do I hear a thousand?”

Bertram raised his paddle.

“A thousand at the back. Do I have an advance on a thousand?”

Another paddle went up. The man must have been shortsighted.

The rest of the bidders, dealers, collectors, agents and gallery owners were staring in something close to disbelief.

“It’s against you, sir, at two thousand pounds,” said Slade, looking fixedly at Bertram.

He lowered his left eyelid a fraction. Bertram raised his paddle.

“Three thousand pounds,” said Slade. “Do I hear four?”

There was silence. Then the Japanese nodded. Slade was confused. He could see the thick black hair flecked with grey, but the almond eyes were masked by the bottle-thick lenses.

“Was that a bid, sir?” he asked.

“Hai”, said Mr. Yamamoto and nodded again. He sounded like Toshiro Mifune in Shogun.

“If you would be kind enough to raise your paddle, sir,” said Slade.

The man from Tokyo said clearly, “Ah, so,” and raised his paddle.

“Four thousand pounds,” said Slade.

His composure was still intact though he had never expected anyone to want to outbid the stolid Bertram. On cue, Bertram raised his paddle again.

The bemusement in the hall was nothing to that felt by Alan Leigh-Travers, who was leaning against the back wall. He had never seen or heard of
The Game Bag
, and if he had it would have been on its way home to Suffolk in the next van. If Slade wanted to introduce an extra lot into his sale, wildly post-catalogue, he might have mentioned it. And who was Mcfee? He had never heard of him. The ancestor of some shooting pal of Slade, perhaps. Still, it had already made £5,000, God knew how, so no matter. A respectable price for anything and a miracle for this daub. The commission fee would keep the directors in decent claret for a while.

In the next thirty minutes the composure of Leightravers was knocked sideways. The Japanese gallery-owner, the back of whose head he could see, kept nodding and saying “Hai” while someone out of sight behind a pillar further up the back wall kept raising him. What the hell did they think they were doing? It was a wretched daub of a painting, anyone could see that. The room had lapsed into utter silence. The price went through £50,000.

Leigh-Travers shuffled and jostled his way down the back wall until he came to the pillar and had a look round it. He almost sustained a heart attack. The mystery bidder was Bertram, for Pete’s sake. That could only mean Slade was buying in, for the House.

Ashen-faced, Leigh-Travers caught Slade’s glance across the length of the hall. Slade grinned and gave him another lascivious wink. That confirmed it. His Vice-Chairman had gone certifiably insane. He hurried from the hall to where the paddle girls sat, seized an internal phone and rang the Chairman’s office, asking Phyllis to put him through to the Duke of Gateshead as a matter of urgency.

Before he got back to the hall, the bidding had climbed to £100,000 and still Mr. Yamamoto would not back off. Slade was raising now in multiples of £10,000 and beginning to worry badly.

He alone knew that millions of pounds lay beneath the two partridge, so why was the Japanese bidding? Did he also know something? Impossible, the painting was a walk-in from Bury St. Edmunds. Had Professor Carpenter shot his mouth off somewhere in the Far East? Equally impossible. Did Yamamoto simply like the painting? Had he no taste at all? Did he think the tycoons of Tokyo and Osaka were going to flock to his galleries to buy this rubbish at a profit?

Something had gone wrong, but what? He could not refuse to take the bids from Yamamoto, not in front of the entire hall, but knowing what lay beneath the partridge he could not indicate to Bertram to stop, either, and thus let the work head for Japan.

The rest of the bidders realized something extremely weird was afoot. None of them had ever seen anything like it. Here was an appalling daub on display that normally should never have appeared in anything above a car-boot sale, and two bidders were driving it through the roof. One was an old codger in a walrus moustache and the other was an implacable samurai. The first thought that occurred to all of them was ‘inside knowledge’.

They all knew that the art world was not for the squeamish and that some of the tricks of the trade would have made a Corsican knifeman look like a vicar. Every veteran in the hall recalled the perfectly true tale of the two dealers attending a miserable sale in a decrepit old manor house when one of them spotted a still life of a dead hare, hanging in the stairwell. Not even on display. But they backed a hunch and bought it. The dead hare turned out to be the last recorded painting ever done by Rembrandt. But surely old Harmenszoon on his deathbed and gripped by palsy could not have delivered those awful partridge? So they peered and peered, looking for the hidden talent, but could see none. And the bidding went on.

At £200,000 there was a disturbance in the doorway as people gave way and the wuthering height of the Duke of Gateshead slipped in. He stood against the back wall like a condor alert for a bit of living flesh to peck.

By £240,000 Slade’s self-control was beginning to disintegrate.

A sheen of sweat beaded his forehead and reflected the glare of the lights. His voice had gone up several octaves.

Something inside him screamed for this farce to stop, but he could not stop it. His carefully scripted scenario was completely out of control.

At a quarter of a million the tic near his left eye began to act up. Across the hall old Bertram saw the endless winking and just went on bidding. By this point Slade wanted him to stop, but Bertram knew his orders: one wink, one bid.

“Against you, sir,” Slade squawked at the pebble glasses from Tokyo.

There was a long pause. He prayed the nightmare would finally end. In a clear voice Mr. Yamamoto said, “Hai.” Slade’s left eye was going like the front end of a speeding ambulance, so Bertram raised his paddle.

At £300,000 Leigh-Travers whispered furiously in the duke’s ear and the condor began to move purposefully down the wall towards his employee Bertram. In the silent hall all eyes were on the Japanese. He suddenly rose, placed his paddle on his seat, bowed formally to Peregrine Slade, and walked towards the door. The crowd parted as the Red Sea before Moses.

“Going once,” said Slade weakly, “twice.”

His gavel banged on the block and the room erupted. As always with the ending of unbearable tension, everyone wanted to say something to his neighbour. Slade recovered somewhat, wiped his brow, handed over the rest of the sale to Leightravers and descended his podium.

Bertram, released from his duty, headed for his cubbyhole to brew a nice cup of tea.

The duke bent his head to his Vice-Chairman and hissed: “My office. Five minutes, if you please.”

“Peregrine,” he began when they were alone in the Chairman’s suite. No more ‘Perry’ or ‘dear old bean’. Even the facade of amiability was gone. “May I ask exactly what the devil you thought you were doing down there?”

“Conducting an auction.”

“Don’t patronize me, sir. That appalling daub of two partridge, it was junk.”

“At first sight.”

“You were buying it in. For the House. Why?”

From his breast pocket Slade retrieved the two-page letter and report from Professor Carpenter at the Colbert.

“I hope this explains why. I should have had it for £5,000, maximum. But for that lunatic Japanese, I would have.”

The Duke of Gateshead read the report carefully in the sunlight from the window, and his expression changed. His ancestors had murdered and plundered their way to prominence, and, as with Benny Evans, old genes die hard.

“Different complexion, old bean, entirely different complexion. Who else knows about this?”

“No one. I received the report at my home last month and kept it to myself. Stephen Carpenter, me, now you. That’s it. Fewer the better, I thought.”

“And the owner?”

“Some idiot Scot. To cover our backs, I offered him £50,000. The fool turned it down. I have my letter and the tape of his rejection. Now, of course, I wish he had taken it. But I could not foresee that crazy Japanese this morning. Damn near robbed us of it.”

The duke thought for several moments. A fly buzzed on the pane, loud as a chainsaw in the silence.

“Cimabue,” he murmured. “Duccio. Good God, we haven’t had one of those in the House for years. Seven, eight million? Look, settle up with this owner without delay. I’ll sanction. Who do you want for the restoration? The Colbert?”

“It’s a big organization. Lots of staff. People talk. I’d like to use Edward Hargreaves. He’s among the best in the world, works alone and is silent as the grave.”

“Good idea. Get on with it. In your court. Let me know the moment the restoration is complete.”

Edward Hargreaves did indeed work alone, a dour and secretive man with a private studio in Hammersmith. In the restoring of damaged or overpainted Old Masters, he was peerless.

He read the Carpenter report and thought of contacting the professor for a conference. But the senior restorer at the Colbert would be less than human if he were not deeply offended that the fascinating commission had gone to someone else, so Hargreaves decided to stay silent. But he knew the Colbert stationery and the professor’s signature, so he could use the report as a base for his own labours. He informed Slade, when the Vice-Chairman of Darcy delivered the Scottish still life to his studio personally, that he would need two weeks.

He set it on an easel beneath the north light and for two days he simply stared at it. The thick Victorian oil paint would have to come off with extreme delicacy so as not to damage the masterpiece beneath. On the third day he began to work.

Peregrine Slade took his call two weeks later. He was agog.

“Well, my dear Edward?”

“The work is finished. What lay beneath the still life is now fully exposed to view.”

“And the colours? Are they as fresh as the day they were painted?”

“Oh, beyond a doubt”, said the voice down the phone.

“I’ll send my car,” said Slade.

“I think perhaps I should come with the painting,” said Hargreaves carefully.

“Excellent,” beamed Slade. “My Bentley will be with you in half an hour.”

He phoned the Duke of Gateshead.

“Splendid work,” said the Chairman. “Let’s have an unveiling. My office, twelve hundred hours.”

He had once been in the Coldstream Guards and liked to pepper his talk to subordinates with military phrases.

At five to twelve a porter set up an easel in the Chairman’s office and left. At twelve sharp Edward Hargreaves, carrying the tempera-on-panel wrapped in a soft blanket and escorted by Peregrine Slade, entered the room. He placed the painting on the easel.

The duke had cracked open a bottle of Dom Perignon. He offered a glass to each guest. Slade accepted, Hargreaves demurred.

“So,” beamed the duke, “What have we? A Duccio?”

“Er, not this time,” said Hargreaves.

“Surprise me,” said Slade. “A Cimabue?”

“Not exactly.”

“Can’t wait,’ said the duke. “Come on, lift the blanket.”

Hargreaves did so. The painting was indeed as the letter apparently from the Colbert had described it. Beautifully executed and precisely in the style of the early Renaissance of Florence and Siena.

The background was a medieval landscape of gentle hills with, in the distance, an ancient bell tower. In the foreground was the single living figure. It was a donkey, or Biblical ass, staring forlornly at the viewer. Its organ hung limply towards the ground as if recently and thoroughly pulled. In the middle ground was indeed a shallow valley with a track down the centre. On the track, emerging from the valley, was a small but perfectly identifiable Mercedes-Benz.

Hargreaves contemplated a point in space. Slade thought he might succumb at once to a fatal heart attack, then hoped he would, then feared that he might not.

Inside the Duke of Gateshead five centuries of breeding grappled for control. Finally the breeding won and he stalked from the room without a word.

An hour later the Hon. Peregrine Slade left the building on a more permanent basis.

The remainder of September was an eventful period.

In response to daily phone calls, the Sudbury newsagent had confirmed a second embossed letter awaited Mr. Mcfee.

Disguised as the ginger-whiskered Scot, Trumpy had gone up by train to collect it. The envelope contained a cheque from the House of Darcy for £265,000.

Using some beautifully crafted e-documents from Suzie, he opened an account with Barclays Bank in St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands, one of Britain’s last no-tax havens. When the cheque was cleared and credited he went over for the day by air and opened another account in the name of Trumpington Gore with the Royal Bank of Canada, just down the street. Then he went to Barclays and transferred the lot from Mr. Hamish Mcfee to Mr. Gore down the road. The deputy manager at Barclays was surprised at the speed of the opening and closing of the Scotsman’s account, but made no demur.

From the Canadians, who did not give a damn about British mainland tax laws, Trumpy extracted two banker cheques. One, for £13,250, went to Colley Burnside, who could contemplate a twilight to his life floating contentedly on a sea of vintage claret. Trumpy withdrew £1,750 in cash for himself as ‘getting-by money’. The second cheque was for Benny Evans and Suzie Day jointly, in the sum of £150,000. With the balance of £100,000 the helpful Canadians were happy to create a long-term high-yield annuity fund capable of paying Trumpington Gore about £1,000 a month for the rest of his days.

Benny and Suzie married and returned to Benny’s native Lancashire, where he opened a small art gallery and she became a freelance computer programmer. Within a year she had grown out the peroxide, removed the facial metal and had twin boys.

Trumpy got home from the Channel Islands to find a letter from Eon Productions. It told him that Pierce Brosnan, with whom he had had a tiny role in Goldeneye, wished that he have a much larger part in the next Bond movie.