The Modigliani Scandal Part 16

No, the church has no paintings.

The man thought for a moment, searching for words. Is there a museum in the village? Or perhaps someone with a few paintings in his house?

The priest laughed. My son, this is a poor village. No one buys paintings. In good times, when they have a little extra money, they eat meat-or perhaps drink wine. There are no art collectors here.

The stranger looked disappointed. The priest wondered whether to tell him about his rivals. But then he would be forced to mention Danielli, and he would have to give this man information he had withheld from the couple.

That seemed unfair. However, he would not lie again. He decided to tell the man about Danielli if he asked: otherwise, he would not volunteer the information.

The next question surprised him.

Is there a family named Modigliani here?

The priest raised his eyebrows. Quickly, the stranger said: Why does the question shock you?

Young man, do you really think there is a Modigliani here in Poglio? I am no student of these things, but even I know that Modigliani was the greatest Italian painter of this century. It is hardly likely that one of his works lies unnoticed anywhere in the world, let alone Poglio.

And there is no Modigliani family here," the man persisted.

No.

The man sighed. He stayed in his seat for a moment, staring at the toe of his shoe and wrinkling his brow. Then he stood up.

"Thank you for your help, he said.

The priest saw him to the door. "I am sorry I could not give the answers you wanted to hear, he said. G.o.d bless you.

When the door shut behind him, Julian stood outside the priests house for a moment, blinking in the sunshine and breathing the fresh air. G.o.d, the place was smelly. The poor old sod had probably never learned to look after himself-Italian men were used to being waited on hand and foot by their mothers and their wives, he seemed to recall reading.

It was amazing Italy could find enough priests, what with that and the celibacy ... He grinned as the thought reminded him of the recent abrupt end to his own celibacy. The elation which had come with the discovery of his own potency was still with him. He had proved it had all been Sarahs fault. The b.i.t.c.h had tried to pretend she was not enjoying it at first, but the act had not lasted. What with that, and the sale of her car, and the Modigliani-maybe he was finding his form again.

But he did not have the picture yet. That last stroke of genius was essential, to put the crowning touch to his personal renaissance. The postcard from the girl who signed herself "D" was a shaky foundation on which to build his hopes, he knew: yet it was by following up dubious leads that great finds were made.

The prospect of the Modigliani had receded a long way during the interview with the priest. If it was here in Poglio it was going to be hard to find. There was one consolation: it looked as if Julian was the first here. For if a painting had been bought in a little place like this, every villager would know about it within hours.

He stood beside his rented baby Fiat, wondering what was the next step. He had entered the village from the south, and the church was one of the first buildings he had come across. He could look around for a public building: a village hall, maybe, or a police station. The priest had said there was no museum.

He decided on a quick reconnaissance, and jumped into the little car. Its engine whirred tinnily as he started it and drove slowly into the village. In less than five minutes he had looked at every building. None of them looked promising. The blue Mercedes coupe parked outside the bar must belong to a rich man: the owner obviously did not live in the village.

He drove back to his first parking-spot and got out of the car. There was nothing else for it: he would have to knock on doors. If he went to every house in the village, it could not take all afternoon.

He looked at the small, whitewashed houses: some set back behind kitchen-gardens, others shoulder-to-shoulder at the roadside. He wondered where to start. Since they were equally improbable places to find a Modigliani, he chose the nearest and walked to the door.

There was no knocker, so he banged on the brown paintwork with his knuckles and waited.

The woman who came to the door had a baby in one arm, its small fist clenched in her unwashed brown hair. Her eyes were set close together about a high, narrow nose, giving her a shifty look.

Julian said: I am an art dealer from England, looking for old paintings. Have you any pictures I could look at, please?

She stared at him silently for a long minute, a look of disbelief and wariness on her face. Then she shook her head silently and closed the door.

Julian turned away dispirited. He wanted very badly to give up the door-to-door stratagem-it made him feel like a salesman. The next house confronted him forbiddingly. Small windows on either side of a narrow door reminded him of the face of the woman with the child.

He willed his legs to carry him forward. This door had a knocker: an ornate one, in the shape of a lions head. The paintwork was new and the windows clean.

A man came, in shirtsleeves and an open waistcoat, smoking a pipe with a badly chewed stem. He was about fifty. Julian repeated his question.

The man frowned; then his face cleared as he penetrated Julians bad Italian. Come in, he smiled. Inside, the house was dean and prettily furnished: the floors were scrubbed and the paintwork gleamed. The man sat Julian down.

You want to see some pictures? The man spoke slowly and a little too loudly, as if talking to someone who was deaf and senile. Julian a.s.sumed his accent was the cause of this. He nodded dumbly.

The man raised a finger in a gesture meaning Wait and left the room. He came back a moment later with a pile of framed photographs, brown with age and obscured by dust.

Julian shook his head. I mean paintings, he said, miming the act of brushing paint onto canvas.

Puzzlement and a trace of exasperation crossed the mans face, and he fingered his mustache. He lifted a small, cheap print of Christ from a nail on the wail and offered it.

Julian took it, pretended to examine it, shook his head, and handed it back. "Any more?

"No."

Julian stood up. He tried to put grat.i.tude into his smile. I am sorry, he said. You have been kind.

The man shrugged, and opened the door.

Julians reluctance to go on was even greater now. Disconsolate and indecisive, he stood in the street and felt the hot sun on his neck. He would have to take care not to get burned, he thought inconsequentially.

He considered going for a drink. The bar was a few dozen yards down the road, by the blue Mercedes. But a drink would not progress matters.

A girl came out of the bar and opened the car door. Julian looked at her. Was she a b.i.t.c.h like Sarah? Any girl rich enough to own one of those had a right to be a b.i.t.c.h. She tossed her hair over one shoulder as she climbed in. The spoiled daughter of a wealthy man, Julian thought.

A man came out of the bar and got into the other side of the car, and the girl said something to him. Her voice carried up the street.

Suddenly Julians mind clicked into gear.

He had a.s.sumed that the girl was going to drive, but now that he looked more carefully he could see that the steering wheel was on the right-hand side of the car.

The girls words to the man had sounded like English.

The car had British registration plates.

The Mercedes came to life with a throaty chuckle. Julian turned on his heel and walked briskly to where his Fiat was parked. The other car pa.s.sed him as he keyed the ignition, and he did a three-point turn.

A wealthy English girl in a British car in Poglio: it had to be the girl who sent the postcard.

Julian could not take the chance that it was not.

He raced after the Mercedes, letting the tiny engine of the Fiat scream in low gear. The blue car took a right turn, following the west road out of the village. Julian took the same turning.

The driver of the Mercedes went fast, handling the powerful car with skill. Julian soon lost the flashing brakelights in the bends of the lane. He squeezed the last ounce of speed from his car.

When he shot past the Mercedes he almost missed it. He braked to a halt at a crossroads and reversed.

The other car had pulled in off the road. The building it was outside looked at first like a farmhouse, until Julian saw the beer advertis.e.m.e.nt in the window.

The young couple had got out and were entering the door to the bar. Julian drove the Fiat in next to their car.

On the other side of the Mercedes was a third car: another Fiat, only this was a big, prestige model, painted a hideous metallic green. Julian wondered who it could belong to.

He got out of his car and followed the others into the bar.

IV.

PETER USHER PUT DOWN his safety razor, dipped his washcloth in hot water and washed the remains of the shaving cream off his face. He studied himself in the mirror.

He picked up a comb and drew his long hair back off his face, so that it lay flat above his ears and on top of his head. He combed it carefully down the back of his neck and tucked the long ends under his shirt collar.

Without the beard and mustache his face took on a different appearance. His hooked nose and pointed, receding chin gave him the look of a spiv, especially with his hair slicked back.

He put the comb down and picked up his jacket. It would do. It was only a precaution, anyway.

He walked from the bathroom into the kitchen of the little house. The ten canvases were there, bound in newspapers and tied with string, stacked up against the wall. He stepped around them and went out through the kitchen door.

Mitchs van was parked in the lane at the bottom of the garden. Peter opened the rear doors and wedged them with a pair of planks. Then he began loading the paintings.

The morning was still cool, although the sun was bright and the day promised to be warm. Some of the precautions they were taking were a bit extreme, Peter thought as he lugged a heavy frame down the cracked garden path. Still, it was a good plan: dozens of possible snags had been foreseen and taken care of. Each of them was changing his or her appearance slightly. Of course, if it ever came to an identification lineup the disguises would not be enough-but there was no way it could come to that.

With the last canvas loaded, he closed the van doors, locked up the house and drove off. He threaded his way patiently through the traffic, resigned to the tedious journey up to the West End.

He found his way to a large college campus in Bloomsbury. He and Mitch had chosen the exact spot a couple of days earlier. The college occupied a block 200 yards wide and almost half a mile long, much of it converted Victorian houses. It had many entrances.

Peter parked on a double yellow line in a little drive which led to one of the college gates. A curious warden would a.s.sume he was delivering to the college building beside the gate-but he was on a public road, so college officials would not be able to ask him his business. Anyone else would see a young man, presumably a student, unloading junk from an old van He opened the rear doors and took the paintings out one by one, leaning them against the railings. When the job was done he closed the van.

There was a telephone box right beside the gates-one of the reasons they had chosen this spot. Peter went in and dialed the number of a taxi firm. He gave his exact location, and was promised a cab within five minutes.

It came sooner. The cabbie helped Peter load the canvases into the taxi. They took up most of the backseat. Peter told the driver: Hilton Hotel, for a Mr. Eric Clapton. The false name was a joke which had appealed to Mitch. Peter gave the cabbie 50 pence for helping load the paintings, then waved him goodbye.

He got into the van when the taxi was out of sight, turned it around, and headed for home. Now there was no way the fakes could be connected with the little house in Clapham.

Anne felt on top of the world as she looked around the suite at the Hilton. Her hair had been styled by Sa.s.soon, and her dress, coat, and shoes came from a madly expensive boutique in Sloane Street. A trace of French perfume was detectable in the air around her.

She lifted her arms and spun around in a circle, like a child showing off a party dress. If I go to jail for life, this will have been worth it, she said.

"Make the most of it-those clothes have to be burned tomorrow, said Mitch. He sat in a plush chair opposite her. His clenched, busy hands betrayed the strain he felt and gave the lie to his easy smile. He was dressed in flared jeans, a sweater, and a knitted bobble cap, like a f.a.ggot playing at being a workman, he had said. His hair was piled under the cap to conceal its length, and he wore plastic-rimmed National Health gla.s.ses with plain lenses.

There was a tentative tap at the door. A room service waiter came in with coffee and cream cakes on a tray.

Your coffee, madam, he said, and put the tray down on a low table. "There is a taxi outside with a number of parcels for you, Mr. Clapton," he added, looking at Mitch.

Oh, Eric, that will be the paintings. Go and see to it, would you? Anne spoke in a perfect imitation of French-accented upper-cla.s.s English, and Mitch had to conceal his surprise at the sound.

He went down to the ground floor in the elevator, and out through the foyer to the waiting taxi. Keep the meter running, chief-madam can afford it," he said.

He turned back to the doorman and pressed two pound notes into his hand. See if you can get me a luggage trolley, or something, and a helping hand, he said.

The flunky stepped inside the hotel, and emerged a couple of minutes later with a uniformed bellhop pushing a trolley. Mitch wondered whether any of the tip found its way into the bellhops pocket.

The two of them put five of the paintings on the trolley, and the bellhop disappeared with it. Mitch unloaded the remainder and paid off the cabbie. The empty trolley returned, and Mitch took the rest of the paintings up to the suite. He gave the bellhop a pound-might as well spread the largesse, he thought.

He closed the door and sat down to coffee. He realized that the first stage of the plan had been completed successfully; and with the realization came tension, seeping into his muscles and stringing his nerves tautly. Now there was no turning back. He lit a short cigarette from the packet in his shirt pocket, thinking it would help him relax. It did not-it never did, but he never ceased thinking it would. He tasted his coffee. It was too hot, and he could not summon the patience to wait for it to cool.

He asked Anne: "What's that?

She looked up from the clipboard she was scribbling on. Our list. Name of the picture, artist, gallery or dealer its for, their phone number, name of the man in charge and his deputy. She scribbled something, then flicked pages in the telephone directory on her lap.

Efficient. Mitch swallowed his coffee hot, burning his throat. With his cigarette between his lips he began to unpack the paintings.

He piled the discarded newspapers and string in a corner. They had two leather portfolios, one large and one small, for taking the works to the galleries. He had not wanted to buy ten, for fear of the purchase being conspicuous.

When he had finished, he and Anne sat at the large table in the center of the room. There were two telephones on it, by request. Anne placed her list by his side, and they began phoning.

Anne dialed a number and waited. A girls voice said: Claypole and Company, good morning," all in one breath.

Good morning, said Anne. Mr. Claypole, please. Her French accent had gone.

One moment. There was a hum, and a click, then a second girl.

Mr. Claypoles office."

Good morning. Mr. Claypole, please, Anne repeated.

Im afraid hes in conference. Whos calling?

I have Monsieur Renalle of Agence Arts Nancy. Perhaps Mr. de Lincourt is available?

If you will hold, Ill see.

There was a pause, and then a male voice came on the line. De Lincourt speaking.

Good morning, Mr. de Lincourt. I have Monsieur Renalle of Agence Arts Nancy for you. Anne nodded to Mitch. As she replaced the receiver of her telephone, he lifted his.

"Mr. de Lincourt? he said.