A Murderous Mind Read online

  Alec bustled through. She heard him in the kitchen, rattling plates and dishing up their supper, chatting to Napoleon who thought that as his people were getting an extra meal maybe he should be entitled as well. She found her thoughts turning to Gregory and wondered where he was right now. How he was. What this year might bring for him.

  Alec set her tray on her knee and told her where everything was. ‘There’s a late film on,’ he said. ‘Or do you just want to eat and then go to bed?’

  Something in his voice hinted that he might not just be thinking of sleep.

  TWO

  Patrick Jones had driven over to Bob Taylor’s place early as he always did on a Tuesday morning. He worked for a morning before returning to the university for the afternoon lectures. Had Patrick had his way then he would not still be on his uni course; he enjoyed his time working with the artist far more than his studies, but both his father, Harry, and Bob had told him that he should not throw away this time. That he should enjoy broadening his knowledge base and meeting other people following Patrick’s general path.

  Patrick had hated University in the first term, but his dad and Bob had been right and he’d not only got used to it but he had made some good friends – though he still thought he was learning far more from Bob Taylor than from his degree course.

  As Patrick arrived a courier van was turning out of Bob’s gate and a wooden crate sat on one of the tables in the studio when Patrick went through.

  ‘Do you like a puzzle?’ Bob asked.

  Patrick frowned. ‘What kind of puzzle?’

  ‘Mysteries. Nothing dangerous, nothing life or death,’ he reassured. He and Patrick had met because of a situation that really had been life or death and both were acutely aware of that. And not keen to repeat the experience.

  ‘Just abstract sort of puzzles. Like who painted what, or who might just be saying they did.’

  ‘Forgeries?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘It’s not always that simple,’ he said. ‘Forgery implies intent. Sometimes that intent is there, sometimes mistakes are made, sometimes artists allow their students to use their name and their influence. Sometimes copies are made and at the time everyone knows they are copies. Then time passes, memories are lost or a new owner sets out to deceive. You have to peel back the layers, find the objective truth, the forensic truth if you will, and then you get to the other minutiae. The subjective truth, the opinions. The mystery and the deceit. It’s fascinating stuff, Patrick.’

  Patrick looked speculatively at Bob Taylor. ‘And is that what the courier brought this morning? A mystery?’

  ‘Yes and no. I’ve been asked to look at a painting and make a judgement as to its authenticity. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a fake. I’m even pretty sure I know who made it. What I’m not so sure about is what I’m going to say.’ He winked at his wife, Annie, who laughed.

  ‘You’ll do the right thing,’ she said. ‘You always do.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t know what that is this time?’

  ‘Maybe the right thing isn’t what other people might think,’ Annie parried.

  Patrick got the feeling he’d walked in on an ongoing conversation. ‘Why might you not?’ he asked. ‘Why would you like to tell a lie?’

  ‘Because,’ Bob Taylor said, taking up a scalpel and gently easing a layer of tape away from the edge of the box, ‘because some people don’t deserve to own anything beautiful. Because all they want to know is what it might be worth and it would amuse me to let them think they may have something really valuable, in monetary terms anyway, just for a while before I let them down.’

  He pulled the tape free and then started on the second edge. Patrick moved in closer, aware that Annie had been unable to resist and had come to stand beside him.

  ‘And because if they think this is genuine then they’ll either try to sell or they’ll shove it into a bank vault somewhere just so it can get even more valuable. If they think it’s a fake then they’ll make sure it’s destroyed and that hurts me, Patrick. That hurts me very much. No one should be permitted to destroy a thing of beauty, just because it isn’t worth as much as they hoped.’

  He continued to remove the tape to reveal the wooden frame of a box, the sort Patrick had become familiar with in the studio because Bob packed his own work for shipment in something similar. Bob removed the tape and pins holding the top of the box in place and lifted it aside. Patrick and Annie both craned in for a first look.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Annie said.

  Patrick almost held his breath as Bob eased the picture from its box and laid it out on his worktable. Beautiful, he thought, didn’t even begin to describe it. The picture glowed in the weak winter sunlight. It was small, maybe thirty centimetres by twenty, he guessed and enclosed in an ornately carved wooden frame with a flat, inner border. Areas of gold leaf on the inner mount gleamed softly, the gilded gesso worked with punches to add texture; more surfaces to catch the light. The subject was traditional. A Madonna and child with an older woman, he guessed, probably St Anne. Patrick, having now spent several months as assistant and general part-time factotum for Bob Taylor, was getting his head around medieval iconography. They sat at rest in a landscape of trees and rocks, the grass beneath the virgin’s feet scattered with delicate flowers. Both women leaned in towards the toddling child, protective arms ready to catch him, should he fall. The colours were fresh and clear as only egg tempera could be after all this time, he thought. Then reminded himself that it might not be ‘all that time’.

  ‘The Bevi Madonna,’ Bob said softly. ‘A masterpiece in any language. Any except the language of hard cash.’

  Patrick looked up at him. ‘Surely, no one would want to destroy this?’ he argued. ‘Even if it wasn’t an original. It’s still …’ he sought the words. How could you describe something that glowed from within, the expression on the women’s faces so intent and so loving, the embroidery on their robes so detailed and delicately wrought that a skilled needleworker could have recreated the pattern of it. Now he looked more closely he realized that this was actually a transitional painting, the artist breaking free from the technical and traditional stricture of pure tempera. There were areas of transparent glaze, colours finely and thinly applied over the tempera underpainting, effects that could only have been achieved by using oils in conjunction with the tempera. The result was one of restrained … joy. It was the only word Patrick could come up with. The artist had poured love and skill and a sense of awe into this picture and the result was something that lit up the room. It was jewel-like and uniquely lovely and Patrick could not countenance even the possibility that anyone could wish it harm.

  ‘Who is supposed to have painted it?’ Annie asked.

  ‘It’s attributed to a student of Giovanni Bellini.’ He tipped the painting forward to show a selection of imprints on the wooden support. ‘As you can see there is a selection of collector’s marks, all impossible to verify, of course. Two of the collections do actually mention a Madonna and St Anne in their catalogues, but as there are no details … Bevi was an art finder; bought for a number of collectors, that mark there—’ he pointed to a triangle inside of which was some kind of stylized, plump bird – ‘purports to be his.’ Bob shrugged.

  ‘And who do you think actually did paint it?’

  Patrick found he was holding his breath again. He wanted to believe there was no doubt. That this beautiful little object was under no threat.

  ‘I think it’s one of Freddy’s,’ Bob said.

  ‘Freddy?’ Patrick asked.

  Bob turned to him with a sad smile. ‘Frederick Albert Jones,’ he said. ‘One of the greatest artists never to be recognized by the establishment. He died a couple of weeks ago, which is why the sudden doubt about the authenticity of this piece. Trouble was, when Freddy died, there was another Bevi Madonna sitting on his easel.’

  THREE

  Ginny tapped on her friend’s door and then knocked harder. ‘Come on, time to rejoin the livi
ng. We’ve got a lecture in half an hour, remember.’

  Still no response, not even the usual sleepy grunt that would have told Ginny that she had at least been heard. She tried the door. Leanne rarely bothered to lock it and Ginny often got the job of shaking her friend into full consciousness. Leanne was not a morning person.

  Finding it unlocked she pushed it wide, her nose wrinkling at the strange, unpleasant smell that suddenly issued from the now open room. The curtains were still drawn and the room twilight dark. Ginny could make out the bed and the heaped bedclothes that she assumed still concealed her sleeping friend.

  ‘Leanne? You OK? It’s time to be up.’

  She sniffed again, wondering at the smell. It was more familiar now and even more unpleasant for the recognition. Some combination of butcher’s shop and the bathroom after Sam had used it.

  Ginny made to take a step forward and then paused. The small sense of wrongness that Leanne was still not awake and had not answered her call now grew into a massive certainty of wrongness that held her, frozen in the doorway.

  ‘She not up yet?’ Sam asked from across the kitchen. He dumped his bag on the floor and reached into the cupboard for his jacket.

  ‘No,’ Ginny said. ‘Sam, I think … I think there’s something wrong.’

  ‘Like what?’ he asked. He came over and stood beside Ginny in the doorway. ‘Christ, what’s that smell?’

  Ginny reached around the door frame and switched on the main light.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sam whispered, his voice suddenly failing him as though his breath was forced from his lungs.

  Ginny didn’t even manage that. I should be screaming, she thought. But I don’t know how. Instead she stared and stared, disbelief fighting what her eyes knew to be true. What was left of their friend lay on the bed and the whole room was red with her blood.

  FOUR

  Patrick had driven Bob over to the auction house. Annie was coming into town later and said she would pick him up. These past months Patrick had worked with him, gaining valuable practical experience alongside his university studies and Bob had taken his role as mentor and employer very seriously, introducing Patrick to new techniques, to artwork in the hands of private collectors that Bob knew and, as with the purpose of this auction house visit, to the more esoteric aspects of his profession.

  Bob Taylor was an internationally renowned artist but he had always shifted pretty much for himself, never taking on assistants or feeling the need for an entourage of young interns. Until Patrick had been catapulted into his life the autumn before.

  Bob’s wife, Annie Raven – she had kept her own name after they had married – had a friend that she regarded as a brother. She and Nathan Crow had grown up together, shared a life that Bob still only partly understood, but it was a past that had brought danger right into Bob’s own house. If it hadn’t been for Nathan, Bob thought, then the man with a gun would not have arrived in his studio, but if it hadn’t been for Gregory, then Bob would certainly have died there.

  Patrick had, somewhat unexpectedly, come as part of this package of unlikely friendships. Bob had extended a friendly hand to the young artist, recognizing his developing skills and his utter determination, and what had begun as a favour to the man who had saved his life had developed into a role that was part teacher and pupil, part fellow artists – despite their difference in age and experience.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Patrick asked. Bob was obviously well known at the auction room. He’d been greeted by name and led over to a table piled high with old prints and loose drawings.

  ‘Anything like this,’ Bob said. ‘But also old books. They don’t have to be in good condition, in fact, the tattier the better, but look at the age. Anything nineteenth century or earlier. By the early eighteen hundreds, we’re really getting into commercially produced, machine-made paper, but it’s still usable for some projects.’

  He could see Patrick’s puzzled look. ‘The end papers,’ Bob explained. ‘They are usually blank. I can clean them up and use them.’

  ‘That means taking the book apart,’ Patrick objected. Somehow, that didn’t seem right.

  ‘Which is why we’re looking for tatty ones.’ Bob smiled at Patrick’s consternation. ‘If you feel bad about it, Patrick, we’ll take what we need and I’ll teach you to rebind the rest. I’ve got all the kit back at the studio.’

  Patrick nodded and relaxed. Most people would have laughed at him, he knew, but Bob usually ‘got him’ and his odd tendency to empathize with inanimate objects.

  ‘Go and take a look around, see if you can turn up anything useful and I’ll go through this lot. When you come back I’ll show you what I’ve found and why I want it.’

  Patrick nodded again and wandered off back towards where he’d spotted a pile of books on the way in. He’d never been to an auction house before. They’d come on the viewing day and the massive, high-ceilinged space was quiet. People wandered purposefully, catalogues in hand, perusing items for potential bids and no one paid him much attention. The auction house was situated in an old chapel, the offices back where the vestry would have been and Patrick found himself listening to the place. The quiet footsteps, the thick dustiness that seemed to deaden sound. The occasional cough or scrape or slide as people inspected the stock. Naomi would like this, he thought. She was acutely aware of how places sounded. He supposed it was mostly because she could no longer see, but he was also pretty sure that even in her sighted days she would have listened to a place just as much as she’d have looked at it. Close association with her since his fifteenth year had taught Patrick to do the same and now, at eighteen, it had become ingrained habit.

  ‘You’re with Bob, right?’

  Patrick turned to look at the speaker, a middle-aged woman in jeans and a tweed jacket. She had glasses on a string around her neck.

  ‘Yes,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Then he’d probably want a look at these,’ she said. She led Patrick over to a stack of boxes set back in the corner of the chapel. ‘They’re catalogued as three boxed lots at the moment, no one’s really been through them properly, but it’s typical Bob Taylor junk.’ She smiled and Patrick realized there was no malice in her words.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look.’

  She nodded. ‘So you’re Bob’s assistant,’ she said, regarding Patrick with discomforting interest.

  ‘Um, yes. Part-time, I’m still at uni.’

  Someone was calling to her from the back office and Patrick was relieved when the woman, apparently named Mitzi, left him to it. He was never good at explaining himself. An old oak table stood next to the stack and he took the first box and set it down on the table top. ‘Old,’ Patrick muttered. ‘Old stuff. The older the better.’ How did he tell?

  He glanced across the chapel to where Bob was still sorting and chatting to another man. The two obviously knew one another well. Between Bob and Patrick, the browsers moved, examining, marking notes in catalogues, making judgements. They did so, Patrick noted, in isolation, shuffling around one another almost without acknowledgement, intent on their tasks. Bob and his friend were the only real animation in the room. Patrick turned his attention to the first box of books, setting them out on the table and then returning to the box anything that was obviously twentieth century. He discarded the paperbacks and the children’s books, setting aside anything that looked as though it might warrant further investigation. He recalled that his father, Harry, who liked to browse in second-hand bookshops, usually looked for printing dates and edition numbers. Harry didn’t really collect first editions, just books he liked and wanted to read, but Patrick knew he was always pleased when he found an early one.

  Methodically, Patrick started his investigation.

  Whoever had owned this collection, Patrick thought, had an odd and eclectic taste. A book entitled Froggy’s Little Brother sat on top of William Blake’s collected poems. Many were beautifully bound and Patrick felt his chest constrict at the thought that B
ob might want to take them apart. He supposed it might be possible to carefully slice out the end papers and leave little trace but as Patrick ran his fingers across the embossed cover of Le Morte d’Arthur he knew he’d find it hard to countenance even that level of vandalism – and even if it was his friend Bob doing the damage. He comforted himself with the thought that the book was probably not old enough to interest the artist, the paper was very obviously machine-made, he could see the lines from the rollers lightly impressed across the surface and whatever project Bob had in mind, Patrick reckoned he’d be looking for something that at least appeared to be earlier.

  He’d sorted out a half dozen possible paper sources when Bob Taylor came over.

  ‘Found some nice tatty ones, I see.’ He grinned at Patrick and then picked up the volume he’d been admiring earlier. ‘I love these bindings,’ he said caressing the tooled leather and smooth cloth as Patrick had done earlier. ‘I’ve got a stack of books like this in the back bedroom. If I ever get around to getting the book shelves, I thought I’d turn it into a library.’

  ‘I thought these might be OK,’ Patrick said, indicating the small stack of extremely tatty Victorian volumes. ‘But they’re all obviously machine-made paper, so …’

  ‘No, they’ll be fine for you to practise with,’ Bob said. ‘I can teach you to clean the muck off without going too far and bleaching all the tone out of it. And we can practise getting rid of the foxing, that sort of thing. If it all goes wrong it’s no great loss. But if I’m eventually going to trust you with the seventeenth century stuff, you’re going to have to know what you’re doing.’ He smiled at Patrick. ‘Part of your apprenticeship,’ he said. ‘Being a decent restorer will help keep you in work. Think of it as a safety net. Right, I’ll go and have a word with Mitzi about these, see if we can strike a deal now or at least get her to list them as a separate lot and then I’ll show you what I’ve found over there.’ He jerked his head back towards the stack of prints he had been looking through earlier.