The Gilded Seal

‘It must have been a private matter.’ Wilson perched his spectacles back on his nose and peered at her impatiently. ‘Personally, I find people’s lack of willingness to speculate on the causes commendable rather than strange.’

This was going nowhere. Jennifer decided on a change of approach.

‘Have you ever been a victim of fraud here, Mr Wilson?’

‘Fraud?’ The question seemed to take him by surprise and his watery grey eyes blinked repeatedly.

‘Artistic fraud. Has anyone ever tried to sell you a forgery? Have you perhaps bought one without realising what it was at the time?’

‘What sort of a question is that?’ Wilson asked haughtily, stepping out from behind his desk and drawing himself up to his full five feet six – still a few inches shorter than Jennifer.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I take it you haven’t been working in the art world long?’

‘Less than a year,’ she admitted icily. His condescending tone was beginning to rile her, although she comforted herself with the thought that he was probably like this with everyone. Part of her couldn’t help wondering, however, if he would speak to a man in the same way. Probably not.

‘It shows.’ He took up a position close to the door as he spoke, Jennifer taking this as a rather unsubtle attempt to bring their conversation to an end. ‘A bit more experience would have taught you to tread more carefully when using f-words.’

‘F-words?’

‘Fake, forgery, fraud. Bring them up in the wrong context and you’ll find yourself on very dangerous ground.’ His tone was growing increasingly strident, almost angry.

‘I wasn’t suggesting…’

‘People’s reputations are on the line. Reputations that have taken years to establish. An accusation is made and pfff –’ he snapped his fingers ‘– it’s all gone. But what if you get it wrong? By the time you realise your mistake, lifelong relationships have been destroyed, trust shattered. Forgery is the paedophilia of the art world. Once the suspicion is raised, you’re presumed guilty even when proven innocent. It’s a shadow that never leaves you, poisoning everything you touch. So you need to be either very brave, or very sure that you’re right, before you cry forgery in this city.’

‘Even so,’ she said with a frown, ‘given the sums involved, I would have thought that forged works appear on a fairly regular –’

‘I’ve already told you,’ he snapped, his hand hovering over the door handle, his cheeks flushed, ‘none of us do this for the money. It’s…’

‘For the art, I know.’ She completed the sentence for him unsmilingly. It wasn’t the first time today she’d heard that familiar and infuriating refrain.

TWELVE (#ulink_e6eef123-b1c2-5ee7-9849-67446fafe395)

Alameda, Seville

19th April – 5.25 p.m.

Gillez led Tom round to the other side of the well. There, hastily daubed against its weather-stained stone base, were three letters, or at least what appeared to be letters, arranged in a triangle. At the top an F, to the left a Q, to the right an almost indistinct N.

‘Any ideas?’ Gillez asked hopefully, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

Tom shrugged.

‘Not really,’ he lied.

The triangle was Rafael’s symbol, an oblique reference to the mountainous region of Northern Italy his family came from and from which his name derived – Quintavalle literally meant the fifth valley. The top letter was who the message was addressed to. F for Felix. The Q was who it was from. Quintavalle. As for the N, Tom was certain that it wasn’t an N at all but an M that Rafael had been unable to complete before his attackers pounced. An M for Milo, to tell Tom that that was who was about to kill him.

‘Did you find a small gambling chip anywhere? Mother-of-pearl, inlaid with an ebony letter?’

‘What?’ The confused expression on Gillez’s face told Tom they hadn’t. Not that surprising, on reflection. Murder was probably not something Milo would want to advertise.

‘Show me the photos.’ Tom demanded icily.

‘I thought you didn’t want to…’

‘Well now I do,’ Tom insisted, his earlier reluctance forgotten.

With a shrug, Gillez pulled a handful of black-and-white photos out of the file and handed them over. Tom leafed through them slowly, his face impassive, trying to divorce the pictures of the carcase that had been strung across the open doorway from the living, feeling person he had once known. It was an impossible task and Tom knew that from now on both images were condemned to an unhappy marriage in his mind, each intimately bound up with the other.

He looked back to the inscription written in his friend’s blood. He had not given much thought to the events up at Drumlanrig Castle since he had learnt about Rafael’s fate. In fact, he had called Dorling on his way to the airport to excuse himself, temporarily at least, from the investigation.

Now, however, the image of the black cat nailed to the wall and its parallels with Rafael’s agonising death came sharply back into focus. Milo was clearly involved in both cases and wanted him to know it. The question was why.

He looked up sharply, the noise of approaching sirens interrupting his thoughts and prompting an instant, almost instinctive reaction.

‘Are they for me?’

‘Of course not,’ Gillez laughed. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Especially not to you.’

Tom stared at Gillez for moment and then cuffed him across the face. The man’s head snapped back as if it was on a spring. A small cut opened up on his right cheekbone.

‘Yes, you would,’ Tom said stonily. If there was one thing he had learned to rely on, it was Gillez’s pathological dishonesty.

Gillez glared at him angrily, his hand clutching his face.

‘Don’t you trust anyone any more?’

‘Cut the bullshit, Marco. How long have I got?’

Marco’s shoulders slumped into a sullen sulk.

‘It’s not my fault. They still want you for that Prado job. I had to give them something in exchange for the file.’

‘Don’t try and pretend you did me some sort of a favour,’ Tom snarled. ‘This was all about you. It always is. What did they catch you at this time? Bribing a judge, sleeping with the mayor’s wife? Something that made it worth selling me out for, in any case. How long have I got?’

‘One, maybe two minutes,’ Gillez admitted, still massaging his cheek. ‘They’re locking down the whole area. They don’t want you slipping away again.’

‘Then I’d better make this look convincing.’

Tom stepped forward and punched him in the face, breaking the sharp ridge of his nose with a satisfyingly loud crack. Gillez screamed and clutched his face, the file dropping from his hand, blood seeping between his fingers and dripping on to his pastel jacket and cream shoes.

‘You don’t want them thinking you let me get away, do you?’ Tom shouted as he scooped the file off the floor. The anger and frustration of the last twenty-four hours had found a strange release in the sharp stab of pain across his knuckles and Gillez’s animal yelp. He went to hit him again, but then drew back as the sound of approaching feet and muffled shouts of ‘Policía!’ reached him. Spinning round, he darted through one of the open doorways and up the stairs just as someone began pounding on the heavy gate. He was glad he’d taken the time to lock it behind them.

He continued up the crumbling staircase until he arrived at a flimsy metal door. Kicking it open, he emerged on to the flat roof. The city stretched out around him, slumbering in the dusty heat, the surrounding rooftops of burnt terracotta forming stepping stones across which, if he was quick, he could make his way to safety.

From the courtyard below came the sound of the gate splintering. Gillez’s plaintive cry echoed up the stairwell. Tom’s Spanish wasn’t fluent, but he knew enough to understand what he was blubbing.