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Book excerpt

Chapter One

Terry Statham walked over to the canvas that was standing on an easel in the middle of the room and went ‘Du-du’, just like a little kid, before he pulled away the cloth that was covering it, and Angie found herself looking at Rembrandt’s ‘Self Portrait at the Age of 63’.

            They were in the front room of Terry’s flat, which he’d had converted into a studio. Paintings that Terry had done in a variety of different styles were hanging all over the whitewashed walls, but it was the face of the 63-year-old Rembrandt that claimed all of Angie’s attention. Having a man like Terry as a father, Angie had been made familiar with the works of the Old Masters from a ridiculously early age, so that even as a small child she knew certain canvases the way many little girls nowadays know their Barbie dolls and Bratz.

‘Whaddaya think?’ Terry said.

            Angie went right up close to the painting to get a better look at the surface texture, then she took a few paces back and the painting came into clearer focus before her. Yeah, that was Rembrandt all right. Her father had managed to capture him right down to the tiniest nuance of expression and gesture – that was presuming…. Angie turned to Terry and said, ‘It’s a copy, right?’

‘You tell me.’

            ‘Well I mean it must be, obviously – except that it looks far too good for that…too authentic…’ She shook her head, her pretty brown eyes wide with disbelief. ‘How’d you manage to make it seem so real?’

 ‘I guess I must’ve improved with age.’ Terry ran his hand through his thick silvery-grey hair as he spoke.

 ‘Wait a minute,’ Angie said, ‘you can’t be planning on selling it if the original’s still hanging on the wall in the National Gallery, surely?’

            Terry just kept grinning at her and didn’t say anything, and Angie reckoned she knew what that grin meant. ‘Dad, you’ll never do it,’ she said, ‘you’ll get caught.’

The following day Terry Statham walked into the National Gallery with an easel, paint and brushes. He set up the easel in front of Rembrandt’s ‘Self Portrait at the Age of 63’ and began to paint an imitation of the masterpiece that was hanging before him, there on the wall. Terry made a point of making the imitation appear very different from the original, and of vastly inferior quality, for the benefit of any onlookers.

            Then, at a time when the room was nearly empty, he threw a small cylinder down onto the floor. Smoke came out of the cylinder and Terry cried ‘Fire!’ and the few people who were in the room ran out.

Brian Silver, the gallery attendant who was acting as lookout, immediately deactivated the gallery’s CCTV system and took out the tapes that had been used that day. Then he went and manned the entrance to the room, and began directing people to the exit from the building by a different route.

            While Brian was busying himself with preventing anyone from entering the room, Terry and his partner, Kenny Jarrow, set to work. They just looked like two ordinary guys in their forties who were doing something that they did every day.

They lifted Rembrandt’s ‘Self Portrait at the Age of 63’ down off the wall and removed it from its frame. Then they removed the canvas that Terry had been working on that day from the easel, and underneath it was the ‘real’ forgery that he had already finished some time ago.

They took this ‘real’ forgery of Terry’s and put it in the frame, in place of the original, and hung it on the wall. They put the inferior, amateurish-looking copy, on top of the Rembrandt original, wrapped both the paintings in a piece of lamb’s wool, and put them in the case that Terry had brought with him.

Then Kenny went and got the CCTV tapes from Brian Silver, their man on the inside, before he and Kenny and Terry left the gallery separately.

            No one stopped Terry as he went out the back exit carrying the Rembrandt original.

 ‘Hello, Jeremy Willoughby speaking.’

‘I’ve got the Rembrandt... When can we make the exchange?’

            ‘Soon—I just need a little more time.’

            ‘Not going cold on me, are you?’

            ‘No, it’s nothing like that, I assure you,’ Willoughby said. ‘I just need a few more days to free up the whole of the fifty million... I should have it all by Saturday morning.’

            ‘I’ll call you Saturday morning,’ Terry said. ‘But listen, you’d better have it by then if you still want the painting.’

            Terry hung up.

 ‘So this is it,’ Angie said.

            ‘It’s not much to write home about, but you said you wanted to see it, so here we are.’

            There was a small kitchen area directly in front of you as you entered the flat, the bed was away to the left, under the window, and squeezed in between the kitchen area and the bed was a desk with a computer on it. Either side of the computer the desk was crammed with books and papers.

            Angie smiled and Liam took a step forwards, so that they were almost touching. They kissed and Angie felt like she didn’t want to stop. She figured she better had, though, because she didn’t want to appear too keen on him. They’d only been going out for a week, after all. ‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

            ‘I could eat.’

‘Why don’t I make us both something?’

            ‘Sure, if you’d like to.’

            So Angie fixed some pasta with tomato for the two of them. And she had just sat down next to Liam, and was about to take her first mouthful, when her mobile began to bleep. She took it out and snapped it open. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Angie, it’s me.’

‘Hi, Dad... what’s up?’

‘You seen the News today?’

‘No… why?’

‘Maybe you should... ‘

‘Da-ad… can you stop talking in code and tell me what you’re on about?’

‘I don’t wanna spoil the surprise, love.’

‘What are you talking about, Dad...?’

‘Just watch the News, darling... Must dash... Love you.’

Terry hung up.

‘What was that all about?’ Liam asked her.

‘Wish I knew.’ Angie picked up the control unit and turned the TV on, then surfed the channels until she found Sky News.

‘Not on the telly, is he...?’

‘All he said was to watch the News.’

They listened to a report on the economy, and another on the local by-elections, and then the anchor man said, ‘Today the chief curator at London’s National Gallery has announced that one of the gallery’s most valuable and important paintings has been stolen in what appears to have been an elaborate and cunning operation.

The police say the job must have been carried out by extremely intelligent professionals who possess a great deal of knowledge of the art world.

What is more, it appears that the perpetrators of the crime must be in contact with one of the world’s very best art forgers, because in stealing the painting they left a brilliant imitation in its place…

In fact, so brilliant was the forgery that the thieves left hanging on the wall in the National Gallery, in the exact same spot where the original used to hang, that nobody noticed the crime had taken place until one of the thieves called in to inform the gallery’s curator of the fact.

And there I was wondering if Dad was just bluffing and maybe looking for a little attention, Angie thought…

            She phoned him up on his mobile number.

            ‘Hello?’

            ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I hope to God you know what it is you’re doing.’

            ‘Don’t worry, okay?’

            ‘How am I not going to worry?’

            ‘You’re just like your mum used to be.’

            ‘Just be careful, Dad, will you, please.’

            ‘I’m always careful, babe… It goes with the territory.’

            Angie crossed her fingers.

            ‘Take care,’ Terry said, ‘and I’ll be in touch soon, love.’ He hung up.

Terry’s buzzer rang and he wondered who the fuck it could be, as he went and peeked through the net curtains down at the street.

‘Well I’ll be blowed,’ he said, when he saw who it was.

And figured the best thing to do was pretend to be out.

Just a case of waiting for her to go away...only she didn’t...and then he remembered he’d given her a key.

Then he heard sound of a key turning in the door to the flat...

‘Hello, Naomi darling...well this is a nice surprise, I must say.’

They hugged, and then she said, ‘You didn’t call.’

‘Been kinda busy, darlin’... Get you a cup a tea?’

‘A cold lager’d be better.’

‘I’ll see if there’s one in the fridge.’

            Terry went out to the kitchen, and came back into the living room with two cans of Stella Artois and a couple of glasses.

            He’d picked her up in a club a week ago, and bedded her the same night. Then she took off in the morning and said she’d be back. That was when he’d given her the key... He’d given it to her on an impulse, without really thinking things through, and forgotten all about it.

            Stupid of me, he thought.

            Now that she wasn’t a nice girl...only the timing was all wrong.

             Terry put on some Sonny Rollins and they talked for a bit about nothing much, and then they both found themselves sauntering into the bedroom next door.

            Terry had some trouble getting it up at first, so Naomi went down on him. He lay there while she was going to work on him, looking up at the ceiling and thinking.

            He couldn’t wait for Saturday to come around. But what if Willoughby were to say it was no go and pull out right at the last moment? Then he’d have to find another buyer somehow. He’d worry about that if and when it came to it.

            Then Terry found himself getting hard, and he rolled Naomi over onto her

back and they began to make love.

            It went well.

            Afterwards he said, ‘You gonna spend the night?’

            ‘You want me to?’

            ‘Course I do.’

            What else could he say?

            It would have been true, under normal circumstances.