Piltdown Picasso

Robin Richards

Description

The Piltdown Picasso is a fast-moving, well-plotted thriller, peopled by compelling characters shot through with a strong thread of humour. Matthew (Fax) Fairfax, a man with a past, arrives back in London after spending some years travelling and is quickly drawn into the capital's fine art community. After helping a friend out with a favour he finds himself framed as the prime suspect when celebrity Mika Slade, who has recently purchased a dubious Picasso, is gunned down. Fairfax is released from police custody due to lack of evidence and joins forces with Gabi, Slade's zany PA, in an attempt to identify the murderer. They discover that beneath the gloss and polish of London's art world lurks a sleazy underbelly of drugs, insurance scams and art fraud. An industry where crooked dealers threaten, maim, kidnap and murder to ensure their lucrative trade continues in a rigged marketplace where no work of art is quite what it seems. When Gabi is taken hostage, and possibly poisoned by the fumes from the art forger's lethal liquid Bakelite, Fairfax confronts the scam's mastermind in a dramatic and fatal climax high above the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. A rip roaring tale of art and crime, this is the perfect book for all crime fiction fans.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784629281
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Piltdown Picasso
Robin Richards

Copyright © 2015 Robin Richards
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1784629 281
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

For Sarah, with love.
Contents

Cover


Recommendations…


Also by Robin Richards


Chapter One


Chapter Two


Chapter Three


Chapter Four


Chapter Five


Chapter Six


Chapter Seven


Chapter Eight


Chapter Nine


Chapter Ten


Chapter Eleven


Chapter Twelve


Chapter Thirteen


Chapter Fourteen


Chapter Fifteen


Chapter Sixteen


Chapter Seventeen


Chapter Eighteen


Chapter Nineteen


Chapter Twenty


Chapter Twenty-One


Chapter Twenty-Two


Chapter Twenty-Three


Chapter Twenty-Four


Chapter Twenty-Five


Chapter Twenty-Six


Chapter Twenty-Seven
Recommendations…
‘A thoroughly enjoyable criminal drama set in the fascinating and often shady world of art. Highly recommended.’
The Wishing Shelf
‘If you enjoy Dick Francis, you will enjoy Robin Richards.’
The Wishing Shelf
Also by Robin Richards
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Chapter One

It was the first time I’d ever held $25 million in my hands. And I wasn’t even wearing gloves.
I stopped working, just for a couple of seconds, turned and studied the faces watching me. There were five of them altogether, ranged around me in a semi-circle, expectant faces, faces whose expressions spanned the whole spectrum from anxiety through feigned indifference to something like awe – and one countenance in particular which looked like pure murder.
That one gave me a jolt.
The second jolt in as many minutes in fact, the first being his crack about my holding the 25 million. But when I looked at his face again I could see his black look wasn’t aimed at me but at the task my hands were occupied with. I shrugged, turned my back and tried to dismiss him from my mind and concentrate on the job in hand. I busied myself with the spirit level, the drill, the antique-looking brackets and the screwdriver. I ignored them all until the job was done.
It took me another five minutes to finish up, finally twisting the last brass cross-headed screw until it was nipped up tight, but not too tight. Then, I stepped back, hands on hips, to join the others in the semi-circle and to survey my efforts. A ripple of applause broke out, applause that wasn’t for me of course, neither was it for my skill at wielding a screwdriver and a drill; it was a spontaneous outburst of appreciation for the Picasso I’d just fixed to the wall.
As Picassos went this was a minor one, hence the bargain basement price of a mere 25 million US. A sketch, an oil on canvas, a crude daub depicting a woman’s face, angular, disconnected and ugly; more like a skull or an African tribal mask than a real woman’s face. He’d picked out the features in bold strokes of blue and grey paint. A poor effort by anyone’s standards but a Picasso is a Picasso and as such it commanded respect from connoisseur and layman alike.
The master himself had clearly been so dissatisfied that he hadn’t thought it was worth finishing. The background was only half there, the jaw protruded and even I could see that he’d made three attempts to change the angle of the nose and not made any effort to cover up these alterations. One of the few experts who had actually seen it had suggested it may be an early sketch prior to the creation of the groundbreaking Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and his headlong rush into Cubism, but the jury was still out on that one.
The face which was first to break out of the semi-circle and move in close to study the painting couldn’t have been more different to the image on the canvas. Nobody would have called it angular or disconnected, and no red-blooded man alive would ever have called it ugly. Mika Slade, headline-grabbing celebrity, curvaceous beauty and darling of the lads’ mags, studied the painting closely; she took in the bold strokes, its Cubist imagery and the master’s brushwork. There was a frisson of tension in the air, after all she was the one who had just shelled out 25 million big ones for this overpriced daub, and the moment the purchaser first has the chance to scrutinise their wares is always going to be a tense one. Would she hate it, love it, declare it a fake, say she’d wasted her money and demand all of her cash back? If the tabloid newspapers were anything to go by she would make some crass, lewd and off-the-cuff comment. But after what seemed like an age she stepped back, stuck her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants and scanned the assembled company.
‘If I’d just seen a photograph in a book I’d have said it was a load of old rubbish, but seeing it here, in the flesh so to speak, I think it’s amazing. Absolutely bloody amazing!’
A cheer went up around the room, dispelling the tension which had been hovering a moment earlier, then swinging around to her personal assistant, a tall willowy young woman sporting apple green and purple braids and dressed in a mismatched collection of ethnic prints topped off with a biker’s leather jacket: ‘Gabi, go break out the champagne, the good stuff.’
Hanging Picassos, even minor ones, on the walls of the Chelsea flats of notorious celebrities and swigging champagne before elevenses is not my usual line of business but, I had to admit, it did have its compensations. My name is Matthew Fairfax, Fax to my friends, and if I was to be brutally honest, I don’t have a ‘line of business’, not as such, well, not anymore. I’m a thirty-something who prides himself on being able to get on with anyone, anywhere. Appearance-wise, at a fraction over six feet I’m sturdily built, not fat but hardly athletic. I don’t stand out in a crowd but when I make the effort I scrub up tolerably well. In terms of marketable skills these days I’ll turn my hand to anything, which includes being a Picasso hanger to the rich and famous. I was in London to find myself a job. Well, that was the theory. And if the morning was anything to go by, I could do a whole lot worse than look for gainful employment in the art business. A crash course in art history might be good, an internship with Sotheby’s even better; if Henry could do it why not me?
I was only there, in Mika Slade’s flat, wielding the screwdrivers, because my friend Henry couldn’t make it. Emergency dental treatment, that was the excuse, I think. The reality, I suspect, was that new girlfriend Linda – Linda with the face of an angel and the razor-edged tongue of a harpy – made it abundantly clear she was none too pleased at the prospect of her boyfriend spending the morning in the company of the notorious and voluptuous Miss Slade, so under the circumstances, I hadn’t taken a great deal of persuading to deputise.
It was Henry’s boss, art dealer Edgar Walpole, who had apparently searched his contacts to secure the Picasso which Mika had so desired. Mika, who had just completed a 180-degree career move, and had stated publically that she was giving up her media career and was going to concentrate on art, culture and good works in future. The Picasso was to be the foundation stone of her art collection.
Alongside Edgar Walpole and I, swigging Mika Slade’s early morning champagne, was her goofy PA, Gabi, she of the multi-coloured hair and biker jacket. Gabi seemed an enthusiastic sort of a girl who did everything at a sprint. She made a comical sight, Dr Martens boots clattering on the stairs as she dashed off to the kitchen for more champagne.
Saul Gilfelen, gaunt, unshaven, the self-proclaimed ‘bad boy of rock’, and Mika’s latest boyfriend, loudly declared he hated champagne and wanted beer. This occasioned another frantic dash into the kitchen for Gabi, returning with a bottle of designer Belgian beer. Gilfelen snatched the beer out of her hand, ignored the proffered glass and took a deep swallow out of the bottle.
Finally there was Mika’s manager, Ray Kozakis. In his mid-forties, swarthy, beetle-browed Kozakis had been managing people in the media spotlight for years, so much so that he had become something of a celebrity himself. Kozakis was the one who made the initial comment about my holding $25 million in my hands, and with a look of thunder on his face he was still throwing dark glances at the painting hanging in pride of place on Mika’s wall – glances of such fiery intensity I half expected the Picasso to self-combust on the spot.
Despite Kozakis the champagne bubbles were doing a fine job of dissipating the initial tension in the room, the chatter was becoming louder and Mika held court. I found it hard to take my eyes off her. After years of exposure (in every sense of the word) in the tabloids (‘Slade Gets Laid’ was one of the more famous headlines) I had expected her made up to the nines with her plunging cleavage for all to see but no, she was clear-eyed, wearing no makeup, dressed in just a grey marl tracksuit and with her hair pulled tidily back and tied at the nape of her neck. Her skin