They shook their heads. ‘We are fine, thank you,’ Potting said as they sat down, noting the vast surface of the desk was almost completely bare, apart from the computer monitor and the diffusers. ‘Actually we don’t have to declare gifts of a value less than twenty-five pounds. Or is your coffee very special?’
There was no reaction from Piper. Potting glanced at his tablet. ‘Does the name Charlie – Charles – Porteous mean anything to you, Mr Piper?’
‘May I ask why it should?’ he replied, again the only facial movement being his lips.
‘Mr Porteous was a highly respected art dealer,’ Potting said. ‘As you may perhaps remember from the news, he was murdered in October 2015.’
‘I don’t recall. I am usually abroad in October, through to the spring.’ He touched his face. ‘The damp English winter isn’t kind to my skin, but I’ve had to return on business.’
‘Did you ever have dealings with Mr Porteous?’ Wilde asked.
Piper replied, impassively, ‘The art world is a large place, with a great many dealers. I personally only do business with a very small number of them, those who I trust implicitly.’
‘Would that mean that Charlie Porteous was a dealer you did not trust?’ Potting pressed.
Piper stared back at him levelly. ‘Why should it?’
Potting shrugged, a little thrown by the reply. ‘Did you ever have any social interaction with Mr Porteous?’
‘No.’
Potting waited for Piper to say something more but he didn’t. ‘Do you remember anything about his murder? Did any associates of yours in the art world talk about it, or perhaps speculate who might have killed him and why?’
‘No.’
Piper stared at both of them hard, with his weird, cold eyes. For some moments he drummed a rat-a-tat-tat beat on the top of his desk with his manicured nails, then he opened his arms expansively and pointed at some of the pictures around the walls, before zeroing in on one. ‘Recognize this person?’
It was a head and shoulders portrait of an arrogant-looking man, with hair that looked too young for his aged face, and dressed in a red tunic with gold braid. The background was dark and sombre.
Potting and Wilde shook their heads.
‘It is one of three portraits of General Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, painted by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1812. It was stolen from our National Gallery in 1961 by a bus driver called Kempton Bunton and not returned for four years. He claimed to have taken it as a protest against the introduction by the BBC of licence fees. But there has been speculation ever since whether this was his real motive – and whether during that time one or more perfect copies were made of this painting.’
‘What are you saying?’ Velvet Wilde asked. ‘That is a copy?’
‘No, I’m not. It might be, or it might be the original. Sometimes with clever forgers it is impossible to tell. But this is not my point – I appreciate this painting for the beautiful work it is regardless of provenance. I love the history it represents.’ He fell silent for a moment then continued. ‘I see you both looking at my disfigured face. Maybe you are wondering what happened, but as you are detectives, I will credit you that you already know. Yes?’
He waited. They both nodded.
‘What happen to me changed my life and my thinking. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards. From that moment when I began to recover from my assault, I turned to the past to try to understand. I have little interest in current news, the past is where I live my life.’ He raised his arms and pointed around the room. ‘These great people and the past great artists who preserved them for us so we can still see them today. This is the world I consider my manor, not the twentieth or twenty-first century.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to have to bring intrusive twenty-first-century technology into your world, Mr Piper,’ Potting said. ‘But the reason we are here is that one of the persons we believe murdered Charlie Porteous had your number on his phone and we need to know why. Can you explain that?’
Piper stared coldly back at both of them for a few moments, then simply said, ‘No, I cannot.’
‘And you definitely never had any business dealings or social interaction with the late Charles Porteous?’
‘What part of the word no don’t you understand?’ Piper’s body language was impatient. ‘Who is this person who has or had my number in his phone contacts list?’
‘We don’t know that,’ Wilde said. ‘We were hoping you might be able to help us identify him.’
He looked at her sharply. ‘Your accent – you’re from Belfast?’ he questioned, abruptly changing the subject.
‘I am. Have you been there?’ she smiled, attempting to soften him a little.
‘My brother was there, in the army, during the Troubles. He was blown up by a parcel bomb, lost both his eyes and both his arms.’
There was an awkward moment of silence. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘It was a bad time.’
Piper did not respond and sat drumming on the desk surface again. ‘Is there anything else I can help you officers with?’ he asked, finally.
‘Does the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard mean anything to you, Mr Piper?’ Potting asked.
Piper gave him a withering look. ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Is Luxembourg small?’ He stared at them in silence.
‘You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not an expert on art.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Do you have any of Fragonard’s works in your collection?’ Potting continued.
Both detectives noticed the minutest hesitation before Piper replied. ‘That would be a dream for any art collector, Detective Sergeant Potter.’
Potting stood, not bothering to correct him, and Wilde followed his cue. ‘We won’t take up any more of your time, Mr Piper. Thank you.’
Piper said nothing, he just gave a faint nod of his head in acknowledgement.
The doors opened behind them.
47
Sunday, 27 October
The taxi dropped Harry and Freya Kipling at their house. Harry was always extra generous when he’d had a few drinks, and tonight he’d had more than a few at the dinner party at their friends, Jim and Katie Morgan. He pressed a £20 note into the palm of the driver, on top of the fare.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘We’ve had a good week!’ Harry said, slurring his words, ignoring his wife’s disapproving stare.
‘Very generous of you, gov.’
As they walked up to the front door in the mild night air, Freya, who’d drunk only marginally less, held on to his arm in case he stumbled. ‘Shit,’ Harry slurred. ‘That the time?’ He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to two.
She smiled. ‘I did suggest we left a good hour and a half ago.’
‘Yeah, but that Armagnac – that was so good.’
‘Hope it still feels that good at eight o’clock in the morning – when you go off to play golf.’
‘Hmm,’ he murmured, fishing in his pocket for the front door key. He got it in the slot and pushed the door open. As he did so, Jinx shot out past them.
‘Hey, boy!’ Freya called out to him, concerned. He never normally went out the front.
Harry tripped on the doorstep and would have fallen flat on his face if she hadn’t been holding on to him.
‘Darling, was that a twenty-quid tip you gave the driver?’
‘Was it? I meant to give him a fiver.’
She looked at him, grinning. ‘You are totally sloshed.’
‘What the hell, we’re rich! Pay it forward! Brighton cabbies have been struggling ever since they let Uber into the city. We can afford to be generous to them.’