In addition he was in demand by serious art collectors unable or unwilling to pay the escalating insurance premiums on their works, to make copies which could still be displayed in their homes, while the originals remained secure in bank vaults.
Which was why Daniel Hegarty was totally unfazed by the photographs of the front and rear of the painting he was now looking at, early on this glorious October Monday morning. Two lovers in a forest of sun-dappled trees, with a lake behind them, and a plinth close to them on which sat a winged figure. He was already familiar with this painting and had some difficulty concealing a smile.
The man who had brought them to his Saltdean home was Robert Kilgore, for whom he had done a number of previous commissions copying old masters.
‘Yeah, Robert,’ Hegarty said. ‘No problem. How long can you give me?’
‘How long do you need, Mr Hegarty?’ Kilgore asked him politely.
They were seated in the large open-plan living room, the walls lined with Hegarty’s paintings ranging from Norman Rockwell to Caravaggio, and there was a smell of oil paint in the air.
The artist wore his years well; with an elegant head of gelled, spiky silver hair, he exuded the aura of a fit man comfortable in his skin, and had an easy demeanour to go with it, as well as his charming and confident wife, Natalie, who sat in the room with them.
‘Well, Robert,’ he said, staring at the highly detailed photographs, ‘that would depend as usual on how far you went and how much you want to pay. If you want a pukka job that would stand up to every forensic test, that will cost you more. I’d use an old French religious canvas — I’ve a mate in France who’s an antiques dealer and sources them for me — that would be several grand extra. Up to you. But I’ll tell you, what you have here, if it is real, is one of the most stunning pieces anyone has ever brought me.’
‘Do you think it is real, Mr Hegarty?’
He shrugged. ‘Hard to tell from photographs. But from what I can see, if it is a Sexton Blake, whoever did it is a better man than me, Gunga Din.’ He shrugged again. ‘What about you? Do you think it’s real, Robert? Do you believe it’s real?’
‘My employer and I have reason to believe it might be.’
Hegarty whistled. ‘So, two questions. Firstly, where the hell is it, and why couldn’t you bring it here — assuming it’s not hot? And secondly, why do you want a copy?’
‘Too many questions, Mr Hegarty.’
He gave Kilgore a sideways look. ‘Meaning?’
‘Just tell me how long you’d need.’
‘Four weeks, maybe six weeks to be safe.’
‘What? Six weeks? You’re busy?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, but that’s not the issue. I can do the copy in a couple of days, no problem, but I need to get rid of the smell of the oil and the varnish — that’s the giveaway with a copy of an old master. I can buy canvas from around this same period that Fragonard was painting, in the late seventeen hundreds, but not the paints themselves. I’d have to grind them up from the same plants and insects Fragonard used to make his pigments. Cochineal, all of that, if you want to avoid modern tests rumbling it. Then I’d need to get the craquelure on it. After that, my mate Billy, a chain smoker, has it in his house for a few days — that way the paintings get properly aged.’
‘For my purposes and my employer’s none of that will be necessary,’ Kilgore said. ‘All we need is a perfect facsimile. We’re not talking about sophistication here. The people who currently have this picture already think it might be a fake — a Sexton Blake, as you call it — but they aren’t certain. Let’s just say all we want to do is convince them it is a fake, for sure.’
Hegarty looked at him levelly, then grinned broadly. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand your game.’
Kilgore nodded, unsmiling. ‘A perfect copy, two days?’
‘Give me three.’
‘And your price?’
‘Ten thousand.’
‘That’s a lot more than the last commission we gave you.’
‘This is a lot harder.’
The American pursed his lips, then nodded. ‘I’ll grant you that. It had better be good.’
‘Robert, it will look good. Just don’t smell it or subject it to forensic analysis. Do we have a deal?’
Kilgore reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a wad of £50 notes held together by an elastic band.
50
Monday, 28 October
It was an old habit, dating back to when, early in his career, Roy Grace had first transferred from uniform to CID. As a junior Detective Constable at Brighton police station, he tried to learn as much as he could about the city’s crime and its criminals, and found the best resource was the constantly updated computer log of all reported crime and incidents, and the follow-ups. These were known traditionally as serials, as each incident was given a serial number.
From his very first day in CID, he would come in early, before his shift began, and read through the serials of the past twenty-four hours. Over the years, with his highly retentive — near photographic — memory, he had built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the regular offenders, as well as being on top of any changes in crime patterns, from house burglaries to moped theft, to street crimes, to internet fraud.
Even though he had long since moved into Major Crime, dealing mostly with homicide, reading the serials was still the way he liked to start his working day, seeing what was going on in his city, which he still considered his manor, as well as throughout the counties of Sussex and Surrey, which came under his remit. And scanning them at 7.45 a.m. on this Monday morning, he saw all the usual weekend detritus of fights in pubs, bars and streets in many of the town centres of Sussex, as well as burglaries, vehicle thefts, street robberies, a flasher, an assault, and someone missing after a midnight swim. But then he came to one serial that stopped him in his tracks.
He read it through carefully, noting the names of the victims and the attending officers then, fifteen minutes later, carried it in his head through into the briefing of Operation Canvas.
Seated with his team in the conference room, he opened the meeting by saying, ‘Last week at our meeting I raised the issue of the couple who had brought along a painting to the Antiques Roadshow. The pictures expert was very excited. He thought it might be one of the long-lost paintings the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard had done of the four seasons.’
He continued. ‘In light of the possible connection to Charlie Porteous, we made some enquiries and found out the name and address of the couple who took it to the show, a Mr and Mrs Kipling — Harry and Freya. He’s a builder and she’s a teacher, living in Patcham. Norman and Velvet subsequently visited them and talked to Mrs Kipling.’ He glanced at both detectives by way of acknowledgment. ‘They reported back that they believed Mrs Kipling’s story that they bought the painting in a car boot sale because they liked the frame. At that point there was another painting over the possible high-value one beneath.’
Potting and Wilde both nodded in confirmation.
‘I’ve just this morning checked the weekend serials and guess what? It appears the Kiplings had a burglary at their home on Saturday night.’
‘Was the painting taken, boss?’ Jack Alexander asked.
‘Nothing was taken, apparently.’
Grace looked around at the sea of frowns. ‘The couple called it in at a quarter to two on Sunday morning. A response crew, PCs John Alldridge and Dave Simmons, attended. They reported there was very clear evidence of a break-in — a windowpane was smashed — but nothing appeared to have been taken. In a follow-up post on the serials, Alldridge concluded that the couple may have disturbed the intruder who fled empty-handed.’ He paused. ‘My sense is that it is too much of a coincidence to dismiss that an attempted burglary was made on the Kiplings less than a week after Antiques Roadshow broadcast their possible Fragonard painting.’ He looked at the team and saw nods of agreement.