‘After two or three years in Germany, I moved back to Amsterdam. By this time, I’d met Jessica. Her parents — well, her father anyway — was on the art scene. And while I was getting my life in order in Europe, my mother was doing the same in the UK by marrying the poor, oblivious millionaire, Frederick Jenkins.’ Adam uncrossed his legs and sat forwards with his elbows on his knees. ‘Here’s something I bet you don’t know, Jack. My father, Andre Erik Boogaard, was still married to my mother because she couldn’t find him to divorce him.’ Adam sat back, laughing. He rested his elbows on the arms of the leather chair and pressed the tips of his long artist’s fingers together. ‘Has he passed, do you know?’
Jack confirmed that, during their investigations, they had found a death certificate for Adam’s biological father.
Adam’s mobile rang and without a word he got up and left the room. Jack checked his own mobile again: now he was indoors he had a three-bar signal which was a huge relief. Jack reminded himself that this eloquent, charming man could be a heartless psychopath. Jack was alone with him, far from civilisation, with no backup. And at that moment he had no idea what Adam was doing.
Jack got up and wandered the room browsing the stacks of paintings, ornate empty frames, and the huge range of art materials. Then he spotted something that caught his eye: a silver picture frame containing a wedding photograph of Avril and Frederick.
‘Why should she have fond memories when I have none?’
Adam was holding two ice cold beers. He handed one to Jack and retook his seat. Jack was desperate to know who Adam had just been talking to. Had Greg called to check that he was all right and was he now on his way, crowbar in hand? As Adam drank his beer, Jack asked about the artwork that surrounded them.
‘A hobby. Buying and selling. Freddy could be a vicious, belligerent old bastard, but he was an exceptional collector. He’d not share his treasures, though; instead, he hid them away in his secret chamber so that he — and only he — could sit there, with his dick in his hand, enjoying them. My mother had no notion of their value or of the importance of their carefully documented provenance. She had money, jewellery and a fine house, but no brains to speak of. I felt sorry for her in a way: her dream of being cared for by a rich, respectable man and therefore being accepted into polite society, never happened. Jenkins mocked her ignorance, showed her little love and made her deeply unhappy. She gave up all of her friends for him, and yet was never lonelier than when she was living in that huge house behind iron gates.’
Adam laughed as he took a swig of beer before continuing.
‘My mother suddenly needed me. After years of keeping me a dirty secret, she finally needed me. Well, that’s not exactly true. What she needed was a gardener. Freddie after a few years began suffering with arthritis in his knees and the house had become a burden. God, how I wanted to reject her like she’d rejected me. But the truth was, she paid me to stay. She gave me money and a car, and all I had to do was not reveal that I was her son.’ Adam looked away and emptied his bottle. ‘Anyway, I expect that’s about where you came in, isn’t it?’
Jack decided there was no reason to delay the inevitable tricky conversation. ‘Who grew the cannabis in the greenhouse?’
‘Why are you here, DS Warr? Greg said you had good news for me, and I’m trying to figure out what that could be. Is it that you’re looking to make an arrest for the cultivation of a class B drug?’
‘If I was here to arrest you for growing cannabis, I’d have sent the local Garda,’ Jack said.
‘In that case, yes, I grew it. Her greenhouse was brimming with weeds and dead plants. I made better use of it. I can sell CBD oil in your country, but I can’t grow the raw ingredients. I learnt how to grow the stuff out here, so I knew her greenhouse would be perfect. It was a modest enterprise.’
Adam stood sharply, as though he’d just remembered that he had to be somewhere. Jack’s fingers tightened around his half-full beer bottle. ‘Another?’
Jack declined, knowing full well that he shouldn’t really have accepted the first. Adam popped out of the room to fetch himself a second beer. He shouted from elsewhere in the studio, ‘Avril was grateful to have a little spending money of her own and Freddie, as time ticked by, was grateful to live and eventually die pain-free.’
Adam returned, beer in hand and returned to his seat. ‘The cellar gallery became a neat space for bottling the CBD oil and, as money ebbed and flowed with crop cycles, whenever we were short of ready cash Avril started selling off the odd painting. She had no idea of the price of anything, of course.’
Adam went on to explain that after the first successful crop, he started shipping the CBD oil to Amsterdam and Germany — while, at around the same time, Avril had engaged the services of Jason Marks to value and sell some of the paintings. Between them, they were earning enough to pay off Freddie’s eyewatering investment debts and maintain the house. Just.
‘We started making enough money from the cannabis alone, so I wanted her to stop selling paintings. But Jason was taking advantage of her ignorance. That’s when I started shipping them over here, out of harm’s way.’
‘You were stealing from her?’
‘I was preserving history.’ Jack’s gaze swept around all of the artworks stacked against the walls. ‘She didn’t know what I’d taken or what she’d sold. She’d become more interested in the cannabis side of things. She went to California to stay with her brother-in-law, and I had the brief freedom to move more and more artworks, but then she came back with some grand ideas she’d learnt from some professional stoners out there. She wanted the enterprise to become, as she put it, “a fuckin’ empire”.’ Adam stood, and as he walked across to the door he took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘The smoke damages the canvas.’ Then he disappeared outside, giving Jack no option but to join him.
The countryside surrounding the studio was truly stunning. Jack had never seen grass as green, or fields as rolling. Roads snaked through the landscape and over the horizon, urging you to follow.
Adam inhaled the smoke and let it drift from his nostrils. ‘A year or so ago, I came back from Ireland and she’d been to a funeral in Solihull, where she’d met an old school friend.’ Adam’s speech was now slower and he seemed more tense. ‘This friend said he could help her grow her business. Tenfold, was the word he used.’ Adam shook his head and took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I warned her.’
Jack speculated on the identity of Avril’s old schoolfriend. ‘Mahoney?’
Adam claimed that to begin with he had not known how big a player Mahoney was, although he instinctively knew that he was too big for Avril. ‘He was a smooth, two-faced bastard of a man, but like my mother he had gained some kind of veneer of sophistication. She was very enamoured, and he played her like a gigolo — he might have even fucked her to keep her sweet. I could see stuff going on, his so-called helpers coming and going in trucks. I tried to persuade her not to get involved, but she was too stupid to listen, so I eventually left her to it.’
‘You kept going back for the paintings, though?’
Adam tipped his head skywards and laughed out a plume of smoke. ‘I went back for the paintings, yes. And the frames. And the equipment. And the provenance.’ He laughed again. ‘And the odd curveball to keep her guessing. Like fairy duvet sets. I even put a couple of ornaments in her dishwasher once. She was a greedy bitch, greedy and stupid. But I knew she was growing scared of him, which made it even easier for me.’