The Hogarth Conspiracy Read online

  Behind them Tully could hear the sound of dogs starting to bark, and a battered metallic 4 × 4 pulled up alongside the tent. As a thickset man got out of the passenger seat. Jenner called out a nervous greeting, then walked off, the sound of the dogs echoing eerily in the city night.

  Twenty-Two

  BACK INSIDE BERNIE FREELAND’S APARTMENT, ANNETTE DVORSKI noticed that her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she locked the door behind her. Throwing the baseball bat onto the sofa, she began pacing the room, trying to make sense of what she had just heard. Bernie was dead. Bernie Freeland, the man she was relying on for an easy life, was dead. Jesus, she thought angrily, why? Why was he dead? What kind of fucking accident had killed him? He never walked anywhere, so what the hell was he doing getting himself run over? It was such an ordinary, stupid way to die, she thought, flopping heavily into an armchair and staring ahead.

  He might not have known it, but Bernie Freeland had been chosen to become Annette Dvorski’s personal, lucrative pension fund. He had always liked her and had recently mentioned that he wanted to set her up in her own apartment, keep her available just for him. Not bad, Annette had thought, imagining Mrs. Fleet’s face when she told her. Rehearsing and relishing the words she would say to her bitch of a boss: I’m set for life, no more working for you, you cold freak. No more Park Street, no more Mother Fleet. I’m home free, landed one of the biggest fishes there is.

  But then a lovely, fat, unexpected bonus had dropped into Annette’s lap. Not only had she dreamed of landing Bernie Freeland, but she also dreamed of getting her hands on the Hogarth painting. She had worked for many of the art dealers from London, New York, and the Far East, and her connections were legion. How better to escape the whoring than by buying herself out? After all, she knew Arnold Fletcher and still had tentative contact with the reckless and deviant Guy Manners. She would auction the Hogarth privately, setting up a bidding war and knowing that the art hyenas would gather for the kill. All she had to do was get hold of the painting.

  But right now all Annette could do was stare ahead, unable to act. If Bernie had just managed to live a bit longer, she would have been able to tease the hiding place out of him. She knew how much he’d cared for her. When the moment had been ripe, she would have made her move, landing the Hogarth and her own personal big fish. Instead, the big fish had landed on a mortuary slab, not going anywhere. Rage and frustration overwhelmed Annette, and she hurled a glass figurine against the wall, heard it splinter into a dozen fragments. Why now? Why did he have to die now? A traffic accident, a bloody traffic accident—

  Annette stopped short, her mind in free fall. A traffic accident. But was it really? Bernie was dead; Marian was dead. Unnerved, she shivered. Two deaths happening to two people who had traveled on the same plane. Two people who had known about the Hogarth.

  The hairs rose on the back of Annette’s neck. She hurried into the bedroom, changed out of her sporting gear, and began tossing her clothes into her case. Zipping up her boots, Annette paused, cold to the bone. She was in New York, alone in a dead man’s apartment with no protection and with knowledge that had already cost two lives. Unsteadily, she stood and picked up the baseball bat. She thought of Bernie Freeland and was tempted to leave it behind, but she pushed it into her suitcase and slammed the lid closed.

  She would run, she told herself. Go back to the airport and catch the first flight home. It would be safer hiding in plain sight, much safer than going to an unfamiliar hotel. And much safer than staying in a dead man’s home. Suddenly remembering her cell phone, Annette took it out of her bag. There had been four missed calls but no messages, and she was just about to put it back in her pocket when it rang.

  Surprised, she stared at it, not recognizing the number, wondering if she should answer. It rang again, piercing in the quiet apartment, the snow muffling the usual noise outside. Again it rang, and Annette finally answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Annette Dvorski?”

  “No; she’s out.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Her hand gripped the phone, terror welling up inside her, her mouth dry as dust. “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Victor Ballam. I’m working for Mrs. Fleet.” He could tell that she was confused and pressed on. “Are you all right?”

  “Bernie Freeland’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Yes,” he said, catching the imminent panic in her voice. “Where are you?”

  “In his apartment,” Annette said, looking around.

  “On your own?”

  “No, there’s a bar mitzvah going on in here! Of course I’m on my own.”

  “I’m in New York. I’m on my way to the apartment now.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you’d be there. I’m close, really close.” Victor said, obviously running. “Just wait for me.”

  But even as he spoke, Annette heard a sound coming from the bathroom and tensed. Her voice fell almost to a whisper. “I can hear noises!”

  “Noises?”

  “Maybe … I don’t know; it could just be the plumbing. Or someone in the next apartment.”

  “Get out of there, Annette.”

  She nodded, hardly breathing. “I will, I will,” she replied, her ears straining for any other sounds. Silently, she picked up her case and tiptoed toward the door, but when she tried the handle, it was locked. “I can’t open the door!” she hissed into the phone, “It’s locked.” Frantically she rattled the door.

  On the inside, the bolts were all drawn back. Which meant that someone had locked it from the outside.

  “Jesus, I can’t open it!”

  “Is there another exit?”

  Desperate, she ran into the kitchen, looking around. “No, no other exit.”

  Terrified, she moved into the living room again. The light was dim from the heavy snowfall as she flicked on a lamp. And then she saw the footprints on the balcony outside.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she sobbed. “Oh, no. No!”

  “What is it? Annette, what is it?”

  Her eyes were fixed on the footprints, her voice hoarse.

  “Someone’s here.” She ran to the door again.

  He could hear the frantic drumming of her hands on the wood, her muffled sobbing coming desperately over the phone line.

  “Annette!” he shouted. “Annette!”

  But she didn’t answer. Victor ran the rest of the way as fast as he could. Arriving at the apartment block just as someone was leaving by the back door, he took the stairs two at a time, pushing open the fire exit doors on the seventh floor and then racing toward Bernie Freeland’s apartment. Expecting to hear Annette still banging on the door, he slowed as he approached, unnerved by the total, threatening silence. Silence in the hallway and silence coming from the locked apartment.

  “Annette?” he called anxiously. “Annette?”

  He grabbed the handle and, to his surprise, felt it turn and the door open. Inside the apartment the lights were turned off. Victor’s shadow fell onto the pale cold carpet of the dead man’s home. His heartbeat drumming in his ears, he stepped into the darkness, feeling for a light switch on the wall.

  “Annette?” he called out again. “Are you in here?”

  He groped in the darkness, urgently looking for the switch. Then he heard a soft muffled sound and turned. In that moment something struck the back of his skull with such force that he fell forward, the floor rising to meet him as he lost consciousness.

  Twenty-Three

  DOWNING HIS THIRD CUP OF ESPRESSO IN THE TASTEFUL SURROUNDINGS of the Ritz London, Lim Chang dabbed the corners of his mouth and paid his bill. Once outside on Piccadilly, he was struck by the freezing sleet of the early morning and dipped his head against the cold. The black and gilt entrance to the Burlington Arcade was enticing, but he wasn’t going to see Sir Oliver Peters. At least not yet. Although Chinatown—his immediate destination—wasn’t far, he hailed a taxi
to take him there.

  He knew that most of the residents he wanted to talk to would not be up and about so early. Most worked night hours and slept late, which might well give him a slight, if temporary, advantage. Dressed in a dark suit and coat, he fiddled nervously with the white collar of his shirt and wondered if he should have gone for less formal attire after all. But then again, he was an outsider; no point trying to pretend otherwise. Besides, his appearance would ensure that everyone noticed him. The cab pulled up outside the New World restaurant, and Lim Chang got out and paid the driver. He glanced at the red gates that signaled the entrance to Chinatown and thought, not for the first time, that they were looking shabby, the red paint a little chipped, the florid display too stereotypically Far Eastern to enchant. Or maybe he was just jaded.

  He walked past the New World restaurant and turned into Red Lion Street, watched by a Chinese woman who had her arms folded and was talking to a male kitchen hand who was rolling a smoke. From the open back door behind them came a billow of kitchen steam and the sound of dishwashers slamming closed. Skirting the pavement trash cans, Lim Chang watched as a van pulled up; two agile men opened its back doors and slammed crates of fish onto the pavement, calling out loudly in Cantonese. He nodded as he passed by, and they stared curiously after the businesslike figure, seeing him turn into one of the most notorious side alleys in London.

  Uninterested in the effect he was creating, Chang moved down the passageway, past two closed shops and a known gambling club fronting as a lap-dancing venue. When he reached the third doorway, he looked down into the basement. A light was on, and after pausing for an instant, he descended the narrow stone steps. Through the open basement door, he saw two men playing cards and a woman feeding a scrawny baby, her eyes unfocused as the child suckled. Against one window was a table piled with unwashed plates and a knotted glue of burned candle ends. On the wall beside it hung a poster of Hong Kong with an obscene image drawn on it.

  Slapping down his cards, one of the men—grossly fat and sweating profusely even though the temperature was hardly above thirty-five degrees—turned and looked at Lim Chang hovering in the doorway.

  “I need some information,” Lim Chang said simply, introducing himself to both men. He could see that his name registered, and the obese man gestured toward a chair with his puffy hand.

  Lim Chang took the plastic seat, keeping his gaze averted from the woman feeding the child, who seemed indifferent to the fact that both of her breasts were visible The room smelled unpleasantly of onions, cooked food, and the giveaway stink of bugs.

  “Information?”

  Lim Chang nodded. “Do you know of a painting coming onto the market?”

  Suspicious, the fat man looked over to his thinner companion, who idly scratched his shoulder with long yellowed fingernails. He turned bloodshot eyes to Chang.

  “A painting?”

  Chang inclined his head. “I want to know where this painting is. The artist is Hogarth, William Hogarth.”

  “Why would we know?” he said, turning to the gross man.

  “If the painting is in London, you’d know about it,” Lim Chang replied. “The Chinese government wishes to own this work. They would reward anyone well for assistance in this matter.”

  “Was it stolen?” the thinner man asked, moving to the sink and running the water. As he did so, the woman seemed to come back to life as she shoved the infant into a grubby crib and went and leaned against him.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  He ignored her and went back to the table, his bleary eyes hard as he looked at Lim Chang. “Well, was it stolen?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chang replied with awesome composure. “The Australian art dealer Bernie Freeland recently acquired the painting.”

  The fat man wiped his forehead with a cloth. “And?”

  “He’s now dead.”

  “And the painting?”

  “No one knows where it is,” Lim Chang said tonelessly. “Mr. Freeland’s death was supposedly an accident.”

  The men exchanged a glance, both picking up on the word supposedly.

  “You’ve not heard about this death? This accident?” Chang persisted. “But you know who Mr. Freeland was?”

  The obese man nodded.

  “This painting is of great significance. As I say, the Chinese government would be most desirous of owning the work.” He rose to his feet, certain that they understood. “I would pay very well for information regarding Mr. Hogarth and his whereabouts. I feel sure you will want to assist me in this.”

  Both men watched him in silence as he walked to the door, then listened to his footsteps as he climbed the basement steps. After a second or two, the fat man jerked his head.

  Moments later, a wiry little man with spatulate yellow nails was following Lim Chang through Chinatown, watching the smart figure move farther and farther from the welcoming red gates into the mire beyond.

  Surprised that he hadn’t heard from Victor, Tully considered the brief telephone conversation he had just had with Bernie Freeland’s pilot. Arrogant and short-tempered, Fairfax had answered Tully’s questions curtly, with no embellishment. Yes, he had worked for Mr. Freeland for a decade. No, he didn’t know the whores on that ill-fated flight or any of the hookers who had come and gone over the last ten years. Yes, it was a pity Freeland was dead as it would be the end to his lucrative pilot contract. And no, Fairfax said firmly, he hadn’t liked the man one iota.

  “I was doing my job, for which I was very well paid,” he’d said, his tone impatient. “I’m a pilot. I don’t mix with the passengers, especially the types Mr. Freeland liked.”

  “But there weren’t only call girls on that particular flight,” Tully had said. “There were some very important art dealers too, one of them a distinguished peer. Weren’t you tempted to talk to them?”

  “I was flying the plane.” Fairfax’s tone was pompous, self-important.

  “You could have handed it over to your copilot, John Yates.”

  “Hah! A novice. It was his first flight for Mr. Freeland. I’d hardly let him take over, even temporarily.”

  “But he must have done that now and again, if only to let you stretch your legs.”

  The pilot’s tone was metallic. “Are you trying to imply something?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I don’t like your tone—”

  Tully cut him off, oiling his ego into good temper again. “Forgive me. I appreciate your talking to me. After all, one of the young women who had been on that flight was killed shortly afterward.”

  “It didn’t happen on my plane, so it has nothing to do with me.”

  “I understand,” Tully responded patiently. “I was just wanting information for her family. They just want to know about Marian Miller’s last hours.”

  “As a whore?”

  Inwardly boiling, Tully struggled to keep his voice steady. “Nothing happened on the flight? No arguments between the passengers?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve talked to the stewards and everyone else. It seems cut and dried except for Bernie Freeland’s death. First Marian Miller’s death, then Mr. Freeland’s fatal accident. Seems oddly coincidental, doesn’t it?”

  Duncan Fairfax took in a pained breath.

  “Let me spell this out for you. I was paid a great deal of money to fly Freeland’s jet, and I liked the lifestyle. If you’re implying that I would do anything to endanger that—”

  Tully took a shot in the dark.

  “Did Mr. Freeland threaten to fire you?”

  “What? Freeland never threatened anything like that!” Fairfax snorted, caught off guard. “He promised me that it was my job for as long as I wanted it.”

  “But he’d just hired a new bright young pilot. John Yates could have turned out to be your rival.” Tully paused before changing tack. “Did you recommend John Yates for the job as your copilot?”

  “No; Mr. Freeland hired him on a personal recommendatio
n.”

  “What did you think of Mr. Yates?”

  “Very little.”

  Tully shifted gear. “What about Marian Miller?”

  “The whore?” Fairfax snapped. “What about her?”

  “Did you know her?”

  “No!”

  “Did John Yates?”

  His temper ignited. “Right, that’s it! That’s all I’m going to say. The matter’s closed.”

  “Especially for Bernie Freeland,” Tully replied archly, ringing off.

  He was thinking about the conversation as he made his way toward Peckham and the address he had been given for Terry Shaw. Knowing that the area was rough and that many of the houses were boarded up in preparation for redevelopment, he was not surprised to have his car surrounded only moments after he had arrived. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he stared back at the group of kids and then got out of the Volvo, picking out one boy and beckoning to him.

  “You a pedophile?”

  Tully sighed expansively, passing the boy a fiver. “Watch out for my car, hey?”

  “Just a fiver?”

  “Another one if it’s still got wheels when I come back, all right?” He looked at the group of kids, then glanced over to one of the boarded-up houses. “D’you know which is number twenty-three?”

  The boy with the money pointed down the street. “Next door to number forty-seven,” he said with a smirk, to the sniggering delight of his companions.

  “Of course it is,” Tully said wryly, walking off toward the occupied houses. The sleet was working itself into a temper; portentous clouds overhung the dull streets. A dog barked at Tully as he passed.

  Tully rang the bell of number twenty-three.

  “No one home,” a voice called from inside.

  “Mrs. Shaw?”

  “She’s moved.”

  “Mrs. Shaw, you’re not in any trouble; I just wanted to have a chat with you,” Tully said soothingly, staring into an old whey-colored face peering through a gap in the net door curtain.