Stuart Pawson - The Picasso Scam

Except just once. I'd had a bit of a relapse after they brought me to Heckley General and was lying with a tube up my nose and a drip in my arm. The nurse was smiling as she held the screen wide open and told me I had a visitor. Julie hobbled in on her new crutches.

"Hello," she said, softly.

I tried to smile at her, but my throat felt as if I'd swallowed a chainsaw.

"My mum told me what happened to you. I hope you get well soon. I've brought you something to read." She wobbled alarmingly on the crutches as she retrieved a magazine from the pocket of her dressing gown, and held up the latest copy of Just Seventeen.

I managed to say "Thanks' as she placed it on my cabinet.

After an awkward silence she said: "Martin came to see me. And Claire and some girls from school. I think Claire fancies him. She says she's going to tell him some names of… you know… the drugs thing."

I shook my head. "It doesn't… matter," I croaked.

"Are you in pain?" she asked with concern.

I gathered up my reserves of strength and courage and mumbled: "Only … when… I laugh."

She smiled at me. Her face really was bonny. As if an afterthought she dipped into her pocket again and produced the teddy bear. "He's yours now," she told me, as I reached out for him.

I held him up so I could see him without moving my head. One eye was missing and an arm was hanging on by a thread. "What's he… called?"

I asked.

Julie manoeuvred on her crutches and pointed herself towards the way out. "Douglas," she said, over her shoulder, "Douglas Bear-da."

I watched her swing hesitantly away. You'll be all right, I thought.

Then I drifted off into the best untroubled sleep I'd had for months, with Douglas watching over me from the bedside locker.

They'd removed a few feet of my intestine and a piece of liver, but it wasn't a problem. The doctor told me that I still had twenty-odd feet of gut left, and the liver is the only major organ we have that can regenerate itself. I was in nearly-new condition and my warranty was still valid.

"Just go easy on the alcohol," he told me, on the morning I was discharged, 'and lay off the fried food."

"No problem, Doc. What about my sex life? Will that have been affected?"

"No, of course not," he replied in his most reassuring manner.

"Pity," I said. "I was hoping it would have been."

The waiter asked if we preferred our coffee and liqueurs where we were, or would we rather make ourselves comfortable in the lounge.

"In the lounge?" suggested Gilbert.

Annabelle and Molly nodded their acquiescence, so we all moved through and resettled ourselves in the easy chairs round a low table.

"You know," said Molly to Annabelle, 'this is the first time Gilbert has ever told me about a case. Usually I have to be content with what I can glean from the papers." She turned to her husband: "Go on then, finish it off: what happened to this Cakebread man?"

The waiter appeared with the coffees. He placed them on the table and told me that my tea would be along in a moment, in the tone of voice he normally reserved for customers who'd asked for the ketchup.

When he'd gone Gilbert said: "Well, the local police put out an APW that's an all-ports warning for Cakebread, but, frankly, they were a bit slow. He made it all the way to Blackpool airport, where his plane was. He'd flown it the day before and left instructions for it to be refuelled and serviced for use the following weekend. It hadn't been done though. He made an un authorised take-off and headed south. The tower alerted us and the R.A.F and various tracking stations, and he was shadowed all the way. When it was obvious that he was making for foreign parts the R.A.F asked the Americans for assistance. Apparently our planes are too fast and the helicopters haven't the range. The Yanks had an 10 stooging around somewhere…"

"What, an old BSA motorbike?" I interrupted. "My father had one of those when I was a kid."

"No, dumbo, it's an aeroplane. Weird thing with two big jet engines on the back. Apparently they can fly quite slowly if necessary. So this A10 tagged on to Cakebread's tail and followed him. Somewhere off the Channel Isles he ran out of fuel and ditched in the sea. It was dark by then. A fishing boat recovered his body next morning."

We sat in silence for a few moments. Death, even the death of an enemy, always deserves a few private thoughts. I poured a cup of tea and sweetened it with half a sachet of sugar.

"Why did he shoot… Truscott, was it?" asked Molly.

Gilbert didn't volunteer a reply, so I did. "We can't be sure," I said. "To begin with, Truscott was bearing down on him brandishing a gun. It may have flashed through his mind that the game was up and Truscott could turn Queen's evidence. Alternatively, he may have realised that Rudi had given the game away, and shot him in anger.

Another possibility is that he'd intended to kill him all along, once he had no further use for him. We'll never know the truth."

I looked at Annabelle and we exchanged smiles. She was wearing a navy-blue pinstriped suit with red blouse and accessories and looked incredibly beautiful. Her skirt was shorter than I would have expected, displaying a pair of elegant knees that gave me a pain in my operation. I wasn't complaining; I just wanted to sit there for ever, basking on the edge of her limelight.

"That's it," announced Gilbert. "No more shop talk. Have you seen the price of cauliflowers lately, Annabelle? That's what we ought to be doing: growing cauliflowers."

She laughed at him. "Could I just ask one more question?" she said.

"You, Annabelle, can ask as many questions as you like."

I was going to have to watch Gilbert; he was as bewitched as I was.

"This Truscott man. Why did he approach Charles in the first place?

What was he thinking of?"

"Good question," replied Gilbert. "I'll let my trusty lieutenant answer that one."

I lowered my cup. "Vanity," I said. "Truscott had a very desirable lifestyle. He'd stopped lecturing and lived by his paintings his copies of other artists' works. He'd sell to dealers, at an inflated price, without making any claims or telling any lies. They'd show the pictures to gullible gallery owners, again being somewhat frugal with the truth. There's nobody easier to cheat than a greedy person who thinks he's pulling a fast one. The painting would find itself on somebody's wall, credited to one of the masters. Truscott wasn't satisfied with that, though. He wanted recognition for himself, and it was gnawing at his heart that he didn't get any. There's a popular belief that artists are only famous after death. When Cakebread came to him with this scheme he saw it as a way of making a million or two, then vanishing, presumed dead, after leaking the information that the Art Aid paintings were really his work. He wanted the best of both worlds. I was the stooge he chose to make the leak."

"I see. Or I think I do. And the real paintings were traded for drugs in North Africa?"

That's right."

"Were any drugs recovered?"

"Yes, quite a haul. Mrs. Cakebread spilled the beans to save her own skin."

We said goodbye to Molly and Gilbert in the car park and I drove Annabelle back towards the Old Vicarage. On the way she asked me about the Picasso. "Will they be able to tell which is the real one?"

"No problem; they'll just X-ray them both."

"Won't the canvas be different on the modern one?" she said.

"Not necessarily. There are thousands of cheap Victorian paintings about. Just about every house sale has a few. Truscott would buy them all, just for the canvas and the frames."

"You're very knowledgeable about art."

"Not really, and I did attend art college. Maybe it wasn't a complete waste of time after all."