James Twining - The Gilded Seal

‘He was crucified, Marco,’ Tom snapped. ‘Nailed to a doorway in a yard full of dog shit and used rubbers. You call that lucky?’

He turned away and stared angrily at the open doorway. The small part of him that had voiced a faint voice of hope that Rafael could not be dead, that this must all be some terrible mistake, was suddenly tellingly muted. This was where Rafael’s life had ebbed away, retreating a little further out of reach with every agonised breath. He almost wished he’d taken Dominique’s advice and stayed away.

There was a long silence. Gillez, his jaw clicking as he exercised it slowly from side to side, appeared to be waiting for Tom to say something.

‘Would you like to see the photos?’ he asked eventually, thrusting the file hopefully towards Tom.

‘No.’ Tom turned away in distaste, a brief mental image forming of Gillez as a child, pulling the legs off a crab and watching it struggle at the bottom of his bucket. ‘Just tell me what it says.’

Gillez gave a disappointed shrug and turned the page.

‘Rafael Quintavalle. White male. Age fifty-six. Found dead on the Domingo de Resurrección – Easter Sunday. Homicidio . The coroner estimated he’d been here two to three days. He was identified by his step-daughter.’

‘Eva?’ Tom asked in surprise. ‘She’s here?’

‘You know her?’

‘Used to.’ Tom nodded with a sigh.

‘She’s a wild one,’ Gillez said with a whistle. ‘It says here the FBI arrested her for diamond smuggling.’

‘That was a long time ago. What else does it say about Rafael?’

‘He was last seen at the Macarena procession on Jueves Santo – Holy Thursday. At least two people claim they saw him going for confesión in the Basilica de la Macarena just before the procession set out.’

‘Confession?’ Tom gave an incredulous frown. ‘Are you sure?’

‘That’s what it says.’ Again Gillez thrust the file towards him.

‘What does it say about his apartment? Did the police find anything there?’

‘It had already been searched by the time they arrived. They were too late.’

‘I was too late,’ Tom murmured to himself.

‘You knew him well?’ Gillez, fanning himself with one of the photographs, sounded intrigued.

‘Rafael and I did a couple of jobs once,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In the early days. I don’t know why, but we clicked. We’ve been friends ever since.’

He paused, thinking back to when he’d left the CIA, or rather when they’d decided that he’d become a dangerous liability that needed silencing. Rafael had been there for him when he’d gone on the run, had helped set him up in the business, introduced him to the right people, Archie amongst them. He thought back to their friendship and the good times they’d shared. All that was gone now.

‘Rafael was old school, a real character. He taught me a lot about the way the game was played. He taught me a lot about myself. I trusted him. He trusted me. In our business, that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘They say he was a good forger.’

‘One of the best,’ Tom agreed. ‘He’s got two in the Getty and three more in the Prado. And they’re just the ones he told me about.’

‘But he’d retired?’ Gillez sounded uncertain.

‘That’s what he told me.’ Tom shrugged. ‘But retired people don’t get crucified.’

Gillez nodded at this, as if he’d come to the same conclusion. Tom locked eyes with him.

‘What is it?’

‘ Aquí .’

Gillez stepped towards the small well and pointed at the stone step leading up to it. More white chalk marks had been drawn on the floor and the stone.

‘We think he set fire to something before they killed him. A small notebook or something like that. Then he cut himself.’ His eyes shone excitedly, his razor-edged nose quivering as if he’d picked up a scent. ‘The index finger of his right hand was covered in blood.’

‘He wrote something, didn’t he?’ Tom guessed breathlessly. ‘Show me.’

Lexington Avenue, Upper East Side, New York

19th April – 11.25 p.m.

‘The thing is, Special Agent Browne… I’m awful busy.’

If Jennifer had heard those words once since leaving Razi that morning, she’d heard them ten times.

Each visit she’d made had played out the same way: an expectant smile from the gallery owner that had wilted the moment they realised she was not a potential client. Then a slow, deliberate nodding of the head to feign interest in her questions, their eyes glazing over all the while. Shortly thereafter came hesitation, and a sudden distracted interest in a painting that needed straightening or a chest requiring a polish – anything to play for time. Finally, an excuse along the lines of the one that had just been given.

‘Mr Wilson, this won’t take long.’

With a weary sigh, Wilson took his spectacles off, folded them carefully and placed them on the desk in front of him. His pinched features and fussy, slightly arch movements, suggested to Jennifer the type of person who insisted on cataloguing their CDs not only by year of recording, but also by conductor.

‘Very well.’

‘Do you know Reuben Razi?’

‘Is that who this is about?’

‘You do know him then?’

‘I know of him. He’s a buyer. In this business that gets you known.’ He gestured at the paintings carefully arranged around the walls of his gallery, as if to indicate that he too was well known in the art world. ‘But I’ve never met him. He isn’t really involved in the art scene here in Manhattan.’

‘He’s a competitor of yours.’

‘Competitor is such a vulgar word,’ Wilson said, his top lip lifting off his square teeth as he wrinkled his nose. ‘We’re partners, really; partners in a shared cultural enterprise. We’re not like those sharks on Wall Street. We don’t take lumps out of each other any time someone swims too close. Our business is a bit more civilised than that.’

Jennifer bit her tongue, wanting to pick Wilson up on almost every point he’d just made, but knowing she’d only make things more difficult than they already were. Besides, she wasn’t sure whether she was annoyed because she disagreed with him, or because of his pompous, self-satisfied manner.

‘But it is a business. At the end of the day, surely you’re all in it to make money?’

‘We’re in it for the art,’ he corrected her tartly. ‘The money is just a happy coincidence.’

Judging from his immaculate hand-made suit and glittering Cartier wristwatch, it was a coincidence that Jennifer sensed Wilson was taking full advantage of.

‘Would you say Mr Razi is a well-respected member of the Manhattan art community?’ she probed.

‘Of course.’ Wilson nodded, perhaps just a little too emphatically, she thought.

‘You’ve never heard of him falling out with anyone?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ he said, with a firm shake of his head. ‘In fact, I heard he can be … quite charming.’ Wilson bared his teeth with what she assumed was an attempt to look charming himself. She stifled a smile.

‘Did you hear about a fight that he was involved in a few months ago?’

‘I don’t listen to gossip,’ Wilson sniffed disdainfully.

‘It was picked up by the press. A man had his arm broken. An attorney here in Manhattan, by the name of Herbie Hammon. Have you any idea what they were fighting about?’

‘I don’t follow the news either,’ said Wilson with a perfunctory shake of the head. ‘All doom and gloom and celebrity tittle-tattle. I suggest you go and ask Mr Hammon yourself.’

‘I have an appointment to see him later today,’ she said with a thin smile, noting a rolled-up copy of that day’s New York Times peeking out from his trash can. ‘It’s strange – not a single dealer I have spoken to today seems to have heard of that fight, or have an opinion as to what it was about.’