5. The Picassos
CHAPTER 5
THE PICASSOS
The house was a big Edwardian job overlooking the water. It was a furnished rental, so the old leather sofa, stiff-backed chairs, and grandfather clock did not reflect Mr. Townes’s personality. Neither did the fussy flowery wallpaper and the thick red carpeting, which looked prewar.
There were four bedrooms upstairs, but three of them had apparently been converted into storage rooms for canvases and paint. Townes’s bedroom was a spartan room at the back, with a single bed and a chest of drawers. In a cupboard, there were some shirts, a black polo-neck sweater, a couple of T-shirts, and a raincoat. A second bespoke suit from Browne and Company. This one was also a linen cotton blend, cream-colored, light and soft to the touch.
The entire back area of his house had been converted into an art studio. It was in a rather nice conservatory with a huge skylight and big south-facing windows overlooking the lough.
Townes’s paintings were all over the shop and weren’t terribly interesting. Portraits of local people and landscapes in the mold of Jack B. Yeats. The colors didn’t leap out at you, and the people in the pictures were rather lifeless (but then, in all honestly, so were most of the subjects around these parts).
Crabbie and I searched the house peeler-style: thoroughly, carefully, professionally. But it looked as though it had already been depersonalized thoroughly, carefully, and professionally. No passports, no driver’s license, no video-club ID. We didn’t find any letters or blackmail notes or gambling receipts. No little black book detailing affairs, no diary, no eye-opening porn stash, no regular porn stash.
I put on a pair of latex gloves and went out to his bin. Rummaging through that, I didn’t find any receipts either, not even from a supermarket.
“He might be a man who just doesn’t keep receipts,” Crabbie said.
We looked in the fireplace but couldn’t tell from the ash whether he burned his personal correspondence.
“This is bloody peculiar,” I said. “Let’s start over.”
Again, we searched the house for anything that might reveal where Mr. Townes had come from, or even a clue to his provenance.
Nothing.
“Aye,” Crabbie agreed. “Strange.”
A second canvassing of the neighbors also revealed nothing. Quiet man who kept to himself, and in Ulster no higher compliment could ever be paid to anyone. You could be killing prostitutes by the score in some basement dungeon, but if you were a quiet man who kept to himself, the neighbors wouldn’t badmouth you to the cops or the TV crews.
No basement dungeon, by the way. (We checked.)
Back inside to look at the pictures again. Half-finished portraits of local children and families. Still lifes of flowers and leaves. Some of the landscapes revealed a bit of information: he had extensively painted the County Antrim coast and the Fermanagh lakes, and he had made several attempts at Ben Bulben in County Sligo. There even looked to be one of Monet-style haystacks. So he got around a bit.
“Do you want a cup of tea, Sean?” Crabbie asked.
“Third cup of the night, but why not?”
Crabbie stuck the kettle on, and I retired to the living room, which had a well-stuffed bookcase. On top of it were a few big art books—Kandinsky, Roy Lichtenstein, Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. Not exactly the schools that Mr. Townes followed in his own works.
Above the bookcase were two possibly original Picasso etchings—which, if genuine, would almost certainly be the most valuable pieces of art in the house. They were tiny and they were signed, but I couldn’t tell if they were prints from a shop, or the genuine article. I held them up to the light and looked at the back, but I couldn’t figure them out. They were small and they looked old, but they could easily be prints or copies. Hmmm.
I examined the bookcase. Bookcases were better than nothing at pointing you toward someone’s personality. Thrillers, art books, a few history books, and quite the collection of Penguin Classics. I thumbed through a few of them looking for receipts or bookmarks, but nothing fell out.
The last of the long summer twilight had gone now, and I flipped the lights on. At this time of year, full darkness didn’t come until eleven, so it must be pretty late night now. I tapped my watch, but I had forgotten to wind it. The grandfather clock claimed it was 6:17, which I doubted. The living room had no TV or radio or stereo for me to flick on and find out what hour it was in the rest of the world.
“What time is it?” I shouted to Crabbie.
“Can’t talk; I’m on the phone to the station!” he yelled back.
I went to the living room windows and looked out at the street. Eerily quiet now. I’d sent all the coppers back to the station, except for a constable I would keep outside to secure the crime scene, and one forensic officer finishing up her work.
Crabbie came into the living room holding two teacups and looking glum.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“No sign of the stolen car yet. And no appearance of Quentin Townes on the electoral register, the central criminal registry, or the Interpol registry. He never applied for a passport under that name north or south of the border, and he never got a driver’s license under that name either. Here’s your tea. I told them to try every database we had, ’cause I knew you’d want that.”
“Aye, I do. And?”
“It’ll take them a bit. They’ll call us.”
I took the mug and looked at him askance. “No biscuits, mate?”
“Didn’t seem right to nick his biscuits,” Crabbie replied.
“You’re drinking his tea.”
“Tea’s one thing; food’s another,” he said definitively. Crabbie had very firm moral boundaries, and if you didn’t want to upset him it was best not to question him about the geographies of those boundaries.
He was looking off kilter, was the Crabman.
“Here’s one for you,” I said. “Why did the dairy farmer get his wife another acre of pasture for her wedding anniversary?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because love is a cattlefield.”
Crabbie stared into his teacup. I could tell he’d missed this quality banter.
“You see those drawing things above the fireplace?” I asked.
“The wee ones?”
“Yeah.”
“Picassos.”
Even Crabbie knew who Picasso was. He almost choked on his tea.
“Originals?”
“I think so.”
“They must be worth millions!”
I shook my head. “Nah. They’re etchings. He printed thousands of the things in his lifetime. They’ve got to be worth some serious coin, though... but not millions.”
“So Mr. Townes had some money.”
“Oh, yes. He’s driving a brand-new Jag. He’s renting a big four-bedroom house overlooking the water in the nicest part of Carrickfergus. He’s wearing handmade suits and he’s got two Picasso etchings. Our boy had some change.”
We sipped our tea and thought.
“I’ve got one for you. From our Johnnie. He said try this out on Uncle Sean.”
“Go on, then.”
“Which trombonist has the highest IQ?”
“J. J. Johnson?” I said immediately, as J. J. was known to be a genius on bone.
“Glenn Miller,” Crabbie said with a twinkle in his eye, which meant that we were about to receive that rarest of things, a Sergeant John McCrabban joke.
“Why Glenn Miller?” I said, playing my part.
“Because Glenn Miller came up with the big band theory,” Crabbie said, and like an ancient ship breaking up on a reef, his face cracked into a smile.
You couldn’t help but smile back.
“That’s very good. Tell Johnnie he got me.”
“I will.”
“There’s the phone.”
I picked it up, and it was yet more negation from the station.
“No sign of Quentin Townes in any database known to man,” I told Crabbie.
“What about the car?”
“Still nothing.”
“Maybe’s he’s a forger,” Crabbie said, looking at the living room paintings.
I ran with the idea. “Hmmm, I like that. He forges some masterpiece; the dealer takes the picture and then hires a hit man to rub him out so that no rumors about the provenance ever leak out.”
“Could be.”
I shook my head. “But wouldn’t there be preliminary drawings and sketches of said masterpiece? And we didn’t find any of those. No sketches in the style of a lost Rembrandt.”
“He burned them like he burned all his receipts and letters. He’s a cautious man.”
“Aye, okay, I’ll run with that. So let’s finish our tea and take another look at his paintings.”
We went back into the conservatory, but it was as we saw the first time. Commonplace, “easy-listening” stuff. No secret masterpieces or drawings or studies for such works.
Back to the living room.
In this, his personal space, his sanctuary, he preferred other people’s art.
A framed Rothko print, a very large Gauguin reproduction, a National Gallery Later Impressionists Exhibition poster, and those bloody Picassos.
“What do you think of these?” I asked Crabbie.
He lit his pipe, had a good puff, and examined them with me.
“Not really my cup of tea, Sean,” he said at last.
The Picassos were of a bearded man and a woman, both nude. Not really my thing either. They were about the size of a big hardback book, and surely if they were originals they’d be worth a few quid.
I went outside to the FO, asked to borrow her Polaroid camera, came back inside, and took pictures of both Picassos.
“What did you do that for?” Crabbie asked.
“I’ll show them to Archie Simmons. He’ll know whether they’re the real deal or not.”
“Or he’ll tell you they’re fake, and when they’re having the estate sale he’ll snap them up and sell them.”
Archie was, admittedly, not the most trustworthy character on the face of the earth.
I looked at the large Gaugin reproduction. It appeared to be called. D'où Venons-Nous? Que Sommes-Nous? Où Allons-Nous? In other words: Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going?
It was the usual Polynesian scene with muted colors and oddly rendered people. “Is it just me, or is Gauguin a bit shit?”
Crabbie looked at the painting. “Well, I’m no expert?—”
“But you know what you like?—”
“Aye.”
“And these?”
“Not my sort of thing at all either. Gauguin, you say? Name rings a bell.”
“Friend of Van Gogh. Left his family to become a painter and moved to the South Seas.” I stifled a yawn and looked out the window. It had begun to drizzle now, and the moon was covered not by a sixpence but by dark Ulster clouds. “What time is it?”
“A quarter to twelve.”
“We should head on, Crabbie,” I said. “We’re achieving nothing here. Check the Picasso angle in the morning.”
We were just cleaning the tea mugs and about to head out the door when we bumped into the chief inspector. Unlucky us.
“I’m surprised to see you, sir. I thought you’d gone home. I would have made you some tea.”
“I did go home. I came back. I bring tidings.”
“Glad tidings?”
“Middling tidings. Were you lads talking about art?” he asked, casting a mildly amazed glance McCrabban’s way.
“A little bit of art criticism. A little bit of conversation about jazz trombonists.”
“I heard the word ‘Picasso.’”
I showed him the etchings we’d been jawing about. McArthur leaned forward to touch one of them.
“Careful, sir, we think they might possibly be originals,” I said.
McArthur snatched his finger back like a scolded schoolboy.
“How much is this stuff worth?” he asked, gesturing at the pictures on the walls of the living room.
“We think it’s all largely worthless except for these two.”
“Who is the next of kin?”
“Unfortunately, we have no idea.”
“No idea?”
“We reckon the name Quentin Townes might be some sort of alias.”
“Really?”
“Yes sir. When we looked for him on the electoral role, he didn’t make an appearance; and when we ran his name and address through the driver’s-license system, it did not show up. No credit cards, no credit history, apparently no bank account. He appeared to have no National Insurance number, and there’s nothing on the Interpol computer.”
“How did he pay his bills? The lights work in here, don’t they?”
“Everything in cash. Got paid in cash, paid his bills in cash.”
“This is quite the mystery, isn’t it?” McArthur said.
“Yes. Mr. Townes doesn’t seem to exist.”
“Why would he do that, do you think? Pretend to be someone else?” McArthur asked.
“To avoid paying alimony to the ex-wife?” I suggested.
“Some kind of life insurance scam?” Crabbie suggested.
McArthur frowned.
“But you said you had news, sir?” I asked.
“Ah, Duffy, yes. I am indeed the bearer of tidings. They found Townes’s car burned out in the Glenfield Estate. Joyridden to death, say the forensic boys, and a Molotov tossed in the back seat.”
“Prints?”
“No prints. Thing was burned to an iron skeleton. They sprayed accelerant before throwing in the petrol bomb.”
“Very professional of these teenage hooligans,” I said with a trace of skepticism.
“The weans today are smarter than the kids of yesteryear, Sean,” Crabbie said. “And these ones know that they are compromised, not just in a carjacking but also in a murder, so it’s no wonder they took precautions.”
“Well, I suppose we should get over there, Sergeant McCrabban. Do you, er, want to come, sir?” I added reluctantly.
“Oh, yes!” he said enthusiastically. “If I wouldn’t be in the way? I could do with a lift. I walked here from the house.”
The chief inspector was a gifted administrator who had gone to the police college in Hendon and finished at the top of his class. He was Scottish, better-looking and younger than both Crabbie and I, but he was bound to be disappointed to still be a chief inspector and to still be in Carrickfergus after all these years. Still, navigating failure is a useful skill to learn, especially if you live in Northern Ireland
If I had his job, I wouldn’t hang around damp crime scenes at midnight if I could help it. His in-laws must be worse than I thought.
“It’ll probably be quite boring, sir,” I added, but he only nodded glumly and followed us outside.
We left the house and were immediately intercepted by a young copper I didn’t know.
“Are you Inspector Duffy?” she asked me.
“Who’s asking?” I said cautiously.
“WPC Green. You asked for the BT call logs for this address,” she said, holding a piece of paper.
“This is very efficient, thank you, Constable Green,” I said.
“It’s nice to meet you, sir,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Have you indeed?” I asked.
A bob of black curly hair was stuffed under her policewoman’s kepi, and her cheeks were pale and her eyes blue. Sensing danger, McCrabban took the piece of paper from her. “Thank you very much, Constable Green,” he said. “Make sure you check under your vehicle for mercury tilt switch bombs before driving back to the station.”
She nodded and walked back to her car. Crabbie handed me the phone logs. They immediately got my attention because they were very strange indeed.
I showed them to the Crabman. “That’s a bit odd,” he said.
“What is it?” the chief inspector asked. I handed him the piece of paper and then deciphered it for him in case he was slow on the uptake.
“The home phone has been activated for about two and a half months. He’s made about a hundred outgoing calls, and he’s gotten about the same number of incoming calls.”
“Okay.”
“The incoming calls have come from paint-supply places, the electric company, a newsstand, a plumber—the usual thing. And a few of the outgoing calls have gone to places like that too but look at this number here. Almost half the incoming and outgoing calls went to the same number. A phone box on Point Road in Dundalk.”
“Dundalk?”
“Dundalk,” I said again.
“Okay. Is that supposed to be significant or ominous, or something?” McArthur wondered.
“Yeah, I’d say it was a little bit ominous. What would you say, Sergeant McCrabban?”
“A bit ominous, aye,” he agreed.
“Why, for heaven’s sake?” McArthur asked.
“Well, Dundalk is in the Irish Republic?—”
“I knew that!” McArthur claimed.
“And it’s where the IRA Army Council has its HQ. A lot of the top guys in the IRA have left Belfast and moved to Dundalk. It allows them to be still pretty close to the action and they can get Northern Irish TV and radio, but they’re completely immune from police or army harassment.”
“The SAS have been over the border a few times,” McArthur protested.
“Always on lightning raids to little villages or farms contiguous to the border. Never to a big town like Dundalk,” I said.
“Even the local police won’t hassle them. Dundalk is an IRA stronghold. It’s basically their town,” Crabbie said.
“So you see, sir, if our victim was getting a lot of phone calls from a phone box on Point Road in Dundalk, it’s very suspicious indeed,” I said.
“Could he have been working for the IRA in some capacity?” McArthur asked.
“He could indeed,” I replied, pleased to see that he was finally catching on.
“Doing what?”
“Money launderer, quartermaster, forger—anything at all, really.”
“And so you’re thinking there might be more to this carjacking than meets the eye.”
I bloody did at that.
I patted the chief inspector on the shoulder. “Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s something to bear in mind, though. Let’s check out this burned-out Jag first.”