More Spirit Than Animal

THE FALL OF TROY

The Mustang was a nice touch...I could see the attractions of speed and style. Smith said he had a garage full so I might as well take one. I never owned a car but I had driven in the army. Di Lauro was on his way, he was actually on the move, somewhere in the air between Naples and Oxford. I fired up the beast and let it roar before releasing it into the city. The Elysium Gallery would have been the venue but the day was being brokered by the Alphonso Brothers, of Cretan descent and legendary fencers of clandestine art or treasures of dubious acquisition. Looters, robbers and forgers beat a path to Antonio and Raphael Alphonso's door, secure in their discretion and their blue chip customer base. Smith had crossed palms with silver and they were waiting. They had suggested New York...Long Island to be precise. I said Oxford ...we agreed that if Oxford it should be the Sheldonian Theatre, right in the heart of the weary old city.

I sped down Banbury Road and parked up in the centre of Broad Street, a long island of vehicles between two lanes of meagre traffic. The road was permanently blocked at one end giving vehicles access only. It was gone six and workers were leaving so I found a slot easily. I didn't put a ticket on the car. I wasn't sure I'd be needing it again. Broad Street, the Tudor killing ground for the Kings traitors, burned to ashes just outside the city walls, martyrs to a heavenly cause.

I was met by Colorado who took me up the steps to the horse shoe shaped theatre mellow in Cotswold stone, beyond the faux classical heads grinning and gurning atop a row of stone pillars, monolithic witnesses of uncertain origin. On the back of one of their heads was carved a small bird, a wren, commemorating the genius architect of this singular construction. The man brought to the door was the elder of the Alphonso brothers, Antonio, rotund, shabby and oily, bewhiskered, rheumy eyes and beaming the crocodile grin of the overfed but avaricious. Hands shaken. The brothers were legendary in the world of clandestine transactions, brokers to the underworld. Scrupulously efficient they were trusted as long as the price was right. They were men who knew too much, making them dangerous and powerful deal brokers. I noted an armed presence outside and in the theatre itself.

'It's all set, confirmed Colorado...as we entered the main theatre. There was no stage, just a small arena before rising banks of seats set in an arc. The grand piano that normally dominated the space had been pushed to one side, making way for the easel with the covered painting, the gift horse.

'Signore Di Lauro is expected at Kidlington within the hour,' the oily sanctimony of the elder of the brothers did little to endear me to him...why should it...he was bring well paid by me or was it the Toad...Colorado never made it clear to me...no matter this wasn't about money, this was about blood.....

I felt no compulsion to remove the cloth, to take one last look at perhaps my greatest work...or at least my last.

By the time Cassie had left, the germ of an idea was fermenting. Now, did Cassie foretell what would unfold next or did I lift the idea from what she told me? I don't think I will ever know now. All I know is that when the white witch departed I immediately abandoned Rembrandt's The Mill, and started on The Gift, my own watery Lorelei, my Trojan Horse to be dragged up to the very walls of the city. First things first, the choice of a subject that cannot fail, selected from a parade of the damned. As master forger of the Golden Age of Dutch Masters I had become uniquely prepared to fabricate the studied allure, common and essential to all Trojan Whores, the blue print of guile indeed. All I needed now was to analyse an original as much as fate allowed and begin. The secret of getting ahead is to get started as the man from Connecticut once said. And so I chose my prodigal child and got started.

On St Patrick's Day night in March 1990 two thieves disguised as policemen walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, overpowered security and tore from their frames thirteen of the greatest works of art ever stolen. The cream of the crop was the 17th century domestic idyll the CONCERT by the Dutch master JOHANNES VERMEER, now valued at an eye watering $200,000,000, to who no one is prepared to say.