He was glad the Restaurant Rampoldi was right there. The Sass Café would have been his choice, but it was closed at this time of year. And Rampoldi was very cosy. There were only a couple of other diners inside, so he had no problem getting the table right at the back of the restaurant. The owner, who looked like he’d had an eventful life, showed him over to it.
Max liked the simplicity of the place. The starched white tablecloths; the black-and-white cartoon prints of fat, jolly waiters. The unashamed stuffiness.
He quickly flicked to the red wines when the sommelier brought the wine list. And he was impressed. They had two of his favourites.
The 1997 Solaia made by the Antinori family was, in Max’s opinion, the finest wine to come out of Tuscany for a long time. He was amazed they had it. The production had been small and it was hard to find outside Italy. At eight hundred euros a bottle it was expensive, but rightly so. Yet how could he ignore the Château Lafite Rothschild 1990? Such an understated wine. He loved the clever combination of delicate and yet powerful and intense flavours. They also had the 1982 and 1986 vintages, but they were, as far as Max was concerned, for ignorant tourists. Any idiot could buy the most expensive wine on the list. So he went with the Solaia.
Under normal circumstances, such wine would have caused ructions had it appeared on his expenses. But he’d been told to look after his guest, so look after him he would.
Max knew Jacques Bardin would be getting on a bit, so when an old boy, probably in his seventies, with thin eyes above a beaky nose, wire-framed glasses and a long, scruffy tweed coat walked in, he was sure it was his man.
Jacques hesitated a moment to talk to the jovial maître d’ by the door. He declined the offer to take his coat, then headed over towards the table. He was much frailer than Max had imagined.
‘Monsieur Bardin?’ Max smiled formally as he stood up to greet his guest. Jacques simply bowed his head in acknowledgement and sat down.
‘A little red?’ Max asked, trying to put his guest at ease.
‘Thank you,’ Jacques said, again nodding his head. He took a sip as soon as the waiter had poured, and smiled. The waiter showed him the bottle, but he didn’t comment on the wine or the year, which surprised Max.
‘Très bon,’ was all he said.
There was a slight silence, which Max filled awkwardly.
‘Hope it wasn’t too much bother to get here?’
Jacques pursed his lips. He never told anyone where he lived. ‘It was no trouble.’ He helped himself to some bread. Clearly, this put an end to the subject.
Max took the hint. Jacques was not a conversationalist – or, if he were, not with strangers.
‘Tryon is sorry he couldn’t join us. He was most intrigued by your communiqué.’
Jacques took another sip of his wine and contemplated the young Englishman in front of him.
‘Tell me a little of this Tryon, please?’
Max now occupied himself with his wine glass to buy himself some time. ‘Well, obviously, I can’t say too much. But he is my immediate boss. Though he’s based in London, he keeps an eye on what’s going on around the world. He is the overview, let’s say. Out of interest, how did you come to contact him?’
Jacques thought about this question for a moment, as if it were a trap, and was silent. Max didn’t fill in the silence. He wanted to draw the old man out. Eventually, Jacques answered.
‘I have a friend in French Intelligence – through my work. When this problem got out of hand, he gave me Tryon’s number.’
‘And that is why I am here. To sort out this problem. But I need you to explain it all to me.’
The prospect clearly did not appeal to Jacques. He sipped his wine, tore off a piece of bread and then drank some more wine.
‘I was a forger,’ he finally volunteered.
‘Unusual profession,’ Max interjected.
‘I was brought up to it. It was all I knew. When I was a child, I swept the floor of a great man’s studio. He was a genius. And he took me under his wing. Han Van Meegeren. You have heard of him?’ Max nodded.
‘Everyone said he hated people. And passed on nothing. But he taught me everything.’
‘How many paintings have you forged?’
‘Hundreds,’ Jacques answered matter-of-factly.
‘So how does that work? How do you pass them off ?’
Again Jacques paused and thought about his answer.
‘Can you help us?’
‘Yes. But only if you tell us everything. We’re not the police. We don’t care how many paintings you have forged.’
Jacques seemed to accept this.
‘The forger has to deceive the so-called experts who pretend to know everything. I think Van Meegeren was more interested in fooling them than making money. I just did it because I was fortunate to be chosen by him. You pick an artist and create a work that he might have painted. So Van Meegeren created an entire period of Vermeers and managed to fool the idiots that they had discovered a whole lost period. During the war he fooled Göring into thinking that he was buying great masterpieces. And then the idiots threw him into prison for collaborating with the Nazis.’
Max kept nodding. He knew about Van Meegeren. It was Jacques he wanted to know about.
‘So how did you pass off your forgeries?’
‘By creating provenance. It is one thing to create a new painting. It is another to place it. So I would forge invoices, letters, magazine articles, pages from auction catalogues – anything that would place the painting in the past. You would be surprised by some of the people who have helped me. If you own a large château, and you can’t afford to put a new roof on it, what could be easier? Go to some Parisian expert and tell him you’ve discovered a great work in your loft. Just pretend it must have been in the family for generations and no one realized.’
The memory seemed to cheer Jacques up. A philosophical smile spread across his face and he took another sip of wine.
‘How come you got into copying paintings for Pallesson? It doesn’t sound like you needed the money.’
The smile left Jacques’s face as quickly as it had appeared.
‘There is no art to copying paintings. No creativity. Any idiot can do it.’
‘Why do it then?’
‘Pallesson. He’s a clever bastard. He caught me.’
‘How?’
‘He bought a Jan van Goyen that I created. Usual subjects – boats, windmills … The painting was perfect. But I made a mistake with the provenance. I forged a magazine article that referred to the picture, amongst others. Only for some reason the magazine wasn’t published the month I chose. Pallesson checked it out, which was bad luck, and then traced the picture back to me.’
‘What did he do about it?’
‘He said I had to copy some paintings for him. All Dutch masters.’
‘Which you did?’
‘I had no choice. He said bad things would happen to my family if I didn’t.’
Max nodded. That was Pallesson all over. First you find a way of compromising someone. Then you blackmail them.
Max smiled. ‘As I’m sure Tryon has told you, art forgery or copying are not really our business.