“What kind of paper?”
“I have no bloody idea. It could be anything. Maurice was a real pack rat — he never threw anything away.”
“Ms. Byrne, is it possible that I could stop by to take a look at those papers?”
“You’d come all the way from Canada for that?”
“Actually I’m in England right now.”
“Still, that’s an awful lot of trouble for Maurice’s leftovers.”
“Ms. Byrne, this is quite important to my client. He has some art that he thinks was painted by Mr. O’Toole, and he wants it confirmed. I am prepared to pay you for any assistance you can provide.”
“How much are we talking about?” she said swiftly.
“How about a thousand dollars?”
“We use euros here.”
“A thousand euros then.”
“All right, Ms. Lee, bring the cash with you and you can poke away in Maurice’s boxes to your heart’s content.”
“I’m going to try to catch a flight out of here this afternoon.”
“Do you have my address?”
“I do.”
“We’re about fifteen kilometres from the Dublin airport. Any taxi driver will know where Donabate is.”
“Do you mind if I drop by when I get in?”
“As long as you bring the money, you can come at midnight if you want.”
(20)
At a quarter to four Ava stepped outside at Dublin Airport into wet, cold, mean weather. She was beginning to think that all of Europe was sitting under one giant rain cloud. She pulled a Steinum sweater from her bag and put it on.
She had called Helen Byrne as soon as she could turn on her cellphone and was now officially expected. She lined up at the taxi stand; to her right was a mass of people huddled inside a fenced area, partially hidden by small trees. “Stupid smokers,” the woman in front of her said. “They call that area Sherwood Forest because of the trees. Those idiots would stand there even if it was hailing on them.” She was holding a large umbrella and moved it towards Ava so they were both covered.
“Thank you so much,” Ava said.
“Are you Vietnamese?”
“No, Chinese-Canadian.”
“There are lots of Vietnamese in Dublin these days. Them and Poles. Don’t know what restaurants and hotels would do without them. Shut down, probably.”
The line moved quickly, and Ava was in a taxi before most of the smokers had finished getting their fix. She asked the driver to take her to Donabate. “A pretty little town,” he said. “The surrounding area, Fingal, is just as nice.” Ava couldn’t see any of it through the rain and mist. “The town is on a peninsula overlooking the Irish Sea,” he went on. “It has some fine beaches.” Ava wondered how many days a year those beaches could be enjoyed.
The cab stopped in front of a small whitewashed cottage four doors down from a miniature Tesco and six doors from a Boots store. Ava paid the driver, walked up to the front door, and gave the brass knocker a solid rap. She pressed close to the house, trying to keep dry.
The door swung open wide and Ava almost fell inside. “You’re not what I expected,” a woman said.
Neither are you, Ave thought as she stared up at a tall, gangly woman wearing jeans and a red fleece top zipped to the neck. For some reason she had imagined a small, thin, grey-haired old lady. Helen’s hair was dyed blonde, dark at the roots, and combed over to one side. She looked to be in her late forties or early fifties, though it was hard to tell through the thick layer of makeup.
“You’re young,” Helen said.
“Not as young as I look.”
“And I thought you’d look more professional somehow.” Ava glanced down at her training pants and running shoes. “Did you bring the money?”
She passed Helen the wad of euros she’d withdrawn from the ATM at the airport.
“Come in,” Helen said.
Ava put down her bags in the narrow hallway.
“Do you want to go directly to the shed?”
“Please.”
The cottage was tiny, with no more than six rooms. They walked past two closed doors on either side to the back, where the kitchen door opened onto the yard. There was an empty pizza box on the counter. “That’s the shed; the door is open,” Helen said. “There isn’t a light in there and it will get dark in a couple of hours, so you’d better work fast.”
The shed couldn’t have been more than three metres square, big enough for a lawnmower and some basic gardening equipment. Ava pushed the door open and was immediately hit by a musty smell, the kind that damp paper generates. Geez, she thought, all that way for this.
Four rows of cardboard boxes were stacked against the far wall, three boxes high. She opened one and saw a row of neatly hung files, each of their tabs clearly marked. Her spirits rose. Then she noticed that the boxes were dated, starting with 1984-85 and the last dated 2004. She loved tidiness.
She scanned the tabs in the most recent box. Many of the files contained mundane documents, business expenses, bank statements. There was a file marked Jan Sorensen. She opened it and saw copies of all the correspondence that had gone back and forth between the two men. There was another marked Hughes Gallery. And one identified Derain. She opened it with a touch of excitement. Inside was a complete record of the life of a painting: the letter from Glen Hughes requesting the work; Maurice O’Toole’s reply; an invoice for the finished work, sent to an address she didn’t recognize; and a Polaroid photo of the painting itself, with the completion date and a title written across the bottom. You beautiful man, she thought.
She pulled down another box and opened it to find an almost exact duplicate of the first, except instead of Derain, there were tabs for Braque and Dufy. The Dufy file was as complete as the Derain. Ava removed the lids from two more boxes and found more of the same. Drops of water began to fall on her head and on the files. Great, she thought, looking up at a small leak in the ceiling. Ava thought about asking Helen if she could take the boxes into the kitchen and work there, and then thought better of it. She didn’t want the woman standing over her shoulder as she looked through them, and she knew she was going to have to make copies — lots of copies.
She made her way back to the house. Helen was standing in the kitchen with a bottle of beer in her hand. “Back so soon?”
“We need to talk,” Ava said. “I can’t work in the shed. What I’d like to do is take the boxes to my hotel and work there. It’s going to take me a day, maybe longer, to work through them, and I have to take notes and make copies.”
“What hotel?”
“I don’t have one yet, but give me a minute and I will.”
Helen nodded.
Ava called her travel agent in Toronto. “I need a hotel in Dublin, Ireland. I want a suite, something with a proper work area. Book it for two nights.” She turned to Helen. “So you’re okay with this?”
She shrugged and Ava saw she was doing her own calculations. “Look, we can do a different kind of deal, you know.”
“What are you thinking?” Helen asked.
“I’ll buy the files from you.”
“Now why would you do that?”
