She remembered the son’s name was Claude because it’s also her brother's name.
The weird-looking painting had been kept in the attic and forgotten about until she had received the leaflet offering to buy paintings.
“I’ve left it upstairs, dear. Having it in the room gives me the creeps, it’s so weird, but you might like it. I’ll just go and get it.”
A minute later June walked back into the room carrying the ‘weird’ painting.
“Here we are, dear. This is it. See what I mean about it being creepy?”
Peter’s legs almost gave way. He recognised the valuable masterpiece at once. He could feel his heart rate rise in his chest.
“There’s a handwritten note attached to the back. I think it’s all in French, so I’m not really sure what it says. Larry said it was written by the man who painted it. I assume it says something along the lines of ‘thank you for saving my son’?”
Peter pretended he didn’t understand the note either. In reality, he understood every word and it took everything he had to stop himself from shaking.
June Brown signed and dated the receipt with a detailed description of each painting after the highly reputable London art dealer had given her the best price he possibly could and counted out the cash.
The painting hadn’t turned out to be as valuable as she had thought. But in the current situation, she was desperate, and every penny would help.
“Thank you, Mrs Brown. It’s been a genuine pleasure meeting you. I’m just sorry I couldn’t offer you more under the circumstances”
“Thank you, dear. I know you’ve done your best. That’s why I contacted you rather than someone local. I knew you would be fair. What with the high prices in a place like London.”
Peter drove away with the four paintings safely locked in the boot of his car, leaving June Brown with the cash sum of four thousand one hundred and twenty pounds.
After arriving at the hotel, in the privacy of his room he was virtually jumping up and down. He could hardly believe his luck. What he had just purchased was almost certainly a genuine Picasso with a handwritten note from the artist attached to the back. He knew this wasn’t a scam. After all, scams were something Peter knew all about.
When he got back to London he would take the painting straight to Sotheby’s auction house in New Bond Street and get it authenticated but he was 100% certain it was genuine.
Of course, there was a slim chance he was wrong. And besides, it was Friday. By the time he had got back to London, they’d be closed. But he would be at their doorstep first thing on Monday. In the meantime, just in case it was a fake, he needed to use every ounce of willpower he had and focus on his attendance as a stallholder at the Evesham Art and Antiques Fair.
The two-day event had proven to be a good move. Peter sold three of the paintings he had purchased in Trumpington and a further five works of art he had brought from the stock normally kept on display in his London shop, or gallery as he now preferred to call it.
Driving back to London after the antiques fair with just a few miles left to go, his face was glowing and his heart almost pounding out of his chest. He couldn’t wait to show the painting to Norman and tell him the good news.
That lucky break, the one he had been waiting for all those years. It seemed like it had finally arrived.
Chapter Seven
27TH MARCH 2017 - THE AUCTION
“Going once… going twice… for the third and final time… SOLD. For $5.3 million!”
Peter Winston-Moore exhaled the breath he had been holding as the auctioneer’s gavel went down with a sharp crack as he sat transfixed in the main auction room of Sotheby's New York.
Just over five minutes earlier, the bidding had opened at $500,000, and Peter had watched as each bid escalated the price upwards and then into seven figures. For a time, the bids seemed to come thick and fast then gradually slowed as they climbed above $3 million.
By the time the price reached $4 million, all the bidders in the room had dropped out and it seemed to be between two of the people fighting it out on the phones. At what appeared to be the final bid, Peter held his breath as the auctioneer looked from left to right around the room, glancing at the members of staff on the phones before bringing down the gavel and announcing the winning bid.
Peter could barely conceal his excitement to the point of almost letting out a chuckle as he stood up from the seat he had occupied at the end of row six and sauntered to the back of the room and towards the exit.
After all the years of lying, cheating, dishonesty, crooked deals, underhand ways, sly moves, double-dealing and illegal scams that had come to nothing, finally his lucky break had arrived.
The Picasso painting that he had ‘discovered’ in the front room of a small house in an English town and picked up for a song ten months earlier had just turned him from a struggling third-rate wheeler-dealer into a premier league millionaire art dealer.
The painting had been sold to an anonymous buyer. After the deduction of all fees and costs he would end up with around $4 million. Not bad for a day’s work, he thought. I’ve had worse.
Yet two hours earlier he had been worried. Would the painting sell? Would there be a last-minute hitch?
There he was, walking along the streets of New York’s Upper East Side. It felt as if the plush carpets of Sotheby’s had followed him. Like they had magically extended right out of the door and the deep pile was still beneath his
