Of course, the extra angle was that while we were waiting for Drake to hit on Gemma, others would hit on her. Top hotel, leave the camera rolling, in the hope she goes down on a top cop or a politician. Or maybe a judge. Nothing like having His Honour in your pocket if the bastard happens to be looking down on you at the time with his wig on. This is the sort of stuff I told you I dabbled in from time to time, when girls brought celebrities back to my hotels. Most of the videos I’d never used. Kept them for my own private collection in case they ever came in handy.
Then there was the money angle. She was bound to pick up businessmen. We could see if they were worth hitting on or not. What could be easier? Clean the cunts for every penny they had; get as much out of a scam as you can.
Women were another angle. If one picked up Gemma, a woman fucking her would give it another extra. All kinds of offshoots. Oddly enough, though I didn’t know it at the time, Gemma swung both ways. She had a couple of girlfriends round the clubs.
Anyway, all scams have to end. You can only milk them for so long. And when they’re finished, the girl involved has to go. That’s why I’d nudged Gemma into this.
So I sat down and wrote Gemma a letter. She would think it had come from her mother, in response to the one I’d typed for her but never posted. I can’t even remember what bullshit I wrote. Something like:
Dear Gemma,
I’m sorry for taking so long to reply to your letter. But as much as I wish things were different, they are what they are … My family are unaware of my past … I wish you all the best in life.
Love Angela
The usual ‘fuck-off’ letter mothers like Gemma’s send.
It was to tie in with that suicide angle I was telling you about. The suicide was weak, I grant you that. I hadn’t had enough time to work on it. The law’d find Gemma’s body on the pavement outside a high-rise, her ‘mother’s’ letter and the one I’d dictated to the drink company in her pocket, pointing to her having jumped because she couldn’t live with Angela rejecting her twice. I’d cut the ‘Dear Sir’ bit off the one Gemma’d handwritten for me. Anyway, that’s the way it was supposed to work out. The law would suspect Charlie was behind it, but the suicide note would colour it and keep the pressure off him. He’d expect me to have an angle like that working for us.
I’d driven the sixty miles into Allens, County Longford to mail the letter so it would have the right postmark on it. Gemma would have a read of it the following day then be seen to have bowed out that night. Up the emotional pressure on Lucille, all that. That’s how I was seeing it. But I wasn’t the only one with designs on Gemma.
Let me put that another way: someone else was intent on having designs on her. And when I say designs I mean designs. Literally. And it led to me getting the goods on one of the best killers this town had ever known.
Even I hadn’t planned on this one.
PICASSO
Everything was going along superbly, just as I’d planned. And then complacency set in. I’m lucky to be at liberty. Very lucky indeed. Complacency will not set in again. I can assure you of that.
The first error came in the form of two young ladies called Lisa Shine and Jackie Hay.
It had occurred to me that, rather than painting my models from the photographs I’d taken of them, I would instead bring them home and paint at my leisure. After all, did da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa from a Kodak, or Sargent Madam X? No, they had real-life models. Like them, I too would one day hang in the great galleries of the world. Each portrait would bear the model’s own handprint to authenticate its provenance. The world would know me as ‘Hockler’, and not by the ridiculous sobriquet the press had attached to me. Picasso! Hah! Why would one such as I need the name of another when my talent will one day stand on its own merits? Cornelius Hockler! Ultimately I would send my portraits to every major gallery, and the name Hockler would eventually be every bit as well known as the great masters.
Hah! What absolute drivel. Great masters indeed. If Michelangelo had been born in a hut in the Gobi Desert and had painted the ceiling of the local mosque, instead of the Sistine Chapel, no one would have ever heard of him. Mine is a mediocre talent – like many hanging in the art galleries of the world. What is talent? Often it is only one’s ability to be in the right place at the right time. You will observe that I have not said one’s ‘good fortune’ to be in the right place at the right time, which, of course, does apply in certain cases. An artist with a sense for business can discern opportunities using his wit, charm, presentability, his personal allure, his allusiveness perhaps, his articulateness, his ability to endear and elevate himself through colour-blind benefactors, who wouldn’t know one end of a brush from an ear pick. Prominent critics authenticate long-lost works, then a forger steps forward and exposes them for what they are – something
