The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [36]
″Thatʹs what I′m wondering.″ He drained his glass and stood up. ″Crazy conversations like this I don′t need.″
He looked around for Sammy, but he heard her voice before he saw her. She was shouting at Joe Davies. In a second everyone was watching.
Her face was red, and she was more angry than Tom had ever seen her. ″How dare you investigate my friends?″ she yelled. ″You′re not my guardian angel, you′re my lousy fucking agent. You used to be my agent, because you′re fired, Joe Davies.″ She slapped the man′s face once, hard, and turned on her heel.
The agent purpled in humiliation. He stepped after Samantha with a raised fist. Two long strides took Tom across the room. He pushed Joe, gently but firmly, so that the agent rocked back on his heels. Then Tom turned and followed Samantha out of the room.
Outside on the sidewalk, she broke into a run. ″Sammy!″ Tom called. He ran after her. When he caught up with her, he gripped her arm and stopped her.
″What is this all about?″ he asked.
She looked up at him, confusion and anger in her eyes. ″Joe had you investigated,″ she said. ″He said you had a wife, four children, and a police record.″
″Oh.″ He looked piercingly into her eyes. ″So what do you think?″
″How the hell do I know what to think?″
″I have a broken marriage, and the divorce isn′t through yet. Ten years ago I forged a check. Does that make any difference to anything?″
She stared at him for a moment. Then she buried her head in his shoulder. ″No, Tom, no.″
He held her still in his arms for a long moment. Then he said: ″It was a lousy party, anyway. Let′s s get a cab.″
They walked up to Park Lane and found a taxi outside one of the hotels. The driver took them along Piccadilly, the Strand, and Fleet Street. Tom got him to stop at a newsstand where early editions of the morning papers were on sale.
It was getting light as they drove under Holborn Viaduct. ″Look at this,″ Tom said. ″Lord Cardwell′s paintings are expected to raise a million pounds.″ He folded the paper and looked out of the window. ″Do you know how he got those pictures?″
″Tell me.″
″In the seventeenth century sailors died to bring him gold from South America. In the eighteenth, farmers starved to pay his rents. In the nineteenth, children died in factories and urban slums to maximize his profits. In this century he went into banking to help other people do what he had been doing for three hundred years—getting rich on poor men′s backs. Christ, a million pounds could build a nice little housing estate in Islington.″
″What′s to be done?″ Sammy said disconsolately.
″Beats me.″
″If the people won′t take their money from him, weʹll have to.″
″Oh yes?″
″Tom, be serious! Why not?″
He put his arm around her. ″Sure, why not? We′ll steal his paintings, sell them for a million quid, and build a housing estate. We′ll sort out the details in the morning. Kiss me.″
She lifted her mouth to his, and broke away quickly. ″I mean it, Tom.″
He looked at her face for a moment. ″Stone the crows, I think you do,″ he said.
III
JULIAN LAY AWAKE. THE late-August night was unpleasantly warm. The bedroom windows were open, and he had thrown the duvet off the bed, but he was still sweating. Sarah lay with her back to him on the far side of the wide bed, her legs spread in a striding position. Her body gleamed palely in the weak dawn light, and the shadowy cleft of her buttocks was a mocking invitation. She did not stir when he got out of bed.
He took a pair of underpants from a drawer and slipped into them. Closing the bedroom door softly behind him, he went across the hall, down a half flight of stairs, and through the living room to the kitchen. He filled the electric kettle and plugged it in.
The words on the postcard which he had read the previous night in Samantha′s living room were repeated again and again inside his head, like a pop tune which refuses to be forgotten. ″Iʹm off to Poglio to find a lost Modigliani.″ The message had burned its add way into his brain. It was that, more than the heat, which had kept