Fakes and Lies

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Is there any way we can shift to the front of the warehouse?’ Annie asked.

  ‘I think we might be able to pull up another camera feed,’ Alfie said. ‘But the quality is not good. It’s just a basic system someone installed across the road to watch the front of the building. The different systems are all networked, but each building is responsible for supplying its own kit, from the look of it.’ He ran the two images side by side on different screens. The second one was grainy, black and white, but even so the blue car was unmistakable as it moved around to the front of the warehouse.

  The occupants got out and Alfie was able to grab images of their faces as they walked to the main doors. The man evidently had bolt croppers because the padlock fell at his feet. He handed the implement to the girl – they could see now that she was very young, late teens or early twenties at most, and that she looked exceedingly unhappy. She was, Alec guessed, under some kind of duress.

  The door was opened and the two of them went inside. Alec realized he was almost holding his breath. This must be the moment when Patrick was attacked.

  About a minute later, though it seemed much longer, man and girl came running out and the man had Bee thrown over his shoulder. The girl opened the boot of the car and Bee was dumped inside. The boot was slammed closed and the man and the girl got back into the car and drove off at speed.

  They followed the camera trail for about another mile, but after that it was country roads and no CCTV.

  No one spoke at first, all immersed in their own thoughts and shocked by what they’d seen.

  ‘I’m going to call Vin back,’ Alec said. ‘Alfie, can you package this up, with the timestamps and the frame grabs. I’ll take full responsibility for it. Your name doesn’t have to come up, but we do need to get this information to the police as fast as we can.’

  Alfie nodded. ‘Take me about ten minutes. If you’ve got an email, I can send it direct. Just tell your friend that it’s on its way.’

  Alec nodded. He wandered to the other end of the workshop to make his calls and then came back to Alfie with some email addresses. ‘DI Tess Fuller, and copy in DS Dattani. Tess is local and a good friend. And DI Karen Morgan,’ he said. ‘She’s heading up the Antonia Scott inquiry. Tess and Vin will make sure it gets to whoever is in charge of looking into the attack on Patrick.’

  He sat back down. His phone sounded an alert that he had a text. He read it. ‘Patrick’s out of surgery,’ he said. ‘He’s in the ICU. Bob is taking Naomi home but they’re going to see Mari first.’ Mari was Patrick’s grandmother. ‘Bob says he’ll take her to the hospital if she wants to go. I imagine she’s itching to get there but Harry’s told her to get some sleep and wait until there’s something she can actually do.’

  ‘I don’t imagine there’s been much sleeping going on,’ Annie said. ‘Bob will do whatever is needed, you know that, don’t you? So will I.’

  They waited until Alfie had sent the emails. He sent them from Alec’s personal account. A lot of questions would be asked, Alec thought, but that didn’t mean he had to answer any of them. If necessary he could use his own work for a security firm as cover for Alfie’s activities.

  He was yawning as they drove away. ‘I can drive,’ Annie said.

  ‘I’ll be all right, just take it slow.’

  ‘Poor little Bee,’ Annie said. ‘Nothing in her life so far has prepared her for this. Alec, we’ve got to get her back.’

  Harry watched his son. Watched the breath going in, the breath coming out, and knew that Patrick was responsible for neither. Induced coma, they called it. He wasn’t being allowed to breathe on his own for a few days, they told Harry. His brain and his body needed time to recover. There was some swelling on the brain … and a fracture to the skull and a shoulder that had to be pinned in five places. He might not have full mobility in that joint again. The surgeon speculated that the shoulder was what hit the ground first, that he might have twisted when he fell, trying to save himself, and that it was probably a good thing. Had his head hit the ground first there would be no hope. Patrick would probably have died at the scene.

  There were broken ribs as well, and a fractured pelvis and a ruptured kidney. He could live with one, the surgeon said. Many people did.

  He was lucky. Internal bleeding was far less than had been thought and because most of the initial impact had been down his left side, he had not broken his back.

  The way he fell, the surgeon said, might have wrecked his shoulder, smashed his collarbone and his ribs. Punctured a lung. But it had probably saved his life.

  He was sitting alone, having sent everybody else away because he couldn’t bear to see the looks of sympathy or their anxiety. Sitting alone, watching his son not breathing. Watching a machine breathing for his son. Harry kept telling himself that Patrick was lucky to be alive. That Patrick would heal. And he could hear Patrick’s voice in his head saying, Dad, I was bloody rubbish with my left hand anyway. I’m not going to be much worse now, am I?

  Harry realized that he was crying when the tears fell on his hands. He wiped them away with his palms and searched his pockets for a tissue. The door behind him opened and he renewed his attempts to wipe away the tears, not wanting the nursing staff to see him cry.

  ‘Oh, son.’ His mother’s voice behind him. ‘Oh, my darling.’ Harry was suddenly a child again as Mari gathered him into her arms.

  ‘What if he dies, Mum, what if he dies?’

  ‘Hush! He’ll hear you. He’ll think you’re doubting him.’

  She pulled up another chair and they both sat watching Patrick not breathe. Mari might not have been at the hospital before but she had been busy. She had called Patrick’s mother and stepfamily and both his mother and stepfather were on their way. They both sent their love to Harry and told him that it would be all right. That they were coming and would soon be with him.

  Oddly, Harry drew strength from that. From his estranged wife telling him that she was going to be there; from his old boss, now her new husband, telling him the same. They both loved Patrick and somehow, Harry thought, if weight of love could make a difference, then Patrick would make it.

  ‘Bob took Naomi home and then he came to fetch me; he’s sitting in the waiting room. He’s all in, poor love; when I left him he was nodding off in the chair. And Annie and Alec are on their way back. They found some things out but I’ll leave them to tell you all about it when they get here. Alec said to tell you that the police would probably want to speak to you again, see if Patrick had said anything that might be important. Alec said that it was going to be a case of attempted murder and kidnapping. There’s film of some man taking Bee from the warehouse.’

  ‘Film? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was caught on one of those CCTV cameras. Annie took Alec somewhere. To see someone called Alfie? Anyway it seems they found recordings. You mustn’t mention Alfie, he’s not supposed to be doing this sort of thing, apparently. It was all Alec, if anyone wants to know. He sent the footage to one of his colleagues. Ex-colleagues, I suppose they are now. But you know what I mean.’

  Harry stared at his mother, not quite grasping what she was saying, and then he nodded. ‘Someone took the girl away? But that’s terrible. It’s what Annie thought had happened but, you know, I almost wish she’d been the one to push him. At least one of them would be safe then.’

  ‘Hush, boy. It’s all going to be all right. She’s got a lot of good people fighting her corner, and so does Patrick.’

  She took his hand and held it tight but Harry knew how she was really feeling, despite the optimistic words. Her own daughter, Harry’s sister, had been taken away and killed. She’d been snatched and, despite there being good people then, fighting her corner, she’d never come back to them alive.

  ‘Do her family know?’

  ‘I think there’s an aunt they’ve got hold of. The police, I mean. Annie said she’d mentioned going to a family wedding so I assume she might have told Annie where that was or
something.’

  Mari reached out and touched her son’s hand. ‘You’ll be just fine,’ she said. ‘It will all be just fine.’

  Alec and Annie arrived back at the hospital to find Vin Dattani talking to Bob. A uniformed officer hung round in the corridor outside the waiting room.

  Bob looked relieved to see them. Vin and Alec shook hands and Alec made the introductions. Vin wasted no time.

  ‘Got your email. I’m not going to enquire too closely as to how you got that information, but fortunately we can duplicate it. I’ve got people examining those cameras now and with the timecode we can be very precise, track most of the journey. We’re also running images of the two people in the car through the system. But as you know, that can take time. Hopefully we’ll get a match. In the meantime, I’d like Mr and Mrs Taylor to come with me to the police station and make a full statement. There are also some items I’d like them to take a look at. There were drawings and letters that Patrick and Beatrix seemed to be taking away from the studio and Mr Taylor informed me that they were bringing them back for him to look at. So if the two of you could do that now, that would be very helpful.’

  ‘I’ll come along with them,’ Alec said.

  Vin shrugged but didn’t object.

  They made quite a procession leaving the hospital, the police car and then Alec and then Bob and Annie.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ Annie asked her husband.

  ‘One of the nurses directed me to the café. I grabbed some sandwiches and a drink. You?’

  ‘Alfie was his usual hospitable self. So Patrick’s out of surgery? Do we know any more than that?’

  ‘Not really. Harry went off to the ICU and I stayed behind in the waiting room but I’ve not heard from him since.’

  They arrived at the police station and Vin led them into an interview room and sent for tea and coffee. ‘This is just informal,’ he said. ‘I’ll get somebody to take an official statement in a bit but I wanted to have a chat first. You’ve both known Patrick for a while now? But I understand that Beatrix Jones is new to you?’

  ‘I knew her father really well. I’d met Bee maybe two or three times. Three times, I think, once at Freddie’s studio and twice at a couple of different gallery openings. He brought her along as his plus one.’

  Vin nodded. ‘But you don’t know her well.’

  ‘Not well, no. She turned up on our doorstep about a week ago. Her father had died, and she wasn’t convinced it was of natural causes. She’d told the police, and she’d made quite a bit of noise about it, especially after Antonia Scott was found dead.’

  ‘That’s the gallery owner.’ Vin was checking through his notes, obviously trying to bring himself up to speed.

  ‘That’s right. And apparently the only thing that was stolen was a portfolio of Freddie’s work. I’m assuming it was drawings; the Scotts sold a lot of his drawings.’

  ‘And why was she suspicious about her father’s death? I’m presuming she was anxious about it before Antonia Scott’s murder?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Bob said. ‘But Antonia’s death, I think, put the tin hat on it for her. She was convinced he was murdered and to be honest we’ve been anxious too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Freddie had been behaving oddly, even for Freddie, in the months before he died. I talked to him a couple of times and he almost told me something and then backed off. Then when Antonia died, that really seemed strange. Frankly, we were wondering what Freddie had been up to, what he’d got himself into. He’s got a record, as you know, and though he told Bee that he was out of that game I never really believed him.’

  ‘You mean art forgery?’

  ‘Art, documents, Freddie was a bit of an all-rounder. He was amazingly talented both as a legitimate artist in his own right and … well, everything else.’

  ‘And you thought he’d got himself in too deep? That he’d gone back to his criminal activities and—’

  ‘That he was up to his neck in something. You see, Freddie never went for the big time, he wasn’t that ambitious. As long as Freddie was making enough money and life was interesting he had no ambition beyond that. Freddie was an artist. Whatever it took to make sure he could earn his living as an artist, that’s what he did. I don’t think he drew many lines, if you see what I mean, not between what was legal and what was a grey area and what was downright criminal. And the problem with that, as I’m sure you can appreciate, is that there is always somebody around to take advantage.’

  ‘We thought someone was threatening Freddie, possibly even threatening Bee,’ Annie said. ‘But until we had evidence of something, no one was going to listen to us. Bee had proved that when she went to the police about her father’s death. So we employed a private investigator. And I don’t mean your getting evidence for divorce cases type. He’s more of a forensic accountant. He was looking into Freddie’s finances and any business links he had. Freddie was scared and Freddie didn’t scare easily. He wasn’t afraid of petty crime, he wasn’t afraid of going back to prison, though he surely wouldn’t have wanted to. He was one of those people who just took life as it came, the good with the bad. So for Freddie to be frightened, it had to be serious.’

  Vin took some notes. He looked thoughtfully at Annie. ‘And has this private investigator come up with much so far?’

  ‘A few possible leads. I’ve instructed him to send everything he can as electronic copies to your email. If you want to talk to him he’s perfectly happy to do so. DS Dattani, this is totally above board. We were worried about a friend and we were worried about his daughter and it seems that we were right to be so.’

  Vin nodded. He glanced this time at Alec and then said, ‘I’d like the three of you to look at this CCTV footage.’ He made no mention of the possibility that two of them might already have seen it. Vin was concerned now with maintaining a clean chain of evidence and though it had been Alec and Alfie who had alerted him, Vin knew that his officers would have found the same evidence. It might just have taken them a little longer. It was police evidence that mattered now.

  He opened his laptop and turned it so that they could see. Annie, Bob and Alec watched the film in silence. The first part Alec and Annie had already viewed, but there was further footage from two other cameras.

  ‘He made no attempt to hide his face,’ Bob said. ‘He doesn’t care who sees him. I think he’s enjoying himself; he wants people to know. Kind of nihilistic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Takes all sorts.’ Vin nodded. ‘There are criminal exhibitionists, just as there are exhibitionists in every other walk of life. But it does mean he’s pretty confident, overconfident even, and that will probably make him very unpredictable. Not to mention dangerous.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Face recognition is still running. Nothing yet. It can take a while, as you know.’

  Alec nodded.

  ‘You said there were things you wanted us to look at,’ Annie said.

  ‘Yes, there are. Give me a minute.’ Vin left them briefly and returned with two large cardboard boxes, stacked one on top of the other. He placed them on the table and opened the lids.

  ‘I can’t take anything out of the evidence bags; not everything has been processed yet and there might be fingerprints, DNA. But take a look through, see if anything looks familiar, and if you can tell me why they were bringing these things to you, that would be a big help. We’re going to be getting a specialist team involved and they may well want to talk to you again. They can probably ask you better questions than I can.’

  Slowly and carefully Bob and Annie examined the contents of the boxes. If they had a comment to make Vin noted it down, along with the reference number of the evidence bag. Bob told him about the unfinished painting, and that he thought these were reference works for it, but looking at them, he realized they could just as easily be reference material for the Bevi Madonna. Both Bob and the owner had hoped that Bob’s connoisseurship and knowledge of Freddie’s work would
be enough to decide the origin of the piece but more and more Bob was realizing that it would have to go for laboratory tests. What he had initially thought would be an easy question to answer was becoming more and more complex. Bob’s opinion pulled this way and that until he no longer knew what to think.

  ‘If he did paint that one you’ve got,’ Alec said, ‘why do another one right now?’

  ‘We asked ourselves the same thing,’ Bob said. ‘Someone must have seen the original and wanted one, perhaps. It’s not a question I can answer. It just adds to the confusion, to be frank. One thing, though, Freddie kept records of everything he painted. In little blue exercise books. There might be an explanation in there.’

  ‘Records?’

  ‘A lot of it was just about pigments, recipes, reference material.’

  Vin looked through his notes. ‘I’m going to hand Mr and Mrs Taylor over to one of my officers,’ he told Alec. ‘You’ll need to make a formal statement, covering everything you can think of from the moment Bee knocked on your door, and your worries about Freddie and the events of today. Sorry, I know it’s going to take a while. We’ll make sure you’re well supplied with coffee and we’ll rustle up some food from somewhere.’

  Annie nodded. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Can we just phone Harry at the hospital first?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Of course. It’ll take a few minutes to arrange another room and a couple of officers to take statements. You have to do it separately, you understand that?’

  Bob nodded. Vin left them and Bob and Alec both took the opportunity to make phone calls, Alec to Naomi and Bob, in the end, to Mari, as Harry’s phone seemed to be off. Bob brought her up to speed on everything they knew, and what was going on at the police station now.

  Vin returned with a uniformed officer who was to take Bob’s statement and he led Annie down to another room.

  ‘You off home?’ he asked Alec.

  ‘I think so. Unless you need me for anything.’

  Vin Dattani grinned at him. ‘I think you’ve done enough for one day,’ he said. ‘Have you met this private detective?’