‘Your only son,’ Trish said, still trying on the stories until she found one that would fit. ‘That must have hurt. Did the other man involved in the Clouet scam also succumb to this strange religion?’
‘I may be seventy-four, Miss Maguire, and long retired, but my brain still works.’ His voice had returned to its earlier slow harshness. ‘You must have read the interview with Toby Fullwell in the Sunday News, just as I did. Why are you pretending to know so little about him?’
She hesitated, remembering his approval of her frankness at the door.
‘Are you really Trish Maguire, the barrister?’ His tone was goading now, which made her want to resist telling him anything. ‘There is one, I know, because I looked her up after you telephoned. But you could easily be an impersonator.’
‘I am the real thing,’ she assured him, thinking: and I clearly suffer from a surfeit of sentimentality. Why did I think I would find some paternal feeling behind what’s happening to Toby? Did I want it so much that I didn’t care that it might be perverted?
‘Given that you were never a friend of my son’s, do I take it that you have some connection with Toby Fullwell?’
‘I have barely met him.’
‘Then just what exactly are you doing here, Miss Maguire?’
‘Asking questions for a friend,’ she said, happy to join him in providing answers that answered nothing.
‘You can’t expect me to fall for that absurd fiction. “A friend” indeed! That is what nervous young men claim when they ask for information at a venereal disease clinic. I must ask you once again to leave. This Peter and I need to set off for our afternoon walk.’
At the sound of his name, or perhaps the word ‘walk’, the Labrador heaved himself up again and stood panting against the old man’s legs as he pushed himself up off his sofa.
And that, thought Trish, is the only sign I’m going to get that there is some warmth left in him somewhere for the son who so disappointed him.
‘Come on, Peter.’
Somewhere outside a church poured out a cascade of bells, jangling yet satisfying to Trish, who had always loved the rippling, triumphant sound.
‘Those wretched bellringers,’ Martin Chanting said, covering his ears. ‘It’s a new craze round here and they make the evenings hell with their clatter. I wouldn’t mind if it was part of an unbroken tradition, but it’s not. They’d do better to weave baskets. Quieter and much more useful. Goodbye. We won’t meet again.’
Trish went obediently back to her car. She had the key already in the ignition when she started to think properly about the name he’d bestowed on his Labrador. Elderly though it was, it couldn’t have been as old as seventeen. Which meant that it had been named after Peter Chanting disappeared.
Would any man have called his dog after his estranged son if he cared as little for the son as Martin Chanting had claimed? Sentimental or not, she just couldn’t believe it. And if he cared, he must at least have tried to find him.
Running after him and the dog, she tripped and crashed down on the edge of the pavement, ripping her tights and the skin of her left leg. She was amazed at how much it hurt. As a child she’d regularly grazed both knees, tripping while roller-skating or falling out of trees, and she did not remember feeling anything like this.
She thought of poor Mer and his arm. It must have been agony. She hoped, with a passion she hadn’t felt for some time, that the giant had been a fantasy. By the time she had caught up with her quarry, she could feel the warm blood running down her leg. Soon it would clot and stick disgustingly to her skin.
‘Yes?’ he said, turning when she called his name.
‘I accept the fact that you have had no contact with your son,’ she said, standing as straight as her bleeding knee would allow, ‘and that you do not know where he is at this precise moment.’
She saw the start of a smile playing about his thin lips and knew she was on the right track.
‘But I believe you must know more than you suggested about his general whereabouts. Is he still based in Kathmandu?’
‘You are a sharp little thing, aren’t you?’
She couldn’t tell from his tone whether he approved or not. ‘I hope so. It’s an important skill in my job. Does he still live in Nepal?’
‘I don’t know. But it is true that he does come back to this country at intervals.’
‘How do you know?’
‘If it’s any of your business, he writes to me occasionally.’
‘Ah. Good. Where does he stay when he comes back? With you?’
‘Certainly not.’ His expression suggested that he had just trodden on a slug. ‘He has an interest in a small shop in London, selling imported rubbish from the subcontinent. I imagine there is some kind of accommodation over the shop.’
At last, she thought. ‘How can I find it?’
‘It is in Clerkenwell, I believe, and he has called it The Chantry.’ Chanting’s face creased into the kind of contempt that made her throat ache. ‘That, of course, is typical of his feckless stupidity. Anyone who knows the English language will assume that it is a shop selling Christian paraphernalia and eschew it on those grounds, or go there in search of hymnals and leave in disgust at the glitter and incense sticks.’
That’s easily worth a bruised and bloody knee, Trish thought as she thanked him and limped back to the car.
David was writing up his latest contribution to the school project on war when Trish got back to the flat, while Nicky was in the kitchen, preparing supper. The air of busyness and the scent of frying onions made the flat seem quite different from the echoing, brick-walled, art-filled refuge it had been for so long. Trish looked at the small dark head, bent over the wide spread of papers and photographs, heard him sigh, and didn’t regret the old emptiness. Particularly not now that he seemed more serene and she and George were back on track with each other.
Determined not to disturb the peace, Trish crept up the spiral stairs to her room, where she showered and covered the still oozing graze on her knee with extra-wide Elastoplast. Her jeans felt comfortably tight over it, and she pulled on the thick red cashmere tunic George had given her one Christmas, before reaching for the London Business Telephone Directory.
The Chantry was listed, even though there was no entry with its owner’s name. Someone must have records of that somewhere, unless Peter Chanting had been operating it under a false name. Trish padded down the spiral staircase to pull boots on over her thick socks and slipped out of the flat to hail the first cab she saw.
The driver took her to a charming little street near Exmouth Market on the edge of Clerkenwell. It was lined on both sides with small Georgian cottages, some of which had been converted into shops. They had none of the fashionable glamour of their Exmouth Market equivalents, and they looked dustier. There was a newsagent and a small, slightly dingy greengrocer’s. Both were still open. Trish didn’t think she would want to buy any of the limp, grimy vegetables in the greengrocer’s. The potatoes were all sprouting and the bananas looked almost as black as those she’d bought as an impoverished law student.
Two doors along from the greengrocer’s was The Chantry, with a squared-off bay window. There were no display lights in the shop, but she could see the mirrored plaques on a Rajasthani shawl glinting in the light of the overhead street lamp. Moving closer, she saw a ravishing brown silk box, embroidered in gold and amber colours with pearls set here and there among the stitchery, and a set of beautiful brass temple bells.
There was a ‘Closed’ sign on the shop door. Trish peered in through the grimy glass of the window, moving her head, first this way then that, to try to penetrate the gloom of the room beyond the gleaming wares in the window. There seemed to be heaps of fabric and paper lying all over the floor.
She rubbed the window with her sleeve, hoping to get a clearer view, but all she could see was the mess. It looked as though someone had emptied a filing drawer over the floor and then pulled down racks of clothes. She rang
the bell beside the shop door, leaning on it for a full thirty seconds, but no one came, so she went into both the other shops in search of information.
Neither the greengrocer nor the newsagent could help. They couldn’t remember when the shop had last been open or when they’d seen the owner, but they said it was often closed for days at a time and never had many customers.
Back in the street, Trish tried The Chantry’s bell again, then took out her mobile to phone the local police.
‘I see,’ said the man who had taken her call when she had explained herself, ‘so you have never been to this shop before and you have no idea of its normal opening hours. You do not know anything about the owner or any staff he may have. There is no sign of a break-in or any kind of trouble, apart from some mess you think you could see at the back of the shop. And yet you are sure that something serious is going down. Have I got that right?’
‘Yes,’ Trish said, hanging on to her patience like a lifebelt. Could it have been the expectation of a reception like this that had made Henry Buxford wary of going to the police in the first place, rather than a determination to manipulate any evidence there might be that his godson was involved in something criminal? ‘But there’s—’
‘Never you mind. I have taken a note of everything you have told me and I will pass it on to the Home Beat Officer. Goodbye.’
‘Shit!’ Trish shouted to the surprise of a straggly-looking stray cat, which slid away under a parked car. She scuffled in her bag for her diary and then phoned Martin Chanting, who did not sound any more concerned by her story than the police officer had been.
‘There could be any number of explanations for what you have seen,’ he said at last. ‘I have to go, Miss Maguire. Goodbye. Please do not telephone again.’
Feeling a fool in three different dimensions, Trish plodded back to St John Street, down through Smithfield with its gaudily painted ironwork and huge refrigerated meat lorries ready for the morning’s market, and on towards the bridge and home.
Both legs were aching by the time she’d reached the bridge and her neck felt as though it had sunk two inches into her shoulders. She saw that the police had taken away their yellow signs. Had they found out enough about the body in the river now? Or had they just given up expecting any information?
Much later, after David had gone to bed, Trish settled down to draft a letter to Henry. It took her almost an hour to come up with a version that covered everything she wanted to tell him without sounding absurd. With each word she keyed in to her computer, she saw herself in court defending a charge of libel, and knew that she could not send this as an email.
Dear Henry,
You may already have persuaded Toby to tell you what is going on. I very much hope that you have because I am convinced that there is nothing else I can do for you. And something must be done.
If you are still not prepared to go to the police, or Customs & Excise, I think you should seriously consider employing a genuine investigator. I have come to the end of my always limited usefulness and I can see nowhere else to go.
All I have managed to discover is that, irrespective of whatever he may be doing now, Toby has definitely been involved in art fraud in the past. This afternoon I met Martin Chanting (the father of Toby’s Cambridge friend), who virtually confirmed my suspicions that the Clouet drawings Toby identified at Cambridge were in fact fakes, deliberately produced for the purpose.
As you know, Toby and Peter Chanting sold the drawings through Goode & Floore’s and achieved a record price. I have reason to believe that Peter’s father bought them from the purchaser so that he could destroy them and therefore the evidence they represented. Which means, obviously, that we will never be able to prove anything. But I don’t think Toby knows this.
I can only imagine the rows that must have taken place between Martin Chanting, his son and Toby, but they ended with Peter’s exile to Nepal. His father says they have not spoken since, even though Peter now owns a shop in Clerkenwell and must therefore spend at least some of his time in the UK.
Given that, I imagine that he and Toby must have been in touch again and could be up to their old tricks. The Gregory Bequest is relatively close to Clerkenwell. I’d have thought they could easily have met in the street, even if they hadn’t actually planned an encounter.
For a while I thought that Martin Chanting could be behind what has been happening to Toby, taking revenge on him for the loss of his son by forcing Toby to create another fake to sell through Goode & Floore’s. I imagined that it wouldn’t be hard to expose the modern fake and so ruin Toby’s reputation or even have him arrested and tried for fraud.
However, I am now almost sure that his son must be involved in Toby’s current problems. Peter seems to have disappeared, leaving his shop in a state of chaos. Whether he went back to Nepal of his own volition, having done what he wanted, or whether someone (?Toby) could have got rid of him in some other way, I do not know. And, once again, I do not have the resources to gather the evidence that would prove anything.
But I am concerned because, as I told you, Toby has recently been showing signs of violence. We know he has been hitting his wife. I have also discovered that his son, Mer, has a broken arm. He’s been telling his schoolfriends that a giant attacked him. If his father assaulted him, I can understand why he should have made up the story of the giant to make it seem bearable. A lot of children would rather create a mythical bogeyman than blame one of their parents for hurting them. Of course, the so-called giant could be real and working with whoever has been making Toby himself so afraid. Either way, the child’s broken arm seems to me a most serious danger signal.
I ought to have been firmer when we last talked, Henry, but I have to say now that I think the policy of terrifying Toby into making a confession is too dangerous to pursue. I cannot take any further part in it.
Please let me know, however, if there is anything I can ever do for you – in my professional capacity.
With best wishes,
Trish Maguire
Almost satisfied and definitely certain that she couldn’t do any better, she added ‘Strictly Private & Confidential’ at the top of the letter, along with Henry’s name and the address of his bank. She printed off a single copy for herself and filed the original on her hard disk and on a floppy, which she added to the others in her small fireproof safe.
Chapter 18
‘It’s Jay here,’ said the junior clerk’s voice over the phone later that morning. ‘Sir Henry Buxford’s on the line. Can you speak to him?’
Trish had been rereading her copy of the letter she had dropped in at Grunschwig’s offices on her way into chambers and wondering whether she should pre-empt trouble by telling Antony what she had done or leave it to Henry.
‘Yes. Put him through.’
‘I have your envelope, Trish. And I wanted to assure you that I will tackle the matter now. I should also like to say how grateful I am for everything you’ve done, and for the discretion with which you have done it. But I do think your suggestion that Toby might have got rid of his old friend is more than a little Jacobean. As is the idea that he could have deliberately broken his son’s arm.’
Thank God he’s taking it so calmly, she thought. ‘I shall be very relieved if I am wrong,’ she said. ‘But I know there’s something serious going on.’
‘I think you’re right about that. But I’ll handle it from here. I was wondering, though, whether I could persuade you to meet me this evening so that I can thank you in person for what you’ve done. Will you have one more drink with me?’
It would be pretty graceless to refuse to let him thank me in whatever way he wants, Trish thought, as she agreed to meet him.
‘Good. Then what about the Cork & Bottle again at seven o’clock?’
When she put down the phone, Trish saw that another email had come in from Ivan Gregory.
My dear Miss Maguire,
I have remembered the first time my mother told me about the pa
intings. I said, I think, that I’d grown up hearing about them, but that’s not quite true. I had grown up hearing about my amazing father, the love of her life and great connoisseur, but not that we had his collection in our house. That news came one night in the Blitz.
I had come off duty from fire-watching. I was dog-tired. Up half of every night during the bombing and trying to do two or three men’s work at the bank all day took it out of me, even when my asthma wasn’t bad. Some bombs were still falling when I got back home, so I filled one flask with tea and another with whisky and soda, collected my novel – Dickens, I think – and took them with some blankets to the cellar.
My mother was already there, and in the kind of state I’d never seen. She’d always been so brave, but that night something had happened. I didn’t know until later that one of her favourite patients had killed himself. He had long left the nursing home where she worked, but she visited him in his tiny flat whenever she could. It seemed that the sound of the bombing night after night had brought back all his old shell shock and he had hanged himself. She’d found him that day and had had to organize the removal of the body and so on.
The shock had made her very shaky herself and she was talking much more freely than she ever had before about the trenches and the men she had nursed, and her meeting with my father. She talked about her fear and her horror of some of the wounds she had to deal with and the bliss of being clean and warm and loved by a man like him.
Then she began to tell me how he’d first told her about his paintings, about how they had become lovers and she had become pregnant and they had been married by a French priest in a small village behind the front line.
A Place of Safety Page 19
