‘He will be anyway. They won’t hold him just because he may have walloped Griff. I told you, I don’t do cop-shops, not unless I have to. Just pull over and I’ll hitch back.’
He swerved into a lay-by. ‘I can’t make you do this, Lina, but I shall think a lot less of you if you don’t. You’ve got guts. OK, you may have had bad experiences in the past, but you won’t this time.’
‘Want a bet?’ I sneered.
‘Why did you have a bad time last time?’
I heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘Why don’t you just check my record?’
‘You haven’t got one. Some of your mates might have. But you must only ever have had warnings. So you can’t play that card. In any case, there’s something radically different about this time. You’re the real victim, not the possible perpetrator. So,’ he continued in an aunt-y sort of voice, ‘people will be nice to you, and show you pretty mug shots and bring you nice cups of tea.’
I responded in my best imitation of Aidan Morley: ‘How very charming of them. OK. But you’ll have to get me back pronto to pick up His Nibs.’
‘Promise. Mustn’t keep your father waiting, must we?’
I shook my head. ‘You know something: I might have sprung from his loins, as Griff would put it, but he’s not my father. Never will be. If I’m not careful, he may become my child.’ I meant to think it, not say it aloud, but perhaps that didn’t matter. In any case he said nothing; he just looked at me sideways and put the car into gear.
It wasn’t the promise of cups of tea that finally swung it. It was the thought that I might spot a mug they weren’t expecting me to identify – Dan Freeman’s. I’d had the idea that he might be a pedestrian that our security camera had picked up, after all. I wouldn’t mention at the outset his connection with Oxford: I had an idea police officers might feel the same sort of fear-tinged respect I’d had for brainy academics.
Dave didn’t seem to have said anything about my grubby past. No one sneered at me, or uttered thinly-veiled threats if I didn’t cooperate. In fact they were so polite, I wondered if Dave had mentioned that I was the daughter of a Title. A WPC the same age as me kept me company, worrying a rapidly growing zit on her chin when she thought I wouldn’t notice. What I did drag out of her as she showed me the photos was that Hoodie couldn’t offer any reasonable explanation why he’d come to Kent, or why he’d grabbed me from behind. Reluctantly I mentioned Marcus; but I kept quiet about Tony. I had no more than suspicions about him, after all, and I had an idea that suspicions wouldn’t do his police career any good, if they proved to be empty. She got more interested when I mentioned what I referred to as our other night visitors, and positively lavished photos and tea on me.
After an hour of looking at faces, I flung up my hands in despair. ‘It’s all these fixed expressions,’ I moaned. ‘In real life people’s faces move all the time. And they put on glasses, they change the colour of their hair –’
She abandoned the spot to point at the screen. ‘Computers can take off glasses, change hairstyles.’ Remove spots? ‘Forget the inessentials. I always think concentrating on the eyes is best. You can’t change those.’
‘Coloured contact lenses? Sorry. I didn’t mean to be flip. Look, could you really make a few of these guys bald? Because Dan Freeman had so little hair it hardly counts. Very tired skin – I wanted to slop moisturiser all over it. And his eyes – they seemed to cry out for their spectacles. You know, as if he’d taken them off – no, he couldn’t have done, because there weren’t any little marks on his nose. I’d have remembered those.’
Another ten minutes convinced me I was wasting everyone’s time. Dan Freeman was not on their books. Perhaps, after all, the original Dan had been a decent, honest man, simply helping a person in need, and I’d simply been confused when I thought the Bredeham look-alike resembled him.
They’d follow up the Marcus connection with Hoodie, they said. While I waited for Dave I dithered. Should I phone Marcus and warn him? He’d given me all the information that had enabled me to run Bossingham Hall to ground, so I owed him for that. And for the decanter sale, of course. But somehow he must have had a hand in getting Hoodie to Tenterden – him or someone he’d let into the house. Probably. Possibly. Now I knew why people smoked. To occupy their hands and mouths while their brains did something else.
‘First stop Bredeham to pick up the hire-car,’ I told Dave.
‘Sure thing, Miss Daisy,’ he replied, tugging his forelock, or where his forelock would have been if he’d had one. He added in his normal voice, ‘And then?’
‘Then I thank you kindly and go on to Ashford to pick up Lord Elham.’
He digested that. ‘Aren’t you afraid of Marcus using your spare house keys to get back in and rob you?’
‘I was last night. But then I changed the burglar alarm code, so even if he did get in, he’d waken the dead.’
‘Including Tony, living conveniently opposite.’
‘Including Tony.’ I couldn’t help sighing. But it wasn’t for lost love, it was for lost trust. Whose side was he on? Whose side had he been on from the start?
‘Fancied him, did you?’ He spurted past a Euro-lorry.
I didn’t want to split emotional hairs. ‘For about ten minutes. But now Griff’s given me a teddy bear.’
His laugh was surprisingly gentle. ‘You’d rather take a teddy bear to bed, is that what you’re saying?’
‘You know where you are with a teddy bear.’
‘But not with human beings?’
‘Not the ones I’ve come across, Griff apart. And he can still surprise me.’
‘His relationship with Aidan Morley, for instance? You don’t seem to like him very much.’
‘Griff says I have this tendency to inverted snobbery. But Aidan and me are from different worlds: him and his public school accent and his posh house and his wonderful Merc and –’
‘And Griff,’ he concluded for me. ‘It’s all right not to like someone – to be jealous of them.’
‘I didn’t say I was jealous of Aidan. I said I didn’t like him. He’s not a very nice man. Lots of people don’t like Griff, which is a shame, because he is a nice man. Much nicer than Lord Elham.’ Yes, I’d change the subject to him – see how it felt to finger my bruises, you might say. ‘I wonder how he dealt with his NHS breakfast. Now, he’s supposed to be a noble, in fact he used to sit in the House of Lords and rule the country, when he could be bothered, but – he’s a shit, Dave.’
‘So why are you being so nice to him?’
‘Because even shits need looking after. And we seem to have a sin – a symb – oh, that relationship where you both need each other. Symbiosis, that’s it. He needs me to stop him dying of food poisoning or something, and I quite like the way he passes antiques my way.’
‘You’re not setting yourself up for an accusation of obtaining goods by false pretences, are you?’ He sounded like one of my social workers. Not the nicest, either.
‘Nothing false, no pretences,’ I snapped. ‘And I keep a record of all our transactions. All signed and sealed.’ I looked out of the passenger window, but had to give up. No point in losing a perfectly good breakfast.
His voice was much kinder when, a few minutes later, he broke the silence. ‘Would you like me to come along with you? Pack him up and take him home? After all, there may be a reception committee waiting for him. And you, of course.’
It was tempting. Very tempting. But I wasn’t sure if he’d be there as my friend, or as a policeman having a good sniff round and finding all sorts of things he shouldn’t. And, yes, I had a bit of unfinished business with Lord Elham, in the shape of the forged page.
‘How dare you ask such a thing? Me, a forger!’ Despite his bandages, despite being crammed into a bright red Ka’s passenger seat (the rental people were beginning to hex me when I went in) Lord Elham did his best to get on his high horse.
‘My colleague was really impressed – said it was the highest quality forgery. I
t’d have taken real skill to produce anything that good. You could make a good living, he said.’
‘I already have.’ He preened himself. ‘No reason why I shouldn’t carry on.’
I pulled the car over. ‘There’s every reason. No. Sit still and listen. Natura Rerum is priceless. As soon as I got hold of what people thought was a genuine page, people have been after me or Griff, my partner. Sometimes they’ve tried to throw sand in our eyes by making it seem like a general outbreak of theft.’
‘Are you sure it’s not?’ So he was listening, after all.
‘After last night? Look, Lord Elham, however I try to tell myself there’s been a whole series of coincidences, I don’t believe it any more. Someone’s been after me, after Griff and now after you. And I’m very much afraid it’s not just one someone. And I’m even more afraid that it’s not just criminals who’ll be taking an interest. The police don’t like forgery, no matter how good it is.’
‘I never claimed it was the real thing. Caveat emptor, and all that. Or didn’t you learn Latin at that state school you went to?’
Why was he bothering to be nasty now? Or perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he simply didn’t understand. ‘State schools,’ I said. ‘Maybe if you’d forked out for me to go to a posh public school –’
‘Thirty times – no, thirty-one times seven years at –’ He shook his head, then held it still, wincing. ‘Could I have afforded it, Lina?’
‘You’ve no idea what happened to your other children?’ I started the car again, checking carefully for other cars behind me. ‘Never the least bit interested?’
‘Nappies! All that crying and puking. Maybe when they got older. I mean, you’re quite interesting, aren’t you? Tell you what, you should come and live with me. All those bedrooms – no one’d know.’
So he didn’t want me in his own private section. Good job, really. It’d have taken a week to make a room habitable.
‘The thing is, Lina, you’ve made me quite nervous. All these people after me. And now the police, too.’
And there I’d thought he might actually want my company for its own sake. ‘Tell whoever you’ve been supplying that you’re giving up,’ I said. ‘The antiques trade being what it is, everyone’ll get the message pretty quickly. Get rid off your printing equipment fast – I know someone who’ll probably give you a decent price. And – most of all – get rid of that damned book. It shouldn’t be shut away in one man’s house. It should be there for everyone to see.’ Like the one in the Bodleian, where you practically had to give a sample of your DNA before you could see it? ‘You know, the British Museum or something. But make it part of the deal that the public can have a look.’
‘The deal?’
‘When you give it to them.’
‘Give! I thought you said it was priceless. How much would they give me for it?’
I swallowed what I wanted to say. ‘Is it yours to sell?’
‘It’s not the Vultures’. No, they own the house and contents, but not the stuff in my wing. That was the agreement. And Natura Rerum’s always been in my wing. Ever since the deal was mooted, anyway.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘For God’s sake, so I can put it somewhere safe before we both get killed for it!’ I put the car into gear. The Ka. Whatever. ‘Tell you what, take me back a different route from usual.’
‘How should I know which way?’ He spread his hands helplessly as if I’d asked him to explain one of those Greek things in geometry without a diagram.
‘You live round here. You were brought up round here. You must have gone on walks or pony rides with your governess.’
‘Can’t bear gee gees. Never could. Big hulking things. And yet chaps breed them and race them and bet on them. Seem to enjoy riding them, too.’
I didn’t argue. Come to think of it, I’d seen more horses round here than I’d ever seen, munching their way through fields. There must be a reason for them. ‘What about walking or drives in the car? I only want you to guide me through the back lanes, for God’s sake, so no one tails us.’
‘No, they’re very narrow. You stick to Stone Street.’
I gave up, and concentrated on the road ahead. And, of course, behind. Perhaps he was right: it was better to be on a nice straight stretch like most of the B2068 – Stone Street – where you could see a mile behind as well as ahead.
‘Wheelbarrow Town,’ he said suddenly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘There’s a road through Wheelbarrow Town. Head for Lyminge. There you are! That garage!’ He flung his arm across my chest. ‘Right!’
I barely had time to signal, which must have pleased the guy coming up behind me at well past the sixty limit. Lord Elham directed me through increasingly narrow lanes. Then we reached another comparatively straight road, across heathland.
‘The Minnis. Never been enclosed,’ he informed me.
‘Where’s this town, then?’
‘A couple of miles back.’
‘Eh?’
‘Just a few cottages. But I always liked the name. Nice names round here. Ever had piles? No? Too young, I suppose. Anyway, if your name was Lin, and you’d got piles, I’d take you to Linsore Bottom.’
He expected a laugh, so he got one. Suddenly I was in a familiar cluster of houses, the Hop Pocket to my left. I took the right, and then started up the track to Bossingham Hall. The Ka’s suspension didn’t like it one scrap. Neither did Lord Elham’s head. So I stopped, reversing to the lane, intending to go back up it and into the grounds through those wonderful front gates. Until, that is, I saw a blue Focus nosing its way towards me. To hell with the suspension. I pulled sharply back in. off the track and into the shelter of the hedge. Hell, this would have to be the day I’d chosen a red car.
But there must be a lot of Focuses on the road, and I must be getting neurotic. At any rate, this one, carried on the way it was going, to Linsore Bottom for all I knew. Griff’d love that name, especially as a woman friend of his was always banging on about her haemorrhoids. But for the moment, what I had to think about was getting up to the house safe and sound, hiding the car, and making sure we locked ourselves away from the police and other intruders.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘There’s that play,’ Lord Elham reflected, staring into his champagne glass, ‘where this chappie gives up conjuring and makes a speech about it. Lina ought to know, but she went to these rotten schools, you see. You got any idea, old boy?’
Titus looked desperately to me for help. I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t every day you got invited to a stately home to clear out some illicit loot you could use in your own illegal sideline, and then, black sacks stowed in your white van, quaff champagne in a crystal glass. This had no doubt been his idea of dying and going to heaven – until, that is, the loony lord started talking Shakespeare.
‘The Tempest,’ I said, having seen it – and been totally confused by it – with Griff, who’d blamed himself for my puzzlement and read it through with me two very wet winter evenings in the caravan. ‘Something about charms being overthrown.’ I’d tried to learn the whole speech to please Griff, but what little had stuck had slipped away now.
I hadn’t had an easy time persuading Lord Elham to do maybe not the honest, but at least the sensible thing. The moment we’d reached the Hall, he’d wanted to glue himself to the television: apparently even an afternoon of watching a women’s cricket match in Durham was better than confronting unwelcome truths.
‘Look,’ I’d persisted, ‘I wasn’t exaggerating this morning when I said you – we – were in danger.’
‘You will stay then?’ He’d been as eager as a puppy.
‘On a few conditions. One of which is that we get rid of evidence that’d send you down if the police decided to pay you a visit. I can take the lot to the tip. Or I can contact my mate Titus Oates.’
‘Is that really his name?’
‘Of course not. But no one ever uses h
is real one. He’d dispose of it for you, no questions asked.’
‘Do you think he’d let me do some work for him? I get so bored.’
‘You’ll have to ask him, won’t you? He’s told me your work’s good.’ Carrot, then a bit of stick. ‘You might get quite bored in jail, of course. And there’d be no champagne there.’
‘Hmm. That writer chappie – not a real lord, was he? He didn’t think much of it, did he?’
‘Not one bit.’ On the other hand, a prison diet, while not the sort of thing Griff would let me eat, might be healthier than eternal Pot Noodles – even than eternal frozen meals for one, two of which I’d reheated for our lunch. ‘The other thing we have to do – and fast – is get Natura Rerum into safe keeping.’
‘They’ll never find it,’ he said, reaching for the remote again.
‘They tried to run me over; they attacked a frail old man; they socked you. Would they stop at a touch of torture, d’you suppose?’ Preferably him, not me, but you never knew. And what I did know was that I’d blab at the first opportunity. I’d hate the idea of the book falling into bad hands, but it hadn’t brought me much luck so far, and I didn’t feel I owed it anything. At least, that was what I told myself. But I wasn’t sure.
‘My God! Torture?’
‘We’re miles from anywhere: no one’d hear us scream. And if they decided to kill us who’d find out? They could be away from here and living off the proceeds in Spain before they found our bodies.’ I didn’t tell him that I’d known the same temptation to violence. Now, though I could have wrung his neck, I couldn’t have done him real harm.
‘But – Lina, you’re joking.’
Arms akimbo, I demanded, ‘Do I look as if I’m joking?’
‘That’s what Nanny Lyons used to say. She used to frighten me, Lina.’
Drawing the Line Page 26
