Rainstone Fall

by Peter Helton

  Having recently lost my only shotgun to a gangster and having had my handgun confiscated by the fuzz I also felt quite under-equipped in the violence department. Shotguns and kidnapped boys didn’t really mix, I quickly told myself, since they were hardly precision weapons, and the Webley .38, while satisfyingly noisy, was about as reliable as everything else made in the 1930s.

  My mobile gurgled: text message. U there? Open door. From Tim. What was wrong with the bell pull? Nothing, as far as I could see when I got to the hall. I yanked open the door. More rain.

  Tim’s TT was parked next to the Landy. The Norton was lying in the mud, on its side. Tim was lying in a puddle next to it, also on his side, clutching his mobile. I squelched over to help him up.

  ‘What are you doing down there? Want a hand up?’

  ‘I can’t get up, my back’s gone,’ he said in a pathetic voice I’d never heard him use before.

  I knelt down next to him. ‘What happened, Bigfoot?’

  ‘Your bloody bike must have slipped off its stand in the mud. I tried to bloody lift it and halfway up my bloody back went bang. And I mean: bang, I think I heard it go. Don’t touch me, I think I’d scream. How often have I told you the bloody yard needs recobbling or tarmacking or something. It would never have happened if you hadn’t neglected this damn place for God knows how many years.’

  ‘You’re so right, Tim. And it was very kind of you to try and pick up the Norton but also very stupid, it weighs an absolute ton.’ It was raining hard now and even I was getting soaked. ‘Can you move at all?’

  ‘It hurts so much when I do, I think I’d rather not, thanks.’

  ‘Okay. In that case, can I bring you out a cup of coffee or something?’

  ‘Ha-bloody-ha. Got any better ideas?’

  ‘No, but Annis might. I’ll go and fetch her. We’ll find a solution somehow. Back in a tick. Honest.’ I ran inside, shouted Annis awake, grabbed my raincoat and an umbrella and ran back out. I laid the coat over him and arranged the brolly so it covered his head.

  ‘This is your solution? Cosy. Please don’t bring me a bowl of chicken broth, Chris.’

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind,’ I lied. Ungrateful sod.

  He groaned, shivering. Half of his face was caked with mud and he was as wet as though he had come down the mill race. At last Annis splashed over. I left Tim to explain while I followed a sudden inspiration and rummaged in a shed until I found a strong plank of wood, about five foot long and twelve inches wide. Together and on the count of three we managed to pull him on to it. It looked precarious but with much groaning, grumbling and several very bad words we managed to carry him inside and deposit him on the carpet between the sofas and the fireplace.

  I lit the fire while Annis carefully stripped the wet clothes off him despite his howls of pain. We got him on to some folded blankets and under a duvet at last. Then I called Dr Marland, one of the few practitioners I knew who still did house calls, though she travelled with a minder after dark and charged accordingly.

  ‘Where’s the pain?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Where exactly does it hurt?’ I asked Tim.

  ‘Lower back. And my left leg, behind the knee. I think I must have torn something there.’ I relayed all that.

  ‘Sounds very much like a prolapsed disc. Keep him where he is, in a position most comfortable to him, try it on the side with a cushion between his knees. Give him some painkillers and put a hot water bottle against his lumbar region.’

  ‘Okay. How long will you be?’

  ‘How long will I be? I’m not coming out for something like that and anyway, he’s not one of my patients! Get him to his own doctor when he gets some movement back. But he’ll need a physio more than a doctor.’

  ‘Why does his leg hurt though?’

  ‘That happens when the prolapse is to the back and the side, it presses on a nerve root. Okay? Bye.’

  ‘Wait! Just one more question: how long before he’s okay again?’

  ‘Hard to say. Couple of weeks’ rest, then a programme of exercises to strengthen the lower back. His back will be vulnerable for a few months. But the physio will explain all that. Goodbye, Mr Honeysett.’

  And that, as they say, was that. I might not have had much of a plan for getting at the Rodin but the little I did have was lying groaning on my sitting-room floor with a slipped disc and would probably remain there for quite a while. I must have looked at Tim with a less than charitable expression because he started to protest.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Honeypot, but I didn’t exactly do it on purpose. And it happened while I was trying to rescue the Norton from the mud, so you can stop scowling at me. I think those guys have stopped following me, I didn’t notice anything suspicious today. But better hide the TT somewhere in your outbuildings just in case. Don’t want it scratched though. What’s that weird smell all of a sudden?’

  I sniffed. ‘Charred onions. Special recipe.’

  An additional layer of gloom settled on my mind as I scraped the onions into the bin and started over again, wielding the knife perhaps just a fraction more ferociously than before. I started off the sausages at the same time and put the water on for the spuds.

  Annis came in from ministering to the safe breaker on the floor. ‘What now?’

  ‘You can wash the chard and peel the potatoes.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know it wasn’t but do it anyway. According to Dr Marland he won’t be breaking into museums for a while.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Her very words.’ It also struck me that he might be unable to perform other acrobatics for quite a while but the unexpected pleasure I derived from the thought instantly made me feel guilty again.

  ‘It’s you and me then,’ she said, taking the peeler to the first pink-eyed tuber.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, looking across at her. ‘Just you and me. You and me making love in the shower, you and me cooking a meal together, you and me stealing sculpture from the gallery. The simple, everyday stuff of mature relationships. Got any ideas?’

  ‘One or two.’ Annis grinned idiotically as she whittled the potato in her hand.

  ‘Okay, I’ll leave it all with you then, shall I?’

  I pretty much did exactly that for the rest of the day. Annis looked after Jill and she looked after Tim. She got some painkillers into him and tucked him up with piles of cushions. She even ladled the mash, laced with fresh horseradish, the venison sausages drowned in onion gravy and the steamed chard into him because sitting up to use knife and fork was still out of the question. This humiliating complication alone convinced me that the man was in serious pain. Later she went up to the studio and worked by the cool light of a couple of daylight bulbs until the wind picked up again and the noisy snapping of the tarpaulin drove her back to the house. I couldn’t even think of lifting a paint brush. Annis found me in bed, trying to control my anxieties with a hefty nightcap of Laphroaig. I watched her pull her clothes off and throw them into a pile under the window while she complained away about the draught and noise in the studio. I listened to her hum some atonal nonsense under the shower and admired her taut body as she towelled her strawberry hair by the bed. I simply couldn’t believe I had never told her that I loved her.

  She bounced into bed, took the Laphroaig from me and emptied the glass down her throat. ‘Eeeeyuch! Do you know,’ she asked as she made her head comfortable on my chest, ‘what I like so much about making love in the afternoon?’

  ‘Do tell me.’

  ‘If you play your cards right you get to do it again in the evening.’

  The sky was a little brighter when I brought Tim a cup of coffee in the morning.

  He declared that his back had improved a bit overnight but soon disillusioned me again by explaining that ‘improvement’ meant he no longer had shooting pains in the back of the knee, not that he was about to clamber up the façade of the Victoria Art Gallery. Which made me realize once
and for all that it would be me climbing into the museum, and since we had already ruled out getting in on the ground floor that meant I would have to acquire some cat-burglary skills pronto. And did I mention I’m not very good with heights?

  I discussed it with Tim while we ate one of our favourite breakfasts of scrambled eggs with coriander leaf and huge dollops of brinjal pickle. ‘What about Annis?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s worse than me. She’s fearless on the flat but standing on a thick carpet gives her vertigo.’

  ‘You really are a pair of sissies. You’ll just have to find a way then. The back of the building is the obvious way in. There’s no security guard at night, which should tell you something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That they think nobody would be crazy enough to try it right under the noses of all the cops in Bath. Getting out and away will definitely be the challenge. You’d better come up with something soon, you’ve only got a couple of days until the exhibition ends. And you’ll have to find a getaway car in good time and stash it somewhere safe, not around here where Needham’s boys are likely to turn up for a bit of harassment. If you buy the car, or bike if you prefer, and they clock you on CCTV then they’ll trace it back to you, so you’ll have to steal it. And then you’ll need false plates. Not so easy any more but you can still get them off the internet. Make sure they’ll exactly match the year of the car or you’ll not get very far, the cops are fiendishly clued up on anything to do with plates.’

  This was something else I hadn’t quite thought through. It would hardly do to turn up in one of our own cars and drive through the thickly surveillanced centre, if we ever got to drive away at all. ‘We could of course hold up the place and try and get it that way . . .’ I suggested half-heartedly.

  ‘Now you’re really talking out of your arse. You’d be a little old man before they let you out of jail again. Even if you used a toy gun. I can recommend it only as the best way of getting yourself shot full of holes you don’t require. Think of something else,’ he said vehemently.

  ‘I didn’t really mean it,’ I assured him.

  ‘Glad to hear it, Honeypot. I certainly wouldn’t let you involve Annis in a hare-brained scheme like that.’

  ‘Let me?’ Something about the way he implied that he had any say in what Annis did or did not suddenly got my goat. ‘I doubt you’d have much say in the matter. If she decided to do it then I’d like to see you try and stop her,’ my goat said sharply.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he admitted. ‘She’s got too much sense to get involved in anything too crazy anyway. Mind you,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘she hangs out with us two idiots and how sensible is that?’

  * * *

  Later that same morning I was back on Grand Parade across from the entrance to Victoria Gallery in search of a way inside that wouldn’t end in one of the many disasters Tim had lugubriously predicted. Mindful of the CCTV cameras at every street corner I had left the Norton out of sight in Caxton Court under the bridge and had picked up a different hat in a charity shop on Argyll Street. Looking up at the façade should have been enough to convince me to just keep on walking until I found a friendly policeman to unburden myself to. Yet there was something else apart from my feelings of obligation and guilt that made me amble along in the weak October sunshine and squint up at the rooflines of the adjoining buildings. If I was honest the answer probably lay in a surfeit of Cary Grant movies in my youth. Somewhere the task of getting in and out of a museum at night – and it would have to be night – struck a hopelessly romantic chord inside me. Thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette I ambled along and mingled with the few tourists who had braved this year’s wash-out autumn to admire Pulteney Bridge, Grand Parade with its colonnaded walkway underneath and the river Avon roaring over the horseshoe weir below. For the first time in years the river was in such spate that all boat tours had to be cancelled as simply too dangerous.

  I took the cameras more seriously now and tried to behave like everyone around me. On a security tape I would look just like any other visitor, taking only a passing interest in the architecture of the museum and walking in that curiously uncoordinated, aimless way we all acquire as soon as we turn tourist. After ten minutes of hanging around the balustrade on the parade I was none the wiser. I crossed to the other side and walked past the pizza joint, the ladies’ fashion shop, the entrance to the market and the Turkish restaurant. At the corner of Boat Stall Lane was a pub called the Rummer. I was going to stroll past slowly and take only a casual interest in the lane which leads to the car park at the back, but the view that presented itself was so arresting that I stood stock still and stared, possibly with my mouth open. There were no cars in the car park. Instead, a sweating and shouting tribe of workmen were erecting an enormous scaffold covering the entire width of the Guildhall building. Another set of men were just manoeuvring a couple of blue and white portable toilets against the back of the covered market. Three huge lorries seemed to fill the entire place.

  I forced myself to walk on, past the Empire Hotel. My first feeling had been one of panic but gradually I realized that scaffolding on the building next door might turn out to be nearly as good as a ladder on the museum wall itself. I walked around the hotel until I came to the porte cochère between Browns and the Empire Hotel. And strolled in. For a while nobody took much notice, they were simply too busy to care. There was a definite hierarchy and pecking order among them. Being actually on the scaffold, even ten feet off the ground, which was how high it reached at the moment, obviously allowed you to shout instruction and insult at the mortals on the ground, whose names appeared to be either Moron or Fuckwit. I circled round between lorries to the right, trying to look like I had some business there. I read the writing on the side of the nearest cab with joy. These were proper roofers, not just a scaffolding firm. The scaffolding would go all the way to the top to allow access to the roof and cupola, where the storm probably did some damage. Another hour or so, I noted with satisfaction, and the only two security cameras would disappear behind the scaffold. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the people responsible for security here would be too lethargic to do anything about it (‘Hey, it’s only for a few days’).

  I stood near the back door of Garfunkel’s kitchen and let my eyes run along the roofline of the covered market. I imagined myself scaling the scaffold, then following the skyline to the roof of the museum, where sooner or later I’d be confronted with the large skylights of the upstairs gallery . . . My stomach contracted at the thought. I grabbed the cast-iron railings harder and looked down into what at first sight seemed to be just the basement courtyard of the hotel. Then my eyes travelled further along and down, past silver beer kegs, empty gas cylinders and stacks of plastic crates towards a small cast-iron gate. All I could see beyond it was the swollen turmoil of the river Avon. As I walked back a few paces towards the porte cochère it became clear that this courtyard was in fact an ancient slipway leading in a steady slope from the yard towards the water. At this end it was barred by a larger gate. I tested it casually. It was locked and looked ancient but was obviously in use, so how difficult could it be?

  One of the scaffolders shouted and pointed. ‘S’cuse me, mate, but you can’t hang round here, this lorry’s about to move back, all right?’ I just nodded and walked off as the lorry started bleeping his reverse warning, not wanting to give anyone cause to remember me. I left through Boat Stall Lane and without a look back crossed the river via Pulteney Bridge, then clattered down the steps which led to the walkway and the imaginatively named Riverside Café overlooking the weir. I stuck my head through the door and ordered Earl Grey from an aproned waitress, then sat outside in the thin sunlight and peered across at the colonnaded walkway underneath Grand Parade. Even from here I could clearly see the wrought-iron door of the slipway leading on to it. There wasn’t a camera in sight. Access to this colonnaded walkway used to be from Parade Gardens, the little park bordered by the river. Now th
e walkway was closed to the public, probably to stop kids jumping into the river there or because of ageing masonry. Between the columns ran wrought-iron railings, easily surmounted, and below them an overgrown drop of twelve or fifteen feet down to the water, which would seem like nothing to a man who had just come down from the roof of the museum carrying a Rodin bronze on his back.

  It was obvious. I didn’t need a getaway car at all. What I needed was a boat.

  The Earl Grey arrived. I slipped a slice of lemon into my tea and raised my cup in salute to the river. There was only a small problem: the Avon was in such spate that all river traffic had been banned until further notice, so it would be complete madness trying to get the sculpture out that way.

  Perfect.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jake’s place had to be one of the few locations where the exhaust note of the Norton remained unremarked upon. At the moment it even remained unnoticed. Somewhere deep inside the workshop an engine was revving freely, unencumbered by any kind of exhaust system at all, judging by the deep shockwaves of sound, and somewhere else the high-pitched scream of an angle-grinder getting purchase on something big and hollow added the top notes to this rhapsody of toil. I left the bike at the entrance and picked my way through the broken landscape of automotive history in the yard.

  Originally Jake had bought the farm to breed ponies, but the venture had failed. After that he had changed direction and turned his first love, classic cars, into a thriving business. Restoring and maintaining vintage machinery – as long as it was British and had an internal combustion engine – had made him a modest fortune. You wouldn’t know it though, because the place looked like a scrapyard, with bits of pre-1970s cars and vans lying everywhere, some under tarpaulins, some protected by makeshift roofs, some taking a well-earned rest in the weeds. Despite his financial success Jake was still doing most of the work himself, with only one or two assistants, because that was what he enjoyed. At this very moment he was listening with rapt attention, oily bald head cocked to one side, to the unimaginable racket coming from a huge lump of an engine sitting on a workbench in the main workshop, worrying the accelerator with his thumb. He nodded at me and continued his revving, so I sat on an oil drum outside until he had heard enough of the testosterone symphony and joined me, carrying two tin mugs of tea made with a blow torch.