by Peter Helton
I engaged the cutter again at the top pane of glass and it snapped out as easily as the first. Reaching through I found the bolt and wriggled it back, a fraction of an inch at a time, until the door eased open. I looked down. Sure enough, there was an identical bolt at the bottom which had not been engaged. I slipped inside and gently clicked the door shut behind me. The noise of the rain fell away. Standing still in the kitchen I listened: water dripping off me on to the floor; a fridge-freezer humming near the door. The workings of the grandfather clock in the hall seemed monstrously loud. I crept forward and was appalled at the squelching sound my left boot produced. Putting weight only on to the heel stopped the noise but didn’t exactly make me feel sure-footed. First I investigated the sitting room. I had a strong feeling the stamp collection would be upstairs but would feel like an idiot if I had braved the stairs and the whole of the first floor with Connabear asleep only to later find what I was looking for downstairs. Some of the bookshelves had drawers at the bottom. At first I thought I’d hit pay dirt when I found fat albums wedged into one but they turned out to be full of deckle-edged black and white prints of people taking cycling holidays. I closed the heavy drawer carefully, straightened up, turned and swept an ornament off the shelf with the little black rucksack I’d forgotten I was carrying. It hit the thick carpet with a horribly loud thump but didn’t break. I put it back where I thought it had been. It was another bunny rabbit and seemed to have the same evil smile as its larger cousins in the garden. After having managed to squeeze around the sofas, armchairs, tables and plant stands without knocking anything else over I started on the dreaded stairs. I just knew they would creak at some point, no matter how lightly I trod, and sure enough, the last but one groaned loudly as I stood on it. I froze. My breath seemed so loud I was sure it could be heard for miles around. I waited, ready for flight should I hear the slightest sound, but nothing happened. Eventually I gathered the nerve to take the last two steps. I stood in the thickly carpeted upstairs corridor, carefully playing the torch beam about. There were five doors, all of them closed apart from the one at the end. From there vitreous china sparkled in the torch beam, which made it a safe bet for being a bathroom. This still left a bewildering choice of doors. At all times while thinking about the break-in I had firmly held in my mind an image of one closed door — with Connabear comfortably and noisily snoring behind it — and the others open for me to wander in and out of until I’d located the Penny Black.
I crept along the corridor and listened at each door in turn for Rufus Connabear’s breathing or perhaps a helpful little snuffle. Not a sound behind any of them. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t bothered to check whether his car was sheltering in the port, so for all I knew Connabear and his Jag might be miles away, heading for France on a cross-Channel ferry, let’s say. Dream on.
There was no easy solution, I simply had to open one of the doors and see what I’d find. Obviously I had a one in four chance of getting it right first time, though, not being a betting man, how the odds changed after that was a bit hazy in my mind. Anyway, I told myself as I turned the first brass door knob, my chances sounded pretty good to my non-mathematical brain. Pointing the torch down the hall so that only reflected light would fall into the room I opened the door very slowly. I could make out a kind of padded seat and then the bottom of a bed. Was the bed occupied? I strained my hearing but couldn’t be sure. I stuck my head through the gap. The bed was empty and I remembered to breathe again. Widening the crack I padded inside to have a look around. I could use the torch quite freely now. There were no signs of recent occupation but for a spare room it had some character, with more books on shelves and tiny framed watercolours on the walls, and the ill-judged addition of a rabbit ornament here and there. I went through the chest of drawers to the left of the window — it was full of linen. Under the bed were lengths of curved tubular aluminium, perhaps part of an exercise machine, and fluff. The place smelled unused and dusty. Not bothering to close the door I moved to the next. Even putting my ear right against it I heard nothing above the rain that the wind flung against the blind window in the corridor. It suddenly occurred to me that now I had a one in three chance of opening the wrong door. How had that happened? How had the odds turned so dramatically against me? Perhaps it was simply a ‘glass half-full/half-empty’ situation? Or should that be quarter-empty, I really wasn’t sure. .
Telling myself to get a grip I turned the brass knob and opened the door a fraction. All I could make out was an ornate secretaire and chair by the uncurtained window but my nose told me that this room had to be occupied. The moist and stale fug of sleep hung unmistakably in the air, together with the sound of my hammering heart. Connabear’s bedroom. With him in it. Was the Penny Black there too? I didn’t want to admit to that possibility yet. Creeping about in his bedroom while the man was asleep had to be the absolute last resort. Needing hearing aids to communicate easily with people was different from being profoundly deaf. I was sure sooner or later he’d hear me rummaging so close to him. Anyway, it was pitch dark, I’d have to use my torch and if nothing else surely that would wake him. If he woke up the shock of finding me there might give him a heart attack. Or me.
The next door seemed different. There was just not enough wall space on either side for it to be anything but a walk-in cupboard or another bathroom perhaps. I moved on to the last door. To make sure, I listened again, in case I had been wrong about the man living by himself. This was it. This just had to be the room where he kept his pet cobras and poisonous jumping spiders. I took even longer turning the knob and easing the door open since I’d been too scared to close the bedroom door again and I felt sure the tiniest squeak might wake him. As soon as the gap was wide enough I squeezed through and gratefully closed the door behind me. I found the light switch and flicked it on. After creeping around by torchlight it seemed insanely bright and scary but would speed up my search. It would probably show under the door so I had to be quick; didn’t old people get up to go to the loo a lot at night?
I was standing in a fair-sized study, the main feature of which was a mahogany desk and dark leather chair. On the tidy desk sat phone, blotter, brass lamp and leather picture frame holding a small black and white photo. Either side of the window stood wooden filing cabinets that matched the wood of the desk, and two bookshelves to my right completed the furnishings. They were stuffed with what looked like reference books and at least one complete encyclopedia. On the wall behind the desk hung a framed landscape painting, done with more enthusiasm than skill in oily impasto. I made straight for it as the likeliest place to hide a safe and lifted it off the wall. No wall safe, I was glad to see. I hadn’t really meant to lift the picture completely off the hook and now I found it hard to marry the hook and nail again. I rested it on the floor, rolled the chair closer to the wall, then picked up the painting again and climbed gingerly up. Then I stopped. What was I doing? I was a burglar, there was no need to clear up after myself, the main thing was to find the daft stamp and get the hell out again. But since I was already up there. . Before I managed to get the framed horror back on the nail the door flew open, making me scream with surprise and nearly lose my balance.
‘Don’t move, you bastard! Put that down!’ Even in his black pyjamas Connabear looked wide awake. He was wearing both his hearing aids and pointing both barrels of his shotgun at me. And he looked furious. As for his contradictory demands I chose not moving as the safer option. ‘It’s you,’ he said next. The disappointment in his croaky voice was obvious but he seemed to shrug it off quickly. ‘Put that painting back on the wall.’
‘Okay, just don’t do anything rash with that gun.’ I fumbled some more with the hook and at last caught the nail.
‘Now put your hands up and get your filthy boots off my chair.’
I stepped down with my hands up. Something in the way he held the gun convinced me that it was loaded and that old Rufus had experience in handling it.
He nodded his head up at the
daub. ‘You weren’t really going to steal that, were you? My wife painted that.’
Now I noticed the initials in the bottom-right corner, P.C. ‘Well, ehm, it’s rather nice,’ I lied. ‘I’m a painter myself, so I have an eye for these things.’
‘Oh yeah? No wonder you have to resort to robbing people if you think that’s a nice painting. It’s a horrible mess, my wife had no talent for art whatsoever. I’m keeping it for my daughter’s sake who is similarly afflicted, though I always make sure I’m sitting with my back to it. Right, move around to the window, but slowly, and keep your hands up. You scum, you thought I was just a doddery old codger. You thought you could turn the place over and probably just clout me one if I woke up. .’
‘No, of course not,’ I protested.
‘I thought you were a nice young man yesterday. Really did. Nicely spoken, too. And to think I even let you in the house. You make one false move and I’ll happily shoot you.’
‘You can’t mean that,’ I suggested, lowering my hands.
He tightened his grip on the weapon. ‘Oh yeah? You just try it.’
‘Make an awful mess,’ I suggested.
‘I look forward to it,’ he said and looked like he meant it.
‘The last guy who shot a burglar with a shotgun, you know, that farmer, he spent years in prison.’
‘Ah, but he shot him from behind, I’ll shoot you from the front,’ he said conversationally. ‘Actually he’s out now. And anyway, didn’t they change the law on defending your property? I think we’re allowed to shoot you now.’
My arms were already tired from manoeuvring the heavily framed daub about and keeping them in the air was surprisingly hard work. How to get out of this one? As usual, I’d have to talk myself out of it. The really disconcerting thing was that he seemed so much more awake than me, but then I’d heard it said that old people needed less sleep. I felt suddenly exhausted and thought I could easily nod off with my hands in the air.
He moved behind the desk and sat in the chair, then propelled himself forward with his slippered feet until he could rest the gun barrels on the desk and keep the weapon trained on me with one hand. Then he reached for the phone.
‘No, please, don’t call the police.’ Of all the things that might happen, getting arrested had never figured in any scenarios I had imagined. Unmoved, he dialled 999.
Last chance now. ‘I am being blackmailed into breaking into your house, it’s not what I normally do, there’s a boy’s life at stake, in fact I’m a private eye and a client’s son has been kidnapped and breaking in here and stealing the Penny Black is part of the ransom, you have to believe me.’ I rattled it all off quickly before he’d get through to the police.
He paused and gave me a contemptuous look. ‘That’s the most pathetic cock and bull story I have heard for a long time.’
‘Honestly. I wish there was a less fantastical explanation but that’s the situation I’m in.’
He shook his head and waggled the receiver at me. ‘Did you cut the phone line?’
‘No, didn’t think of that. Should’ve, I suppose. Why, is it not working?’
‘No, must be the weather. It happens. Joys of country living.’ He replaced the receiver and gripped the gun with both hands again. ‘So you’re trying to tell me someone went to the trouble of kidnapping a boy — which carries a mandatory life sentence if I’m not mistaken — to make you steal my Penny Black?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s a very unlikely story, Mr Burglar.’
‘Why? Drugs, money, art, diamonds, rare stamps, it’s all currency in criminal circles.’
He nodded. ‘True. Do you have any idea how much money we are talking about here?’
‘Not really.’
‘About two-fifty.’
‘Quarter of a million?’ I whistled.
‘No, you saphead. Pounds. Two hundred and fifty pounds will buy you a fair example.’
‘There must be some mistake. It must be worth more than that. I thought it being the first ever stamp and. .’ I faltered, faced with the pitiful look he gave me.
‘Do you know how many of them were issued?’ he asked, frowning disapprovingly at my ignorance. ‘More than sixty million of them. Even an unused one in mint condition wouldn’t exactly break the bank.’
‘So they got it completely wrong. .’ A thin silver lining stole into my mind, looking for a cloud.
‘It’s a common misconception,’ he explained happily. ‘Now if we were talking about, let’s say, the Blue Mauritius, then a million dollars would be a good starting price, and the Treskilling Yellow sold for over a couple of million a while back.’
‘But you don’t have any of those. .?’
‘No, never had, either. I offloaded most of my collection long ago, and just in time too. Others got badly burnt when the bottom fell out of the stamp market in the eighties but I saw it coming. And it’s about to happen again, I might add.’ He lifted his nose as though he could sniff the imminent collapse of the stamp market in this very room. ‘I kept the Penny Blacks though. Out of sentimentality, mainly. I remember being very excited when I was able to add a copy to my collection when I was a young man. I don’t remember what I paid for it but it seemed a fair bit of money to me then. And then there’s the historical connection of course. They were issued in Bath after all.’
‘Yes, I know about that part. Did you say Penny Blacks? Plural?’
‘Yes, I have three examples. One is right here, see?’ He turned the picture frame on the desk around and proffered it up for my inspection. Without thinking I walked up to the desk and took it — and noticed in passing that I didn’t get shot. What earlier I had taken to be a small black and white photograph was in fact the famous stamp. It had the head of a young Queen Victoria on it and bore the legend Postage, One Penny. In the bottom left-hand corner was a Q and in the bottom right a G.
‘What do those letters mean?’ I enquired.
‘Oh, they give the exact position of the stamp on the sheet. They were printed in sheets of two hundred and forty, you see, twenty rows of twelve, so this example came from the seventeenth row, Q, and the seventh position, G.’
I handed him the frame and he set it back in its place on his desk. There were no other pictures, no photographs of his wife, for example, I noted. Perhaps he had fonder memories of the stamp than of the dearly departed dauber. ‘So the man who forced me to break in here to steal that stamp is labouring under a serious misconception, i.e. that the thing is worth a fortune.’
‘So it appears. Are you being serious about this kidnapped boy story then? Surely you could have simply gone to the police. Should have, I should add.’
‘It’s the mother’s decision. No police. Who am I to make that decision for her? I feel guilty enough as it is. The kidnappers told her to get in touch with me so they could use her son to make me do their bidding. This isn’t the first burglary they forced me into, but the last one went wrong. Then they came up with this scheme and here I am looking down the barrels of. . a rather fine shotgun, I can’t help noticing.’
‘Yes, it is rather fine, and it does you credit to have noticed it. You’re a better judge of guns than paintings perhaps. It’s a James Purdey, engraved by Stephen Kelly, one of a pair. Probably the most expensive items in the house, that’s what you should have gone for,’ he said, giving me a schoolmasterly look over the top of his gold spectacles.
‘Look, I’m really not a habitual house-breaker. I’m a private investigator, as well as a painter. .’ I started rummaging in my jacket pockets for a business card while Connabear tightened his bony grip on the polished walnut stock of the gun. When at last I managed to fish one out it was damp and dog-eared and looked like I’d found it in the street somewhere.
He took the proffered card reluctantly but the expression on his face brightened as he looked at it. ‘Honeysett. You’re the chap who found that woman who was imprisoned in the old railway station, that made national news, Nikki Somebody or other. I remember seeing your pictur
e.’
‘Nikki Reid.’
‘That’s her. Worked for an estate agency. So. . this story you told me is really true? About the boy?’
‘I’m afraid it is. I messed up the first burglary they asked me to do, well, the burglary went all right but then I got mugged on the way home. .’
‘Nowhere is safe. .’
‘So it seems. And. . so they changed their demands. They gave me your name and address and told me to steal that stamp and now I messed up this burglary too.’
‘I’d say so. You’ve no idea who the kidnappers are?’
‘None. I don’t even know if it’s one or many. I get phone calls from mobiles, a scratchy voice making demands. I feel just a little under pressure to get this right and I’m constantly getting it wrong. If you don’t mind me asking, who would know that you own copies of the Penny Black?’
He chuckled. ‘Many, many people. I was quite an active collector and even people I dealt with in the course of my business had often heard that I collected stamps.’
‘What was your business, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Not at all. Bunting.’
‘Bunting? Is there money in bunting?’
‘Certainly. Decorative bunting, corporate bunting, national bunting, international bunting, point of sale. . And not just bunting, we did banners and flags and flagpoles. Static flagpoles, portable flagpoles, indoor flagpoles, outdoor flagpoles. But after my wife died I sold the business to a big digital printing firm and retired. I’d only kept the business that long for something to get me out of the house. If you get my meaning.’
I said I probably did. ‘It was common knowledge then that you owned a Penny Black.’
‘Yes, and you’d be surprised how many people thought it was worth a fortune.’
