‘Check your list,’ I said with a cheery smile. ‘Take your mind off things.’
Thurso’s a lovely old place. Ferries from the north wend to the islands. Its size and bustle surprised me; North Sea oil, I suppose, or innate vigour. Folk might say it’s not up to much, but for me Thurso will always get a medal. It was there that the whole thing fell into place.
Mr McDuff was pleasantly young, very impressed by our motor. I’d parked it outside in full view, surreptitiously asking Michelle who I was supposed to be.
‘You told him Barnthwaite.’ She sat, clearly having none of it. I yanked her out, maintaining a charming smile and gripping her arm bloodless.
‘Smile, love,’ I said through my smile. ‘You’re Mrs MacHenry until I say otherwise, or it’s jail for the pair of us.’
I introduced myself to Mr McDuff while Mrs MacHenry made her selections. We were told that a separate invoice would have to be signed for every order. I sighed, said Mr Sinclair the butler was a stickler for inventories.
It was after we’d loaded up that light dawned. The stores lad carried out the victuals, groceries, wines and whatnot, while Michelle and I went to sign. Mr McDuff had the invoices all ready and offered me them. I frowned.
‘No, sir,’ I corrected. ‘I’m never empowered to sign. The laird’s housekeeper does it, Mrs MacHenry.’
He ahemed, hating being caught out in protocol. He’d rather have died. ‘Of course,’ he exclaimed, passing her the pen.
Now, one of the most surprising facts of life is that women make bad crooks. Which, when you think about it, is really weird. I mean, they’re born deceivers. Right from birth they’re talented fibbers and conwomen. And their entire lives are a testimony to pretence. Yet how often do you hear of a really dazzling robbery executed by a bird? No. Birds go for the drip-feed: a zillion minor transgressions, debts created wholesale because trillions of housewives skilfully delay paying today’s electricity bill. Individually, nothing. Totalled, a genuine migraine for Lloyd’s of London. It explains a lot about the structure of society. Which is the reason I’d warned Michelle every second breath that she wasn’t to forget her true identity, Mrs MacHenry. And even as she took the manager’s pen to sign I watched her, heart beating, in case she absently signed ‘Michelle McGunn’. That was how I saw her face when I mentioned the laird. For that fleeting moment, she suffered anguish. But it all passed smoothly, and we left for Tarrant’s.
This was a mine of stuff. Brass, woods, sheet metals, resins, glues, studs, tools. Aladdin’s cave. I’d had the forethought to ask Mr McDuff’s opinion of ship chandlers in Thurso. A phone call from Mr Tarrant to McDuff established our credibility, which sadly nowadays means mere credit worthiness. Sign of the times, that the word for trustworthy now relates only to money.
‘The laird doesn’t hold with plastic cards,’ I told Mr Tarrant. ‘He settles in money, though it’d make it so much simpler for us, wouldn’t it, Mrs MacHenry? He won’t listen.’
‘True,’ Michelle sighed. By then, to my relief, she’d stopped that awful inner weeping which started at McDuff’s stores when I’d called her the laird’s.
We got a ton of invaluable materials, promised to call in four days for more stuff, and departed. Luckily Michelle had enough money for us to buy pasties from the market. I pulled in south-east on the A882 for us to nosh.
Michelle gave a rather hysterical giggle, gazing at the car’s contents. We’d had to buy a roof rack to load the stuff.
‘We’ve committed a robbery,’ she said, laughing.
‘Scrub that plural, love,’ I corrected. ‘You signed, remember? In fact, we’ve got to call in at Dubneath police station and tell all.’
She laughed so much that she finally started to cry. I’m not much use at consolation, so I had her pasty to save it going cold. We weren’t so credit worthy that we could afford to chuck good stuff to waste. It was faith we lacked. Anyway there was no time left now for any of this malarkey. It was splashdown.
* * *
The first splash occurred at the police station, where I spoke to the one bobby in charge.
‘It’s rather a serious problem,’ I said. ‘We wish to report a theft.’ Which widened Michelle’s eyes even further. She was already frantic, thinking we’d come to surrender over the groceries.
Michelle groaned. I admonished her, ‘Please, Mrs McGunn. Do keep calm. The police are here to help in these cases.’
The bobby swelled with understanding and eagle-eyed vigilance. We got Michelle a chair while I explained, in strictest confidence, about the secret auction at Tachnadray.
‘Naturally,’ I said, leaning anxiously over the constabulary desk, ‘Miss Elaine wants this information kept confidential. I employed a printer in East Anglia. I’ve just heard that all four hundred printed catalogues were stolen in Suffolk.’
The sergeant put his pen down. ‘Only catalogues?’
‘Only?’ I bleated, aghast. ‘Advance notice to antique dealers is valuable information. We hope to restrict the sale to a limited number of trusted collectors.’
‘And?’ He resumed writing, without enthusiasm.
‘So we want a twenty-four hour police guard, please.’
He stopped writing. ‘A what?’
‘Round-the-clock surveillance. Now—’ I waxed enthusiastic – ‘the way I see it is a road block, and a helicopter—’
‘Sir,’ the sergeant said wearily, ‘do you know the size of our area? And the number of officers with which we’re expected to run it?’
‘But surely you see the implications for the sale?’
He sighed. ‘Consider a moment, sir. These booklets.’
‘Catalogues,’ I corrected, frosty.
‘Catalogues. Where would they have gone to?’
‘Well, I ordered them posted to collectors as far as Germany, America—’
‘And the material in them . . . ?’
‘Descriptions of antiques for auction at Tachnadray.’
He put his pen away. ‘Well, sir. Naturally we’re only too anxious to assist Tachnadray Hall, but auctions are quite legal. And for people to come and buy’s quite legal too. How they hear about it’s their own business. The only problem is the loss – you say by theft – of your catalogues. That’s a concern for the Suffolk division. Naturally, if you have any problems about admission on the day . . .’
Polite, but undoubtedly the sailor’s elbow. Showing profound disappointment with Dubneath’s constabulary, I extracted a promise of complete silence on the matter, then left huffily. Michelle was already bewildered into obedience, so my dragging her into the MacNeishes’ tavern to use the phone produced no demur, not even when I feverishly phoned the local Tachan Times and Argus, the district’s Pravda, to issue a denial.
‘This is Ian McGunn,’ I told the reporter sternly. ‘There is absolutely no truth in rumours that we attach the slightest importance to the outrageous theft of sale catalogues on their way to Tachnadray.’ The girl squealed to hold on please, evidently scrabbling to snap her Marconi Patent Office Wax-Cylinder Voice Recorder into action. ‘Furthermore,’ I went on, ‘we deplore the inability of the police to respond to requests for total surveillance, and demand that you omit any mention of this . . .’
We did the same denial for six other newspapers, including the Glasgow Herald. Mary hadn’t baked that day, having been up at the Hall, so no pasties. I had to make do with a batch of over-sweet Chorley cakes and a leftover cheese-and-onion pie before we hit the road to Tachnadray.
‘Anybody in the clan a crooked auctioneer, love?’ I said through a mouthful.
Michelle smiled, thinking I was joking. ‘Ian. How do you remember everything we’re doing? Including all your lies to Sergeant Kerr?’
I said piously, ‘I didn’t lie, love.’
She gasped a pure innocent gasp, her hair fluffing in the breeze. I was beginning to like Michelle. ‘There really was a theft? Our catalogues really were stolen? How dreadful!’
‘Well, it act
ually doesn’t happen till tonight.’
‘But how can that possibly—?’
‘Shut it, love.’ Liking her didn’t mean all this explaining wasn’t giving me a headache. ‘And don’t admit I know about Joseph. They already know I know, but still don’t.’
She gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘Hasn’t it been a day?’
She didn’t know it yet, but the poor lass should’ve saved her heartfelt sighs. She’d soon need every one she could get.
Chapter 21
JUST AS YOU can’t outdo the Maltese for doorknockers or the Swiss for cuckoo clocks, so you can’t beat Caithness for conviction. Once Tachnadray had declared for crime, it became Fighter Command in a 1940s film, furiously active yet meticulous. Maybe it was their first delicious taste of scamming that gingered everybody up. I don’t know. Within three days it came alive.
At my seminary school they used to set us a perennial problem: given the choice, whether to disbelieve in God or His absence. I never knew how to answer. Similarly, I’m never quite sure whether it’s crime or sanctity which offers the least painful compromise for the human race. I’ve experimented with both, and found little difference. Now, I think perhaps sin has the edge, because it at least provides a decent income. So maybe it was the hope of solvency which spurred Elaine’s retainers on.
At my request Elaine had spread word. Any old objects relating to the clan, or to any McGunn, Tachnadray, Caithness or indeed the Highlands, were badly needed at Tachnadray. Anyone wanting to sell the same should communicate with Michelle McGunn at Tachnadray forthwith. They actually started coming in by that first afternoon. How the hell did news travel? I tried asking an old woman who came trogging up carrying an infantry officer’s telescope – leather-cased, War Office stamp and arrows – and she merely smiled, ‘Och, I heard,’ which was as far as I got.
Our peaceful scene had a visit from a police car asking if everything was all right. I started my favourite spiel requesting road blocks, helicopters . . . They drove off in haste. A Glasgow paper’d run a spread showing Alan pointing to bits of broken windscreen on the Ipswich bypass – the result of my phoned instruction to Tinker. Decadent youth, exploited by international financiers, was apparently to blame. More coverage – as the media nowadays term falsehood – was on the way. A TV crew was turned away. That sat sullenly on the hillside until Robert mustered a sortie to persuade.
And the letters came in.
That second day, Michelle was thrilled, rushing to find me in the workshop and holding all three. ‘And one’s from London!’ she cried, beside herself. ‘From a collector!’
‘Get notepaper printed, love,’ I said. I was busily engraving Elaine’s coat-of-arms on a mid-nineteenth-century pipe box, silver. It’s murder by hand, but more artistic than the modified dental drills most forgers use. I felt bad about it for the box’s sake, but murder asserts priorities.
‘Notepaper? Think of the expense, Ian!’
‘All right, love.’ I re-goggled and resumed my engraving. ‘Only don’t come wailing I didn’t warn you.’
‘Michelle.’ Duncan was fretting out some wood sections I’d marked. ‘Do as Ian says. Get young Hamish along today.’
‘Very well.’ Michelle was still doubtful. ‘But I can’t see why we’d waste money printing grand notepaper when I can just as easily write our address longhand.’
Duncan didn’t glance at me. ‘We’ve never done anything like this before, and Ian has.’
Hamish McGunn, printer, came on a bicycle about teatime, fingers black and face pale. He looked sub-nourished, Charles Dickens in the blacking factory. Michelle brought him across, still in a huff from being told off. She fetched tea in mugs and a bowl of barm cakes with margarine. No jam, and it served us right.
‘Ian wants notepaper printed,’ she said, angrily offering the nosh so fast you had to make a dive.
‘Embossed,’ I said, ‘if you’ve got that thermal process. Tachnadray’s coat-of-arms left, and address. Put Michelle as “Auction Secretary”. And our phone number.’
‘Tachnadray isn’t on the phone,’ Michelle said.
Hamish wrote on unheeding, squarish writing, hard pencil.
‘And then do a flyer sheet. The colours are yours, but choose discreet posh.’ I gave him a crumpled paper. ‘That’s the wording. A thousand of each by tomorrow noon.’ I grinned inside as his head raised. ‘Ten days Michelle’ll give you the full catalogue. Two thousand, about sixty pages. There’ll be one score colour plates and three score black-and-white.’
‘Ay, there’s just the question, Ian,’ Hamish said, embarrassed.
‘The money in seven days. But—’ I raised a handy maul in threat – ‘use Linotron Baskerville or Bembo and the deal’s off. We’ve got educated folk coming. Okay?’
He left laughing, pedalling like the clappers.
Michelle stuck to her guns. ‘Tachnadray’s no longer on the phone.’ Poor lass, it was all becoming too much.
‘A Telecom van’ll be here soon, love.’ I gave her my most innocent gaze. ‘Could you direct them to Dr Lamont’s office please?’
‘Dr Lamont?’ She stood helplessly.
‘Doctors get priority with phones.’
‘But is there really a Dr Lamont—?’
A kilted man staggering under a bookcase from Mac’s lorry shouted, ‘Michelle. A telephone man’s here asking . . .’ She left at a stumbling run.
‘Honestly,’ I said to the silent Duncan as we resumed work. ‘Women. Set them a hand’s turn and they go to pieces. Notice there was no jam?’
The whole of Tachnadray was silent. It was ten-thirty, long past nightfall. Michelle, lustrous as a grisaille-glass Early English cathedral window at sunset, had met me as instructed in our lonely office. Our only light was candles and an oil lamp.
‘Ready?’ I asked huskily.
‘Yes,’ she said. Her face glowed, her eyes danced.
Cunning to the last, I dialled and passed the receiver. ‘Our first phone call from Tachnadray.’
‘This is the house auction secretary speaking,’ she said. ‘Could I please have, ah, Tinker?’
I egged her on. ‘Don’t forget the room.’
‘Tinker? This is Mrs Michelle, auction secretary. You will please transfer to a separate extension in a room away from noise.’ An alarmed expression, her hand on the mouth-piece. ‘He says he can’t, Ian. It sounds like a . . .’
‘It is a pub. Tell the boozy old devil to take his beer and Ted can shoot refills through the hatch.’
‘He’s going,’ Michelle whispered. ‘What a dreadful cough.’
‘You’re doing great.’
‘He said where’s Lovejoy. That’s the name you—’
Tinker’s cough ground out as I took the receiver. ‘Tinker? ’Course the scam’s on. Listen: make sure you remember this bird’s voice, d’y’hear? She’ll be doing the phoning every night. She’s new so talk slow, understand? And a new pub every night. Treble Tile tomorrow, same time. Make sure she gets the number.’
‘Bird indeed,’ Michelle muttered.
‘And Tinker. I’ve decided on the auctioneer. Tee up Trembler.’
‘Bleedin’ ’ell,’ Tinker croaked. ‘Asking for trouble?’
I lost my rag. ‘Do as your bloody told,’ I yelled. ‘Everybody’s flaming boss until it’s time to pick up the tab—’
‘Awreet, Lovejoy. I’ll find him. But Aussie’s free and Flintstone’s out of clink—’
‘Trembler! ’ I bawled, then, smiling, passed Michelle the receiver. ‘Off you go, love. Good luck. Tell Tinker to glam Trembler up. And get a typewriter.’
‘Glam? A typewriter? Where from?’ she was asking, round eyed, as I took my leave with a candle to light my way. I didn’t reply. Where from, indeed. Did I have to think of everything? I went to see if there was blood on the laird’s old car.
* * *
The monster motor was housed in a drystone coach house behind Duncan’s workshop. Before knocking off as night fell I’d trailed a
cable from the window while Duncan had a final smoke at the door, his closing ritual safe from our volatile solvents. I’d left the switch down.
The cable stretched to the coach house, explaining its length. Robert padlocked the double doors on the motor’s return, always good for a laugh. I opened the door, trailed the cable in after me, pulled the leaf shut. A bulb from my pocket, and I started searching.
Say, forty minutes later, and defeat. No blood that I could see. Blood’s russet after a few minutes, then brown, then black. It was a common enough art stain in its time, and you can tell the shade. Therefore, Joseph, who was Michelle and Duncan’s son, who’d ‘betrayed Tachnadray’ and was now kept imprisoned at Shooters, had returned without being bludgeoned. Persuaded? Drugged? Gunpoint? I gave up. Lots of puzzles in clan country. Not a lot of explanations.
Two dozen letters next morning, proving my denials to the world’s press were working a treat. Michelle drumming her fingers saying things like, ‘Where’s that Hamish got to?’ Mrs Buchan gave me a three-plate breakfast and some scruffy young lass zoomed coffee to our office.
‘I like your new nail varnish, Michelle. Women don’t use enough make-up.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. She was narked because the coffee bird was talkative. ‘Shouldn’t we make a start? There’s so much to do.’
And there was. I’d nicked a few old fruit boxes, into which she sorted the letters by postmark. I was pleased. I like evidence of suspicion. It means people are thinking.
‘Haven’t you got little feet?’ I said. ‘Has everybody got titchy plates in Belgium?’
‘Tinker’s list is completely erratic,’ she began, ignoring this banter. ‘I tried to make him dictate items according to the dealers. He was most abusive.’
‘Tut-tut.’ I apologized for Tinker, struggling for sobriety. ‘You’ll have to cross-file, love.’
‘And he doesn’t seem to know you as . . . as Ian McGunn, Ian. Only by that absurd nickname.’ She wasn’t looking up. We’d never been closer. I said nothing. She shrugged and began, ‘First, then. A tortoiseshell—’
‘No, love. Give everything a number starting at one zero zero zero, or you’ll make mistakes. Documentary errors run at four per cent among auctioneers.’
The Tartan Ringers Page 15
