‘Of course.’
I halted my involuntary bath by clasping Barker firmly around the muzzle. ‘Um, would it actually have mattered if we were followed to Folkestone and the detective saw us going to Sam’s house?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said James cheerfully, ‘but it was fun throwing him off, wasn’t it?’
‘Great fun,’ I muttered, and no doubt it was even more fun having a chance to get his mitts on Harry’s new car. I rubbed my shoulder where over-enthusiastic cornering had probably produced an enormous bruise.
He laughed when I complained. Typical, I thought, closing my eyes and trying to pretend I didn’t know exactly how fast we were going.
‘I doubt it’ll make Sam Elliot any more accommodating if we disturb him in the middle of his lunch so we might as well get something to eat ourselves,’ said James as we reached the outskirts of Folkestone sometime after one o’clock. That was fine by me. I was starving. ‘But we can’t leave Barker alone while we eat in a restaurant, so shall we get a picnic and eat it on the beach? Now the sun’s come out it shouldn’t be too cold,’ he said, drawing into a parking space outside a delicatessen.
‘Am I being given a choice?’
‘Of course,’ he said promptly. ‘If you want I’ll willingly take you for a greasy hamburger and soggy chips and cola, sitting on a metal chair at a too-small table. Then Barker and I will leave you there while we go for wine and sandwiches on the beach. I’d rather you came with me, though, I have to share the bottle with someone and too much wine isn’t good for Barker. He starts making vulgar suggestions to poodles.’
Manlike, James insisted on walking for what seemed like miles along the promenade before he found a spot he declared exactly right. Frankly, this particular bit of shingle beach, where we could sit with our backs against the promenade wall with the warmth of the sun in our faces and watch the sea, looked much like the other twenty or so similar spots he had considered and rejected but I decided it would be politic not to say so. I’d had to stay in the car and protect it from a ferocious-looking warden while he chose what we ate and I hadn’t forgotten his eclectic choice of food for breakfast so I was a bit suspicious of what might be in the carrier bag he’d been swinging from one hand. But what he produced from his Aladdin’s bag was just perfect for the beach: sandwiches with tangy fillings, a couple of still warm small pies, a bunch of grapes and some suitably rough red wine that wasn’t overpowered by ozone and sea spray. Naturally he’d remembered to buy a corkscrew. Much more surprising were the napkins to wipe our fingers on.
‘I love the sea in winter,’ said James idly as he watched a pair of gulls squabbling over a bit of seaweed. Barker was also watching them intently, torn by the need to go and chase them off his beach and the equally pressing necessity of staying by us in case we should happen to drop sandwiches.
‘Me too, it’s so nice and empty.’ I took a swig of wine out of my plastic glass and leaned back against the wall, my eyes shut against the sun. ‘Do you know, this is the first time for over a week that I’ve been able to just sit down and do nothing? I’ve either been chasing around after Cressida, or travelling, or working. I did have that time with Mum, but Cressida was there and Mum isn’t exactly a rest cure at the best of times.’
‘Mmm,’ James agreed. ‘But you don’t think I’m going to let you sit and do nothing for long, do you? We’ve got a job to do and Barker needs a walk first.’
‘I was afraid of that,’ I said gloomily.
‘It’ll do you good.’ He shovelled the rubbish back into the bag and handed the last sandwich to a grateful dog. ‘You can walk off lunch.’
‘You’re a real boost to a girl’s ego, James,’ I grumbled as I scrambled to my feet. ‘I take it you mean that someone my size needs all the exercise they can get.’
He stopped for a moment and looked at me with raised eyebrows. ‘Stop fishing for compliments, Laura,’ he said in the dismissive voice he used to employ with me ten years ago. ‘You know perfectly well that while you don’t look like a coat hanger, you’ve got the sort of figure most men fantasise about.’ Then he turned back to what he was doing. I stood there open-mouthed, wondering if I’d heard right.
I couldn’t have, I decided as we walked along the beach and skimmed stones along the water for an ecstatically barking Barker to try and retrieve. Or rather I threw stones which, to his disgust, often didn’t even reach the water’s edge, or if they did, fell with a disappointing plop. James, with infuriating competence, managed to get some of his to do three bounces before they went under. To my intense pleasure Barker decided he who threw the stone was also going to have the privilege of having Barker shake himself dry all over him. We had to extend our walk by another twenty minutes so that James’s trousers could dry off, not that any of us minded. It had turned into a glorious afternoon with the sun glinting off the sea and a wind that was just cool enough to refresh but not so cold as to chill extremities and turn one’s nose an unflattering colour. In fact I would have been quite happy to go on for much longer, strolling past old-fashioned wooden beach huts, closed up until the summer, throwing bits of driftwood for a delighted dog and chatting to James about nothing very much. And it wasn’t simply because I felt that I’d enjoyed the last hour and a half more than anything I’d done in the last few months. I was now getting distinctly cold feet about seeing Sam Elliot at all. There might be a horribly embarrassing scene and, while James relished a fight, I most definitely didn’t.
I was so preoccupied with my worries I wasn’t too clever about the directions to Sam’s house which led to a common driver/passenger conversation. ‘What do you mean, you can’t remember what the road looks like? You drove here, for God’s sake.’ And, ‘Trust a woman not to be able to read simple directions.’
And, ‘If you’re so bloody clever find it yourself and don’t ask me.’
Needless to say we couldn’t find a single passer-by in the whole of Folkestone who had ever heard of Chintlesham Road, let alone knew where it was. After ten minutes of acrimonious discussion and driving around streets that all looked depressingly like the last we turned into a side road and I saw a familiar-looking large house with balloons tied to the gate and a van parked outside with ‘Funny Bunny Children’s Entertainments’ painted along the side. Just in time. James was muttering that I should thank my lucky stars we weren’t in France since he’d be able to claim throttling me was a crime passionelle, and would undoubtedly already have taken advantage of it.
‘Remember to leave the talking to me,’ he said as he pressed the bell in the large brick porch.
‘Jawohl, boss!’ I said smartly and saluted.
He looked down his nose at me in an expressive manner but before he could do anything was forestalled by the sound of pounding feet and the door being flung open. The sounds of shrieking and general mayhem drifted towards us from the other end of a hallway with raspberry pink walls and over-polished parquet. A very small person, with large blue eyes nearly obscured by a long fringe, stared up at us. ‘Are you coming to Barnaby’s party? ’Cos if you are, you’re late,’ it said. ‘We’ve started. We’ve played Pass the Parcel. Isabelle won.’ Due to a modish blouson jacket and jeans outfit it was difficult to tell what sex it was. I would have hazarded a guess at feminine but didn’t dare say in case I caused irreparable offence.
James bent down. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t been invited to Barnaby’s party,’ he said gravely. ‘We’d like to see Daddy.’
The small person hesitated, obviously unsure what to do, and was saved by a dark-haired man in his thirties coming through a door at the end of the hall. ‘Who is it, Max?’
Max turned on his heel and belted back to the party, calling as he went past, ‘For you, Daddy.’
‘Sam Elliot?’ asked James as the man approached.
He nodded, dark eyes watching us warily. He was dressed conventionally enough in the middle-class male yuppie uniform for weekends of jeans and V-necked pullover over a striped s
hirt, though it was easy enough to see he didn’t buy his clothes at Marks and Spencer’s, and also that if he wasn’t careful good living was going to give him quite a substantial paunch in the near future. The planes of his conventionally good-looking face were already a bit blurred, though his skin glowed a healthy brown, no doubt gained from a ski slope somewhere.
‘We’d like to have a word with you,’ said James breezily.
I suppose you don’t get to head up an outfit like Lifesigns without learning something about how to read body language. Sam certainly caught on to ours quickly enough. He stiffened and said, ‘I’m very busy and as you can see there’s a party going on for my son. I don’t have the time...’ and began to shut the door.
‘This won’t take long.’ James put his foot forward before the door could be closed in such an adroit manner that I wondered if he’d had practice.
‘Look here!’ said Sam. ‘If you don’t let me close the door immediately I’m calling the police.’
James left his foot exactly where it was. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to do that. It might lead to some awkward questions being asked.’ Sam Elliot’s eyes flickered uneasily as James gave him a singularly unpleasant smile. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we discussed this inside rather than on the doorstep? I’m sure you wouldn’t want your son’s guests to take back a garbled version of what we have to say to you.’
I had no idea that James could give such an immaculate imitation of an enforcer from the more sinister sort of debt collection agency. It certainly had the required effect on Sam for he stepped back grudgingly and opened the door wide, though he tried to retrieve a little lost ground by saying aggressively, ‘I can only give you five minutes.’
‘That should be fine.’ James stepped back with exaggerated courtesy and waved me to go on in front of him and into a small sitting room done up to the nines in rag rolling, marbling and swagged and ruched curtains. The over-stuffed sofas were so plumped up that it was difficult to imagine anyone daring to ruck up their smooth line. Too bad, I thought, leaning back against a serried row of cushions in co-ordinating colours set on their corners with mathematical precision.
James sat down in an arm chair with frilled covers and stretched out his legs comfortably in front of him while Sam took what he must have hoped was a commanding position in front of the fireplace, his feet spread out and hands linked behind his back like a colonel of the old school. James didn’t look in the least commanded. He smiled benignly and said, ‘As I’m sure you’ve guessed we’re friends of Cressida’s. She would be here herself but she’s in hospital, so we’ve come instead to collect the statuette she accidentally left in the carrier bag she returned to you.’
Sam’s mouth set into a thin line. ‘She gave it to me.’
‘It wasn’t hers to give away,’ James said, not bothering to argue the point. ‘It belongs to her husband.’
Sam shrugged. ‘She’ll have to explain herself to him then, won’t she? Cressida put me to considerable inconvenience with her fits and starts - I had a lot of difficulty finding someone at such short notice to fill her place as helper at last weekend’s seminar just because she decided to go off jaunting to Paris,’ he glared at me, ‘not to mention putting her up and then having to find her a hotel.’
‘Not to mention her turning you down,’ I interrupted. ‘That must have been so inconvenient.’ I looked at James. ‘Sam doesn’t usually have graduates of his courses to stay here but he made a special exception for Cressida. Then he made her a very interesting proposition, one that involved his wife too - or was it someone else’s?’
James rested his chin on his fingers and appeared to be studying something in his lap very intently while flags of colour appeared along the blurred lines of Sam’s cheekbones. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he stammered. Wisely he didn’t go on trying to deny it but cleared his throat. ‘Cressida put me to a lot of trouble, I altered a lot of my arrangements to suit her and look how she repaid me!’ he said, deliberately avoiding my gaze and shifting his feet from side to side. ‘One of the most important things you learn from a Lifesigns course is that you have to shape your own life and not blame others for your mistakes.’ He was gaining confidence as he got underway with a spiel that had doubtless been used many times before. ‘That’s why I don’t blame her for my mistake in inviting her to come and stay in my house,’ he said with spurious generosity. ‘But it wouldn’t be helping Cressida if I were to give her the message that she can do what she likes in a temper because she can always put it right afterwards. So that is why I’m keeping that statuette,’ he said virtuously. ‘It will be a valuable lesson for her.’
‘And a valuable possession for you,’ murmured James. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t be quite so keen to keep it if it were merely something that had been picked up from a tourist shop in Florence.’
Sam did the soft shoe shuffle again. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ he said with obvious untruth. ‘As I said, my mind is made up. The statuette is mine now and I have no intention of giving it to Cressida. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey. Now if you don’t mind, the entertainment will be over in a minute—’
James didn’t move. He stared at Sam levelly over the top of his linked fingers. Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned forwards. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to. Leave now before I call the police. There’s nothing more to discuss.’
‘Yes, there is,’ said James softly. ‘If you call the police I shall have to inform them that you have in your possession one of only two bronzes in existence by the Florentine master Giacomo Farelli. A statue that happens to be on the International Register of Stolen Works of Art.’
Sam’s eyes bulged slightly in their sockets. ‘That can’t be true. Cressida said her husband’s father had bought it.’ He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, looked at it vaguely and put it back again, regaining a little poise. ‘Even if it is stolen, as you claim, it wouldn’t make any difference. I’d say I had no idea what it was.’
‘But that’s not the case, is it? I’ve just told you. And you’re still insisting you won’t give it up. Laura will be my witness that you are knowingly keeping a stolen art treasure, won’t you?’ I nodded vigorously. ‘At the very least you’d be done for possession of a stolen object even if you managed to escape extradition to Italy. You might, I suppose, just get away with probation for a first offence,’ he mused, ‘though frankly I think I’d rather be safely locked away in prison than facing whatever Stefano would do to me once he found out I was the one responsible for his losing his beloved possession permanently.’
‘Are you saying that Cressida’s husband is some sort of criminal thug?’ asked Sam with a brave attempt at a contemptuous laugh.
‘Oh, Stefano’s not a thug,’ said James. ‘Not personally.’ Sam’s ski-slope brown complexion acquired a greenish tinge. ‘He’s charming to meet socially, very cultured and hospitable - unless you’ve done something to offend him or made a pass at his wife. He’s extremely protective about her. And jealous.’ Sam went a little paler. ‘And it’s quite true he doesn’t surround himself with men who look like gorillas in white suits and dark glasses. But he is Italian,’ James began ticking off points on his fingers, ‘it’s widely known that his present fortune is based on his father’s black market activities during the war and that it’s best not to enquire too closely exactly what it is that Stefano does, where his money comes from or ask who his associates in Italy are. I’ve heard that they come from Palermo.’ He paused for a moment and looked at Sam. ‘That’s in Sicily, in case you didn’t know. And you might ask why he wants to sink millions of pounds into a luxury hotel unless it’s because when the money comes out again it’ll have been through the financial equivalent of the hot wash. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.’
Sam’s jaw sagged. ‘You don’t have any proof,’ he said finally, tugging at the collar of his shirt with one finger as if he needed air.
‘With people
like that I don’t ask for proof. I know what I believe. And right now Stefano thinks I'm the one who has the statuette. Since he’s already given me a very effective demonstration of how he’ll frame me and ruin my business if he doesn’t get it back, I’m sure you’ll understand why if I can’t return it myself I’ll have to let him know where it really is.’
‘I thought you said it wasn’t his?’ protested Sam.
James smiled faintly. ‘Stefano thinks it’s his, and with people like that it’s best to let them have their way.’
The door burst open letting in a wave of high-pitched laughter and a blonde woman in her thirties. She gave us a single harassed look and then addressed herself to Sam. ‘There you are! Look, I cannot cope with feeding twenty-three five year olds on my own and that useless entertainer says he’s not paid to help during tea!’ she said in the voice of one who has just reached the end of her tether. ‘That little... so and so Damien has already thrown jelly at Alice and made her cry, and Joshua offered to show his willy to Venetia if she gave him her mini Mars bar...’
Children’s parties had got a lot more interesting since my day.
Sam said hastily, ‘I’ll only be another minute, Susie, I promise, and then I’ll be there to give you a hand.’
‘You’d better be,’ she declared desperately as a piercing scream rent the air. With an apologetic look towards James and me she shut the door.
‘You heard my wife, she needs me. I can’t stay and listen to any more of this ridiculous farrago of lies about Cressida’s husband being connected to the Mafia. Please go now.’
‘No,’ said James flatly. Sam stared at him nonplussed. James stood up, his lazy air dissipating like smoke in the wind. ‘You’ve got a simple choice,’ he said in a level voice. ‘You can either give the faun to us and we’ll return it to Stefano, saying we collected it for Cressy after she accidentally left it behind. Or,’ he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a mobile phone, ‘I ring Stefano and tell him that it’s here and you refuse to return it.’
Something Stupid Page 29
