The upshot was that I was to take the small white horse to one of her colleagues, a forensic photographer, whatever one of them was. She also detailed a detective constable to what wasn’t quite a case yet, as she told him, but might be. ‘There. So tomorrow little white gee gee can go back to the shop it came from, complete with its print, and with luck that Paul of yours will be left alone. Any ideas who’s behind this? Not that old villain Oates?’
‘Would I be telling you about it if for a minute I thought so? By the way, do you and your mates know anything about gold picture frames? He wanted me to warn you about someone faking them.’ I crossed my fingers behind my back. But Titus needed a few brownie points, didn’t he?
‘I doubt it. And do I want to? Just run one hare at a time, Lina, that’s my advice.’
‘Actually, there’s another hare, too. A high-fired Ruskin one.’
‘OK. Tell. Hey, are those stuffed olives I see there?’
Mary was more relieved than Paul to see the much-photographed white horse. She pushed him out into the corner of the garden where reception was best to phone the original owner. ‘Now, tell me,’ she asked, ‘did you meet any nice handsome policemen?’
I nodded, just to wind her up. Actually, DC Carwyn Morgan had been drop-dead gorgeous, but more, I suspected, the sort of guy Griff’s eyes would follow around a room. On the other hand, he’d got the makings of an ally, and just at the moment I rated a mate above a lover.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Only about five nine. But a lovely body – obviously uses the gym. Thirties – early. Blond hair already thinning on top. Nice hands. Really nice hands.’ I mimed the way he’d handled the horse, as if it was a body he loved.
As if against her better judgement, and certainly doubting mine, she asked, ‘And will you be seeing him again?’
I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter. ‘Oh, if this white horse business takes off, I should think so.’ He’d promised to update me immediately if the print showed up on their system, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. ‘But not otherwise. And just as a police officer. No more.’
The mixture of relief and disappointment on her face made me laugh again.
‘I can’t inspect every guy as if he’s boyfriend material, can I? Not as if I was one of Lizzie Bennet’s sisters, always on the catch for an officer.’
‘There’s something about a uniform, though.’
I shook my head. ‘He’s plain clothes.’
Her face dropped. ‘Like Morris?’
‘Heavens, I hope not!’ How on earth had she startled that out of me? It was time to change the subject. ‘You know, I suspect Griff’s getting a bit bored in Tenterden, and I know he’d love to see you. If I take over the shop tomorrow, would you and Paul have time to nip over?’ I’d pay her as if she’d worked every last minute, but there was no need to say that now. ‘You wouldn’t have to stay for very long: I should imagine Aidan will have the stopwatch on you. He insists on treating Griff as an invalid,’ I added, wondering if I was being disloyal. ‘And the trouble is, it’s so nice for Griff to be pampered, I’m afraid he won’t want to be independent again.’ Maybe that sounded better.
‘Aidan always terrifies me,’ Mary said. ‘There are some gays who love women, aren’t there, like your Griff, and some men, like Aidan, who despise them. At least, I always feel thoroughly despised.’
It was something she did very well. My therapist would have said she had the same self-esteem issues as mine, even if she showed them in different ways. I wanted to give sound advice about not taking his attitude personally, but instead I found myself giving her a quick hug. ‘Talk about the wedding plans,’ I said. ‘Aidan’ll hate it, but Griff needs something to look forward to. Oh, Mary, I do wish he was safe here at home.’
She returned the hug. ‘We all do. And I’m sure he does too. But he’d be afraid of giving you even more work.’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘And he’s right. You’re working all hours to keep the business afloat. Well?’ She turned wide-eyed to Paul as he closed his phone and returned to the shop.
‘Fine. I lied my socks off and told him I’d driven all the way to Cambridge to see my niece and would drop the horse off tomorrow morning. If that’s OK by you, Lina?’
‘More than OK.’
‘We could go on the way to Tenterden, couldn’t we, Paul?’
I could see him working out the dubious geography, but he smiled as if he’d always wanted to go to Tenterden.
‘To see Griff,’ she explained. ‘And talk about the wedding.’
Another huge smile. What a nice man he was. Wouldn’t it be nice to find such a kind and decent partner for myself, though I did rather hope I didn’t have to wait till I was a widow in my sixties.
I left them wrapping the newly repaired Worcester vase ready for the courier who was due any moment. Where did my time go?
Mary and Paul were just leaving for the day, white horse, double bubble-wrapped, safe in the rear footwell, when Mary opened the passenger window.
‘I don’t think I reminded you. In the diary there’s a note about a fair on Sunday. Great Hogben.’
I slapped my forehead; I’d completely forgotten. Griff would probably have said it was because though Great Hogben village hall antiques and collectibles fair was one of our regulars, I wanted to scrub it from our calendar. We never did more than cover our expenditure. But he insisted that even tiny events helped bring money into villages that needed it, and that we were, in his opinion, honour bound to keep going. It was only a couple of hours or so on a Sunday morning, he reminded me. ‘Or so’, indeed. By the time he’d chatted to all his old friends, all equally keen to stop going, but equally reluctant to ditch yet another fair, we never got back before four. Day gone.
This time, however, there’d be no Griff, of course.
I looked at my watch: should I pack for the fair tonight, or wait till tomorrow when I’d be in the shop anyway?
My phone decided the matter. DC Morgan? Carwyn Morgan!
‘Hi, Lina. Bad news, I’m afraid. We don’t have a match. But we do have some people on our radar whom you may recognize. Would you mind if I brought some mugshots round for you to look at on my way home?’
Mind? I’d be delighted. If I thought about it I had to admit I found the cottage horribly quiet without Griff – crazy, since often he was simply sitting reading downstairs, as quiet as a mouse. I fished out the nicer china in case he had time for a coffee. Was it too late to offer him one of Griff’s lovely little cakes? There were still some in the freezer.
‘We’d have liked to get prints off the exterior of the horse,’ Carwyn said, ‘but they were thoroughly corrupted.’
‘By Freya Webb’s and mine, not to mention our shop manager’s and her fiancé’s.’
‘Shame: I love playing with a nice bit of kit which we take round with us – we just ask the suspect to shove his finger in and we can see if he’s on the database. Just like that.’ He clicked his thumb and finger.
I looked him in the eye. ‘You may well have my prints on your database, though they should really have been destroyed by now. I was a feral kid at one time – it was only when Griff, the Tripp half of our business, took me on that I joined the human race.’
He looked around, wide-eyed, taking in the exquisite furniture and delicate china. ‘He was taking a hell of a risk, wasn’t he?’ Then he frowned. ‘Mind you, so were you. He could have been a raging paedophile.’
‘I don’t think Griff could rage if he tried. And he’s got a lifelong partner. He’s staying with him now while he gets over his operation.’
‘And you?’ he asked casually.
If I knew Freya and her mates, everyone would know about Morris and me, but I pretended not to know which question to answer first. ‘Oh, I can rage. Pity it’s not an Olympic sport – I could have got Gold for England. Funnily enough, I never damaged anything he cared for.’ Except myself, of course. ‘I didn’t throw so m
uch as a plate when my bloke and I split the other day,’ I said tersely. Why we were talking as personally as this, I’d no idea. It was time to change direction. ‘So you’ve got nothing on the print under the glaze?’
‘Nope. And we have to remember that it may well be that of a completely innocent employee. Though how it would get through quality control …’
At last he produced his laptop. It was easier to put it on the office desk, so we could both see without cosying up on the sofa.
We were doing fine, cracking loads of highly un-PC jokes about the owners of the faces he brought up, until I spotted Titus. Though I said nothing, he must have picked up my reaction. ‘Him?’ He pointed with a well-manicured finger.
At this point I remembered why I’d decided never to get close to a police officer: a relationship depended on honesty, and I couldn’t ever be honest about Titus, or, of course, my father. Now wasn’t the moment to reflect on why I’d made an exception for Morris.
‘Of course I know Titus. He’s a highly respected dealer,’ I said indignantly, or as near as I could get. I could scarcely add that it wasn’t china he faked. ‘In fact, he asked me to pass on to Freya the information that, for some reason, someone had started to make a lot of little gold picture frames. I suspect she thought she’d left enough for her replacement to worry about without those.’
‘Replacement!’ he snorted. ‘In the current economic situation?’ But he must have gathered he was getting nothing about Titus from me, so he moved over to women’s faces.
‘Nothing. I’m sorry. She came to the shop at the very moment Griff was in the operating theatre,’ I said apologetically. ‘And I truly can’t tell you much about her.’
‘I quite understand. But anything you can think of would be good, too.’
I’d have loved to respond to his smile with one of my own. Instead, I sat on my hands, to stop myself hitting my face in frustration. ‘I can’t recall her name or anything. She’d given the horse she was trying to sell some stupid name, too. The trouble is,’ I said, again shocking myself by my frankness, ‘when you have a crap childhood like mine, you survive by shutting it out. At least that was what my therapist said. Griff’s tried all sorts of things to improve my memory, but whenever something nasty happens, it all seems to go off in a grey mist. Until the flashbacks start,’ I added bitterly. ‘I could do without them. But our Mrs Walker, who’ll be back in the shop on Monday, is a genius: she’ll tell you all about her. And so,’ I added with a grin, ‘will our CCTV.’ Why on earth hadn’t I thought of it before? And as one thing popped into my mind, so did another. ‘Ah! Of course! Mrs Fielding and Puck!’
Once he’d got the footage, including the entire recorded conversation, there was really no reason for him to hang around. He’d got all the evidence he needed. But – Limoges plate apart – there was really no reason for me to get rid of him. How I came to show him the plate, and explain what I had to do, I don’t know.
Then he started asking intelligent questions. Not just about the repair processes. ‘So if I wanted to buy a piece from your shop, how would I know it was kosher?’ he asked, narrow-eyed.
‘We always provide documentation with each piece. Where possible, we give its provenance. If necessary we detail any damage or repairs, mine or anyone else’s. If I do insurance work, both the client and the insurers get a list of what I’ve done. Tripp and Townend have a national reputation for probity. International, these days.’
He laughed. ‘So how do you make a profit?’
‘Apart from buying cheap and selling dear, which is what all dealers do? For some reason these hands of mine take on a life of their own when I’m repairing. People are pleased by the results.’ Did I sound too defensive? With a bit of a challenge in my chin, I showed him the invoice for the museum work. ‘So this is what keeps us in profit.’
Whistling softly, he nodded. ‘What if I had something I wanted to sell on?’
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’re asking if we fence things? Never knowingly. Never. As for doing it accidentally, I’m sure Brian Baker – and you can’t be much more respected as an auctioneer than he is – would say the same as me: you get a feeling for things, and for people. If in doubt, don’t buy. If in doubt, certainly don’t offer for sale. Hence we turned down the offer of Puck.’
‘But you do sell, on commission?’
‘You haven’t half been doing your homework! Occasionally. I regularly sell on commission for my father, Lord Elham, who’s got a wing of a stately home stuffed with artefacts, mostly tat, but some worth flogging. The odd dealer’s tried to con him. I don’t. Ever. And just in case you wish to know, I give him a receipt for any items I remove, and he gives me one for any money I bring him.’
He nodded doubtfully.
‘There’s one bit of homework you’ve missed,’ I said. ‘Come down to the office for a moment.’ It didn’t take me long to bring up the names of my French clients. ‘These are people I’ve been working for recently – before I was the victim of a pretty nasty assault here in Kent – or, to stretch a point, it might have been Sussex – a couple of weeks back.’ I sketched a few details, which made him raise his eyebrows in an altogether satisfactory way. ‘You see, I help the good guys, Carwyn. Not the baddies.’
‘So why are you friends with Titus Oates?’
He’d been doing what Paul’s white horse people did. Lots of nice questions, all on a nice friendly level. And all he wanted was to nail Titus. What I wanted to say was that Titus was a good friend of Pa’s. I had a nasty feeling that this was precisely what he wanted me to say. With faint praise I’d have damned them both.
‘There are some people I’m happy to bad-mouth, Carwyn, but Titus isn’t one of them. He’s always been someone I can turn to. Now, I’m afraid I’ve got a date this evening.’ It was with the Limoges plate, but he didn’t need to know that. I felt angry and sad. I’d have loved to have a guy like Carwyn as a friend. But you couldn’t run with the fox and hunt with the hounds, not in terms of personal relations. Perhaps, deep down, that was one reason why Morris had never committed to me – because he knew I had dodgy friends.
ELEVEN
It was the most gorgeous late summer’s day – just the weather to be outdoors, preferably on an empty beach with the wind in my hair, or even, if I had to, in the garden, which I’d neglected recently. Instead I spent Saturday closeted in the faint mustiness of the shop – no matter how clean Mary kept it, which was off the immaculate scale, the old items came with their own smells.
Occasionally, I had a customer, but I also packed up the stock to take with me the next day. Fortunately for my sanity, I had the book on miniatures to keep me company. Mary and Paul phoned to say they’d found Griff so cheerful and bright that they’d insisted on taking him for a tiny trip in the car, padding the space between his seat belt and his still tender chest with a little cushion. He’d loved it: though she had a feeling that Aidan had disapproved.
‘But he’s OK?’
‘Tired, but in a good way. He’s worried about you, you know, not getting out enough. I may have told him there was plenty of time for you to go on the razzle when he was back running the business, but I agreed with him. Lina, you do need some joy in your life. And some fun. And some silliness.’
With someone like Carwyn? Why hadn’t I just stayed off my high horse and suggested a drink? Mates, that’s all? ‘When Griff’s better I shall go for all three,’ I promised her. But once again my fingers were crossed behind my back. Tonight I’d have loved even one of those diversions, but the best I could manage was another wicked takeaway and a glass of wine. Tim looked thoroughly disapproving at the thought of my drinking alone, and sent me off to have a scented bath with candles and nice music. Pity I filled the bath too full and ran out of hot water.
Sunday dawned suddenly autumnal, wind slapping dollops of rain into your face and leaves wet and slippery beneath your feet, delightful – or not, when you’re carrying plastic boxes full of china, even
if none of it was particularly valuable: I’d selected the grown-up equivalent of pocket-money toys. Even if I didn’t sell much, I might get a sighting of another dodgy horse or even some questionable Ruskin ware.
Neither. To be honest, I was quite glad: after all, many of the dealers were friends of Griff’s. Most of them had sent him cards or flowers, and it was good to pass thanks and good news back to them. I didn’t want them to have been conned into selling fakes – or, worse still, actually to have known they were diddling the public.
The very few customers came in with streaming macs and lethal umbrellas; those who came to our stall picked up one object after another, only to put each down with a disparaging snort. One or two dealers had people approach them asking them to look at an item they’d brought with them – getting a free valuation, in other words.
Round about one o’clock, when we were supposed to pack up, there was a little surge of punters who actually began opening wallets. One customer pounced on a pretty Coalport trio, reduced because I’d had to repair the plate, and another didn’t even bother to haggle over a vase I’d have paid her to take away. At least, I reflected, as I stowed the last plastic box in the van, the driving rain slapping my hair across my eyes and making it hard to grip the handles, there was something to make Griff smile. There’d be precious little else if the rest of the day at Aidan’s was as chilly as I expected.
Would Aidan manage to crack his face when I told him about the next few minutes? A woman fell in the car park – maybe she slipped on some leaves. There were two sounds: her scream and the sound of china being smashed. Other people were quicker to pick her up than I was, but naturally as soon as I’d made sure the box was safe and locked the van, I joined the knot of onlookers.
By now she was on her feet. Someone offered her a cup of tea, even though the fair was officially over and the hall was being locked up. But she insisted she was all right, and, picking up her plastic carrier and its bubble-wrapped contents, which had tipped sideways on to the tarmac, said she’d be off. Didn’t I know that voice from somewhere? But perhaps I’d just heard it this afternoon.
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