‘You’ve been very helpful, sir,’ he said, when he’d put the last full-stop to his notes. ‘You realize, of course, that you’re making a very serious allegation against one at least of these … escorts. Did you ever give me the full names, sir? Or that of the agency?’
Nice, neat question. Of course he hadn’t. Aidan blushed, and to my chagrin I found myself joining him, though I’d bet it was for a different reason. I’d never even asked Charles’ full name. He’d always been just Charles, Richard’s minion. Not a person in his own right.
‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to ask Charles’ employer, Sir Richard Walker, of Warebank Court,’ Aidan declared airily, trying to regain control of the situation. ‘It’s not far from Cirencester.’
Carwyn nodded, jotting. ‘And for the other man?’
This time his face was crimson, and he looked furtively at me. ‘His name’s Collingwood.’
I don’t think I’ve ever sat so hard on a sofa. ‘Not Tris! So why, Aidan, did you hit him so hard?’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘I know. It wasn’t anything to do with rescuing me, was it? It was because you suspected it was him that had nicked your miniature.’
The silence was crushing. It was filled with all the scathing words I didn’t know well enough to use out loud, plus a few more I’d rather Carwyn didn’t know I could use. ‘Hit him hard enough to land him in A and E,’ I prompted at last, to update Carwyn. Then I produced my brassiest smile, the sort that most irritated Aidan. ‘I should imagine it’s all recorded on our CCTV system, which is always attracted by brawls.’
Carwyn, bemused, fumbled for his mobile.
Griff, who seemed remarkably calm, perhaps courtesy of all those pills he had to pop, gestured elegantly. ‘The mobile reception’s terrible round here. Please feel free to use our office phone to make any calls.’
As much to escape the highly charged atmosphere in the living room as anything else, I led the way. He closed both the living room door and, once we were both inside, the office door.
His smile was cautious. ‘What’s your role in all this, Lina?’
‘Aidan came to ask me for advice. God knows why. And my advice was to talk to you.’
He nodded. As he picked up the phone he asked, ‘Heard from DCI Morris recently?’
I stared, very hard. ‘Where’s that coming from?’ Bloody Freya, that was where, of course.
‘Just wondered.’
‘Weird thing to wonder about when you’re supposed to be chasing criminals. Which is,’ I added, as offhand as I could, ‘what I suppose Morris is doing. Haven’t heard from him for weeks. I’ll leave you to it.’ Whatever it was – which he clearly had no intention of telling me.
I wandered into the kitchen. Maybe my thinking processes would be helped by a coffee; on the other hand, even if Aidan would like one, Griff wouldn’t sleep all night if he indulged. So though I filled the kettle I didn’t switch it on.
Tris first. Was he truly gay? In which case why had he bothered to try and snog me? Gay men didn’t need what Griff called beards these days, so he didn’t need to pretend to be straight. Was he trying to worm his way not into my knickers but into our cottage, with a view to arranging a few thefts from that? Or did he genuinely want a paying job with us? If he’d had one, perhaps he could have given up what I was sure Griff would discreetly call his agency work.
There were two rich collectors and two resentful young men – surely Charles’ treatment as no more than Richard’s minion must have rankled as much as Tris’s unpaid status, assuming that was a major motivation? Were they possibly connected? The collectors were friends, of course: were they conspirators? Or did they even know each other? And what, for goodness’ sake, might either of them have to do with white horses, one complete with fingerprint, and sang de boeuf Ruskin ware? Somehow I didn’t see them as masterminds of criminal gangs, either. They were both too sure of themselves and their place in the order of things to need to change anything – unless, of course, they could get their mitts on a prize item without asking troublesome questions.
There was another question, too. Were the attempts to get through our security system in any way connected with all these goings on? That would have implied a degree of sophistication I really didn’t like, but which Sir Richard might conceivably have. He wouldn’t have soiled his hands himself, of course – he’d have got one of the workers to do it. And certainly the guy posing as an operative was genuinely working-class by his accent. But connection? I couldn’t see one. Not even a hint of one to mention to Carwyn.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Drinking alone?’ Carwyn made me jump so much that I slopped a drop or two on the otherwise pristine tablecloth.
‘Griff’s got pills to take and I presume you and Aidan are driving,’ I said, which didn’t seem the answer to his question. I mopped up the wine with a J-cloth. What a good job I wasn’t drinking red.
‘All this is really getting to you, isn’t it? On top of that nasty assault only a few weeks ago. And I’d guess that with Griff out of the loop you’ve been working all hours. With no support.’ He sounded as kind as I imagined a favourite uncle might – I could imagine Paul saying his words, in exactly the same tone.
‘Wrong there. Mary Walker and Paul Banner, her fiancé, have been saints. Speaking of which, is there any news about the antiques shop where he bought the little white horse?’
He checked his watch. ‘We’ve got your friend Paul ID-ing a couple of people at this very moment.’ He added, his smile hard to read, ‘So we may not need to contact your ex in Devon.’
For some reason I needed to say, ‘We were never an item, so he’s hardly an ex. But it’d be good if you people could deal with it all, wouldn’t it?’ I think I said that, but my mind was suddenly groping after something it had forgotten.
‘Lina?’ he prompted.
‘You’ll think I’m an absolute idiot, but I’ve just recalled that one of the young men … involved … with Aidan knows a lot about Beswick horses. Our first conversation. I’m sorry. My memory’s awful. Especially under stress. And Griff was still in intensive care or only just a day out of it when the conversation took place.’
‘So are you trying to tie this young man – Tris Collingwood, I presume – in with the white horse scam?’
‘No! Absolutely not!’ My fingers crossed behind my back. ‘The community support guy was hinting I’d save him a lot of trouble if I talked to Tris. About why he grabbed me and why Aidan socked him.’ More or less true, anyway. ‘Do you want me to?’
He shook his head, absent-mindedly helping himself to half an inch of the Sauvignon Blanc I’d not returned to the fridge. ‘On what basis? You couldn’t ask him if he stole Aidan’s miniatures – or any other miniatures. That’s a job for us, Lina. All due respect but we do have procedures. I know we were slow picking up the case, but we’re certainly running with it now.’ He looked at the bottle and topped up my glass and his, emptying it.
‘But … Can’t you let me talk to him? As a mate? He was an unpaid intern, Carwyn. Humiliating. Had to ask me to buy meals and drinks. Begged me for a job. A paying job.’ My eyes filled with tears. ‘Isn’t that what everyone wants? A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay?’ Hell, wasn’t it usually the other way round? If it was, Carwyn didn’t pick me up on it. As something as an afterthought, we clinked glasses.
‘Why didn’t you give him a job, if you were sorry for him?’ He sat almost but not quite opposite me, something that reminded me horribly of police interview rooms.
‘No vacancies,’ I told him.
‘Would you have created a vacancy if you’d trusted him?’
‘What gave you the idea I don’t?’ But I’d hesitated a second too long.
Even if he meant to reply, two phones rang – the office one and his mobile. ‘Try out in the yard, by the washing whirligig,’ I said, taking my glass of wine with me.
The call was from the security people. Should I panic?
‘Geoff? Haven’t heard from yo
u for a bit,’ I said doubtfully.
‘Did you expect to?’
‘Well, yes … That security impersonator. The one who scared me rigid.’
There was a pause. He’d obviously no idea what I was talking about. It was easy to forget, wasn’t it, that I was only one of many clients to worry about. At last – and I could almost hear him slapping his forehead in irritation – he said, ‘Ah! That bugger pretending to be one of us? Dennis, his real name. We picked him up doing the same with some other clients. Says he needs to check their system, disables it, and goes back later to help himself to the stuff he’s checked out. He had a bit of an accident, so we called the police.’
‘Accident?’
‘Hurt his face a bit. Very sad,’ he said, irony dripping from his voice. ‘Anyway, no need to worry about him: he won’t be hitting the town again for a bit. Though I must say, and this is why I called, if you carry on meeting all and sundry out in the street, you’ll have plenty of other things to worry about.’
‘Meeting all and—?’
‘Recall that nice little kerfuffle there a while back?’ His voice changed. ‘What the hell were you doing going out on your own to talk to that little scrote? Nah, don’t bother explaining. Got a teenage girl myself. Going to get five top A levels they say, but when it comes to lurve she’s got no more idea than a flea. Any road, nice bit of work from that guy with the Merc.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘Do that. But watch your back. That’s my advice.’
‘I might even take it. But why did you call him a scrote?’
‘All the images of him we’ve got on file. What a tosser.’
‘Anything specific?’ I asked carefully.
‘Babe, it’s confidential, isn’t it?’
‘What if it affects my health and safety?’
‘What if it doesn’t though? Not yours.’
‘Look, Geoff, there’s a detective downstairs. Fraud and theft and I don’t know what. Talk to him?’
‘You talk to him,’ he said, enigmatic as Titus, and cut the call.
It felt dead weird tapping on my own living room door and waiting, instead of marching straight in. Weirder to have Carwyn emerge and close the door behind him, edging us towards the kitchen again.
I tried to take the ascendant, but couldn’t quite manage an arms akimbo challenge. ‘You know stuff about Tris you’ve not yet told me. Were you trying to find out if I was his accomplice?’
‘The thought never once crossed my mind.’
I think I believed him. ‘Good. So what do you know?’
He patted his phone. ‘He’s just been fingered, Lina – by the people who made your friend Paul give back the white horse. And since they show up on Ashford CCTV as having had a hand in wrecking your friend Rob Sampson’s shop—’
‘A hand? They weren’t working on their own? Was an ex-security guy called Dennis involved?’
‘Not as far as I know. They were working with a young man – very talented, by all accounts, with a degree in ceramics and goodness knows what else. Wayne Sergeant. Based in Rye, as it happens, not Totnes. Access to his own kiln, and knows the theory too. Unlike the others, a working class lad made good. Or not, in view of what he’s been up to.’
‘The others? So more than one posh young man?’ My stomach clenched.
‘The provenance part and finances were dealt with by a very clever young man, living in Warwickshire, with all sorts of diplomas and degrees in art and a gaga uncle who didn’t know his estates (oh yes, two or three of them) – called Torquil Hart-Richards.’
‘My God, what a moniker. As posh as … as posh as Tristam’s. And possibly Charles’s?’
He nodded, as if pleased that my guess spared him the trouble of having to break bad news. ‘Charles Huddleston’s.’
‘So this posh gang – how did they come together? All Millfield School pupils?’
‘Absolutely not. Charles was a model pupil, and an excellent student at uni. He seems to have gone bad later – there appears to be a polo connection, actually, with Collingwood. Hart-Richards knew Collingwood through his cousin, a lady you might know as a Mrs Fielding. What made them turn to crime, goodness knows.’
‘Money? Or rather, in Tris’s case, lack of?’
‘Their families are loaded.’ He gave a massive shrug. ‘I’m sure they’ll wheel out top counsel, who’ll come out with all sorts of pseudo-psychological crap about why their poor clients suffered these temporary aberrations.’ With one swig he downed the now lukewarm wine he’d left earlier. He stared at the glass as if blaming it for his outburst. Managing a smile, he added, ‘I forgot to tell you. When I spoke to Sir Richard Walker, to find more about Charles, he said he wanted you to know that someone you made a promise to is on the mend after emergency surgery.’
‘Toby Byrne. Just as posh, but a nice ordinary name,’ I said, irrelevantly. ‘I promised him I’d get him his stolen miniature back.’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Will you be returning each stolen masterpiece to its owner, or just those to the collectors you know personally? Because it’ll take quite a bit of your time to do that. We’ve got the Met’s Fine Arts unit involved now. They and my colleagues are working their way through the records of all the auction houses in the country where mixed groups of miniatures were sold as single lots. And through all the known collectors who might have lost one. Some museums actually have so many in their vaults, they were robbed without even knowing it, apparently. Even some abroad. So Interpol may come into it,’ he added, almost apologetically. After all, he knew that such a connection with Morris might touch a raw nerve.
It didn’t. Not very hard, anyway. In any case, I was more interested in other things just now. ‘My miniature – the one you took into protective custody – was stolen, of course?’
‘I’m afraid so. From some collection in Germany.’
‘The Tansey Collection,’ I said. I wouldn’t have known about it, of course, unless Titus had mentioned it. Titus had mentioned something else, hadn’t he? It was time to tell him my theory. ‘I don’t suppose the miniatures had been smuggled out without frames and ended up in modern frames with fake hallmarks?’ His face gave him away. ‘Yes! I told you my friend Titus was kosher! It was he who put me on to it – tried to warn Freya Webb, you remember.’
‘I think kosher might be going a bit far, Lina, but I’m prepared to say he was right on this occasion. Can we leave it at that?’
I twinkled at him under my lashes. ‘No chance of a reward for him?’
‘Not the smallest chance. Now, if you can stop winding me up for a moment I ought to take a formal statement.’
‘Do you still get involved with such mundane stuff? I thought it was farmed out to non-police personnel these days.’
‘Perhaps I don’t trust them to spell miniature correctly?’
I ventured a couple of alternative spellings.
He cackled.
‘All the same,’ I said at last, ‘I really don’t think I could give a full and accurate statement tonight. Not with that wine on an empty stomach.’ Which he’d had too. In the best tradition of Tripp hospitality I turned to and made sandwiches – Griff’s own bread, of course. He made a willing scullion.
By the time we carried the trays – Aidan and Griff would no doubt want refreshments too – the conversation in the living room involved, of all things, laughter. Both the old dears sported Cheshire cat grins. Bridges were under repair, if not quite rebuilt.
Griff saw me first, getting up to pull out a couple of occasional tables. ‘My darling child, we were just talking about my night nurse.’
Carwyn raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask why. He poured wine – red – for Griff, and then for Aidan, but a mite less willingly, I thought.
I frowned. ‘The invisible one? The one who didn’t give you your pills? Smoked salmon or low-fat cheese,’ I added, pointing.
‘Exactly. The invisible one. But not the inaudible one. My love, the reason you never sa
w her was that she lasted precisely one night. God knows how much Aidan paid for her to care for me—’
‘But care for him she did not,’ Aidan concluded, waving away the expense with his beautifully manicured hand.
‘In fact, she required Aidan to care for her. The bedroom with the en suite bathroom; the baby-alarm. We weren’t exactly happy, but didn’t know what to expect. What we did know was that she wasn’t supposed to sleep through the night, snoring so loudly that she kept Aidan awake, and then demand tea in bed in the morning.’
Aidan added darkly, provoking further laughter from the others, ‘And other favours.’
As if!
‘We didn’t want to worry you by telling you the truth,’ Aidan added, ‘since you seemed to have enough on your plate already.’
I could hardly argue with that. In any case, there’d been plenty of bad feeling without my adding to it. So I just picked up on one word. ‘The truth! All I wanted – all! – was to know the truth about what’s been going on. That’s all. And now I almost wish I didn’t know. All those young lives ruined. I ought to sneer and somehow say it’ll do such spoilt young men good to see what life behind bars is like. But I can’t. All I can see is the waste of all their talents. Would it have saved Tris if I’d spotted early on that he really needed paid work – if I’d taken him on for the day Paul isn’t with us? Like Griff saved me?’
Griff took my hand and squeezed it, but left it to Carwyn to reply.
‘He was in way too deep for that, Lina. He might have been born with a canteen of silver cutlery but it was well and truly tarnished within twelve months of his leaving uni. And you know what, he might just have responded to your generosity as he did to the Bakers’ – robbing you if not directly, certainly indirectly. DCI Webb tells me you value your reputation for probity above anything.’ He looked from me to Griff, who nodded.
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