The road ended in a wire fence behind the warehouse and was sparsely lit by sodium yellow street lamps. They hid behind a row of bins. Here the smell was stronger, coming from a woollen blanket which reeked of wet dog. A tramp’s hidey-hole perhaps.
Time ticked away slowly. It was uncomfortable to crouch down, but neither of them fancied sitting on the ground which was even more disgusting than the blanket. They didn’t speak, and in the silence the realisation stole over Helen that coming here was a bad idea.
What if they had misunderstood the e-mail, and it wasn’t happening tonight? What if delivery had been arranged for another place? What if they were caught? The thought made her shiver.
The drone of a van, like a purring tiger, was almost a relief. It swung around the corner, then headed straight for where they were hiding. For one long moment Helen feared the driver was going to ram into them, but then the van stopped and reversed towards the warehouse. As it reversed, she noticed a Bulgarian country sticker on the bumper.
Three men climbed out. One unlocked the back of the van, the other the warehouse. The door rattled back, and the whir from the automatic opening mechanism drowned out what the men were saying to each other.
They all seemed to have dark hair with an olive-skinned complexion – although it was difficult to tell in the yellow light – and wore trousers and short black leather jackets. One of them also wore a tunic over his trousers which reached to his knees. Indians, she thought, or maybe Middle Eastern.
The men unloaded a large crate about five feet high and wheeled it inside the warehouse on a sack barrow. A few minutes later they returned and unloaded another crate the same size. After another half hour of unloading a few other boxes from the van, and a lot of what sounded like swearing, the men locked the warehouse and drove off.
She and Charlie waited a while to make sure they were gone, then slipped out from behind the stinking bins. The men had put the rotting cardboard boxes back where they lay before, and the only evidence that anyone had been here was a few more scatterings of packaging material.
‘How do we get in?’ Helen asked.
‘There’s got to be another door, or a window somewhere. Let’s go round the back.’
Charlie was right. Helen tried the glass-panel door, but it was securely locked. So were the two casement windows.
‘Bugger,’ she muttered, although she’d expected it.
‘There’s gotta be a way,’ said Charlie, and went around the side to check for windows higher up.
Impatience got the better of Helen. She stepped back and rammed a Doc-Martens-clad foot through the glass in the door. A crunch and the glass shattered, but she was now stuck with one foot through the glass and some very dangerous-looking shards surrounding it.
Charlie came back, her mouth wide open. ‘And the alarm?’
‘Did you see a box on the wall?’
‘No, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.’
‘Hear anything?’
Charlie shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Look,’ said Helen, ‘do you think you could give me a hand here? Otherwise I’ll cut myself when I pull my leg out.’
Charlie pulled her sleeve over her hand to protect it against the glass, and removed the more vicious fragments. Then she lifted Helen’s leg out of the hole. ‘Okay, I’m impressed,’ she said, ‘but next time, check it isn’t double-glazed, all right? You were lucky today.’
Helen grinned. ‘You’re just jealous.’
‘Wha’ever.’ Charlie put her hand through the hole and turned the latch on the inside of the door, and it swung open. They were met by a curious smell, a mixture of oil and wood chippings, spices mingled with the mustiness of clothes kept in a cupboard for too long.
They found themselves on a small landing, with a loo on one side and an office on the other, and a narrow set of steps leading down to the main part of the warehouse.
A large torch sat in a recharger by the door. Helen grabbed it and flicked it on. The cone of light illuminated a path among the boxes stacked high, and she was reminded of one of those cramped grocery shops in India which sold just about everything.
Everywhere a jumble of vastly different items spilled from cardboard boxes and wooden crates: clothes, cushion covers, rugs, exotic spices, kitchenware, juice cartons, tinned food, a variety of statuettes and a whole box full of tacky plastic flowers. There were even several suites of wicker chairs and tables stacked high on top of each other against one wall. It was an Aladdin’s cave for shoppers who liked cheap and tasteless imports.
And then there were the two crates standing upright in the centre of the warehouse.
Charlie pointed to the crates. ‘There’s the delivery. Wonder what it is. You can hardly smuggle something as big as that, so maybe that’s not it.’
‘Did the e-mail say anything about smuggling?’
‘No, but I still want to see what it is.’ Charlie found a screwdriver in a cardboard box full of brittle-looking tools and used it to lever the lid off the front of the crate. The sound of the nails grinding against the wood as the lid reluctantly gave way set Helen’s teeth on edge.
‘Could you hurry up, please? I really don’t like this.’
‘Keep your hair on. Didn’t you say your aunt was in Amsterdam?’
‘And the warehouse owner?’ said Helen.
‘We’ll be fine.’
It was cold in the warehouse, and Helen wrapped her arms around herself. ‘We won’t find anything, you know. If it’s another one of Letitia’s “copies”, we can’t prove it. Not unless an army of antiques experts are let loose on it.’
‘Don’t be so negative.’ Charlie loosened a last difficult nail, then tossed the bent screwdriver aside with a frown. Together they lifted the lid away, and Helen dug out the packaging material. The finely shredded wood almost crumpled in her hands, and her throat went dry from dust and something else, anticipation perhaps.
Inside was an Indian sandstone pillar a little under five feet high and two feet wide, shaped like the Hindu god Shiva. She ran a hand over the weathered surface and experienced a sudden longing for India, for Joe and her job at The Sundowner. Stepping back, she clutched her mother’s elephant pendant and the silver medallion Mamaji had given her. Everything had seemed so much simpler back then.
‘Here’s a different one.’ Charlie had opened the next crate with another screwdriver, revealing a second statue, this one the Hindu elephant god sitting in the lotus position on his throne. As Charlie removed the lid, the statue rocked ominously on its plinth.
‘Careful,’ said Helen, ‘it might topple.’ She found a piece of wood and wedged it underneath the crate.
‘What are they?’
‘Statues from a Hindu temple. Probably part of a pillar. That one there.’ Helen pointed to the first crate, ‘is the god Shiva, the destroyer. This one’s Ganesh, god of intellect and wisdom, and my favourite. Some also call him the Remover of Obstacles.’
‘That should keep him busy. You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘I lived in India for two years. It’s hard not to become fascinated.’
‘Really? You never told me.’
Helen shrugged. It seemed so long ago now.
‘So, are they real?’ asked Charlie.
‘Well, they’re not Scotch mist, are they?’
‘No, I meant, are they genuine?’
Helen chewed her lip. ‘I think they are. A while back, maybe a year ago, some ancient pillars were stolen from a temple. There was a big hoo-hah about it, but they never found them. Probably because they’d been smuggled out of the country immediately, perhaps by a company like the one that owns this warehouse. There may even have been some bribery involved. It was on TV.’
‘You speak Hindi too? Is there no end to your talents?’
‘I don’t. Someone summarised it for me.’
‘Are they valuable?’
‘They’re irreplaceable to the people who lost them. It’s not about
money, it’s about belief.’ Helen let go of the amulet and the pendant, which felt suddenly hot in her hand. ‘They’re very old, ninth century I think, so, yes, in monetary terms they’d fetch a fortune from a collector.’
Charlie snorted scornfully. ‘If it’s such a high-profile case in India, Letitia’s running one hell of a risk. They’re way too recognisable. Even she can’t be that stupid.’
‘Who isn’t that stupid?’
Chapter Thirty
Letitia’s cut-glass voice rang out across the warehouse just as the overhead lights came on, and they froze into living statues. On the steps behind Letitia were two men, her chauffeur and someone Helen hadn’t seen before, a short, rotund Indian man with a moustache. Perhaps the owner of the warehouse.
Whoever he was, his bulk was blocking their only way out.
Charlie stepped closer to Helen, clutching the screwdriver in her hand, and Helen felt the cold metal against her trouser leg.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
Charlie ignored her. ‘We know all about your scam,’ she shouted.
Letitia came towards them, all perfume, pearls and Hermes handbag. ‘Do you indeed? That’s really not terribly convenient.’
‘We know how you’ve been at it for years, selling off stolen antiques as copies and pocketing the change.’
‘Shut up, Charlie,’ Helen hissed.
‘What an imagination you have. I’m just a businesswoman.’
The Indian man came up beside Letitia and stabbed a chubby finger at them. ‘You know these burglars? Who are they?’
‘It’ll be all right, Mr Singh. I’ll handle it. One of them’s my niece, the other …’ Letitia made a dismissive gesture.
‘It’s all on your computer,’ Charlie continued, undaunted. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Right now copies are winging their way to every agency I could think of. The Met, FBI, Interpol, they all know what you’re up to. Probably on their way here now.’
Letitia cocked her head sideways, pretending to listen. ‘They must have the wrong address. I don’t hear any sirens.’
‘They’ll be here.’
It was all bluff, and Charlie couldn’t quite hide it. She hadn’t e-mailed the files to anyone except herself. No one was coming. As for Helen, her anger was greater than her fear. Finally she may have found the person responsible for her mother’s death. The sense of betrayal rose like a sour taste in her throat, and she swallowed it back to stop herself from being sick.
‘Why?’ she asked, a bitter note in her voice. ‘You had it all. Money, respect, a company on its way to mega success. With a bit of careful politics you could’ve had it your way. Why jeopardise it? Why kill my mother?’
‘Kill your mother? What makes you say that?’
‘The shopping bag, with the elephant on.’
‘So I have one of her bags. What of it?’
‘It proves you had her killed. That bag was on the back seat, with me. I remember it like it was yesterday. You took it.’
Letitia’s voice went from cool to icy. ‘It proves nothing. You were a child, and no one mentioned a bag disappearing. Who’d believe you now?’
Helen’s cheeks flamed, and she recalled her humiliation in Wilcox’s office.
‘You’ve been a thorn in my side ever since you came back,’ said Letitia. ‘First sticking your nose into my business, then wrapping Mother around your little finger so she’d bequeath you her shares.’
‘I know why you killed her,’ said Helen. ‘She was passionate about the company, just like you, but you were going to ruin it, and she couldn’t let that happen.’
‘My father,’ Letitia snapped suddenly, ‘worked his fingers to the bone to build up the company. Before my parents met, he started from nothing and was nearly crushed by some of the big auction houses several times. When he died, my mother worked her fingers to the bone.’
‘I know all that. What did that have to do with my mother?’
‘She wanted control. Full control.’ Letitia sent Helen a pitying look. ‘She wanted to get rid of me and teamed up with one of our shareholders, passing him information about … my side business, that he could use against me.’
‘Moody.’
Letitia smiled nastily. ‘There was something poisonous about Mimi. Everything she touched just shrivelled up and died. I wasn’t going to let her do that, to me or the business which my father – and my mother – gave their life’s blood to preserve.’
It took a moment for Letitia’s words to sink in. Her mother hadn’t been a whistle-blower after all. There were no noble motives. Instead she had been just as greedy as the rest of them. The disillusionment settled like a stone in Helen’s stomach.
‘It was necessary. I’m sorry if you thought your mother was a saint, but there it is.’ Letitia shrugged. ‘I knew this crazy woman – this Fay Cooper – had been stalking Mimi. I wanted to make it look like she did it. When one of my associates told me your mother had another meeting planned with Moody, my man broke into Fay’s house and stole a very recognisable knife, then used that.’
‘And what about me?’
‘Well, what person in her right mind brings a child to a secret meeting? You should’ve been at home, with a babysitter or something. When he spotted you in the back, the useless moron panicked and left the bloodied knife instead of putting it back at Fay’s house as he was supposed to. It was pure luck Fay was there at the time and was convicted, that your condition made you so unreliable.’
Condition. Despite being a murdering bitch, at least Letitia didn’t make Helen feel like a freak. If she could only keep her talking …
Then what? No one was going to come. Charlie was bluffing, and Helen suspected Letitia knew that.
Even so, it might give her a chance to think of what to do.
‘If your hit man used Fay’s knife, why did you steal my mother’s?’
‘Your mother’s what?’
‘Knife. They were identical, part of a set. Ruth said she found it in the packaging hall. Said you knew it was one of four.’
‘I didn’t steal Mimi’s knife. When I heard it was missing, I worried the police would start looking beyond Fay Cooper, but in the end it didn’t matter. I never knew what happened to the other knife. If Ruth says she found it in the packaging hall, she’s probably lying to cover having stolen it herself, but then again, my sister is good at that.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Letitia shrugged again. ‘Up to you. I’ve lost count of the number of times Ruth has reinvented the past. She’s probably told you some cock and bull story of why she won’t agree to a post-mortem on Mother. One might wonder why.’
That was exactly what Ruth had done, but Helen wasn’t going to give Letitia the satisfaction of having guessed that.
Instead she said, ‘What about these statues? What’s that all about?’
‘You ask a lot of questions. They were a miscalculation, to be frank. Too recognisable, as your friend pointed out. I’ll have to sell them behind closed doors. Should fetch about twenty-five grand each, after Mr Singh here has taken his cut.’
‘To line your own pockets.’ It was the first time since her empty threats that Charlie has spoken up.
Letitia looked genuinely affronted. ‘Only some of it. Although sometimes what we sell is sold as copies, in certain circles our reputation – my reputation – helps generate twice as much business as we’d otherwise have had. There’s a lot of people out there who are happy to sell their valuables in a less conventional way. Ransome’s was a cottage industry when I took over, and look at it now. Because I bend the rules, we generate millions.’ For a moment pride gleamed in her eyes, then turned cold once again as she stared at Helen. ‘I need your shares,’ she said.
‘Even if I die, Ruth says you can’t afford to buy them.’
‘Well, Ruth is wrong. She doesn’t know I’ve been profiting off the books.’ Letitia gave a short laugh and fished a hand mirror and a lipstick out of her handbag, then began
applying lipstick. ‘It’s a pity you can’t be part of it all. We’d have made a good team. And you’d have been useful, especially now that you’ve shacked up with Moody’s son.’
Helen’s eyes widened.
‘Didn’t think I knew, did you?’ I know when everyone in that house of yours comes and goes. It was easy enough for Pete here to wait for the right moment. Trouble is, he hit the wrong person.’
‘It was you? That ran over Fay?’ Charlie’s scowl was fearsome. ‘You fucking bitch!’
Before Helen could stop her, she charged at Letitia with the screwdriver raised. Quick as lightening the chauffeur caught Charlie’s arm, wrenched it behind her back and upwards, snapping the bones. Charlie screamed as he pulled the screwdriver from her paralysed fingers and drove it deep inside her back, then pushed her to the ground. She landed with a groan, a plea in her terrified eyes, then her head dropped to one side, and she lay still. Slowly a dark red stain fanned out from under her body.
Too shocked by this sudden show of deadly violence, Helen could only stare from Charlie to Letitia, then back again. Up till now she’d believed – foolishly – that Letitia would let them go, instead of facing up to the inevitable, that she was going to die.
Mr Singh was the first to react. ‘Fuck!’ he croaked. Covering his mouth with his hand, he fumbled his way up the stairs and could be heard retching outside.
Even Letitia looked a little queasy, her lips quivering beneath the fresh coat of lipstick. ‘You brought this on yourself. If only you’d let it be.’
Enraged, Helen launched herself at the chauffeur, catching him in the stomach. She managed to unbalance him, then he regained his footing and tossed her aside like a rag doll. He pulled a length of nylon cord out of his jacket pocket and swung it over her head. Instinctively she brought her hands up, and they caught under the cord. Gasping and gagging for breath, she felt it digging into her palms, the pain immense.
Letitia’s eyes met hers for a moment. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,’ she said, and turned away.
The chauffeur loosened the cord, and Helen fell forward on her elbows, sending shooting pains up her arms. Red spots danced before her eyes as she gulped for air in short, sharp bursts.
The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) Page 33
