by Oliver Tidy
‘I think I should drive out to Goldenhurst. Make sure this isn’t a hoax.’
Of course, she meant ‘we’.
We took the ‘tank’ and in ten minutes we were back to a place that was becoming quite familiar. We banged on the front door and no one answered. We looked in the windows. The lights were on, the curtains were open and the place was empty.
I said, ‘What now?’
Jo’s phone rang. She accepted the call, listened and said, ‘Let me talk to my client.’ Jo crooked her finger at me and when I got in close she turned the phone so that we could both hear. Jo’s breath smelled like she needed something to eat.
‘Miss Cash.’ It was Rebecca Swaine. ‘Please, no police. Do as they say. They haven’t hurt me. Find what they want.’
‘That’s all you get for now,’ said the woman.
‘You said money,’ said Jo. ‘What money?’
‘My money. Your client’s husband took my money. You heard her. No police. Find the money, give it back and everyone can go home safe and happy. Police, and people might get hurt. People might not come back. And don’t think I won’t know. Like I know you and your boyfriend are at this moment standing on her driveway.’
We both instinctively started looking around. The caller, knowing that would be our reaction, laughed in our ears. ‘We’re not there now, silly.’
‘How much is it?’ said Jo.
‘Enough that when you find it you’ll know it. I’ll be in touch and if you have any success call this number.’
The call was terminated.
‘They must still be around to know that we’re here,’ I said.
Jo sighed rather heavily. ‘Forget it, David. They might have been parked up on the way. Just watched us drive past, heading here because they’d know that’s what we’d do. They won’t be around here now.’
I said, ‘Shit.’ Then I said, ‘Good job we didn’t bring the money straight here from the church, eh?’
‘I hope so, David.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe if we had, they’d have just taken it and left her alone.’
‘True. How would that have made you feel?’
‘Pissed off.’ And I was understanding why Jo was reluctant to call in the law: she wanted to bring a satisfactory resolution to things herself – client and money united with a full and detailed explanation for everything. It was professional pride and it was potentially dangerous. It’s no secret what follows pride.
***
40
I was hungry so I’d knocked us up a meal in the wok. We were both on the sauce. Soy for Jo, Blankety-blank for me.
‘Have a drink,’ I said. ‘You look like you could do with one. There won’t be any driving tonight.’
Jo shook her head. ‘You can’t know that.’
‘They’ve probably taken her back to London, haven’t they?’
‘Probably.’
‘You’re going to try and find them, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I’ve found the money. So I’ve bought myself some time. I can spend it looking for them.’
I resisted the urge to remind Jo of whose idea it had been to look in the church for the case and who it was who found it.
‘Where will you start?’
‘I still have friends in the force. Tat and tail sounds distinctive. He might have form.’
‘Will you ask Marion Pardew?’
Jo shook her head as she sucked up some noodles. ‘I don’t know her well enough and I might have to explain things.’
‘When will you start?’
‘I hope you’re not trying to make me feel bad.’
‘Just asking.’
‘I’ll make some calls when I’ve finished this.’
‘How do you think they’ll treat her?’
‘I think they’ll treat her fine. They want their money back. They don’t want the complications of hurting people.’
‘At least we know why the gallery was broken into.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Come on. It must be. They didn’t take anything else.’
‘We can’t know that for certain. But I agree with you. It’s not somewhere I would have expected Nigel to keep a hundred grand but when you’re running out of options you get desperate. They had to chance a look. They took it.’
‘And Natalie?’
‘What about Natalie?’
‘They’ve shown they’re not averse to kidnap. I’d say it’s looking more likely that they have something to do with her disappearance.’
Jo made a noise to express her disagreement. ‘There could still be any number of reasons why Natalie has gone off the radar.’
‘Give me three.’
‘Holiday, hiding...’
Jo’s phone rang. She swallowed her food and answered it. I continued eating, with my eyes on her. It was a personal call and it didn’t last long.
Jo pushed her plate away. She hadn’t eaten much.
I said, ‘How about calling them and saying you’ve found fifty thousand?’
‘And what if they say, find the other fifty thousand?’
‘What about calling them and saying you have no idea where the money is and they can do what they like to her?’
‘That’s not a bad idea, actually. Call their bluff.’
‘I was joking.’
‘Really? I’m not. I don’t think they’d hurt her.’
‘You can’t take that risk. She’s your client, remember?’
‘I want to call my mate from Ashford, but if I do that she’ll have to inform her DI and you saw what her problem was.’
‘No. I mean, I saw she had a problem, but I don’t know what it was.’
‘Me.’
‘Oh. What about phoning your old mate DI Sprake from Folkestone?’
‘A: we didn’t part on the best of terms. B: he’d have to pass it over to Ashford because Aldington comes under Ashford police jurisdiction and I’d be back with the DI with a problem.’
‘The longer you leave it to call the police, the worse it’s going to look. They’ll say, why didn’t you report it straight away?’
‘I needed to make sure it wasn’t a hoax.’
‘That’s only going to work for a certain window of time and it’s nearly shut.’
‘Come on, David. Think.’
‘I already did. I had some good thoughts and you ignored them and me.’
She stood and paced. Then she stopped and said, ‘I’m going back to Goldenhurst.’
‘What? Why?’
‘With Rebecca Swaine out of the way, I can have a good look around. Plus I might see something that might mean something to me now, when it didn’t before. And I need to be doing something. I can’t just watch TV.’
‘Shitty death, Jo. Are you telling me you’re going to break into your client’s home when she’s been kidnapped?’
‘I’m only doing it to try to find something to help get her back. I’m not asking you to come.’
‘What if you get caught breaking and entering?’
‘By who? No one overlooks the place.’
‘You know I can’t let you go up there alone.’
‘You don’t have to come in; you can just sit in the car and keep watch.’
‘Be a remote accessory after the fact, whatever that means? Tell you what: I come up for moral support and if your search turns up nothing and you have no ideas and we’re none the wiser about anything, you call the cops. Your Ashford mate.’
Jo considered for a second and said, ‘OK.’ She had her hands behind her back. She might have had her fingers crossed.
I had to find somewhere special to hide the briefcase. I couldn’t leave it in the shop safe because (a) it wouldn’t have fitted and (b) I didn’t want awkward questions from the ladies next time I saw them about bundles of twenty-pound notes. In the end, to save time and arguments, we took it with us.
***
41
Déjà vu. Rebecca Swaine’s driveway on
a nippy still January night. The only difference from earlier was my tummy was full and I had a glass of plonk filtering through my system.
A heavy darkness clung to everything. Through the bare branches of the trees, and with our elevated position overlooking the Marsh, I could make out the twinkling streetlights of the A259, the Christmas tree effect of the nuclear power station that squatted on the shingle peninsula out at Dungeness and the glow-worm effect that characterised the shipping that had laid up for the night in the sheltered bay of the English Channel.
I asked Jo how she intended to gain entry and she showed me her Maglite torch. It wasn’t going to be subtle. I stifled a groan. She decided we should break a window on the far side of the house where it would be more discreet. Just the idea of breaking and entering had my senses on full alert. That’s the dark for you. Everything seems amplified, especially bad things. I reminded myself that our proposed actions were the offspring of concern and worry regarding Rebecca Swaine’s immediate future.
‘Shouldn’t we be wearing gloves?’ I said.
‘And how would that look if the law should happen to turn up?’
I didn’t like to think of the law turning up. And then I did like to think about the law turning up – Jo would have to explain what we were doing there and she couldn’t do that without mentioning the kidnap of her client. And then the police would be involved, which is what I wanted.
As I followed Jo past the front door on the narrow path I tried the handle on an impulse. The door opened, letting out a wedge of yellow light.
I said, ‘Psssst.’
Jo turned. I caught a flash of teeth. She said, ‘Well done. At least no one can accuse us of breaking and entering now.’
We stepped inside. As I shut the door behind us, I said, ‘What can they accuse us of?’
‘Nothing that would stick. Stop worrying.’
Jo called out three loud hellos. As expected, there was no reply. We didn’t exchange our outdoor shoes for guest slippers.
Jo had ideas. She locked the front door and I trailed her through to Nigel’s rooms. I tried not to feel that what we were doing was wrong. I tried not to feel scared. I tried not to feel.
She had a good look around, downstairs, then she went in search of Sigmund’s rooms. They were upstairs off the landing that led to his studio.
Jo poked about a little more seriously, although she didn’t share with me what she was looking for. Maybe she didn’t know.
I had a look along his shelves and my eye was taken by something out of place. It was scrapbook size. It was a scrapbook. I took it down and flicked through it and quickly realised that this was a scrapbook of all sorts of ephemera, newspaper articles, magazine cuttings, photographs. There was even what looked like some original correspondence from the focus of the compilation: Paul Nash. There were other letters too. From other people.
I waved it at Jo and told her what it was. She didn’t seem particularly interested. Probably because she didn’t find it. I held on to it and followed her through into Sigmund’s studio. It wasn’t as neat as it had been when I’d last been in there. It looked like someone had been poking about.
Jo let out a long breath. It was one of her mannerisms when she was frustrated by something.
She took out her phone and said, ‘Time to call the cavalry.’
I said, ‘Really?’ because I didn’t believe her.
‘Yes. Really. Come on. We can wait for them downstairs.’
In the room with the fire, which was now out, I made myself comfortable on the sofa and for something to do I flicked through the scrapbook. There were newspaper cuttings, yellowed with age, original handwritten letters, many of which had an aged quality – something about the handwriting and the paper – that was confirmed by those that were dated. And there were lots of photographs: both amateur and professional-looking.
Jo was pacing with her phone to her ear. She hadn’t spoken. She huffed and hung up and said, ‘No answer.’
I said, ‘It is Sunday night.’
Jo was tapping her phone against her chin and still pacing when I found something interesting. I had to say her name twice before she looked at me.
‘Come and look at this,’ I said.
She came and sat next to me. Anyone looking through the window might have believed we were happily married and spending a quiet evening in going through the family photo album. All that was missing were our slippers.
‘What is it now?’ she said, and there was more than a hint of impatience there.
What I had was a landscape orientation black and white photograph of three men posing for the camera in front of a building, the identity of which was not immediately apparent from the picture. I could tell it wasn’t that old from the faces of Sigmund Swaine and Nigel Tate. Five years at most. I didn’t know the third man but he caught my eye because he had a ponytail and there was a mark on his neck, just above the open collar of his shirt. It was either a birthmark or a tattoo.
I turned it over but there were no names helpfully scrawled on the back. Jo almost snatched it from me and looked more closely. I noticed a newspaper cutting that had been tucked in the same page. There was a photograph between a headline and a block of text. There were more people in the photograph – a decent crowd – and it was harder to identify them individually. But I could make out Sigmund and Nigel – and the third man was there, too.
‘Bingo,’ I said, feeling rather pleased with myself. I read: ‘Alumni of Royal College of Art come from all over to attend the opening of the college’s new Sackler Building for painting.’
Jo said, ‘What’s the date?’
‘November, 2009.’
‘Where is it?’
‘According to this, Howie Street, Battersea.’
I took the photograph back from Jo. ‘That has to be tat and tail.’
‘It has to be worth a look,’ she said.
‘What about the police?’
‘I tried. I kept my promise.’
‘Will you try again?’
‘David, I want to check this out for myself first.’
I wasn’t going to argue with her about it any more. ‘OK.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s gone nine. There won’t be anyone there now other than security.’
‘I can’t go home to bed, David.’
***
42
At least because of the hour and the day there wasn’t much traffic to speak of on the motorways. I punched our destination into the GPS and sat back to enjoy the ride. Jo was driving. And the way she was driving it wouldn’t take long.
Howie Street was short and given over mostly to buildings of the Royal College of Art. The one we were looking for was ‘painting’, which was directly opposite ‘sculpture’. I had grave doubts regarding what could be discovered from driving all the way up there on a Sunday night but I understood why Jo needed to try.
The street was quiet. There were street lights. Jo brought the car to a stop by the kerb directly outside the ‘painting’ building. There were lights on inside the part of the building nearest to us. Behind the roller blind of the window that gave out onto the pavement a silhouette of a figure crossed the room.
We got out together and approached the entry phone system. Jo pushed the button. We heard a buzzer sound inside.
‘Who is it?’ said a distorted male voice.
Jo looked up at the CCTV camera that was trained on our position, depressed the intercom button and said, ‘Can I have a word, please. Face to face.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to contact someone to do with this department and it’s urgent.’
Surprisingly, we weren’t told to bugger off. A man wearing the uniform of the private security sector came to stand behind the clear glass door. Maybe he was just bored and we were a bit of stimulation in his mundane routine.
We had a conversation through a few millimetres of glass. ‘Go on then, what’s so important?’
‘Can you give me a telephone
number of one of the senior people who runs this place?’
‘Why?’
Jo held up her industry-recognised identification card and said, ‘I’m a private investigator. My client is in serious trouble and I have good reason to believe that someone who could help me with my enquiries might have been a student here at one time.’
The man looked to be thinking about things. He said, ‘Can’t it wait until the morning?’
‘My client is missing as of this evening. In very suspicious circumstances.’
I’d thought to bring the scrapbook with us. I gave them to Jo to see if she wanted to use them. She did.
‘We’re looking for someone who was at the opening of this building in 2009. He’s an ex-student of the RCA. I just need to speak to someone who can identify him for me. That’s all. Please. Just a phone number. You can call them if you like and relay my message. I’m not exaggerating when I say this could be a matter of life and death.’
The man scratched his face. He said, ‘Wait there.’
He was back in a minute with a bunch of keys and another security guard. He unlocked and opened the door to admit us. I held up my finger and nipped back to the car for the briefcase. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving a hundred thousand pounds that wasn’t mine in a car that was a car thief’s wet dream.
The man gave me a questioning look.
‘Valuables,’ I said and smiled.
We followed him into the little office that security called home. A small television with a bad picture was making noise in the corner of the room. He turned it off and said, ‘Sit down.’
We sat. I laid the case on my lap and rested my elbows on it.
‘If you’re going to call someone for us,’ said Jo, it’s got to be someone who’s been on the lecturing staff here for a good while. The guy we’re looking for was probably here years ago.’
The man nodded his understanding, picked up the landline telephone and dialled a number from a contact sheet on a clipboard.
After a few edgy seconds he said, ‘Sorry to call you so late in the evening, madam. It’s security at ‘painting’ in Howie Street here.’
