The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  The door opened to admit a young man pushing a wheelchair.

  “Ah, my transport of delight!” Griff exclaimed, submitting to having a nurse check that the number on his wristband matched that on the young man’s paperwork. Lest I feel a frisson of alarm, with wild fears of the attackers taking him where they could finish off what they had started, Aidan made a dramatic appearance, pressing me to somewhere fairly near his bosom and then hindering rather than helping the porter in his efforts to get Griff into the wheelchair. Aidan would go with him in the ambulance. I would follow in my car.

  As soon as DS Barnes had finished with me, that is. He had just pulled his unmarked car up alongside mine, and was checking for the right change to feed to the meter. He pulled a face when I told him Griff was no longer at the hospital, but listened disbelievingly when I told him what had been stolen.

  “Try and kill an old man just because he’s bought a table you wanted?” he squeaked. “You’re joking. Was it made of gold and lined with silver?”

  “Wood inlaid with more wood, from what I can gather. There’s a picture of it in the auction catalogue - and that, according to Griff, should be in the glovebox of the van.”

  “Which is currently in one of our car pounds. If you came with me, you could tell me all about it.” His smile was agreeable, but I had this rule never to trust anyone till I’d had Griff’s opinion of them. So I muttered something about not affording any more time in the car park - well, they charged as if lives depended on the parking fees - and told him I’d follow him, provided he would phone one of his police cronies to make sure Griff had arrived safely. He looked at me very hard. “You really are worried they’ll have another go at the old guy, aren’t you? OK, I’ll get on to it.”

  ~ * ~

  The Tripp and Townend, Antique Dealers van sat rather sadly in the corner of the pound, as if it felt personally responsible for the trickles of blood on its paintwork. DS Barnes had already donned disposable gloves and was fossicking round inside, displaying a neat bum to the world. But he came up with nothing, and, seeing me the far side of the barrier, waved to his mate to let me in.

  “Are you sure about the catalogue?”

  “Griff was. But then, he’s over seventy and has been beaten about the head, so he might have got it wrong. In any case, it hardly matters - the auctioneer must have loads left over.”

  “If I get hold of a copy and bring it over to your shop, can you tell me all about the table? Not until you’ve seen that Griff’s all right and tight, of course. And he has arrived safely - well, he would, with a couple of our lads riding shotgun, as it were.”

  “You set up motorcycle outriders?” Forgetting my manners, I reached up and gave him a smacking thank-you kiss - but only on the cheek.

  ~ * ~

  Much as I would have liked to spend the day holding Griff’s hand, he pointed out that we had a business to run. As luck would have it, it was a very quiet day, and I could have stayed. However, since I had time on my hands, I could spend a lot of it texting or emailing fellow-dealers, asking if they had ever had similar experiences to Griff’s. Of course, the police were probably checking through their records for exactly the same information, but I had an idea that some of our colleagues would only have called in the fuzz if they’d had the Crown Jewels stolen.

  I never spent much time at school, and Griff’s best efforts to help me write what he called a lady-like script had failed. But he had taught me keyboard skills, so I could run off a list for DS Barnes. Neat columns: items stolen; when; where; value; from whom (I nearly typed who from but that would have made Griff grind his teeth); police action. As I’d suspected, only about half of the twenty or so robberies had been reported to the police, and none of the objects had ever been recovered. Nor had they shown up elsewhere in the UK, at auctions or at antiques fairs.

  Just as I was locking up for the day, Barnes appeared, looking, in a much more expensive suit, rather sleeker than he had yesterday. His expression of concern told me that I didn’t. Well, the floor beside Griff had proved harder than I’d expected so I’d not slept a lot.

  “What I thought was,” he began, “is that I could run you over to see Griff, we could all have a chat, then I could run you back here and we... Well, maybe we should have a bite to eat somewhere.”

  I didn’t directly reply but said, “If Griff sees me looking like this he’ll have an instant relapse. Can you give me five minutes to change?”

  “An hour if you like. So long as you leave me in here to look round... it’s like a museum, isn’t it? An Aladdin’s cave?”

  But he still hadn’t had Griff’s approval so I said, truthfully, “It’ll be freezing in here in five minutes. Come into the house - there’s some nice stuff in there, too.”

  And I didn’t let him see what burglar-alarm code I tapped in either.

  What we kept in the house was stuff we couldn’t sell in the shop because it was slightly damaged or the provenance was dubious or else was so lovely neither of us had the heart to sell it. So while I was taking a risk, it was smaller than leaving him with all the highly collectable items in the shop. In any case, I hadn’t told him about the CCTV that operated even inside the house if we wanted it to, so I could watch him while I was putting on a better top and applying what Griff, after years in the theatre, always called slap. It took longer than five minutes, but no more than eight, and I even had time to brush my hair. Will had done no more than gaze with what looked like open-mouthed wonder at a couple of small Impressionist oil paintings - standing back, getting close to, but never touching. Which was fortunate, since they were wired into a very loud alarm system indeed.

  ~ * ~

  It only took forty minutes or so to reach the nursing home, which looked and smelled far more like a posh hotel than the repository for incontinent old codgers Griff had always feared ending his days in. He had a single, en suite room, with a TV and couple of easy chairs, in addition to the upright one on which he was enthroned and a bed that did its best to disguise its high-tech lifting and tilting mechanisms. The decor was almost as bland as that in the bad-news room at the other hospital, but the standard of the reproductions on the wall was much higher.

  Aidan was sitting beside him reading aloud, something his consciously mellifluous voice was well suited to. He stopped, inserting a bookmark and closing the volume with just enough of a snap to show he was not used to being interrupted in mid-paragraph. My smile and his were as bland as the wallpaper, something I suspected Will noticed.

  He shook hands first with Aidan and then very gently with Griff. “The bruises are coming out, I see.”

  “Why not? I did years ago,” Griff said with a beam. Then he touched his cheek. “I’ve not seen my face yet - they sent a minion to shave me and throw in a haircut as a bonus.”

  The expression on Aidan’s face told me he expected to see the freebie added to his bill. But he had the decency to make himself scarce so that both Will and I could sit down. Will produced the auctioneer’s catalogue.

  “My reading glasses hurt my nose,” Griff complained. “That’s why dear Aidan was reading aloud.”

  “What a good job I remembered these,” I said, burrowing in my bag. “Here, try these lorgnettes. They came with that job lot of spectacle cases, remember? They may not be quite your prescription but they have a certain something, don’t you think?” I waved the pretty turquoise-and-white-enamelled Victorian hand-held specs before me, pressing a little button so that the lenses popped out.

  “My sweet girl, what a gem you are!” Griff took them and peered this way and that. “You see, you adjust the focal length by moving them closer to or further away from your eyes. How clever. And how very pretty. Dear child. Now I can see whatever it is you wish to show me, young man,” he added, taking the catalogue and opening it. “Ah - there’s the wretched games table. What on earth could there be about such a monstrosity that someone should go to such lengths to get hold of it? Why, a quiet wor
d to me beforehand and the promise of a drink afterwards and I wouldn’t have bid so high. Or indeed at all. Mrs Thingy could have waited for another - as indeed she will have to now.”

  “And why indeed should they have stolen twenty or so others in the last twelve months?” Will asked. “At least, that’s what Lina’s research shows.”

  Griff shot me a keen glance. “Do our friends know that the police might see this list?”

  Will coughed. “Just at the moment we’re interested in the thieves, not their victims, Mr - Griff. And I gave Lina my word that I would only interview people who had already reported the thefts to their local police.”

  “Very well. I hope you will keep it.”

  “Of course.” He sounded sincere enough. He patted the catalogue photo. “Now, if these are gaming tables, am I right in thinking that they would have been in casinos or clubs?”

  “Games tables. Probably in private homes - no TV in those days so you made your own entertainment,” Griff explained.

  Will jotted. “Okay. Now, to me this just looks like an ordinary table with a chessboard inlaid on the top. Am I missing something?”

  “Sometimes the chessboard part swivels round to reveal a backgammon well. Or some have side drawers for pieces and counters. I dare say some even have secret drawers, so that someone who knows where they are can cheat. None are terribly valuable, not unless they’re made by a famous manufacturer.” Griff didn’t volunteer how much he had paid, still less how much he would have asked Mrs Davenport to pay.

  “Yet someone wants shedloads of the dratted things. And hides them away.”

  “Or, more likely, young man,” Griff said, closing the lorgnette and waving it to emphasize the point, “has had them out of the country within the hour. Look at the places they were stolen... Ipswich; Plymouth; Southampton; loads round here in Kent.”

  “But why on earth should they want them abroad?”

  ~ * ~

  “It seems to me,” I said, as Will and I walked back to the car park, “that the only way of finding out why these tables are going abroad is to buy one and follow it.”

  “Follow?” He frowned. “I suppose we could always hide a tracking device in it. So how could we make sure that there’d be a games table on the market soon?” He let me into his car before going round to the driver’s side, just as if Griff were watching to make sure he had good manners.

  “Easy,” I said. “So long as you don’t want a kosher one.”

  “Do I want to know what you mean by that?” It was hard to tell in the darkness whether he was serious or not.

  “No names, no pack drill. I know a couple of dealers who would put together - using authentic bits and pieces - a games table that would convince most punters. And so long as it was me - it was I - who bought it, knowing it was a fake, that wouldn’t be a problem, would it? In fact,” I added, “wouldn’t it be all the better for being dodgy? It would mean that whoever bought it just wanted any old rubbish, not a really good one.”

  “I’m not sure I follow your logic.” he grinned. “But I don’t think you’d be involved. It’d be one of our officers.”

  “In the antiques world everyone knows everyone else. You put a police officer in there and whoever wants the table would be on to him in thirty seconds.”

  “Or her,” he corrected me. “Someone who looked like you. You could do the bidding and then the officer could take your place in the van. There’s a whole department at Scotland Yard devoted to fine art theft - I’m sure they’ll want to be involved.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Games tables aren’t exactly fine art. And I have this feeling that it’s not the art value the thieves are interested in.” Griff always insisted that I had a bit of the divvy about me, in other words an instinct for what was real and what was fake.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know... But maybe we’ll find out.”

  ~ * ~

  Smudger Smith operated at the shady end of antiques dealing. If asked, he might say he was into recycling before it even got fashionable. What he did was take a nice table top, say, the legs of which had been ruined by something like a fire or woodworm. Then he’d find a set of legs of the same wood, but not necessarily even from a table, and marry them up. He might even make his own table legs, and artificially age them, or make them from old wood from yet another item.

  We met in a pub in a town some way from both our bases, and cash was exchanged in the used fivers and tenners he demanded, all courtesy of the police. What they’d say when I couldn’t provide a receipt I’d no idea - but ask Smudger to put anything on paper and he’d have disappeared before you could blink.

  “How soon d’you want it?”

  “The next furniture sale in Canterbury.” I was dead sure that if I’d asked him how he was going to fix it he’d have been outraged. “Plenty of little drawers and a couple of cupboards, if you can manage it,” I added. ‘“You know the sort of thing.” My hands conjured the sort of mini-turrets and curlicues and cabriole legs that Griff particularly loathed.

  But that was all right because I made sure Griff knew nothing about it.

  ~ * ~

  A week later Will popped into the shop with some news. “We’ve had a couple of writing bureaux reported as missing,” he said. “Could there be any connection?”

  “What period?”

  “One’s seventeenth-century Italian.”

  “Wow, you’re talking serious money there. Collectors would have your hand off.” I tugged an idea from my brain. “It would have one thing in common with those tables - it would almost certainly have secret drawers. Very secret. Will, has anything else gone missing over the last few weeks? So valuable your specialized squad would be on to it?”

  He jotted in his notebook. “I could find out. Any news of your table?”

  “It’ll be ready for next week’s sale.” I handed him the money I hadn’t had to spend, thanks to my haggling skills. “Sorry - my contact doesn’t do receipts.”

  “So you could have kept the whole lot and I’d have been none the wiser.”

  “I would,” I said shortly. When I was younger I’d have taken the lot and lied myself blue in the face. But not after six years with Griff. I changed the subject. The problem would be keeping Griff away from the auction now he was back on his feet. I might have to talk to Aidan.

  “You don’t think Will’s a bit too good to be true?” I asked Griff, when Aidan, always the perfect host, had gone to bring fresh toast.

  Griff was staying with him for an extra week’s convalescence when he’d been signed off by the private hospital. Then Aidan - prompted by me - thought they might go for a nice cruise somewhere exotic. Half of me was delighted: a break was just what Griff needed. The other half was desolate. But at least it meant he wouldn’t be at the sale.

  “You’re not losing your heart to him, are you, sweet one?”

  I licked my index finger and collected a few crumbs from the pristine cloth. “It’d be very easy to.” Eventually I looked him in the eye. “You wouldn’t recommend it?”

  But Aidan was returning.

  “Just make haste slowly,” Griff whispered.

  ~ * ~

  Having bought Smudger’s games table - he’d actually done such a good job I would have had to look twice to see it was a wrong ‘un - all I had to do was deliver it to a smallish, brownish man at another remote location. Having shown him the hidden drawer, a cunning device that made him suck in his breath quite sharply, I gave it a farewell pat, and tried to think no more about it. After all, I had a few questions of my own to ask. Smudger wasn’t the only one with skills he didn’t talk about. There were people out there who could copy the Kohinoor Diamond, others who could knock up a Leonardo cartoon the man himself would have been proud of. I didn’t dare approach them directly, of course, because I wasn’t supposed to know of their existence. But I did discover that a guy known as Provo, since he could even provide
a convincing provenance for his fakes, had been especially busy recently, though no one knew why anyone should want a whole load of Nicholas Hilliard miniatures. There was another rumour that there was a glut of games tables up in the north, something I could with a clear conscience tell Will, who made another note and sucked his pencil.

  Being trussed up in the back of the van wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal, was it? Not that I’d be trussed up very long. There’s a trick to bracing your wrists when you’re tied up - I told you I didn’t go to school much, but I learned a lot of things not on the national curriculum. While I worked on the rope, I seethed with anger. The police were supposed to have replaced me as I left the auction rooms with a lookalike, because though I may now be law-abiding, I didn’t see that my getting beaten up like Griff needed to be part of the deal. But the cop they sent was a woman who’d played rugby for England, all five foot eleven of her and goodness knows how many stone. Twice what I carry, that’s for sure. Will and a couple of other plainclothes officers had been hard put not to laugh. So I’d been the tethered goat, after all. I’d seen the table loaded into the back of the van, driven off, and someone had called on our business mobile - the one with its number painted on the side of the van.