As I sat there, stewing over my thoughts, over memories and guilt, my phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and chuckled at the image of Jeannie’s face and number shining up at me.
“Hello, Jeannie,” I answered. “It’s been a while.”
“Hello, Thatch. Not that long,” she replied.
“Five months.”
“I see you’ve been counting.” I could hear her smirk down the phone.
“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with you knocking around me,” I answered, reclining further against the bar.
She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “I’ve missed you too, Thatch.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“How do you know this isn’t a personal call?” she asked, sounding affronted.
“Is it?”
“No.”
“What do you want?” I asked her, toying with a button on my coat as we spoke.
“I’ve heard about this case of yours,” she told me. I could hear her moving around, her house most likely, and throwing herself down on a chair. “The art theft. Most intriguing.”
“You can’t have the story,” I quickly told her.
“I don’t want it,” she replied just as speedily, “though I am surprised you’re working it, Thatch. Rich people losing their fortunes.” She clicked her tongue. “Just doesn’t quite interest me as much as other things.”
“Like murder and general mayhem?” I asked.
“You know me well. But I think I might be able to help you,” she carried on, “and since you haven’t bothered to ask for my help, although I’m sure it’s occurred to you, I thought I’d be a lovely person and offer it.”
It had occurred to me. It had occurred to Mills too. Only I was reluctant to bring her in on cases all the time.
“How so?” I asked her, resting my elbow on the bar and propping my head upon my fist.
“I know a chap, art dealer in the city. Deal with private sales, very private. As in, unless you specifically know about it, it doesn’t exist.”
“How do you know him?”
“From an old story, back when I was fresh out of uni. Bought a few pieces from him since then, he’s clean,” she added hastily as I grew suspicious, “just rich. Rich people are always secretive, though, aren’t they?”
“In my experience, yes.”
“Mine too. Anyway, if someone’s looking to sell that painting without catching your eye and without going to the auction, he’d know about it.”
“Would he meet with me?”
“Yes,” she said surely.
“Very confident.”
“I spoke to him earlier,” she told me. “He’s rather horrified at the thought of art being so poorly mistreated. He’ll help you out.”
“You do have the most interesting connections, Jeannie Gray,” I murmured into the phone, “very random. Please don’t tell you’ve also got people from the mafia or the secret service on that phone of yours.”
“No mafia,” she assured me, “but I do know a woman who works for Madame Tussaud’s, and you’d be surprised by the things she knows.”
“I dare not ask.”
“Anyway,” she said breezily, “I’m sending you his details, give him a call, Thatch, he can help.”
“Much appreciated, Jeannie.”
“Anytime. Now, where are you?” she asked. “You sound like you’re in a cave.”
“Just an old building,” I replied.
There was a pause. “You mother’s place?” Her voice had softened.
“That’s the one.”
“Mind out for splinters,” she said after another long pause.
I laughed. “I will.”
“Good. Good luck with the case Thatch,” she said.
“See you around, Jeannie,” I replied.
She hung up a moment later, the beeping sound of the disconnect suddenly very loud. I sighed, lowering my phone and staring at the screen. An email popped up seconds later from her, the art dealer’s information, a Mr Laurin Harrer, strange name included.
I left it, for now, placing my phone down on the bar and looked around the room again. A face appeared at one of the windows, and I yelped, stumbling off the stool, my heart thrumming into action.
Elsie shuffled in, hands spread out placatingly. “Sorry, love,” she soothed, coming over and taking my arm and I tried to lower my erratic heart.
“Bloody hell, Elsie,” I panted, “you scared me half to death. What are you doing snooping around the windows for?”
“I wanted to make sure it was you,” she said, helping me back to the stool. She found another one, dragged it over and hopped up, her short legs swinging.
“Who else would it be? I have the only key, other than you, and my car’s outside.”
She looked over her shoulder to the window, looking at the car. “Well, when you put it like that it all sounds very reasonable,” she huffed, laying her hand over mine. “Sorry for the fright, pet.” She patted my hand and pulled away, looking around the room. “Looks good, with a bit of sunshine coming in. You’ve done good work, lad.”
“You think so?”
“I do. Think you’re a madman wasting all your free time out here, rattling around the old place.” She gave me a moderately withering look. “I’ll be surprised if you haven’t ruined your lungs. But it’s looking like the old place again. She’d be proud,” she added in a much softer voice, her wrinkled eyes lining with water. “I know I am.”
I took her hand properly, squeezing the old, calloused fingers gently. “Thank you, Elsie.”
She reached over, patting my cheek and pulled herself away, sniffing loudly and squaring herself up again. “Much left to do?” she asked.
“Upstairs, mostly. And there’s something living in the chimney,” I added.
She nodded. “Starlings.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“I have. You'll have to find another place for their nest though, Max, I’ll not have you carting starlings around with no home.”
“I’ll find them somewhere,” I promised. “Maybe I’ll turn the whole back garden into a bloody animal sanctuary.”
“You should and all,” she said. “Always badgers lurking around out here.”
“I haven’t seen a badger in years,” I admitted, scratching the back of my neck.
“Well, they’re hardly going to come slinking into the city for old chips and rancid bits of scran, are they?”
I chuckled, dipping my head. “When it’s all done,” I told her, “I’ll have you over for some dinner.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked around the room again, staring up at the ceiling. “I might be dead by the time that comes around, lad.”
“I should be out here more often, then,” I answered. She reached over and slapped me on the back of the head,
“Don’t you play with me, Max Thatcher. I saw you into this world, and I’ll see you out of it if I have to.”
“Consider me warned,” I said, rubbing my head.
“It’s getting on out there,” she said after a pause, her face directed towards the window where the sky was streaking with orange and pink. “You best be home. Get a good night’s kip for this new case of yours.”
“How do you know about my new case?”
“Heard that Sharp make a statement about it. Her best people, she says, working the case. Knew it would be you.” She hopped down from the stool and looked at me proudly. “It is you, isn’t it? I’m not going to have to go and have words with her, am I?”
“No,” though the thought of such an interaction was a marvellous image, “she was referring to me.”
“You’ll see it sorted.” She rubbed my shoulder and stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat. “Take care of yourself, Max.”
“You too, Elsie.” She waved my words off, shuffling from the coaching house, muttering under her breath about dust and beetles. That was a thought. I’d hadn’t considered beetles and woodw
orms. Another job on the list, I thought tiredly, jumping down from the stool.
I went to put the boards back up, safety mostly, until I got the windows all fixed and secure, and my phone rang again. My heart sunk a little as I fished out and saw Mills’s name there inside of Jeannie’s. It was late for him to be calling, he never phoned after six unless he had something good to share, or to see if I fancied a pint.
“Mills,” I answered.
“Sir,” his quiet voice greeted me, “I’ve found the artist. Brynmor Ragsdale.”
“Brynmor Ragsdale?” I repeated. It was a day for ridiculous names, apparently.
“Yes, sir,” he confirmed.
“Who names their child that?”
“Someone who wants a painter for a son?” he suggested.
I chuckled quietly at that. “Local chap?” I asked.
“Yes. Born in the Hocking Estate village, early twentieth century. Died during the first World War.”
“Born on the Estate?” I muttered, more to myself.
“Well, the village sir, sir.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
“The piece that Lord Hocking has was given to him a gift from Ragsdale’s younger sister after he expressed interest in it.”
“A gift?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright,” I pushed him on.
“One of Ragsdale’s pieces sold five years ago at an auction, made just under one and a half thousand pounds.”
I stopped where I was standing, frowning into the empty room. “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Thought it’d be worth more than that,” I muttered, dragging my hand through my hair. “Definitely a sentimental piece then.”
“Definitely,” he agreed, “both as a gift, and since it was of the estate itself, I can’t imagine anyone else paying much for it. Smaller than the one from the auction, too, if my measurements are right.”
I didn’t doubt that they were. “Alright. Good work, Mills,” I said honestly, glancing at the darkening sky. “Get some rest now, you’ve done enough for today.” I paused, all this art driving me a bit mad.
“Jeannie called,” I told him, knowing he’d be smug faced at that.
“She did?” came a causal response.
“Knows an art dealer who handles private sellings that we can meet.”
“That’s good news.”
“If our thief is going to sell,” I reminded him, “but if that’s the profit that we’d be looking at, I don’t want to pin all our hopes and dreams on it.”
“What’s the next move then, sir?”
“Richard Sandow. If you wanted to piss off your brother, what would you steal from him?” I never had one myself, but I always knew exactly how to piss off Sally.
“The one thing I know he’d probably break my nose for taking.”
I laughed at that. Sally had once lobbed a bucket at my head for taking her favourite pinecone. “We’ll cross the art dealer of the list,” I decided, “more for Sharp’s sake than anything else, but we focus on the brother and the butler. That’s where my suspicion lies right now.”
“See you tomorrow then, sir.”
“Tomorrow, Mills,” I bid farewell and hung up, placing the last board back up, taking Elsie’s advice, and heading home.
Ten
Thatcher
We were in the station early the next morning to update Sharp on our plans. As we waited for her, I pulled up Jeannie’s email, making a note of the art dealers’ information. She’d set up the meeting herself, and we were due to meet him this morning in a few hours, at a café in the city. Mills did some digging into this Laurin Harrer as we twiddled our thumbs. His name was tied to a few galleries in the city, to a few private collections in houses not unlike the Hocking Estate. Specialising in private auctions, he was our best bet at finding the painting if it was due to be sold. Neither Mills nor I expected it to be, but we had to cross off every lead. My biggest lead would come to fruition this afternoon, now that I had found Richard Sandow. Learning about what exactly had come between the two brothers, what had happened amongst the whole family and I would wager, in that very house itself, felt to me like the appropriate thread to follow.
Now, I just had to make sure that Sharp agreed.
She was uncharacteristically late, blustering into the station in a whirl of coat and coffee cups, her hair windswept all around her face. Appearing in the hall across from our open door, she waved us over and into her office, where she pulled off her coat and sorted her hair in a very flustered manner. Mills helped her out of her coat when her arm got caught, hanging it on the rack for her as she, at last, collapsed in her chair. Sharp rubbed at her temples, looking rather exhausted, and took a long sip of her coffee. I looked her over, her skin, the shadows underneath her eyes, her slightly hunched posture, looking for signs of illness.
“My son threw up,” she told us as Mills sat down beside me, “in the car on the way to school.”
I winced. “Is he alright?”
She waved a hand. “He’ll be fine. That’s what grandparents are for. Now,” she folded her hands together under her chin and sat up straight, “the painting. Tell me what you boys are up to.”
“We have a meeting in about an hour with an art dealer, Laurin Harrer,” I told her. “He works private auctions, selling directly from the artists to the buyer. Our theory is that if the thief is going to sell and they’re avoiding the market, he’d be the sort of man to know about such a trade.”
“Unless they sell it outside the city,” she suggested.
“One bridge at a time, ma’am,” I replied.
She nodded slowly. “What else?”
“I’ve found the information on Richard Sandow, Lord Hocking’s estranged brother. My plan is that this afternoon, I’ll go and meet him. See what he can tell me about the family, why they fell out.”
“And he might shed some more light on the painting,” Mills added.
“Sandow?” Sharp repeated, tapping her computer into life.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Name’s familiar,” she told me, frowning at her screen. “Something to do with the hospital, or welfare or something.”
“He worked on the board of directors for a hospital,” I told her. But she shook her head and looked away from the screen,
“No, it was something else. It’ll come to me. Lord Hocking made no mention of his brother?”
“He did not. Only the sister,” I said.
“Well, you would think that given the circumstances, he would have told you about him. This brother of his might have all the right motive necessary to steal the painting.”
“And knowledge of the house,” Mills added. “He’d know about the annual party, about where the painting was kept, the layout of the house. All of it.”
“And the staff,” I agreed quietly. “None of them mentioned seeing him.”
Sharp frowned at the tone of my voice. “Unless…?”
“Unless they were working with him.”
“The butler, again?” she asked.
“If he knows that family as well as he’s supposed to, and the house, and the guests, you’d think he would have noticed something out of the ordinary. Would have stayed somewhere he could monitor all that. But instead, he was rooting around the back corridors, where he couldn’t see who came in or out.”
“Butlers have jobs, Thatcher,” Sharp reminded me.
“He would have known Richard Sandow,” I pressed. “All I think is that it’s a bit odd, is all. I’m asking you to bear it in mind,” I added, only slightly jokingly.
“He had worked there a while,” Mills put in, “and his father before him. Maybe he always preferred Richard or took his side in whatever fall out they had.”
Sharp’s eyes narrowed, reading both of our faces. They flicked to her computer screen again, and she sat back in her seat, crossing her arms. Whatever half-remembered fact she knew about Sandow was clearly still nagging at
her. After staring at us for a long minute, she gave a short nod.
“Get this business with the art dealer over and done with,” she instructed us. “At least once it’s done, you can follow more genuine leads. But the family is prolific, and the press are already interested in this case, the public too. We need to be showing that we’re following the rules correctly. By the book, Thatcher, got it?”
“Ticking all the boxes, ma’am,” I assured her.
“Good.” She stood up, leaning on her desk, and Mills and I followed suit. “Report back after your meeting with the dealer,” she ordered, “and once you’ve seen Sandow I want you back here, alright?”
“Alright, ma’am.”
“Are you both going?” she asked, looking from me to Mills.
“That was the idea, yes,” I said.
She turned to Mills. “Once you’re done with the art dealer, come back here. Thatcher can handle the brother alone, and I want you working with Smith. The sooner we get all the alibis confirmed and ironed out, the better.”
Mills nodded, but I noticed the light dimming in his eyes. He was more like me than I had first realised. Liked to be out there, talking, looking, though he was certainly a dab hand at the paperwork side of things too.
“Off you go then,” Sharp said, sitting back down and dismissing us with a wave.
We trudged out, fetched our things from our office, and headed down to the street, opting to walk to the café, amidst the growing numbers of tourists. They flocked outside the tall buildings, taking pictures of the walls, the narrow streets and snickelways.
Mills and I strode along, dodging the wandering visitors.
“Alibis,” he muttered as we walked, “I hate checking alibis.”
“We all do,” I reminded him. “Smith especially, actually. With you there, the whole thing will be over before you know it.”
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 34
