Death Comes to Call: An absolutely unputdownable English cozy mystery novel (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 3)

by Clare Chase

  She stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the cold, hard tiles where Luke and Matthew’s father had fallen to his death. At last, she started the climb to the first floor, her footsteps making no sound on the high-quality cushioned carpet. All around her, everything was quiet – as silent as the grave.

  Thirty-Eight

  The moment his mother had called, Blake felt a massive piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. He was over at the gallery in less than fifteen minutes, screeching to a halt on the shingle driveway. The painting, as predicted, was nowhere to be seen, but they didn’t need a warrant, given they were there to arrest Trent on suspicion of murder.

  They found the artwork upstairs, in the man’s private quarters. Most interestingly, it wasn’t the only one. There were four more, each resembling the work of late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century artists. It would have been hard to prove that Trent knew the single Picasso lookalike was a fake, but four such paintings was way too much of a coincidence. With this little hoard, things weren’t looking so sunny for him.

  They’d left the gallery in the hands of the CSIs, Max and a couple of PCs. Monique Courville had left the premises on some kind of errand, apparently, just before they’d got there, but they were going to bring her in for questioning too, as soon as they reached her.

  Now, Jonny Trent and his solicitor had joined Blake and Megan at the station for an interview. If he’d looked nervous the day Blake first met him, it was nothing to his demeanour now. He was twisting the gold ring on his right hand and chewing his lip. Blake could almost feel his held breath as though it were his own.

  ‘We have an expert who says that all five paintings in your flat, which crudely imitate lesser known works by well-known artists, were in fact created by the same person.’ Blake leant forward, his elbows on the table between them. ‘And that person was Luke Cope.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’ Trent was still attempting an airy bluster.

  ‘That’s an initial conclusion by an expert. We can bring in second opinions, and thirds. We can also look to trace the frames and the canvases that were used. And we can compare the paints between the fakes and Cope’s works.’ They’d need a warrant for that, given that it would involve scraping samples off the canvases, but Blake decided not to bother Trent with the details. ‘And we’ve also got forensics looking at them.’

  ‘Forensics?’ Trent appeared surprised at the pitch of his own voice.

  Blake smiled. ‘Tacky paint’s excellent at picking up fingerprints, fibres and all of that stuff. It’ll be better for you if you’re honest.’ He stared into the gallery owner’s piggy eyes. ‘So, Luke painted the fakes for you. When did you make the deal? When he first came to visit you? You agreed to display his genuine works in pride of place in the main galleries, in exchange for the fakes in your back gallery. Was that it?’

  Trent looked down at the table.

  ‘Then Freya Cross found out – quite recently – what you’d managed to keep secret all this time. No wonder you were so precious about the back gallery being your pet project! The entries in your ledger looked innocent enough, individually. A single painting ‘in the style of’ a famous artist is one thing. But at some point, Freya must have noticed a pattern, and seen just how well you were doing out of the arrangement.’

  A pattern. Suddenly he thought of Freya on the night she’d been killed, carrying the mysterious missing holdall. And then of the ledger they’d seized as evidence that morning: a brand new one, just as his mother had said.

  ‘Freya somehow found out that it was Luke who’d been supplying you with fakes,’ Blake said. ‘Monique Courville heard them arguing about it. Freya asked Luke how he could have been so stupid.’ Perhaps it had been after their row that Luke had painted the picture of his hands around Freya Cross’s neck. Because she’d made him feel a fool? Because she hadn’t ‘understood’ him? Blake felt a shiver of disgust run through his core. ‘But because Freya was in love with Luke, instead of reporting you both, she stole the ledger, with its evidence of the past sales you’d made, and took it with her to meet him. I presume it was too bulky to get rid of at her house without raising questions, and she wouldn’t have risked just throwing it away. She’d have wanted Luke to destroy it and promise to stop working for you. But it wasn’t Luke who turned up to meet her.’

  He paused for a moment, his throat dry. ‘Our evidence is that Luke’s suicide was faked, so we’re looking for someone with a motive for killing both him and Freya.’ It was all he could do to keep his seat when he thought back to the two dead bodies he’d seen; Freya’s waxy skin, and Luke Cope’s pecked eyeball. ‘You fit the bill. You had no guarantee they’d keep your secret, and they had the ledger as proof. You’ll face jail for what you’ve done, and your business and reputation will be in ruins.’

  Trent’s healthy colour had faded. His cheeks were slack and pallid with shock.

  ‘When did you find out Freya knew your secret?’

  ‘I—’ He clearly felt the need to reply too urgently to think through what to say in advance. ‘I didn’t know. How would I know that she knew?’

  ‘Oh come on!’ The guy clearly took him for an idiot. ‘I’m betting the first thing Luke did was to warn you you’d been found out. And we’ve searched your place, don’t forget. My colleagues inform me that the meeting Freya Cross had marked on her kitchen calendar was in your desk diary too. So you did know she had something to discuss. Something so serious she booked an appointment rather than just knocking on your office door.’

  ‘It could have been anything.’ He was too slow. ‘I…’ Another long pause. ‘I even wondered if she might want to ask about maternity leave. It’s true!’ A pathetic note of protest. He must have read Blake’s expression correctly then.

  ‘Besides,’ Trent went on, ‘wasn’t Luke found dead in some place in the back of beyond – a bolthole no one knew existed?’

  Blake raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Well, someone was clearly aware. You’re telling me you had no idea about the place then?’

  A splutter. ‘How would I?’

  Blake noticed the man’s lawyer was trying to catch Trent’s eye. He smiled again. ‘That’s a no, is it?’

  ‘Of course it’s a no,’ Trent said. The lawyer’s hand went down onto his arm just too late.

  ‘That’s fine then,’ Blake said. ‘Our tech guys will look at the journeys recorded on your satnav, but that won’t cause you any problems, given what you’ve just told me.’

  And now, Jonny Trent did look at his solicitor, and the solicitor looked back at him.

  ‘I believe my client might like to revise his statement,’ the lawyer said.

  Nice.

  Thirty-Nine

  At the top of the stairs in Luke Cope’s house, Tara’s gaze swept over the wide landing, with its tall ornate mirror and sombre paintings. She wondered if he’d viewed those artworks as a child, determined to paint something more dramatic. What would his parents have thought? Which of the children had they valued more?

  She went back into Luke Cope’s bedroom, with its clutter, the clothes strewn about the place, imprints of the man’s character wherever she looked. He hadn’t cared about anything except his art, that was what everyone said. Once again, she noted the books by his bedside. She wondered what he read for relaxation and went to examine a bookcase that ran along one side of his room, opposite the window. She’d got the main light on, but it was still shadowy over there. The colour of the walls, a moody grey, didn’t help. She crouched down to scan the shelves.

  A second later she’d forgotten the room around her. The first book she pulled out was Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work. A second was called Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Around Us. And next to it were self-help books. How to Escape Your Demons, and Your Genes Are Not Your Destiny. She thought again of the Stanley knife she’d noticed, the first day she’d visited the house, jammed into a board as though it had been thrust there in anger. What
had Luke Cope been dealing with?

  Her legs felt wobbly as she stood up and dusted the bits of fluff off the hem of her coat. She hadn’t bothered to take it off; it was bitterly cold without the heating on.

  She exited Luke’s room and crossed the landing now, to make her way up another set of stairs that were narrower and more confined. She hadn’t got this far when she’d last visited, though the CSIs, Megan and Max must have covered the entire house. Once again she was conscious of her feet sinking into the high-quality carpet. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, leaving almost no light and making the space feel claustrophobic. She’d have to watch her step.

  Once she’d opened the door, she found what must have been Luke Cope’s dumping ground. There was no overhead light, and the room’s floorboards were bare. She discovered a lamp on a low table and turned it on. Its feeble glow cast shadows beyond boxes and crates that were dotted around the space. The curtains were three-quarters closed and she went to pull them back, but the light was fading now and her efforts didn’t make much difference. She looked down onto the street. There, below her in the foggy gloom, was a dark-blue Mercedes. For a microsecond she felt nothing more than a flicker of heightened awareness. But almost instantly the memory of the car that had nearly mowed her down sharpened in her mind. She took a deep breath. Vehicles like that were common in this part of the city. By straining her eyes she could just read the number plate. In a moment she’d called the station to ask them to run it. Might as well just check it wasn’t flagged on the system, but it probably belonged to one of Luke Cope’s well-to-do neighbours.

  She went back to exploring the room, which contained trunks with paintings inside them. She moved them out of the containers one by one. They were unmistakably Luke’s work. The first few were of similar subjects to the ones downstairs, fenland scenes, angry skies and seas, and bleak landscapes with isolated buildings. But then she came across a series of scenes that looked like stage sets. Characters were amassed amongst exaggerated furniture in garish colours. The subjects wore masks.

  Suddenly, Tara’s attention was caught by just one of them – a face she recognised, that appeared in each of the paintings.

  Matthew Cope.

  She examined one more closely. The mask he wore represented his own face. If anything, Luke had made it more handsome than his brother was in reality. But the face behind the mask brought the wobbly feeling back into Tara’s legs, and sent the hairs on her scalp rising. It was recognisably Matthew too. Luke had given his brother a reddish pallor, sharp teeth and staring eyes. He’d painted him as the devil hiding behind the persona he presented in public.

  In comparison with Luke’s painting of Freya Cross it ought to have been nothing, but it wasn’t. And she’d almost missed it: small figures, with faces that were smaller still, on canvases a child could handle. She could see why Max and Megan hadn’t spotted them, especially as Max had had almost no contact with Matthew, and Megan none.

  A message came through on Tara’s phone, sending adrenaline coursing round her body. The Mercedes outside was registered to a man who’d been questioned in association with a drugs case. Heroin. There hadn’t been enough evidence to charge him.

  Was it the same one she’d seen near Matthew Cope’s place? In her imagination she was back in the man’s dreary kitchen, full of the tatty furniture he’d been landed with. It had smelt of cigarette smoke, she suddenly remembered…

  And in that moment, she realised Matthew had lied to her. He’d told Vicky Cope that he didn’t smoke when she’d offered him one of her Marlboro Lights.

  He had had a visitor that day, just before she’d turned up. And it was likely that that person was the owner of the blue Mercedes. Someone who’d been suspected of dealing heroin…

  She’d just started to dial Max’s number when she heard movement behind her.

  The sound of a footstep on the wooden floor.

  Forty

  When Blake came out of the interview room he was frowning.

  Trent had claimed he’d driven over to the mill to have it out with Luke, believing that he’d killed Freya Cross to keep her quiet. He’d said he’d been concerned, and after a while he’d claimed he’d wondered if Luke had harmed himself after killing his lover. And a little while after that, he’d confessed that he’d also hoped to get inside the mill to find the missing ledger that contained records of the multiple frauds before someone else did. That and to remove any fakes Luke might have stashed there, too.

  That last bit had sounded entirely plausible. In his eyes, Jonny Trent was a heartless, selfish man, out for what he could get.

  He’d told them he wasn’t aware that Luke had told anyone else about the mill, but then he wouldn’t be. And once all that had come out he’d started to confirm other details too, including the fact that he’d given Luke items of jewellery he’d bought, which, as they’d thought, Luke had then passed off as bequests from his mother. He’d sold them on to get his fee.

  But what nagged at Blake’s mind most of all was the messages Jonny Trent had left on Freya’s phone. Where the hell are you? Call me.

  Why would he send a text like that if he’d killed her? He doubted the double-bluff theory. The Jonny Trent he knew would have texted a ‘concerned boss’ message if he’d done it with an eye to the investigators who’d be assessing it later.

  Fleming met him and Megan in the corridor, took one look at his face and sighed. ‘Care to share your thoughts with me?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s our killer.’

  Forty-One

  Tara squared her shoulders and faced Matthew Cope head on. ‘I was having a last look round. My boss has got a suspect in custody, and I imagine this place will be handed back to your brother’s executors shortly. We’re keen to find any last bits of evidence that might support the case we’re making.’ She smiled, but even as she said the words, she knew the bluff wasn’t working.

  Matthew’s eyes drifted to the paintings his brother had done of him, which she’d left strewn across the top of one of the trunks in the room. His face twitched.

  Multiple thoughts coalesced in Tara’s mind. Matthew claimed he’d gone to the Flag and Diamond because it was where his brother drank, but the place had been associated with a heroin-related crime, just as the driver of the car outside his house had been. What if the pub had never been Luke’s haunt? What if it was Matthew that drank there; Matthew that was linked to a drug outfit? Max had said Matthew raised his hand to the landlord before he left the Flag and Diamond. It was a familiar gesture. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of that before? And Max said Matthew looked as though he was finding his ground with the people he was talking to. Negotiating? Matthew’s boss’s words came back to her now. He’d said he could sell oranges to the people of Valencia. And if he was there selling heroin…

  Matthew’s eyes were on her face. It was as though he was reading her every thought. And at that moment, he took out a gun from inside his jacket pocket.

  There wasn’t time to think. The information was all there in her head at once: a man who’d killed twice – she still didn’t understand why. One person – more than one maybe – downstairs, outside in a car, with a lot at stake. Who knew how much money?

  These people wouldn’t muck about. And there, laid over the top of that immediate knowledge, was the need to act instantly, decisively. If Matthew Cope had any clue she was going to go onto the attack she wouldn’t stand a chance.

  In less than a second she had her left hand clamped around his wrist, vice-like, her nails digging into his flesh. In the exact same instant, she thrust her right hand up under the muzzle of the gun, shoving it towards the ceiling. It was no longer at an angle where he could hit her with a bullet, and she yanked the weapon out of his hand sharply, swinging her knee up violently to hit him where he’d hurt the most. Thank God her woollen dress was so stretchy. She laughed, the adrenaline making her crazy.

  But Matthew Cope was down, not out. He’d howled and fallen back
when her knee had connected, but now he struggled to his feet. He was limping towards her. She aimed the gun at him.

  ‘Stop right where you are!’

  His staring eyes bored into hers. He kept on coming.

  ‘You think I wouldn’t do it?’

  Matthew Cope stood inches from her, ran his tongue over his dry lips and pulled a knife from under his jacket. ‘The gun isn’t loaded.’

  Forty-Two

  Blake was pissed off. And now he couldn’t reach Tara either. He wanted to know what she’d found out from Vicky Cope. Not only had his DC gone AWOL, she was also ignoring her phone.

  He could see – as he’d sent her off – that she hadn’t liked being out of the main action, but she needed to learn you had to play your part, even if that wasn’t an exciting one.

  Deep down, he was pretty sure she was still angry with him too. Guilt made him more irritable. But whatever excuse she had for feeling resentful, she still needed to get over it and get on with the job.

  ‘She put in a call for a vehicle check twenty minutes ago,’ Max said, looking at a log on his screen.

  Blake stood up straighter and frowned. ‘Really? With what result?’

  Max’s brow was creased too. ‘The owner of the vehicle in question has been interviewed in the past in relation to a drugs charge. Heroin.’