Thief Taker

by Alan Scholefield

  In the past few days she had gone through a…she searched for the word and found it…a catharsis. It had started with Chris’ disappearance and ended in a spell of furious painting. Now she felt weak but calm.

  Hesitantly she took a deep breath. There was no choking sensation, no blockage, no breathlessness. Her lungs were clear. If she was careful they might stay that way. She might even be able to think of what had happened to her father without getting the panicky feeling which always signalled another attack.

  The day stretched ahead. She did not feel like painting — that was over for the time being — but she knew she would have to go through the work she had done. She would burn some paintings, as she always did, and keep one or two. But first she must put flowers on kitten’s grave.

  The glade in which the caravan stood was surrounded by wildflowers. There were bluebells and cowslips and wild geraniums.

  She walked past the place where Nemo had been tethered and began to pick the flowers. When she had collected a small bunch she walked deeper into the woods to the grave and placed them under the cross she had made of twigs.

  And this was where Macrae and Silver found her.

  They had left London before breakfast with Eddie Twyford driving the unmarked Ford. The journey had started badly. Macrae and Eddie had argued about the quickest way from Battersea to the M4. Macrae had won and they had become jammed in traffic near the river because of a burst water main. Then they had stopped for breakfast and Macrae had said that his poached egg was “off and had made a scene about it.

  And now they were lost.

  “For God’s sake stop and let’s look at the map,” Macrae said.

  “I looked at it before we left, guv’nor.” Eddie peered at the forest with suspicious, uneasy eyes.

  “I think we should have gone left about three miles back,” Macrae said.

  “There was no sign, guv’nor. Nothing that said Lexton.”

  They came to a village and Silver got out to ask the way.

  “Straight on,” he said, proving Eddie right. Macrae’s body language said he wasn’t too happy about that. He sat hunched in his overcoat and hat as though travelling in an unheated car forty years ago.

  They moved deeper into the forest. They were surrounded now by trees and undergrowth. Soon they entered the hamlet of Lexton, dominated by its church, the spire black against the grey sky.

  There were a dozen houses, a pub, and a single shop. It was part post office, part supermarket and part hardware store. It also sold postcards, stationery, maps and guide books.

  An elderly lady with blue-grey hair was furiously counting money behind the brass bars of the post office counter.

  In reply to his question about Rachel Nihill she looked severely at him over half-lens spectacles and said, “I am a public servant. I cannot divulge information of the sort you require.”

  She had an over-refined voice as though she had taken elocution lessons.

  “All I want to do is talk to her,” Silver said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She turned back to the small pile of notes and began counting again.

  Silver pushed his warrant card on to the counter. She studied it for some seconds. “A policeman!” Her eyes glinted and she ran her tongue over her lips. “Oh well, that is indeed different. As far as I know, and it is only what I am informed — she and her husband are living on Old Beauty.”

  “Old Beauty?”

  “The old iron mine.”

  She gave him directions, he bought a guide book, and came back to the car.

  “It’s not far, guv’nor. There’s a mine. She’s on the property somewhere. She comes up to the post office every day to check for mail and buy supplies. But she hasn’t been up the last few days.”

  “You want me to go down there!” Eddie asked, looking at a muddy, potholed track.

  “For Christ’s sake, if that’s the way then take it!” Macrae said.

  “I’d rather take the Old Kent Road in rush hour.”

  “Come on, Eddie, get a move on.”

  They bumped down the track for another half-mile and then Eddie stopped. His mouth had set in a tight line. Macrae said to Silver, “How far now?”

  “She said it wasn’t more than a mile.”

  Macrae said to Eddie, “We’ll walk. Turn the car round.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll find a place.”

  They went on down the track passing an old brick chimney and the remains of the winding gear of an iron mine. The trees were in their new shiny leaves but neither took much notice. Macrae walked with his eyes down to avoid the mud, Silver scanned the guide book.

  “They’ve been mining iron here since before Roman times.”

  Macrae did not reply.

  “They stopped in 1945.”

  Macrae grunted.

  “I didn’t know the word miner used only to refer to iron miners. Coal miners were called colliers.”

  “Where’d you get all this guff?”

  “Guide book. It says all those born outside the forest are regarded as foreigners.”

  Macrae stopped and Silver caught up with him. They stood for a moment looking at Rachel Nihill. She was kneeling on the ground and looked small and very alone. She heard them and turned.

  “Mrs Nihill?” Macrae said.

  “Ms.”

  “I’m Detective Superintendent Macrae. This is Sergeant Silver. We’ve come from London.” He held his warrant card out but she hardly glanced at it.

  “I was putting some flowers on kitten’s grave,” she said.

  “I had a kitten once,” Silver said. “It died too.”

  “I suppose you’ve come about my father.”

  She led them back to the caravan.

  “Anything you could tell us would be helpful,” Macrae said.

  She stood by the fire, her right hand cupping her left elbow. Silver was struck by the pose, especially in combination with the long flower-patterned dress. He looked at her closely. She was a plain young woman with mousey hair. Early twenties, he estimated. Small. Thin. In the clear light he could see that she had once had a problem with her skin.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  Silver said, “That’d be great.”

  She gave them each a mug from the black metal pot that stood by the side of the fire. Silver thought it tasted of woodsmoke and chicory. She sat on the caravan steps.

  “It’s lovely,” Silver said, indicating the caravan. “I’ve never seen one close-up before.”

  “Chris did most of it.”

  “Is that your husband?”

  “You haven’t come to talk about him, have you?”

  Macrae always liked to find the reason for reluctance. “We’ve come to talk about everyone: you, your mother, Chris — Christopher?”

  “That’s right.”

  Silver made a note.

  “And my father.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve come to talk about my father.”

  “Aye. Your father, naturally.”

  “Who told you I was here? My mother?”

  “Of course.”

  “The bitch.”

  “Didn’t you want us to know?” Silver said. He had been walking round the caravan, admiring it.

  “I don’t care what you know. I just don’t like her interfering, that’s all.”

  “It’s not her fault,” Macrae said. “We asked her.”

  “D’you mind if I go in?” Silver asked.

  “Have you got a search warrant?”

  “Have you got something to hide?” Macrae asked.

  “Why do you want to go in?” she asked Silver.

  “Well, it’s lovely. I’d just like to see how you’ve done it up.” She shrugged. “OK.” She moved from the steps and adopted the same pose as before. She turned her pale-blue eyes on Silver — eyes that should have been lovely had she had colour in her face — and watched him as he went up the steps. “Mind your head,” s
he said.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Macrae said.

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Do you think you do?”

  She laughed dryly. “You answer questions with questions.”

  Macrae threw the dregs of his coffee on to the ground. “That’s why we’re here. To ask questions.”

  “But why me?”

  “You’re his wee girl. We’re trying to get a picture of him. We know a bit about him, not much. There isn’t a lot in the files.”

  “He paid people to keep his name out of the papers.”

  “You can’t keep secrets from your own family. Or at least not completely, unless you work at it.”

  “He did.”

  “Who’s the artist?” Silver said, coming down the steps.

  “If you mean the paintings, then I did them.”

  He smiled. “What have you got against rabbits?”

  Macrae was irritated at the interruption and went back to question her earlier statement. “You mean he kept secrets from you? Or that he worked hard to keep them from the family?”

  “Both.”

  “In what way?”

  “Look, I haven’t lived with my family for years.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “All I ever wanted was to get away from them. I ran away from school once when I knew they were coming down for Parents’ Day.”

  “Where did you run to?”

  “London. I caught a bus and spent the day there. My father was furious. He came down and threatened to sue the headmistress and the governors and God knows who else if it ever happened again.”

  “Did it?”

  “No.”

  “Were you afraid of your father?”

  “Yes. He was a bastard. He hurt people. He hurt my mother.”

  “Are you sorry he’s dead?” Silver broke in.

  “I’m not sorry.”

  “Are you pleased?”

  “In a way.”

  “You must have hated him.”

  “I suppose so. All I ever wanted to do was get away from him. And from my mother too. May I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead,” Macrae said.

  “Did you love your parents?”

  His big head fell slightly forward in what Silver had described to Zoe as his “minotaur” pose. He looked discomfited.

  “I’m being honest with you,” she said.

  “One of them,” Macrae said unwillingly. “My mother.”

  “In my class at school about sixty per cent of the girls disliked their parents.”

  Macrae switched the subject. “You say he hurt your mother: how?”

  She began to walk slowly up and down on the far side of the stone fireplace. “He was rude. He laughed at her. Sometimes he laughed at her posh accent. She’s not all that bright. Sometimes he called her stupid.”

  “But did he hit her?” Silver said.

  “Not in front of me, but I heard them having rows occasionally. I saw bruises. She was often in tears.”

  “What caused the rows?”

  “His other women.”

  “Did he always have other women?”

  “I think so.”

  “How old were you when they separated?”

  “Fifteen. I was supposed to live with my mother. But I worked it so I spent the holidays on school trips. I think she was pleased and he was away a lot of the time. Then I came into a trust fund when I was eighteen. Not much but I could get along on my own. Do what I liked.”

  “And this is what you like?” Silver said. “Living in a gypsy caravan in a forest?”

  “I didn’t know it till I met Chris.”

  “Tell us about him.”

  “Why?”

  “It helps us get a picture,” Macrae said.

  “I was at art school.”

  “He was taking art?”

  “No. He was a…well, he was a carpenter. A cabinetmaker. He did some work in the house where I was lodging. We met that way.” She paused. “He was the first person who was ever kind to me.”

  “Did he know you had money?”

  “I told him all about it. But you’re wrong if you think that’s…I mean it’s not much money. He’s part gypsy. He was restless. He wanted to travel, to wander. So I bought the caravan. He fixed it.”

  She told them about their journey and how they had fetched up in the Forest of Dean.

  “When did he split?” Silver said.

  “A few days ago.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s my business. Just say we had a disagreement. So he left and took Nemo.”

  “Who’s Nemo?”

  “The horse.”

  “Where did Chris come from originally?”

  “Why?”

  “We have to check on everyone.”

  “I suppose so. Lympton in Wiltshire.”

  “Do you have an address for him?”

  She shook her head. “He isn’t the kind of person who has an address.”

  Half an hour later they left. Silver felt guilty as they walked back up the track. He turned once and raised his hand. She looked so defenceless. It reminded him of a Victorian painting. “A Forest Moment.” Something like that…

  Rachel watched the two detectives until they were out of sight.

  She was alone.

  She said the phrase out loud: “I am alone.”

  Boarding school did not fit people for solitude, she thought. After school there had been art college and lodgings and then Chris. She had almost never been alone. Till now.

  Only an hour or so before, she had stood by the open fireplace, which he had made with rounded boulders, watching the water come to the boil for coffee and had felt a sense of freedom and calm. But the visit by the two detectives had destroyed that.

  The day stretched ahead and was less inviting than it had been. Freedom had its problems. She had wanted everything: happiness, Chris, the caravan, the forest…Now she only had the caravan and the forest.

  Once, when she had expressed doubt about the length of the journey from Hampshire through the winding lanes, Chris had said she should think of it in terms of a mile at a time. If she thought of the whole journey she would never start.

  This is what she would have to do with her time now. She must not think of the months and the years ahead, not even a whole day, just the next fifteen minutes or so.

  One step at a time.

  But what was she to do? Should she buy another horse? If she did, where should she go? Or should she stay? But she couldn’t stay in the forest for ever…

  She felt cold and went back into the caravan. It was a mess, paintings everywhere, on the dresser and the bunks, and charcoal drawings pinned higgledy-piggledy to the walls.

  Most of her work was done in poster paint. She liked hard bright colours: vivid greens, cerulean blues, and reds that leapt out at one.

  She began to gather them up. None of them were much more than eighteen inches square, for the caravan was too small for large works. She made a pile and then opened the big drawer under one of the bunks and was about to put the new series in with all the earlier paintings when she thought she ought to go through them once again, re-sort them, get them into chronological order. She had too many and this would enable her to throw away repeats or those with which she wasn’t satisfied.

  She paused on her knees in front of the drawer and riffled through the paintings. There were sixty or seventy of them. Every style imaginable. They represented her life, she thought. This drawer was her whole existence. In a moment of inspiration she knew what she wanted. She would sort them into sequence and they would make a pictorial diary of her life.

  Then she would put each one up on the small easel and judge it just as they judged entries for the Royal Academy. She would be her own hanging committee! If a painting passed she would keep it and mount it. If it didn’t, then into the fire with it!

  This would take hours and hours. She could do a little at a time. Not too much. She coul
d save it up, look forward to it.

  She pulled the paintings from the drawer on to the floor. A narrative of a life. Only a few days ago she had painted herself as a child. That would have to go in the first pile: the childhood pile. Then there would be the boarding school pile. And after that the pile she thought of as her wandering time.

  She picked up a piece of cartridge paper. It went into the childhood pile. Here the rabbit was very red and very big.

  ““My Life”, by Rachel Nihill” she said out loud.

  Macrae, Silver and Eddie Twyford stopped at a pub near Chepstow for a pint and a sandwich and went over the meeting.

  “It’s odd,” Silver said.

  “What is?”

  “She’s drawn to the rough trade — like her mother.”

  “But for different reasons, laddie. Robson Healey would have probably been an exciting sort of bloke for the mother. But Chris…She said he was kind to her. That’s what some people want most.”

  Silver looked at Macrae under his eyebrows. Was that Macrae talking from his own experience? Once, when drunk, he had rambled on about his father’s brutality both to himself and to his mother. This morning it had been oddly embarrassing to hear the great thief taker confess to loving his mother.

  “Drink up,” Macrae said. “Let’s go and see this friend of her mother’s…What’s his name?”

  Silver looked at his notebook and read out: “Charles Harris, Weyford Marina, Surrey. I checked. It’s near Guildford on the river Wey.”

  He saw the entry below that in his notebook. It was a note to himself to check that Ronald Purvis was still serving his time in gaol. He hadn’t had a chance yet. He’d do that when he got back to London.

  He said, “You ever come across the letters BOLTOP written on the back flap of an envelope, guv’nor?”

  “BOLTOP? Never. Why?”

  “Someone addressed an envelope like that to Zoe.”

  “You heard of SWALK?” Eddie said. “Sealed With A Loving Kiss. When I was doing my National Service lots of the blokes used to put that on their envelopes. I remember some of ‘em put BOLTOP too. Better On Lips Than On Paper.”

  “Not only the army,” Macrae said. “They do it a lot in the nick.”