At the foot of the stairs, he turned, glared up at me, jabbed at me with one finger, then drew it emphatically across his throat. The message couldn’t have been clearer.
I held up my phone, pointing in his direction. I might not have a signal to make a call, but I could still take a photograph. The camera flashed. Vlad’s face turned white with rage as he realised what I’d done. For a moment I thought he would rush the stairs and wrench the phone from my hand. But then the siren sounded closer. He muttered, and banged his way out of the door after his companion.
I flew down the stairs behind him, slammed the front door shut and thrust the bolts home. My heart was hammering and I felt sick. I took a deep breath and ran back up to the living room, where Nick had slumped into a chair. He looked ashen.
I knew he kept bottles of booze in a cupboard. I hunted around, found brandy and a glass, poured, and placed it on the table next to him. He was breathless and I gave him a moment to recover himself, picking up the table that had been thrown over and collecting the pieces of a shattered ornament.
‘Oh, Juno … Juno …’ he gasped at last, shaking his head. ‘You should not have done that.’
‘I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t.’ I knelt beside his chair. He reached out and gripped my hand weakly. His touch was clammy, his breathing ragged.
‘I’m going to call a doctor,’ I told him.
‘No, no,’ he protested feebly. ‘I have pills …’ He pointed to the mantelpiece. Searching amongst the clutter of ornaments and old envelopes on the shelf, I found a small brown bottle and shook two tiny tablets out into his trembling palm. He put them under his tongue and after a minute he seemed to be breathing easier.
‘Who are those men?’ I asked him. ‘What do they want?’
He slid a shifty glance at me. ‘They are just … business associates.’
‘Business associates?’ I repeated scornfully. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘No! No police,’ he gripped my hand again. ‘You promise … Juno … call police … things get very bad.’
‘Either you tell me what’s going on, Nick, or I call them right now.’
‘And tell them what?’ he demanded, rallying. ‘You hear argument … you don’t … know … what is about. Old man get punched …’ He shrugged. ‘You think they care?’ He gave the ghost of a chuckle. ‘Is just misunderstanding, Juno … is all right.’
I went to the window, threw up the sash, and looked up and down the street. I couldn’t see Vlad or Igor anywhere but that didn’t mean they weren’t lurking somewhere. They’d be back, I was sure of that. But Nick was deaf to all arguments. The mention of police only made him agitated and I didn’t want to make his condition worse than it already was. In the end, I promised I wouldn’t call them. Yet.
‘Is all right, Juno, they gone.’ Nick chuckled. ‘Angry goddess scare them away. You go now, huh?’
‘I’ll go when you’re fit enough to follow me down the stairs,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘You lock and bolt the door after me. And don’t you let them in again, you promise me?’
Nick nodded. ‘I promise,’ he agreed meekly.
It was half an hour before I cracked open the front door. I peeped out cautiously, in case the two bogeymen were in the alley. When I was sure the coast was clear, I shut the door behind me and waited until I heard Nick push the bolts into place before I hurried across Shadow Lane and climbed into my van, locking the door after me. I sat for a moment, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel as the full idiocy of what I’d done came over me. I’d have been no match for either of those two if they’d decided to turn on me. And there’d been no mistaking the meaning of Vlad’s departing gesture. I could have ended up battered and bruised, and very possibly floating down the River Dart.
I considered breaking my promise and going straight to the police but there didn’t seem much point. I knew if they followed it up with Nick, he’d only downplay the incident, or even deny it took place at all. I sighed. I wasn’t happy, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do. Reluctantly, I pulled away from the kerb.
I was booked for that afternoon, gardening for the vicar. I usually love working in the vicarage garden, surrounded by warm stone walls hanging with old-fashioned roses, clusters of scented Rambling Rector and Himalayan Musk nodding in the breeze. In fact, a couple of hours working in any garden can make me feel better about most things. But dead-heading the roses and staking the delphiniums didn’t work for me that afternoon. Birdsong and bees bumbling amongst the lavender failed to lift my spirits. All I could think about was Nick. When I got home, I parked the van, but didn’t bother going back into the house. I passed the garden gate, walked down the lane and scrambled through the hedge and across the field.
Paul was in his workshop. I called at the caravan first, but it was locked up, so I made my way down to the big corrugated iron shed. The door was standing open. I went inside and stood for a moment surrounded by a jumble of old furniture. I could hear water splashing somewhere, what sounded like a powerful jet or hose. I called Paul’s name and wandered through the shed into an old, attached stone barn. I called again. The sound of the water stopped abruptly and he appeared, coming through a small door, wearing wet gumboots, the trousers of his overalls splashed with wetness, a pair of protective goggles pushed up on his forehead. ‘Juno!’ he cried, smiling. He stripped off a pair of heavy rubber gauntlets and tossed them on a workbench. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.’ His smile faded as he looked at my face. ‘What’s wrong?’
I began to relate what had happened that morning, but he stopped me and made me sit down. He pulled up a stool beside me and listened whilst I poured out what had happened.
‘And you’ve no idea who these men were?’ he asked at last.
‘That’s why I came to you. I thought you might know them. Nick might have mentioned them, or said something …’ I showed him the photograph of Vlad I’d taken on my phone. It was a charming study, his face twisted with malice, caught just at the moment he was drawing his finger across his throat.
‘Never seen him before.’ Paul frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I know some of the dealers he knows, local people, like Tom Smithson and Verbena. But I’ve never come across this pair.’
‘Nick won’t tell me what they want. I’m frightened he’s going to get hurt.’
Paul thought for a moment. ‘Tell you what, Nick and I need to settle up for the things I sold for him at the fair yesterday. I’ll go around tonight, see if I can find out anything. He might open up to me.’
‘Thanks.’ I smiled and he smiled back.
‘So,’ I said, deliberately breaking eye contact and looking around me, ‘this is your empire.’
‘Allow me to show you around, madam.’
The barn was workmanlike and tidy, the space taken up by an enormous saw bench and stacks of furniture in various stages of restoration. Chisels and files hung in specially fitted racks on the walls and there were plastic bins for wood shavings and sawdust. Rows of tightly fitted tins stood on the shelves and there was a strong smell of resin, beeswax and spirit varnish. There was also an oil painting on an easel, of a barge with red sails on a swelling grey sea, its colours bright and fresh.
‘Is this a genuine Arnold Bishop?’ I asked.
Paul grinned. ‘The very same.’
‘Where’s the Darkolene?’
He pointed to a battered, ancient-looking tin with dribbles of dried, dark-brown varnish down the side. ‘That’s my last one. I’m starting to panic.’
Chaos was allowed to reign in one corner only. Dirty coffee mugs jostled for space on a wooden draining board next to a cracked china sink, with an old kettle, an exploded bag of sugar and half-opened packets of biscuits.
‘I don’t think much of the catering arrangements,’ I told him frankly.
‘What’s up here?’ I climbed a wooden ladder to an old hayloft but there was nothing to see but more furniture.
&n
bsp; Back down on ground level, I went through the little wooden door Paul had come through earlier. It took me into a lean-to with a glass skylight in a corrugated metal roof. The concrete floor was shiny with wetness, the powerful hose Paul had been using lying like a huge serpent on the concrete. Beneath the skylight stood a large metal tank, about the size of a builder’s skip. ‘Is this the stripping tank?’ I had to stand on tiptoe to peer in. It was half full of cold, clear liquid.
‘Careful!’ Paul warned me, following me through the door. ‘Don’t get too close.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘Sodium hydroxide,’ he said, stooping to coil up the hose. ‘Caustic soda.’
‘Nasty stuff! Isn’t it bad for old furniture?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it ruin the wood?’
He laughed, coiling the hose over a reel mounted on the wall. Its brass nozzle drizzled slightly and he gave a final turn to a large tap on the wall beside it, making sure the water was turned off. Then he came over to join me by the tank. ‘Leave anything in too long and it’ll fall to pieces. It dissolves all the glue in the joints. I heat the tank first, then things don’t have to stay in so long, and it doesn’t damage the wood so much. I never use it for the good stuff.’ He pointed to a pine cupboard lying on its side on the wet concrete. ‘I’ve just taken that out. I was rinsing it off when you called.’
‘How do you get the stuff in there?’ I looked up. Above the tank a big metal grid, like an old-fashioned laundry airer, hung on chains.
‘If you stand aside a minute, I’ll show you.’ He grabbed one of three levers on the side of the tank. ‘This one raises and lowers the grid,’ he demonstrated. The chains squeaked and rattled as the grid went up and down. ‘This one opens and closes the lid.’ He pulled the second lever and the two metal halves of the lid closed in a neat seam over the top of the tank.
‘And what does that one do?’ I asked, pointing at the third.
‘Ah, this is the one you have to watch,’ he told me. ‘Mind your head, it swings out a bit suddenly. This lever swings the whole rig out sideways. Then you can lower it to the ground to put whatever you want to go in the tank on the grid …’
‘And then raise it with the other lever and swing it back again,’ I completed for him.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Want a go?’
I took over the levers and played happily for a couple of minutes, raising and lowering the rack and swinging it into place until the novelty wore off.
‘It’s a bit risky isn’t it, using this stuff?’ I asked. ‘It burns horribly, caustic soda.’
‘When I put the tank in, I had to lay a special drain,’ he explained. ‘If you don’t dispose of the waste properly you can get a big fine.’
‘What would happen if you fell in?’
‘You’d never get out again, that’s for sure. Left there long enough, you’d dissolve.’
I suspected him of pulling my leg. ‘Seriously?’
‘It used to be used for disposing of animal carcasses − human ones too, I expect, on the quiet. I heard a story once about a bloke who fell in a tank and couldn’t get out. They found him next morning − nothing but jelly.’
I took a step back, shuddering. In the safety of the workshop once more, my thoughts returned to Nick. ‘Will you phone me when you’ve seen him tonight?’
‘Don’t worry.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘Perhaps these guys won’t come back. It sounds like you made a good job of scaring them off.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I got back to the house I still had to unload Nick’s boxes. As I was making my fifth trip from the van to the front door with my arms full, Adam came out to give me a hand and told me I could store them in a space under the stairs. I began to feel a lot happier. Then Kate came out from the kitchen and asked me if I’d like a spicy vegetable pasty for my supper and my happiness bordered on ecstasy.
I ate it warm from the microwave, standing in the kitchen, Bill weaving figures of eight around my ankles. I put the plate in the sink and dusted crumbs of flaky pastry from my boobs. I had things to do.
I hunted under my bed until I found what I was looking for – a carved wooden box that belonged to Cordelia. I put it on the kitchen table and opened the lid.
‘Aha!’ I declared, picking out a tiny pair of pliers. The rest of the box was stuffed with self-seal plastic bags containing long metal pins, hooks and various types of bead: Cordelia’s earring-making kit.
I fetched the green glass necklace I had bought from Pat. I’d cleaned it prior to taking it to the antiques fair so I was able to start work at once, snipping each of the three strings that made up the necklace and letting the beads fall out on to a tray. I picked up three, ascending in size, and threaded them on to a long silver pin, putting a tiny silver bead from Cordelia’s kit in between each one. Bill, who had leapt up on the table, watched with interest as I used the pliers to bend the top of the pin over into a loop and hang it on to the hook that went through the ear. I pinched the loop into place. ‘Voilà!’ I dangled the result in front of him. ‘One earring!’
Over the next two hours I made twenty-four pairs of green glass earrings, using either gold or silver beads to separate the glass ones, varying the design with additional beads from Cordelia’s box. Bill lost interest after whisking a marble-sized bead on to the floor with his paw, chasing it around the kitchen floor and losing it under the fridge, obliging me to fish about among the dust with the handle of a broom. Then he curled up, inconveniently, on my lap.
I was pleased with my night’s work, if a bit boggle-eyed. No two pairs of earrings were the same. And I still had beads from the necklace left over. I also had a stiff neck. I stretched and let down my hair just as the phone rang. It was Paul.
‘Is Nick OK?’ I asked.
‘Yup. He was being careful, wouldn’t open the door to me until I called to him through the letter box.’
‘Did he tell you anything?’
‘I asked him straight out. He was cross with you for talking to me and he clammed up at first. But eventually he opened up a bit, said that he’d dealt with these guys in the past … “moved things on for them”, is how he put it. He said they come down now and again from London to do business with him and he’s never had any trouble with them before.’
‘Well, he was having trouble with them this morning.’
‘This time, there was a problem over the price of some stuff he’d sold for them. He’d put it in an auction for them and whatever it was – he wouldn’t tell me − didn’t reach the expected price. They’re after Nick for the difference.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I objected. ‘It’s not his fault.’
‘I don’t think fair comes into their vocabulary.’
‘Probably not,’ I agreed. ‘What’s he going to do?’
‘Pay up and get them off his back, he says. He’s going to set up a meeting. I offered to be there as security. They’re not likely to turn violent if he’s got a witness.’
‘I want to be there too.’
I heard Paul laugh down the phone. ‘You might scare them off! I wish I’d been there this morning, I hear you were a sight to see.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I muttered, embarrassed.
‘By the way, you didn’t notice their car this morning, did you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘It’s probably just coincidence. There was a black BMW parked down the street this evening, I noticed it when I came out of Nick’s. There were two men sitting in it. When I walked down the street in their direction they drove away, pretty sharp.’
‘Did you get a look at them?’
‘Not really. It was too dark. When I got in my van, I drove around the block a few times in case they’d come back, but they didn’t. Like I say, it was probably just coincidence.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
Paul yawned. ‘Well, I’m off to bed. Try not to antagonise any more dangerous thugs if you can help it.’
I remembered Vlad standi
ng at the foot of Nick’s stairs, glaring at me and drawing his finger across his throat. ‘I’ll try,’ I promised.
Next morning, I popped into the bazaar and gave a mournful Pat a quick lesson in how to make earrings. The ones I’d made the night before hung in rows on an old photo frame I’d padded with black velvet and turned into a display stand.
‘Juno, they’re lovely!’ she cried.
‘Shove over, then, cos I’m going to show you how to make them.’
It was, as I told her, dead easy, once she’d mastered the knack of bending the top of the earring pin over into a loop with the pliers. The real skill came in choosing the beads, putting colours and shapes together. Judging from the pretty baby clothes she’d knitted, I reckoned Pat would be good at that, and she was. Her big, bony hands worked with surprising dexterity.
‘I must pay you for all these beads and things,’ she said, looking anxious.
‘Nope, treat it as a donation to the animals.’ I left her with all the spare beads, plus lists of jewellery-making suppliers. I loaned her Cordelia’s little pliers, with a warning that I’d want them back. They had sentimental value.
‘Oh, Juno, thank you ever so much!’
‘My pleasure, Pat. Just get cracking! I’ve got something else to bring you next week.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paul was wrong about the BMW. It wasn’t black, it was blue. I was coming back from Tavistock on the B3357, the road which bisects the moor. Summer had finally started in earnest and I’d given myself a day off for a snoop around Tavistock. It’s a lovely town with an old, stone-built market hall, which yielded some interesting goodies. But I spent more than I intended, so instead of treating myself to lunch in a cafe, I settled for some shop-bought sandwiches and decided to take the scenic route home across the moor and stop for a picnic.
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