by Lorna Gray
From his position just behind my left shoulder, Adam was looking at me strangely. I think I must have gone from my usual wearied pallor to trying not to laugh. All the same he was saying bluntly, “So what is it that you want from her, Jim?”
It had the effect of sobering me up very rapidly.
Jim was surveying Adam thoughtfully. It occurred to me then that Jim really was toying with him. Jim had been goading me into declaring my innocence just to see what effect it had. And while Adam’s general instinct to protect me was on some level mildly thrilling, it also made me wonder why Jim thought it should even need testing. I was rapidly coming to understand that Jim said and did nothing without measuring each act for its value to a deeper purpose. He was a handsome man, yes, but beneath the good looks he was as hard as granite. Now he was saying calmly, “I think the real question you should be asking, Adam, is what do they want from her. Wouldn’t you say, Kate?”
Taking my cue very carefully and keeping my gaze fixed firmly on the hands that were now clasped nervously on the tabletop, I said, “I really don’t know what it is I’m supposed to give them. They seemed to think Rhys had given me something before he … died. I swear they made some mention of the gallery that day in Lancaster but I can’t remember their precise words now. I don’t believe they’ve said anything about it to me since. When I last saw them, they seemed simply determined to get me into their car. And of course now they’ve made absolutely no mention of surrendering anything but myself at the meeting today. And yet—”
I dared to lift my gaze. This was Jim’s cue to say something very specific and reassuring about nobody being required to surrender themselves to anyone but he didn’t. Instead he simply raised his eyebrows and prompted, “Yes?”
“Surely they know by now I haven’t got it. They know I’d have given it to Adam at the very least and now they’ve seen you arrive. They must know I haven’t got this thing.”
Jim reached across the table and lifted the photograph of that busy opening night at the gallery. He examined it for a moment. Then he said crisply, “They do. Three weeks ago at about this time of day, Philip Black was beginning another day on a tedious sleuthing job that at some point was going to have to be drawn to a close. Three weeks ago we were still no closer to proving that this gallery was the hidden connection between a thief and his dead middleman. Then all hell broke loose and a policeman disappeared without a trace, a notable photographer supposedly committed suicide and two previously invisible men lurched out into the open to undertake a reckless pursuit of a lone woman across England into Wales. Philip Black found his evidence. They thought Kate had it. And now suddenly they’re issuing invitations to a lunchtime rendezvous with the full benefit of public scrutiny. What does that tell us?”
“That the thief is desperate?” This was warmly from Mrs Francis. She was looking excited, like she might singlehandedly solve this thing herself.
Jim shook his head. “Not quite. Let me put it this way. About a year ago, the thief decided to use a middleman to handle the sale of a collection of respectably valuable artworks because this man had skills he needed, namely the capacity to run any gauntlet for a bit of ready cash. Three years before that, he’d hired a team of professionals to undertake the original theft, because naturally he needed people with subtle talents. Now he’s using Clarke and Reed as a sort of hostage delivery service and who are they? Murderers? Brainless heavies? No. Now I have their names,” a brief nod to me, “I can tell you that they’re a pair of quite ordinary scoundrels who have been using their military service to develop a nice little sideline in security now the war is over. They’re hired sleuths. This thief always uses people who have just the right skills for the job. He’s been paying them to retrieve this missing fragment of evidence.”
“No,” said Adam, emphatically. The sideboard clattered as he adjusted his position. I twisted to look up at him in surprise. He wasn’t looking at me, he was staring fixedly over my head at Jim. “No,” he said again.
Jim repeated stoically, “Clarke and Reed are being paid to retrieve whatever it was that Philip Black uncovered. Clearly in the midst of making him disappear, they failed to get him to divulge where he’d put this treasure. They had reason to believe he might have passed it to you, Kate. They promptly took to hounding you. Then, equally abruptly, this thief abandons that plan and decides he wants you. In person. And why? Because he believes now that it’s still lodged somewhere in that gallery and you’re the woman to find it for him. You have a skill he needs. And it doesn’t matter to him in the slightest that by inviting you there he’s risking exposure himself.”
“Perhaps he’s just trying to silence her.” Adam’s retort was curt.
“Well he needn’t, because as this investigation currently stands, they could still get clean away. If I collared Clarke and Reed now, I might get them on a charge of using black market fuel perhaps, with all this driving about the country they’ve been doing … Or at a pinch we might manage to build a case for attempted kidnap in Lancaster if someone could be persuaded to remember that they saw the pair of them by the bus stop after all. But I’ve got nothing on the man who’s giving them their orders. Everything changed for all of us the minute they sent the invitation to go to that gallery. They know you wouldn’t be unguarded now. That tells me that there’s something so vital that this thief wants from you that he is prepared to risk our presence to get it.”
“That’s absurd reasoning. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Would you find it more digestible if I confided that I suspect the truth is that it doesn’t matter to him that she might bring me along?”
“Not remotely. You might as well pretend that he actually wants you there. Either way it means that somehow this thief has planned to get what he wants without any fear that in the process he’ll give you even the smallest glimpse of what you want. And that all points to the same thing. I say again: No.”
Jim seemed to understand his meaning rather better than I did. He said, “Listen to this, Adam.” Then he proceeded to read from his notebook, though I suspect he knew the contents by heart. “Philip Black disappeared approximately three days before Rhys Williams died. The day Black vanished, witnesses placed him at a sporting event in the company of Mr Williams. They were working on their collaboration; something to do with the psychology of gambling. It was Phil’s idea and, if you recall, purely a front. We picked horse racing as Phil’s journalistic niche because Rhys Williams had undertaken a collaborative project once before on a sporting theme and the results had sold well, and also because Phil was a man obsessed by steeple chasing. They say the best lies are built upon a germ of truth after all. We only know the rough time of Phil’s disappearance by virtue of the last known sighting that placed him on his motorbike travelling towards Cirencester on the Saturday evening, three days before Rhys died.”
“He was on his way to the gallery?”
“Presumably so, Adam, yes.”
“And is your witness reliable?” Adam was blunt.
“Yes.” Jim was equally matter-of-fact and for good reason. “He’s me.”
After a pause Jim added, “I shadowed him to this race meeting and I can tell you the only characters there were Phil and Rhys Williams and a lot of people screaming at horses. Phil was his usual self. He hadn’t found anything yet. The next day, Sunday, he failed to make his weekly catch-up with me. We thought nothing of it. He often ducked out of sight for a while. But two days after that Rhys was apparently motivated to dramatically end his own life. We called in Philip to explain what had happened and that was when we learned he’d disappeared. Three days later I went to Aberystwyth and four days after that you appeared, Kate. And with you came Clarke and Reed.”
“You keep saying that apparently Rhys killed himself.” Behind me Adam was speaking through gritted teeth.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You keep saying apparent suicide, or supposedly he killed himself. Aren’t you certain?”
“And you’re using the term ‘was’ when talking about your friend Philip Black, not ‘is’. He was obsessed by horse racing.”
“Yes.”
Adam summarised, “He was at the gallery and after months of inactivity, something happened and now he’s disappeared. Presumably he died.”
“Yes.”
Adam continued, “Rhys lived and worked at the gallery and something was uncovered that either drove him into a wild panic where death seemed the only way out, or someone did it for him. Either way he died.”
“Yes.” Jim’s agreement was bland.
“The middleman who handled the looted artworks made a hash of his job and then he died.”
“That’s a loose interpretation of those events but for the purposes of your argument, yes. He died.”
“And still you want Kate to give this man the help he’s looking for.”
Now I understood his intense opposition. My cheeks were burning. Which was odd because I was utterly cold.
“Let me make something abundantly clear to you both.” Jim’s voice was suddenly pure steel. “I’ve been inside that gallery. I’ve searched it from top to bottom, both when we first came across that crucial letter and again a fortnight ago when Rhys Williams died. I’ve found nothing. There has never been any trace of anything that shouldn’t be there. Then Kate Ward appeared on the scene and suddenly the façade they’ve been hiding behind has slowly started crumbling. In one week you’ve exposed more about their activities than the whole of the Gloucester police force has achieved in nearly a year of investigation. You’ve drawn them into the open to the point that I have the names of two men I formerly didn’t even know existed. Now they’ve categorically proved that we have the power to expose the person behind all this – that single person who knows how to recognise a valuable painting, who is sitting on a priceless hoard and who will willingly swat aside the life of a policeman in order to keep it. I am not proposing that Kate helps this thief recover the thread he lost when Philip Black disappeared. I’m proposing that she goes to this gallery with the benefit of a full escort and searches it from top to bottom with us until we have that blasted piece of evidence that will hang this man.”
“Unless it’s a woman.” I don’t know what made me say that. It was nerves I think.
“Yes,” agreed Jim tersely, “unless it’s a woman.”
His harsh eyes moved beyond me as he remarked, “I know how you feel, Adam.”
Adam was making that telltale gesture of running his hand through his hair. His gaze dropped to mine and his mouth twisted into a little humourless smile. “Of course you do.”
“There isn’t any other way. This man is moving on this now. We have to take him. Certainly, Kate could run again and go into hiding and hope he forgets her in the end. And while she’s doing that I could put guards on that gallery and get a warrant and wait until a team has pulled it apart brick by brick and still I’d find nothing. And if we stop her from playing along with this man’s little plan, how long do you think it would be before it occurs to him to instruct Clarke to simply burn it all down? Adam, I need your support.”
“No.”
“No, I don’t have your support?”
“Just no. Absolutely no. No, no and no. It’s immoral.”
“Kate?”
“Oh sure,” remarked Adam with a hard, bitter laugh. “Now you ask her. As an afterthought. You said it yourself; you knew she wouldn’t come back here under her own volition so you decided to cast me as her keeper. Only she was too independent for you then and this time I’m not quite toeing the line, am I? Of course I’m not going to join you in steering her. She’s barely recovered from the last time you and I, along with this thief of yours, set about systematically eroding her sense of control. You and I both know that Kate is brave enough for almost anything, but do you actually want her to go to this place feeling alone again?”
We gaped at him.
Then we went to the gallery.
Chapter 27
I didn’t feel remotely alone when I stepped out through Adam’s front door amongst a swarm of five or so policemen and into the back of a car. But I wasn’t feeling quite the courageous woman Adam had described either, and it wasn’t just the dread of returning to my old marital home that concerned me. It was the fact that now that the decision had been made, Adam was abruptly back on side. His simple act of climbing before me into the back of the police car was disconcerting proof that while Detective Sergeant James Fleece had been getting on with the awkward business of preparing us to help with his case, Adam had been quietly cast as the mainstay that would keep me afloat.
It was proof that while Jim had never really intended to leave me feeling isolated, he also clearly still had considerable doubts about my strength of mind.
I didn’t get long to decide whether this was offensive or he was just being really, really practical. Gloucester Street, where Adam and his daughter lived, was one of the main routes into town. This was no Georgian spectacle like nearby Cheltenham. Cirencester was a place where the old and the not-so-old jostled together in cramped rows, all uneven charm, before bursting into the busy marketplace beneath the gaze of the grey church tower. Then we were weaving our way between busses and a horse-drawn delivery wagon onto Cricklade Street and drawing to a halt outside my old home.
The narrow three-storey structure that housed the gallery had steeply pointed gables and narrow stone mullioned windows. Its beautiful, characterful frontage was much as I remembered it from the day I had packed up my belongings and left, and it was hard to say when I had liked the sight of it less; then or now. The gallery was closed, unsurprisingly, since there was no one left to run it.
“Ready?” This came from Jim, twisting in the seat in front of mine. The car had stopped. Adam was sitting beside me behind the driver. A second police car was squeaking to a halt behind us too. Then the policemen, both uniformed and plain-clothed, were out and doing their routine again of clearing a path for us between the car and the front door and checking the crowd for danger. I wished they wouldn’t. It made it all seem so real.
Adam’s door was opened for him. He stepped out. He turned to wait for me. I was there, standing beside him beneath lines of bunting and flags and realising that like Aberystwyth, this town too was in the midst of its Royal Wedding celebrations. There should have been an exhibition in the gallery to support it – I could see one peeling poster between the glass and the internal shutters. The shabbiness of the window display made it seem like its last resident had been dead for years.
Then the shopkeeper from the watchmakers next door sneezed loudly and gracelessly, and abruptly reduced the funereal mood that weighted our first steps towards the door into something rather more commonplace. Someone behind me sniggered. Then Jim tipped his mouth slightly closer to my ear so that his words were for me alone as he cheerfully said, “It’s a bit behindhand of me to suddenly ask you this now, but are you sure you’re ready for this? You look pretty beaten about, if I’m allowed to be honest. And,” he added, “it’s not helped by your sudden transition into demure clothing, Mrs Williams.”
His remark made me jump like I’d been touched by a live wire. Then I covered the reaction by turning my attention to a search of the contents of my handbag. The hem of the grey frock was just visible between the flaps of my raincoat.
I observed, “I must have been in disguise in Aberystwyth after all, don’t you think?”
I withdrew my hand from my bag and found that Adam’s gaze had fixed on me. He’d been listening. Then his eyes ran down to what lay within my finger
s. He looked even more surprised.
“You have a key?”
---
I did have a key. For the very simple reason that the gallery was mine; or rather, it was my uncle’s and since he was aged and retired, mine to enjoy until the old man’s death.
Of course, given this minor detail of ownership, it was perhaps doubly odd that I should have allowed Rhys to stay while I scurried home to my parents with my head held low. But after all, his was the artistic talent that could be measured against present greats and in some ways the loss of such a place felt like suitable reparation for my part in our marriage’s failure. And besides all that, as I was frequently being reminded at the moment, I had been deeply unhappy here and I had never really intended to ever come back…
I needn’t have bothered carrying the key with me all this time either. Because just as I stepped forwards with the view of putting my hand to the lock, the door opened and in its stead stood an extremely carelessly dressed, magnificently attractive woman: Christi.
We stared at each other. Then Rhys’s model and muse smiled. “Katarina.”
She still had the same humbling figure I remembered; age and elegant curves united with a fearsomely aggressive femininity. It was accompanied by the same tireless energy, wildly curling amber hair with its defiant strands of grey, dramatic eyebrows and a mouth that was very much used to saying what it liked. That mouth now formed a pout as she examined me in her turn and then moved on to consume the two men with me and the crowd of uniforms just behind. She seemed to hesitate at Adam’s face; her eyes hardened a little as perhaps she tried to place him. Then she moved on to Jim. She had clearly met him during his last visit.
“James,” she said, with a little staged flicker of long eyelashes.
“Detective Sergeant James Fleece,” he replied with that perfect calm of one beautiful person to another.
“Got a better list of questions this time?”
“Got Kate.”
His reply made her smile, a brief flash of genuine amusement before she returned her gaze to Adam. Her voice was deep – far deeper than mine. “You’d better come in.” And somehow engineered it so that I was the one left to shut the door.