Headcase

by Peter Helton

  Lodge. My own painting, come to think of it. I sucked furiously on the cigarette. I had taken on too much. Why wasn’t I getting any help? I had to kick Tim’s behind a bit and insist that Annis get herself back to Bath pronto, otherwise the workload would soon overwhelm me.

  Annis appeared to have switched her mobile off. Fuming as I sat, listening to the ringing tone of Alison’s phone, I imagined the two of them lying on a beach, probably with a bag of strawberries and a bottle of red, and it didn’t improve my mood. Why did that damn technophobe not have an answering machine? Next I dialled Tim’s number and drew a blank there as well. I tried him at home and left a grouchy message on his machine.

  The thought of bright-eyed red mullet waiting downstairs on crushed ice perked me up again. I was working on the switch from harassed PI to caring housekeeper when I passed the little table in the hall where new mail landed and unwanted letters accumulated. I picked up the small pile. Some buff envelopes, probably full of forms, for Adrian, Dave and Gavin. There was one addressed to Jennifer Kickaldy, marked Private and Confidential. So I opened it.

  Credit card bills can tell you a lot about people’s lives, a fact most people don’t take into account when they carelessly throw them out with the rubbish. (Going through people’s dustbins is not my favourite part of the job but it’s invariably rewarding.) Jenny’s bill didn’t reveal any dark secrets that would show the motive for her murder but it was remarkable for a couple of reasons. Just as I had suspected, Jenny had used her private funds to subsidize the meagre food rations at Somerset Lodge. One of the big supermarkets featured twice weekly on her bill. It didn’t come as a great surprise, since I would soon be doing the same. The other feature was the fact that Jenny had kept using her card on the day after her own death. Now that was remarkable. Though whether I’d remark on it to Needham & Co. I hadn’t decided yet.

  Here was at least one possible explanation of how Gavin managed to keep himself alive out there without Jenny feeding him every day. In a sense she still was. The account was likely to be closed now, a fact which whoever had used it had probably anticipated. The amounts weren’t colossal but someone had gone on a little spree on Saturday — supermarkets, off-licences and petrol stations around Bath. It also meant Gavin was not alone — he would have needed a female to act as Jenny for the transactions. A missing credit card was theoretically a motive for murder. Petrol stations had surveillance cameras and could link transaction times to their tapes, which they kept for weeks. But I wanted Needham to keep as open a mind as possible. He would sooner or later investigate all of Jenny’s accounts anyway, it was routine.

  I descaled the mullet, then started on the salsa. Jenny’s herb garden was nothing like the straggly, hanging-on-for-dear-life affair Annis and I kept near our kitchen door. The coriander, nicely shaded, was prolific, just what I was looking for. Five minutes later I had finely chopped a bunch of it, together with some red onions, a pound of ripe tomatoes and a couple of red chillies. I dressed the lot with lime juice and some extra virgin while the baby potatoes simmered away, then shoved the fish under the grill. We scoffed every bit of it with some rocket leaves outside under the overloaded walnut trees.

  Halfway through the washing up I heard a mobile ring. It sounded like mine yet it also sounded far away. I checked my jacket pockets — no mobile. I was sure I had brought it. Now it was behind me. I opened the fridge: it was sitting in the salad crisper. Definite signs of a preoccupied mind.

  “I’ve got something I want you to see,” Tim got in before I could whine at him about feeling overworked.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure but it’s kinda interesting. Come over, I’m having a beer down my local.”

  “Down his local” was an apt description. Tim lived in Northampton Street and the walk “down the pub” involved descending a flight of stairs and turning in next door. I had congratulated him on his choice of location when I helped him move in, though I gathered the novelty had since worn off. As I drove over I realized that I hadn’t been to his place since the move. Tim was using the pub as his reception room much as I used the Bathtub as my office.

  I was so desperate for movement in any of our cases that I’d rushed across town like a wild thing. Tim was sitting at the bar, his glass conveniently empty. Tim always had good timing. I ordered drinks for both of us.

  The place had been oldified with the standard fake beams, replica brasses and books bought by the yard, all straight from Ye Olde English Pub Catalogue. A huge gaming machine flickered, whirred and gurgled in the vain hope of tempting the half-dozen or so drinkers entrenched at the bar. For extra privacy we settled into a niche with a neon-lit fish tank. I’d seen happier fish on my barbecue.

  “So?”

  “Got your pictures enlarged.” With a flourish Tim dropped an A4 envelope in front of me.

  “You didn’t bring me here for those, did you? I’d hoped for something more relevant to Aqua,” I complained ungratefully. “I mean, thanks for doing them but as far as I can see we’re stuck on every investigation we have on our books right now — ”

  “Shut up already and admire your pictures.”

  Grumpily I pulled out the prints. “Eh?”

  “Exactly. The strip of negatives didn’t match the prints of your house. Some sort of mix-up. Looks dramatic though, dunnit?” Tim’s tanned face broke into a happy grin. He had finally dug up something to surprise me with.

  There were four prints. The first one was a full frontal of Starfall House. Gillian had obviously followed my hint in her search for a Georgian villa and found the Dufossee residence. At the edge of the photograph the green BMW and the silver Mercedes were just visible. The next print showed the house with part of the gardens, shot from further to the left. Around the furthest corner, probably unnoticed by Gill at this moment, were two small figures, running towards her, hard to make out. The next print was more revealing. Closer up now, the figures had advanced on the camera. The man closest, in black chinos and T-shirt, pointed a menacing finger at the lens, his face flushed with anger. I had never seen him before. The shape running behind him, suit jacket flaring and no less intent to get his hands on the camera, I had no difficulty in placing — my patron of the arts and avid collector of Honeysett canvases, Al-Omari.

  The last print was the most dramatic. A rear view out of a car, quite blurred with movement, it showed the silver Mercedes tearing out of the Starfall drive’s gate. Gill had to have taken it over her shoulder while driving. A gutsy performance.

  “Like them? Make any sense?”

  “Not yet. I’m still on my first Stella though,” I said, taking a gulp in the hope it would reach my brain cells sometime soon. “Well, the house is Starfall House…”

  “I guessed that, I was there when you told her about it. But who are the uglies?”

  “The het-up one with the short-cropped hair I’ve not seen before. But the other one I’ve met. He’s one of the Saudis who bought my paintings.”

  “What’s he doing there, buying more paintings?”

  “Good question. Last time I saw him he was acting all dignified and unflappable. Keeps strange company, judging by this picture.”

  “Camera-shy art collector and psycho with bad taste in jewellery.”

  “Has he?” I looked again. The het-up one sported a death-head ring on his middle finger. “Indeed. And you’re right, he looks about as stable as a pile of ball bearings.

  Judging by the last print they tore after her in the car, proper little chase it must’ve been too. Mercedes versus…what does she drive, a Punto? She was lucky to lose them.”

  “Especially since she doesn’t know the area. Could the Dufossee juniors be flogging off Daddy’s collection, dressing it up as a burglary?”

  I had already discounted that theory. “Makes sense only if you can defraud the insurance company, in which case they wouldn’t have called us, they’d have screamed for the police. The insurance company wouldn’t pay up without a pro
per investigation and the police would surely prove it was an inside job. Dufossee senior might not have long to live anyway, so why not wait?”

  “Who said he’s on his way out?” Tim wanted to know. “Virginia?”

  “Both of them. You’ve got a point. We only have their word for it, he could be anywhere, fit and healthy. Or nowhere. Or dead. What am I saying? I’m getting paranoid now. But why contact us? It makes no sense if they’re up to no good…Let’s get back to the paintings a minute. The paintings at Starfall House are in a completely different bracket from the things he buys off Simon Paris Fine Art,” I thought out loud. “And why would Al-Omari go and spend good dosh on my work if he’s doing dodgy deals with Dufossee?”

  “Don’t know, but I’ll buy you a beer if you stop alliterating.”

  “Done deal.”

  While Tim was at the bar having our pints refilled I went back to examining the prints. If this was TV there’d be this amazing hidden clue somewhere that would produce the eureka effect in part two and solve the whole case. Instead they raised more questions than they answered.

  With a fresh Stella in front of me I lit a Camel and tried to puff my way to some sort of conclusion. “So what have we got? Al-Omari, who’s here just a few days to buy paintings, my paintings, just happens to know the Dufossees, our clients re art theft. When I met Leonard at Starfall House this Merc was parked smack in front of the house. No attempt at concealing it. Stands to reason Al-Omari or Nadeem, his side-kick, were there but didn’t care to show themselves. And here endeth the lesson because I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Doesn’t Leonard run a wine business?”

  “Yes. Sulis Wines. It’s a mail order company. Actually they sell all sorts of drinks.”

  “Perhaps they’re buying a few cases of wine to take home while they’re at it? Since England is famed for its vineyards,” Tim added.

  “Now that would be illegal. Drinking’s a great no-no in Saudiland.” Both of us took a hasty gulp of our beers at the mere thought of such a place.

  “So a few cases of wine would fetch quite a price out there?” Tim said shrewdly.

  I admitted Tim had a point. But if you wanted to smuggle alcohol to Saudi Arabia, would you buy the stuff in England? In Bath? “Okay, I reckon it’s time we paid Leonard another visit, only this time not at Starfall House. And without appointment.”

  “His offices?” Tim came alive.

  “His warehouse. Might find all sorts of things in a warehouse.”

  Despite anything his name might suggest, Tim is not big on wood. We nipped to his little Georgian flat so he could tool up and I could clear my head with coffee while dusk deepened outside. Tim’s style was techno minimal, which was just as well because the flat was truly tiny. The kitchen and sitting room were open plan by default since whoever had butchered this building hadn’t left enough space for a dividing wall or a door to swing anywhere. The place was as close to unfurnished as a man could get whilst still having somewhere to park his bum — just a chrome and canvas sofa and a stone and glass coffee table. The rest was taken up by an overloaded computer desk and a flat TV screen twice the size of the windows. The whole place was spotlessly clean.

  “Shall I make coffee?” I suggested doubtfully, looking round his kitchen. It had more gadgets than an aircraft carrier and I didn’t recognize half of them.

  “I’ll do it,” he said quickly and fired up a black espresso machine in the corner.

  “What do you do with all this stuff?” I asked, marvelling at the amount of wires trailing everywhere.

  “Fully automatic breakfast, mate. Everything’s run by my PC. When my alarm goes off the coffee-maker comes on, the egg-boiler starts making perfect five-minute eggs and by the time I get out of the shower the microwave has heated my croissant. Only way I make it to work, I’m crap in the morning. I’m crap in the evening as well, of course, but I usually manage to prime it all up before I pass out.”

  While I slurped the best cappuccino I’d had outside Italy he busied himself next door and soon reappeared with a black holdall. “Ready.”

  The warehouse of Leonard’s Sulis Wines business stood on the small, low-tech Locksbrook Trading Estate, just off the Lower Bristol Road. We drove the short way from Northampton Street in Tim’s 007-worthy Audi TT. With a hum its dashboard lit up with twice as many dials and screens as it had when it left the assembly line. It looked every bit as bewildering as his kitchen and as far as I knew made perfect five-minute eggs as well.

  The evening was mild, almost sullen in its stillness, as we squeezed out of the TT opposite a short Victorian terrace on Locks-brook Road. Identical rectangles of TV screens cast changing lights in most of the front rooms in near identical houses. We sauntered down the road for a first reconnaissance without Tim’s giveaway of a black holdall. The trading estate proper began as we turned the corner. It had a charmingly ramshackle feel to it. Dimly lit, without a central gate to keep out undesirables like us and as far as I could see no CCTV to cover the general area. Apart from the car dealership at the front this was definitely downmarket. We found the soot-blackened Victorian warehouse of Sulis Wines between a foundry specializing in drainage casting and a coal merchant-cum-scrap dealer. The yard that fronted Leonard’s unlit premises was protected by an imposing ten-foot metal gate, its effectiveness curiously cancelled out by being set into a five-foot wall of crumbling red brick topped with a couple of strands of rusted barbed wire. Even the coal merchant next door had better security. We were over the wall in seconds and landed cautiously among the clutter of carelessly stacked pallets and overflowing wheelie bins on the other side.

  On this kind of caper I’m usually happy to follow Tim’s lead. His criminal instincts seem to be honed to a finer pitch than mine. Tonight he came far better prepared than me too, dressed in tight-fitting clothes and dark trainers, While I thought I could hear the leather of my jacket and boots creak in the dank silence of the yard.

  The large, navy blue double doors, high enough to admit a trailer-lorry, were securely barred and impressively padlocked. Tim didn’t even give them fleeting consideration but immediately loped off along the narrow passage between the building and the brick wall that shielded us from the road. Beyond a blue plastic barrel and a high clump of weed growing from a crack in the worn concrete we found a battered metal door with blue flaking paint. There was no door handle, only a Yale lock. We were in the purple shadows thrown by the sodium lights on the other side of the street, quite safe from casual observers.

  “How did you know there was a door here?” I whispered to Tim who was already attacking the lock with what looked like a pair of tiny flattened crochet needles and that rapturous middle-distance stare he gets when confronted with a closed door.

  “A warehouse is a warehouse is a — ” CLICK — “warehouse.” We were in.

  “How come the alarm didn’t go off?” I wanted to know next, since I had seen the red and white alarm box high up at the front.

  “The alarm’s a fake, first thing I noticed. Which means Dufossee junior is either stupid or skint.” When the darkness leapt back from the acid blue beam of his powerful LED torch I could see we were in a narrow corridor with doors leading off it, one to the left, one at the end straight ahead. I added the weaker beam of my Mini Maglite to the illumination and we set off. Tim tried the first door. “Office.”

  We let our lights travel over the drab interior, grey filing cabinet, plastic-covered armchairs, littered desk. This was not what I had expected from a wine dealership. The place had all the desolate unloveliness of a minicab company’s waiting room. There wasn’t even a computer, only a cheap BT answerphone. Tim’s torch beam probed into the furthest corner. “Baby!” he whispered lovingly. He had picked out a tall safe with two gleaming dials and a highly polished handle. “So that’s what he spent his dosh on. That’s a seriously posh money box, mate. Won’t be easy,” he added gleefully.

  “Let’s have a look around first, perhaps we don’t e
ven have to go there.”

  Tim’s reluctance to turn his back on the challenge of a modern safe was palpable. I pulled open the door at the end of the corridor and we stepped into the dark cavern of the warehouse proper. I turned my torch here and there, illuminating precious little. It was musty and chilly in here but looked exactly as you’d expect. Most of the space was taken up by row after row of grey metal shelving units full of boxes. Thousands and thousands of them. There were also stacks of plastic crates, piled high against the wall opposite, teetering towers of pallets and a forklift truck parked on the litter-strewn floor.

  “So it’s a drinks warehouse,” I said disappointedly. I wasn’t sure what I had hoped for instead but I felt badly deflated.

  “You go and inspect,” Tim offered, “I’ll get the kit from the car and blow the door off the money box.”

  “You’re going to blow it?” I was nearly shouting.

  “Figure of speech, mate, relax. I haven’t blown a safe since, well, the first time really,” he said wistfully.

  “What happened?”

  “It blew smack through the wall and into a lift shaft. Lacked finesse, I thought.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way. Okay, go ahead, and I’ll do some wine sampling.”

  As soon as he had slipped away, taking the strong beam of his torch with him, I realized the craziness of this undertaking. A Mini Maglite is fabulous for looking through a dark cupboard but not the kind of illumination you’d want for searching the inky vastness of a warehouse. The few near-blind skylights set impossibly high in the ceiling admitted hardly any light at all but would advertise my presence quite clearly if I switched on the lights. Starting down a narrow aisle between shelves at random I let the feeble beam travel along the wine crates without the slightest inclination to start a proper search. I poked a box of Australian Chardonnay which was heavy and unyielding and felt suspiciously as though it might be full of Australian Chardonnay. I turned down the next aisle and found much the same there. Wine from all corners of the world: France, Chile, South Africa. I rapped against a few more crates. If you wanted to hide something here you would hardly leave it within easy reach. A proper search would require a team of people and a couple of days. We had to pin our hopes on finding some clues in the office, especially the safe. I sauntered all the way to the back wall and turned down yet another identical-looking aisle.