by Jane Renshaw
She hadn’t corrected his interpretation of events – if, indeed, it had actually been his interpretation. She suspected that he knew there was more to it but had decided not to go there. She hadn’t confessed that she’d had no suspicions about Phil until much later; that she’d bought Phil’s story about being undercover at Kinty at Campbell’s instigation; that it had never occurred to her that Campbell knew nothing about Phil’s masquerade as Baz.
But when Claire had rumbled that, what had Phil’s endgame been? He’d asked Claire not to let on to Campbell that she knew about ‘Baz’, but that was a temporary reprieve. Unless... Unless Phil had intended taking Claire out of the game too.
‘Probably,’ was all she’d felt able to say.
‘Sorry,’ he had immediately apologised. ‘I don’t know how I have the nerve to sit here challenging your decisions, when my own – Well, let’s just say that, unlike yourself, I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory.’
It had been the first day the medics had decided she was well enough to cope with visitors other than immediate family, and as DCI Stewart had fussed with the window, muttering that hospitals were always ridiculously overheated, a voice had said, ‘A breeding ground for germs.’
Hector. Bearing two Sleekster boxes from Hotel Chocolat that made DCI Stewart’s offering of Cadbury’s Roses look distinctly cheapskate.
‘What the fuck?’ DCI Stewart’s words rang round the ward, and several people looked up.
‘This one’s the Everything Sleekster and this one’s the fruit-based selection. A nod to healthy eating.’
Claire snorted.
The DCI looked as if he would like to grab the Sleeksters and beat Hector over the head with them, but he just said, ‘I hardly think this is appropriate.’
‘Glass houses... Here you are, browbeating a junior colleague who’ll presumably be giving evidence to the inquiry –’
‘I’m not browbeating anyone!’ the DCI practically shouted.
‘All right, all right,’ Hector grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to write to my MP about it.’
Claire winced. It was all over the press that Phil Caddick, a police officer, was wanted for double murder, and that the local bobbies had been after the wrong man. Balfour Jarvie MP had called for an inquiry into Police Scotland’s handling of the investigation.
‘Claire,’ said the DCI. ‘Would you like him escorted off the ward?’
‘It’s tempting, but then there’s the Sleeksters.’
The DCI looked from Hector to Claire, his face now purple.
When he’d gone, Hector sat, and leant back in the chair, legs crossed at the ankles, and looked at her as if that was all he wanted to do, as if this was a wonderful moment, as if he was relaxing in a tropical paradise with a beautiful woman and couldn’t believe his luck, rather than stuck in an overheated orthopaedics ward in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary with a sweaty Claire whose hair hadn’t been washed in a week.
‘When did you know I was a cop?’ she said.
‘Well.’ He smiled. ‘My suspicions were first aroused by your CV.’
‘My – what?’
‘Confession time.’ He lowered his voice. ‘When Chimp was killed, I’d have had to be pretty thick not to put two and two together and come to the conclusion that he’d been done away with by whoever it was he had evidence against. Chimp was very cagey about this person’s identity, insisting he needed to give them a chance to explain themselves... Why would he do that, unless it was someone he knew and liked? The only people he knew well up here, apart from his fellow estate workers – and I was pretty confident in their – I want to say integrity, but that’s perhaps not the right word –’
She interrupted: ‘The only other people he knew well enough to hesitate about shopping were his colleagues on the force. So you knew whoever killed Chimp must be a bent copper, right from the start.’
‘Knew is putting it high. I suspected as much, but I could hardly go to Campbell Stewart with that little theory without strong evidence.’
‘And you knew DCI Stewart would want to put another UC in place to investigate Chimp’s death. So you advertised for a housekeeper, thinking – what?’
‘We needed a housekeeper... But yes, I was half expecting another UC to apply, maybe someone who was in league with the bent copper, someone who’d persuaded Campbell to give them the job so they could set me up as a scapegoat for Chimp’s murder. And my thinking was that I’d rather have that person – close. Under my eye.’
‘So you could turn the tables. So you could find out who killed Chimp?’
‘That was the plan. But at our first meeting, I realised that if you were a UC, you either had nothing to do with what was going on, or you were...’
‘An unwitting pawn?’ She flushed. ‘Who might well let slip the information you needed. Oh God.’ She took a slug of water from the glass on the cabinet by her bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Yes, I was hoping he might give himself away through you, but that didn’t happen. All a bit of a cock-up, I’m afraid.’
‘Mainly because I was such an idiot. From start to finish. I should at least have realised, when I found out that Phil was masquerading as Baz –’
‘Why should you?’ He shook his head. ‘He was your friend. Of course you trusted him.’
Silence, as her brain slowly worked back through what had happened.
‘Chimp had told you the evidence wasn’t at Pond Cottage,’ she said at last, ‘so that was a safe place to put me. You knew I wouldn’t find anything there and pass it on to the bent copper. Phil didn’t know that, though. He must have been the one who searched the cottage. He must have got the keys from Chimp at some stage and copied them.’
Hector nodded.
‘When did you know for sure that I was a UC?’
‘I think it was when I was showing you round Pond Cottage –’
She groaned. ‘And you made that crack about Chimp’s unquiet spirit slopping about in the toilet bowl. You wanted to see how I’d react. If I was a UC, I’d find that particularly shocking.’
‘Yes. Sorry about that.’
‘Why didn’t you come clean?’ she said in a rush.
He raised his eyebrows.
‘About Chimp. About your suspicions. After we – after we –’
‘After we what, Claire?’
She could feel her face burning. ‘Instead of suggesting that ridiculous battle of wits, why didn’t you tell me that you thought a bent cop had killed Chimp? I could have helped you discover the truth.’
‘You wouldn’t have gone straight to Phil with it?’
She shook her head. Sighed. ‘Oh God, I don’t know!’
‘I doubt you’d have entertained the possibility that Phil himself could be the culprit. Why would you?’ He moved in the chair. ‘Are you going to open those chocolates or what? Ah, a bit difficult one-handed. Shall I...?’
Claire had no appetite, but she managed a Blackcurrant Bombe.
‘There’s still so much that doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘Phil told me that Chimp – John – got the job through someone in Birmingham who’d worked with John and who also knew DCI Stewart. But the DCI says that’s not how it happened. It was Phil who suggested John. I’ve been trying to think of an explanation for that, but I can’t. And the DCI’s equally baffled. Why would Phil take such a massive risk, putting someone undercover at Pitfourie who knew him, just eight miles from where “Baz” was running a drugs operation?’
‘That is odd, certainly.’ He examined the open box of chocolates. ‘And there are other things that don’t quite add up. What was the sequence of events? Phil Caddick found out I would be – uh, visiting Drumdargie on Christmas Eve, somehow persuaded the Twat to meet him there, and killed him? But how did Caddick know about the secret room? When Caddick pulled a gun on him, did the Twat blurt out that there was a secret room containing priceless artworks in the castle, in an attempt to cut a deal and save his skin?’
She shrugged. ‘We’ll never know, I don’t suppose, exactly what happened between Phil and Weber.’
‘Perhaps not.’ He selected a Raspberry Smoothie. ‘The other anomaly is the planting of drugs in the boathouse. That was Phil, I assume. He planted the drugs and made an anonymous tip-off. The theory is, I suppose, that he wanted Chimp in and out of Pitfourie as quickly as possible, to cut the risk of him encountering “Baz”, and so tried to hurry things along. But when the tip-off came in, DCI Stewart told Chimp about it, and Chimp was able to dispose of the drugs before the police attended. He then told me he’d found drugs in the boathouse and got rid of them, although at that stage he didn’t let on he was a cop.’
‘It must have made you wonder, though?’
‘Mm. When Damian found out Chimp was a UC, it didn’t come as a huge surprise.’
‘So why is Phil planting drugs in the boathouse an anomaly? It was his first attempt to frame you and get Chimp off the scene. It makes sense, surely?’
‘I don’t know that it does. Even if the police had found drugs in the boathouse and arrested and charged me, no way was Campbell going to be happy with a drugs bust – he was after a collar for more than that. Chimp wouldn’t have been pulled out. But maybe Phil Caddick didn’t know that.’
Claire sighed. ‘Maybe not.’
It was still hard to think about Phil. About Jennifer and Laura, and how all this was going to affect them. Their house would have to be sold if it had been bought with the proceeds of crime.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and put his hand over hers on the bedcover.
She nodded.
Then: ‘It would never have worked,’ she found herself saying.
He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose it would.’
But he kept his hand on hers until what sounded like a troupe of particularly noisy revellers just let out of a pub at closing time erupted into the ward, and Claire’s family were swarming round the bed in appalling contravention of the two visitors per patient rule, her cousins Lexie and Olivia and her Auntie June and Uncle Richard and Grannie and Grandpa and Mum and Dad and Gabby and David.
They all had to attempt to hug her, of course, which wasn’t easy when the recipient was sitting up in bed with an injured shoulder that shouldn’t be touched.
She tried to introduce everyone to Hector and vice versa, but it was such chaos, and then he was leaving and she could only flick a glance at him every few seconds as everyone claimed her attention, and Gabby and David fought over the box of chocolates, and she had a glimpse of him taking Grannie’s hand and the two of them exchanging a few words; the back of his head as he moved away down the ward, between the close-ups of her cousins’ faces, leaning in to speak over the hubbub; the last of him a quick backwards glance as he reached the door, and a hand half raised in farewell.
Fare well, fare well. I hope you fare well.
She knew she would never see him again.
As Grannie stooped over the bed to kiss Claire in her turn, she murmured: ‘So that was Hector. Now I understand. Now I understand completely.’
Claire had already told Grannie everything, of course, and Grannie had been by turns shocked, entertained, furious, amazed and censorious. But Hector had, it seemed, banished all the negatives in one brief exchange of pleasantries.
He had been all Grannie had wanted to talk about in the intervening weeks: Hector Hector Hector. And now here she was, getting out of a taxi, beaming at Claire. She was wearing an elegant red coat, so striking in combination with her neat white hair. She took Claire’s good arm, just saying ‘You’ll see,’ when Claire asked where they were going.
Five minutes’ walk down South End Road, past the little run of up-market cafés, a bookshop, a tiny florist, Grannie relented. ‘We’re going to tea at a friend’s house.’
‘Which friend? Do I know them?’
‘You’ve met.’
The ridiculous hope that it might be Hector rushed into her head before she pushed it out again. Hector didn’t have a house in London. Did he? And even if he did, he wasn’t likely go along with some ridiculous matchmaking plan of Grannie’s.
Two minutes later they had left the bustle behind for the leafy serenity of Keats Grove, a narrow street of charming Georgian and Victorian and Arts and Crafts houses set back from the pavement behind hedges and shrubs and lines of trees bounding deep front gardens. This was one of the most exclusive areas of the city. Claire didn’t know anyone who lived here, surely? It had the feel of a village, with little garden gates and brick paths, lawns and shrubs and topiary and ivy-clad walls.
Grannie opened one of those little gates and they walked up a flagstone path to a Gothic Revival cottage with pointy, many-paned windows and the bones of a wisteria trained above the door. It reminded Claire a little of Pond Cottage.
Grannie rang the bell.
‘Are you going to tell me now –’ Claire began, but then the door opened and an elderly woman was smiling at them.
It was Frieda Mortimer. Jess White’s grandmother.
Claire gaped from one to the other, and both women laughed.
‘You know each other?’
‘We’ve never met, until today,’ said Frieda. ‘Phone calls only.’ She took Grannie’s hands in hers. ‘Evelyn, it’s so good to see you!’
Frieda showed them in to a beautiful large square sitting room furnished with an eclectic range of antiques, one whole wall floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A lady’s desk was positioned next to the shelves, angled to the windows that looked out onto a secluded rear garden. A fire crackled in the Victorian grate.
Grannie exclaimed over everything – the marble fireplace, the crewelwork cover on the sofa, the big Christmas cactus on a windowsill which was still flowering, the shocking pink blooms so perfect as to not look quite real.
Claire had never known two people to hit it off so well so quickly.
Or perhaps she had.
But she wasn’t going to think about that.
She was dying to know how – why – they had been in touch with each other, but now Frieda was bringing in a tray with a teapot and china cups on it, and Claire, taking it from her to set it on the coffee table, was transported back to the House of Pitfourie. To sitting in the drawing room with him, that first time.
‘Let’s keep her in suspense a little longer,’ said Frieda, and she and Grannie exchanged half-guilty looks, like naughty children. ‘We have a story to tell you, Claire, but let’s have our tea first.’
Claire sighed, and accepted a scone.
‘And how is Hector?’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve always liked a Scotsman. My husband, in fact, was one quarter Scots.’
Claire groaned inwardly. What was this? Some sort of intervention?
‘I’ve no idea.’
Another exchange of looks.
‘Jess wasn’t in his bedroom for any sort of shenanigans, you know,’ said Frieda blithely. ‘As your grandmother so cleverly deduced.’
‘Just call me Miss Marple,’ chuckled Grannie.
‘What?’
Frieda smiled, and shook her head, and set down her cup. ‘Evelyn, we mustn’t torture the poor girl. That scone is going to give you indigestion, Claire. Come along. We can have some fresh tea presently. Come along, Claire. I have something to show you that I think will be of interest.’
They followed her up a curving stair to a light, airy first floor landing.
Frieda opened a door to an immaculate bedroom, with pale blue walls and white furniture. On the wall opposite the double bed was a painting.
The painting!
The painting of the lady that Hector had stolen from Drumdargie Castle!
Grannie smiled. ‘Oh, Frieda, it’s wonderful. She’s lovely.’
‘It was painted in Berlin, in 1936,’ said Frieda, crossing the room to stand in front of the painting. ‘By Lotte Laserstein, just a year before she emigrated to Sweden. She was a Jew, you see. Zeit und Ort, the picture is ca
lled: The Time and the Place.’
So Frieda had commissioned Hector to steal this?
‘It’s a portrait of my mother,’ said Frieda simply.
‘Oh.’ Claire could see, now, a resemblance between the woman in the portrait and this formidable old lady standing at her side.
‘As far as I’m aware, it’s the only image of her that is extant. We lost all our family photographs in the War.’
Grannie touched Frieda’s arm. ‘How did Lotte Laserstein come to paint her? Did they know each other?’
‘No. My father commissioned her – she was then a young and fashionable up-and-coming artist – to paint this portrait as a wedding present for my mother.’
‘So how did Max Weber come to own it?’ said Claire.
‘And now we come to the nub of the matter.’ Frieda gestured to the chaise longue at the end of the bed and they sat down on it in a row, looking up at the painting like people in a gallery. ‘His grandfather, also Max Weber, also a dubious art dealer and collector, seems to have “acquired” it in 1938, as far as we can make out. We’ve been busy, you see, my granddaughter and I, attempting to locate the artworks stolen from our family during the War. Her husband Nick has more money than he knows what to do with, and it was his Christmas present to Jess last year – a pledge to fund a search, for as long as it took.’ Her eyes filmed with tears. ‘He is rather an amazing young man.’
‘You’re Jewish,’ Claire breathed.
‘Oh yes, I’m Jewish.’
Oh God.
That conversation at the dinner table at Aucharblet, the digs at the Twat about his antecedents and the Nazis... What must poor Frieda have been suffering, as she calmly cut into her fish?
‘This portrait was the only thing, really, that I cared about finding. We knew that the artwork in my grandparents’ home was mainly looted by Max Weber. It seems he had a contact in the Gestapo who tipped him off when raids were to take place on the homes of wealthy Jewish families. And in he would swoop, like a vulture. The problem was, of course, that looted art tends not to leave much of a trail. But we knew that his grandson Max was another such as he, and there were whispers of a secret art collection. We hoped – we dared to hope... My father had made a fuss, after the War, about the painting, and recruited Lotte Laserstein herself to the cause. It would have been risky for Max Weber Senior to try to sell it on, so we hoped it might still be in the hands of his family.’ She sighed. ‘Nick and Jess infiltrated the social set of his fiancée Perdita Jarvie. But then, disaster – his London home was undergoing refurbishment, and Max and Perdita fled the city.’