by Dan Latus
‘Security is always a compromise,’ I told her. ‘The more you have, the more you pay, but it’s never absolute anyway. A good man – or a bad one – can always break through, given enough time and determination.
‘Besides, you have to consider what kind of a place you want here. You’re not trying to keep people out. You want the gallery to be welcoming and attractive to people, presumably, not a Fort Knox designed to stop anyone getting inside. What I’m proposing should be more than enough for what you have here. Have you had any problems, by the way?’
‘Nothing serious – yet.’
‘Let’s keep it that way. I’ll do some detailed costing and come back to you with my ideas. Then, if you’re still interested, I’ll get the hardware and software ordered. I think you should tag items with sensors that will alert someone if they are touched or moved. Meantime, there are some simple things that you can do yourself.’
‘Oh? Like what?’
‘Well, for one, I’d like you to make sure you’re happy about everyone who works here. A lot of the thefts that do occur from art galleries involve insider assistance. Let’s try and rule that out.
‘Then I’d like you to think about how you organize your exhibitions and displays a bit more. Your most valuable items should be in the safest part of the gallery, or the part hardest to reach. Don’t have them where someone can break a window, reach through and grab them.
‘There’s also some practical things worth doing on the outside of the building. You have unprotected glass on the roof. We need either to encase it or to fit bars, so someone can’t just shin up a drainpipe, tap the glass out and let themselves in the easy way.
‘External windows need protecting for the same reason. And outside the entrance you need some sort of impediment to stop someone crashing a stolen vehicle through the doors. Bollards, or something similar, would do it. Decorative street furniture, perhaps? A sculpture or two?’
She was looking doubtful.
‘Jac, big museums have had priceless artefacts stolen in less than a minute by people who have smashed a window, climbed in and helped themselves and been away again before the alarms have got into their stride. You can’t depend totally on alarms and motion sensors, or any other kind of electronic device.’
‘I suppose …’ she started, ‘but what…?’
‘I know an architect who would be glad to advise you on a sensitive approach to fitting these kinds of things. He’s good. It’s not hi-tech,’ I added, ‘but it can be better than that – more effective.’
She smiled at last. ‘OK, Frank. That makes sense.’
‘He lives in York. Mostly he protects medieval windows. I’ll contact him for you, if you like?’
‘Thank you, Frank. I would appreciate it. Gosh!’ she added. ‘There’s more to this than I thought.’
‘A lot of it’s just common sense, and experience. You could skip the electronics altogether and still make the place a lot more secure than it currently is.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m happy with what you’ve told me. Let’s do what you’re suggesting.’
‘Good. I don’t think you’ll regret it.’ I stirred my coffee. ‘It’s a very nice gallery, by the way. How long have you been going?’
‘A year. A little more.’ She shrugged. ‘We’re not pulling up trees yet, but we’re doing OK. Better than I expected, the truth be told.’
I nodded. ‘You seem to employ a few people?’
‘More than you might think, actually.’ She smiled. ‘Probably like you?’
‘I don’t employ anyone.’
‘No one at all?’
‘No. Not one. That suits me best. No one to argue with, that way.’
‘Is that what you do – argue a lot?’
I grinned. ‘So people say. Ask Lydia.’
‘Maybe I will.’ She threw back her head and laughed, exposing a milk-white throat that I felt a sudden urge to lick. ‘But you don’t seem the aggressively argumentative type to me,’ she added.
‘No. I’m a real softy.’
Somehow I had amused her. I could tell. I felt pleased with myself.
‘How did you get into the gallery business?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve always been involved with the visual arts. School, college, etcetera. I liked painting. I still do. But I took stock and decided I was never going to make a decent living out of my pictures. This was a way of keeping in touch. I like what I do here anyway. I discovered a flair for business I hadn’t realized I had.’
If this was all hers, she probably did have a flair. She had done well here.
‘How about you?’ she added.
‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ I said, draining my cup and making moves to be on my way.
‘Too long for now?’ she asked archly.
I nodded.
‘Some other time, perhaps?’
‘Some other time,’ I agreed with a smile as I stood up.
‘Oh, by the way, Jac, there’s an art centre opened recently not far from where I live. Meridion House, just outside Port Holland. You haven’t heard of it, have you?’
She thought for a moment and shook her head. ‘What do they do?’
‘No idea. I can’t find anything about it. When I turned up this morning, the gatekeeper wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it either.’
She frowned. ‘Perhaps they’re not up and running yet?’
‘They’ve been going a year, apparently, like you.’
‘It sounds an odd sort of place.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. It’s always good to know what’s happening in the region.’
As I made my way out, I saw a little knot of young people who had wandered in off the street and were excitedly discussing a painting. I smiled. This was a very different place altogether to Meridion House.
Back outside, I looked up and saw Jac standing at the window of her office. She gave me a wave and I waved back. I found myself looking forward to seeing her again.
16
Iwas drawn back to the beach at Port Holland. It was hard to say why exactly. Just a feeling that important things might happen there. Probably the boat was at the heart of my wondering. It was so big and improbable a vessel to find in that particular place. The only other boats to call Port Holland home these days were a few fishing cobles, good enough in their own way but nothing compared with Meridion.
From the beach Meridion looked big, but from the start of the jetty it seemed enormous, a real oligarch’s yacht. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it was one of those with its own submarine and helicopter. Probably a missile battery, as well, in case the mackerel started attacking in numbers.
‘What do you want?’
I turned. Three men were walking towards me. Crew members, I assumed. They were dressed alike, in navy trousers and sweaters, and padded jackets.
‘I don’t want anything,’ I told the spokesman. ‘Just having a look round.’
Unsmiling, he stared hard at me and said, ‘Get off the jetty. We’ve got work to do.’
‘I wasn’t aware this was private property.’
‘Get off – now!’
They were a tough-looking trio, and more than I could handle. I took out my mobile and started punching in numbers.
‘I’m calling the police,’ I said mildly. ‘My friends there will be interested to hear that someone in a public place is being threatened by gentlemen from a foreign-owned yacht.’
I paused, my thumb over the call button. ‘What’s it to be, fellas? You want me to take this further?’
‘By the time they get here,’ the spokesman said, ‘there won’t be much left of you to find.’
‘I’m prepared to take the risk.’
Staring hard back at him, I pressed ‘Call’.
He couldn’t handle that. He glowered at me and beckoned to the others. They all walked past, heading for the boat.
‘Don’t get in the way!’ he snapped over his shoulder.
Nice people, I thought. Why would the owner of a big, posh boat want crew like that? It wasn’t as if this was the Somali coast.
The encounter had intrigued me. I didn’t stay on the jetty much longer, but I didn’t leave Port Holland either. I climbed back up the cliff and settled down to wait and watch for a while. I wondered what work was planned for the jetty, or for the boat. Whatever it was, there didn’t seem to be any hurry about it. Nothing happened for an hour or so.
By then, I was pretty well frozen and about ready to give up. I was feeling despondent, as well, having wasted some of the few hours of good daylight available in mid-November. If the guys on the jetty hadn’t been so threatening I would have left long since, I told myself. Probably I wouldn’t even have stayed at all. I had better things to do than this.
Then a burst of activity aboard Meridion changed all that and made me forget my discomfort. The rear flap I had seen in action before opened and three crew members emerged from the interior of the boat. They walked briskly along the jetty and up across the sand and shingle to join a couple more men in the same uniform who seemed to have emerged from the tunnel.
Interesting. Something was happening at last. I could hardly wait!
There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing around the entrance to the tunnel. A couple of men laid boards across the sand, and then several trolleys bearing big wooden crates were wheeled across them.
Once on the jetty, the trolleys were rolled quickly along to the boat, across a ramp and into the cavernous interior.
I counted six crates, each about ten feet long and four high and wide. Once aboard, the big flap swung slowly shut again. Some of the crew stayed on board. The others returned along the jetty with the empty trolleys, and headed back up towards the tunnel. I watched until the door at the entrance swung shut, with them inside.
I felt vindicated. There was no way that tunnel was just a storage shed.
As for the crates…. Well, what did you put in big wooden crates that you then put on a big, fancy boat, and all this in a ruined harbour on the North Yorkshire coast? I had my suspicions, but they were bordering on fantasy. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had them at all if I hadn’t been challenged so threateningly on the jetty.
That was Bill Peart’s opinion as well.
‘Loading stuff in broad daylight that they took from their own property and placed on their own boat?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
I sighed. ‘You weren’t there. You weren’t threatened. In a public place, as well.’
‘Do you want to make a formal complaint?’
‘No. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Well, then. They’ve rebuilt the jetty with their own money, as I understand it. And with an expensive boat like that, they’ve got to be security conscious. Besides, you’re a suspicious-looking character.’
‘Thanks, Bill.’
I thought hard about what I’d seen. ‘There were no markings on the crates.’
‘So?’
‘They looked new. Well made, too. They must have had something heavy in them, all those guys to push them. And valuable.’
Bill shrugged. His complacent silence was getting on my nerves.
‘There’s no road down to the beach there, Bill. Whatever the crates were holding, they came out of that bloody tunnel.’
He swigged the last of his coffee and held out the mug for a refill.
‘Get it yourself!’
He did. Then he stood over me, lording it, and suddenly I knew. I stared at him. He shrugged.
‘You know what they’re doing, don’t you?’
He nodded.
‘What?’
‘I can’t tell you. If I did, I’d have to—’
‘Don’t bother with the rest,’ I snorted. ‘And if you think you can just come here when you’re cold and wet, and drink my coffee, you can—’
‘National security,’ he said sharply, cutting me off. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’
I stared at him. ‘You’re kidding?’
He shook his head. ‘I wish I was. I’ve been warned off.’
‘Warned off what?’
‘Can’t tell you.’
‘What about the bodies? Are you warned off them, as well?’
‘No. The case goes on. But it’s nothing to do with Meridion House. I’ve been told.’
‘And you can accept that?’
‘I’ve got a pension to consider. The payment start date is coming up fast.’
‘I hope I’m never as old as you,’ I said bitterly.
‘There’s no chance of that, the way you’re going on.’
Then he left.
17
At half-tide I went down the cliff path near my place again. There were three fishermen’s huts at the bottom, on our little beach. One was Jimmy’s main storage place, where he kept nets and tools, and various paraphernalia he needed for the boat. Not that he went there much these days, and even then only when the sun was shining.
A second hut was also Jimmy’s, by inheritance. It had belonged to his uncle but it wasn’t up to much now, and it got used even less than his main hut. The third hut wasn’t much better. It belonged to a fisherman even older than Jimmy, and in the past year or two arthritis and other maladies had kept him away so long you could say it was disused. Increasingly, Jimmy’s main hut was heading in the same direction. The path down to the beach was a young man’s path.
There were no locks on any of the hut doors; they weren’t needed. Probably there were only three or four people in the entire world who even knew the huts existed. I had a look inside them.
Only Jimmy’s was what you might call habitable, and even then it was marginal. It did have a bunk bed for occasional use, but there wasn’t any bedding there now. It also had a chair and a pot-bellied, cast-iron stove in which you could burn driftwood and anything else you could find. You could make toast on it, as well. Or roast potatoes and fish. Jimmy and I had done that together a few times, while we waited for the tide or dried off and recovered from our exertions.
The hut was seldom used now, but the stove had been lit in the recent past and there were still breadcrumbs on the little table that the local mice had somehow missed. Perhaps the mice had gone away, emigrated, despairing of huts so long disused. I closed the door carefully and wedged it shut. Then I began the long climb back up the cliff.
The answerphone was flashing when I got back to the house. I pressed the play button.
The message was from a Mr Borovsky, who claimed to be the owner of the Meridion House Art Centre. His accent was obviously foreign, but he was nevertheless an articulate English speaker.
He said he understood that I had paid the centre a visit and been turned back. He was sorry about that. He had not been at home when I called.
The centre was not open to the public. However, he was anxious to cultivate good relations with the local community and he would be happy to meet me and show me around, if I was still interested. Ten o’clock tomorrow would be perfect from his point of view. He would be sure to be home then.
That rather pulled the rug out from beneath me. National security? What on earth had Bill Peart been talking about? There couldn’t be much mystery about the place if the owner was prepared to go to this much trouble. As Groucho Marx might have said: Was it somewhere worth visiting now that I had an invitation?
For the next hour I got on with the job of ordering the equipment I needed for Jac Picknett’s art gallery. I also left a message for my architect friend in York. It was a relief to have something tangible to think about and to do.
But then I came back to the girl, and the agonizing question of whether she was still alive or not. What had happened to her after she’d left here? The uncertainty and my fears for her were wearing me down.
Then the thought of the men in the blue Volkswagen Passat, and how I had seen such a car passing through the gateway
to Meridion House, came to mind. I knew I had to go there, if only to rule that car out. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow at ten.
Right now, though, I had to get to Middlesbrough to bring Mr Mack back home.
As I might have anticipated, Jimmy wasn’t in the most pleasant and cooperative of moods. He had been cooped up too long.
‘What kept you?’ he demanded as soon as I walked through the door. ‘I’ve been sitting here waiting.’
I glanced at my watch. I was late, it was true. Five minutes late.
I made an offering. ‘The traffic, Jim. It was very heavy.’
He scowled and shuffled to his feet. A passing nurse raised her eyebrows. I picked up his bag.
‘I thought you liked it here,’ I said mildly.
‘Liked it?’ He snorted with derision. ‘You stay here a few days, and see how you like it.’
‘Now, now, Mr Mack!’ the nurse called across the ward. ‘Don’t you be giving us a bad name.’
‘I’ll see he doesn’t,’ I assured her.
She grinned and waved us off.
‘Sounds like you’ve overstayed your welcome,’ I suggested.
‘Them nurses! They think they’re God Almighty.’
‘So you’ve met your match?’
He didn’t say anything else until we were in the Land Rover, the miserable old bugger. Then he said, ‘Found that girl yet?’
‘Nope.’
‘Thought as much. She still around?’
‘How the hell do I know? I haven’t seen her. That’s all I know.’
For the first time, Jimmy smiled. Then he nodded as I started the engine. ‘You can always tell,’ he said mysteriously.
‘You can, eh? And how do I do that?’
‘Missing any food?’ he asked. ‘Anything you thought you had, and now you find you don’t?
For a moment it didn’t click. Then I shook my head, chuckled and glanced at him with admiration. ‘You cunning old sod!’
I got him settled in his own place and left him to it. He could manage, and he wanted to be alone. That was what I wanted by then, too: Jimmy Mack left alone. Also, I wanted to see if I was missing any more food.