Altered Images

by Maxine Barry

  Detective Inspector Richard Braine of the Art Fraud Squad answered on the sixth ring. ‘Hello Richard?’ Lorcan said grimly. ‘I’ve got news for you. Yes. A nibble. A definite nibble. Yes, one of the students.’ He paused, listened, took a deep breath and another mouthful of wine.

  ‘Frederica Delacroix,’ he said, his voice as dead as the feeling in his heart.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Annis and the rest of the gang stepped off the train at Oxford’s station and stood, pooling their luggage around them on the platform.

  ‘Hardly a teaming metropolis is it?’ Gordon, the play’s ‘policeman’ said wryly.

  ‘You’re out in the boonies now dear,’ Gerry drawled cheerfully, her red hair newly-coloured and cut.

  ‘Well I for one am glad to be out of London for a little while,’ the ever-enthusiastic Julie said. ‘Just fancy—Oxford. I wonder where the dreaming spires are?’

  John laughed. ‘They’re not a theme park, Jules. They’ll be scattered about all over the place, I expect.’ Everyone laughed, collected their luggage, and set off, groaning, up the stairs. No moving escalators for Oxford, it seemed.

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ Norman puffed, ‘the delights of provincial . . . tours.’ Annis offered to carry one of his bags for him, and got a very sad look in return. They decided to share the cost of two taxis to their digs, and quickly piled in, chattering like magpies.

  Annis craned her neck for her first glimpse of the University city and the colleges with their crenellated, pale Cotswold stone walls. They’d arrived during the Exams season, when students on their way to Examination Schools were required to wear ‘sub fusc’—the black undergraduate gown—and caps. Tutors and Fellows, on their way to the Sheldonian Theatre for a special ceremony, could be seen walking down the streets, dressed in ceremonial robes that were everything from scarlet to royal purple, emerald to azure, yellow to pink. Some gowns even had ermine lapels and were lined with silk.

  Julie, her mouth open wide in astonishment as the taxi narrowly avoided knocking one magnificently capped, white-haired Fellow off his rather ancient bicycle, gave him a wave as she caught his eye. The Tutor, a Classics Don from Pembroke, gave the pretty little blonde girl a soft smile.

  ‘This town is amazing,’ Gordon spoke for them all as they passed the Randolph Hotel, the Memorial, and the façades of Balliol and St John’s Colleges on their right, and the Taylor Institution, Blackfriars and St Cross on their left. Then they were approaching the Banbury Road, with the out-of-place, modern glass and concrete building that was the Engineering Department, before heading for the hilly suburb of Headington. The big white building of the John Radcliffe Hospital dominated the skyline, but then they were twisting down side streets, finally pulling up outside a house that had obviously once been two semi-detached houses, but had been converted into one.

  The troupe of actors looked at the unprepossessing building with a mutual feeling of gloom. Pooling their change, they paid off the drivers and stood in silence on the pavement outside the lodging house. The garden was choked with weeds and the front door was slightly warped, its once-cheerful sky blue paint peeling badly.

  ‘Welcome to Bleak House,’ Gerry drawled as John knocked on the door. There was a muffled noise and then suddenly Mrs Clemence stood there in all her glory.

  She was a scrawny sparrow of a woman, with a thin neck and unsympathetic, brown eyes. She wore a dirty flowered apron and was smoking with gusto. ‘You’re the actors then?’ she hazarded, around the vile-smelling puffs.

  Annis’s stomach heaved uneasily as she imagined this woman standing over the stove, cooking their food.

  Norman Rix smiled. ‘Indeed we are, madam,’ he said.

  Mrs Clemence shot him a suspicious look. ‘Righto. I’ve got your rooms all ready for you. Doubles, all of ’em.’

  The house was full, which meant, Annis thought, that the amount of accommodation available in this city must be appallingly small.

  Annis’s mood nose-dived as she entered the room that she and Julie were to share. The two young women gazed around in acute dismay. ‘Oh no,’ Julie wailed. ‘She’s got to be kidding!’ But, Annis grimly suspected, Mrs Clemence wasn’t.

  The roof sloped in two places, which meant they’d have to spend their time permanently stooped if they didn’t want to keep banging their heads. The beds were of the steel-framed, folding variety, the kind you took on camping holidays. The reason for this, it was plain to see, was that proper single beds simply wouldn’t have fitted in. There was one wardrobe, which had about enough room to hang a hat and dress if they were size eight, and a set of drawers that had been placed precariously on the deep windowsill, blocking out the light, that being the only place it would fit in. The walls were damp.

  ‘Do you think the boys would do a swap with us?’ Julie asked hopefully.

  Annis, much more conversant with the current state of male gallantry, snorted inelegantly. ‘Fat chance.’

  She walked to one of the beds, banged her head on the ceiling, sat down, shot up as the bed wobbled and threatened to collapse under her, banged her head on the ceiling again, and duck-walked back to the door. ‘This is impossible,’ she snarled. She slung her unopened suitcase on to the floor, her elbow banging into Julie’s rib as she did so. The younger actress yelped, Annis apologised, and backed out. ‘Look, you unpack first,’ Annis offered, summoning up the last dregs of her patience. ‘There isn’t room for both of us in here at the same time. I’ll go downstairs for a cup of tea and then come up and do my own unpacking.’

  But there was to be no tea. Mrs Clemence, it seemed, had a strict ‘kitchen-exclusion zone’ when it came to her boarders. Annis suspected that the landlady simply didn’t want her paying guests to see the state of her kitchen. Even though the kitchen door was closed, the rank smell of stale grease wafted up through the rest of the house.

  As she turned to leave, her landlady reminded her that hot water was scarce, and she had her regular boarders to think of, so to be sure and tell the others not to have a bath too often. The sitting room was a study in clashing colours—salmon pink walls and dark red carpet. The sofa and chairs were horsehair and itched like hell.

  By now, Annis had come to the conclusion that this was no accident. Mrs Clemence obviously didn’t like having people under her feet all day long, and nobody in their right mind would want to sit on her furniture for more than a minute. In despair, Annis wandered out into the garden—or rather, weed and nettle patch. There wasn’t even a plastic garden chair to sit on. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ she snarled, and marched to the gate.

  She knew Reeve had driven up to Oxford last night, and had overheard him talking to Gordon and Norman about the bizarre address of his friend’s house. What the hell was the name of that street? Something really odd. Squitchey Lane? Yes, that was it. She found a bus stop at the end of the cul-de-sac and, asking the bus driver’s advice, got off at a stop that would take her to within walking distance of it.

  * * *

  Reeve stepped under the needle-sharp power-spray shower and sang happily as he washed his dark curly hair, gargling under the spray and soaping himself all over in Vince’s luxurious shower gel. When he was finished, he wrapped a voluminous fluffy towel around his waist and padded down the spiral staircase, across a deep-piled carpet, and into the conservatory. There he stretched out on a sun-lounger, and sipped the long cool glass of lemonade he’d made up earlier, chinking the ice-cubes thoughtfully.

  May was in one of its sweltering moods, and he had all the windows, including the French windows, open to allow a pleasant breeze to stir the wonderfully fragrant orange blossom that was growing along one glass wall. The house was modest in proportion, but Vince had decked it out like a single man’s dream. The bed in the master bedroom was king-sized, black-satin sheeted, and round. In the en-suite bathroom next to it was a sunken bath with gold taps, surrounded by mirrors. The ground floor was carpeted throughout in expensive white Axminster, the couches deep cream lea
ther, the tables smoky glass. It was air-conditioned throughout. The built-in stereo and sound system came with more hidden speakers than MI5 owned. All in all, Reeve was sure he could put up with it for the next week or so.

  They’d come to Oxford early because Ray had wanted them to get a feel for the city. All the cast had also been given chunky dossiers about the way publishing companies worked, the idea being that they were to absorb as much about that industry as possible, so that the real delegates wouldn’t be able to distinguish the actors from the real members of their profession. Reeve leaned back on the lounger and opened one curious eye as, outside the open French windows, he heard a loud ‘craccckkk’.

  Annis, who’d just trodden on a dry twig, instantly froze. She’d found Squitchey Lane easily, and a few enquiries of the neighbours had quickly pointed her in the direction of Vince Margetti’s house. It was set in grounds of busily blossoming rhododendrons and azaleas, bubbling carp ponds and velvety-green lawns. She’d crept into the garden and been staring at the house with a mixture of rage, envy and indecision, when she’d seen a naked figure walk past the window.

  At least, he’d looked naked, from the waist up. His dark curly hair was still clearly wet from a shower, and his bronzed chest had been mute testimony to the sunbathing he’d already managed to get in. As she’d followed his progress through the house, sneaking from rhododendron bush to rhododendron bush, she eventually saw him emerge into the conservatory, a white towel wrapped around his waist, bare shins and calves still glistening with water.

  Annis’s breath caught as she watched him stretch out on the brightly-patterned sun lounger, the towel falling perilously open as he moved. She caught a brief glimpse of hard, muscled thigh, the merest dark shadow of hair and . . . then he was lying down. Sipping a glass of something long and maddeningly cool, he looked like a Roman Emperor about to have someone peel him a grape—whilst she couldn’t even get access to a kitchen! It was then that she had stood on a fallen twig.

  Inside, Reeve got up and walked slowly to the entrance to the doorway, looking out. Vince had the house outfitted with the latest burglar alarms and gadgets, but they were all turned off at the moment. But something had definitely made a noise out there in the garden. Reeve shrugged. Probably a cat. He turned, and then caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash of dark hair swinging around a shoulder.

  He gazed at a rhododendron bush full of hot-pink flowers. And detected a rounded blue rump. Blue jeans and female. There was only one woman he knew who had such a deliciously rounded derrière as that.

  Annis froze, head down, and waited. It would be too much if he found her, skulking about in here. Now that she had actually arrived, there was no damned way she was going to ask if his offer of a room was still available. She’d perish before she’d ask him for a favour now. She told herself firmly that her room back at Mrs Clemence’s wasn’t all that bad.

  She held her breath. Had he gone yet?

  Reeve grinned, long and slow. Then he turned and went back to his sun lounger and icy drink.

  * * *

  ‘Look who’s dropped in!’ Gerry drawled.

  It was six-thirty in the evening, and they were all sitting out in the garden, John and Gordon having cleared a space in the stinging nettles that afternoon. Everyone looked up as the gate creaked—there wasn’t anything in the boarding house that didn’t—and everyone slow hand-clapped as Reeve walked up the uneven path, tripping over a broken paving stone.

  ‘How the other half live!’ he greeted them with a wide smile, his sapphire-blue eyes twinkling with amusement. Annis, who’d seen for herself just how he was living, bared her teeth in a ferocious smile.

  ‘So, what do you think of our esteemed landlady’s abode?’ Norman, wincing as a stray nettle attacked his ankle, spread a fulsome arm towards the house. Reeve looked at the grey concrete oblong house, and was reminded of a prison.

  He grimaced. ‘Oh, very “DesRes”.’

  ‘Hope nobody wants a shower,’ Julie, coming through the door, called out gaily. ‘There’s no hot water. And there’s a spider in the overflow. It keeps hiding in ambush, waiting to crawl out whenever you turn on the taps—so watch out!’

  Annis, who loathed spiders, shuddered visibly.

  ‘Oh joy,’ Gerry drawled, and lit yet another cigarette.

  Annis, who didn’t much care for passive smoking, moved a little further away from her. The ten days in Oxford, which had initially looked like being such a pleasant working holiday, were fast taking on all the appeal of an endurance test.

  Reeve nudged John over and sat down on the blanket beside them, wincing at the stone that bit into his backside. ‘Wouldn’t it be better inside?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ the chorus of voices was unanimous and emphatic, and Reeve grinned. He couldn’t help it. No wonder Annis had come calling on him this afternoon. One look at this place was enough for any sane, sensible person to realise that they wouldn’t want to stay in it. If they had a choice, that is.

  ‘So, who’s had a chance to read the “publishing company” blurb?’ he asked, deeming it prudent not to mention his own state-of-the-art, bachelor’s-fantasy digs.

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Gordon growled. ‘We’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Are we going to look around the college tomorrow?’ Julie asked. ‘St Bede’s I mean? You know, get a feel for the place.’

  ‘Can we just go in and wander around?’ John asked.

  ‘I think so,’ Reeve replied. ‘They’re fairly public places. St Bede’s has pretty gardens, apparently. The silver birches are quite famous—like Christ Church’s deer, and Worcester’s lake and tame squirrels.’

  ‘Who’s been a good boy and done all his homework then?’ Annis drawled, wanting to hit him, and kiss him, at one and the same time. She was particularly irritated by the way he was lounging on the blanket, oozing male hormones like a . . . like a sultan surrounded by his seraglio!’

  She’d had to buy a warm can of coke from a shop on the way back, and she was damned sure it hadn’t tasted as good as whatever it was he’d been drinking in that glamorous house! Suddenly she felt thirsty again.

  By mutual consent, they retired to a pub, where Julie, pumped artfully by Reeve, described the horrors of her room, the rickety beds, the killer ceiling, and the dire state of the kitchen. Afterwards, they took a bus to a green and pleasant park there, and as dusk fell, wandered off in groups—Gerry and Norman, to talk about ‘the old days’ and Julie, John and Gordon to plot about ways of foiling Mrs Clemence’s ‘no kitchen’ rule.

  Annis let Reeve lead her to a pretty bridge over the river Cherwell. There she leaned on the white-painted railings, under the willow branches, and stared down into the placid water.

  She could feel him beside her, like a burst of energy. When he leaned on the iron railing beside her, she could see the way the summer’s breeze toyed with the silken strands of hairs on his forearms. She could smell a wonderful aroma rising from his warm skin—expensive toiletries and clean, intoxicating maleness. The combination made her knees wobble in sudden weakness.

  ‘So, the digs are a bit of a nightmare then?’ he mused innocently, looking out over the river, biting back a grin as he remembered her skulking in the shrubbery.

  ‘Reeve,’ she said sweetly, ‘do you want to get pushed into the river?’

  ‘Annis,’ he said equally sweetly, ‘would you like the spare room at my place?’

  Annis longed to say no. Literally itched to throw his offer back in his face. But the memory of Mrs Clemence was too strong. And the memory of him, walking about in only a towel, was even stronger.

  ‘Reeve,’ she said softly, ‘I thought you were never going to ask!’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lorcan spotted one of the Ruskin secretaries, just on her way into the office, and hailed her. ‘Hello. I’m looking for one of the students. Frederica Delacroix? She’s not here. I don’t suppose you know where I could find her?’

  Even as he aske
d, he mentally winced. Was she wondering why he wanted to know? Was his own weakness carved on his face, obvious for anybody to see. I need to see Frederica.

  But the secretary merely shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mr Greene. You could try Queen’s Lane Coffee House—that’s the favourite student hangout at the moment.’

  Lorcan thanked her and made his way there. Richard, he knew, was checking up on her at his end, but he doubted that he’d find anything. Although the Art Fraud Squad had a huge source of information at their fingertips, his gut instinct told him that Frederica had only recently fallen in with whatever gang was behind this Oxford job. For one thing, she was still too young for this to be anything but her first forgery job. No, the more he was around her, the more sure he was that she was a kid who’d just got in over her head. Not a hardened criminal. He couldn’t believe she was crooked.

  Couldn’t, or didn’t want to, a voice mocked him from deep inside his head. Grimly, he shook the thought off. He had enough to cope with without that. Without contemplating the incredible, hideous, ridiculous thought that, at his age, he might be falling in love with a woman barely out of her teens!

  At the coffee house he found a third-year printmaker who told him that Frederica had gone home for the weekend.

  With Frederica out of the way . . . He returned to the Ruskin, relieved to find that the third floor contained only an absorbed sculptor and a few first-year students chattering about the evil-mindedness of exam-setters.

  Frederica’s work space was empty. Casting a quick glance around, he walked to a covered canvas set up on her easel, and lifted the sheet off. He recognised the canvas as the one she’d been preparing the previous week. It was now clean and dry, and just didn’t have the look of a modem weave.

  He leaned forward, picking out faint lines already marking the piece. For a second or two they puzzled him—they were hardly bold, preliminary outlines, such as he would have expected from an artist of her confidence and calibre. Instead, in faint relief, was . . . yes . . . a building of some kind, perhaps a barn? And the beginnings of . . . water? Trees in the background, a large expanse of sky . . . ?