by Jean Chapman
At that moment Cathy came hurrying to them. ‘Auntie Karen says … she can’t find … Munch,’ she said, adding, ‘I let him out into the garden ages ago. Is it my fault? Does he not … be let out?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Toby reassured her, ‘we’ve made sure the garden is dog-proof, but come on, we’ll all look round. We’ll find him. Don’t worry.’
Cathy became more and more distressed as they looked and called.
Higham vetoed any of them going out into the streets to search.
‘That will not include Karen and myself,’ Toby stated.
‘And I’ll go,’ Liz said.
‘I want to help,’ Cathy said.
‘You help by staying here with me and your mother, and John,’ Higham said equally firmly.
‘I was … the last one to see Munch. I … have to go.’
‘No!’ Higham exclaimed. ‘No.’
‘You …’ his daughter said with as much vehemence as her father, ‘try to make me … a prisoner. I am going.’
Higham looked as if he had been struck.
‘Cathy can come with Karen and me,’ Toby said. ‘We’re hardly going to let anything happen to her.’
‘My daughter is under my protection –’ Higham began.
‘I shall soon be … eighteen … and able to please myself.’
Higham looked as if there were other measures he might resort to, but even as he was reminding her she was not of age yet, Toby said, ‘Come on, Cathy, you call his name and I’ll whistle. We’ll start in the garden just in case he’s asleep under a bush.’
Cannon watched Higham’s face; from the man’s expression there would be repercussions from this mini-rebellion.
There were sadly no results from the search for Munch, though they scoured the neighbourhood. Cathy came back in tears. ‘It is punishment for being disrespectful,’ she said.
‘Nonsense!’ Her mother vetoed the idea. ‘The dog’s probably got himself a lady-friend somewhere.’
‘He’ll probably come home when he’s really hungry,’ Toby said. ‘Come on, Cathy, no more tears. It will soon be time for Liz and John to go. What have you got arranged for tomorrow?’
Cannon was remembering the last time he had seen someone so distressed over a missing dog – that had been Timmy Riley. Now it was Cathy Higham. And the link? An over-devoted father?
‘A punishment for being disrespectful!’ Liz repeated Cathy’s words as they walked back to their hotel that evening. ‘The girl’s been over-protected; she knows little of normal life as far as I can see.’
‘And does she have the talent her brother thinks she has?’
Liz stopped walking and took a folder from under her arm. ‘We’ve swapped sketchbooks. We’re going to give each other a crit about our work.’ She opened the book at the last page worked on, the still life set up that day.
‘Well, that looks pretty good to me …’ he began.
‘Yes, but look at the background she’s sketched in,’ she said.
‘Like cloud effects, yes, if those were in, say …’ He frowned then added, ‘Well, they’re kind of more the sort of thing you do in your landscapes.’
‘And they’d be spectacular but she’s never done landscape. She’s been restricted to the art at her special academic-slanted school. They had an art teacher come in, who she said was about a hundred, and they did still life and botanical studies. She copies with amazing skill but she also has imagination like Toby. She needs an outlet.’ She fanned through the pages and he saw that every still life had been given a background, each botanical study of leaves, flower and root had the suggestion of a garden behind it.
‘I can see what you mean,’ he said, ‘but we are here to help keep the family safe, not improve Cathy’s art.’
‘Having seen her work and enthusiasm, I feel it’s a mission,’ Liz replied. ‘My mission if you like. Devotion is all very well in its place, but when it gets out of all proportion it’s maudlin, wrong!’
Cannon sighed. ‘I’ll just be glad when this dog is found,’ he said. ‘It’s getting too familiar: lost dogs; dogs shut in sheds; dogs tied up to garden urns and line-posts.’
‘So what are you going to suggest the family do?’ she asked.
‘As soon as we get to the hotel, I’m going to have a talk to Betterson.’
Once the DI was free to talk, Cannon brought him up to date with events, after which there was a moment’s serious silence. When he told him of his suspicions that Bliss and Heaven might be the same professor, there was a longer silence.
‘I’ll look into it – discreetly, I think,’ Betterson said. ‘Work forward from the date of the brother’s death; we know his name would be Heaven. Only ever come across the surname once before,’ the DI added. ‘A romantic novelist my mother used to read.’
‘There’s something else that’s bothering me,’ Cannon heard himself say, and until that moment he was not sure he had seriously intended to voice this concern; it was more theory than fact.
‘Go on,’ Betterson said.
‘First there was the strange figure drawn on Higham’s car in London, then the wound to Ford’s chest, the slash across the carpet, and now this. A drawing cut out so cleanly while it was mounted on a board on a wall, not easy to do. I …’ He hesitated but he’d gone so far now he told himself he might as well finish. ‘Bliss has a large collection of walking sticks in his shop, one I thought seemed heavy for its slender shaft, much heavier that the others. I didn’t think of it at the time but now I’m wondering if it could have been a sword-stick. This could be the way a blade was carried undetected around London, Lincolnshire, perhaps even here in Oslo.’
Again there was a silence, then Betterson said, ‘But if it was used to cut out the father in the drawing, Bliss would have had to get it through customs, and it could not have been still in the shop when you last went there.’
‘No, not the same one,’ Cannon agreed, ‘but there was another that was there, a great heavy beast of a stick, like an Irish shillelagh …’
Christ!’ Betterson breathed. ‘You’re thinking of Riley?’
‘It was distinctive,’ Cannon went on, ignoring the query. ‘The whole stick was in dark wood, heavy, very polished as if with regular use, a businesslike …’
‘Weapon,’ Betterson finished for him, ‘and you want me to find it and let forensics …’
The line crackled, cut out for a moment then came back, and Cannon added hastily, ‘See if you can trace where Bliss is now through these sales Mavis Moyle says he’s been to,’ Cannon said.
There was another slight pause, as if Betterson was weighing his own position and Cannon’s suggestions and value out there at Higham’s side.
‘OK,’ he agreed, ‘but you keep me informed of anything new your end, anything.’
‘Of course,’ Cannon said, sensing that now he had a proper ‘professional’ understanding with the DI. ‘We can go forward on that.’
Chapter 16
Heart-thumping alarm was Mavis Moyle’s reaction to the noise that woke her. She sat up and listened. Nothing, but she had certainly not imagined it, or dreamt it. Had it been the sound of glass shattering? She frowned; no, it had been more like something falling, rattling down, and even as she listened the noise came again. She slipped out of bed and went to the front window of her cottage and peered cautiously out.
The moon was behind cloud but the white van parked outside Michael Bliss’s shop stood out very clearly. Even as she watched, the large dark shape of a man passed along the side of the van. The back doors were open and he disappeared for a moment. She could hear the sound of objects knocking together as he loaded them into the vehicle. He emerged, retraced a few steps, bent to scoop something up from the pavement he must have dropped, turned, put this into the van, then went back towards the shop.
So the antique shop she was in charge of was being robbed, but why hadn’t the alarm gone off? As she reached for her phone, she was racking her brain to make sure she reme
mbered setting the alarm – it was something she did quite automatically. The thought made her stomach turn; surely she had gone through the procedure?
She reached for her mobile, pressed 999 and asked for police, whispering, for the man she had seen could be one of several, a gang.
‘The police are on their way,’ she was told as soon as she had given the address and circumstances, then she was asked, ‘Are you safe?’
‘I’m in my bedroom next to the shop,’ she told the calm, reassuring woman on the other end of the phone.
‘Stay where you are and keep away from the windows,’ she was told.
‘Damn it,’ she breathed, when she had disconnected, ‘I should see as much as I can, I owe it to the prof.’
Then she heard an engine starting up, and rushed back to the window in time to see the van moving away. Now she pushed the curtains aside, trying to see the number plate, but all she could make out was that it had an advertisement on its side, bold black letters made into a square with an exclamation mark at the end of the first three words and below a question mark at the end of the second three words.
‘Oh! No!’ she exclaimed. She knew exactly what it said without being able to see the words. “Hire a Van! With a Man?” The prof often hired a van liked this, and with a man if he bought large objects. What she had seen being reloaded could have been packing materials – and she’d sent for the police! She went downstairs as fast as she could. She slipped her feet into her outdoor shoes, unlocked the door and stepped outside. A first bird piped that dawn was breaking, and in the distance she heard the siren of a police car. The air was chill, a promise of winter coming. She went back and put an outdoor coat over her pyjamas, and waited.
She soon realized that the police siren she had thought was hurtling to answer her call was in fact moving away, towards the main road.
Slowly she walked down her garden path to the front gate and noticed there was a light on somewhere in the back of the shop. It must be the prof come home specially to receive this early-morning delivery. But why on earth this early? Was he up to something he shouldn’t be? She smiled at the thought. She would pull his leg about it and tell him off about his hired man making such a clatter.
She was surprised to find the shop door wide open, pushed right back, but because the light was coming from his office, and convinced it was her employer, she called out, ‘Hello! Mr Bliss! It’s Mavis.’
Her words hit a blank wall of unresponsive silence, but she called again and walked through the gloom of the shop towards the office. She could see things had been moved, but this often had to be done if something large was delivered.
‘Mr Bliss?’ she enquired at the office door.
The office was empty but the main switches to the shop were here, and she flicked the whole lot on and walked back into the shop proper – and gasped.
Betterson had a lot to tell Cannon the following night when he rang. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ he asked.
‘Couldn’t be more so,’ a pyjama-clad Cannon said, lying back on his great square pillow, being handed a glass of wine from the mini-bar by Liz.
‘Sorry it’s late but I’ve been waiting on some forensic results.’
‘Sounds ominous,’ Cannon said. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Bliss’s antique shop has been raided.’ He told Cannon of the robbery and what Mavis Moyle had seen.
Once more Cannon beckoned Liz to come and listen, switching to speakerphone so they could both hear.
‘It was hardly burglary,’ Betterson went on. ‘Whoever did the job had a key and the code to the burglar alarm. The last prints that should have been on those buttons, Mavis’s, were all smudged; someone with gloves on had switched the alarm off.
‘The shop’s been stripped of all the jewellery items, and again these were in locked cabinets, which had been unlocked with the keys. Then …’ Betterson paused to draw breath as if to impart the most important piece of news. ‘Then, although there were plenty of other more portable objects that could have been taken, the other collection that has gone is the walking sticks you asked me to look at – every last one.’
Cannon sat up and put his drink down. ‘The walking sticks,’ he repeated.
‘Not one left in the shop, and Mavis Moyle said there were a lot, and in several different places.’
‘But it wasn’t Bliss himself Mavis thought she saw?’ he asked.
‘No, a big man, she said, and the forensics that have just come have proved her right.’
‘How?’ Cannon wanted to know.
‘Mavis told us Bliss is a regular customer with this van hire company. We’ve been to see them, and found Bliss had phoned to say he would probably be making internet bids on some items in Boston and Lynn, as there were big house sales in both places. He wanted a careful man with the van, he said, as there were items of Georgian glass and mirrors he hoped to buy. These incidentally were still in the shop but then they had a call saying a van was needed overnight and it would be collected.’
‘Was the call from Bliss?’
‘The young chap in the office said he thought so, but wasn’t certain because the phone was crackly.’ Betterson paused before adding, ‘But we know now who picked the van up.’
Cannon waited; Liz strained closer to the phone.
‘The office chappie said they were quite busy when this big fella came in, and he remembered him standing with one hand up on a small shelf near the door where they keep the phone directories. Forensics got a beautiful set of prints.’
‘And?’ Cannon said.
‘The man who collected the van was our friend Spier. We’ve issued a warrant for his arrest and—’ Betterson was interrupted and quickly ended the call with, ‘Have to go, possible sighting of the van. Will be in touch.’
‘Spier!’ Cannon exclaimed after Betterson had rung off. ‘Spier?’
‘Who had an argument with Riley on quiz night, and who possibly tied up Ford’s dog at his mother’s house,’ Liz said. ‘This alters things.’
‘Some things,’ Cannon amended, finishing his wine quickly as if to get something out of the way. ‘Maurice Spier, who’s got plenty of brawn but not too much up top,’ Cannon said, ‘and who obviously is in England and not here cutting up drawings or kidnapping Toby Higham’s dog.’
‘But who it seems has keys to Bliss’s shop and cabinets, so to have these he must have … what?
‘Been given them by Bliss.’ Cannon suggested.
‘Or attacked and robbed Bliss … or worse. Having done two murders one more can hardly seem to matter,’ Liz said.
‘But Spier is certainly not the man who has followed Higham from Wales, to London, to Lincolnshire and now to Norway to keep him scared to death.’
Before Liz could answer, Cannon’s mobile went again.
‘Have they found the van already?’ Liz wondered. ‘That was quick.’
The call was not Betterson, it was Catherine, in tears.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cannon asked. ‘Take your time, talk slowly.’
She tried but it was in a series of rushed and broken phrases that would have made little sense to anyone who did not know the circumstances.
‘A friend of Toby’s lives …. near open ground and … a cemetery … says there’s a dog barking … sounds … in … distress. My father says … could be … any dog … says no one is to go and … I …’ She sounded so distraught she could hardly breathe and in the background Cannon could hear raised voices, then she gasped, ‘But Toby says he is going … now.’
‘No,’ Cannon said quickly, ‘tell Toby to wait, I’ll go with him. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
He pulled on joggers and top as he told Liz what had happened.
‘Shall I come?’ she asked.
‘No, I’m ready and off. Stay put. I’ll keep you informed.’
For a capital city Oslo, he thought, was quiet at nights, or at least quiet in the streets he ran through. One or two people leaving restaurants, a late
bus and one or two cars, that was all.
One of the security men greeted him at the gate and Toby was waiting for him on the doorstep, clearly not very pleased. Karen was holding Catherine’s hand in the background and in the lounge he could hear Trude Higham talking to her husband.
‘Let’s go,’ Toby said and, turning to nod at the two women, closed the door behind himself.
‘It’s a colleague from the Art Academy who rang me, he says there has been a dog barking continually from the direction of the cemetery. He’s never heard a dog in that area before and thought it might just be Munch.’
‘Is it far?’ Cannon asked as they ran.
‘Five minutes,’ Toby answered. ‘I’m sorry Cathy rang you at this time of night.’ As if to underline his words, a church clock chimed out midnight.
‘Seems like the ideal time to be in a graveyard,’ Cannon said as he saw the outline of a spire, iron gates and a wall at the end of the road.
Toby stopped running, bent over and gave a short, ironic laugh. ‘God, my father gets me so uptight,’ he said.
‘I got on better with my grandfather than my old man,’ Cannon said, starting to run slowly on again. ‘My grandfather was a policeman; suppose that’s why I joined the Met.’
‘And left before your time, I understand,’ Toby said, catching up with him. ‘Why was that?’
‘Long story, tell you sometime,’ Cannon said. ‘In the meantime, how do we get in here? Will it be locked up for the night?’
‘Not sure but I know the wall is quite low at the back around the older part of the burial ground.’ He stopped and stood quite still. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Hear anything?’
Cannon listened. ‘I hear something but it doesn’t sound like a dog.’
‘It sounds like something in trouble, that’s for sure,’ Toby said.
‘And it is coming from the direction of the graveyard,’ Cannon said, ‘and isn’t there a park of some kind?’
‘Yes,’ Toby said, pulling a torch from his pocket and leading the way once more. ‘The colleague who rang me lives near the park.’