Ring of Guilt

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Could you bear it if I asked Will to collect you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘I could—’ Harvey began.

  ‘It could take forever,’ I said. ‘And I know you’ve got to tackle the dreaded A303.’ Should I take a risk? ‘If you want to drop off the plate at the shop I’ll fix it for you. I can return it next time Griff and I are in Devon. Powderham or Matford?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d best be off, then.’

  My father looked at the unused tea things, but said nothing. He heaved himself to his feet. ‘We’ll see you out.’ He offered me his hooked arm, and we progressed to the front door together, standing on the bottom step to wave our guest goodbye.

  When we were back in his living room, he said, quite huskily, ‘That was a terrific performance, my girl. Stiff upper lip and all that.’

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked numbly.

  ‘That old bugger Griff, of course. Saw this Ronnie Biggs’ picture in some magazine at the dentist’s. With his wife. Phoned me. But you knew anyway?’

  ‘Inspired guess.’

  He shook his head. ‘More like what you do with the china. Talking of which, I could do with a bit more bubbly. Hang on, before you go walkabout, you should try this for size.’ He dug in his pocket and produced a leather covered box. ‘Was going to save it for your birthday, but you earned it today. No, I wouldn’t have let anyone else have it even if he could have dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. Here you are. What the bloody hell’s that racket? The damned house isn’t on fire, is it?’

  Just Will, employing blues and twos. The walkabout would have to wait. But at least I managed to put my arms round my father’s neck and give him a hug. He even patted my back lightly in return.

  Not every one travels to a police station with a Cartier watch round her wrist. I pulled my sleeve down over it, in case anyone wanted to accuse me of nicking it. Will told me he was under instructions to say nothing of what was going on, but it was clear he was as pleased as I was to have found a spot that just fitted the tea bowl base. SOCOs were happily recording all their findings, according to Will.

  Freya swept in to greet us both in a conference room, one with all those clever electronic screens showing what people should be looking at. ‘How well do you know your Shakespeare, folks? Lina?’

  What sort of question was that? It hadn’t been a very easy day so far, and I was tempted to tell her where to put her stupid test. But she was clearly bubbling with something, and although the topmost file of the pile she’d dumped on a table clearly said BUDGET I didn’t think it was with the joys of accounts.

  ‘It depends which play,’ I said without a smile.

  ‘Hamlet. The bit where Claudius is talking about his wedding to whats-her-name?’

  ‘Gertrude,’ Will prompted. ‘. . . The imperial jointress to this warlike state . . .’

  ‘Yes! That’s the good thing about you graduate fast-tracked people, you know your stuff. With an auspicious and a dropping eye. Two conflicting emotions. Which is what we’ve got here.’

  She waited while the room filled up with other officers, one or two of whom I recognized from the fair. Not PC Acne, and not Bernie Winters. ‘Firstly, I have to give you all some bad news. PC Winters, known to a lot of you as Bernie, has died. He was suffering from liver cancer. But he didn’t die of it. He killed himself. Because he’d committed a crime no police officer should ever commit. He’d killed someone. Chris Mason. We found both the bodies by the site near Ottinge that we’ve all been protecting because of its national importance. Mason was strangled; Bernie hanged himself.’

  Someone asked, ‘Why should he—?’ But, covering his mouth, sprinted off without waiting for an answer.

  Freya looked at me.

  ‘Night hawking?’ I suggested. ‘Bernie loathed night hawks. Worse than just thieves, he said. They desecrated graves, like the one Will and I found by accident.’

  ‘Female, ninth century,’ Will put in, with a quick smile at me.

  ‘And he must have been a bit careless about hiding his loot,’ I continued, ‘because his wife managed to sell a ring on her jewellery stall. To me. But he can’t have had anything to do with the one I bought at auction.’

  ‘Actually, it’s a slightly different period,’ Will put in again. ‘If it’s the one we found in Mason’s lock up. Plus a whole lot of other stuff. You’ve heard of the Staffordshire hoard? This isn’t as big – yet. But it could be just as important. And Mason had destroyed all sorts of vital evidence the archaeologists could have used.’

  ‘Poor Bernie. The thing he hated most. And if you know you’re dying, you might decide to take the law into your own hands,’ I said quietly. Should I offer them our CCTV footage to show how unhinged he was? Perhaps later, in private.

  ‘We think he’d tried it before,’ Webb said. ‘When you found your “body”, Lina. But something must have interrupted him and he stopped. Mason could hardly complain, could he? Not without giving the game away.’

  ‘Which of them switched the road sign around?’

  ‘Who knows? Whoever it was was trying to deter other people from finding the site, I should imagine. As these people will all tell you, Lina, we tie up most of the ends, but sometimes not all.’

  I smiled. And suddenly more Shakespeare came into my head. ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.’ I caught Freya’s eye and straightened my shoulders. ‘But what’s the good news you promised, DCI Webb?’ After all, she was very much on duty and might not appreciate my using her first name.

  She smiled. ‘That’s about you, too, Lina. Sir Douglas Nelson and our friends the Broad-Ticemans. There is a connection. A very interesting one. But here we’ve had to consult with one of our colleagues from Met Fine Art Squad, ladies and gentleman, so he knows his onions.’

  And in walked a familiar figure. ‘Morris!’ I gasped. Thank God there was a table between us, or despite everything I’d have run into his arms.

  I’ve a nasty suspicion he might have held his arms open for me, too, from the way his colour came and went when he spotted me. But he confined himself to a curt nod, and kept his eyes away from me as he did the meet and greet stuff with his Kentish colleagues.

  It seemed best for me to shut down any emotions I might have been feeling – there wasn’t time for me to examine them as my therapist had told me. But I did recognize was a surge of anger, alongside – well, the desire to hug him. Hug! As if.

  But he was already speaking, tapping the screen to bring up photos of the people and the places he was speaking about. I thought the technology had gone a bit OTT when a snap of the British Museum flew up. It was, come to think of it, like those rather random images they use on TV news stories, when they don’t want to have a blank behind the presenter’s head. If there’s a health scare, they show pictures of hospital wards, and people looking busy – that sort of thing. Anyway, it was then replaced with a photo of a very haggard old-looking Sir Douggie that would have made Griff grin maliciously, and then by a set of official-looking snaps of ancient artefacts.

  ‘A number of these items have surfaced in collections across the world – acquired, in general, by people not too fussy about provenance.’ He couldn’t resist a glance in my direction. I licked an index finger and marked a figure one in the air. ‘In fact the provenance, had they seen it, would have been impeccable – from the BM’s vaults. It was only when a bona fide collector was offered something he’d only seen in a textbook – one written, ironically, by Sir Douglas – and contacted his local force that we got involved. And then things started to get interesting.’

  ‘Not for me,’ I’d recovered enough to chime in. ‘They got interesting for Griff and me when Sir Douggie accused us of stealing Saxon artefacts and put you lot on to us, Will.’ If I’d had more panache, I’d have reached over to squeeze his hand. I didn’t want to give the lie to Griff’s claim that he and I were besotted with each other, after all. As it was, all I could manage w
as a warm smile.

  Morris registered the smile, I was sure of that, but continued, ‘Perhaps he thought that if he showed he was lily-white pure in the matter of stolen items it would throw up a smokescreen around his own activities. Stealing big time from the BM. But he’s a Very Respectable Person.’ You could almost see the capital letters. ‘Not the sort of guy to know the sort of fences we usually deal with. So we needed to find a connection with someone whose business was international, who was used to sending expensive and very well packed items through Customs and Excise without the inconvenience of having them randomly opened and checked. It was something Lina Townend said that gave me the idea.’

  Lina Townend, eh? How very official.

  ‘I leafed through endless antiques and society magazines and found several pictures of him at the same gathering as one of your Kentish residents.’

  Just as Griff had found pictures of Harvey and his wife. But Harvey was yesterday’s news. Already.

  ‘Which brings us on to Charles and Phoebe Broad-Ticeman. Why such a distinguished and hitherto irreproachable man should turn to crime I’ve yet to find out.’

  ‘Cash flow problems,’ I heard myself saying. ‘He may be stinking rich by the standards of everyone here, but he’s got to sell stuff or he doesn’t have any cash. And the way the market is now . . .’ I gave what I hoped was a worldly-wise shrug.

  ‘So why should Broad-Ticeman want to mess up Lina’s reputation?’ Webb put in.

  ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

  ‘Try this theory for size,’ I said, suddenly enjoying the fact that I knew more than a lot of experts. ‘Griff – that’s my business partner and very dear friend,’ I added, for the benefit of any officers who might not know him from Adam, ‘offended Sir Douggie years back. Most other people forget grudges. Sir Douggie doesn’t seem to be that type. So Griff’s theory is that these attacks on my reputation have been ways at getting at him. So presumably he roped his posh mate in to help with the dirty work.’

  ‘Presumably doesn’t get convictions, unfortunately,’ Webb observed. ‘But we’ll certainly put that to him. For corroboration, we’ll ask the people who mounted the bowl and the bleach incidents. We’ve got good clear images of the people involved in the weekend’s activities.’

  ‘Any familiar faces?’ Morris asked.

  ‘Some of our local rent-a-villains – the sort of toerags who’ll do anything for a couple of bob. I’m sure we’ll pick them up soon and sort it all out.’

  ‘What about the silent ones?’ I asked, not knowing I shouldn’t.

  ‘We’ve an idea that the Borders Agency people might be interested in them – there’s a suspicion that the big packing cases Broad-Ticeman sent abroad may not have come back empty.’ She looked around the room. ‘Anything else we should all know?’

  Will said, ‘Since the media are bound to get wind of the . . . the new crime scene, ma’am, English Heritage and the other archaeologists would like to go public. It’s a major site, and will attract a lot of attention. There’s talk of the local museums setting up a fund so that all the finds can be kept together.’

  ‘In that case, they’d better have my ring too,’ I said. ‘Not that it is my ring, is it? For all I bought it honestly, it was stolen property, and not mine at all. Ever.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the law, Lina. I was wondering how to break it to you,’ Morris said.

  I wished he hadn’t sounded so kind. Kindness always makes me want to cry. I stuck out my chin. ‘Well, I’ve still got the other one. The one I accidentally bought at auction. Unless that was nicked too?’

  ‘Don’t worry – we’re busy checking,’ Will said. Which worried me all the more.

  In the end, it was easier to donate the ring I’d bought at auction to Canterbury Museum, and let them sort it out. True, it ended up with a nice spotlight on it, and a little white card giving my name, but it wasn’t quite the British Museum unveiling and champagne at the Savoy I’d secretly dreamed of. Tough.

  Another ring I was more than interested in – my grandmother’s – still lurked somewhere in Bossingham Hall, though my attempts to pick up its vibes consistently failed. On the other hand, I did find a nice rare piece of early Wedgwood under a bed, and an amazing Flemish mirror, tucked in the back of a wardrobe in my father’s part of the attic. Not our area at all, of course, but it still brought in enough for a very great deal of champagne.

  I was still celebrating that when I got a call from Freya Webb. They’d picked up the lowlife who they thought had popped the Broad-Ticemans’ bowl on my stand, and would like me to ID him. It took me five seconds. He was quite happy to spill all he knew about the B-Ts, in return for whatever deal the police cut him. As were the illegal immigrant servants – the woman who was as scared of the dogs as I was, and her bleach-squirting husband.

  The B-Ts’ trial, and Sir Douggie’s, will take place soon. A big affair. I’m not looking forward to going into the witness box, but I shall only be one of many. And there’s something about justice being done in public that I like. These days, anyway. I know this view irritated Titus, but he was distinctly off me at the moment. My moment with the candlestick had profoundly disturbed him, since it broke his cardinal rule of never doing anything to attract the attention of the police.

  Mrs Walker now sported an engagement ring. Mr Banner had decided not to buy one from us, for which, in view of what the world knew about his sexual prowess and endurance, I was very grateful. There was talk of me being her bridesmaid, but I continued to pray they’d have a very quiet register office wedding.

  She’d been so contrite over what she called her dereliction of duty that she was ready to resign. But Griff’s partner Aidan broke an ankle, and Griff had to spend so much time in Tenterden that I had to swallow my immediate response and tell her I was happy for her to stay, with even more hours. Restoration work was flooding my way; maybe Harvey had put in a good word for me with his upmarket friends to salve his conscience. I saw him occasionally at fairs, or when he had something that needed my skills, but there was no more dashing round the country at unearthly hours to pick up the vase or whatever. I filed the occasional email he sent under E for Experience and didn’t get round to replying. Likewise a couple Morris sent me after that meeting in Maidstone.

  All those hopes Griff had of Will and me? Hard to tell. Will’s on some long-term secondment, largely, I think, because his bosses don’t want him to be romantically involved with a key witness. Or is that just a good excuse? We shall see. But a large box containing two wretched Toby jugs arrived this morning and if I worry about my own long face I shan’t be able to tackle theirs.