by Oliver Tidy
‘Why would they do such a thing, do you think?’ she said.
Jo said, ‘Firstly, we don’t know that they did, Mrs Swaine. We don’t know that your brother was anything to do with it.’
Almost as though she hadn’t heard Jo, she said, ‘Sigmund and Nigel were very close. They were better friends than Nigel and I were.’
I hoped she wasn’t going to suggest they were also lovers. I’d only been joking about that.
‘They’d known each other a long time. They were at college together.’
‘What sort of college?’ said Jo.
‘Art college, actually. Nigel could paint but he gave up. He just stopped one day. I don’t think his parents approved. He dropped out of college and went into business.’
I thought that was interesting. The art college bit.
‘But their friendship endured,’ said Jo.
‘Yes. It was Sigmund who introduced me to Nigel.’ She might have gone on to say more but I had to brake rather hard to avoid a triple pack of fibreglass insulation that was rolling around the middle lane of the motorway trying to cause an accident. By the time we were past it, she’d stopped reminiscing.
I said, ‘If they had been in it together, why wouldn’t they have included you, do you think?’
It seemed a reasonable and pertinent question to me. I thought it might encourage Mrs Swaine to reveal something that she might not otherwise. I caught Jo twitch her head in my direction. I gave her a very little smile.
‘It’s what I was thinking,’ said Mrs Swaine, as if her train of thought was back on track. ‘Why would they? The only thing I can think is that it was something they would know I wouldn’t approve of; something I wouldn’t tolerate; something they’d know I couldn’t be a party to.’
‘And what fits that bill?’ I said.
‘Something illegal.’
Encouraged, I said, ‘Yesterday, when I was looking through Sigmund’s work, I was struck by something familiar in his style.’
Mrs Swaine turned her head to meet my gaze in the mirror. That part of her face that held her emerald gaze was perfectly framed in the little rectangle. ‘And?’
‘I’m no great appreciator of art, but I was struck by a resemblance to the style of Paul Nash. You have a Nash, I remember.’
‘I have a couple.’ She wasn’t bragging; she was just saying. ‘Daddy didn’t just collect books. Sigmund had something of an unhealthy obsession with Nash’s work. With Nash the man, too. He lived in Dymchurch for a while, you know?’
‘I know. He rented a cottage in the High Street in the twenties.’ In response to her raised eyebrows, I smiled, I hoped a little enigmatically.
‘Nash and my grandfather were great friends. The Nashes often visited my grandparents’ home while they lived in the village.’
‘Is that how your family came by the paintings?’
‘No. That was all to do with my father’s obsession.’
There was something she wanted to add. I could sense it. I said, ‘What was behind the obsession?’
‘My father believed that he was the love-child of Paul Nash and my grandmother.’
This was news. ‘And he convinced Sigmund that he was Paul Nash’s grandson?’
‘Perhaps he was,’ said Mrs Swaine, and she was back to staring out of the window.
I remember feeling that another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
***
36
We turned into Judd Street from Euston Road. It was empty of cars, apart from ours. I couldn’t see any pedestrians either. It had a feel of a place deserted – a scene from a zombie movie before all hell breaks loose. We prowled in low gear towards the gallery.
‘It’s just up here on the right,’ I said, to prepare our passenger.
As we rolled to a stop alongside the gallery my heart sank. Police tape fluttered in the light breeze channelled up between the tall buildings. Where the front door had been, a rectangle of thick and sturdy plywood with an emergency glazier’s advertisement stencilled on it was now fixed. I glanced up at the alarm. There were no little red lights glowing to show it was working.
‘What’s happened?’ said Mrs Swaine. ‘Was it like this when you came before?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Jo, and there was something in her tone to suggest she was cross.
We were parked on a single yellow line. I turned the engine off. It was Sunday. I thought we would be safe from wardens and penalties. We all got out and went for a closer look. The inside of the car had been warm. The breeze was cold. In just a shirt, I felt it keenly.
We did our best to see inside but, like before, the fixed security grilles made that difficult.
In our confusion, Jo said, ‘I’m going to talk to misery guts.’
She left Mrs Swaine and me and disappeared below ground level in search of answers. We heard her banging on the door.
I said, ‘Shall we wait in the car? It’s cold out here.’
Jo reappeared in a couple of minutes. She got back in the car with a brrrr.
‘He’s not in or not answering,’ she said.
I said, ‘What now?’
‘I called Marion.’ To Mrs Swaine, Jo said, ‘She’s a police officer I know up here. This isn’t her patch but she’s going to try to put us in contact with someone whose it is.’
Jo’s phone rang before further questions could be asked. She got out of the car to have her conversation in private, which I didn’t think was very nice of her. She spent a couple of minutes walking up and down the pavement outside the gallery with the phone clamped to her ear.
When she returned, she said, ‘That was the detective whose desk this landed on. He wants us to stay put. He’s going to come and speak to us.’
‘Is that normal?’ I said.
‘He’s keen. I got the impression he was short of leads and couldn’t believe his luck when I explained who and where we are.’
‘How long is he going to be?’ I said.
‘He said he’d be over as soon as he could.’
I suggested we waited in the cafe Jo and I had visited the day before. It seemed a popular idea.
I got our drinks and joined the ladies at a table by a window that overlooked the street. The only thing that seemed to have changed was the date of the newspapers. I recognised some of the customers from the previous day. I recognised the same acoustic guitars strains on the stereo, too. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who thought classical guitar and coffee shops went together like things that go together.
Jo asked whether coffee-shop-Paul was about. He wasn’t; it was his day off, but his mate Harry was in. Jo questioned him about the people who’d been looking for Nigel and he confirmed that they were a man and a woman and that the man had a tattoo of a small bird on his neck. He confirmed the ponytail too. He couldn’t tell us much more; he’d been busy, he said.
We were on our second round, again got by me, when a nondescript saloon car pulled up behind the Range Rover. A man got out.
‘That’s him,’ said Jo. I didn’t ask how she knew.
She rapped on the window for his attention and beckoned him over, which I thought was a bit cheeky. He was the police, after all.
Jo made the introductions. Jo and the detective shook hands and there seemed some genuine friendliness there. I had to wonder how far the jungle drums and Jo’s reputation had spread. The policeman bestowed business nods in the direction of Mrs Swaine and me.
A chair was organised. He took off his overcoat. Jo asked what he wanted to drink and when he gave his order she looked at me and smiled nicely and her meaning was clear.
By the time I returned with his drink, the three of them were chatting quite comfortably.
‘Cheers,’ he said and turned back to the women.
‘So you had no idea your husband had opened a gallery?’ he said.
‘No. It’s been quite a shock,’ said Mrs Swaine.
Because I’d spent a good five minutes queuing for his flipping
coffee behind a dippy woman in a massively oversized cardigan who couldn’t make her flipping mind up which flipping muffin to have with her flipping espresso, I didn’t know how much they’d told each other.
‘What can you tell us about what’s happened?’ said Jo.
‘No secrets here. Nothing much to go on either, if I’m honest. Late last night report of a break-in across the road. The old boy who manages the flats got a dink on the head for his trouble. He’s still in the hospital. I haven’t spoken to him yet, but I don’t hold out much hope he’ll have much to contribute. You know how it is?’ Jo nodded.
‘Did they steal many of the paintings?’ said Mrs Swaine.
‘Until we can find someone who knows what was in there, I can’t say.’
I opened my mouth to mention Natalie but shut it again quickly when I saw Jo’s look.
‘Can we have a look inside?’ said Jo.
This was the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
‘As you’re next of kin,’ he said to Mrs Swaine, ‘and SOCO have been and gone, I don’t see why not. Maybe you’ll be able to help with our enquiries.’
We finished our drinks, shrugged our coats back on and made our way across the street.
‘Nice motor,’ he said, looking at the Range Rover. ‘The private sector must be paying well.’
‘That belongs to my chauffeur,’ said Jo. ‘I couldn’t afford the petrol for that thing with what I’m making.’
He tore the police tape, unlocked the padlock and grunted with the effort of opening the temporary and ill-fitting front door. He went in first and we all crunched over broken glass after him.
It was one long open space through to a door set in the partition wall at the back of it. Only a big, naked desk and an executive chair halfway down broke things up. The flooring was laminated boards. The walls were plain white. The ceiling had some sympathetic track lighting. There were paintings on the walls. And there didn’t appear to be any missing; there were no bare nails sticking out of the plaster.
My eyes were drawn to the artwork. I can look at a painting that’s considered important, valuable even, and not be particularly enamoured with it. And I could look at others and be immediately intrigued and involved in them: Hilder’s snow scenes, Vermeer’s interiors, Nash’s war artistry, for examples. Paintings with qualities that grabbed my eyeballs, stirred an emotion, touched on a memory, a nerve or a sense. The images on the walls of the gallery had a similar effect on me. They were mostly landscapes but there was something quite out of the ordinary about them. It was something elusive, mysterious and, for me, a layman in such things, indefinable, like Mona Lisa’s smirk.
To Mrs Swaine, Jo said, ‘Do you recognise any of the pictures?’
From the moment we’d crossed the threshold, my attention had flitted between her and the paintings. Her expression hadn’t given much away but the way her eyes roamed over the works of art we passed led me to believe that she was not unfamiliar with them, or at least their style.
Mrs Swaine gave a small nod and said, ‘These are Sigmund’s.’
No one felt the need to challenge her.
‘There don’t appear to be any missing,’ I said.
The policeman looked at me and I said, ‘You can see from the spotlights in the ceiling that all the parts of the wall where the lights are pointing are occupied.’
He moved across to a bank of switches and turned them all on to prove me right.
‘So what would whoever broke in have been after?’ said Mrs Swaine.
‘No idea,’ said the policeman. ‘Maybe they were looking for something. Maybe they found it.’
‘What’s in the room at the back?’ said Jo.
Jo and I followed him through. I looked around for Rebecca Swaine but she was lost in one of her brother’s imaginings. She looked very sad and forlorn, like a painting herself, standing unhappily in front of something she’d been kept out of. I felt for her.
The room at the back was nothing more than a place for making tea, washing up a cup, keeping wrapping and packing materials. There was a toilet in a small space.
Mrs Swaine was staring despondently at another picture when we filed back out. She was interested only in the artwork and what it all meant to her and for her. The bigger picture.
‘When might I be able to have these back?’ she said.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go through the proper channels for that,’ said the policeman. ‘More than my job’s worth to let you remove stuff.’
Rebecca Swaine nodded her understanding.
‘How badly was the old boy hurt?’ said Jo.
‘Few stitches. Shaken up as much as anything. He’ll be home today, probably.’
We parted with the police on the pavement and on good terms. He’d got something out of it. Information, names and contact details for his forms. But none of us was any the wiser over why someone should go to the trouble of breaking into Tate’s Modern and steal nothing and, other than the door, do no damage.
Jo wrote a note for the caretaker and slipped it through his letterbox.
I asked if anyone was hungry or wanted another drink before we pushed off, but neither of them did. I was starving and my stomach was grumbling before we were even back on the motorway.
I waited as long as I could stand it for one of my passengers to share their thoughts over events. In the end I had to say something. ‘At least we know that your husband was selling your brother’s work.’
‘It doesn’t explain why they would have kept it from me or why they both committed suicide,’ she said. ‘And there is no evidence to suggest that any of the paintings were sold. Will you be able to get me my answers, Miss Cash?’
‘I still have some leads of my own to pursue, Mrs Swaine. If you want me to.’
‘I want you to. I want to know what they were doing. I want to know everything about it. I want to know why they died.’ She sounded filled with a barely suppressed cold anger and it encouraged me to just shut up and drive. Hell hath no fury like a woman lied to by the only ‘real’ people in her life.
***
37
Rebecca Swaine thanked us politely when we dropped her off. She didn’t invite us in for refreshment. I felt that she wanted to be very alone. I felt that she had some emotions to deal with and her kind didn’t do that sort of thing in public.
Jo promised to keep in touch.
As we drove home along Eastbridge Road, I said, ‘Did you tell him about Natalie?’
‘Yeah. He said he’d look into it.’
‘Did he know about the two suicides?’
‘We talked about it in the cafe. Weren’t you listening?’
‘Maybe that’s when I was waiting tables.’
Jo smiled at me and patted my leg. ‘Thanks for that. And thanks for today.’
Like a puppy that gets its head patted, I felt better. ‘What about the two who’ve been looking for Nigel?’
‘I told him about them, too. He said if he had any luck he’d let me know.’
‘What do you think about it?’
Jo shook her head and looked out of the window. ‘I think she’s right. They must have been up to something illegal. Something they couldn’t share with her. Maybe they were just using Sigmund’s paintings as a front for an illegitimate business. What about this bloke Nash?’
‘What about him?’
‘Could he have anything to do with it?’
‘I doubt it; he’s been dead over fifty years.’
‘I don’t mean literally.’
‘If they were up to something, there’d have to be something incriminating, wouldn’t there? We’ve found nothing physical to suggest it.’
‘His briefcase,’ said Jo. ‘If we could find his briefcase... what are you doing, you idiot?’
I’d stamped on the brakes and ended up in the verge as the tyres had slewed across the narrow damp surface.
‘His briefcase. The police didn’t take it. Rebecca Swaine hasn’t seen it. The la
st place it was seen was at home. If Sigmund thought there was something incriminating in it, or important to him, when he learned that Nigel had done away with himself he might have taken it.’
‘It wasn’t in his studio,’ said Jo. ‘You’re blocking the road.’
‘There’s no traffic. Where was the last place Sigmund was seen alive?’
The penny dropped. She said, ‘Well, come on then. Turn this tank around and let’s go and see.’
I drove on to the next suitable turning area – an opening to a field. As I manoeuvred the ‘tank’ in a five-point turn in the country lane, Jo said, ‘It would certainly explain what Sigmund was doing hiding out at St Whats-its.’
‘St Rumwold’s,’ I corrected her. ‘Maybe he wasn’t running away or hiding out; maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and what he was doing was hiding something in a good place. I’d bet there are nooks and crannies in that place that don’t even see a duster during a Lent clean. And we burst in on him and frightened the life out of him and he lost his head.’
I headed back to the Lower Wall crossroads and took a left. The ribbon of raised tarmac was not wide enough for two vehicles. The swollen dyke on our left was a constant reminder of the dangers of driving fast out there. I could tell Jo wanted me to put my foot down, but I’d heard stories of motorists losing control of their vehicles and ending upside down in one of the Marsh sewers in a seat belt that they were suspended from and couldn’t undo. A rotten way to go.
A couple of hundred metres on, I took our first right. We navigated bends, blind corners and bridges as we rapidly closed the gap between ourselves and the remote house of God.
Just as I sensed Jo was going to ask how much further it was, I caught a glimpse of the church’s distinctive cupola and said so. We recrossed the Royal Military Canal via one of the smaller bridges and I parked up on the verge.
‘Why are you stopping here?’ said Jo.
‘Because we can’t park by the church without blocking the road.’