by Oliver Tidy
After a minute catching my breath and sucking in some salty air, I hopped back onto the sea wall and started home. With a tail wind and a loose top that acted as a sail my legs could only just about keep up with the rest of me as I fairly flew home.
I needed to get up to date with Bookers-related paperwork and so after showering I went downstairs, made coffee and applied myself.
Mel and Linda, the ladies that ran the place for me when I was out playing second fiddle to and chauffeuring Jo around, duly arrived and Bookers came awake, opened its door and saw a steady trickle of customers, most of whom I knew by sight and greeted warmly. The position of owner/manager was starting to grow on me. Things had settled down, routines had been formed and I was becoming comfortably familiar with my role. I had what many would consider a life of ease. It was certainly an easy life.
I had a wander around the whole estate mid-morning – ex-builder’s yard/future dream home/children’s play park – which cheered me up further, despite the weather’s best attempts to dampen my spirits along with everything else. When I re-entered Bookers thinking about coffee, maybe a muffin and a good warm, Jo was settled at my table and reading some documents.
We greeted each other like we always seemed to, like siblings who got on.
Jo said, ‘I’ve spoken to Rebecca Swaine.’
‘Oh, yeah? How is she?’
‘I didn’t ask. I’m only interested in her as a client, I’m not her doctor. I briefed her on things and she’s invited us out for a final conference and settling of accounts. I think she wants to bury the hatchet properly on this unsavoury chapter of her life.’
‘Well, let’s hope she’s not looking for a head for that. Or two. As it happens I’m free today.’
‘David, you’re free every day.’
‘I didn’t say I wasn’t. What time?’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’
‘Have I got time for a quick coffee first?’
Jo pulled a face. ‘Seriously? I’d rather just close the file on this. You can sit around and drink coffee all afternoon if you like. I’ve got another job to get on with.’
‘The snooping?’
‘I prefer surveillance.’
‘More respectable?’
‘No. It’s because that’s what it is. Surveillance is something professional while snooping is something amateurish.’
‘It was interesting though, don’t you think?’
‘The Swaine case?’ I nodded. ‘It made a change. I wish I could get more “interesting” cases.’
‘They’ll come.’
***
53
Mrs Swaine might have lost a little weight. The skin on her face seemed to have a touch more slackness about it, like she was experiencing a greater gravitational pull than the rest of us. There were dark circles under her eyes. And those unusual green eyes that had seemed lit from behind when I’d first encountered her only a week before were now dull and lifeless. I almost felt sorry for her. It was hard for me to see the domineering, controlling woman I’d been led to believe she was in the defeated, deflated looking person on the settee opposite us.
Joan had been curt and a little surly as she had been last time we’d troubled her to get out the best china and the worst biscuits. We had the same tray and the same china and the same brand of biscuits in their packaging as last time. It was all a little predictable, a bit miserable and a tad depressing.
When Joan had bustled out, possibly to eavesdrop from just outside the door, Mrs Swaine got proceedings under way.
‘Thank you both for coming again at such short notice. I really appreciate the time, attention and support you’ve provided me with through this very difficult phase of my life. It’s hard to believe it was only last Monday that I first met you both. And now I’ve lost my only sibling, my husband and discovered that just about everything my life was built on these days was a lie.’ She was laying it on with a trowel. She pulled herself together with a visible effort, or maybe it was just for appearances’ sake and said, ‘You can be sure, Miss Cash that should anyone I know require the services of someone professional, competent and above all discreet in the future I will be very happy to recommend you.’
I don’t know what Jo was thinking, but I thought that ‘discreet’ seemed to get a subtle emphasis. Maybe Mrs Swaine was sending a gentle reminder about client confidentiality.
‘And you, too, Mr Booker. I want you to know that I value the time, trouble and attention you’ve devoted to my difficulties.’
I smiled and nodded sympathy and understanding, I hoped.
Jo said, ‘I’m glad, we’re glad, you feel you’ve had good service from us, Mrs Swaine.’
‘You’ve brought your account with you?’ said Mrs Swaine.
Jo took a sealed envelope from her handbag and slid it across the table. Mrs Swaine took it with no suggestion of doing anything as vulgar as opening it in front of us. We all knew she could afford it with the ten grand she’d made from the books. What she didn’t know was she was about to get a lot richer.
‘Mrs Swaine,’ said Jo. ‘I understand that you terminated my involvement in things when we dropped you off yesterday morning, but a previous line of enquiry has since turned up some new information. I only mention this because it explains things that, now you’ve had some time to reflect, you might still want explained. I’m happy to relate it to you now, another time if you prefer, or to forget all about it. It’s up to you.’ Mrs Swaine looked a little unsure of herself. While her mind dealt with Jo’s news, Jo followed it up with, ‘And we also recovered some money that we believe was the proceeds of Sigmund’s and your husband’s... foray into the art world.’
I so wanted to look at Jo for that but to do so would have risked me bursting out laughing. Foray? I made a mental note to ask her where she got that from.
Jo was still talking, ‘Before you say anything, I want to be completely transparent with you. We both know what your brother and your husband were involved in.’ Mrs Swaine’s head fell forward, like it was on a hinge, with what I assumed was either shame or embarrassment. Jo was prompted to say, ‘Mrs Swaine, you remember I told you about client confidentiality. Both David and I are bound by that. To labour a point, what we’ve learned in the course of this investigation stays between us and you – my client.’
Mrs Swaine looked up at us and tried to force a smile. It was closer to a grimace. ‘Who told you about Nigel and Sigmund?’ It wasn’t clear whether she was talking about their sexual history, their art-forgery or both. She certainly looked like she was pondering with some justifiable anxiety that there were others who knew things she would rather keep buried rather than made public, thereby making her a laughing stock among the gentry, or at least that’s what I imagined she was fearing.
Jo looked at me and raised an eyebrow as some sort of cuing signal. I realised I was on. I cleared my throat and said, ‘When I drove Lewis Edwards to get the money, he told me.’ For once my brain was slightly ahead of my mouth and so I managed to stop myself saying, he couldn’t help himself; he’s such a terrible old gossip. That would only have fuelled Mrs Swaine’s concerns over word spreading to soil the family name and connections. Mrs Swaine still looked deeply concerned by the news.
Jo had brought a big handbag with her. It was more of a satchel actually. Something the pony express might have used as a saddlebag. She hefted it up onto her lap and she had Mrs Swaine’s full attention.
‘When we recovered your husband’s briefcase from the church there was significantly more than the forty thousand pounds in it that you insisted we handed over to Hayley to buy her silence.’
Mrs Swaine did not see Jo’s version of events as something to contend. She was suddenly very interested in the money, which suggested a story. ‘How much more?’
‘Including the ten thousand we kept back from Hayley, sixty thousand pounds more.’
The colour drained out of Mrs Swaine’s pasty chops, like artificially blue water out of a fl
ushed toilet.
Mrs Swaine said, ‘Pardon?’
‘There was one hundred thousand pounds in the case.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘If you want me to explain why and how I’ll be happy to but I should warn you, there are things to learn that might be difficult for you to hear.’
‘More than finding out that my husband and brother were lovers, you mean?’ said Mrs Swaine.
Put so bluntly I had to control my inclination to wince.
‘Possibly not,’ said Jo, remaining consummately professional, ‘but potentially painful nonetheless.’
Jo took the opportunity of the lull in the conversation to take out what remained of the money. She piled it up next to the tray of tea and biscuits. It wasn’t such a big pile for such a lot of money. As a psychological tactic is was a good move; a big pile of cash can soften a lot of bad news.
‘There is fifty-seven thousand, four hundred pounds here.’ Jo had made me hand over my four hundred pounds from my ‘bonding’ with Lewis.
Mrs Swaine stared at it, like someone might stare at a leprechaun that hopped onto the coffee table and started dancing.
While Mrs Swaine ordered her thoughts, Jo said, ‘Two thousand six hundred went on extraordinary expenses. There is a full account of what went to whom in the envelope.’
Mrs Swaine said, ‘I don’t understand. Where has this come from?’
Jo said, ‘Let me explain things: I took a chance that given developments and circumstances forty thousand would satisfy that woman who abducted you. It was my decision to keep ten back. It’s part of the money on the table. If Hayley had kicked up an almighty fuss I could have found a way to come up with it, but with your husband dead I was fairly sure she would settle for the bird in the hand, so to speak. In fact, if you hadn’t insisted on staying there until the money was handed over I wouldn’t have given her a penny.’
‘That is a lot of money,’ said Mrs Swaine, still staring at the pile. ‘Is it all the profit from their forging?’
‘I can only guess yes to that.’
‘So why was there a hundred thousand in the case when you found it?’
‘If I’m to tell you that, I have to tell you those unpleasant things.’
‘I suppose I should hear it now, so that I’m not surprised in the future. When I think of what I’ve gone through in the last seven days I doubt there could be much more to hurt or surprise me.’
I doubted that but shut my gob.
‘Your husband had no intention of paying Hayley’s money back. He had one hundred thousand pounds in the case because he was running away to Spain with the young woman who worked in the gallery.’
Jo let that settle for a few seconds. Mrs Swaine didn’t bat an eyelid. Maybe it is hard to shock someone with news of their husband’s heterosexual philandering when the same husband has only recently been unveiled as that someone’s brother’s lover. It crossed my mind that had he been offered it, Freud might have passed on the consultation as beyond his level of expertise.
‘Nigel was supposed to be meeting her on Wednesday evening at Gatwick airport,’ said Jo.
‘Why didn’t he then?’
‘Because his passport went missing. According to the woman – who returned to the UK yesterday after running out of money in Spain – Nigel called her on Wednesday night and told her to go ahead without him because he couldn’t find his passport and even if he had he wouldn’t be able to make the plane. He told her he’d join her as soon as he could.’
‘But he killed himself that night. That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It makes more sense when you understand that Nigel lost his job in the city because of some corrupt business dealing. As you know, he was let go by Hudsons, but the context of his dismissal meant that he left without a hope of finding employment in the financial sector once word got around. He was to be investigated by the Financial Services Authority and I’ve been led to believe that could have meant jail time for him. When you couple that with threats of exposure for art fraud, which would have brought a whole new set of legal problems, and the realisation that all of a sudden the escape route to the Costa del Crime he had planned had just been cut off then perhaps his taking of his own life seems a little more understandable. Incidentally, Mrs Swaine, you don’t know anything of what happened to your husband’s passport do you?’
Mrs Swaine shook her head. She seemed to me to be telling the truth, thereby whittling down the list of suspects who might have had something to do with the disappearance of Nigel’s passport to one.
None of Jo’s disclosures seemed like news to Mrs Swaine. She said, ‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it? How could I have been so naive? How could I have been taken in by such an evil, scheming man? You two must think that I’m a particular kind of fool.’ She was still thinking about how she was going to come out of this.
‘No, Mrs Swaine, we don’t. Nigel was a clever man. He was a skilled manipulator. But he wasn’t all bad.’
‘Really? You do surprise me.’
‘He opened up Tate’s Modern while he was still at Hudsons, before the irregularities in his business dealings were exposed. He opened it because he believed in Sigmund’s work, apparently. They weren’t forging works of art then. That came later. Nigel used some of his ill-gotten gains from Hudson’s to invest in your brother.’
Despite Jo giving it some feeling, Mrs Swaine appeared unmoved by Nigel’s philanthropy with money come by dishonestly. (Put like that, he could have been the art world’s latter day equivalent of Robin Hood.) And we quickly found out why.
‘But why didn’t either of them tell me? Why was I excluded from something so important in my brother’s life? I’ve supported him in his art forever. It’s always been just the two of us. I simply don’t understand why they would have conspired and connived behind my back, under my roof, in order to leave me completely in the dark.’
I remembered Mrs Swaine referring to Nigel and Sigmund as the only two ‘real’ people in her life. I sat opposite her willing that the memory wasn’t prompted for her, too. No good could come of it. But it would probably come later with the rest of the crushing torment.
‘That’s not something we can answer,’ said Jo, and her implication was clear.
After a long pause, Mrs Swaine said, ‘Do you have anything else to share with me?’
Jo took in a deep breath and indicated that she didn’t.
We watched Mrs Swaine make a decision. She picked up the envelope, slipped her finger under the gummed flap and opened it. She scanned it quickly, just looking for the bottom line.
‘I might as well pay you in cash, Miss Cash,’ she said. ‘I must say that your transparency and honesty over the money has completely put my mind at rest regarding your confidence concerning other potentially damaging aspects of this whole horrible episode. Thank you.’
She counted out the necessary number of bundles and then put two more on top.
‘Mrs Swaine...’ was about as far as Jo got.
‘Call it a bonus for a job well done. I don’t want any arguments.’
Mrs Swaine saw us out. We all shook hands. On the doorstep I said, ‘If you want me to, I can see if the chap I sold your books to still has them.’
Rebecca Swaine smiled at me and there was something of her old self touched her features. ‘Thank you, Mr Booker. To be honest with you, I don’t miss them. I never looked at them. I’m even thinking of thinning the library out a bit more. Maybe you’ll be able to put me in touch with someone?’
I smiled back. ‘Just let me know, Mrs Swaine.’
As we went to leave a thought occurred to me. I turned back and said, ‘Mrs Swaine, do you remember what you told Sigmund regarding the reason for our visit the first time we came here?’
Jo looked interested in the answer. Mrs Swaine thought for a long moment and said, ‘I think I told him that you were looking for Nigel. Something to do with his business. Why do you want to know? Is it important?’
; I shook my head and smiled and said, ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’
***
54
A strong winter sun had barged its way through the clouds of earlier and when we were back in the car I made a decision for us.
‘Where are you going?’ said Jo, as I turned left out of Goldenhurst instead of right.
‘I want to show you something. It’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘What? I don’t like surprises.’
‘Tough. Talking of surprises, how do you feel about being paid with dirty money from the proceeds of criminal activity?’
‘We don’t know that every note in that briefcase was from the sales of fake Nashes, do we?’
‘No, but it’s a fair guess.’
‘I like to think that the money she paid me with was money earned honestly through the sale of Sigmund’s own paintings.’
We laughed.
I drove along Giggers Green Road as far as the first left, cruised the short distance to the turning I needed and took us left again down the narrow road towards St Rumwold’s church. I stopped in the lay-by we’d stopped in when we came looking for Nigel Tate’s briefcase.
‘What are we doing back here?’ said Jo, although she didn’t sound terribly cross about it.
‘I want to show you something.’
She didn’t argue with me. Perhaps it had something to do with how well she’d just been paid.
We walked back to the church and I led her up the garden path. She followed me as I stepped on to the grass of the graveyard, ducked under the spreading sagging limbs of the yew tree and around to the south facing side of the place. There were benches there against the church wall. I sat down and motioned for Jo to join me.
She sat and said, ‘Well?’ She sounded on her guard and it occurred to me that maybe she feared I was going to propose, or something, which made me laugh.
‘What’s funny?’ she said.
‘Nothing. Don’t look at me, look that way,’ I said.