The Last Letter
Page 40
Find after find filled the counter. Nicole hummed away to herself, a German pop song she’d overheard on the train, its beat equally catchy and repetitive, meditative almost.
The last thing she pulled from the suitcase was the flying jacket. She’d carefully placed the letter in her folder of receipts back in France, its poignancy still tugging at her heart. After pricing it up, she hung the jacket off the handle of the silver cabinet, its leather still supple after all these years. She fancied she could smell the cologne of the pilot, and wondered what had become of him, and of the Elizabeth he had written to – the Elizabeth who had never received his last words.
Zipping shut the larger bag, she moved onto its smaller cousin, removing first the shoebox of militaria she’d bought from the same seller at the market. Tipping it onto the counter, she disentangled the jumble of dog tag cords, the red and green discs a brotherhood of servicemen, in death as they were in life.
Still humming away, she nearly shot out of her skin when a customer hammered furiously on the front door.
Damn it. The whole reason she hadn’t opened up yet was that she wanted to get all this stuff priced up first, especially before any of her regular customers came in. Occasionally her more pushy regulars, or rather, the more knowledgeable ones, would see something unpriced on the counter, offer to buy it before she’d had a chance to research it, and would escape with an absolute bargain. Especially the ‘Toy Guy’ as she’d taken to calling him. He’d buy all her lead toys, old Meccano, and lately he’d been branching out to actual car memorabilia, and military badges of all things. It was all very well a customer getting a good deal on an obscure Stanley sharpening stone #4, but for things like war medals or military insignia, they needed to be thoroughly researched before they were put out for sale.
Switching back the black evening dress hung on the front door to obscure the grille-covered window, she was surprised by the sight of a small man, his neck cinched in by a clerical collar. Like most, she was conditioned to trust a man of the cloth, so she fumbled with the lock, opening the door to the agitated priest.
Fastidiously presented, the man inside the clothes looked like a ruffled rooster, up in arms about her tardiness in opening the shop.
‘Good morning. I have been waiting for you to open, after finding you closed all weekend. I have urgent business to attend to, so may we come in?’
‘We?’ Nicole asked, seeing no one with the man.
‘I have colleagues who are on their way, they will be with us presently ...’
Nicole interrupted, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not open yet. Is there something specific I can help you with? I’ll be open at lunchtime otherwise.’
‘The auction for the Roman statue – I had the highest bid. I have come to pick it up, to take it to its true home.’
If she was puzzled by his peculiar statement, she gave no sign, ‘Oh, sorry, yes, I hadn’t looked online this weekend – of course, please come in.’
Pulling the door right open, she allowed Shalfoon to enter the shop, closing the door behind him, ‘Can you text your colleagues to tell them to knock when they get here, otherwise every Tom, Dick and Harry will want to come in. That’s always the way when the door’s shut. When it’s open, hardly anyone comes in,’ she laughed.
Avoiding the suitcases on the floor, she slipped in behind the counter, flipping open her laptop. A few short keystrokes later she had the auction up in front of her.
‘Are you paying with cash or credit card?’ Nicole asked, looking at Shalfoon, her eyes bright, the sale a substantial one.
Shalfoon cleared his throat, this was the part he found most distasteful. He would have preferred the assistance of the inept Art Loss Register people and the police. Pulling himself taller, he started to speak, ‘The statue is actually ...’ before another knocking at the door. ‘That’ll be my colleagues,’ he said.
Nicole sighed, squeezing back past the bags and down to the door.
Opening the door, she was confronted by Inspector Fujimoto, Fiona Duodu, and two other people she’d never met.
‘Oh, hello – sorry but now’s not really a good time. Can you just give me a few minutes? I’ve an actual customer in the shop buying a statue, and well ... as you know, I didn’t have that many sales last week, so I kind of need this one.’
‘Morning, Miss Pilcher. Sorry, but as improbable as this sounds, we’re here because of the statue ...’
Time stopped for Nicole. This was the real risk of selling stuff whose provenance was unknown. At any stage a customer could waltz in claiming the article had been stolen. There were processes in place to protect dealers from unscrupulous claims, but more often than not, the police sided with the customer, tarring all second-hand dealers with the same criminal brush. She’d heard of one dealer, who’d been buying odd bits of Doulton, silver, and assorted bric-a-brac for years from a sensibly dressed, middle-aged matron, but it later transpired she worked in a rest home, and had been stealing from the elderly residents for years and years before finally being caught.
‘Right, best you come inside then. This is going to be awkward, because the guy buying the statue is a reverend of some kind.’ Smiling apologetically, she ushered them all inside.
With this many people in the little shop, space seemed to shrink, and Nicole had to squeeze past the four of them and the minister before reaching the relative safety of the counter.
‘OK, hit me with it. This was going to be the biggest sale of the year, or at least since I started working here,’ the dismay in her voice matching the look on her face.
‘This is not your business?’ Shalfoon asked abruptly. This could be a wrinkle in the plan.
‘Sorry, no, I’m just an employee, the ...’
‘Well then, I will need to speak with the proprietor about ...about the restitution of the Church’s property.’
‘That’s going to be a tad difficult because she’s not here. I would have thought the police here would have told you that?’ Nicole said, trying to keep the smugness from her tone. Her mother had always warned her to watch her tone; it was a downfall of hers when dealing with idiots. One former employer had even tried to discipline her for narrowing her eyes at him. Nutter.
‘Then where did you find my ... the Church’s ... statue?’ Shalfoon spluttered his face reddening, his dreams of ecclesiastical adoration slipping from his grasp.
‘I think I’ll step in here now,’ Fujimoto interrupted, his hands firmly in his pockets. This shop made him feel nervous. The precariously pancaked china bowls looked like they were waiting for him to breathe near them before they careened off the stack of old enamelware they were balanced on. ‘The reality is that Sarah Lester, the owner of this shop, is missing, and we’d like to question her about a number of things. Sadly, your statue is at the bottom of that list. We are only here at the request of Miss Dance from the Register, but ...’ and here the Bishop tried to interject. He was promptly shut down. ‘Let me finish ... for the sake of completeness, we’ll take the statue for safekeeping while you lot thrash it out amongst yourselves.’
‘I found it downstairs, in the basement. There’s no way I could possibly tell you when it was bought or where it came from.’ Looking beseechingly at Fiona, she added, ‘You’ve seen the stock books – that statue, however remarkable, could have been entered into the register as “Statues (10)”, with no other defining feature. You’re dreaming if you think it’s yours. It’s probably just a replica anyway.’
‘Ah-ha, so you were knowingly selling a fake, a counterfeit statue, pawning it off as the genuine article.’
‘No I wasn’t, if you’d read the auction listing properly, you’d have seen that I made no claims as to its actual age, in fact I even said I wasn’t sure. Buyer beware and all that stuff.’
‘See, officer, see what criminals these people are. You should just arrest her now.’
‘Thank you, but that’s not quite how we run our investigations. Once we locate Miss Lester, I’m sure most of
our questions will be answered.’
At that moment, Sarah appeared at the bottom of the staircase. Barefoot in jeans and rumpled T-shirt. She made her way forward.
‘You’re looking for me?’
THE ROUGH
‘You seriously want me to go into that pissy little hole?’ Melissa asked Sinclair, her face as incredulous as the botox would permit, when she took in the peeling paint around the window frame – what was left of the paint to peel, anyway. The dated window display would be more at home in Russia’s Cold War era department stores than a modern London street. ‘It’s hardly the same calibre as the shops I’ve taken you to,’ she added petulantly.
‘Won’t take more than a minute. Give it a try – you might pick up a bargain in a slum like this.’
Rearranging her face into a delicate pout, well practised over the years – the face which used to get her anything she wanted – she watched in shock as Sinclair disappeared inside, leaving her alone on the footpath.
This happens when you try a bit of rough. Sometimes they don’t play by the rules, but damn it’s exciting.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to acknowledge a number of people who have made this journey possible.
Firstly, my family – my husband and my children. They put up with me disappearing into the study, and meandering blindly through the non-fiction section at the library looking for inspiration. Thank you.
My mother, who seems most impressed that I can actually write, and is now firmly my number one fan.
Weirdly I want to thank a shop, Antique Alley. Without Antique Alley, there would be no story. The stock, the customers, the history, the vibe. My brother and Janny. Combined, they force my fingers to type.
My editor, David Powell. Without him, this would be a jumble of adverbs, adjectives, and the wrong nouns. Thank you.
Accent Press, for taking me on, again.
Wikipedia and Google. Yes, I know you shouldn’t always believe everything you read online, but I write fiction, so if there are errors in this story, blame me. Wikipedia and Google remain an essential source of information at eleven o’clock at night when the library is closed and you really need to know if they used bullocks to pull carriages in India in the 1860s.
The Muriels. Without their encouragement, ideas, complaints and advice, we wouldn’t be where we are today – you reading and me writing. Thank you ladies.
I’m planning on writing many more books, so please follow me on my journey via one of the links below.
Thank you for your support.
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Published by Accent Press Ltd 2016
ISBN 9781786154347
Copyright © Kirsten McKenzie 2016
The right of Kirsten McKenzie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN