Headcase Page 3

  A fat snake of double-decker tour buses was clogging up Brock Street as I stepped back into the late afternoon heat from Simon’s air-conditioned emporium in Margaret’s Buildings. It slowed down to give their passengers a brief and oblique view of the sweeping majesty of the Royal Crescent before squeezing into Upper Church Street. The fortunate inhabitants of the Crescent have been made more fortunate still by being exempt from the diesel fumes and amplified commentary of the grinding tourist procession.

  I turned the other way, inched the car out of its tight parking space in Catherine Place and zipped through Circus Mews and Bennett Street before re-joining the traffic stew at the bottom of Lansdown Road. I had no intention of getting infected with Simon’s panic about the sale so I settled into the inevitable crawl. There was one more thing to do before I returned to the valley: the meeting I had set up between Tim and the worried partner of the Walcot Street antiques dealer. Not that Tim needed me for this but the meeting took place, appropriately, in the beer garden of the Bell, not fifty yards from the premises of Austin Antiques, and I was ready for a drink.

  A lucky parking space by the side of the charity shop, early eye contact with a hectic barmaid and I was equipped with an ice cold pint of Stella. The inside of the Bell appeared gloomy after the brightness of the street and was almost deserted apart from the scrum at the bar. Everyone had squeezed into the courtyard at the back. Tim and Carl Fishers, our worried client, were perched on upturned beer crates in a corner under some aphid-ridden bushes.

  Fishers rose to greet me and we shook hands. A tiny black beard clung to the bottom of his sharp triangular face but his voice seemed to come from a broader chest than his gangly frame. It was deep and confident. He didn’t seem to mind repeating his story to me while I pulled up a crate and sipped my Stella.

  “I’ve been involved with Austin for two years now, sank quite a bit of money into it.

  His expertise, my money. It sounds naive now but I don’t really know anything about antiques. I just liked the idea of it, you know, not as impersonal as burying your money in other investments. Thought I might learn something, too. We met on the golf course a few years back, then one day I talked about investments and he suggested I come in with him. He was just starting up in Walcot.”

  “And now you’re thinking…what?”

  “He’s holding out. Things go through the shop and never turn up in the books. Return of sale, Geoff says, stuff he takes on from customers and when they don’t sell after a time they go back. Business is bad, too much competition, he says. But I know he’s making money.”

  “Do any cash transactions show up?”

  “Yes, some.”

  “So we can’t catch him out on that.”

  “What I really want you to do is have a look on his computer. He puts everything on that but I wouldn’t know how to switch one on. And put a camera and a microphone in his office, as Mr Bigfoot suggested before you arrived.”

  This happens a lot to Mr Bigwood. He ran a broad hand through his woolly blond hair. “Call me Tim,” he offered gracefully.

  “And I don’t want it done just for a limited time. I want to be able to permanently check what my friend Geoff gets up to,”

  Fishers said and gulped down his watery-looking pint.

  “You want to buy surveillance equipment and want us to install it permanently?” Tim asked.

  “I want to be able to keep tabs on him from now on,” Fishers confirmed.

  I looked at Tim who nodded sagely. “I’ve got the equipment in the car. Pricey to buy, but no problem.”

  Fishers checked the time on his diminutive mobile. “He’d have left by now. Shall we go, gentlemen?” He rose impatiently, couldn’t wait to get at the guy. I hoovered up the rest of my pint and followed.

  Fishers went ahead to double check the place was really empty, then waved us on. This was my kind of antiques shop. Geoff Austin had set it up two years ago yet the place gave the impression it had been here from the beginning of time. If Austin Antiques specialized in anything in particular then it was not apparent. Statuary; furniture; a musket, chained to the wall; rapiers and swords in a hollow elephant’s foot; framed paintings and prints on the walls, against the walls, most of them dull; jewellery in vitrines; a stuffed fox in a glass case; figurines and china under lock and key, apparently valuable, definitely hideous. This was the kind of shop where you felt you could discover something exciting. The kind of shop where inevitably you discover that you can’t afford your discoveries.

  Tim lugged past me with a heavy stainless steel carry case, straight to the office. I followed reluctantly. A small room, now crowded with the three of us and Tim’s equipment. A large mahogany desk, antique, held the computer, state of the art, according to Tim, who had already fired it up. A tall metal locker held more prints and some rare books, Fishers explained, the little safe in the corner the more expensive small pieces, including jewellery and watches, locked up every night. Fishers didn’t have a key.

  “An old Bruton Centurion,” Tim said with that dismissive tone that told me not to ask. He’d have it open in twenty minutes. I couldn’t be of any real help here and left. I had pictures to take.

  CHAPTER II

  An unfamiliar car was parked in the yard when I arrived at Mill House, something rare enough to make me curious. The scent of burning kindling and catching charcoal hung in the still air so I made my way straight to the back of the house. The barbecue was flaming. Under the ancient oak at the top of the meadow a girl or woman in khaki shorts and vest was pointing the long lens of a camera at me. Whether or not she took a picture of me I couldn’t tell. She lowered the camera and skipped towards me. Very blonde hair held in a long ponytail, clear grey eyes and a slightly aquiline nose. I put her at early thirties.

  “You’re Chris Honeysett? I’m Gillian Pine.” She fished a business card from her back pocket where it had moulded itself into a slight curve against her behind. I would keep it for future reference. “I’m a location finder for the BBC. Came across your house quite by accident. You do own this house? Miss Jordan said.”

  Said Miss Jordan appeared with a tray of long glasses of orange juice and soda which lit up brightly in the sun. “Hi, Chris, this is Gill,” Annis said. “She’s from the BBC. Fancies Mill House as a set for a drama.” Gill made a mischievous face by half closing one eye and doing something curiously attractive with the corner of her mouth. “And Miss Jordan…”

  “You can call me Annis.”

  “Okay, Annis told me exactly what you’d say to that.”

  Both looked intently at me, expecting me to perform. I obliged: “Not bloody likely.” Both of them laughed. And that seemed to settle that.

  We talked on the veranda. Gill entertained us with stories of her travels looking for suitable places to film, a job that seemed to have taken her everywhere I had ever heard of. Finding houses, streets, landscapes, facilities. “I don’t travel far afield any more though, only do Britain now. I’ve a son at home and don’t want to be away so much.” She had one more light-hearted go at tempting me into handing over Mill House to a film crew, complete with cast and their trailers, BBC lorries and catering vans. “They pay extremely well, are very well behaved. They’ll pay for luxury accommodation if you need to move out for the duration and pay for any damage. Not that they’ll do any,” she added quickly.

  “What kind of programme is it?” I asked. Not that I was in the least tempted.

  “Nothing in particular. I just couldn’t resist photographing your house. I know I could sell them this place. No, I’m really out to find a large Georgian villa. Bath seemed the obvious place to come to. For a drama set at the turn of the century.”

  “Any luck so far?”

  “No.”

  Then I remembered Starfall House and mentioned it to her. Then I remembered Mr Dufossee’s illness. I doubted he wanted a film crew crawling all over his place. I added that I didn’t think Starfall House was such a good idea after all, told her t
o be extra discreet. She promised.

  Tim’s eventual arrival at Mill House was the starting signal. Annis threw some red mullet on the grill, I cracked open near-frozen bottles of Stella and we were under way. Gill made to leave but we insisted she stay, at least for the food. Tim settled his broad back into a wicker chair next to Gill and gave us all the rundown on the Fishers job without mentioning any names. Tim is nothing if not discreet.

  He installed a pinhole camera and microphone in the office and concealed the recorder in the basement, where Fishers could check whenever his partner was out. He had attacked the computer and found several files protected with encryption as well as passwords. Fishers didn’t want Tim to spend all night trying to decrypt the files. The mere fact that they were this heavily protected seemed to confirm Austin’s guilt for him. Fishers decided the camera would yield enough evidence. The old Centurion safe didn’t hold out long but had no secrets to reveal.

  “You’re a safe cracker as well?” Gill’s admiration for Tim’s skills went up another notch. “Where did you learn to do that sort of thing?”

  Tim waved her question away with a fresh bottle of Stella. “All part of the package.”

  To this day I have no idea where Tim acquired his expertise in opening locks of all kind. Nor did I ever ask him how he can afford to drive a brand new Audi TT on the money he earns. And I don’t intend to, in case I don’t like the answers to my questions. I need Tim and don’t want to have to let him go. One thing I do know. Whatever Tim gets up to he’s never been caught. Superintendent Needham had all of us checked out and to his lasting surprise none of us had any “previous”.

  “So did we make any money?” I asked.

  “Well, I did,” Tim declared. “I sold him my own equipment. Wanted some new stuff anyway. Then there’s time, of course.”

  “Don’t forget to fill in a time sheet then, I don’t want another guesstimate.” Tim is even worse with paperwork than I am.

  Annis now gave a quick account of her Turner-watching. He’d walked down Milsom Street, Burton Street and Union Street, bought his lunch at the sandwich shop by the abbey and sauntered on to Pulteney Bridge, down the steps to the weir. There he consumed his sandwich sitting on the parched patch of grass below the cafe and made a call on his mobile which lasted half an hour. He smiled and laughed a lot. A social call. Then he went back to his office. Nada, in other words. Depending on who he was calling of course. Gill seemed fascinated by these workaday accounts.

  Light was rapidly failing when I walked Gill to her car. We stood for a moment by the channel which gave off a cool, fresh scent that overlaid the darker smells of permanently wet wood and stone.

  “I’m not sure I could live with the noise of your mill stream,” she said.

  “Where in Bath are you staying?”

  “At a B&B on the Upper Bristol Road.”

  “I couldn’t live with the noise of that.” It’s a main thoroughfare with buses, lorries and whathaveyou bombing along.

  “Mm. Point taken. If I’d known I’d have chosen somewhere else. But believe it or not, it’s my first time in Bath.”

  “Staying much longer?”

  “A while.”

  “Want to meet up again before you leave?” A question I hadn’t planned to ask. Came out of nowhere. Impossible now to gauge her reaction in the dark. I concentrated on where the grey of her eyes shimmered indistinctly. She took her time.

  “All right, let’s.”

  “Saturday lunch? At one? The Bathtub in Grove Street. Do you know it?”

  “I’m a location finder, remember?”

  She beeped her horn as she drove up the lane.

  There are certain mornings that are just so. Mornings that seem to say, hey, I started off perfectly, now the rest is up to you. There are mornings that are so pristine it makes you afraid you might sully them with some clumsiness. A careless word. A less than graceful movement. There are mornings that later, when the nightmares arrive, when your life is irreversibly changed by the evil of the day, you wish you could simply crawl back to. And stay there forever. Hidden. Safe. Sane.

  The sun licked languidly at the dew in the meadow when I wandered across to the barn with my first mug of coffee and Simon’s camera. The birds were chiding in the trees behind the studio. The woodpecker was working, often heard, yet never seen. I flung open the broad double door and measured my canvases, propped the right sizes against the outside wall, away from direct sunlight. There were more than enough. I photographed them carefully and delivered the camera into Simon’s eager hands in Bath.

  Now I could devote some quality time to the missing Dufossee paintings. Virginia regretted she was too busy to meet me at Starfall House but would arrange for someone to be there and give me all the assistance — and presumably instant coffee — I’d require.

  The sun was burning holes through the haze by the time I arrived at Starfall House. A silver Mercedes and a green BMW had got there before me. The man who greeted me on the doorstep might have been waiting behind the door for my arrival, so instant was his response to the bell.

  “Mr Honeysett? Leonard Dufossee. My sister asked me to give you all the help you might need. Come inside.” I’d intended to.

  He led me to the large drawing room with the baby grand and the empty spaces on the wall and flopped down on a sofa. His hair was short and wiry and black. His right eye was also black. “A crate of wine caught me out, tumbled straight in my face,” he pre-empted my question. “I run a mail order drinks business,” he added.

  His irises were of the same intense blue as his sister’s, making me change my mind about the coloured contacts I had suspected her of wearing. The only other similarity I could find was the rate at which he smoked. Still only in his early thirties, I guessed, he had managed to grow a considerable paunch, suggesting that he might be ordering food in while mailing drinks out. The ashtray on the table was half full, the whole room reeked of the stuff. Leonard seemed far less sure of himself, had none of his sister’s commanding air.

  “Is there any news yet?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t expect there to be. Let’s treat this as day one. I’ve put out a few feelers but as I told your sister the chances of clearing this up without the help of the police are slim. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it my full attention. I’ll start by photographing the place and lifting fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints? Surely burglars don’t leave fingerprints anymore.”

  Leonard had a point of course. No halfway decent burglar would work without gloves. Only junkies do. And this had nothing to do with someone getting money for gear. The fingerprint lifting was more an insurance against the wrath of Superintendent Needham when he eventually found out that his forensic evidence had been trampled over by the time he and his boys got there. An empty gesture perhaps, but it would make me feel better about our inevitable run-in.

  “There’s always a small chance. Not so long ago a burglar was convicted by an ear print he had left on a window, where he’d listened to make sure the victim was out. So you never can tell.” I unpacked the equipment from my bag and started on the wall next to the empty square by the fireplace. “Did you agree with your sister it was better to keep the police out for a while?” I asked while I worked.

  Leonard cleared his throat. “Mm, yes. It’s better this way. Dad really isn’t well. Though it does make me nervous, too. I grew up with these paintings. I’m very fond of them, especially the Spencer Gores — the nude in the garden and the one in the studio interior. Spent hours dreaming of girls in front of those canvases. But then I have to admit I can’t actually remember when I last looked at them. You know, really looked? I regret that now.”

  Leonard showed me where he thought the burglars had entered the house. A narrow window, originally a coal chute, in a cellar room had been forced. “The connecting door to the hall should have been locked but it looks like it was left open by mistake. The alarm must have gone off when that door was ope
ned, that’s how it’s set up. Then they disabled the alarm at the control box by the door.”

  If the burglars already knew where the box was the alarm probably rang for no more than ten seconds. It had no relay to a police station, so once it fell silent they had all the time in the world. Upstairs, after I finished taking prints, I paid leisurely homage to the Pissarro — a village almost obscured by the russet foliage of the trees in the foreground. Pissarro could do trees all right. I could smell them. Leonard hovered nearby, not interrupting. Probably not wondering whether he was paying for the time I spent staring. I was sure his sister would have.

  All the paintings were screwed into place with mirror plates, not wired into the wall or individually alarmed as they should have been. No smart alarms, no smart water. I could not imagine any insurance company being happy with these arrangements. Maybe ten, fifteen years ago but not today.

  “The paintings are insured, naturally?” I asked.

  “They are, but that’s hardly the point, is it? It’s not the money. At least not for me,” Leonard said, looking for a place to put out his cigarette and not finding one.

  “Who has a key to the house?”

  “Only my father, my sister and myself. And Mrs Ibbs, the housekeeper. She’s away visiting relatives.”

  “Does Mrs Ibbs live in?”

  “No, in the village. She’s a widow,” he added for some reason.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back? I’ll have to talk to her.”

  Leonard didn’t know when she’d return but furnished me with her address and phone number in Compton Dando.

  “The gardeners? Don’t they have a key?”

  “No need to, there is a shed with all the gear in it.”

  “Do you trust Mrs Ibbs?”

  Leonard seemed to find the question vaguely amusing. Yes he did trust Mrs Ibbs, she’d been looking after Starfall House and Mr Dufossee senior for years.

  I thanked Leonard for his help and promised to keep his sister informed. He handed me his business card, asking me to ring him as soon as I had news. Perhaps Leonard and Virginia didn’t communicate well. I declined to stay for a coffee. Starfall House had provided me with enough of a metaphorical headache, so I felt no need to add a real one.