McNaughtie, McNaughtie and Niece (Solicitors), of Edinburgh, begged to inform me that subsequent to reading the will after the untimely death of their client, they were holding a parcel for me which had been in their safety depository for some time. Would I please be kind enough to contact them with a view to arranging its collection?
I rang them immediately but they weren't open yet. The Presbyterian work ethic didn't extend to starting before nine of the a.m. I took the letter to the office, skipped morning parade and sent Tony Willis up to the Super's prayer meeting.
I got straight on the blower. It was cheaper to use the firm's phone, and it could be police business. A soft Edinburgh brogue answered immediately, but I didn't catch a word she said.
"Could I speak to one of the partners, please?"
"Yes, they're all here, which one would you be liking?"
"Er, Mr. McNaughtie, please." Except that I pronounced it McNorty.
"It's pronounced Nochty, McNochty," she told me, 'and both Mr.
McNaughties passed on many years ago. Miss McNaughtie is in, would you care to speak with her?"
The niece? "Oh, sorry. Yes, Miss McNaughtie will be fine, thank you."
Sparky had pricked up his ears in disbelief when I had asked for Mr.
McNorty, and now his shoulders were bobbing up and down as he hid his face behind a sheaf of court papers.
"Pillock," I hissed at him with my hand over the mouthpiece.
After I'd introduced myself, Miss McNaughtie started to tell me about my bequest, but I cut her short and asked her how Truscott had died.
The poor sod had burned to death when his cottage caught fire. The verdict had been accidental death, possibly brought about by falling asleep in a highly inflammable armchair whilst smoking. She couldn't tell me anything further, so I asked her what he'd left me.
"It's probably a painting. Mr. Truscott was a very eminent artist, you know. It is well wrapped up and has been in our depository for several weeks, along with one or two others. Mr. Truscott specialised in copying old masters, but his paintings are very valuable in their own right. Would you like us to arrange delivery by Housecarl, or will you come to collect it?"
Housecarl were the biggest security company in the country. It crossed my mind that they had probably managed the transport of the Art Aid paintings, something we hadn't looked into. Maybe we should start looking again.
"Yes, I'd be grateful if you could send it to me," I told her, 'but first of all could you possibly open it up and tell me what it is?"
This prospect delighted Miss McNaughtie, and she promised to ring me back as soon as the wrappings were off. She kept her word.
"It's a copy of a Picasso. I didn't think I liked Picasso, but this one is charming."
"Is it a portrait of a lady?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Facing left, hair piled on top of her head, lots of blue and yellow, holding a magnolia blossom?"
"That's it, Mr. Priest. You obviously know the painting."
"Yes, I've seen the original. She's called Isobelle Maillol. Rumour has it that she was Picasso's mistress. Can you see if the painting is damaged in any way, probably very slightly?"
She was quiet for a couple of minutes, then she came back to the phone and told me: "Yes, but it is very slight. There's a scratch, only about an inch long, near the top left-hand corner. It's hardly noticeable."
"Thank you. Well spotted. Mr. Truscott told me that it had been damaged. Is it possible for you to tell me who he left the rest of his estate to?"
"It's public knowledge, Mr. Priest. Everything went to his two ex-wives. Not that it amounts to much. As far as we have been able to ascertain, his estate is somewhat smaller than we had expected."
"How small?"
"Oh, about fifteen thousand pounds, plus a few paintings."
I'd have put him easily into the half-millionaire bracket. Miss McNaughtie gave me the address of the burnt-out cottage and I confirmed my address with her. Before I put the instrument down I told her it had been a pleasure talking to her, but it hadn't. As I trudged up the stairs to Gilbert Wood's office I wondered if this elderly Edinburgh spinster was gazing upon that beautiful three-eyed lady in a new light in the knowledge that she had been Picasso's mistress. I was also wondering what the hell to do next.
The black economy was booming. How we envy those TV detectives who work on one crime at a time; swarming about with their able assistant until the culprit is firmly behind bars before moving on to the next juicy piece of villainy. It would have been nice to have been able to follow my whim and investigate Truscott's lifestyle, but we had a business to run.
There had been another ram-raid in Heckley over the weekend: a Lada estate had been driven through the shutters of Bink's Hi-Fi and Video, and four youths had made off in a stolen Sierra with eight thousand pounds worth of goodies. It was the tenth similar raid we'd had in as many weeks. In addition a gang of pickpockets and bag-snatchers was operating in the New Mall, with apparent impunity from the law. The Super was catching flack from the Chamber of Commerce, the Retailers'
Association and the Watch Committee. I was catching flack, with interest, from the Super.
Truscott wouldn't go away, though. We didn't have a crime or a complainant; but dead men don't complain, they just stink, and I could feel it in my nostrils. Eventually I tracked down the officer who had investigated the fire at Truscott's cottage.
"Aye, we're happy that it was an accident," he told me when I got him to the phone, 'and the Procurator Fiscal agrees. There was nothing left of the body, just a pile of ashes. He used the place as an artist's studio, so there was lots of paint and spirit and stuff lying around. Went up like a bonfire."
"How was he identified?"
"Personal effects. Signet ring, wristwatch. Decent watch, a Rolex.
It'd stopped, though. His ex-wife was the only next of kin we could trace. She recognised them."
Vanessa? "Did you meet the ex-wife?"
"No, one of my constables dealt with it."
I told the sergeant why I was so interested, and about Truscott's claim that his life was in danger. "Just out of interest, Sergeant," I chose my words carefully, 'you wouldn't happen to know of any missing persons locally, would you?"
He realised what I was getting at. "Are you implying that the body wasn't this Truscott fellow?" A note of aggression had crept into his voice.
"It's a remote possibility."
He was silent for a long while. I'd have thought we'd been cut off except that I could hear him breathing. Then he said: "Aye, old Jamie."
"Old Jamie, who's he?"
"He's a vagrant, wanders from village to village. He vanishes into Edinburgh when the weather turns, then comes back in the spring, sure as the swallows."
"But he's disappeared?"
"Aye. A few people have commented that he hasn't been seen around.
We've been half expecting to find him lying in a burn somewhere."
I could feel the poor sergeant growing agitated. One accidental death and one missing person to deal with, and some Sassenach was accusing him of getting them the wrong way round.
"Accidental death," he told me with an air of finality, 'that's what the Procurator Fiscal said it was. If you think any different you'd best take it up with him."
"I'm sure you're right," I agreed, trying to get him back on my side.
"But I would be interested if old Jamie turns up." He promised to let me know. As an afterthought I said: "Oh, by the way, who is the Procurator Fiscal these days?"
He gave me a name that sounded like a chord on the bagpipes. I asked him to spell it. We rang off on reasonable terms, but I couldn't help thinking that they were looking for Auld Jamie in the wrong sort of burn.
I'm Gilbert Wood's greatest fan. He actually volunteered to ring the Procurator Fiscal. I was causing him a lot of hassle that he could do without, but deep down he was beguiled by the thought of cracking a multi-million-pound art scam. Especially one that nobody knew had happened.
"Okay, Charlie, okay! I'll bloody well ring him, if only to get you off my back." He was pacing back and forth like a tiger in a cage, except he looked more like a panda. The mood, though, was definitely tigerish. "But not just yet. Where do we stand with the ram-raiders?
The only people who aren't on to me are the bloody glass merchants and the suppliers of eight-by-four sheets of plywood. What are your boys coming up with?"
"You're going to give yourself a coronary," I stated. "You've forgotten how to enjoy yourself. Sit down, calm down, and I'll tell you all about it."
Gilbert sat down. Two young constables were trying to penetrate the gangs on the estates where we thought the ram-raiders came from. It was a risky situation and we were all uneasy about it. They appeared to revel in the job, though.
"Martin Makinson seems to be coming up with the goods," I told him.
"He's well in with a receiver and is bulk-buying off him. We sell the goods back to the insurance companies. They pay up front "Bulk-buying! Is he creating the demand that they're trying to fill?
This could work wonders for the economy."
"No, that was just a figure of speech. He just buys enough to keep his credibility high. He's worked himself into a good bargaining position; now he's talking about dealing directly with Mr. Big. There is a Mr.
Big. These people are organised."
"How safe is he? What have you told him?"
"Maz has been given strict…"
"Who's Maz?" Gilbert interrupted.
"Martin," I answered. "He calls himself Maz now, it goes with his new haircut. And the tattoos. And the nose-ring. He really takes his work seriously. I've given him strict instructions that if he gets the faintest inkling of being rumbled he's to cut and run. I've also warned him that he might be dealing with dumbos at present, but the next tier will be a different league, they'll have brains. Just a name, that's all I've told him to get."
Gilbert was calm now. He shook his head slowly. "Rather him than me," he said, then asked: "Do you worry about them, Charlie?"
"Mmm, I worry myself sick. They seem to lap it up, though."
"And what about John Rose?"
"John is cultivating a couple of contacts in a gang who call themselves the Fusiliers. Plenty going off but all small stuff. Thieving, some drugs, a bit of football hooliganism, racist overtones. Nothing organised, though."
"God, what a healthy environment to put our best recruits into. What would his mother think? Call him off if he's wasting his time."
"I'll leave him a bit longer, if you don't mind. No doubt we'll get something out of it. I'm having to be flexible with them both, though, because they're supposed to be unemployed. That's leaving me short in other areas."
"Okay," agreed Gilbert, 'do what you think is best. How are you getting on with your dad's Jaguar? Is it nearly ready?"
"It's going well. The wheels have just been done up and now they're back at Jimmy Hoyle's for new tyres and balancing. All we need then is an MOT and we're away."
I stood up to leave. "Don't forget the Procurator Fiscal," I reminded him. His reply tripped off the tongue with similar ease.
Nigel Newley was back with us. He'd shown a definite aptitude for detective work and started to fit in when he realised that we weren't complete barbarians north of Hemel Hempstead. We just like to pretend we are. He'd even acquired a taste for the beer, and no longer diluted it with brown ale. I'd had him in, together with another DC, Jeff Caton, to give them a grilling in preparation for their promotion panels. When we'd finished I asked Jeff to find the names of the Traffic boys who had escorted the Art Aid convoy, and to check which security company was involved.
"A fart to a Ferrari it was Housecarl, but check anyway," I told him.
Nigel had a report to type. He'd caught a pickpocket in the New Mall.
She was a sixty-seven-year-old alcoholic. We both agreed that this burst of success was unlikely to get the Super off our necks, but we'd go through the motions by giving her a caution and alerting the Social Services. Tony Willis was busy at the typewriter keys, too, preparing some court reports. Tony's typing has all the intermittency of some dastardly Chinese water torture. After a longer than average pause he asked: "Does buggery have a g-g in it?"
"A gee-gee, a moo cow, usually something like that," I told him.
"Thanks, boss. We'd be lost without you."
"Any time, Anthony."
Nigel was gazing at us both with a vacant expression when Gilbert Wood burst in. "Haven't you got anything to do?" he demanded of Nigel.
Without waiting for a reply he hurled a screwed-up ball of paper at me and sat down. I smoothed out the sheet and saw it was the Procurator Fiscal's name and number that I had given him. He took a few deep breaths before he spoke. "I just rang your friend Jock McPillock. Made me feel like a bloody schoolboy. How dare I have the temerity to ring him on the electric telephone? Any second I expected him to call me wee laddie."
I waited until Gilbert had calmed down. "Do I get the impression he's not willing to co-operate?" I asked, stifling a laugh.
"Him and me also. Not without hard evidence. A crime would be a good starting point. My advice is drop it, Charlie, we've enough on our plates chasing real villains without inventing them."
"Okay, boss, but thanks for ringing him. I'll cross it off my list of Jobs I Must Do. Kettle's just boiled if you want a coffee."
"No thanks. Wife's got me on decaffeinated. Tastes just the same to me." He stumped off back to his office.
Nigel recovered his voice. "Could be the perfect crime," he said. "The one nobody believes has been committed. Are you going to drop it, boss?"
"Is he chuff," said DS Willis.
Next morning Jeff Caton presented me with a list of the Traffic officers that I'd asked for, with their current shifts. "The security company situation is a bit odd," he told me. "Housecarl had the main contract to transport the Art Aid paintings, but apparently a firm called ABC Security have a contract with West Pennine County Council to do all their security work. They insisted it was their job and threatened to sue for breach of contract. Eventually a compromise was agreed to by the insurers, whereby Housecarl subcontracted this one journey to ABC "ABC Security, well done." I'd seen their vans occasionally. They seemed to have sprung up in the last couple of years. I didn't attach any significance to the name: every category in the Yellow Pages has somebody called ABC listed. A part of me was also beginning to think that perhaps Gilbert Wood was right. I could do without all this. I'd have one last throw, though.
"Get some background on ABC," I told him. "Find out what sort of company it is and who the registered owners are. But don't let them know we are asking. And if the Super asks what you're doing, tell him you're looking for a lost gerbil."
It was decision time. What to have for lunch. I didn't fancy the canteen and I could use some fresh air, so I decided to wander down to the New Mall and eat there. The opening of the New Mall had been a bit of a renaissance for the centre of Heckley. We'd gone through the black-hole-in-the-middle period and, hopefully, were now entering a new, more prosperous phase for the town's traders. It was a rather grand place, and had been well accepted after many early misgivings. It had a posher name, but all and sundry referred to it as the New Mall.
Unfortunately it had become a happy hunting ground for petty thieves.
Today the local radio station was holding some sort of fund-raising event there that would provide riveting listening for its countless dozens of fans. For some strange reason this was expected to attract people to the mall, not drive them away, so it could be a good day for picking a pocket or two. We'd got everybody available mingling with the throng of happy teenyboppers.
Normally, I wouldn't become involved at this level, but the council elections were imminent, and one of the candidates was floating his campaign on the crime wave in there. My plan was simple I'd eat, look at the girls, nab a couple of villains, then come back to the office.
When the others returned empty-handed I'd give them hell and go home with a nice self-satisfied feeling.
The multi-choice, serve-yourself restaurant is on the third floor of the mall. The disc jockey was strutting his stuff on the ground floor, but it was still too close. I was tucking into my pizza when Sparky joined me. One-up to him: he'd found me before I found him.
"Any action?" I asked.
"A definite possible," he told me. "Mad Maggie has her eye on three girls who are acting a bit strange. At least three of the women who lost handbags were sitting over in that far left-hand corner when they realised their bags had gone. It's a bit more secluded there, lots of plastic palm trees. These girls keep returning to the spot, looking for a vacant table. Done it about six times so far. Why are you eating pizza? You always say you don't like it when we send out for some."
"Good for Maggie," I said. "Set a woman to catch a woman. We've too many old-fashioned ideas about villains; we'd have been watching the blokes. I don't like pizza the girl behind the counter looks like Steffi Graf."
"Speak for yourself, I'm younger than you. How long have you been a Steffi Graf fan?"
"About half an hour."
"You should try the roast beef stall, I always go there."
"What's the waitress like?"
"Henry Cooper, but the beefs good."
Sparky took me to where DC Margaret Madison was looking at a closed-circuit television monitor, focused down on to the corner of the restaurant where the action was.
"Hi, boss," she whispered, somewhat unnecessarily, and gestured with an inclination of her head. "They're back, and they're sitting behind that woman who's put her handbag on the floor."
The three girls were at a table in the corner, facing outwards. They had a commanding view of the immediate vicinity, but could not be observed themselves. Except by us.
"Can you record this?" I asked Maggie.
"It's in the can, sweetie. Sorry, boss film producers' jargon."
A middle-aged woman was at the next table to the girls, with her back to them. Maggie juggled with the camera's remote control and showed me the woman's handbag on the floor. As we watched, the bent end of an umbrella came into view and slowly hooked itself through the strap of the bag. Maggie pulled the camera back into wide angle. The girl on the left gently drew the bag towards her. When it was within reach she picked it up and put it over her shoulder and all three of them stood up and calmly walked away.
"Dave, you go up and collar the woman, and radio the others to join us at the ground-floor exits." I was speaking as we dashed out of the monitor room. We were already on the ground floor. A couple of the mall's own security people were with us. I told them to get to the Ladies' toilets in case the girls went there with their spoils. Maggie and I stood at the foot of the staircase, from where we could also watch the escalator. We tried to look natural.
"God, you've got beautiful eyes," I told her. "Why don't you let me take you away from all this?"
"You say the nicest things, Charlie. What will we do about Robin?"
"There's always a snag. We could poison him, does he like mushrooms?
Don't answer that, they're coming down the escalator."
We walked to the foot of the escalator and it delivered the three girls, as pretty as a postcard, right on to our doormat.
"Police," I said. "You're under arrest for sus."
The front one's face registered horror for a split second, then she burst between us and fled. The second girl tried to follow but I grabbed the sleeve of her baseball jacket. The other one turned back up the escalator with Maggie in hot pursuit. The girl I'd grabbed tried to slip out of her jacket and run, but I managed to hold her arm.
She started to thump me with her free hand and kick me.
"Help!" she yelled. "Help me! He's attacking me! Rape!"
I managed to get her in a bear hug. She was kicking and spitting and still shouting for help. From up the escalator I could hear her pal yelling: "Get off me, you cow. Let me go!" A crowd started to gather.
It looked as if they might join in on the girls' side.
"I'm a police officer," I shouted above her screams. "She's under arrest for suspicion of theft."
"Do you have to be so rough with her?"
"Bastard pigs, that's all you're fit for."
Maggie appeared with her girl in handcuffs, closely followed by Sparky and the lady with no handbag. We got the cuffs on my girl, but not without a struggle.
"Take them in," I told Maggie and Sparky, loosening my tie and brushing the hair from my eyes. "I'll try for some Brownie points in PR." I turned to face the crowd and held up my hands. A big youth with a beer gut testing the tensile strength of his T-shirt stood at the front of the crowd, together with a young woman wearing a baby round her neck in a sling, as if it were the latest fashion accessory. They'd done most of the protesting, so I addressed them directly.
"Look, I'm sorry if we appeared rough, but the girls were given plenty of opportunity to come quietly. The third one did escape. There's been a spate of handbag-stealing in the mall recently, and we have good reason to believe that those girls were involved. Now will you please all go back to what you were doing."
Most of them started to melt, away. Some of the troops had been mixed in with them, keeping an eye on things, and they drifted off. The woman with the baby held back.
"Typical police bullshit," she snorted. "Your behaviour was disgraceful. I'm going to take this further. I demand to know your name."
"Priest," I answered wearily. "Inspector. Try to have a nice rest of the day."
Another woman, a little older, appeared in front of me. She was offering me a tissue. "She scratched you, Inspector. Your cheek's bleeding slightly."
I took the tissue and wiped my cheek. "Thank you," I said, smiling so wide it hurt my face. "You're very kind. Could I possibly repay you by buying you a coffee?"
"I'd prefer tea," replied Annabelle Wilberforce.