Gold Digger (33 page)
Authors: Frances Fyfield
‘Going to be OK, Di. Getting bail tomorrow. Sleep now.’
‘Peg likes maps,’ she said.
There were noises off. She could remember the geese flying overhead and the painting of the shells.
‘As for your dad, Di,’ Jones said to her dreaming form and her ugly grazed face, ‘Monica might have been right. Maybe he did just want to help.’
T
he men went upstairs.
‘If it was you shopped Peg, Saul, I’ll knock your block off,’ Jones said.
‘More likely a friend of yours, isn’t it?’
Jones nodded.
‘Women,’ he said. ‘Fucking women.’
They began to tidy up the mess of the gallery room.
‘Those daughters were entitled to the paintings,’ Jones said. ‘They earned them fair and square. Fucking lousy thieves, that’s all. Ever heard of
agent provocateur?
They were fucking set up, that’s what they were. Tricked into crime by being given bait. Can’t expect them not to do it, can you? Shouldn’t have hit her, though, fucking out of order.’
‘And thus they learn what they are,’ Saul said, smoothly. ‘Thieves. They’ll still be quids in for something if they keep their heads. All perfectly honourable, better than they deserve. And Gayle caught on camera, beating up her father’s little wife while her husband vandalises. They can’t claim now. We’ve got them.’
‘I got to tell you something,’ Jones said, heavily. ‘Half the cameras didn’t work.’
‘So? They don’t know that, do they?’
D
i touched the back of her head and felt damp, short hair and a crusted lump and the dull ache that was nothing to do with headache pain and more to do with the heart which aspirin could not cure. Saul would never understand about the cellar. She could not count how many people had found refuge in it over the years of her residence, let alone the years before. The wall was built for shelter as much as subterfuge. The cellar was always safe. A picture came to mind: that beautiful woman in the blowing pink skirt, trying to keep her hat on in a brisk breeze on the beach. Thought of how to keep the cellar open and yet keep it closed, thought of Peg and Patrick, thought ahead and thought of her father coming into the room.
I only want to help.
Maybe she could bury Thomas now.
Thomas, my love: Did I really know you? I feel a hundred years old.
The collection matters more than anything, doesn’t it? Gayle must let Patrick come back. Gayle deserved better. Gayle was the child you loved best, the oldest, the one who remembered most. Gayle was the one who lost the most because her mother lied.
Let me sleep.
Jones and Paul paced the gallery room, tidying up. A pink sky loomed through the windows. They were drunk with fatigue, and for all that, it was thin Saul who led the way, with Jones plodding behind him, prodding him with comments. They were armed with black bin liners and sprays, cleaners to the manner born, dividing the tasks without argument. Saul did the wiping down, Jones the collection.
‘And another thing,’ Jones said. ‘We’re destroying evidence. Look at it.’
Saul looked at a piece of bloodied rope. ‘My, my,’ he said admiringly. ‘Fancy her chewing her way through that. Put it
in the big bag, will you? You know Di wants the evidence destroyed. She’d never have anyone put on trial, but they won’t know that.’
The room was tidy and almost normal. The screen was clean. The bloodstained carpet was rolled against the wall.
‘The difference is that no one else came in, this time,’ Jones said.
Saul hesitated.
‘When I was standing on the pier,’ he said, ‘Watching the front door and realising something was wrong, I thought I saw a man, framed in the light. He waited a little while, and then he went away. That’s all I saw.’
Jones nodded. Saul touched the rope and winced at the feel of it, vicious and ineffectual, like the woman who wielded it. He was wondering at the same time, how long or short it would be before Di started defending her.
The pink light through the windows sank and turned grey and winter day unrolled. They worked on, yawning.
Saul leant against the desk. Soon it would be as if no one had been here at all, the room back to its former glory.
‘Why did you get me to stick a camera in this room? When they were never going to come into the house?’
‘For posterity,’ Saul said, airily. ‘Precaution, just in case.’
‘Bollocks,’ Jones said. ‘You’re a fucking bastard, Saul.’
‘Bones,’ Saul said, suddenly. ‘Old bones, we have to get rid of old bones. I do want to use that space, potentially magnificent. So we’ve got to knock down the wall and get rid of the bones.’
Jones considered. ‘I know of a man,’ he said, slowly. ‘But he’s the last we could ask.’
‘Fed to the fishes, in whole or in part? Burial at sea? Any ideas?’ Saul rattled on.
‘What Di says, goes. It’s Di’s house,’ Jones said. ‘Don’t you ever forget it. This is
her
house. Always has been.’
They went downstairs. Jones secured the front door by jamming it closed. It would not be open again before the spring. The gallery was pristine, the house restored.
‘The man on the steps. The one I saw. Was it her father?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jones said, truthfully.
A
nd then Saul was off on another tangent, laughing loudly, braying, his voice breaking up and coughing as he pointed to the wall in the snug, towards that little smudge of painting that hung without a frame on a hook near the big nude and next to the shelves with the teapots. He reached for it, took it down and turned it round. There was another painting on the back.
‘Dürer,’ he murmured, reverentially as if saying a prayer. ‘It’s only Dürer, painting St Jerome on a piece of wood, and then when you turn the panel over, he has the sun in a black sky. How Thomas had it, I don’t know. We’ve been researching it for years, Thomas and me. The National Gallery has the equivalent. This is really for them. The worth of this smudge? Not a million. Nearer five. And they missed it. They came into the house, walked straight by and missed it.’
‘You mean it’s worth that, and they passed it by and took two fucking frauds?’
‘Not frauds, no,’ Saul said, hurt. ‘Genuine works of art.’
Jones looked at the tiny, dirty painting. Turned it over and saw the glowing sun in the dark sky.
‘You could have taken it,’ Jones said slowly. ‘You could have taken it any time and run.’
Saul nodded.
‘Yes, I might have done, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t really love it.’
‘What’s love got to do with it?’ Jones said. ‘Everything,’ said Saul.
T
he next day, Di wrote to Raymond Forrest.
Dear Raymond, I think, I think, I think, that due to certain events, we might be able to insist on getting Thomas out of the morgue.
Late afternoon, early evening. In his office, which was devoid of any decoration, Raymond Forrest was staring at a blank wall and having a surprising day. He had received extraordinary communications from Edward, to the effect that Edward and family were no longer wanting to contest the will of the late Thos P; no longer wanted the second post mortem and that his son Patrick was free to visit whenever he wished. Raymond tried to phone his client, to leave a message, thought again and sent an email, to which he got a stunning reply in the form of an image.
Picture.
A funeral cortege, with plumed horses, drawing a gun carriage, in which the body lies in a coffin, draped with a blue cloth rather than a flag, the carriage flanked by men in dinner suits and ladies in evening dress. Petals and confetti are thrown, as if at a wedding. A life is being celebrated. Possible fanciful reconstruction of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington, like a picture in the dormitory.
That’s how I’d like it to be, Di wrote.
Raymond wrote back.
No. Thomas wanted his ashes scattered at sea
.
So he did,
she wrote.
So he did.
A
nd now, Raymond thought, let us see. Perhaps now the real Diana Porteous will emerge.
Now she has it all.
PILOGUE
M
ay, the next year
Di’s diary.
We have learned to fish on the pier and we learned about birds in the sanctuary on the far side of the bay. The hide’s a wooden shed, reached by a concrete path, flanked by a couple of benches at each corner of the route which led around the edge of a high bank, covered with every variety of wild flowers and foliage; it’s a riot of intense colour at the best time of the year. The hide has nothing else in it but a bench and a narrow slit of a window, facing on the hidden lake, with the graceful reeds surrounding it, swaying in the breeze that made ripples in the calm water, and we watched, through the long window, peering through the slit.
The plover’s so small, you can scarcely see it without binoculars even from twenty-five yards, unless you had spectacular eyesight, like Patrick has. The bird’s a mere fifteen centimetres; a tiny little wader with a furtive, hunched attitude that has nothing to do with confidence, often seen alone, feeds singly; has rapid, graceful
movement. The plumage changes with the season, so that it’s always disguised. It loves to eat spiders and other insects, is partial to very small, marine snails invisible to the eye. It’s a dowdy little tough, with a limited voice, that either goes
wit, wit wit,
or makes a dry
prr, prr, prr;
Thomas could mimic it, so can I. I taught him, I’m teaching Patrick.
Then I said, My, it’s close in here. Look out, look, over there. It’s an egret, has legs like a pair of wands.
And then beyond that on the far bank of the hidden lake, there was a figure coming over the near horizon, wearing a cap and carrying either a stick or a gun. The illusion of him shimmered.
Then I looked again.
It was only Jones, coming to find us.
And Gayle is coming to fetch Patrick tomorrow.
On a day like this, Thomas, I really think I’ve got it all.
Better than gold.
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
W
ith profound thanks to Angus Neil, for the ideas, the passion for painting, and the generous imparting of knowledge, some of which I’ve retained.
You have enriched my life and sharpened my eyes.
All mistakes are my own.
BOUT
THE
AUTHOR
FRANCES FYFIELD
has spent much of her professional life practicing as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed her highly acclaimed novels. She has been the recipient of both the Gold and Silver Crime Writers’ Association Daggers. She is also a regular broadcaster on Radio 4, most recently as the presenter of the series ‘Tales from the Stave.’ She lives in London and in Deal, overlooking the sea, which is her passion.
www.frances fyfield.co.uk
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LSO
BY
F
RANCES
F
YFIELD
S
AFER
T
HAN
H
OUSES
OPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book was originally published in Great Britain by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, in 2012.
