The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (26 page)

Regretting her outburst, Helen bit her lip.

‘You don’t have to want it for yourself,’ said Charlie. ‘You could exploit those capitalist pricks the way they’ve probably exploited a whole bunch of people to get so filthy rich in the first place. Do some good with the money. You know, rob from the rich and give to the poor.’

‘If only things were that simple,’ Helen replied as hysterical laughter threatened to well up inside her. ‘I’d be stealing from myself.’

‘Details.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘Come on, let’s have a look at what’s in that packet.’

Never you mind.

Recalling Letitia’s warning, Helen glanced up at her uncle’s town house and the dark windows. He was probably watching her right now, from behind his curtains.

‘Okay. But not here.’

They drove to a nearby pub tucked away from the main road and almost deserted at this hour of the day. Helen ordered two Cokes, and they chose a table in a secluded booth at the far corner of the pub away from windows and prying eyes.

Charlie undid the string securing the parcel and pushed the paper aside to reveal something that looked like a wooden book. Wrapping her hands in the sleeves from her jumper for protection, Helen opened it, folding back one page to the left then the other to the right.

‘What is it?’ asked Charlie.

‘It’s a Russian icon. A triptych because it has three panels.’

She looked at the centre image of the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus depicted as a miniature adult. The left was from the annunciation with the archangel Gabriel, and the right showed Mary in the cave with the shrouded Jesus. Three scenes from the life of the Virgin on a Russian icon, just as Letitia had said. Nothing strange about that.

Charlie reached out to touch it, but Helen stopped her. ‘You can’t touch art with greasy fingers.’

‘Well, la-di-dah. Is it very valuable?’

Helen held it up to the light. The surface was slightly uneven where the original coat of varnish had cracked and then been restored. She had learned about icons at school. Apart from enjoying Art as a subject, the fact that they were Russian, and a part of her ancestry so to speak, had captured her imagination and provided her with a way of holding on to her identity at the same time. She probably knew more about them than most people, even Letitia. Pictures of saints, and often the Holy Virgin, they were painted on wooden board with
gesso
, a kind of chalk, as well as with egg tempera, which was made from mixing powdered pigment with egg yolk, and then coated with finishing oil. This one had also been overlaid with engraved silver leaf on the garments, the halos, and the backgrounds.

‘Letitia said so. It depends how old it is, but the paperwork should tell us that.’

‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Charlie slipped a dirty, chipped fingernail under the flap and opened the envelope without damaging the glue, glanced at the papers, then handed them to Helen. ‘See what you can make of it. It’s all Greek to me.’

‘Close. It’s Russian, you dork.’

‘Well, what does it say? You’re the one with the Russian uncle.’

‘I’m a bit rusty, but’—Helen waved a sheet of paper under Charlie’s nose—‘here’s a translation. Lucky me.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘It says,’ Helen read aloud, ‘that the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation certifies that this is an icon of one hundred years in age and that exporting it from Russia is within the law.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘There’s some law forbidding exports of icons older than a hundred years. This one obviously comes direct from Russia where they’re quite strict, but sometimes they’re smuggled into the Baltic countries and won’t have a certificate.’

Charlie looked at the icon. ‘A hundred years old? I’m no expert but this one looks older.’

‘Maybe it is.’

‘But the certificate says it isn’t.’

Helen smiled. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s true. What if you paid someone in the Ministry of Culture to say it was one hundred years old just to make it easier to get it out of the country?’

‘Corruption. Okay, I buy that. But why is it so urgent that it has to be back before lunch?’

‘Because Letitia has a meeting with a private buyer. Which is why we need to get back.’ She returned the papers to the envelope, wrapped the icon carefully and got up.

Charlie caught her arm. ‘Sit down. I have an idea. I don’t know much about art,’ she said, ‘but I know about stealing stuff.’

‘We don’t know if it’s stolen.’

‘All right, listen, imagine running off with the
Mona Lisa
.’

‘I’ve been to the Louvre. It’s pretty impossible. They don’t even let you see it half the time.’

‘Just go with me here.’

Helen sighed. ‘Okay. We steal the
Mona Lisa
. Then what?’

‘That’s it. That’s exactly it. What would you do with it?’

‘Hang it on the wall.’ Helen shrugged. ‘Try to sell it.’

‘And how’d you flog her? On
E-bay
?’

‘No, I’d go to a private collector. Someone with money who’d buy it off me.’

‘Where’d you find this collector?’ Charlie persisted. ‘They don’t advertise in the local paper. “Stolen fine art bought and sold. Competitive rates.”’ She snorted. ‘You need to find a middle man, someone who knows all the buyers and sellers, who’s selling what, and who wants to buy what. That might explain those numbers on Letitia’s spreadsheet.’

‘You’re saying my aunt is a fence?’

‘Not really. She just facilitates the sale. And charges a commission which she doesn’t declare to the tax man.’

‘But some of those figures had to do with objects already sold through the auction house.’

‘So the auction is rigged, then,’ said Charlie.

‘The bidding is open to the floor,’ Helen pointed out. ‘You can’t rig an auction unless the auctioneer is in on it.’

‘Probably gets a bit on the side.’

‘There are rules and regulations, Charlie. Guidance from the Department of Trade and Industry, the Office of Fair Trading—’

‘You can easily get by those.’

Helen laughed. ‘You watch too much TV.’

‘Maybe,’ said Charlie, ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a hefty trade going on, and a lot of money involved. And if some of that money changes hands under the table, it’s usually because it’s dirty.’

Helen went still. This could be bigger than she’d imagined. If Charlie was right, and if this scam had been running a long time, some of Ransome’s clients were very ruthless, ruthless enough to kill if there was someone interfering.

Or perhaps Mimi had been a dodgy dealer too, and ended up on the wrong side of one of these individuals?

It was
her
mother who’d agreed to meet her killer at some godforsaken hour, irresponsibly bringing her five-year-old daughter.
Her
mother that had brought a bag of paperwork to the meeting.

Her
mother who’d choked on her own blood, while her child lay helpless on the back seat, potentially the killer’s next victim.

The thought that her whole world may have been turned upside down over something as base as dirty money twisted inside her like a knife slicing through butter, but she couldn’t back down now. She had to get to the bottom of it, whatever ‘it’ was.

Even if it meant finding out things about her mother she’d rather had remained buried.

‘Please don’t say anything about my
connections
,’ said Helen when they got back. ‘I’m not exactly proud of them.’

‘Why?’

‘Just … don’t, okay?’

Charlie shrugged. ‘Sure, have your little secrets. It’s nothing to me.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

Don’t say that, thought Helen.
Don’t say that.

She handed the parcel to Letitia, who was on the phone and only acknowledged her with a nod. She would have liked a chance to speak to Ruth, to see if she’d imagined the look that passed between them earlier, but Ruth was no longer there, and she was left alone with her thoughts. Cup of tea in hand, she sat on the steps to the loading bay, a favourite spot for the smokers, but no one chose that moment to sneak out for an unscheduled cigarette break.

It was funny how lies always begot more lies and landed you in a right old mess.

Now both Jason and Charlie knew who she really was. She could probably trust Charlie not to say anything for the moment, but soon she’d have to come out with it, and what would happened then? When she left India, she’d never expected to make friends with her colleagues and her house mates, and suddenly a lot more was at stake than finding out what happened with her mother.

She thought of her new friends in turn. Jason and Charlie. Bill and Jim. Lee, after a fashion.

Fay.

The name echoed in her head. Her mother’s killer.

Or not.

Fay was guilty of harassment and stalking, but she may be innocent of murder. If Helen’s mother had been a whistle-blower or involved in something bad, and got herself killed in the process, then instead of committing murder, Fay could have, by following Mimi around, actually saved Helen’s life simply by being there. By going down for it despite not being able to remember anything, she had ensured no one came looking for a five-year-old witness.

Helen had harboured feelings of hatred and resentment for twenty years, feelings which had played a far greater part in making her into the person she was than the actual loss of her mother. Was it possible she should have been feeling gratitude all of these years instead?

Chapter Eighteen

Jason turned the key, revved the engine and felt the motorbike thrum to life under him. The bike was Trevor’s, an old Triumph Bonneville he’d spent years restoring, and it had taken a great deal of persuasion on Jason’s part to get him to hand over the keys in exchange for Trevor needing to borrow his van for the day.

‘Just make sure you bring her back in one piece, or you’re dead meat,’ grumbled Trevor. ‘Oh, and one other thing, that company name you mentioned, the one your bird works for—’

‘She’s not my bird.’

‘Well, whatever. Anyway, I think I’ve seen that name before. Lucy sometimes brings work home, and I’m sure I saw it in some of her papers. Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Okay, will do.’ Jason revved the engine again and grinned when Trevor waved him off with an impatient gesture.

He’d made Trevor feel guilty about not being able to operate his stall without his van to cart everything back and forth, but truthfully he didn’t mind. He needed to work on the house anyway. But as he rode home, something Lee had told him this morning in the kitchen, about Helen standing outside the door to Fay’s room at night, was playing like a loop in his mind. Jason had believed her when she said she wasn’t planning to harm Fay, but what if he’d made a mistake? Why was she creeping around?

Okay, so Lee crept about too, but he didn’t live under the same roof as someone convicted of murdering his mother.

Jason changed course and headed towards Helen’s work. He’d see if she could take a break, maybe invite her out for coffee, then give her a chance to explain herself.

Just as he pulled up to Ransome & Daughters, he saw Helen get in a taxi. On the hope that she’d have a few minutes to spare for him when they got to wherever she was headed, he gunned the engine, pulled out into the traffic and followed. When she got out on Piccadilly and hopped on the back of a scooter, his first thought was that she’d seen him and was trying to give him the slip.

Then another thought hit him. She had a boyfriend she hadn’t said anything about.

She didn’t have to, of course. Tell him about her private life. But that didn’t stop the feeling of jealousy creeping up on him. Flexing his fingers, he tightened his grip on the handle bars. He could hardly accuse her of playing with him, but when they were together, he’d got the sense that there wasn’t anyone else.

When Helen and Scooter Man pulled up outside Stephanov’s town house, and Scooter Man took off his helmet, Jason nearly laughed. What an idiot he’d been – he’d completely forgotten that Charlie was working as a courier now.

That didn’t explain why Helen was introducing Charlie to her uncle though, when she’d asked Jason not to mention the connection. At least he knew it couldn’t have anything to do with harming Fay, because Charlie would never be party to that. But why were Helen and Charlie covertly meeting up in the middle of traffic, sneaking off to meet with her Russian uncle?

Spying on Helen was ridiculous. He should come forward, let her know he was there. Or better yet, drive away. But if his instincts were wrong about her, and Fay or Charlie suffered for it … He drove around the corner and into a small side road, where he had a view of the house without being too obvious.

They emerged fifteen minutes later. Helen, carrying a smallish flat parcel and an envelope, stopped on the pavement and they seemed to debate something. Then Helen glanced around her, resting her eyes on him for a second, but he was safely disguised by Trevor’s helmet so she didn’t recognise him. The girls got back on the scooter.

Jason followed them as discreetly as he could, but Charlie’s driving was erratic and in total disregard of the Highway Code, and he nearly lost them. They stopped outside a traditional pub with seating outside and hanging baskets planted with ivy and trailing petunias. He drove past and parked the bike behind a large van, then walked back and peered through the window of the pub. They were sitting in the far corner with the parcel on a table between them, and Charlie had a ‘don’t-argue-with-me’ expression on her face.

Uh-oh, he thought,
I know that look.

Helen opened the parcel, but he was too far away to see what it was, and he couldn’t go inside because they’d recognise him. He leaned against the wall and wondered what to do.

A gate opened to the pub’s back yard, and a youth came out dragging a garden hose with a long spout. Watching him watering the hanging baskets, Jason had an idea.

‘Would you like to earn a quick fifty quid? Don’t worry, it’s nothing dirty,’ he added when the kid sent him a horrified look.