32
It was clear that Lucy and me had drifted apart and, quite honestly, I couldn’t work out the reason why.
If anyone was to blame for our troubles I should have said she was, for taking part in a burglary which, of course, was a complete cock-up. From what she told me, and from what I heard around about Screwtop being connected with the job, it was pretty obvious that Detective Sergeant Ishmael Macdonald was on the case from the start. So what Lucy did was to walk straight into the arms of the law. But when I visited I couldn’t blame her for it. I was very careful not to lay any blame at all. That’s not what you want to hear when you’re behind bars, believe me.
But what was it all for, for God’s sake? During an earlier visit Lucy had told me what she took was a picture of a naked woman drying herself after a bath, which Robin Thirkell kept in his bedroom. What he kept it in there for I don’t know, unless perhaps he got his rocks off looking at it, which I wouldn’t put past the type of person he undoubtedly is. But was the amount of trouble she’d got into worth it? When I said that, she told me that I really didn’t understand anything about her. She was probably right.
I had looked into her Milton book, which seemed to be written in a foreign language at first, but I began to read it with the help of the notes Lucy had written out. So I got to read about the old devil who turned himself into a snake to tempt the first woman to steal. I think the first woman must have been a bit like Lucy, she was so easily tempted to steal an apple which must have had even less value than the picture of the bint just out of the bath.
I was, quite frankly, gobsmacked when I told Lucy this and, far from being impressed, she brought my visit to an abrupt end. I mean, this was exactly what she had wanted to happen on the day she met me coming out of the Scrubs and she took me for a giant burger. Admittedly I wasn’t all that proud of the way I carried on, but she worked hard on my case.
But now all that work had paid off and all she seemed to be was angry with me and disappointed. She seemed to be happier with the women she lived with in Holloway - them that set fire to sleeping husbands and all that sort of thing. When we discussed that Lucy’s case might not be heard for around six months, at the start of the next year, Mr Bethell said he’d apply to a judge this time for bail, but Lucy didn’t want it. She said her friend Martine was due to have her baby at any moment and she didn’t want to leave her.
Whatever she thought about it or me, I was going to do my best to help Lucy. I couldn’t believe she planned a job like that by herself. She must have been forced into it, or tricked into it, by the old firm I used to work for, or, come to think of it, I’d been working for ever since I first met Chippy McGrath all those years ago.
I thought I should be a bit more sure of my ground before I accused Chippy. Then I remembered that a picture was the cause of all the trouble. I had the number of all Chippy’s associates, so I rang his art expert, a bit of an old fart called Hughie Whitcombe. I got an invitation to a drink with Hughie at his club in Pall Mall. To get in there I had to look respectable and remember to wear a tie.
The Gainsborough was nothing like the old Brummell Club or even the Close-Up, where I’d sometimes been with Lucy. The Gainsborough seemed to be a place mainly used for sleeping. The old bald-headed porter was asleep behind his desk in the marble-tiled entrance hall. He thought Hughie was in there somewhere, but having been asleep he couldn’t be quite sure where he’d got to. He led me across the hall and we had a peep through the half-open door of the ‘smoking room’, but there was no sign of Hughie there. Finally we discovered him wide awake alone at the bar, where the bloke in charge was leaning back against the shelf of bottles, his arms crossed, one hand clutching a dishcloth and his eyes closed. The few members at the tables talked quietly, afraid of waking this person up. Only Hughie sat with his eyes wide open, a grey-haired man whose glasses were continually slipping down his nose, wearing a tweed suit that looked as if it had lived with him for a long time and a spotted bow tie.
‘You’d like a drink,’ he welcomed me. ‘Guests can’t pay but I know you lot are always stuffed with folding money. Slip me a bit of it and we’ll do our best to wake up Clive.’
I slipped him a tenner in a way which he didn’t seem to mind the other members noticing. He then called ‘Clive!’ loudly so that the barman opened his eyes, looked startled and delivered a couple of whiskies quite quickly.
‘Thank you.’ Hughie gulped his and then asked me, ‘How is Leonardo de Medici?’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘No, of course you don’t. I’m sorry. I always think of our friend Leonard as like the great Medicis of Florence. A brigand, of course, but deeply interested in art.’
The words came tumbling out of Hughie, high-pitched and quite excited. I knew he’d written for one of the posh papers and then been sacked, to be replaced by some girl he always said ‘thought art was all about people videoing their own bottoms’. He’d got involved in the stolen picture business, first of all as a go-between, agreeing ransoms for stolen stuff, and then as Chippy’s adviser on what was worth stealing or how to turn stolen art into money.
‘Did Chippy ever say anything to you . . .’
‘You mean Leonardo?’ he corrected me. ‘Let’s show the greatest respect for an important patron of the arts.’
‘All right, Leonardo.’
‘Leonardo de Medici.’
‘If you want. Did he say anything about a picture of a woman drying herself after a bath?’
‘Oh! You mean the little Bonnard.’
‘Is that what I mean?’
‘Pierre Bonnard. Leonardo was going to “find” one for us. Picture of the painter’s wife, Marthe, having got out of the bath. As Leonardo said, it would have been worth more if she’d been in the bath, but all the same it would have been a nice little earner.’
‘Chippy . . . sorry, Leonard said he was going to get this picture?’
‘It was going to come to us through the system.’
‘But it never came?’
‘I suppose there must have been some hitch.’
‘Yes, I suppose there must.’
I didn’t tell him that the hitch was that the thief in question had landed up in Holloway Prison. Hughie woke Clive the barman up and ordered more drinks. Then he said, ‘Do stay for lunch if you can. It’s very reasonable here, and if you’d like to contribute a little of your folding money . . .’
‘You’ve done it all my bloody life. We did all the stealing for you and then we did the prison for you. All for you, you jammy bastard. We did the prison while you sat in that fucking maisonette and got richer and more respectable, and we all worked for you so you could become “Leonardo” - that’s what Hughie calls you. The great soon to be Sir Leonard who does good work for poor misguided prisoners. You just used me. All my life. But this time you went too fucking far. You used Lucy to do your stealing and now she’s in prison because of you, Chippy.’
I had caught him at work in SCRAP and, in spite of the protests of a worried-looking woman in the main office, when I got to him I didn’t, as you can see, mince my words. I gave it to him absolutely straight.
‘Don’t ever use that word in here.’
‘What word is that?’
‘Chippy!’ He scarcely whispered it.
‘Chippy!’ I said quite loudly. ‘I’m going to use it. And I’ll make sure Lucy uses it in court. She’ll have to explain why she went out stealing to get a picture for you. You organized the entire fucking job.’
‘She volunteered. She made sure I’d help her do it. She threatened to make trouble if I didn’t lay on a team for her.’
‘Screwtop and Ozzy. That was the team, wasn’t it?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘No perhaps about it. And Hughie was going to get the money for it.’
‘I meant her to have her share.’
‘Well, you’ll get your share, Chippy. She’s going to tell them the whole story in court.’
Chippy was sitting at his desk. He looked hunched-up, smaller than usual. He stared up at me, pleading.
‘What can I do about it?’
‘I don’t know. Give her some sort of a defence. She was with other people. Can you find someone to say they forced her to do it? Threatened her? You think of something. You’ll find someone else to take the blame. That’s your special subject, isn’t it, Chippy?’
He still looked up at me and said quietly, ‘I ought to get you killed, Terry.’
‘That wouldn’t do you any good.’ I managed to sound cheerful. ‘She’ll tell the story in court anyway. So you just think of a way of helping her out. Think about it, Chippy.’
I left him then. He did think about it, and he found a way out which was no help to Lucy. No help at all.