SEVEN

Griff’s partner, Aidan, appears like a sympathetic Cheshire cat whenever Griff has a health crisis. I’ve learned to put up with it. After all, I have the better part of the bargain – I’m with Griff when he’s well and wonderful fun; Aidan gets him when he’s frail and tetchy.

So I didn’t have too many reservations about phoning Aidan from A and E, and telling him about the assault.

‘But your cottage has cameras where other people just have household dust,’ he objected. ‘However did the assailant gain access?’

‘That’s just what I’d like to know,’ I said grimly, though pleased he’d referred to the cottage as ours, not just Griff’s, as he used to do. ‘As would the police. I’ve not had a chance to talk to him yet – he’s still in the hands of the medics.’

‘But he isn’t in danger?’ You could actually hear the anxiety in Aidan’s voice. I might not like the man, but he’s certainly devoted to Griff; he probably tolerated me for much the same reason.

‘Absolutely not. At least, that’s what they’ve told me. They’re just stitching up a cut over his eyebrow. He’s going to look pretty weird for the next few days.’ I paused. I knew what was coming, largely because I’d just opened the door to the suggestion.

‘Do you suppose a few days in Tenterden might be beneficial?’

Excellent. ‘I can’t think of anything better, Aidan. Followed by a couple of days with you in London. He deserves a treat. Last time he was there it was in the company of Miles Winterton, and he didn’t enjoy it much. Apparently Miles has become teetotal.’

‘Has he indeed!’

‘And is marrying Caro.’ I paused to allow that to sink in. ‘He’s giving them an African lavatory.’

‘What a very appropriate comment, as it were!’ He gave the rich chuckle that I’d once absolutely hated, but which now made me join in. ‘And it was your idea? Of course it was! My dear Lina, you are so good for him.’

‘As you are. I know you won’t let him eat or drink too much, but you’ll indulge him in other ways and he’ll come back full of energy to a nice clean cottage. I think it’ll take a specialist cleaner to tackle the carpet.’

‘I’ll get the firm I use to contact you.’

‘Tell you what, Aidan – email me their details and I’ll contact them. You never know,’ I added. ‘After all, Chummie knows there’s literally blood on the carpet, and pretending to be a cleaner could be a dodge he might use to try to get in.’

‘You are such a credit to him, my dear. Now, you will tell me how he goes on and when I can expect him?’

‘He can tell you himself,’ I said, joy at the sight of Griff emerging into the waiting area making me generous. I passed over the phone to Griff’s more bandaged hand. After all, I could hold the other.

The van wasn’t exactly the sleek Mercedes Aidan would have conveyed Griff in, but we always kept overnight bags in the back, just in case we were ever trapped in bad weather miles from anywhere, and it was, of course, already parked in the William Harvey car park.

‘I want the unedited version of events,’ I said as I fastened the seat belt for him. ‘Chapter and verse. I know when you have a chance to talk properly to Aidan, you’ll fillet out all the worst details so he doesn’t worry too much, and I’m never sure how much you trust the police—’

‘A touch more than you do, my child. Particularly,’ he added dryly, ‘as they have the benefit of all our security cameras to check that I’m missing nothing out. But why mention Aidan? And why are we taking the Tenterden road?’

‘Because the chemicals they use to clean blood off carpets might not be good for you, and because Aidan has invited you to go up to London with him as soon as you’re presentable. Mind you,’ I said, glancing sideways at him and wondering how long it would take him to suggest I stayed over in Tenterden too, ‘that may be some time. Come on, Griff, what happened?’

He sighed. ‘You know our friend X?’

‘Yes. Well, of course, I know of him.’ X was a drifter who irregularly turned up at our cottage first thing in the morning with items for Griff to buy. One glimpse of me and he’d stayed away six months at a stretch, so always I was stuck in my bedroom until he slipped away again, pocketing whatever cash Griff chose to give him. This was nowhere near what we’d sell for, but enough to keep him in cheap cider for a while. Any more and he’d drink himself to death within a week, Griff insisted. ‘But it was never him, not in broad daylight, surely?’

‘No. But a man who said he was a friend of his, with an urgent message.’

‘Did he actually use X’s name?’

‘No. Now I come to think of it, he didn’t. He just said, “Our friend.” But you know I’ve always promised to be there for X if he ever needs me. I thought – if I thought at all, which I may not have done, having just been awoken from a little doze, if the truth be told – that he needed me to stand bail and had sent this man to fetch me.’

‘Wouldn’t the police have contacted you?’

‘I’m sure you’re right. I just wasn’t thinking straight, as I said. Anyway, as soon as I stepped aside to let him in, I realized there was something wrong with his face.’

‘Something wrong?’ I had a weird thought of leprosy or something.

‘I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. By that time he’d hit me, and I’d retaliated with that over-the-top Moorcroft vase Aunt Bea left me. And then he persuaded me that I ought to open the safe. Well, I knew we were insured – I shall be able to replace that Moorcroft with something much more tasteful – and I knew about the camera. But I don’t think even that will give us a true image of him. They’ll see a poor aged man, balding, stooped.’

‘I know. I looked. But then he seemed to get younger before my eyes. And then old again. Do you think the stoop was fake?’

‘I think so. And I also suspect that he was wearing a very good wig and particularly fine make-up. TV or film quality. That good. Might even have been wearing a latex mask or part-mask, I suppose.’

‘And wearing gloves, no doubt.’

‘Of course. But again, very fine, so I didn’t see them through the peephole. And yes, I was alert enough to check, I’m sure of that.’

I slowed into a tail of traffic. There were often long queues on this route, which was far too narrow and winding to deserve to be called an A road. ‘So what did you tell the police? Did you mention X? Because surely they’ll ask why you let him in.’

‘They already have. I said I thought he was an acquaintance from my long-ago theatre days. Cunning, don’t you think? Because then I could introduce the idea of make-up, which you may be sure I did.’

‘Did he say what he wanted?’

Griff pretended he was dozing.

‘He did, didn’t he? It was that damned snuffbox, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m afraid it was,’ he said in a small voice.

‘And what did you say?’ I added, in an even smaller one. After all, it was my fault.

‘That if it was valuable, you must have put it in the safe – I hoped that all the goodies in there would distract him. I said my hand was shaking too much to deal with the combination, and that he’d have to do it. Which is how he came to set off the alarm, because I forgot to tell him how to switch it off.’ He was trying to divert me, I knew he was. ‘So then he decided to make himself scarce. Do you think he’ll come back, sweet one?’

If he was wearing make-up as clever as that, we might not recognize him if he did. ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ I said brightly. ‘And I’ll find somewhere else to hide the snuffbox, just in case.’

‘Such as where? Lina, my darling, I know what you’re thinking – that you could conceal it at Bossingham Hall, and no one would ever find it. But consider the old man. You’d never forgive yourself if he got beaten up.’

It was a bit rich to refer to my father like that, when Griff was at least six years older. But he had a point.

‘You’re not suggesting I ought to keep it until that bastard comes back with another disguise and then just hand it over without an argument?’

‘We don’t need it, whatever it is. It’s just a piece of metal.’ When I said nothing, he sighed. ‘Oh, my love, I know you divvied it, and I never doubt your instincts, never. But I just wonder if in this case the game isn’t worth the candle. We’re not experts or collectors.’

‘There must be someone, not just this Damian of yours, who could help. We can’t just sit around until he comes back.’

‘But—’

‘If someone wants it this badly it must have more than intrinsic value,’ I said, with a bit of a jut to my jaw, not least because he’d taught me the expression in the first place.

‘In that case, you know what we have to do, don’t you? My angel, I know you don’t want to get in touch with him yourself, but that doesn’t stop me doing it. I want to entrust this to Morris.’

‘Really, really, no. You promised me, remember! Morris’s marriage has got to stick. Got to. Leda deserves a proper father, not an absentee one.’ I scratched my head, desperately. ‘More to the point, what if it turned out to have dodgy provenance? It’d be a police case before you could blink. That’s why I wouldn’t ask Will or Freya to help.’

‘So you need someone strong with the morality of the police but not absolute subservience to the law—’

‘Not Robin. Definitely not. If anyone asked him, he’d blush and give the game away. Besides,’ I added, ‘I need him to get me access to the guy who donated the book, remember?’

‘My poor dim memory informs me that it was the same man who donated the snuffbox. Very well, you don’t want to involve Robin as a guardian, but as your muscle. But if you have nothing to guard, what of all your enquiries then? I would click a dismissive thumb and finger if I could, sweet one. In fact, I’m going to put my foot down. That snuffbox has to leave the cottage. Preferably under the eye of the media, so our friend would know there was no point in coming back, but I suppose that’s too much to hope.’

I allowed him to think I was too preoccupied with the traffic to respond. For some reason the pace had slowed to about five miles an hour.

‘Bruce Farfrae,’ Griff said at last. ‘Thoroughly and lastingly married. You even chose his silver anniversary present, didn’t you? No longer in the police. Fingers in every art pie going.’

‘Not his thing, though. Impressionist painting, that’s what he knows all about.’

‘And other things, I should imagine, since before he went private he was Morris’s superior officer at the Met. He’s also kindly and avuncular.’

When Griff had taken me over as a young uneducated street urchin, I’d had no education to speak of. He’d dealt with that as best he could, but there were times when he used words I recognized but couldn’t place. This one, however, was a stranger.

‘Avuncular?’

‘From the Latin. It originally meant like a little grandfather, which was how the Romans described maternal uncles.’

I smiled. ‘Like your deputy? If I had an uncle.’

‘If indeed I had the honour of being your true grandfather. Now it just means like an uncle. Kindly, dispassionate, supportive. And, in Farfrae’s case, always happy if you can pick him out another print of the villages in his romantic past.’

‘He didn’t respond to my last emails,’ I grumbled, ‘and I really needed an uncle then.’

‘He has explained, loved one. When a man is trying to sort out the provenance of middle-eastern art treasures that suddenly surfaced after the Iraq war and the looting of Baghdad’s museums, then he can’t always fly to your aid. Ah, I see the problem ahead. There’s a tractor trying to turn into a field, and it’s jammed in the gate. What fun.’

It was quite late in the day when I eventually delivered Griff to Aidan’s. Overnight case apart, he kept a selection of clothes and other necessities there, even spare pills. I knew he’d be in good hands, even if he had to wait till he was able to go out before he could eat well. Aidan’s eye-wateringly expensive kitchen was wasted on a man who could barely boil an egg. All the same, it was harder than usual to decline Aidan’s invitation to stay. My excuse was that I wanted to get home in daylight, something that made no sense at all to me but always seemed to ring bells with them.

‘But you could stay till morning,’ Griff urged.

Aidan nodded, with courtesy, if not much enthusiasm.

‘Tim the Bear would be so upset if I wasn’t there at bedtime,’ I said firmly, adding, when Griff opened his mouth for one more protest, ‘and I haven’t got Farfrae’s contact details here.’

They couldn’t argue with that. In any case, they had a diversion – a couple of plain clothes officers arrived clutching a laptop. Despite all our footage, they wanted to see if Griff could recognize anyone on their database. I left them to it.