“Can you think of any collectors whose particular interests are covered by the thefts?” I asked.
“Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t know personally, but I have a couple of chums in the gallery business. I could ask them to ask round and see what they come up with. That’s a really constructive idea,” Ballantrae enthused.
I basked in the glow of his praise. It made a refreshing change from Trevor Kerr’s charmlessness. “What’s the geographical spread like?” I asked.
“We were the most northerly victims. But there doesn’t seem to be any real pattern. They go from Northumberland to Cornwall north to south, and from Lincolnshire to Anglesey east to west. I can let you have a printout,” he added, jumping to his feet and walking behind his computer. He hit a few keys, and the printer behind me cranked itself into life.
I twirled the chair round and took the sheet of paper out of the machine. Reading down it, I saw the glimmer of an idea. “Have you got a map of the U.K. I can look at?” I asked.
Ballantrae nodded. “I’ve got a data disk with various maps on it. Want a look?”
I came round behind his desk and waited for him to load the disk. He called up a map of the U.K. with major cities and the road network. “Can you import this map and manipulate it in a graphics file?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. And promptly did it. He gave me a quick tutorial on how to use his software, and I started fiddling with it. First, I marked the approximate locations of the burglaries, with a little help from Ballantrae in identifying locations. I looked at the array.
“I wish we had one of those programs that crime-pattern analysts use,” I muttered. I’d recently spent a day at a seminar run by the Association of British Investigators where an academic had shown us how sophisticated computer programs were helping police to predict where repeat offenders might strike next. It had been impressive, though not a lot of use to the likes of me.
“I never imagined I’d have any use for one of those,” Ballantrae said dryly.
Ellen laughed. “No doubt the software king will have one by next week,” she said.
Using the mouse, I drew a line connecting the outermost burglaries. There were eight in that group, scattered round the fringes of England and Wales. Then I repeated the exercise with the remainder. The outer line was a rough oval, with a kink over Cornwall. It looked like a cartoon speech balloon, containing the immortal words of the Scilly Isles. The inner line was more jagged. I disconnected Henry Naismith’s robbery and another outside Burnley. Now the inner line was more like a trapezium, narrower at the top, spreading at the bottom. Finally, I linked Henry and the Burnley job with a pair of semicircles. “See anything?” I asked.
“Greater Manchester,” Ballantrae breathed. “How fascinating. Well, Ms. Brannigan, you’re clearly the right woman for the job.”
I was glad somebody thought so. “Have there been any clues at all in any of the cases?” I asked.
Ballantrae walked over to a shelf that held his computer software boxes and manuals. “I don’t know if you’d call it a clue, exactly. But one of the properties that was burgled had just installed closed-circuit TV and they have a video of the robbery. But it’s not actually a lot of help, since the thieves were very sensibly wearing ski masks.” He took a video down from the shelf. “Would you like to see it?”
“Why not?” I’d schlepped all the way up here. I wasn’t going home before I’d extracted every last drop of info out of Lord Ballantrae.
“We’ll have to go through to the den,” he said.
As I followed him back across the hall, Ellen said affectionately, “Some days I think he’s auditioning for Crimewatch.”
We retraced my steps back toward the kitchen, turning into a room only twice the size of my living room. The view was spectacular, if you like that sort of thing, looking out across a swath of grass, a river and not very distant hills. Me, I’m happy with my garden fence. As Ballantrae crossed to the video, I gave the room the once-over. It wasn’t a bit like a stately home. The mismatched collection of sofas and aria-chairs was modern, looking comfortable if a bit dog-haired and dog-eared. Shelves along one wall held a selection of board games, jigsaws, console games and videotapes. A coffee table was strewn with comics and magazines. In one corner, there was a huge Nicam stereo TV and video with a Nintendo console lying in front of it. The only picture on the walls was a framed photograph of James and Ellen with a young boy and girl, sitting round a picnic table in skiing clothes. They all looked as if the world was their oyster. Come to think of it, it probably was.
“Sorry about the mess,” Ellen said in the offhand tone that told me she didn’t give a shit about tidiness. “The children make it and I can’t be bothered unmaking it. Have a seat.”
She walked over to the windows and pulled one of the curtains across, cutting down the brightness so we could see the video more clearly. I sat down opposite the TV, where daytime TV’s best actors played out their roles as a happily married couple telling the rest of us how to beat cellulite. Ballantrae slumped down beside me and hit the play button. “This is Morton Grange in Humberside,” he said. “Home of Lord Andrew Cumberbatch. His was the Ruisdael.”
The screen showed an empty room lined with paintings. Suddenly, from the bottom left-hand corner, the burglars appeared. The staccato movements of the time-lapse photography made them look like puppets in an amateur performance. Both men were wearing ski masks with holes for eyes and mouth only, and the kind of overalls you can pick up for next to nothing in any army surplus store. One of them ran across to the paintings, pulled out a power screwdriver and unscrewed the clips that held the frame to the wall. The other, holding a sledgehammer, hung back. Then he turned toward the camera and took a couple of steps forward.
Recognition hit me like a sledgehammer to the stomach.
10
ONE OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE IS HOW I GOT OUT OF
Castle Dumdivie without confessing that I knew exactly who had had it away on his toes with Lord Andrew Cumberbatch’s nice little Ruisdael. I was only grateful that James Ballantrae was sitting next to me and couldn’t see my face.
After the first seconds of shock, I tried to tell myself I was imagining things. But the longer I watched, the more convinced I was that I was right. I knew those shoulders, those light, bouncing steps. God knows I’d watched that footwork often enough, trying to gauge where the next kick was coming from. I forced myself to sit motionless to the bitter end. Then I said, “I see what you mean. Even their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them from that.”
“Their lovers might,” Ellen said shrewdly. “Don’t they say a person’s walk is the one thing they can never disguise?”
She was bang on the button, of course. “The video makes it look too jerky for that, I’d have thought,” I said.
“I don’t know.” Ballantrae lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Body language and gesture are pretty individual. Look at the number of criminals who get caught by the videos they show on Crimewatch.”
“Told you,” Ellen said fondly. “He’s dying to go on and talk about his art robberies. The only thing that’s holding him back is that all his cronies are terrified about what the publicity might do to their admissions.”
“Yes, but now the cat’s out of the bag with that newspaper story in Manchester, there’s no point in holding back,” Ballantrae said. “Maybe I should give them a ring…”
“Any chance you could let me have a copy of the tape?” I asked. “I’d like to show it to Henry Naismith’s staff while everything’s still fresh in their memories. Perhaps, as Ellen suggests, there might be something in the way these men move that triggers something off. The police reckon they will have gone round the house a couple of times as regular punters, sussing it out, so we might just get lucky if one of Henry’s staff has a photographic memory.”