“So you’ve been doing these art robberies,” I said. “That’s right. Listen, if I’d have known that you’d done the security on Birchfield Place, I wouldn’t have gone near the gaff. You’re my mate, I don’t want to embarrass you.”
I shook my head, “If I recognized you, Dennis, chances are someone else might, especially if they put the tape on the box.” He sighed. “So do what you have to do, Kate.” He met my eyes, not in a challenge, but in a kind of agreement.
“You don’t think I’m going to shop you, do you?” I blurted out indignantly.
“It’s your job,” he said simply.
I shook my head. “No it’s not. My job is to get my client’s property back. It’s the police that arrest villains, not me.”
“You’ve turned people over to the dibble before,” Dennis pointed out. “You got principles, you should stick to them. It’s okay, Kate, I won’t hold it against you. It’s an occupational hazard. You work with asbestos, sometimes you get lung cancer. You go robbing for a living, sometimes you get a nicking. There’s nothing personal in it.”
“Will you get it into your thick head that I am not going to grass you up?” I said belligerently. “The only thing I’m interested in is getting Henry Naismith’s Monet back. Anyway, you’re only a small fish. If I want anybody, I want the whale.”
Dennis’s lips tightened to a thin line. “Okay, I hear you,” he said grimly. I didn’t expect him to fall to his knees in gratitude. Nobody likes being placed under the kind of obligation I’d just laid on him.
“So cough,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple,” he said, taking his time over pulling out his cigarettes and lighting up. “I haven’t got it anymore.”
“That was quick,” I said, disappointed. From what Dennis had told me about his previous exploits in the field of executive burglary, it often takes some time to shift the proceeds, fences being notoriously twitchy about taking responsibility for stolen goods that are still so hot they risk meltdown.
Dennis leaned back in his seat, unbuttoning his jacket. “A ready market. That’s one of the reasons I got into this in the first place. See, what happened was when I realized this court case wasn’t going to go away, I put the word out that I was looking for a nice little earner. A couple of weeks later, I get a call from this bloke I know in Leeds. I fenced a couple of choice antique items with him in the old days when I was pursuing my former career. Anyway, he says he’s heard about my bit of bother, and he’s got a contact for me. He gives me this mobile phone number, and tells me to ring this bloke.
“So I ring the number and mention my contact’s name and this bloke says to me he’s in the market for serious art. He says he has a client for topflight gear, flat fee of ten grand a pop for pieces agreed in advance. I go, how do I know I can trust you, and he goes, ‘you don’t part with the gear till you see the color of my money.’ I go, how does it work, and he goes, ‘you decide on something you think you can get away with, and you ring me and ask me if I want it. I ring you back the next day with a yes or a no.’ ”
“So you embark on your new career as art robber,” I said. “Simple, really.”
“You wouldn’t be so sarcastic if you knew what a nause it is shifting stuff like that on the open market,” Dennis said with feeling.
“How did you know what to go for? And where to go for it?” I demanded. I’d never had Dennis pegged as a paid-up member of the National Trust.
“My mate Frankie came out a while back,” he said. I didn’t think he meant that Frankie had revealed he was a raging queen. “He’s been doing an eight stretch for armed robbery, and he did an Open University degree while he was inside. He did a couple of courses in history of art. He reckoned it would come in useful on the outside,” he added dryly.
“I don’t think that’s quite what the government had in mind when they set up the OU,” I said.
Dennis grinned. “Get an education, get on in life. Anyway, we spent a couple of months schlepping round these country houses, sussing out what was where, what was worth nicking and what the security was like. Pathetic, most of it.”
I had a sudden thought. “Dennis, these robberies have been going on for nine months now. You only got nicked a few weeks ago. You didn’t start doing this for insurance money, you started doing this out of sheer badness,“ I accused him.
He shrugged, looking slightly shamefaced. “So I lied. I’m sorry, Kate, I can’t change the habit of a lifetime. This was just too good to miss. And watertight. We don’t touch places with security guards so nobody gets hurt or upset. We’re in and out so fast there’s no way we’re going to get caught.”
“I caught you,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but you’re a special case,” Dennis said. “Besides, the CCTV wasn’t there when we cased the place. They must have only just put it in.”
“So who is this guy who’s giving you peanuts for these masterpieces?”
Dennis smiled wryly. “It’s not peanuts, Kate. It’s good money and no hassle.”
“It’s a tiny fraction of what they’re worth,” I said.
“Define worth. What an insurance company pays out? What you could get at auction? Worth is what somebody’s prepared to pay. I reckon ten grand for a night’s work is not bad going.”
“A grand for every year if they catch you. You’d get a better rate of pay working in a sweatshop making schneid T-shirts. So who’s the buyer? Some private collector, or what?”
“I don’t know,” Dennis said. “I don’t even know who the fence is.”
I snorted incredulously. “And I am Marie of Romania. Come on, Dennis, you’ve done more than a dozen deals with this guy, you must know who he is.”
“I’ve never met him before this run of jobs,” Dennis said. “All I’ve got is the number for his mobile.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “You’ve done over a hundred grand’s worth of work for some punter whose name you don’t even know?”
‘“S right,” he said easily. “My business isn’t like yours, Kate. I don’t take out credit references on the people I do business with. Look, what happens is, every few weeks I ring the guy up with one of Frankie’s suggestions. He gives me the nod, we go out and do the job and I give him a bell. We meet on the motorway services, we show him the goods, he counts the dosh in front of us and we all go home happy boys.”
“What about the fakes?”
There was a deathly silence. He ground out his cigarette viciously in the ashtray. “How did you find out about them?” Dennis asked warily. “There’s been nothing in the papers or anything about that.”
“What happens when it turns out you’ve nicked a copy?” I asked, ignoring him.
Dennis shifted in his seat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “You setting me up, or what?” he asked. “You saying that Monet wasn’t kosher?”
“It was kosher,” I said. “But they haven’t all been, have they?”
Dennis lit his cigarette like an actor in a Pinter play filling one of the gaps with a complicated bit of business. “Three of them were bent as a nine-bob note,” he said. “First I knew about it was about a week after we’d done the handover when the geezer bells me and tells me. I said I never knew anything about it, and he goes, ‘I’m sure you were acting in good faith, but the problem is that so was my client. He reckons you owe him ten grand. And he has very efficient debt collectors. But he’s a fair man. He’ll cancel the debt if you provide another painting for free.’ So we to-and-fro a bit, and eventually he agrees that he’ll pay us a grand for expenses for the next kosher one we bring him, and we’re all square. So we go and do another one, and bugger me if it isn’t bent as well.” He shook his head in wonderment.