There wasn’t time to strap the Horngacher in place. It would have to take its chance on the rubber mats. He opened the doors, heaved it in and slammed them shut.
Behind him he heard a shout. The security guard was at the museum door. The dog, a German shepherd, was racing across the car park. Bernie almost reached the front of the van when the dog sank its teeth into his leg below the knee. The pain was wicked. He fisted the dog, but it hung on, snarling. He dragged open the van door. More by luck than judgement the door struck the dog and threw it off him. Bernie heaved himself inside, closed the door, started up and drove off.
In the long history of thefts, this one didn’t rate among the most efficient and ingenious, but so what, it had come off. Leg throbbing, breath rasping, heart racing, Bernie headed towards Surrey.
A couple of Mercs and a limo were on Sly Small’s drive when Bernie drove up. Inside the limo, the driver was reading a paperback. He didn’t give Bernie a glance.
“What kept you, birdbrain?” Sly said when he opened the door.
Bernie had his story ready. “There were too many police about. I took some back roads and got a bit lost.”
“Did you fetch the harp?”
“No problem, Mr Small.”
“Why are you limping if there was no problem?”
“My dodgy knee. I’m not used to humping heavy things around.”
Sly didn’t have much sympathy. “Hump it inside, then. We want to see this goddam thing.”
Bernie noted the use of the plural and assumed Rocky was inside the house. It wouldn’t have hurt Rocky to help lift his father’s gift inside — an idea Bernie decided against mentioning. It wouldn’t have hurt that driver, either, but he was still reading. Bernie braced himself for one final effort, grasped the Horngacher and staggered inside with it.
“In here,” Sly’s voice announced from the front room.
He just succeeded in getting in there before his arms gave way. The harp’s base struck the floor with a thump. “Sorry.” He stopped it from keeling over. Nothing seemed to be broken.
He took a couple of deep breaths before noticing who was in the room. Not Rocky, but a silver-haired man wearing shades. The man had started to rise from his chair when the harp hit the floor, but he sank down again.
“Do you want to check it, maestro?” Sly said to the man. “Good idea. Here, take hold of my arm.”
This struck Bernie as odd. Sly wasn’t the sort who offered his arm to anyone.
But the man seemed to take it as normal. He stood and waited for Sly to cross the room. Then he rested his hand lightly on Sly’s arm and Bernie understood. The man was blind.
Sly was leading him towards the harp. He’d called him maestro. It didn’t make any sense, but this had to be Igor Gurney, the harpist. Was it possible that Sly Small, for all his evil reputation, had experienced a crisis of conscience, just as Bernie had? Was he about to reunite the harp with its owner?
If so, they were in for a surprise.
The blind man reached the harp and felt for it. “Why isn’t it in its case?” he asked. “It should have travelled in its case.”
“I, em... the wheels came off,” Bernie improvised. “It got too heavy, so I lifted it out.”
The hands were all over the harp, feeling the carved columns and pedestals. “This isn’t mine.”
Bernie felt a surge of panic. He’d hoped one Horngacher was very like another. This one from Winchester would have fooled Sly for sure. And Rocky. He hadn’t bargained on Igor Gurney checking it over.
“What do you mean?” Sly said. “It’s got to be yours.” He turned to Bernie. “You picked it up from the Albert Hall like I said, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes...” Bernie started to say.
“It’s a very fine instrument, but it isn’t mine,” Gurney insisted. He plucked at the strings. “It wants tuning. What have you done with my harp?”
“He’s shafted us, the bastard,” Sly said. “What kind of fools do you take us for?” Without warning, he pulled out a gun and shoved it into Bernie’s ribcage. “I’ll show you what I do to two-timing finks like you.”
“No violence, please,” Gurney said. Then the familiar bars of the William Tell Overture sounded from somewhere in his pocket. He pulled out a mobile phone and listened. His face registered extreme shock. “It’s my chauffeur. The police are at the door.”
“Flaming hell.” Sly dropped his gun and kicked it out of sight under an armchair.
Bernie removed his and did the same. Just in time, because three armed officers stormed into the room and ordered them to lie face down on the floor.
“What’s this about?” Sly said. “This is a private house.”
“Having a musical evening were you?” one of the police said. “We decided to join you. I’m Sergeant Brinkley from the drugs squad and I have reason to believe you’ve just taken possession of a consignment of cocaine.”
“Untrue,” Sly said.
“Shut up. We have a search warrant. We’ve tracked this operation every mile of the way from Prague. You may be hot stuff on the harp, Mr Gurney, but you’re no angel. We know how you bring the stuff in. Mike, open the top of the harp — known as the crown, isn’t it, Mr Gurney? — and let’s see how much is in there.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gurney said.
“You’re going to blame the driver, are you? We watched him at the Albert Hall loading the harp into his van. Got it on video. After that all we had to do was get down here and wait for him to make the delivery. Hurry up, Mike.”
“It’s hard to shift,” the officer called Mike said.
Bernie’s confidence began to grow again. If they’d really tracked every mile of the operation they’d know he’d returned Gurney’s harp to the Albert Hall. Clearly they didn’t.
“All right, the lid’s off,” Mike said. “Hang about — there’s nothing in it.”
Bernie, still with his face to the floor, smiled.
They asked Gurney if this was his harp and he said with total sincerity that it was. Blind men can’t always be trusted.
They brought in the sniffer dog next. The only thing that interested it was Bernie’s torn trouser leg. The tail wagged when it got a whiff of that.
After the police had quit in disarray, Sly cracked open a bottle of champagne. “I think some debriefing is in order now,” he said. “If this isn’t the maestro’s harp, what is it?”
“I, em, borrowed it,” Bernie said, digging deep for a plausible story. “I spotted the police surveillance at the Albert Hall soon after I’d lifted Mr Gurney’s harp, so I returned that one pretty damn quick.”
“My harp is safe?” Gurney said with relief.
“Safe in the Albert Hall.”
Bernie told them how he’d removed the other Horngacher from the museum.
“Nice work,” Sly said.
“Nice work? The man’s saved our skins. You promised me he was totally reliable and he is,” Gurney said. “I’ve learned my lesson. You and I can never do business again, Mr Small.”
“That’s bleeding obvious,” Sly said. “It wasn’t my end of the operation that the police were onto.”
“So all that stuff about young Rocky and the Royal College wasn’t true?” Bernie said.
“Hogwash,” Sly said. “Rocky’s in a young offender’s institution.”
“Why didn’t you tell me I was smuggling heroin?”
“You didn’t need to know. It isn’t that I didn’t trust you with a parcel of the finest Peruvian flake, just that I trusted you more with a fifty grand harp. As a music lover, you’d be sure to treat it with respect.”