These were all dealers operating beyond the fringe of the coterie of respectable dealers, who’d helped him out on the occasions when he’d made an error of judgement either in acquiring a hot painting, or one that had turned out to be a fake, that he needed to dispose of in a hurry, with no questions asked.
Still concerned about the legitimacy of his purchase of this Fragonard, and wary of formally putting it up for sale, he had also discreetly notified a few of the wealthiest collectors among his clients, people who could comfortably afford to buy a painting of this value, and who would trust him.
One of these, George Astone, who had amassed one of the finest private collections of French masters in the country, had come straight back to him, very interested.
But Astone, a charming, ebullient character, who lived in grand style in a stately home ten miles north of Brighton, was immobile following a stroke. He couldn’t easily travel to London – could Porteous bring the picture to his home? From the photographs Porteous had emailed him in strictest confidence, he was very eager to buy it. Porteous had agreed to bring it over to him in the morning.
By sheer serendipity Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’, from his Four Seasons, was playing on Radio Three on the Bentley’s sound system as Porteous turned into his street. A good omen. He smiled, everything was good tonight!
He drove along the dark, tree-lined avenue, turned in and pulled up outside the wrought-iron gates of his home, in the faint glare of the street light across the road. He was looking forward to the crazy greeting he would get from his lurcher, Poussin, and hoped his barking wouldn’t wake his wife. It was 12.40 a.m. – Susan would be well asleep by now. He reached down into the cubbyhole below the dash, found the clicker and pressed it.
Nothing happened.
He pressed again, but still the gates did not move. He frowned. Was the battery dead? He pressed again and the little red light came on. But the gates didn’t move.
It wasn’t the first time this had ever happened. Cursing and making a mental note to call the gate people in the morning, he lowered his window and reached out to the panel to punch in the key code manually. But he was too far away.
Cursing again, he opened the car door and leaned across, oblivious to the shadow moving towards him from behind a tree as he tapped in the code: 7979 followed by the plus sign. Instantly the gates began, jerkily, to open and the bright security lights came on.
At the same instant, lights exploded inside his head as he felt a blow just behind his ear. It was followed immediately by a crashing whack from an iron bar. Shooting stars. Meteorites. The wildest fireworks display of his life going on in there while he stumbled forward and hit the ground, all his lights going out.
He never heard the words of his assailant, cursing him for being such a fat, heavy bastard as he heaved Porteous back into the driver’s seat of the car.
He never heard the slam of the driver’s door as blood oozed from the back of his smashed skull into the tan – with contrast cream stitching – Connolly leather headrest.
4
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Harry Kipling made every customer feel like they were his new best friend. With his twinkly eyes, cheeky grin and messy hair, and invariably wearing shorts on all but the coldest of winter days, the stocky forty-five-year-old was constantly bursting with boyish enthusiasm and energy. He gave each customer the impression he could not do enough for them, and he sure tried.
Call me Harry and I’ll hurry! was his catchphrase. Heck, when you inherited an identical surname to the brand of one of Britain’s most famous cake makers, you either had to make a joke of it or change it.
And not so easy to change your name when your family business, Harold Kipling & Sons, Brighton’s Premier Builders, had been established in 1892 and carried all that goodwill with it.
Besides, it was an icebreaker for a new customer, when discussing extensions to the rear of their house, invariably to tell Harry to make sure he brought some exceedingly good cakes with him, heh-heh.
Business was busy right now, the demand for extensions and for loft conversions better than ever, and a decent turnover was coming in. But he struggled to make a profit year on year. His business would be considerably more profitable, his wife Freya often chided him, if he wasn’t quite so obliging to his customers.
Freya, also forty-five and his childhood sweetheart, was deputy head of a local school. Still the beautiful former head girl, with her long blonde hair and trim figure, she was the organized one in the marriage, and in the rare free time she had after dealing with all the paperwork mountain from her school, and doing her workouts, she helped Harry out with the books of his business – something he was rubbish at. And sometimes what she saw worried her.
Because he always wanted to be helpful, and because he was a genuinely kind man, Harry constantly did his customers favours here and there at no extra charge – invariably eating into his all-too-thin profit margins.
It would be nice, Freya mentioned, and very pointedly, if just occasionally he would do them some favours, too. Such as fixing the floor tile in the downstairs loo of their house, which had been loose for months, or the damp patch in the ceiling of their fourteen-year-old son Tom’s room. Not to mention the wonky wall light in their lounge. And the kitchen cabinet door which had had a broken hinge for as long as she could remember. And everything else that was wrong with their small, attractive but increasingly cluttered 1950s corner house in Mackie Crescent in the leafy Brighton suburb of Patcham.
‘It’s on my list, darling,’ was his standard response. ‘I’ll do it at the weekend.’
But he never did, because most Saturdays, if he wasn’t going with Tom to football at the Amex, to cheer on the Seagulls, or taking him to play rugby or tennis – the two sports Tom was obsessed with playing, which he and Freya encouraged – he would be putting in extra hours at a customer’s house, trying to get a job finished.
And on the alternate Sundays when he didn’t play golf, and while Tom slept in until midday, Harry enjoyed indulging with Freya in their favourite pastime together: scouring car boot sales. And then, when they returned home, after examining and cleaning or polishing their booty, he would take command of the kitchen – or the barbecue on summer days – to cook a roast.
Tom was a Type-1 diabetic. Increasingly, due to him badgering his parents that it was better both for the planet and his sugar levels, Harry had been experimenting with vegetarian and vegan roasts – and discovered to his and Freya’s surprise that they enjoyed both of these, as well as his increasing repertoire of fish and seafood, as much as, if not even more than, meat.
Invariably, after lunch, any good intentions Harry might have had of putting in an hour or two of DIY on the house were nixed by the several large glasses of the red Rioja he and Freya favoured. It would be feet up in front of the television for pretty much the rest of the day and evening, while Tom, if there wasn’t a major sports game on to watch, disappeared up to his room, into his world – alien to them – of computer gaming.
One of the passions Harry and Freya shared was a love of bric-a-brac, and on this Sunday morning they were among the first in line for the 8 a.m. opening of the Sayers Common car boot sale, five miles north of Brighton.
Both were well aware, from long experience, that if you wanted to snap up bargains, you had to be there at doors opening to have any chance against the professional dealers. And they had a well-rehearsed and practised plan of splitting up the moment they entered, Freya going left and Harry going right, scouring the stalls for bargains.