Saturday, 2 November
‘Happy days, boss!’ Robert Kilgore said, standing in Piper’s office and presenting him with the clumsily wrapped package. ‘As you Brits say!’
Piper, his face revealing nothing, as usual, took a pair of scissors from a drawer. He carefully removed the brown paper, cut through the gaffer tape securing the bubble wrap, and finally lifted the picture clear.
Kilgore beamed as his boss studied the front carefully, then turned it around and examined the back. Then the front again. Even though it was virtually impossible to read anything in his expression, Kilgore saw what he interpreted as the shadow of a flicker of doubt.
Then Piper brought it close to his face and sniffed.
An instant later he slammed it down on his desk. ‘This is a forgery,’ he said. ‘This is a fucking forgery!’
Robert Kilgore had seen his boss angry plenty of times over the past fifteen years he’d worked for him, but he’d never seen him as angry as this. He was like one of those fireworks that kept firing exploding bombshells into the air, each one bigger and louder than the previous.
Piper stood, apoplectic, behind his desk, the debris of bubble wrap and brown paper strewn around him, as he held up the painting again. ‘It’s a fucking forgery!’
‘This is what Archie Goff removed from the Kiplings’ living room wall, sir.’ It was partly due to his Southern breeding and partly due to the sheer coldness Piper exuded that he rarely, in all these years, used his boss’s first name. And Piper only used his last name when he was angry. He was seriously angry now.
Piper shook his head. ‘No, Kilgore, it’s what that toe-rag, Goff, told you he’d removed from the Kiplings’ wall. I know that Antiques Roadshow expert, Oliver Desouta, I’ve bought pictures from his gallery, and I called him on Monday morning, to ask him his opinion – what he really thought. He told me that while he would need more time to fully establish its provenance, that he was as certain as he could be, with his forty years’ experience of the art world, specializing in French old masters, that it was the genuine article. Didn’t you fucking smell it?’
‘I did not, sir, no. It was all wrapped up, as I brought it to you just now.’
Piper shook his head, all the explosions fired from his shell now, and sat back down, a dangerously simmering husk. ‘We bailed him out because he was recommended, you told me, as the finest house burglar in the county.’
‘That is correct, sir.’
‘So does he think we’re a bunch of monkeys? Does he seriously think he can walk off with the original and pass off Hegarty’s forgery to us without us noticing? Do I look stupid, Kilgore? Do I look like someone who just rode into town on the back of a truck?’
‘I wouldn’t say so, no, sir.’
Piper thrust the painting at him. ‘Smell it!’
Kilgore took it, held it close to his face and sniffed. And immediately noticed the faint reek of varnish. He nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Yep?’ Piper retorted. ‘That’s all you have to say?’
‘No, sir, I reckon you are right.’
‘You reckon? Bobby, we’ve been royally stiffed by a low-life scumbag dickhead. I don’t know what’s going on in his head – clearly not much if he thinks he can get away with this. You have his contact details? His address? Phone?’
‘Both,’ Kilgore said.
Piper stabbed a button on his desk intercom. Moments later the twin guards came into the room. He gave them their instructions.
54
Saturday, 2 November
Even though he’d got up early in order to beat the Saturday crowds and had arrived at the Cannon Place car park just before 10 a.m., Archie Goff still had to drive up to Level Five before he found a free parking space. It was a tight one at that, between a Porsche Cayenne and a squat sports car he didn’t recognize.
After reversing the Astra in carefully, there was barely enough room for him to squeeze out, and he had to tap the side of the Cayenne with his door. He paid no attention to the white van that followed him in, and had now driven on past.
There was a jeweller in the Brighton Lanes, Anthony Horowitz, a ten-minute walk away, with whom he had done business many times. He knew that Horowitz only stocked quality. And, Anthony owed him a favour. On the last big job he’d done, before Hope Manor, he’d held back a bunch of watches and jewellery, instead of handing them along with the rest of his haul to his fence, Ricky Sharp. He knew fine well he’d get a better price from Horowitz, even with a big knock-down. Horowitz had handed him ten grand in cash knowing the goods were worth a good fifty grand, if not more, at current retail prices. ‘I owe you one,’ Anthony had said as his parting words.
Archie intended to call in that favour now and bag himself a nice antique engagement ring for just a few hundred quid.
Less than half an hour later he was climbing, with some difficulty, wheezing, back up the car park staircase. Elated, he repeatedly patted the lump in the inside breast pocket of his bomber jacket. Checking his purchase was still there. Inside the small blue cotton-wool-lined box Anthony Horowitz had found for the ring.
He could not wait to see Isabella’s face when she popped the lid off that box to see the white-gold ring with the tiny ruby set in the head. She’d let slip some while ago that rubies were her favourite stones, and this one was just plain gorgeous.
Horowitz had tried to stiff him for £750 for it, and he’d managed to haggle him down to £500, still more than he’d budgeted to pay, but what the hell. She was worth it.
He stopped to get his breath back when he reached the fifth floor, feeling a little giddy from the exertion, his chest hammering. He felt a sharp pain in his left arm and then another down his chest, and for a moment panicked that he might be having a heart attack.
Oh God, not now, please not now.
He was hyperventilating.
Took some deep breaths. Slowly, steadily, he calmed down. Felt fine again after some moments. Although he was aware he was drenched in perspiration. Maybe he would join a gym after they got back from the New Forest. Hell, he was only sixty-four – no age today. Get his fitness up. He owed that to his future bride. Hell, he owed it to himself and to his daughter.
He walked along the deserted floor of the car park, trying to remember exactly which row he’d left the Astra in.
He never heard the soft footsteps behind him.
Never registered the single blow to the base of his neck that knocked him, instantly, unconscious.
55
Saturday, 2 November
When he opened his eyes, Archie Goff was confused and disoriented. The back of his head was throbbing. He had been in the Cannon Place car park behind Churchill Square. Who were these people? Big, unsmiling identical faces, in matching black mandarin collars and with identical shiny black hair slicked back.
Was he seeing double? For a moment, in his befuddled state, he thought he might have been mugged. That this face or these faces belonged to his rescuers.
But he wasn’t seeing double, he realized, after some moments. And there was something in their eyes that he really did not like.
Slowly he became aware of his surroundings. He was in a huge, cold, empty warehouse, as vast as an aircraft hangar. Some wooden pallets were stacked over in a far corner; a couple of grey-sided containers. Over to the right, as far as he could crane his neck to see, was a white van. There was nothing else in here except for the two massive, muscular men who looked like identical twins. He was stark naked, he realized with shock, and seated in a chair, but as he tried to move, neither he nor the chair budged. It felt like the chair was cemented to the floor and his bum and back were cemented to the chair. He was bound by a rope across his midriff and by something sharp around his wrists and ankles.