‘You tell them both to go away and come back some other time.’
‘I’m not doing that,’ Hegarty said, emboldened now as he saw the menace in Kilgore’s face turn to concern. ‘They are very busy and I need clear windows. We get a lot of salt off the sea – hence the name of this place, Saltdean.’
‘You are starting to really piss me off, Mr Hegarty.’
‘Not half as much as you are pissing my wife and me off.’
An instant later the doorbell rang.
‘You do not answer it,’ Kilgore said.
Hegarty smiled. ‘Not a problem, I don’t need to.’
A young male voice called out from upstairs. ‘Mr Hegarty, Mrs Hegarty, it’s Charlie and Joey, just come in to do the windows!’
73
Monday, 4 November
‘I’d advise you untie us pretty quickly, Mr Kilgore,’ Hegarty said quietly. ‘It won’t look too good. And I’d also advise you to put your piece away. Charlie up there is a black-belt mixed martial arts fighter, and if I ask him nicely, he’ll shove that gun so far down your throat you’ll need an enema to get it back.’
‘You’re not in any position to threaten me, Mr Hegarty.’
‘Actually, I am, and you know that.’
‘Shall I start upstairs, Mr and Mrs Hegarty?’ the window cleaner called down.
Kilgore, momentarily panic-stricken, told his two heavies not to react.
‘Great, thanks, Charlie,’ Hegarty called out. ‘Tea with three lumps?’
‘Top man!’ the reply came.
‘Tell him to get lost,’ Kilgore demanded, but his voice had lost its authority. He stepped back, blocking the view of the window cleaner outside.
‘You tell him,’ Hegarty retorted.
Kilgore frowned, looking thrown and uncertain what to do next, the gun jigging up and down. Then he said quietly to the twins, ‘Untie them.’ Levelling the gun first at Hegarty then Natalie, he retreated to the bottom of the staircase.
As the twins removed the bonds around the couple, and the gag from Natalie’s mouth, Kilgore announced quietly, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do, Mr and Mrs Hegarty. We’re all going to sit calmly around your kitchen table, like we’re having a real friendly meeting, until these two jokers have done their stuff and gone away.’
Still covered by the gun, both Hegartys shook some blood back into their arms, then complied. Natalie exchanged a nervous glance with her husband, sitting next to her. The hired muscle perched opposite and Kilgore took the head of the table, holding his gun low, out of sight. Addressing the couple, Kilgore said, ‘If either of you attempt to call for help, I’ll shoot you both and the window cleaners, I promise.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Hegarty said.
‘Darling,’ Natalie cautioned her husband.
Hegarty grinned at Kilgore. ‘Four dead bodies? Really? You and these apes don’t want to spend the rest of your lives in prison, do you?’
‘I mean what I said, Hegarty.’
‘You do, so go ahead, shoot me.’ He stared at the American hard in the eyes. ‘Might be wiser to talk, don’t you think?’ He stood up.
‘Sit down,’ Kilgore said.
‘I have to make our window cleaners their tea. For Charlie upstairs and Joey outside.’
‘SIT!’ he snapped.
Rambo growled at Kilgore, who glared down at the dogs then up at the forger. ‘I never took you for being a comedian, Mr Hegarty.’
‘And I never took you for being a man without a plan, Mr Kilgore,’ he said, calmly walking over to the kettle and switching it on.
The twins stood, but Kilgore snapped a hand at them, indicating them to remain seated.
A Banksy copy was mounted on the wall above the cupboards over the worktop. It depicted two helmeted male police officers embracing passionately and snogging.
Kilgore pointed at it. ‘That does not do anything for me.’
‘Really? Banksy is one of the greatest modern artists of our time,’ Hegarty said, taking two mugs from the cupboard and setting them down on the worktop.
‘There are no greatest artists of our time. Good art stopped in the nineteenth century,’ Kilgore said.
Hegarty looked at him. ‘And there I was thinking you were an art connoisseur.’ He dropped a teabag into each mug.
‘Excuse me,’ Natalie butted in. ‘Could we not discuss your issue in a calm and sensible manner, Mr Kilgore? I’m needed on duty, where we are already short-staffed.’
As the kettle started to come to the boil, Kilgore looked at her. ‘It’s very simple, Mrs Hegarty. On behalf of my employer, I commissioned your husband to paint a copy of a Fragonard for which he was paid well. I believe he has the original painting and I want it. All he has to do is give us the original, Summer, and we’ll be out of here.’ He nodded at Hegarty. ‘I’d be prepared to say, nice try and let it rest at that. How fair does that sound?’
‘My husband is not a liar,’ Natalie said firmly.
Pouring water into the mugs, Hegarty shook his head. He counted out sugar lumps from a bowl, dropped some into each mug then turned. ‘Mr Kilgore, do you really think if I cheated my customers I would have survived this long in business? You asked me to paint a copy of Fragonard’s Summer. I obligingly made the quality of copy you requested – one that would stand up to visual inspection, but not a forensic one. And last week, having done the job, I gave it to you. Sure, I made an extra copy for myself, as I’ve already explained. You can tell from the back easily enough – there are none of the markings you’d expect to find on a painting of that age.’ He shrugged.
‘What exactly are you saying, Mr Hegarty?’ Kilgore asked.
‘Let me explain some background, which you are very clearly unaware of. Several weeks ago I was contacted by Mr Harold Kipling, who did some building work here for us a couple of years ago. He told me he’d bought a painting in a car boot sale, which he believed might possibly be an original Fragonard – Summer – part of the artist’s long-lost Four Seasons paintings. He asked me if I could make a copy which he could hang on a wall in his home, saying he wanted to put the original into a secure storage unit for safe keeping until he could establish whether it was an original or not.’ Noting the surprise on Kilgore’s face, he went on. ‘I duly made a copy for him and gave him the copy plus his original back and kept my cabbage. As I’ve just told you, Mr Kilgore, what would be the point in trying to hang on to the original, which would be unsellable? My business is copying famous paintings, and forging originals. I’m not in the business of stealing art.’
‘You know fine well that is bullshit, Mr Hegarty. There are plenty of collectors around the world, in Russia and China among other countries, who pay big money for famous works of art regardless of their provenance.’
The kettle came to the boil and Hegarty filled each of the mugs, then put the kettle down, allowing the tea to steep. ‘Not my scene, Mr Kilgore.’
Kilgore looked like he was about to explode. ‘You must have known it was your own goddamn copy that we took from the Kiplings’ house. Why the hell didn’t you say something? You knew why we wanted the copy.’
Ignoring Natalie’s anxious glance, Hegarty pulled the teabags out of the mugs, opened the fridge, removed a carton of milk, poured out two measures into each of the mugs, then popped a teaspoon from the drying rack into each.
‘Mr Kilgore, I never question the motives of my clients. I make copies of paintings to order, that’s a big part of how I earn my living.’ He calmly opened a cupboard door, removed a pack of Jammy Dodger biscuits and emptied some onto a plate. Scooping up the two mugs with one hand, he picked up the plate with the other and headed towards the staircase. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.