‘Please take your time,’ Alldridge coaxed gently. ‘You’ve been through quite an ordeal.’
Freya nodded tearfully. ‘Just the hallway, the kitchen and here.’ She looked at her husband for confirmation.
‘I think you said the American had checked out all the other rooms, darling,’ Harry replied.
She nodded and said, shakily, ‘Yes, yes I’d forgotten. He had a look around.’
‘Can you tell us what happened and how come these people got into your house?’ Alldridge asked.
‘I... I let them in.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘You see, I was expecting a man called Mike Elkington – that was the name he gave me over the phone – he said he needed a builder, urgently, and Harry had been recommended to him.’
‘Did he say by who?’ Alldridge asked, making notes on a small tablet.
She shook her head wearily, the sedative the paramedic had given her making her increasingly drowsy.
‘Can you try to go through the descriptions of your attackers once more, Mrs Kipling?’ PC Simmons asked. ‘So we can circulate it to all our patrols, just in case these people are still out and about.’
Harry, holding Freya’s hand, responded. ‘The main man was tall and thin with a very distinct Southern American accent – you know – drawl. His accomplices were big guys, beefcakes, like nightclub bouncers.’ Then he remembered. ‘Oh yes, one – the one that came with me to the depot in Worthing – was called Ross or Russ or something like that.’
‘Ross?’ PC Simmons echoed as his colleague appeared to write this into his tablet. ‘What kind of an accent did this person – Ross – have?’ he asked.
Harry shook his head. ‘I never heard him actually speak.’ At that moment he noticed DI Remington-Hobbs standing in the doorway, looking around for a moment before coming into the room.
‘Mr and Mrs Kipling,’ she said, ‘you and your son have been through quite a trauma, and we are thankful you are safe now. For your reassurance, I’m going to post an officer outside your house for the rest of the night, so you’ll be able to get, hopefully, as much of a good night’s sleep as you can. Because of the gravity of this incident, I’ve requested the involvement of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, but asked them not to contact you until tomorrow morning.’ She smiled, looking at her watch. ‘It’s past 10.30 p.m. and I don’t think it would be productive for them to attend tonight, it looks to me like you all need some rest. They will probably require you and your son to come to the CID HQ for interviews, to see what else you can remember about these criminals, when you are feeling fresher, and your son is better.’
Harry and Freya looked at each other before Harry spoke. ‘We’ve already spoken with two detectives after our break-in.’ Then Freya asked her, ‘Can Tom go to school tomorrow if he’s feeling up to it?’
The Detective Inspector hesitated. ‘Well, I think it would be better if he took the day off – or at least the morning, anyway. Just like you and your husband, Tom may have valuable information for us, and it would be good for him to be interviewed while all this is fresh in his mind.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Freya said.
‘We’ll do whatever you need,’ Harry added.
‘I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,’ the DI said. ‘What a nightmare. And obviously we need to consider a link between this and the break-in you had here previously. Hopefully, we’ll catch the offenders and get your painting back. Is it insured?’
Harry shook his head ruefully. ‘We never insured it because we didn’t know what its real value is – we were about to hand it to an auction house who were going to have their experts study it in depth, with a view to putting it into a sale in January – if they could establish to their satisfaction it was genuine.’
‘What would it be worth if so?’ the DI asked.
Harry shrugged. ‘Five million, perhaps more.’
The DI looked astounded. ‘Five million pounds?’
He nodded and glanced at Freya who said, ‘Maybe, but so far it’s not brought us much happiness or luck.’
‘Let’s see if we can change that,’ Val Remington-Hobbs said breezily.
‘You really think you have a hope of getting that painting back?’ Harry asked.
‘We will do all we can,’ the DI replied.
‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I’m already reading your quote in tomorrow’s Argus. “We will do all we can to catch these offenders, said Detective Inspector Remington-Hobbs.”’
Ignoring Freya, who had raised a placating hand, he shook his head at the detective. ‘Good luck with that one.’
91
Wednesday, 6 November
Rocky and Rambo raced each other up the vast Downland field, in yet another of their eternally futile attempts at catching a seagull, or indeed any kind of bird. Daniel Hegarty watched the creature wait until almost the very last second, as if taunting them, before taking majestically off and soaring high above them.
It was just gone 6.35 a.m. and the charcoal canvas of the pre-dawn sky was veined with thin streaks of yellow and red.
He should be feeling great. Yesterday he’d agreed a commission for a copy of a Norman Rockwell for a well-known actor, for £15,000. It was his third lucrative commission in as many weeks – and he was rapidly approaching the point where he was going to have to either turn down work or offer far longer lead times. But he was feeling far from great this morning, after his second sleepless night in a row. He was deeply troubled. Vexed.
Afraid.
A wintry chill blew through him as he stared, deep in thought, down at the houses of Saltdean and the grey water of the English Channel beyond. He’d tried to be too clever, he realized, and had crossed a line. Put himself into a place where he neither wanted to be nor needed to be, not at this stage of his life and his career.
When Harry Kipling had first brought the Fragonard painting to him, asking him to make a copy, he’d sensed a real opportunity. Kipling was a decent sort, and he’d done a good job on their building extension here, and at a fair price, but he was totally naïve about art. The builder had explained excitedly how he’d bought the picture in a car boot sale, then, after dissolving the ugly painting over it, the stunning work of art beneath had been revealed. He’d taken it to the Antiques Roadshow, where the expert had told him that, if genuine, it could be worth millions. But as Harry had told him, the expert on the show had been unable to ascertain then and there whether it was a genuine Fragonard or not.
That was when Hegarty spotted his opportunity.
Although commissioned to create one copy of the painting, for the Kiplings to display on their lounge wall as insurance while they stored the original safely, until they could get it authenticated or not, Hegarty craftily made two copies. The first, for the lounge wall, was a faithful reproduction, nice quality, but easily detectable as a fake to anyone who knew anything about art. But the second copy was a work he was immensely proud of, one of his finest ever. A true masterpiece!
He used his years of experience in art forgery, even down to his pièce de résistance – mixing pigments with a few clothing fibres from a smock from the mid-1700s, obtained from a mate who worked in the Brighton Museum.
He’d added a few touches to the reverse of the canvas, then, keeping the original himself, had handed both forgeries back to a delighted Harry.
His plan had been simple. Eventually Harry Kipling would attempt to sell the painting, probably through a major London auction house where it would be subject to intense scrutiny – carbon dating, spectrogram analysis and an assessment by a Fragonard expert. That expert, and Hegarty had a pretty good idea who would be called in, would pronounce that painting a fake because of the brushstroke technique – something Hegarty had done deliberately and very subtly, just here and there.