‘No, he got a new chauffeur. What do you think? How could he not pay up? Who would have done business with him if he hadn’t? How could he have lived with himself, for that matter?’
And ‘living with it’ would come into it for us too. My Accumulated Guilt Quotient was already going through the roof. Louis had been snatched to get to me, to buy the services of Aqua Investigations. Whoever he was, he knew me, at least by reputation. I myself knew plenty of unsavoury individuals and had paraded their mental mug shots through my private gallery but no one stood out as an obvious choice for the face behind the voice. His voice reminded me of nobody and of nothing, it was too distorted over the phone, and if I really had met the bastard before, then that was deliberate.
The elderly couple at the table next to ours left and their place was taken by a man wearing a waxed jacket and a matching wide-brimmed hat. I looked across at his face. Around fifty and quite a bit paler than a man ought to be. I’d never seen him before, yet I began to feel uneasy and I motioned Tim with my head: let’s get out of here. As we rounded the corner towards the exit I looked back. The man was staring straight at me and from a distance of twenty-five feet our eyes met briefly, then his gaze slid over and off me, not interested, turning instead to the young boy carrying two steaming mugs towards his table.
‘What’s the matter?’ Tim wanted to know.
‘Nothing, paranoia’s setting in, that’s all.’
We had deliberately exited at the back of the market into the courtyard. The old Empire Hotel and the old police station — now thankfully Browns restaurant — the Guildhall and the covered market all backed on to what was now used as a private car park for council workers, restaurateurs and market traders. A man in dirty chef’s whites puffed at a small cigar by a door at the back of the Empire, a seagull flew over and scored a direct hit on a shiny blue Jaguar.
Tim sniffed the air and pulled a face. ‘This really stinks. There might be a way into the museum from back here but it would mean one hell of a climb.’ He turned his back on me and began walking away through the narrow passage between the hotel and the market building.
I went after him and tried to find something optimistic to say. ‘If a couple of guys with a ladder can nick a Munch from a museum in Norway then surely we must be able to pinch an itsy-bitsy Rodin in Bath.’
He wasn’t having any of it. ‘They do things differently in Norway. Must be the long winters. Or perhaps it’s the terrible folk music, but this is different. We can’t even reconnoitre the place properly. We won’t know if there’s a way in until we get there and getting there is probably just as risky as breaking in is going to be. I really don’t like this, Chris. I think it’s one break-in too far. The chances of getting away with it are minimal — and I just mean away from the museum, there’s no way we won’t get nicked for it later. And don’t look at me like that.’ Apparently I was looking at him like that. ‘It’s a lot to ask for a kid you never even met.’
I had never seen Tim less enthusiastic about any scheme I had proposed but I knew that without him my chances were nil. ‘If I didn’t know you any better I’d say you didn’t want to do it.’
‘Ha-bloody-ha. I’ll have a think but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it. Now I’m going to work.’
‘To work on what?’ I asked, too wrapped up in my own problems to function entirely in the real world.
‘Work. To work, Chris. I do have a job at the uni, you know, the kind that pays my bills. But I might be able to get away early today. I’ll come round and we’ll have another talk then.’
I opened my mouth for an answer but he was already dashing across the street through the traffic, waving without looking back.
Chapter Sixteen
October rain, what can you do with it? Shopping. I’d picked up a couple of ambitiously priced bottles of French red with deliberate absentmindedness then found myself contemplating the pretend summer of the supermarket. Time-warped summer vegetables from Spanish poly-tunnels and optimistic little salmon kebabs that really belonged on a sizzling barbecue couldn’t disguise the fact that people were leaving puddles of cold rainwater on the floor. I heroically turned my back on such anodyne fare, though happily bought the wine, left the supermarket and crossed to Green Street where I picked up a dozen venison sausages at the butcher’s. Having strapped my purchases to the back of the bike I puttered through the drizzle to Larkhall where at Tony’s greengrocer’s things were more in sync with the season. I stocked up with a string of shiny red onions, plenty of dirty carrots, knobbly potatoes, knobblier horseradish and an armful of ruby chard. By the time I pootled out of Larkhall the Norton had taken on the air of a French bicycle wobbling home from the market, with half a kitchen garden tied to the tank. I parked the bike in the muddy yard close to the house, untied my purchases and splashed dirt all the way from the front door through to the kitchen, plonking my purchases on the table where they joyfully tumbled from their bags. Yet the unhappy atmosphere seemed evident in the very pine-fragranced and lemon-freshened air. Deep in my irrational self I resented Jill and her son and their predicament, I resented all of it as an imposition and intrusion into my happy-go-lucky lifestyle. Never mind Tim’s reluctance, I couldn’t wait to break into the museum and swipe the silly little Rodin and give it to the bastard who’d snatched Louis.
Out of nowhere the nameless cat jumped on to the table and meowed in a low, self-possessed fashion at my purchases. Zabaglione, I thought, then dismissed it instantly. They’d end up calling him Zab.
I even resented Louis for getting himself kidnapped, the silly brat, although I’d never met the poor kid. I wanted my life back. I wanted to be back at the moment before Annis had handed me the phone, I wanted to be back before the storm when I was happily painting in a studio with a roof on it. The cat pawed at the bags. A horseradish root rolled off the table. I kicked it hard across the kitchen floor like a moody teenager who had been grounded: it’s not fair. The cat jumped off the table and galloped out of the kitchen. Yeah, that’s right, make me feel guilty. Very unlike a moody teenager I crawled around on all fours until I’d found where the damn root had ricocheted and washed it carefully. Then I went and dropped my filthy boots on to a newspaper in the hall where I should have left them in the first place and decided to shower my irritations away. When I got to my bedroom I could hear someone else had got to the en suite before me and my mood lifted instantly. I pulled off my clothes where I stood and dropped them on to the floor, then walked into the steamed-up bathroom. Annis’s silhouette moved sinuously behind the glass of the shower cubicle. This was one bathroom scene I was determined would have a good ending. I rapped against the glass with my rings. She slid open the door and pointed her breasts at me, in happy salutation, I hoped.
‘Room for a small one?’ I asked. The old ones are still the best, apparently.
‘Not all that small either.’ She grabbed me and gently pulled me into the cubicle. ‘I was just going to come out,’ she said.
‘I was just going to come in,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh all right then.’
I slid the door shut. The cubicle was ridiculously small and steamy. Annis started soaping me all over but dropped the bar just as she got to the interesting bits, which was a right shame. It slithered into the drain hole and half blocked it. There was simply not enough room to bend down and retrieve it. While the water slowly rose we arranged ourselves first this way, then that. There were bits I was desperate to kiss but couldn’t hope to reach without dislocating a limb. I accidentally nudged the mixer with my elbow and the water turned to skin-blistering hot. Annis screamed and I fiddled it back to normal. A few minutes later her knee nudged it into the arctic zone. This time we both screamed.