"Maybe I should take it over," said Danny, "and sneak out at night to carve the stones by moonlight."
"Do you enjoy it that much?"
He made a rocking motion with a hand. "Not all the time-it can be bloody frustrating when it doesn't go right-but it's what I want to do."
"Sam's willing to let you work in the barn at the bottom of our garden," I said, leading the way back out again. "It'll mean slumming it in the tack room and working with the doors open if you want any light"-I shrugged-"but it won't cost you anything. If you can scrounge some stone and don't mind sleeping rough for a bit ... it's free and available."
He was less than appreciative. "I'd freeze to death in the winter."
"Mm," I agreed, "and Sam'll have your hide if he catches you smoking cannabis."
"What about you?"
"I never argue with my husband in public so if you come ... and he catches you ... you're on your own." I turned to look at him. "Think about it, anyway. You won't get a better offer today."
He became very quiet as we approached the car. "Why would you want to help me?" he asked, taking the keys from my hand to unlock the door.
"Think of it as an investment in the future." He held the door open.
"You'd never make a penny," he said gloomily. "I haven't that much talent."
I gave him a quick hug. "We'll see." I lowered myself onto the seat. "But it's not a financial investment, Danny, more a loan of goodwill that you can repay with interest to someone who deserves a similar chance at another time."
He wouldn't meet my eyes. "What do you want in return?"
"Nothing," I said honestly, reaching for the door. "There are no strings attached. The barn's there if you want to take us up on it. If you don't, no hard feelings."
He shuffled his feet on the gravel. "Alan's phoned a few times wanting to know what you've been saying about him," he said abruptly. "He's really twitched even though I keep telling him you're only interested in what happened to the black lady." I didn't answer.
"What did he do to you?" he asked me.
"What makes you think he did anything?"
"Your face goes blank every time his name's mentioned."
He put his hand on the door to stop me closing it. "I'd never go against him," he said painfully. "He's my brother."
"I wouldn't expect you to," I said as I started the engine. "But the offer of the barn has nothing to do with Alan, Danny. If you're happy to come, we're happy to have you. I hope you'll remember that ... whatever happens..."
My last visit that day was a prearranged one to Sheila Arnold in her office. She and Larry had been away the previous week on a whistlestop visit to the Florida condo-"keeping Larry happy" had been her wry description over the telephone-and this was my first opportunity to show her the photographs of Beth and Alan's house. She had agreed to see me at the end of afternoon surgery and was updating some patients' notes on her computer when I dropped into the chair beside her desk. She gave me a quick smile, then pushed her keyboard away and turned to face me.
"Well?"
I'd had more copies made from the negatives after Drury's fit of pique with my rucksack, and I produced these from my pocket and spread them across her desk.
"My God!" she declared in amazement. "I thought you were exaggerating when you said you'd found the mother lode."
I tapped the bangle on her wrist, then pointed to a close-up of Beth Slater's forearm. "Snap?" I suggested. "She has four of them, and I think she wears them all the time because she pushes them up her arm every time she goes near the sink. I doubt she has any idea they're valuable or even that they're jade. She probably thinks they're plastic or resin."
Sheila studied a picture of Beth with her children. "She has a nice face."
"Yes," I agreed.
"You liked her."
"Very much," I said with a sigh, "which makes it difficult to know what to do next. I don't think she has any idea these things were stolen. She told me Alan bought the Quetzalcoatl in a junk shop then started collecting other Mexican pieces because he believes the Aztecs were an alien civilization. Her children were full of it while I was taking the photographs-they think their dad's a genius because he knows more about aliens than anyone else-and it seems rather pointless to make them unhappy just for the sake of proving he was a thief twenty years ago."
Sheila lifted each picture in turn and studied it closely. "I remember some of these things," she said finally, "but I couldn't swear to all of them. Also, apart from the bangles and the mosaic, there doesn't seem to be much of any value. What happened to the gold and silver pieces, for example?"
"Alan's mother sold them to buy her house," I said, "but I've very little proof to back that up." I showed her the Chiswick jeweler's affidavit. "The description of the woman fits Maureen-along with half a million others who can manage a Birmingham accent-but it's only five items and accounts for less than Ł1,000."
"How much did the house cost her?"
"About Ł15,000 in total. She claims it all came from a win on the football pools which is why she didn't have to declare it." I lifted an amused eyebrow. "The house is now worth upwards of Ł200,000 and increasing every day as the housing boom takes off."
"My God!" said Sheila in disgust. "We didn't get much more than that for our four-bedroom job seven years ago."
"I know. It's sickening." I isolated a wide-angled shot of the sitting room. "Maureen stuffed most of this into the cupboard under her stairs because she didn't think it had any value"-I smiled ironically-"and it was still there when you were trying to persuade Drury Annie had been burgled. In fact, as Alan didn't retrieve it until a good ten years later Drury could have found it if he'd bothered to investigate."
She looked annoyed. "And I would have been vindicated?"
I nodded.
"I'll never forgive Peter Stanhope for accusing me of neglecting her, you know. He said I'd only invented her wealth to make myself look better."
"I know." It obviously still rankled with her, I thought, and decided to keep to myself that Drury had known about the Quetzalcoatl long before Sheila had reported it stolen. I wanted an objective opinion, not one given in anger. "The worst of it is," I said, showing her the picture, "that poor Beth did all this decorating herself to make a Mexican setting for the artifacts ... and it seems cruel to take them away just to prove a point. No one else is going to appreciate them as much as she and Alan do."
Sheila propped her chin in her hands and regarded me solemnly. "Is this a way of asking me to forget that I ever said Annie was robbed?"
"I don't know." I sighed. "I keep wondering if it's right to destroy innocent children's lives over a crime that was committed twenty years ago."
"Except I seem to remember you telling me that if you found Annie's thief you'd also find her murderer. Were you wrong?"
I studied a close-up of the brass artillery shell that stood in Beth's fireplace with colorful silk flowers fanning out of it like peacock feathers. "Does it matter?" I asked her. "Doesn't the same principle apply whatever the crime? Wouldn't I be choosing the lesser of two evils if I left Annie's death as an accident?"
She eyed me thoughtfully. "It depends how two-faced you want to be," she said bluntly. "That was probably Sergeant Drury's excuse as well ... yet you've spent twenty years trying to prove him wrong."
Correspondence re: a meeting on 20.08.99
LEAVENHAM FARM, LEAVENHAM, NR
DORCHESTER, DORSET DT2 XXY
Alan Slater
12 Peasmont Road
Isleworth