Stuart Pawson
The Picasso Scam
Chapter One
Red was no longer my favourite colour. Suddenly it was the colour of danger. And blood. Is that why it was chosen to represent danger? It seemed the most important question in the world to me. Strange and inconsequential, the thoughts you have when death is only the twitch of a finger away.
The red was mine, my blood, pumping between the fingers I was clutching to my stomach as I staggered towards the doorway from the warehouse.
Behind me the shotgun exploded again as I hit the door. I cringed with fear and pain but no fiery blast came, just cold, fresh air as I fell through on to the welcome pavement outside.
Footsteps. I could see feet all around me. And voices: "He's hurt…
Call a doctor… He's bleeding… I heard a shot… What's your name?"
"What's your name?"
Somebody was shaking my shoulder: "What's your name?"
Did they mean me?
Again, gently: "What are you called, love?"
"Priest," I said. My face was pressed against the wet pavement. It was cool and friendly, and had a smell that rekindled some way-back memory.
"What did you say, love?"
"Priest," said a voice in my head, a hundred miles away. If only I could remember… "He wants a priest."
"We've sent for the police and an ambulance."
"What are you called?"
"Priest."
"Don't worry about a priest, love, let's get you to hospital. There'll be a priest there."
"No! I don't want a priest… I am a priest." The voice was a thousand miles away now, or was I just thinking it. "I am not a priest, I am… Priest… Charlie Priest. Detective Inspector Charles Priest of the… '
That smell. I could remember what it was. When we were kids we played cowboys and Indians. You had to lie on the ground and count to fifty.
When you'd been shot. When you were dead.
There are some names you forget instantly and some that you hear once and they are engraved on the inside of your skull for ever. It was three years earlier that I had first come across Aubrey Cakebread, but I knew there was no need to write the name down. Once afflicted there was no cure, like herpes.
We were driving over the Tops from Lancashire back to Yorkshire after interviewing a prisoner being held at Oldfield. I had Nigel Newley with me. Nigel was a graduate recruit seconded to CID as part of his crash course in becoming a wonderful British bobby. He was handsome, athletic, had a decent mind and spoke like a BBC news reader He was with me because nobody else at Heckley nick could stand him.
We had been entertained by the Oldfield boys all part of Nigel's training, of course and it was late. My ancient Cortina estate was protesting at the gradients. The interior was filled with exhaust fumes and the smell of an abused clutch.
"A Cortina!" exclaimed Nigel. "How come you drive a clapped-out Cortina?" For a Southerner he didn't mince his words.
"It came cheap," I said.
"I see. You mean it's all part of your cover so you can bust a gang of fluffy-dice thieves."
"Don't be insolent. The Cortina is a fine, reliable vehicle. At this very moment there are thousands of housewives snuggling up to their husbands, dreaming about the romantic evenings they used to spend in the back seat of their first company Cortina."
I crunched it into second for the last hairpin. A few moments later we crested the brow and the car sighed with relief. The fumes cleared and we enjoyed the night air.
"When I say cheap I mean really cheap," I told him. "Like free I had it given."
"On your pay, and single, I would have thought you'd have something flash," he replied.
Away to our left were the lights of Heckley and the string of other towns making up what was once called the Heavy Woollen District.
Millions of glowing specks: beads of orange streetlights and coloured window lights, like galaxies carelessly flung down to blanket the hills. We used to come up here often, when I was courting Vanessa, just to look at the lights. Well, that wasn't the only reason.
Vanessa had dreams of painting the sight, and one night we brought her paints and a canvas and she worked by the car's interior light. She was going through her Abstract Expressionist phase. The picture had a background of black and Prussian blue stabs of colour, with the lights picked out by splatters of white, yellow and orange. It was good I liked it but she made a right Jackson Pollock of the inside of the car.
"The lights look nice," Nigel confirmed.
"Yes, they do," I replied eventually.
We were coasting downhill. The Cortina was a lot happier going downhill. I wasn't the brakes were about as much use as a plough to a fish farmer.
"I had a messy divorce," I explained. "Left me cleaned out, with a big mortgage. A friend gave me this to help out. It's been a godsend."
"Sorry, boss," he said. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Don't worry about it," I replied. "It's over. From now on it can only get better."
We rolled on in silence for a while. "Are you in a hurry to get back?"
I asked.
Nigel said he wasn't.
"Good. So let's go looking for rustlers. You know all about them, I suppose?" No harm in reminding him of the pecking order. There had been a spate of sheep-stealing lately. Lambs had gone missing, and one had been found staggering around with a crossbow bolt sticking through its neck. Nigel was familiar with the basics of the case. I swung off the main road and followed a much narrower one for about a mile, to the area where the injured lamb had been found. When we reached a crossroads I parked in a gateway, behind a dry-stone wall. In one of the angles made by the roads stood a telephone box. It was the old-fashioned type, and the light was on inside.
I filled Nigel in on the details. The farmer had found the lamb and tyre tracks near the box. It was a slim chance but that was what detective work was all about: put yourself in the right place and then be patient. Besides, I didn't want to go home. A fellow officer is not my first choice for company on a Friday night, but at this hour it was the best I was going to get.
"What the devil is the phone box doing up here?" asked Nigel.
"Saving lives in winter," I replied, 'and winning a few votes for the councillor who put it there. It's supposed to be the loneliest box in the country."
We got talking about the job. I told him about the old Heavy Woollen District, and how the low property prices and fine old Victorian houses seemed to be attracting a certain type of criminal who had an eye for privacy. The area had also spawned a disproportionately high number of multiple killers.
"Don't make the mistake of thinking this is the sticks," I told him.
"Crimewise, this is the land of opportunity. Every one of those lights we could see from up the hill has a story to tell, and plenty of 'em's illegal."
"Is it true you were the youngest-ever inspector?" he asked.
I laughed. "Probably not, but I was young. Now I am quite definitely the longest-serving inspector."
"What went wrong?"
"Who knows?" I said. Apart from me.
Nigel was okay. I decided to expand a little. Maybe it would do me good. "I started out as an art student but I didn't seem to fit in.
When I finished I decided I wanted a complete change, so I came into the family firm. Dad was a Dixon of Dock Green desk sergeant at Heckley for donkey's years. He died of cancer, but I made him happy in the end. I'm glad about that. Now I'm beginning to think that I don't fit in again. It's only taken me until now to realise it." This was getting serious. I grinned at him: "Maybe I'm just shiftless."
We could see the lights of an occasional vehicle wind up the main road and vanish over the Tops.
"I'd rather be here with the other new starter," I said. "No offence, but she's better-looking than you."