Dead End (15 page)

Slider read, and let out a soundless whistle. ‘You’re not kidding.’ A Turner, a minor Constable and an Italian painter Slider hadn’t heard of – religious and Italian, sixteenth-century. The three together had been bought for a total of one million, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. ‘And Coleraine wasn’t kidding when he said he was doing all right. One and a quarter million on piccies? I wonder if Lenny knew what he was getting into. Pictures like that are a bit out of his league.’

Beevers scratched his woolly head thoughtfully. ‘The funny thing is, guv, Coleraine never reported ’em missing. You know McLaren used to be at Kensington, where Coleraine’s gaff is? Well, he got a mate of his over there to look up the records. There was a break-in at the house on the fifth of June, three weeks after he bought the paintings. It looked like a professional job – burglar alarm bypassed and a window taken right out, nice as pie, not kid’s stuff. This mate of McLaren’s faxed us the report, and there’s a list of stolen gear – small antiques, silver and some figurines – but no mention of these paintings. But,’ he added the word weightily as he drew another sheet forward and turned it for Slider’s scrutiny, tapping with his forefinger, ‘if you look here, on this list of the gear we got from Lenny’s, this occasional table sounds very like the one Coleraine says he lost; and these figurines, here, they’ve got to be the same, haven’t they?’

Slider read. ‘They sound like it,’ he admitted.

‘Staffordshire glazed figures, 1840s, Victoria and Albert, Admiral Nelson, Sir Robert Peel, George Washington, they’re all on the list. George Hudson – who was he, anyway?’

‘The Railway King. Pioneering railway builder. Didn’t you want to drive a steam train when you were a kid?’

‘I’m not old enough,’ Beevers said with unconscious cruelty. ‘Anyway, guv, here we’ve got gear from Coleraine’s break-in turning up at Lenny’s, plus paintings we know Coleraine bought, but he never reports ’em stolen.’ He shook his head with dark reproof. ‘It’s a bit queer.’

After consulting with the duty sergeant, Paxman, whose specialist subject on
Mastermind
could have been Drinking Habits of Shepherd’s Bush Lowlife, 1960 to 1990, Slider ran Lenny Picket to earth in The George in Hammersmith Broadway, a vast Edwardian pub of mahogany panels and acid-embossed glass screens, in whose womblike darkness the few daytime drinkers sat at a respectful distance from each other and politely never looked up when anyone came in or went out. As if out of a sense of artistic coherence, everything about Lenny was as narrow as his name – narrow face, narrow shoulders, narrow chest. He smoked very thin roll-ups and during the brief period they stayed alight narrowed his eyes against the rising smoke. He was a squirrel of a man, small, neat, quick and adaptable; a player of many rôles, who at the drop of a hat could switch speech modes from Parkhurst to Park Lane.

He was reading up the forthcoming antique sales in the
Telegraph,
and folded the paper hastily when Slider arrived alongside his table.

‘Oh, Mr Slider, you gave me a start,’ he said. He had a curiously husky voice which made him sound a bit like Lauren Bacall. Perhaps that was why Slider had always liked him.

‘Hullo, Lenny. I wanted to have a word with you. Mind if I sit down?’

‘Can I stop you?’ Lenny shrugged. ‘I’m on bail, my life isn’t my own any more.’

‘Drink?’

‘Might as well take one off you. Gold watch – make it a double – no ice.’

When Slider returned with the drinks he settled down on the other side of the table, and Lenny abandoned the dismal remains of his last roll-up, brought out a packet of Rizla and a tin of Old Horrible, and started anew. ‘What’s the beef, then?’

‘It’s about that last haul we nicked you for.’

‘Come on now, Mr Slider, I put me hand up for that like a good boy,’ he protested. ‘End of story.
Finito.’

‘All right, Len, it’s not grief for you. I just want some information,’ Slider reassured him. ‘About those three oil paintings.’

Lenny looked gloomy. ‘I wishter God I’d never touched ’em. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been in this business all my life, and rule number one is never touch nothing there’s only one of. I mean, what the ’ell was I going to do with ’em? A nice bit of furniture, a nice garden stachoo, who’s to say where it came from? But an oil painting, and a ruddy Gainsborough into the bargain—’

‘It was a Constable, actually.’

‘Don’t say that word, please,’ Lenny shuddered delicately. ‘I’ll never forget when that PC D’Arblay came bursting in. The irony was not lost on me, I promise you.’

‘Does it never bother you that what you’re doing is completely immoral?’ Slider asked in wonder. ‘You seem such a nice bloke otherwise.’

‘Come on now, Mr Slider, be fair. I’m a businessman,’ he said in wounded tones. ‘I pay an honest price for what I buy, and sell it again at an honest profit. I’ve got thousands of satisfied customers who’d give me a testimony. I don’t ask where the stuff comes from or where it goes to, but then who does? It’s not my fault if other people break the law, is it?’

‘A fascinating rationale,’ Slider said. ‘I like you, Lenny. It’s such a pity you’re bent.’

‘Bent? Listen,’ he leaned forward earnestly, ‘I had a young bloke in my place a couple of weeks ago, posh accent, posh clothes, all the education money could buy: he comes in to look at some lead allegorical figures for his garden, argues about the price, finally writes me a cheque – and has it away with my fountain pen. Now
that’s
bent. Young people today! They got no standards.’

Slider smiled. ‘Well, I’m not interested in statues. It’s those oil paintings I want to know about. I want to know where they came from. D’you want to give me a name, Len, and save me a lot of trouble?’

Lenny lifted a hand. ‘Now then, now then, you know me better than that. I may not be lily-white in your eyes, but I don’t grass up a business associate. Where’d I be if I got meself a reputation? I’d be finished. No-one’d ever do business with me again if they knew I was going to put Plod on their tail.’

‘And you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t ask you unless it was important,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose I didn’t really expect you to tell me, though I could make a fair guess – within three names.’ He looked deep into Lenny’s eyes, or as deep as you can look into the slit in a pillar box, but Lenny faced him out unmoved. ‘Look,’ Slider went on, ‘at this stage you don’t have to tell me who you got the pictures from, I just want to know where they were stolen from. The address, that’s all.’

‘What d’you mean, at this stage?’ Lenny asked suspiciously.

‘It may or it may not prove important. If it doesn’t, you won’t hear any more about it, my word on it. If it is important, I’ll try to keep you out of it and establish the information from another direction.’

‘Try?’ Lenny sounded peevish. ‘And I’ll be inside
trying
not to get my boat altered during association period.’

‘It’s a murder case I’m investigating,’ Slider said impatiently. ‘Don’t mess me about, Lenny. I’m asking you nicely now, and ten to one you’ll hear nothing more about it. But we can do it the hard way if you like, and you can have all the publicity you want.’

‘That’s blackmail. I’m surprised at you, Mr Slider. I always thought you was a decent bloke.’ He shook his head over the unreliability of humankind. ‘Look, I tell you straight, I don’t know where the pictures came from. That’s not something I ever ask. I can go back to my supplier and ask him, but whether he’ll tell me or not—’ He shook his head again.

‘He’ll tell you. You’ll make him. You’ll find a way, Lenny. I have confidence in you.’

‘It might take me a bit of time.’

Slider smiled. For such a kind-faced man he could look surprisingly menacing when he wanted to, Lenny thought.

‘Oh, you’ll have the information by Monday, I’m sure of it. An anonymous phone call is all I want. Just an address. Got me?’

‘Got you,’ Lenny sighed. He pushed his roll-up into the corner of his mouth and fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. ‘Tell me, does anybody ever make the mistake of thinking you’re soft?’

‘Only my wife,’ Slider said sadly.

On the whole Atherton liked what had happened to Covent Garden. Some of the shops might be a bit poncey, and it seemed to be impossible to cross the piazza without having to avoid someone in black tights and a striped jumper miming his way round a sheet of glass; but at least the place was vital now. Empty upstairs rooms were being turned into flats and bedsitters, the reversal of the usual trend in Central London, and it had the comfortingly Manhattan feeling of a place where people lived, shopped, ate and sat out on sunny evenings on their doorsteps and window-sills watching the world go by.

It had always been rich in restaurants, and he decided to fortify himself with lunch before seeking out Kate Apwey’s lover. In a state of pleasant anticipation he strolled into what had been his favourite tatty tratt, a place of check tablecloths and heartwarming Italian vulgarity, only to find it had changed hands since his last visit. Atherton knew he was in trouble when he saw sun-dried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar on the menu: life at the Casa Angelo had suddenly got serious. Gone were the tight-trousered boys with priapic pepper mills, the vast mamma in black wedged behind the till, the clusters of strawed Chianti bottles hanging about in corners like evil funghi, the loop tape of
Volare
and
O Sole Mio.
Now there was rubber music played almost but not quite sub-aurally, the tablecloths were white and the light fittings chrome, and the pictures on the walls were numbingly abstract. Gone were the familiar comforts of avocado vinaigrette, spag bol and pollo sorpreso, the mountain of profiteroles on the sweet trolley overshadowing an untouched bowl of oranges in somethingorother. Now the food made sparse patterns on the oversize plates; olive oil seemed to get drizzled
over most things, and the owner actually came out in a grey silk suit and supervised the drizzling. Atherton ate and left a sadder but not much wider man; nobody, in his opinion, ought ever to come out of an Italian restaurant still able to do up all their buttons.

Chastened, he sought Murray’s address – a flat above a former warehouse – and found it with some difficulty, for the door was not where it might be expected to be, but round an apparently unrelated corner. He was prepared for there to be no answer to his ring, but after a few moments there was a thunder of feet and the door was opened by a young man, dark-haired and olive-skinned, small and powerful as an Etruscan warrior, standing on the bare wooden stairs onto which the door opened directly. He was wearing grey flannel trousers and braces over a bare chest, his bare feet were very dirty, his chin was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair looked as though he had slept in it. He looked about mid-twenties, though there were lines in his face which suggested a hard life – or perhaps merely chronic bad-temper. He looked at Atherton with an expression of suspicion if not hostility: this was not the man to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

‘Are you Steve Murray?’ Atherton asked mildly.

‘Who wants to know?’ he barked.

Atherton showed his brief. ‘Can I come in? I want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

The memory of the sad meal sapped Atherton’s patience. ‘Oh, don’t get funny with me,’ he said. ‘What do you think I want to talk about? The Arts budget?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Murray said. ‘Have you got a warrant?’

Atherton sighed inwardly. They all watched too many tv cop shows these days. ‘Should I need one?’ he asked pointedly.

Murray stared a moment and then backed off, turning himself with some delicacy on the stairs, and Atherton followed him up. At the top was another door, letting onto a long dark corridor running the width of the building, fragrant with the ghost of a thousand cabbages and sounding hollow underfoot. At the far end a rectangle of light was the doorway into the main room: large, lofty and lit with a range of old-fashioned metal-framed
windows all along one wall. An upstairs storeroom, he thought, and imagined it stacked with wooden crates of bananas from the Windward Isles, oranges from Cape Town, pineapples from the Gold Coast – ah, the romance of greengrocery! It had probably been a very good storeroom and was now, with the perverse fashion for housing humans in structures designed for inanimate objects, a comfortless living-room. It was bare-floored and sparsely furnished – some of the pieces giving the impression of having been made from those same crates – and one corner accommodated the kitchen, divided off by a breakfast bar. The air was heavy with the smell of joss-sticks not quite masking the smell of pot. Atherton was glad it was none of his business: he wouldn’t have wagered a dead cat on there not being little plastic bags of forbidden substances lying about.

Without a glance at Atherton, Murray walked straight across the room, swung himself up onto a bar-stool at the kitchen counter, picked up the newspaper lying there and began to read it.

‘Nice place,’ Atherton said. ‘Do you live here alone?’ Murray continued to ignore him, turning a page with ostentatious concentration. ‘I know you’re not reading that,’ Atherton said pleasantly, ‘it’s
The Sun.
You might as well talk to me and get it over with.’

Murray flung the paper down petulantly. ‘You people never leave me alone, just because I got into a bit of trouble once. What do you want, anyway? I’ve got to go to work in half an hour, so you’ll have to make it quick.’