Drawing the Line (28 page)

‘Looking after Griff’s van,’ I said briskly, not wanting to discuss hot-wiring. ‘When you do get it started, I couldn’t bum a lift, could I? To the Cathedral? Or, if it won’t, and they’ll let me use that Ka, I could drive you.’

Close looked at his watch. ‘You may have to leave it till tomorrow, your – miss. It’ll be all locked up now.’

‘With your evidence, officer, in the safe. It’s my busy day tomorrow, I’m afraid, Lina, starting with early Communion, so I’ll push off home now. It’s not all that far to walk.’

‘Someone’ll give you a lift if you ask,’ Close said, offhand.

I hauled myself up. I ought to say something, but I wasn’t sure what. Too much booze, maybe – I was coming over tearful again. And here we were, shaking hands, as if I really were a ladyship. If only he – anyone – could give me a good, solid hug and tell me everything would be all right.

Robin squeezed my hand gently, and bent to kiss my cheek. ‘I promise you the book’ll be safe until you care to collect it. Will someone make sure Lina gets home safely?’

‘Of course, padre.’ Close almost saluted. Hmm: I suppose that meant he had a military background.

A tiny voice in my head insisted that I was home. Home at Bossingham Hall. I opened my mouth to say
it. Then I thought of our cottage and Tim Bear, and shut it again. Robin flapped a hand and left, closing the door.

‘Let’s begin at the beginning,’ Freeman said, sitting in the chair Robin had vacated.

‘
Under Milk Wood
,’ I cut in, surprising myself as much as him. ‘Griff read it to me,’ I explained. ‘Griffith Tripp. Actor and Antique Dealer. The one I’d like to be my father but isn’t.’

‘Unlike the man who is your father, but isn’t likeable,’ Close said; if I was surprised before, I was amazed now. ‘How do you feel about not being Elham’s heir?’

So was this to be me making a statement or them making accusations? I braced myself, wishing Robin had stayed.

I tried shaking my head emphatically, but settled for gently. ‘I can’t be his heir. He can’t adopt me. I’m too old. Plus there are another thirty of us with equal claims. In any case, Griff’s the person anyone with any sense would want for a parent. I owe everything to him. He tried to put me off this hunt of mine. He always swore it would end in tears. That’s the beginning, you see: my hunt for my father. It led me to do all sorts of silly things. Hang on. It led all sorts of other people to do silly things. Nasty things, come to think of it.’ My head was beginning to hurt inside as well as out – was it the champagne or all those blows? ‘I suppose I couldn’t have an aspirin or two? And one of Lord Elham’s TV dinners to help them down?’

Freeman said, ‘I think all this can wait till the morning, sir, don’t you? Which is your bedroom, miss? We’ll get a WPC to bring you an sandwich or something.’

‘I want to go home,’ I said, wishing I didn’t sound so
damned plaintive.

‘But Lord Elham said you were in charge here –’

My head swum. ‘Will your people be here all night? Well then, I can’t see you needing me to stand guard.’ Yes, forget what I’d said earlier. No one needed me here. ‘My home’s back in Bredeham, as I’m sure you know. Just opposite Tony Baker’s house. Do I take it he won’t be there to keep an eye on me as he always promised Griff when he was going to be away?’

‘You take it right, miss,’ Close said grimly. ‘I fancy there’ll be a For Sale sign going up there soon.’

Dan Freeman drove the Ka for me, Close following in a police car.

‘You’d better talk to keep me awake,’ I said. ‘About Oxford, first and foremost. Why did you go to all that trouble for me at the Bodleian? Lie for me? Forge a letter? And then go and talk to the librarian afterwards? No, you didn’t know I’d seen you, did you? I thought you were a criminal.’

Laughing, he shook his head. ‘Yours wasn’t the only copy of the
Natura Rerum
frontispiece in circulation, of course. We’d been approached by two separate dealers who were afraid someone had damaged a priceless book. It’s not unknown. Libraries both here and in Scandinavia have been robbed – violated – by a man who cuts pages from volumes of maps. I’d been sent to discuss additional security for the Bodleian’s
Natura
Rerum
. I’d been working undercover before that, and hadn’t had time to change my appearance.’

‘I was a suspect, was I?’

‘Yes. By coincidence you turn up and start asking to see it. It’s a good job you didn’t try to smuggle in a razor
or we’d have had you under arrest before you could say metal detector.’

‘Quite right too. Even –’ I shut up. I’d only been going to say that even old reprobates like Titus drew the line at such wanton destruction. The less said about Titus the better, especially considering what his van had carried recently. What would he do with all the stuff? No, I didn’t want to know. ‘Where did Tony Baker fit in? And Dave Trent? And all that stuff they talked about the Kitty Gang?’

‘Actually, they were only lying a bit. The Kent police did have an Operation Kitty to deal with outbreaks of crime against vulnerable pensioners. Whether Kitty refers to felines or small amounts of cash, you’ll have to ask them, not me. Baker seems to have targeted you and Mr Tripp from the start. Police officers are trained to pick up clues from people’s behaviour, remember, and he knew you were excited about something. When your shop was robbed, he thought other people were on to whatever it was too.’

‘Was that enough – pure supposition?’

‘He knew various unsavoury people, Lina. Including an old lady with a penchant for teaspoons who was actually doing two things – casing the joint, as it were, and hoping that when you told Tony about her you’d say something along the lines of, “at least she didn’t get X”.’

‘X being whatever it was I’d got hold of.’

‘Quite. But that didn’t work, so under the pretext of advising some of your colleagues about security, he learned you’d got hold of what everyone wanted to be a valuable piece of paper but most suspected was a forgery. So Baker brought in a few reinforcements.’

‘The security guard at Harrogate? Marcus?’

‘Marcus is what is technically known as a prat. He really did come down to seek solace when he had a bust-up with that cousin of his. At least, that’s what he said in his statement. No, he wasn’t one of those walloping you, Lina. But he didn’t do Lord Elham a lot of good.’

‘Where did Dave Trent fit in?’

‘First of all as an entirely legitimate police officer. He suspected Tony was up to something, however, and taxed him with it. Tony offered to cut him in on the deal. He accepted. We are talking millions here, Lina.’

‘I just hope that curate guy’s straight,’ I said.

‘He stowed something in the Cathedral safe,’ he said. ‘We checked. And he did phone us. And he was concerned enough about you to come haring back. He even hit someone – yes, the guy who hurt your face. A good right hook for a clergyman.’

‘So, just for once, someone has been telling the truth. That’s something, I suppose.’ I said it coolly. But as before, I rather felt like doing a handspring, as if I’d found a particularly rare pearl. ‘So who was the guy he socked?’

‘His name’s Malcolm Hamilton. He was a security guard. He claims you hit him very hard last night.’

‘I thought your people were going to keep him in custody.’

‘We couldn’t tie him in with any crime. No reason to.’

‘You will tonight, won’t you?’

He must have heard the panic in my voice. ‘Would you like me to arrange a police guard? Or fix a hotel room?’

‘I’d rather go home.’ And I could phone Griff,
whatever time of night it was, and if I knew him he’d be back for lunch tomorrow. And if I didn’t hope for it too hard, he might even be home to cook my breakfast. ‘Yes, please. Take me home.’

‘All these young men fluttering round the place.’ Griff smiled happily, helping himself to a last sautéed potato. ‘I might have died and gone to heaven. That golden haired cherub’s just the sort I’d like to meet me at the Pearly Gate. And that crop-haired detective’s polished up quite nicely.’

‘On the limited evidence I have so far,’ I said, my face still sore enough for me to be cautious how I smiled, ‘they’re straight. In both senses. As are most of the other young flutterers.’

‘But fluttering they indubitably are. Around you, dear heart.’

‘And don’t put on that face, because Dan’s too old, and Robin’s as poor as a church mouse.’

‘What about the auctioneer? You don’t feel he might be just a smidgen –?’

‘Married. Two kids. In any case, once the book’s safely sold, you won’t see him again.’

‘It’s a good deal of responsibility that Lord Elham’s placed on your young shoulders.’

‘Whose shoulders would you place it on? All that rough treatment seems to have shaken up the few grey cells he’d got left.’

I topped up Griff’s glass. We’d agreed that he’d stay on the wagon every day till suppertime (he was working on a wonderful non-alcoholic tomato juice cocktail which even I liked) and then drink only the best – which was good, since Lord Elham had told me to help myself from his cellar. We were drinking a red Rioja a lot older than I was with one of Griff’s wonderful meals.

‘Whose idea was it to give his old college time to raise the money?’

‘His. Yes, honestly. He really seemed to regret not having made the best of his chances. Getting thrown out of Cambridge – that’s quite an achievement, isn’t it? But it was me who said –’

‘“It was I”, darling.’

‘–who said it should stay in this country if Cambridge can’t raise the dosh. Because I should like to see it again, and I won’t be able to if it goes abroad.’

‘You’ve no regrets about not accepting it, as he wanted? You’re sure?’

I speared a mushroom. ‘It wasn’t his to give, any more than it was mine to accept. There’d only have been a huge lawsuit if his trustees had thought I was doing anything for my own pe — peculiarly?’

‘Pecuniary advantage. I suppose so. And they’d have been totally churlish if they’d tried to stop him selling one of the nation’s treasures. Especially as he’s putting it into yet another trust for all you children. But it was terribly puritan of you to ask for that clause about no one touching it till they’d reached thirty years of age, my love. Quixotic, even.’

I pulled a face. ‘It’ll allow the lawyers time to trace a few more of us. And I don’t want a load of money, not yet. But it’ll be nice to think that if I do ever get any paper qualifications and want to go to Uni, that I won’t have a bloody great student loan, won’t it? And any of my half-brothers and sisters who’ve already got one will be able to pay it off. I mean, imagine having a job like Robin’s that pays chicken feed and having that – that albatross hanging round your neck.’

He nodded, saying, so terribly casually I knew he was fishing, ‘It was nice of him to go with you to the Cathedral with you.’

‘Who else could have gone? The authorities there knew him. And I wanted to see where they’d stashed it.’ That was one disappointment: it had been in an ordinary office-type safe, not some great vault filled with gilt church plate. And I wasn’t just being coy about Robin. It seemed to me anyone having a relationship with a man whose main relationship was with Someone Else might be taking on rather more than she could chew. And until all my teeth were fixed, and the wire had come out of my wretched sore jaws, I wasn’t reckoning on biting anything tough.

I cleared the table, so knackered I’d have loved to stack all the china, but knowing Griff’d turn to and do it if I left it. His bombing around the countryside had tired him more than I liked, and he’d been further drained by the knowledge that he’d not judged people as clearly as he liked.

He was still staring into the dregs of his glass when I came back. You could see how much effort it took not to top it up. It would have been so easy to indulge him but I hardened my heart.

‘You weren’t,’ he said, his usual firm delivery something horribly like a quaver, ‘thinking of taking up you father’s offer of an apartment in his wing? Now you’ve cleaned it all up, you deserve a reward.’

I pulled up a chair and sat beside him, holding both his hands and looking into his eyes. ‘I’ve got china to sell on commission it’ll take me years to restore. I’ve got all that wonderful furniture to learn about. What more
reward do I want?’

‘Some people might think it’s your duty to go and look after your father.’

‘Some people might think he deserves to be stuck in a grotty old folks’ home. Council run, for preference, the old snob. OK, I’ll keep an eye on him – after all, I shall need to deliver his profits from time to time. And I ought to get him to eat a bit better. But I don’t have to live with him to do that. And if I did, I still wouldn’t.’

‘And what about that man from Devon who was checking up on you? Didn’t he say he was your grandfather? Though I must say that Habgood’s not very close to Townend.’

‘According to him, my mother changed her surname to her stepfather’s.’

Griff stared at me. ‘You do look very alike. Will you have the DNA test he wants?’

‘I might. Just to put his mind at rest. His, not mine.’

‘But to turn down the chance of a family –’

‘I’ve already got a hell of a lot of family! One has,’ I said in Lord Elham’s drawl, ‘to draw the line somewhere! No, you’re all the family I need. The thing is, I ought to have said this ages ago, but I’ve never quite managed it, have I? You’re better than father or mother and a couple of grandparents all rolled into one.’ Finger on lips, I looked round guiltily before pouring an extra half-inch into both our glasses. ‘It’s you I love.’ There, I’d managed it. ‘Griff, my dearest of friends, I love you.’

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