The Bronze Lady (Woodford Antiques Mystery Book 2) (14 page)

Chapter 34

Monday 25
th
January, 12 noon

‘Hello darling, how lovely to see you. Are you having an early lunch?’ Gemma greeted her eldest son with a hug and a kiss, which a few years ago he would have squirmed and complained about, but now he reciprocated with affection.

‘Yes, Paul has gone AWOL so I have come down here to fetch some lunch for me and Rebecca,’ said Daniel. ‘The warehouse is spotless, and I have left the others washing the vans.’

‘Paul? He walked past here about two hours ago. Hazel Wilkinson came in for a coffee and a hot cross bun earlier and said she saw him going into the police station. We wondered if it had anything to do with Simon Maxwell-Lewis and those stolen medals?’

‘Did he? It would be news to me if it is. I don’t think Rebecca knows either, I asked her earlier where he was and she said she didn’t know. How weird. Mind you, he has been behaving out of character for the last few weeks; keeps coming into work earlier than me!’

‘Can I settle up please Gemma?’ Tony Cookson interrupted the Mother-Son conversation by waving a ten pound note between them.

‘Yes, of course Tony. Five pounds exactly, thank you. Bye! So, my baby boy,’ she said, turning back to Daniel. ‘What would you like for your lunch? Do you know what Rebecca wants or do you need to phone her once you’ve seen the menu?’

‘She already knows what she wants, parsnip soup and an egg and cress roll please. She sent me down with this flask for the soup, so I’ll take it back up to her once I’ve finished my lunch. I’m going to take a lunch break here and have something hot, it’s freezing outside!’

Daniel went and stood over by the wood burning stove which was kept permanently lit at this time of year. He checked the stack of logs next to it was sufficient for the next twenty four hours, and then stood with his back to the stove, warming the backs of his legs.

While Gemma was busy in the kitchen she heard the bell ring to signal the arrival of more customers, and heard her son welcoming and settling them at one of the tables. When she came back out she was unpleasantly surprised to see one of the dealers from next door, Rowland Mitchell, sitting at the table, while her son pulled faces behind him. When you run a business with open access to the public you quickly learn to cope with those who are less-than-desirable, but having someone as pungent as Rowland Mitchell in an eating establishment is particularly challenging. Gemma was pleased that her son had the common sense to place Rowland in the far corner of the room, away from both the wood burner and the kitchen. All the same, she hoped he wouldn’t be staying long, and only wanted a quick drink or bite to eat.

She plastered on her welcoming smile ‘Hello Rowland. What I can get for you today?’

Chapter 35

Tuesday 26
th
January, 7.10am

The morning was crisp and cold and had the hallmarks of a beautiful bright sunny day to come. Cliff and Paul were the only human beings on the multi-user Trailway, running in time with each other, their strides perfectly matched, the noise of their running shoes crunching on the surface and their breath pumping out of their bodies and clouding before them the only sounds. Their outward appearance of unity belied the major fracture which had taken place in their friendship a few days before. They had met as usual for a run the following morning, but barely spoke more than two words to each other.

Cliff had finally managed to recover his previous fitness, although was disappointed to discover he could no longer drink as many pints of ale or glasses of whisky as he had previously been able AND run the distances he wanted to. All part of getting older, he thought to himself.

When the two men completed their eight mile circuit and reached Woodford Green they slowed down, swinging their arms and shaking their legs as they walked, before stopping at the benches positioned next to the pond. The water had a thin layer of ice covering most of the surface, but it still looked very inviting to Paul who, like Cliff, was sweating despite the low temperature of the winter’s morning. They started their stretching exercises in silence, each concentrating on those muscles which had felt a bit tight at the start of their session and revelling in those which stretched easily.

‘So what’s all this about you spending Monday morning in the police station?’ Cliff asked.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ muttered Paul. ‘Is nothing private in this town? How did you know?’

‘Why what’s happened now? You were spotted by a member of the Woodford Grapevine,’ Cliff laughed in a vain attempt to warm up the atmosphere between them. ‘Come on, what’s going on?’

‘Oh well, I might as tell you. But please don’t breathe a word to anyone else; this is all getting out of hand.’ Paul stood up and looked around, checking nobody was within earshot. ‘Tony wants me to put a brass figure in my auction and catalogue it as bronze.’

‘What? Oh come on Paul, you’ve made that up! And even if it were true, surely that isn’t something you would go to the police about. This isn’t anything to do with his daughter, Lizzi, is it?’ Paul moved towards his friend so that he and Cliff were standing almost toe to toe as the temperature of the argument started to rise, even if the morning air was still below freezing. Paul looked as though he was going to thump Cliff, who shivered and took a slow but big step away from his friend.

‘Lizzi? Yeah right, like I would involve the police in my auction business because of something which isn’t even happening in my personal life. Don’t you know me at all Cliff? Let me spell this out to you, even though you do not deserve any explanation since you didn’t even bother to ask my side of the story before jumping to the same conclusion as everybody else in this town.’ Paul carefully enunciated every word. ‘I did not and have not and will not try to get into the knickers of Lizzi Cookson, or whatever her married name is.’

‘Oh.’ Cliff stood still, trying to understand what was going on. ‘So this has nothing to do with Tony’s daughter?’ He paused, and then spoke as the thought entered his brain, regretting the words almost before they left his mouth. ‘Or is it about Lesley, his wife?’

Paul very slowly shook his head whilst maintaining a furious and dangerous look on his face, his dark eyebrows drawn together, and his brown eyes sending a piercing stare into Cliff’s.

‘Well then I don’t understand. Why have you and Tony fallen out? I can’t believe you would be so petty as to report him to the police for an honest mistake such as thinking brass was bronze. It is an easy mistake to make.’

‘Don’t you understand Cliff? I could lose my business over this. I could go to prison! Knowingly describing brass as bronze is a serious offence in my line of work, not a silly mistake anyone could make. That man knows what he is doing; believe me, and looking back over the years I can see he has been doing it two to three times a year for at least twelve years. He has been pretending to be my friend whilst using my business and the good trustworthy reputation my father built up, to sell his dodgy goods. I can’t bear that a so-called friend of mine would cold-heartedly and deliberately use me in this way, piggy-backing on all the hard work that me and my family have put into building and maintaining a successful auction business with a solid reputation, when all the time all he wanted to do was flog his dodgy brass figurines.’

Paul slumped down on the nearest bench and put his head in his hands. Cliff didn’t know what to do, so he stood awkwardly nearby. He could see that Paul was close to tears as he continued speaking. ‘And then when I challenged him about it, and tried to get him to stop, he started to spread all these vile rumours about me to anyone who would listen. Sadly there were enough people who wanted to hear something bad about me and then pass it on to others, for it to stick. I thought bullying stopped when we grew up and left the playground. It has been a hell of a shock to discover it carries on into adulthood. Trying to prove you are innocent of something is terribly difficult.’

Now that he had started talking Cliff could see Paul wasn’t going to stop, so he sat down on the bench next to him, wincing at the freezing touch of the cold slats of the bench beneath his thighs.

‘I talked to Christine about it at the weekend. The rumours had reached her ears and she came to give me a piece of her mind. She said my love life was upsetting the children because Lizzi is a teacher at their school. I haven’t even spoken to the woman other than a passing “Hello” in the street or in the pub! As far as I know nobody has even asked her if it is true, they are all walking on eggshells around her, as she and her husband try to resolve their differences, which, by the way, have NOTHING to do with me! It is so unfair that someone can start a rumour like that and everyone believes it.’

Cliff started to say something about Rebecca and Christine’s tiff, then switched to a comment about Paul’s track record with women, but then thought that kicking someone when they are down was an awful thing to do, so kept his views on their ex-wives’ disagreement and of Paul’s treatment of women to himself.

‘Luckily Christine believed me. Christine said that I couldn’t allow him to ruin my business, or my reputation, and that if I had proof that he knows what he is doing then I should go to the police, and if I didn’t then I should keep quiet and continue going about my daily life as normal, but cut him off from having access to my business. I tried to do that, Cliff, I really did, but these rumours have been getting out of hand. I can’t even go into the Woodford Tearooms or The Ship Inn without somebody giving me a piece of their mind. And then yesterday morning Ian, or PC McClure as he was contacting me in an official capacity, phoned me at the auction house and asked me to meet him and that DS you know down at Woodford police station.’

‘DS Patty Coxon? So what did PC McClure and DS Coxon want to see you about?’ asked Cliff, as memories of his own relatively recent encounter with the police officers tried to push itself to the forefront of his mind.

‘They had another man there, I didn’t catch his name, something like Ribena or something, I am sure I have seen him somewhere before though, can’t place him just at the moment. Anyway, they said they had evidence that I had been cataloguing brass items as bronze, and selling them at prices reflecting the buyer’s understanding that they were genuine bronze figures.’

‘Oh, phew, I thought you were going to say Lizzi or Jennifer had put in a complaint!’

Paul glared at his friend, but was finding the need to share with somebody overwhelming and carried on regardless of Cliff’s obvious lack of understanding of the seriousness of the situation. ‘Ian did most of the talking. It was like being in a room with Good Cop Ian, Bad Cop DS Coxon, and Not-Sure-Who-He-Is-But-He-Doesn’t-Talk Much other bloke. Ian was telling me that they have intelligence on a criminal gang who have been producing these bronzes for a few years now, based in the UK somewhere. They have been casting and painting them, which as we know isn’t illegal, and then selling them through legitimate channels like my auction house as bronze, which is illegal. Every now and then your DS would chip in with a comment inferring I was part of the gang. When I asked what was in it for me, she laughed and pointed out the fact I get twenty percent commission from both the vendor and the buyer adding up to forty percent. I pointed out to
her
that if I was part of it then I wouldn’t be charging anyone the vendor’s fee so would only be getting twenty percent from the buyer.’

Cliff grimaced. ‘That wasn’t too bright, Paul.’

‘No, it wasn’t. That just set her off on a whole string of questions about who were the vendors and where were they making the brass figures. How many different ways can you ask someone the same two questions? Mind you, Peter Isaac came in yesterday with a brass figure which was sold to his daughter Jennifer, who I have not been pestering either by the way, as a cold painted Vienna bronze at a flea market up in Shropshire. The police didn’t seem surprised when I told them about it, and Ribena, or whatever his name was, just nodded, so they must have more information on that. It was actually very good, the paintwork was very skilled, and the only way I could work it out was by weighing it. Fortunately Jennifer didn’t pay the full bronze price for it, but she paid a higher price than a brass one would be worth.’

‘Who do we know up there we could ask about it?’

‘Oh I don’t want to be any more involved than I have to be Cliff, this whole thing has caused me enough grief over the last few weeks. I am dreading going into work every day in case another piece of shit turns up in the warehouse for auction, I am fed up of the whole bloody thing affecting my business like this. I am obsessed with checking and re-checking the provenance and authenticity of everything, and I know it is driving my employees mad. Your wife has the patience of a saint, and if this keeps up I am worried that young Daniel will be moving to work for someone less erratic than I have been.’

‘But surely you always check the provenance and authenticity of everything which comes into your saleroom?’ Cliff didn’t mean to provoke his friend, but he couldn’t understand why Paul was getting so worked up about the situation.

‘Within reason, mate. But there are certain people who put stuff in and you know it will be quality. I look forward to seeing their names on the list; to recognising their van pulling up in the car park. At the moment I can’t feel that excitement because I don’t trust anyone. And I really don’t like being under suspicion by everybody in the town for something I haven’t done. It’s the repeated deliberate acts of destruction towards my reputation and that of my family business which makes this whole situation a personal betrayal by someone I was proud to count on as a friend of many years. The tittle-tattling and character assassinations are like a physical pain. I appreciate that saying about being stabbed in the back, although I am feeling it in my guts.’

Cliff could see his friend was getting even more worked up as he spoke, rather than finding any sort of relief from sharing his burden with his friend. In an attempt to try to diffuse the situation a little he said ‘But surely now you have been to the police you can rest easy? From what you have just been telling me they know who is behind it all.’

‘Yes but I don’t know who is behind it all, I am suspicious of everyone. I only know the person who is putting them in to my auction, and that is Tony Bloody Cookson!’