The Bronze Lady (Woodford Antiques Mystery Book 2) (21 page)

The tension in the room was palpable as everybody silently tried to calculate how many figures Tony would have been processing in order to earn that amount of money.

‘In this case Mark Kenyon’s parents were casting and painting brass figures in their garage. Mark was then bringing the figures to Tony at Drayton Flea Market for him to disperse throughout the country. We believe that Mark’s parents were the reason why Mark was attacked as he left his home. He was beaten up as a warning that they were drawing attention to the business Tony Cookson had been successfully running for more than thirty years, and that with all his money tied up in it so early in this latest project he could not afford for them to be careless and give the game away by being greedy.’

‘Tony Cookson did that!’ exclaimed Cliff. ‘I don’t believe you. Anyway Tony couldn’t have done it, because we went to Drayton Flea Market together that day. He wouldn’t have had time to drive to Shropshire and bash Mark before driving back to Woodford to collect me. I would have noticed something was wrong, surely?’ All eyes were on Cliff now, and he started to waiver a little as the attention focused his thoughts. ‘Well, he was a bit late, but he explained it had taken a while to defrost the van,’ and then more confidently ‘but there wasn’t a mark on him! I saw the state Mark was in, there was blood everywhere. Tony would have got some of it on himself if he had been wielding the baseball bat, surely?’

‘Oh Cliff. You know for a while we thought you were involved too, and someone was watching your movements that morning. We have CCTV footage of him on the motorway travelling in both directions, and at a service station on the way up. Would you have noticed a few blood splatters on his black coat at that time of the morning? Remember it was cold and dark. I bet you barely even looked him in the face, let alone scrutinised his clothes for cleanliness.’

Cliff was momentarily silenced by the revelation the police had been monitoring his movements, and he had to agree with Robin that Tony could have been wearing lipstick and eyeliner and Cliff probably wouldn’t have noticed when he climbed into the van. Now he thought about it, the interior light wasn’t working that morning for some reason. He scrabbled around for something else to defend his friend. ‘But he was the one who took Mark to hospital! Mark wouldn’t have let him do that if he was the one who had caused all that damage.’

‘Tony Cookson,’ said Robin firmly, ‘didn’t want Mark to know he was behind the attack because then he risked Mark and his parents pulling out completely. He wanted them to stop stealing from him but he wanted to keep them working for him because it was entirely due to their craftsmanship and skill that the quality of the brass figures could pass for bronze ones a hundred years older. We believe that Tony thought by giving Mark a fright it would be enough to stop the family from having their own business dealings in which he wasn’t included. After all it was Tony’s grandfather who had the original idea, and Tony who put the current operation together and invested millions of pounds into it, so he thought it was essential that he had his fingers in every aspect of the business and controlled the flow of the fakes onto the market, and of course that he received all of the money.’

Sarah interjected ‘Well, in a way he was right then. If he had been successfully selling these fakes for thirty years without detection, and it wasn’t until the Kenyons began to go off in their own direction that the bogus bronzes were sending off warning signals and leading you to him.’

‘Yes, Tony is certainly a clever man. However the Kenyons were skilful at what they did, and Tony would not have wanted to replace them. There are not many people he could trust who also had the qualities necessary to work on these projects. He never uses the same people again, but they all continue to receive a percentage of the profits from the overall business at the end of every three year project. They are very well paid for their loyalty.

‘Fortunately for us, Mark did know it was Tony because he saw his boots as he ran away, and then hours later there was Tony, pretending to be all care and concern about Mark’s welfare, still wearing the same boots. They have distinctive yellow laces. When the local policeman came to take Mark’s statement he named Tony without a moment’s hesitation and we were able to pull all of our resources together in order to begin to build a case against him. But he didn’t want Tony to know he knew, hence the confused stories which circulated. Some of you may have heard them? I did, both in here and in the tearooms next door.’

‘So if all Tony was doing was selling the figures on, how do you know he is the ring-leader, and not Mark?’ asked Cliff, still keen to find a reason not to believe the worst of a man he counted as a friend, even though he had witnessed him apparently trying to murder someone Cliff believed Tony thought of as a friend.

‘Well, I can’t tell you everything, but some things you possibly already know. We have the Kenyons’ statements to that effect, which are obviously not enough on their own. Also Tony had a silvering tank in his shed, along with a number of brass figures which Mr and Mrs Kenyon admit to casting. In addition, once the auctioneer we sent to prison seventeen years ago realised no one was coming to save him he provided us with all the evidence he possibly could that Tony Cookson was the brains behind the scam. He reckoned his percentage of the profits was not adequate payment for the loss of his liberty, but as far as we know Tony was never made aware of his betrayal. Sadly, the man died six months into his sentence. Unfortunately his evidence was inadmissible for a technical reason, but thanks to him we knew who was responsible. Now that Tony has committed these two separate violent acts against two people in the antiques trade, we have informants popping up all over the country with irrefutable evidence.’

‘But surely they are incriminating themselves?’ Sarah was still unconvinced about Robin’s account, although she sensed she was in the minority, and briefly wondered if anyone in the room was in regular contact with the police. Or maybe even involved in Tony Cookson’s scam?

Robin smiled. ‘Oh, we have ways of making people feel safe and confident they are doing the right thing. The antiques trade is tight; you don’t like it when people mess with the authenticity of your stock, and you certainly don’t like it when people bring violence to your door.’

Chapter 52

Friday 4
th
March, 6.30pm

Paul Black had been in hospital for over a week, and the enforced bed rest was bringing with it the chance for him to evaluate his life. Ever since Paul first became interested in the opposite sex he enjoyed flirting with women. When he was a teenager he was grateful to any girl who would sleep with him, and even when he and Christine were in a serious relationship he would still enjoy the occasional one-night stand. But once he proposed to her he no longer felt the need to bed every girl who crossed his path, and found it easy to be faithful. Until he got bored of life as a father and a husband.

His second wife Monica was the first woman he slept with since his engagement to Christine, and he would have happily stayed married to Christine and kept Monica as a mistress, but neither woman would settle for that. Paul enjoyed the thrill of the chase, the will-they-won’t-they anticipation. He regretted the end of his relationship with Christine, and particularly as over the years he saw his friends celebrate their tenth, fifteenth, even twentieth wedding anniversaries he felt sad that he had never achieved such milestones with anybody. But the truth was he wasn’t prepared to put the effort into nurturing and sustaining a relationship for more than a few weeks. His reputation exceeded the reality of his love life, but there was enough truth in it to keep it alive. Far from sleeping with a different woman every week, he probably only had three girlfriends a year, but he usually chose to overlap at least two if not all three, just to keep the excitement alive.

In the days he spent recovering in hospital he saw how important it was to his fellow patients for their families to come and visit them. He knew Christine only came to see him through a sense of duty so their children could come. He was grateful for Cliff and Jennifer’s regular visits through friendship. It also made him reflect on why he chose not to have someone special in his life. He had been affected by the unfairness of both Gemma and Sarah’s rebukes about his attitude towards women, because he didn’t see himself as they did, and also because the whole story about his treatment of Lizzi Cookson had been made up by Tony as a cover for his own poor behaviour. While he lay in hospital and observed the interactions between the men and women around him he realised why Gemma and Sarah, and probably many other people in Woodford, thought so little of him.

Jennifer was on his mind. Although he had viewed her as a potential conquest when they first met back in November, he was taken by surprise at her obvious dislike for him whenever they bumped into each other around the town. Sarah’s dressing down about his behaviour in particular had stung, mainly because of the injustice of it but also because he hadn’t realised how pathetic his behaviour had become. He had been deeply affected a few months before when he witnessed Lisa Bartlett’s distress on discovering that her boyfriend, Andrew Dover, had been two-timing her. Sarah compounded his understanding of the effect he was having on other people, and she made him face the facts that it wasn’t a game; he was hurting the women he played around with. And that was how he had been viewing his relationships, as playtime. He worked hard at Black’s Auctions, and enjoyed the interactions with the people he encountered there, but he liked to go home to the peace and quiet of an empty house, and his leisure time was his own. While in hospital he could see how shared histories provided foundations on which to build love, friendship and respect, which in turn provided the kind of supportive relationship he had never felt the desire to have with anyone.

As he looked around the ward and saw how the other patients were being treated by their visitors he felt sorry for himself that he had no one special, who loved him, who knew what his favourite treats were or which clothes he would have liked to have brought in for him. And in amongst the self-pity he faced the harsh reality that there was nobody in his life, other than his children, who he would be rushing to the hospital to see with carefully chosen presents or funny cards to cheer them up and aid their recovery, and be making plans with for their eventual return home.

Meanwhile Jennifer was seeing a different side to Paul. The Paul Black who was lying in the hospital bed didn’t bother putting on a show of flirting with her, or make any presumptions that that was how she wanted to be treated. He was grateful for her part in rescuing him, and genuinely pleased to see her every time she arrived. Jennifer enjoyed watching the banter between him and Cliff, and it was nice to see the lighter, more humorous side of Paul rather than over-powering pathetic seduction techniques she had been previously treated too.

The fear she had felt during those minutes before the police arrived, and the sense of exhilaration at being part of the team who saved a man’s life - the police were sure Tony Cookson would have killed Paul if he hadn’t been interrupted - seemed to have helped Jennifer to pull herself out of the depression she was diving into. Her attitude towards her work had changed, and rather than seeing herself as a drudge at the beck and call of undeserving clients, she approached every day as a fresh new start and enjoyed the anticipation of discovering the next puzzle to solve. Her energy levels lifted, she was finally sleeping soundly at night, and at the end of every day she felt a sense of achievement at everything she had done. In a few short days her life of never-ending unwelcome demands on her time was replaced with enthusiasm and opportunities.

Chapter 53

Monday 7
th
March, 6.30pm

Finally, home sweet home. Paul Black was extremely pleased to walk, well hop on his crutches, through his own front door.

By the time Paul was released from hospital he and Jennifer had spent many hours comfortably chatting via email, facebook, face-to-face during hospital visits, or on the telephone. It was Jennifer who brought him back to his home, which Rebecca and Daniel had ensured was cleaned up and repaired once the police gave them the go-ahead. At her insistence, Paul gave Jennifer a shopping list for food, and she filled the fridge and larder, as well as putting the central heating on and filling the log basket for the fire ready for his return.

On that first evening Jennifer stayed with Paul while he worked out what he could and couldn’t do. Fortunately he designed a relatively large downstairs cloakroom into the layout of his house when he had it built, so he at least had access to a toilet and a sink with room to manoeuvre his plastered leg.

The pair of them also prepared and cooked their first meal together. Paul’s contribution was to sit on the sofa, a lap tray in front him so he could peel and chop the ingredients, despite the injuries sustained to his fingers, hands and arms, and with his plastered leg propped up on the coffee table. Jennifer did everything else.

Tony had managed to break Paul’s leg but other than that everything else he had hit with the baseball bat was badly bruised but not broken, and after a week of bed rest and prescription drugs Paul was released from hospital feeling as though every part of his body was sore, but very happy to be alive.

By the end of the first evening he was feeling depressed and angry that someone who he thought was a friend could hurt him so badly that he couldn’t even cook his own dinner or go upstairs so he could have a shower and sleep in his own bed. The hospital had given him a waterproof cover for his leg, and Jackie Martin gave him her shower stool which she had found invaluable while she was also coping with broken bones and plaster casts, and he would have been very happy to be able to sit in his shower for ages, in relative comfort. A bath was out of the question, he wasn’t much of a bath person so he didn’t mind missing out on that, but at that stage of his recovery he couldn’t manage to climb the stairs using only one leg and his crutches while his hands and arms were so damaged.

Jennifer offered to stay in his spare bedroom upstairs, just in case he needed any assistance manoeuvring himself to and from the toilet during the night. There was no way Paul was going to ask for her help, but he certainly wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity of sleeping in the same house with her.