Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘Any chance of you fleshing that idea out, Detective Constable?’

‘Yes, Guv,’ she replied sharply. ‘To make sure that we wouldn’t recognize the painting if we came across it.’

‘Hmm!’ Holden leant back and shut her eyes briefly as she considered the idea.

Lawson, pleased that her suggestion hadn’t been dismissed out of hand, decided to follow up. ‘In fact, that seems to me to be the obvious solution.’

Holden’s eye opened – an owl wakened from its reverie, or more likely a hawk. ‘Obvious!’ she repeated with sarcastic emphasis. ‘Well, well, well, Constable. Aren’t you the clever clogs! The only problem is I don’t see Jack Smith as being the smartest cookie in the jar. When Fox and I interviewed him, if he was lying, he was very good at it.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t his idea,’ Lawson riposted. She was flying by the seat of her pants now, but there was no way she was going to bail out. ‘Maybe it was the idea of his killer.’

Holden was sitting forward now, and her eyes were looking at Lawson with an intensity that made the constable uneasy. Eventually, she smiled. ‘You’ll make a good detective, Jan. A very good detective.’

Lawson, uncertain of her ground, smiled nervously back. ‘Thank you, Guv.’

‘But just for the sake of argument, Lawson, let’s suppose Jack wasn’t lying. Let’s suppose there are two different paintings. What would you make of that?’

Lawson frowned. She was so set on her own idea that she found it hard to switch her thinking.

‘Well?’ The prompting was gentle, but insistent.

‘Two different paintings?’ Lawson spoke slowly, trying to buy some time while she thought of an answer. ‘To be honest, I would have to say if they are two different paintings, then’ – she struggled for the words – ‘then it’s one heck of a coincidence.’

‘Is it?’ came the reply. ‘Is it really?’

Lawson shivered as a childhood memory resurfaced. It was one of those defining moments of growing up, which mark the progress from innocence to knowledge. She had been watching her cat, Flossie, playing with a mouse in the garden. She was lying on the lawn, and Flossie was toying with the mouse as she sometimes toyed with a ball of wool. Occasionally she would touch it, allowing it to move this way or that, but never once taking its eyes off its helpless playmate. Jan remembered feeling intensely uneasy. The cat was playing, but this was no toy she was playing with, this was a live, harmless little mouse. She did not fully understand what she was seeing, and yet she felt anxious almost to the point of fear. She called Flossie by name, but the cat ignored her. The mouse ran a little way to the left, and Flossie pranced effortlessly into its path, so it stopped, mesmerized. It was a bright sunny day, but at that moment a cloud drifted over, and a shadow passed across that familiar patch of grass, and next door’s Jack Russell began to bark, and – all in an instant – Flossie the cat had pounced and snapped the mouse’s neck with a single bite.

‘What about Dominic Russell?’ Holden said, her face a picture of innocence. ‘He’s got lots of oil paintings.’

‘You think he did it?’

‘Hey! That’s a mighty big leap. But there’s a painting or paintings at the middle of this business. And Maria had, at the very least, a business relationship with him. So I’d say Dominic Russell seems an obvious place to start looking.’

Two unmarked cars pulled up outside D.R. Antiquities just after 2.00 p.m. that afternoon. Dominic Russell, who was preoccupied with labelling a couple of garden statuettes he had just acquired, looked up, his hopes briefly raised that this might herald a serious bit of business. God knows, he needed it. But when the passenger door of the leading car opened and DI Holden got out, he knew it was not to be.

‘You’re not, by any chance, here to buy a retirement gift for the Chief Superintendent, because if you are I am sure I can do a very good deal.’ He grinned as he said it. Mr Bonhomie himself.

‘This is a search warrant.’ Holden held up a piece of paper in front of his face. ‘My colleagues and I would appreciate it if we could have your cooperation.’

‘A search warrant?’ Dominic Russell spoke with apparently genuine surprise. ‘What on earth are you looking for?’

‘I am not required to answer that question, Mr Russell,’ Holden replied. ‘But we would like to see every single painting you have on the premises.’

‘Well, you’d better be bloody careful! If you damage them—’

‘We won’t damage them,’ Holden assured him.

The big policeman, whom Dominic remembered from their previous visit though he couldn’t for the life of him recall his name, stepped forward in his role of polite enforcer. ‘All the more reason to cooperate with us, sir.’

For an hour they searched, Holden and Fox in one team, watched by Dominic, and Lawson and Wilson in the other, escorted by Sarah Russell, who had again been working in the office. It didn’t take long to see that the painting they sought was not on display, but Holden had hardly expected that it would. One of the two smaller buildings turned out to be an area for storage and repair, but carefu

l examination of it proved fruitless. The third building stored mostly furniture, and despite Lawson and Wilson assiduously opening every door and drawer, no paintings were found.

‘So that’s that, is it?’ Dominic said. ‘Such as shame we couldn’t help you find whatever it is you are looking for.’

The mocking tone of his voice did nothing to improve Holden’s mood. She hadn’t liked him on first acquaintance, and she liked him even less now, the patronizing self-satisfied git. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet. They were back in the office, and she looked around again, scanning the room for inspiration. ‘You have catalogues of your paintings, do you?’

‘Nothing current.’