‘Jean-Honoré Fragonard, like many artists before and after him, made a series of paintings of the four seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. If I tell you that at the last auction of a single Fragonard painting it went for over two million pounds, and the world record is over seventeen million pounds, it might start to explain my employer’s interest in this particular painting. It was on a television programme last Sunday, the Antiques Roadshow. This painting is in the possession of a couple in Brighton. What my boss needs is a better photograph of this.’

  Archie frowned. ‘A better photograph?’

  ‘Let me explain. My employer has dedicated his life to discovering, and returning to their rightful owners, great works of art that have been stolen – looted – over the centuries during times of turbulence – most recently during the Nazi era, both from Jewish families in Austria, Germany and Poland as well as during the German occupation of France. But of course it is a delicate task, and the key to any great piece of art is establishing its provenance.’ Kilgore flashed a smile, revealing nicotine-stained teeth, and Archie noticed the ochre staining around some of the man’s fingers.

  ‘And your employer has put up my bail of fifty thousand quid because he would like me to take a better photograph of this painting?’

  Kilgore scratched the back of his head evasively. ‘That’s pretty much it, yes. My employer knows the location of three of these paintings, Spring, Autumn and Winter. The one missing to make the series complete is Summer and he believes this might just be that painting.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  Kilgore smiled again. ‘Well, this is where you are going to earn your money. Our understanding is that you have a reputation as someone who knows how to enter a house, regardless of the alarm systems it may have, that is correct, sir?’

  Archie looked back at him, thinking hard for some moments before he responded. ‘I have my methods.’

  ‘You worked as an apprentice then a master locksmith for some years, I believe?’

  ‘Correct,’ Archie said reluctantly.

  ‘Then more recently, after one of your – shall we say politely – regular residences in the establishment you have just left, you enrolled as a mature student in a City and Guilds electrician course, focusing on burglar alarm systems.’

  Archie waited while his coffee and orange juice were served, then lowered his head and said, irritably, ‘You’ve done your research. Want me to give you a prize? Go ahead, choose from the middle shelf – a fluffy duck or a pink sheep or a goldfish in a bowl?’

  Kilgore smiled, but this time it was a less friendly one, his teeth looking more piranha than gentleman. More Devil. And his tone matched. ‘Mr Goff, my employer did not put up this generous sum of money for your release in order to play games. He will expect value for his money, so can we stop right now the idea this is in any way – excuse my language – a pissing contest?’

  Archie bristled. ‘Perhaps you could tell me your employer’s name?’

  ‘That is not something, for now, you need to know. If you are not happy with our terms, your chauffeur outside will return you to prison, my employer will withdraw his security and that will be the end of it. The choice is entirely yours. Are you in or out?’

  ‘Not much of a choice, is it?’ Archie said resentfully.

  ‘I would say, given your past form, it’s a better choice than you deserve, sir,’ Kilgore said, his tone becoming increasingly cold and hard.

  Archie weighed the options in his mind. He could just walk out of this room and head home. But the menace in Kilgore’s tone suggested that would not lead to a good outcome. And he wanted, very badly, to spend some time free with Isabella, before his inevitable prison sentence when he was convicted. He shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What exactly do I have to do?’

  Kilgore leaned forward, picked up the brown envelope and removed from it some more photographs, which he laid out on the table, glancing a wary eye to ensure the server wasn’t returning. ‘Please take a look at these, Mr Goff.’

  Archie picked up the first one. It was a photograph of a street he recognized immediately, lined on one side with similar-looking houses and bungalows. None of the properties were exactly grand, but Archie knew the street and knew they were all middle class and desirable.

  ‘Recognize where this is, Mr Goff?’

  He nodded. He’d burgled several of these houses earlier in his career before he’d made a speciality in the rich pickings of grander country houses. ‘Yeah, Patcham.’

  Kilgore looked pleased. ‘I understand from the research my employer has carried out that one of your first prison sentences was for breaking and entering in one of these houses, some thirty years ago?’

  Archie stiffened. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I can assure you, Mr Goff, my employer did not get where he is today through poor research. He chose you because he believes you are the best person for this task. Please take a look at the next photograph.’

  Archie lifted it up and it was a close-up of one of the houses. A Volvo estate and a Fiat 500 were parked in the driveway alongside a van. The corner property looked less well kept than most in this street.

  ‘How difficult would it be for you to gain access to this house, Mr Goff?’ Kilgore asked.

  ‘If your employer has done the kind of research you say he does, then I’m guessing he knows what security systems are installed, right?’

  ‘Oh yes. In the past three days extra security locks have been fitted to all doors and windows. A fake burglar alarm box has been installed. Additionally, a CCTV camera has been fitted.’

  ‘Urban properties aren’t my thing these days, Mr Kilgore. But I’m sure this one is possible.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that.’ Kilgore picked up the small leather bag on the table and handed it to Archie. ‘This contains a high-definition camera. I’m now going to instruct you on exactly the photographs my employer requires you to take of the Fragonard painting in this house. And anything else you can find that might tell us stuff of interest about the Kipling family, like financial documents – bank statements, things like that.’

  ‘And that’s all?’ Archie asked, almost incredulous. ‘You really just want me to take photographs? Not steal anything?’

  The piranha teeth appeared again between Kilgore’s thin lips. ‘For stage one, yes.’ Then he patted the pockets of his jacket, momentarily looking more anxious than confident Devil. ‘What do you say about stepping outside for a quick smoke before your breakfast arrives?’

  45

  Thursday, 24 October

  A note in Norman Potting’s diary told him that Stuart Piper had been scheduled to return from his second home in Barbados a few days ago.

  The DS had originally planned to pounce on him on his first day back, hitting him hopefully at a disadvantage when he would be jet-lagged and not thinking as sharply as he might otherwise. But a series of medical tests on Potting’s suspected throat cancer had intervened and this was now his first opportunity. He was driving the unmarked Ford Focus along a narrow country lane accompanied by Velvet Wilde.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked her.

  ‘Going? With what?’ she asked spikily, in her Belfast accent. Although they’d been buddied-up several times recently, she’d still not warmed to the ageing, totally non-politically correct detective.

  ‘Your partner’s pregnancy. The IVF?’

  ‘Just had another failure,’ she responded gloomily. ‘How did your medical tests go?’ She looked at the moving arrow on the satnav. ‘We’re close now,’ she added.

  ‘It’s looking good. As I said to the boss, it may be just a polyp which the quack says could be removed easily, but I need some more scans and stuff.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘That it might just be a polyp.’

  ‘Hopefully.’ He paused then said, ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but if you need a donor, I’d always be up for it. You know, just to help out a colleague.’

  For a moment she was floored, but not by his generosity. ‘Well, yep, thanks, Norman, but that won’t be necessary.’ She restrained herself from adding, not if you were the last man on earth.

  Then she said, ‘Coming up on our left!’

  They drove alongside a tall, imposing and clearly very old stone wall, topped with spiked defences, for several hundred yards, before they reached what looked like it must be the main entrance. A pair of closed wrought-iron gates set between pillars topped with stone balls, with a lodge just inside. A discreet sign, gold lettering on a black background, read BEWLAY PARK. Two CCTV cameras, perched like birds alongside the balls, looked down at them, and there was a phone panel inset on the right-hand pillar, with another camera.

  Potting lowered his window, reached out his arm and pressed the button with a bell symbol. Almost instantly, a stern voice with a heavy London accent said a curt, ‘Identify yourself.’

  ‘Police,’ Potting replied. ‘We would like to speak to Mr Piper.’

  ‘You have no appointment,’ came the blunt reply.

  ‘Correct but we would like a few minutes of Mr Piper’s time.’

  ‘For what purpose? Mr Piper doesn’t see visitors without an appointment.’

  ‘It is in connection with a murder enquiry we are conducting. If this isn’t a convenient moment for Mr Piper, then we can make an appointment for him to come in and talk to us at Sussex Police Headquarters in Lewes,’ Potting said. ‘If that doesn’t suit him we can return with a search warrant.’

  A moment’s silence, then, ‘Wait please.’

  Velvet Wilde looked at Potting and, her voice lowered, asked, ‘A search warrant? Would we get one for this?’

  ‘Probably not.’ He grinned, lowering his voice too. ‘But whoever that wanker is doesn’t know that.’

  ‘You’re terrible!’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘After you’ve been doing this job as long as I have, you’ll learn.’

  She thumped him playfully. ‘Always keen to share your wisdom, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m taking that as a compliment.’

  After a few minutes, during which the two detectives became increasingly convinced they’d been cut off, the gates suddenly began opening, and the same voice came back through the speaker. ‘Hold up your warrant cards.’

  Potting held his up to the panel’s camera. ‘Detective Sergeant Potting,’ he said. Then he took Wilde’s and showed that, too. ‘And Detective Constable Wilde, both from the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

  There was an abrupt, ‘Mr Piper will see you now for fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Very gracious of him,’ Potting responded, and without waiting for a reply, drove on through.

  They headed, for a good quarter of a mile, along a straight avenue lined on both sides with tall trees, until a huge, elegant, Tudor mansion appeared ahead. Beyond were acres of immaculately mown lawn, and a lake with what looked like Grecian statues on an island in the middle.

  Velvet Wilde murmured, ‘Where did it all go wrong for poor Mr Piper?’

  Potting nodded. ‘Yeah, my heart’s bleeding for him having to live in this shithole.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘I mean, why would anyone want to live here, with all the bills, when they could be in a nice council flat in Brighton, with everything paid for and drug dealers on the floor above and below?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  A moment later Potting’s tone changed abruptly as he nodded at the rear-view mirror. ‘Hello, we’ve got an escort.’

  Wilde glanced in her wing mirror and saw, just a short distance behind them, the menacing grille of a black Mercedes G Wagon. ‘Thoughtful of them to provide security for us,’ she said.

  Potting carried on, pulling up outside the portico, and switched off the engine. The Mercedes had stopped, effectively blocking the exit to the driveway, as if signalling they could forget thinking about making a run for it if they weren’t who they said they were.

  Turning to Wilde, he said, ‘If you lived with your partner in a pad like this, would you want to have all this security stuff?’

  ‘I think I would,’ she replied. ‘Because if I’d made the kind of money that could buy this place, I’m unlikely to have made it honestly. So I’d always be looking over my shoulder.’

  Potting smiled. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  46

  Thursday, 24 October

  The two detectives walked up the steps to the grand, white front door, noticing the pair of CCTV cameras on either side of it. Before they’d even reached the door it swung open and a surly man, the height and width of a double fridge, filled most of the space inside the frame.

  He was dressed all in black, with a mandarin-collared suit jacket, wet-look black hair and a coiled earpiece. It sometimes seemed to Norman Potting that there was a secret organization that cloned door heavies. All these types looked the same and dressed the same. And all had attended the same charm school.

  ‘Your ID?’ he asked in a way that particularly annoyed Potting.

  The detectives displayed their warrant cards and received just the faintest reluctant nod in response. Both of them noticed, standing a few yards behind him, another security guard who must be his identical twin, both of them wearing gold bracelets and rings.

  ‘Mr Piper will see you for fifteen minutes. Exactly and no more,’ he said.

  Potting moved confrontationally up to the guard until they were just inches apart and retorted, jabbing a finger at him, ‘Mr Piper will see us for however long we decide, not you or him. Understood?’

  The man spun on his booted heels without replying and led them along a corridor hung on both sides with, even to Norman Potting’s untrained eye, clearly old and fine paintings. Velvet Wilde trailed behind, looking enraptured at them, aware of the footsteps of the man’s twin close behind her. ‘This is incredible!’ she said when she caught up with Potting. Then for his ears only she added, ‘When I went to that art expert’s house, George Astone, last month, I thought I’d seen something amazing, but it’s got nothing on this. I’m not an expert but I do know a little bit about art, and there is serious stuff here.’

  Their escort stopped in front of a pair of oak-panelled double doors, rapped then swung round to face the detectives, giving Potting a particularly hostile look. ‘Enter please.’ He opened the doors.

  There were offices and there were offices, Potting thought. And the room he now entered eclipsed pretty much any he had ever seen. It was a simply vast gallery beneath a domed stuccoed ceiling. The walls were lined with large, magnificent ancestral-style portraits of men in military uniforms, and there was a railed minstrels’ gallery running all the way around the room, with further paintings above that.

  In the centre of the room was an enormous antique desk on a circular Persian rug. Potting recognized the man seated at it from having googled him earlier, and his uncanny resemblance to Clive Owen was even stronger in the flesh. A Dalmatian sat each side of the desk, both dogs so motionless Potting thought at first they must be statues, until getting closer he saw they were moving, their eyes watching him. The room smelled of old, polished wood and a faintly musky aroma that he guessed came from the two diffusers on the desk.

  Piper’s mouth extended into the hint of a smile, but the rest of his face did not move. ‘Officers,’ he said. ‘How may I be of assistance?’ His voice was sharp, bordering on acidic, and he made no attempt to stand up. His grey eyes held a toxic gaze.

  Both Potting and Wilde were disconcerted by the complete lack of movement of his facial muscles. And there was something else about his face, which neither of them could immediately put a finger on, that was equally disturbing. As Piper’s lips formed the words, it felt to Potting almost like he was looking at a hologram rather than an actual human being.

  ‘We appreciate you are a busy man,’ the DS said. ‘We would just like to ask you a few questions. I’m Detective Sergeant Potting and my colleague is Detective Constable Wilde from Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

  Piper raised an arm and indicated to the two tall-backed chairs in front of the desk. ‘Have a seat. Can I offer you tea or coffee? Or would that involve you in hours of paperwork afterwards, since you people are not permitted to accept gifts?’ It was impossible to tell whether he was being humorous or not.

  They shook their heads. ‘We are fine, thank you,’ Potting said as they sat down, noting the vast surface of the desk was almost completely bare, apart from the computer monitor and the diffusers. ‘Actually we don’t have to declare gifts of a value less than twenty-five pounds. Or is your coffee very special?’

  There was no reaction from Piper. Potting glanced at his tablet. ‘Does the name Charlie – Charles – Porteous mean anything to you, Mr Piper?’

  ‘May I ask why it should?’ he replied, again the only facial movement being his lips.

  ‘Mr Porteous was a highly respected art dealer,’ Potting said. ‘As you may perhaps remember from the news, he was murdered in October 2015.’

  ‘I don’t recall. I am usually abroad in October, through to the spring.’ He touched his face. ‘The damp English winter isn’t kind to my skin, but I’ve had to return on business.’

  ‘Did you ever have dealings with Mr Porteous?’ Wilde asked.

  Piper replied, impassively, ‘The art world is a large place, with a great many dealers. I personally only do business with a very small number of them, those who I trust implicitly.’

  ‘Would that mean that Charlie Porteous was a dealer you did not trust?’ Potting pressed.

  Piper stared back at him levelly. ‘Why should it?’

  Potting shrugged, a little thrown by the reply. ‘Did you ever have any social interaction with Mr Porteous?’

  ‘No.’

  Potting waited for Piper to say something more but he didn’t. ‘Do you remember anything about his murder? Did any associates of yours in the art world talk about it, or perhaps speculate who might have killed him and why?’

  ‘No.’