Luke Stanstead raised his arm. ‘Boss, intel on Goff is that he had a new love in his life, a lady called Isabella Reyzebal. What we know about her is that she is a lab technician with a hobby of belly dancing.’

  ‘Woo-hooo!’ exclaimed Potting. ‘If I had a lady like that in my life, I’d do anything to find fifty K to get out and be with her!’

  Smiling, and ignoring the reaction of his team, Grace replied, ‘You’re saying, Norman, if you were Goff, you’d sell your soul for that bail money?’

  Potting frowned. ‘Meaning what, chief?’

  ‘Meaning just that, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘Perhaps Goff, desperate to be with his girlfriend, agreed a deal with one of his network of dodgy pals in exchange for a favour. A pretty big favour.’

  Potting nodded. ‘I think I’m on your bus, chief.’

  ‘Hope you bought a ticket, Norman,’ Velvet Wilde said. ‘Or did you use your free Senior Citizen bus pass?’

  Everyone laughed, including Grace. ‘What I’m positing is that someone wanted Archie Goff out of jail to do a job for them.’ He noticed that Jack Alexander was no longer listening but absorbed in reading something on his screen.

  ‘Sir.’ Jon Exton raised a hand. ‘Are you thinking Goff might have been tortured because he failed to deliver whatever the person who stood his bail wanted?’

  ‘Exactly that, Jon, that is my primary hypothesis right now. We need to find out who really provided the fifty thousand pounds, and establish Goff’s movements from his release from Lewes Prison to the time of his death. I’d like you and Polly to see what you can establish from the prison’s exterior CCTV – did someone pick him up on his release, on the morning of 24 October, or did he take a bus or train back to Brighton that morning? If someone picked him up in a car, then you might be able to track its movements through the ANPR cameras and Brighton Police’s own network of CCTV cameras – we know they cover all the main routes in and out and through the city.’

  ‘Will do, boss,’ Exton said and looked at Sweeney, who nodded.

  Grace glanced at his notes. ‘Our next briefing will be at 6 p.m. Does anyone want to add anything?’

  Alexander raised his arm. ‘Something of interest has literally just come in, sir.’ He pointed at his laptop. ‘It’s from Andy Slark at the Collision Investigation Unit. It’s quite long so I’ll summarize. He’s managed to retrieve the data from the airbag sensors of the crashed Audi A6 that was discovered in Burgess Hill, on the morning of 16 October 2015. This is the vehicle that was linked to the murder of Charlie Porteous.’

  Grace felt a surge of excitement. ‘Yes, Jack.’

  Alexander continued. ‘Slark reports that the airbag sensors fitted to this vehicle – and many other of the more modern upmarket models – measure and record the weight and height of the driver and front-seat passenger with a fair degree of precision, in order to gauge the force of deployment in the event of a collision.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Slark says that the height and weight of both the driver and passenger were similar.’

  After a brief silence, Norman Potting quizzed, ‘How similar, Jack? Do you know how accurately the sensors measured? After all, we knew they were about the same height already.’

  ‘He said that within the sensor computer parameters, the driver was six foot one and the passenger six foot. Both weighing approximately one hundred and ten kilograms.’

  Potting turned to Velvet Wilde. ‘Stuart Piper’s house? His hired muscle, they fit that description, right?’

  ‘So do a lot of people, Norman,’ she replied.

  Potting raised a finger in the air. ‘Ah, but the muscle guys are identical twins.’

  ‘Piper’s bodyguards?’ Grace quizzed sharply.

  ‘Yes, chief,’ Potting said.

  ‘It wouldn’t necessarily rule them out, Norman. Identical twins aren’t always exactly the same height, and we’re talking just one inch difference here.’

  Potting conceded with a reluctant nod.

  Grace carried on. ‘First Piper pops up on the crashed Audi’s phone list. Which indicates that Porteous’s killer knew him. He appears to be a major player in the art world, and significantly, although he has no criminal record, he is on an Interpol watch list. You don’t make that list without good reason.’

  Potting raised his hand. ‘I have spoken over the weekend to a helpful American detective at Interpol, sir,’ he said. ‘To see if we can get any updates on what we already know, and there is something of possible significance. They believe Piper and a former US national who works for him, by the name of Robert Kilgore – now domiciled in the UK – have an inside track on a substantial number of high-value art works that were looted by the Nazis during the Second World War and ended up in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. They don’t have enough for an arrest warrant for either man at this stage, but they have a financial investigation team looking into recent payments that may be linked to them.’

  ‘Do we know the whereabouts of this Robert Kilgore?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I’m working on it – he owns a property, an apartment on the seafront in Kemp Town. He also has properties in Savannah, Georgia, and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.’

  Grace frowned at the latter. ‘A bolthole?’

  ‘Could well be, chief. But it could simply be for business purposes – several countries on the South American continent have historically provided a safe haven for looted art.’

  ‘As well as for looters themselves,’ Grace added. ‘Yes, it would make sense for someone like him to have some kind of a base there. Good work, Norman. If he’s here in England at the moment, we need to talk to him.’ Grace turned to Wilde and Potting. ‘Remind us, what impression did you get from Stuart Piper when you went to his house recently?’

  ‘Apart from the bum’s rush from him and his heavies, chief?’ Potting said, only partly in jest.

  ‘I think we got that he’s not the nicest or most helpful man,’ Wilde added. ‘He was very reticent about Porteous, claiming he’d never had dealings with him. Almost pretending he’d never heard of him. Norman and I discussed that afterwards and it seemed strange. Piper is clearly a very rich man, with vast amounts of period art in his house. Porteous was a major London art dealer. It struck us as unlikely that they wouldn’t have known each other.’

  ‘Perhaps we’d get more out of him by bringing him in for questioning,’ Grace said. ‘A proper cognitive witness interview out of the comfort zone of his home.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll make that easy, chief,’ Potting replied. ‘Just to give you a heads-up on him, he’s like a lion who reckons he’s king of the jungle.’

  ‘So we should be afraid of him, Norman?’ the Detective Superintendent quizzed. ‘Are you scared of him, is that what you are saying?’

  Potting mumbled, awkwardly, ‘Well, no, not exactly, no, chief.’

  Grace replied, ‘Norman, it’s a very dangerous world if police are ever afraid of a criminal, and that will never happen on my watch, OK? A lion might be king of the jungle. But throw him into the shark tank and he’s just another meal.’ He paused. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, chief.’

  ‘Good. After you and Velvet have spoken to Hegarty, I’d like you both to invite Stuart Piper to come in voluntarily for questioning. But in case he doesn’t want to do that willingly, suggest you may return with a search warrant. I’ve a feeling he’s the kind of guy who might not want his house searched.’

  Potting looked at Wilde and saw her complicit smile. ‘With pleasure, chief,’ he said.

  In her Belfast accent, DC Wilde said, ‘When I was a child, Sundays were a day of rest. The Lord’s day. Not yesterday, though.’

  ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways, Velvet,’ Grace retorted.

  ‘You’d like to think, wouldn’t you, sir, that even murderers turn up for Holy Communion?’ she said.

  With a wry smile, Grace said, ‘That’s the problem. Far too many of them do. It’s something my old mentor said, many years ago. Do you know what a murderer looks like? I’ll tell you. He looks like you and me.’

  72

  Monday, 4 November

  Daniel Hegarty, reacting to the terrified scream from his wife, made a desperate lunge for the doorway of his man-cave. Kilgore blocked it, startling Hegarty by pulling out a gun with a silencer attached as he did so. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d stay right there,’ he said icily, pointing the small black weapon straight at him.

  Hegarty hesitated.

  Moving the gun closer to the forger, Kilgore said, ‘My employer doesn’t like vermin, as you’ve already seen.’

  The two men stared at each other with hatred in their eyes.

  ‘My employer also doesn’t like being cheated, Mr Hegarty. And I can assure you no one will hear a gunshot in here.’

  Hegarty debated charging the old man but hesitated at the deadly serious expression on his face – he looked like he really would pull the trigger. An instant later, another man appeared behind Kilgore. A tall, muscular hunk, dressed in black, with a face that looked tough enough to break a sledgehammer.

  ‘Would you mind turning around please, Mr Hegarty, and putting your hands behind your back.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  Unfazed and still consummately polite, Kilgore said, ‘Mr Hegarty, we really do not want to have to hurt your wife, but if you don’t do what I ask you, I’m afraid we will.’

  As if on cue, Natalie screamed again in terror. ‘Daniel – Daniel!’

  Again, Hegarty stiffened, preparing to lunge. ‘You do not touch my wife,’ he yelled at him.

  ‘We’ll do whatever the hell we want, Mr Hegarty. If you do not cooperate we will hurt her real bad. Now turn around.’

  Very reluctantly and slowly, Hegarty obeyed. He heard footsteps, then rough, powerful hands seized his arms, forcing his hands together, palm to palm, then sharp wires cut into his wrists. He tried to move his hands, but they were bound together as if he had been handcuffed.

  A massive hand on his shoulder spun him around until he was face to face with the hulk in black, breathing in a reek of last night’s garlic only faintly masked by mint gum. ‘Follow me, yeah?’

  ‘Where’s my wife? What have you done to her, you bastards?’

  Behind the hulk, he now saw Kilgore standing in the middle of their living area, still with the gun in his hand. ‘Fuck you, Kilgore.’

  ‘There’s really no need for bad language, Mr Hegarty,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Not in your twisted fucking mind,’ Hegarty retorted.

  Before he could duck, Kilgore swung at him. The force of the gun striking his cheek sent him flying; dazed, he lost his footing and fell painfully on his back, on the floor.

  The henchman hauled him to his feet. His face was stinging.

  ‘Let’s have some manners and some decorum, Mr Hegarty,’ Kilgore said, his Southern drawl sounding totally out of place here. ‘And let’s all calm down before someone gets hurt bad.’

  ‘My wife,’ Hegarty said. ‘If you touch—’

  He stopped in mid-sentence as he saw Natalie, a gag tied across her mouth, her eyes a picture of terror, hands cable-tied in front of her, appear at the bottom of the stairs, with another big thug, also all in black. The two men could have been twins. They were twins, he realized. The right hand of the one with Natalie sported a ring with a massive, vulgar-looking ruby-coloured stone. His twin wore a similar ring, with an emerald.

  Elbowing the henchman beside him hard in the groin and hearing a satisfying grunt of pain, Hegarty hurled himself towards his wife. But before he’d got close, he received a massive punch in his stomach, which sent him staggering back, completely winded, and crashing into the pine dining table. He reeled off it, unsteadily, lost his balance and fell, painfully, back onto the floor.

  ‘Just calm down, Mr Hegarty, and take a seat,’ Kilgore said, pulling out one of the wooden chairs while still steadily holding the gun in his other hand.

  Before he could react, a powerful hand hauled Hegarty back up to his feet, propelled him towards the chair and pushed him down onto it. An instant later, a tie-cord was pulled around his midriff and secured behind the chairback. Then the thug similarly secured his legs. All the time Hegarty looked impotently and helplessly at Natalie, who stared pleadingly back at him.

  Kilgore stepped into centre stage. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ he asked.

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘My friends and I are not here on any laughing matter, Mr Hegarty.’ He nodded at the henchmen in turn. They were standing on either side of Natalie now. ‘I’d like you to take a look at your wife, Mr Hegarty. She’s a very attractive lady, wouldn’t you say?’

  Hegarty glared in silence, thinking hard, desperately, about what he could do.

  ‘Oh,’ Kilgore frowned. ‘You don’t agree.’

  ‘Touch her and I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all three of you.’

  Kilgore smiled. ‘Nice sentiment, but I don’t think any of us three are too worried right now about that. What I would say is that your wife has very elegant hands. Beautifully slender fingers. My mama would have called them pianist’s fingers. Or maybe more appropriately right now, surgeon’s fingers.’ He walked over to her, dragging another wooden chair behind him, and raised her cuffed hands in the air, as the two henchmen forced her down onto the chair. Then he dropped her arms, dug into his inside jacket pocket, and produced a small pair of bolt-cutters.

  Fear coiled in Hegarty’s stomach as he saw them.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Mr Hegarty. My employer and I originally thought that threatening to cut off some of your fingers would be a good way to get what we want from you, and you know exactly what that is. Then we thought about it some more and figured that would prevent you from painting further copies for us. Not smart, right? Not smart, because you are one stubborn son-of-a-bitch.’

  Increasingly terrified for Natalie about where this was going, Hegarty said, ‘Do what you want to me, but please don’t hurt my wife. She’s got nothing to do with you people.’

  Kilgore smiled. It was the kind of smile that reminded Hegarty of the jaws of a predatory fish frozen inside a block of ice. ‘Is that right? Well, the choice is yours, Mr Hegarty.’ He pocketed the gun and then the bolt-cutters, raised Natalie’s arms and harshly prised two of her fingers apart. ‘I’m a very fair man, Mr Hegarty. So I’m going to give you the choice of which two of your wife’s fingers I cut off first.’

  A terrible, plaintive sound came from his wife’s gagged mouth. It tore Hegarty’s heart to shreds. ‘No, please, cut mine off, not hers.’

  ‘Well, I’d sure like to, but as I explained, Mr Hegarty, that really would not be forward thinking.’

  ‘You seriously think I’m ever going to work for you bastards again?’

  Kilgore nodded then frowned, as if he was suddenly deep in thought. ‘Oh, I think you will, Mr Hegarty. Because when word gets around the art world about what you’ve done, no one else is going to touch you with a goddamn ten-foot barge pole.’

  ‘Please,’ Hegarty said. ‘Please tell me just what the hell I’m supposed to have done? You brought me photographs of a Fragonard painting of Summer and you asked me to make a copy of it, which I did. I just kept another copy for myself. What the hell is your problem?’

  ‘It’s not my problem, Mr Hegarty. It’s your problem.’ He pulled out the bolt-cutters again and held them in front of Natalie’s terrified face. ‘You thought you could cheat me, and more importantly my employer. I think at some time you’ve had the original painting in your possession. So, if you want your pretty little lady to retain all her fingers, it’s very simple. Give me the original that you’ve stolen, I’ll take it back to my employer, and we’ll all be friends again.’

  ‘You have this all wrong, and you’ve a very weird idea of friendship, Mr Kilgore.’

  The American lowered his head and looked directly at Hegarty. ‘Any more weird than your idea of honesty? Integrity? Do you know the definition of integrity, Mr Hegarty?’

  The forger stared back at him without replying for some moments. ‘And you think you know it, do you?’ he retorted acidly.

  ‘Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.’ Kilgore smiled. ‘True?’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘You have that Watteau which you claim is the original, and that one of your undetectable fakes is the version hanging in the Uffizi in Florence. You were given that original painting in good faith. No one was watching you make a fine copy. No one could challenge you when you duped the gallery into thinking you had given them back the original, as you’ve proudly boasted to me.’

  ‘I was just joking,’ Hegarty said, nervousness raising the pitch of his voice.

  A sharp noise startled them all. It came from behind them.

  Kilgore turned and looked in horror at the huge picture-window. Hegarty turned his head, along with the two henchmen. They saw a squeegee on a wooden pole rubbing up and down the glass.

  ‘The window cleaner,’ Hegarty explained, unnecessarily.

  ‘Get him the hell out of—’

  A moment later a reedy-thin man in his fifties, in dungarees, gave them a happy smile and a wave.

  ‘You have curtains? Blinds?’ Kilgore demanded, with panic in his voice now.

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Tell him to go get the hell out of here,’ Kilgore said.

  ‘You tell him yourself, I’m a bit tied up right now.’

  The American instinctively slipped his hand inside his jacket pocket and gripped his gun.

  ‘Shoot him, why don’t you?’ Hegarty suggested. Then, gathering confidence, he added, ‘He’s seen your face and your two gorillas. You’re going to have to shoot him. POW! POW!’

  ‘Shut it. Make one signal to him and you’re all dead, you both and him. Understand?’

  ‘Actually, Kilgore, I don’t understand. You’re not in the Wild West of the nineteenth century. You are in twenty-first-century England. Saltdean has one murder every ten years. Three in one day isn’t going to look good on your CV.’

  ‘I said shut it.’ Kilgore ushered the twins to stand behind the table and, by joining them, the three of them blocked the window cleaner’s view.