Quick on the Draw Read online

  ‘Sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘I’ll say. They’re making a packet.’

  ‘Your friends sound like a busy lot.’

  ‘They are.’ Sandro’s face drooped. ‘I just can’t believe that these thefts have anything to do with any of them.’

  ‘If you absolutely had to name one of them in particular, or think one of them is more capable of this theft than the others, who would it be?’

  ‘If I absolutely had to …’ He paused, then shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’ve known them most of my life. I’d have said they were all absolutely trustworthy.’

  ‘But if it was life or death …’

  ‘I suppose I’d …’ He dragged the words out reluctantly. ‘Tony Hartley Haywood. Suzy’s brother. But only because there was some trouble at his tennis club, years ago … He was accused of stealing somebody’s engagement ring. It turned up again, but people said that was only because he got scared he’d be found out, so he dropped it in the girl’s sports bag where it was bound to be found. Tony can be a bit of a …’ He failed to complete the sentence, but I got the drift anyway.

  ‘Hmm … What about the cleaners in Venice, who came in the day after your dinner party? Or one of the catering staff?’

  ‘I don’t think it could have been the caterers because we were all still around long after they’d packed up and gone. As for the cleaners, I imagine they’d have been too scared to steal anything, with my uncle’s governante – housekeeper – right there, keeping a beady eye on them. Besides, I already checked, and all the staff who came that morning have been with the company for years. My family has used them many, many times before. And why steal something on that particular day, with all of us still hanging around, when they’ve had so many other opportunities?’

  ‘So you think it boils down to being one of your guests?’

  Sandro nodded, looking absolutely miserable. ‘It almost has to be.’

  ‘Does the fact that you discovered the two artefacts – the ring and the painting – in London point to anyone in particular?’

  ‘Not necessarily. All my friends live or work both here and in Italy. As I said, I went to school with the guys, and the girls are the daughters of my parents’ friends – as well as being part of my crowd, I mean.’ He ran his hands through his beautiful hair. ‘It’s an absolute nightmare.’

  ‘I can see it’s not an ideal situation. Have you told any of them about any of this?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, but Katy kind of hinted at something she’d noticed while they were all in Venice. The worst thing of all is that Suzy was one of the guests. Suppose it’s her? What on earth would I do?’

  ‘Dump her?’

  ‘But I love her,’ he said.

  Ah, the artlessness of youth, I thought. I patted his hand in Great-Aunty mode. ‘I’m sure we can sort this out, one way or another. Meanwhile, right now I’ve got to get to another appointment, so I’ll have to leave very soon.’

  ‘Will you help me? You knowing my parents and all?’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll try. But I really can’t see how much assistance I can offer. So I warn you, I absolutely can’t promise anything.’

  ‘Thank you, cara Alessandra!’ He beamed at me, as though all his troubles were over. I wished I felt as much confidence.

  TWO

  ‘Remind me why we came here,’ I said.

  ‘It’s supposed to be the in-est place in town,’ said my companion, though he sounded doubtful, as if he might have made a mistake and come to the wrong pub. He looked away from me as he said it.

  I squirmed a bit on the tiny barstool I was sitting on, set up next to a high Frisbee-sized table on a stick which barely had room to hold our glasses and a small bowl of mixed nuts.

  ‘That would be as in the most “in”, would it?’ I gave the phrase an ironic little twist, and hoped my lips didn’t have one too.

  The guy wasn’t digging the sarcasm. He stared round the room, attention on almost anyone else but me. Just as well, or he’d have picked up my mood by now. Been aware of the atmosphere on my side of the table. The place was heaving with posers and pseuds, City-types for the most part. Hedge-fund managers, financial consultants, bankers, eyeing up the competition, scoping out the potential, white linen or blue-striped cotton shirts unbuttoned at the neck with silk ties trailing from pockets just to assure their panting public that they had one. Diamond studs in earlobes, faces gleaming with moisturiser. More Louis Vuitton wallets than you could shake a stick at. One or two were even wearing funky designer sunglasses. Oh, please. Sunnies, at this time of night, in this dimly lit bar? But perhaps I was being uncharitable and they all had chronic eye problems. None of them seemed to be in the slightest bit worried about the results of the recent referendum and the dire financial prognostications issuing daily from government sources.

  Boredom had set in maybe twenty minutes ago. Or was it weeks? Possibly longer. I was losing the will to live. But I was hanging on in there because my companion – Darren Carver, an affected and fairly dislikeable wannabe who was hoping to make a name for himself as ‘artistic’, without actually putting in the man-hours in learning how to draw, paint, sculpt or blow bubbles – was the editor of a trendy new art magazine, thanks to the modest pile of money he’d recently inherited from a devoted aunt/godmother/cousin. I wasn’t sure which. He had specifically invited me up to London to discuss an article – or with luck, a series of them – on painting in Venice in general, and contemporary art in particular.

  Why me? Maybe because I’d recently been a guest contributor on I Know What I Like, a blog written by a friend which had become something of a must-read for the arterati. Or maybe because he thought that since I wasn’t based in London, he’d get me cheaper. If so, he was in for a nasty shock.

  I’m not a sucker. Maybe once, but not any more. I’d joined the police fast-track programme from a vague desire to do good, fallen for and married Jack Martin, a fellow copper. I was blissfully in love, I’d reached the rank of detective inspector at an early age and, to crown it all, I discovered I was pregnant. I also discovered Jack ‘Love Rat’ Martin had been having an affair with a manicurist from the local beauty parlour more or less from the day of our wedding. In fact, thinking back, it had probably begun on the day of our wedding. I would have forgiven him, but when I told him I was expecting our child, he said he wasn’t ready for fatherhood, wasn’t sure he ever would be, and wasn’t even ready to be a husband. And then he took off for the beauty parlour lady – with whom he’d subsequently had several children. The possibility of running into him at the station was so unbearable that I felt I had no choice but to resign from the force. Needing something to take my mind off the disaster my life had turned into, and given my fine arts degree, I started compiling a portfolio of famous paintings and drawings of babies and children and writing text to place alongside each one. It was intended for my coming child. And then came an even worse disaster. A miscarriage! I didn’t think I’d ever get over it. But to my surprise, Baby, Baby was picked up by a small publisher (who’d heard of it from a friend of a friend) in time for the Christmas market. It proved a big hit, and led me into a whole new life. Nonetheless, I’d lost any faith I might once have had in the human race, and had grown a skin of cynicism and mistrust to hide my pain. So I didn’t let people push me around.

  I wondered if anyone glancing at us thought we were an item. God, I hoped not. I tried to picture it. Darren and me? Impossible. In fact, I couldn’t see him as an item with anyone, except possibly the face he saw in his bathroom mirror. At least he didn’t have a soul patch and a shaved head, like several of the other loud, laughing nerds in the room. Not that that made him any more congenial than them. Or was I growing more and more like a maiden aunt from the provinces, unwilling to accept that life ebbed and flowed, and soul patches were just part of the trend? A television set fixed high up on a wall was an irritating distraction. It was almost impossible to avoid looking at the flicker of it, though we were f
ar enough away from it for me not to be sure what sport was being played.

  My rugby-playing friend, Sam Willoughby, ambled into my thoughts. I tried to picture Sam with a soul patch … what an excruciating image. Sam was a lot of wonderful things, but trendy wasn’t one of them. Which is how I liked it. He was currently visiting his brother Harry and family in New Zealand, ‘Where men are men and sheep are scared, ha ha!’ as my father always chortled whenever the country came up in conversation, erroneously supposing himself not only witty but original.

  The bar was jammed almost solid. As far as I could see, I looked to be the only woman in there, unless you counted the two sitting at a small table up against the window, holding hands and gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. Silk shirts, good trousers, short wedge-cut hair … Actually, hang on, now I looked closer, they were men too.

  ‘Ludovico de Luigi,’ Darren said, still not meeting my gaze. ‘Giorgione. Guardi. Bellini. Botticelli. My God, Alex, Venice is crawling with them. Awesome. And there are some totally amazing galleries there. I’d like you to give me an overview of those, too.’

  ‘Obviously you’re talking more than one article, in that case,’ I said, hoping I sounded efficient and in control. ‘That is if you want to cover any of them adequately, let alone discuss individual artists.’

  ‘Which of course I do. And you’re just the woman to do it.’ He didn’t sound at all convinced.

  I took out my diary and flipped through it. ‘Give me a rough estimate of when you’d want the first one. I’ve no idea what your lead time is, of course …’ Not too long, I hoped, and I’d certainly be asking for most of my money upfront. I knew from sad experience that art magazines were as ephemeral as smoke.

  ‘Shall we say two months?’

  Oh, man! Not for two months, and that was only for the first one? Darren Douchebag was obviously either a gifted optimist, or less loaded than I’d realized.

  ‘Let’s not,’ I said. ‘And how many pieces do you want? To even begin to do justice to the subject, I’d need at least six.’

  ‘Six?’ He looked at me properly for the first time. ‘Six? That’s a big ask. And we’re a quarterly.’ An apprehensive light gleamed briefly at the back of his eyes, which I now saw were a green-brown colour, like the north-facing side of a tree trunk. Sweat pinpricked his upper lip. ‘That’s way into next year.’

  ‘Four pieces, then. I do have a reputation to consider—’

  ‘Which is why we contacted you in the first place.’ His lips parted in what I think was intended as a friendly smile. I really wished they hadn’t.

  ‘And I’d hate to deliver work which was substandard in any way,’ I went on, steely as a crowbar, using my professionally brisk voice. It usually worked with dithering editors.

  Come on, come on, I muttered internally, give me the damn contract so I can leave and go home. I wondered how long his funds were going to last. Perhaps he did too, which would explain the sweat. The diamond stud in his ear winked apprehensively.

  He ostentatiously stuck out his arm, bent it at the elbow and brought his wrist close to his face. ‘Hey, will you look at the time,’ he said. ‘Gotta bounce in ten.’

  Gotta bounce … I reminded myself that he had a West Coast wife and three half-West Coast children. And that I would probably manage to pressure him into giving me a commission within the next seven minutes. To understand all is to forgive all.

  In the end, it took another fifteen minutes before I was able to slide my butt off my uncomfortable perch and head for the door. But at least I had a secure, if grudging, verbal contract for three articles, with the possibility of more if there were no unexpected glitches. Such as him running out of cash (not that he put it like that). This meant that I was going to have to spend a few days in Venice at the very least. So I’d better start looking for other assignments to run concurrently with his, since paying my own expenses meant I would have to kill two birds, if not three, to make it worthwhile. Nonetheless, all in all, a successful evening – or it would have been if, as I was leaving, I hadn’t caught sight of myself in one of the huge gilt mirrors which lined the bar. I was definitely putting on weight. And my hair needed pruning. Living down in the sticks, it was really easy to get careless about such things.

  I’d come up to London by train, since it was much easier than driving up, throbbing my way through the traffic and then trying to find parking. Now, seated facing the engine, as London drifted away from me, I was chuffed enough to be able to tune out the shrieking kid at the end of the carriage. Not so the irritating woman across the aisle, who seemed to think the train was her office and was conducting her business affairs in a loud voice on her phone, oblivious to the glares that I and my fellow passengers were shooting at her.

  Arriving back at my station – Longbury – I could smell the sea and the heady promise of summer in the air: wallflowers and chicken tikka. Up on the hill top, on the far side of town, perched the university buildings, lit up like a cruise ship anchored off shore. Someone somewhere nearby was eating or had just eaten fish and chips from the Golden Mackerel, leaving an atmospheric trail of hot fat and vinegar. The pubs were full of a more genuine crowd of customer than those in the West End, give or take the ones in leather jeggings or ripped jeans teamed with white T-shirts. A couple of guys were wearing dinner jackets and laughing with two girls in sequinned cocktail frocks. Big night at the Students’ Union, I guessed.

  I had the weekend ahead of me. Remembering my reflection in the mirrors of the London pub, I promised myself that tomorrow I would go for a long, calorie-reducing run along the cliffs. Meanwhile, I’d throw away what was left of that lemon cake I’d bought in a misguided moment. Make a big salad and leave the gin bottle firmly in the door of the fridge. Drink only water from now on. I imagined myself svelte and lithe, an almost impossible task. Not that I was anywhere near obese.

  Coming up the stairs to my flat, I could hear the phone ringing. I managed to catch it before it went to voicemail.

  ‘Dinner. Next Tuesday. Flat’s free,’ said the voice in my ear.

  ‘Thank you, Herry,’ I said. But the receiver had already been replaced. My brother Hereward is notorious for the brevity of his communications – verbal, that is. There were no written ones. As I decoded the message, I took it to mean that I was bidden to dine with him next Tuesday and was welcome to stay the night in the basement which he and his wife, Lena, had converted into a flat. Tastefully, of course. The two of them were nothing if not tasteful. He earned a huge income doing something I’d never quite understood, while she had been a Swedish furniture designer before her marriage and subsequent move to London.

  Briefly I considered calling him back, asking if I could bring a friend, but the question would throw them both into a panic. Besides, it would be too cruel to upset the numbers in what I knew would be a carefully calibrated table arrangement. In any case, who would I bring, with my close friend, Sam, off in the Antipodes? It wasn’t that I didn’t know anyone else who was male, just that I didn’t know them intimately enough to subject them to the cut-glass intricacies of the social life Hereward and Lena lived in Chelsea.

  I poured myself a healthy glass of water, took a swallow and threw the rest into the sink. Enough already with the health kick! I opened the door of the fridge and hoicked out the gin bottle along with the vermouth next to it. I never add ice to my martinis, for fear of diluting them; instead, I keep the ingredients in the fridge, on a high state of alert for when occasion called. I considered this an occasion.

  There were three messages on the phone. Glass in hand, I listened to them. One was from Major Norman Horrocks, saying that if I were to walk down to his place, he had something interesting to show me. The next was a recorded voice saying something about PPI, which I instantly deleted. The third was some query from my publisher, which I’d deal with in the morning.

  I sucked up more of my ice-cold martini. Oh, jeez, it was good. I tried to kid myself it was medicinal, but in fact it was cele
bratory. With a nice commission in my pocket, all I had to do now was figure out how to cover the cost of flying across to Venice and putting myself up there for three or four days, because if one thing had been made clear during my conversation with Darren Carver, it was that he had no intention of footing the bill – though, after some firm pressure on my part, he had rather sulkily conceded that he might be able to make a small contribution towards my expenses. All in all, an extremely satisfactory state of affairs.

  Venice … I replenished my glass, took some relevant books off my shelves and curled up on the sofa with them. I hadn’t been to Venice for several years. The last time was with the Love Rat, my former husband. How happy I’d been back then. How innocent. How ignorant.

  THREE

  Mid-morning the following day, I walked along the lower road out of town, heading towards the Major’s house. I cut through the woods and took the path which would end up in Honeypot Lane, leaving me just a few yards down from the only houses in the narrow road: a semi-detached pair of brick-and-flint cottages which stood like conjoined twins halfway along. Rattray and Metcalfe. In the fields on the opposite side of the lane, tractors were busy muck-spreading up and down the plough. Birds chirped in the hedges. Cows moved languidly, their jaws working as though their mouths were full of Wrigley’s spearmint gum.

  As I walked up the flagged path towards the Major’s kitchen door, I couldn’t help noticing that the lopsided bush which stood to one side had been altered in some way. Last time I was here it had been just an untidy growth. Obviously he’d been at it with his shears since then. Knowing his ill-advised penchant for topiary, I wondered what member of the animal kingdom it was meant to represent. I was guessing some kind of small mammal which had been severely damaged either during its emergence from the womb or by being caught in a trap. A three-legged guinea pig, maybe. Or possibly a tail-less weasel.