Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Don’t move, you bastard! Put that down!’ Even in his black pyjamas Connabear looked wide awake. He was wearing both his hearing aids and pointing both barrels of his shotgun at me. And he looked furious. As for his contradictory demands I chose not moving as the safer option. ‘It’s you,’ he said next. The disappointment in his croaky voice was obvious but he seemed to shrug it off quickly. ‘Put that painting back on the wall.’

‘Okay, just don’t do anything rash with that gun.’ I fumbled some more with the hook and at last caught the nail.

‘Now put your hands up and get your filthy boots off my chair.’

I stepped down with my hands up. Something in the way he held the gun convinced me that it was loaded and that old Rufus had experience in handling it.

He nodded his head up at the daub. ‘You weren’t really going to steal that, were you? My wife painted that.’

Now I noticed the initials in the bottom-right corner, P.C. ‘Well, ehm, it’s rather nice,’ I lied. ‘I’m a painter myself, so I have an eye for these things.’

‘Oh yeah? No wonder you have to resort to robbing people if you think that’s a nice painting. It’s a horrible mess, my wife had no talent for art whatsoever. I’m keeping it for my daughter’s sake who is similarly afflicted, though I always make sure I’m sitting with my back to it. Right, move around to the window, but slowly, and keep your hands up. You scum, you thought I was just a doddery old codger. You thought you could turn the place over and probably just clout me one if I woke up. .’

‘No, of course not,’ I protested.

‘I thought you were a nice young man yesterday. Really did. Nicely spoken, too. And to think I even let you in the house. You make one false move and I’ll happily shoot you.’

‘You can’t mean that,’ I suggested, lowering my hands.

He tightened his grip on the weapon. ‘Oh yeah? You just try it.’

‘Make an awful mess,’ I suggested.

‘ I look forward to it ,’ he said and looked like he meant it.

‘The last guy who shot a burglar with a shotgun, you know, that farmer, he spent years in prison.’

‘Ah, but he shot him from behind, I’ll shoot you from the front,’ he said conversationally. ‘Actually he’s out now. And anyway, didn’t they change the law on defending your property? I think we’re allowed to shoot you now.’

My arms were already tired from manoeuvring the heavily framed daub about and keeping them in the air was surprisingly hard work. How to get out of this one? As usual, I’d have to talk myself out of it. The really disconcerting thing was that he seemed so much more awake than me, but then I’d heard it said that old people needed less sleep. I felt suddenly exhausted and thought I could easily nod off with my hands in the air.

He moved behind the desk and sat in the chair, then propelled himself forward with his slippered feet until he could rest the gun barrels on the desk and keep the weapon trained on me with one hand. Then he reached for the phone.

‘No, please, don’t call the police.’ Of all the things that might happen, getting arrested had never figured in any scenarios I had imagined. Unmoved, he dialled 999.

Last chance now. ‘I am being blackmailed into breaking into your house, it’s not what I normally do, there’s a boy’s life at stake, in fact I’m a private eye and a client’s son has been kidnapped and breaking in here and stealing the Penny Black is part of the ransom, you have to believe me.’ I rattled it all off quickly before he’d get through to the police.

He paused and gave me a contemptuous look. ‘That’s the most pathetic cock and bull story I have heard for a long time.’

‘Honestly. I wish there was a less fantastical explanation but that’s the situation I’m in.’

He shook his head and waggled the receiver at me. ‘Did you cut the phone line?’

‘No, didn’t think of that. Should’ve, I suppose. Why, is it not working?’

‘No, must be the weather. It happens. Joys of country living.’ He replaced the receiver and gripped the gun with both hands again. ‘So you’re trying to tell me someone went to the trouble of kidnapping a boy — which carries a mandatory life sentence if I’m not mistaken — to make you steal my Penny Black?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s a very unlikely story, Mr Burglar.’

‘Why? Drugs, money, art, diamonds, rare stamps, it’s all currency in criminal circles.’

He nodded. ‘True. Do you have any idea how much money we are talking about here?’

‘Not really.’

‘About two-fifty.’

‘Quarter of a million?’ I whistled.

‘No, you saphead. Pounds. Two hundred and fifty pounds will buy you a fair example.’

‘There must be some mistake. It must be worth more than that. I thought it being the first ever stamp and. .’ I faltered, faced with the pitiful look he gave me.

‘Do you know how many of them were issued?’ he asked, frowning disapprovingly at my ignorance. ‘More than sixty million of them. Even an unused one in mint condition wouldn’t exactly break the bank.’

‘So they got it completely wrong. .’ A thin silver lining stole into my mind, looking for a cloud.

‘It’s a common misconception,’ he explained happily. ‘Now if we were talking about, let’s say, the Blue Mauritius, then a million dollars would be a good starting price, and the Treskilling Yellow sold for over a couple of million a while back.’

‘But you don’t have any of those. .?’

‘No, never had, either. I offloaded most of my collection long ago, and just in time too. Others got badly burnt when the bottom fell out of the stamp market in the eighties but I saw it coming. And it’s about to happen again, I might add.’ He lifted his nose as though he could sniff the imminent collapse of the stamp market in this very room. ‘I kept the Penny Blacks though. Out of sentimentality, mainly. I remember being very excited when I was able to add a copy to my collection when I was a young man. I don’t remember what I paid for it but it seemed a fair bit of money to me then. And then there’s the historical connection of course. They were issued in Bath after all.’

‘Yes, I know about that part. Did you say Penny Blacks ? Plural?’

‘Yes, I have three examples. One is right here, see?’ He turned the picture frame on the desk around and proffered it up for my inspection. Without thinking I walked up to the desk and took it — and noticed in passing that I didn’t get shot. What earlier I had taken to be a small black and white photograph was in fact the famous stamp. It had the head of a young Queen Victoria on it and bore the legend Postage, One Penny . In the bottom left-hand corner was a Q and in the bottom right a G.

‘What do those letters mean?’ I enquired.

‘Oh, they give the exact position of the stamp on the sheet. They were printed in sheets of two hundred and forty, you see, twenty rows of twelve, so this example came from the seventeenth row, Q, and the seventh position, G.’

I handed him the frame and he set it back in its place on his desk. There were no other pictures, no photographs of his wife, for example, I noted. Perhaps he had fonder memories of the stamp than of the dearly departed dauber. ‘So the man who forced me to break in here to steal that stamp is labouring under a serious misconception, i.e. that the thing is worth a fortune.’

‘So it appears. Are you being serious about this kidnapped boy story then? Surely you could have simply gone to the police. Should have, I should add.’

‘It’s the mother’s decision. No police . Who am I to make that decision for her? I feel guilty enough as it is. The kidnappers told her to get in touch with me so they could use her son to make me do their bidding. This isn’t the first burglary they forced me into, but the last one went wrong. Then they came up with this scheme and here I am looking down the barrels of. . a rather fine shotgun, I can’t help noticing.’