Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

With sunrise still an hour away I assembled a celebratory breakfast — French croissant, Irish butter, Scottish smoked salmon and Ethiopian coffee — that appeared to have more air miles than your average prime minister. We ought to do something about this, go completely local, I thought with a guilty sigh, though finding someone who grew coffee in Somerset might present a bit of a problem. But then later that day I would be presented with a challenge that would make growing your own coffee look like child’s play.

Waiting.

Waiting, smoking, making tea and waiting. The four of us around the kitchen table, the Penny Black, Louis’s passport to freedom, lying in the centre. Smoking, waiting, coughing, clock-watching.

Waiting, they say, is the worst part of it, but I wasn’t so sure. Could no news really be good news? Would there ever again be good news for Jill?

Tim, who had simply out-raced his shadowers in the TT to get here, dabbing a moistened finger at tiny breadcrumbs on the table and absentmindedly transferring them to his lips; Annis turning the empty coffee mug in front of her between thumb and middle finger, round and round; the nameless cat digging his claws into my sweater every time I moved slightly to make myself comfortable on the hard wooden chair; me, tapping a cheap biro against a notepad where I would write down the next set of instructions. Waiting.

The phone trilled. Tim’s finger arrested halfway to his mouth, Annis gripped the mug. I reached for the phone and the cat held on tight.

‘Honeysett.’

‘Did you get it?’

‘I did, but it wasn’t easy.’ I was thinking of the cheque in Connabear’s desk.

‘Stop whingeing. Okay, sit on it, and make sure it doesn’t get nicked. I’ve got another little task for you.’

‘What do you mean, another task? The deal was that I steal the Penny Black and you let Louis go. Stick to our bargain, I fulfilled my side of it, now y-’

‘Shut up , Honeysett! I told you before, I make the rules and you do as you’re told. Now listen carefully. Your next job. Your last job. I really don’t think you’ll need to write this down, I’m sure you’ll remember this. You will nick the little Rodin sculpture from the Victoria Gallery.’

I stood up and my chair skittered noisily across the tiles. The cat jumped off my lap and galloped away. ‘Is this a bloody wind-up? You can’t be serious.’ Worried faces looked up at me. I bit my lip.

‘Oh really.’ The voice softened dangerously. ‘I somehow thought you might say that. So maybe you would like to write this down so you can remind yourself any time you need to: so far the boy’s in one piece. If you don’t want me to send you bits of the annoying brat in the post to stiffen your resolve, Honeysett, then you’ll do as you’re told. You got that?’ The faint voice had become poisonous with anger. However much I tried I found it impossible to place it. It could be anyone, anywhere. I had always presumed the owner of the voice to be male, but the more I thought about it the less sure I could be even of that.

‘Got it,’ I confirmed.

‘You’re the one who fucked up the Telfer thing, so you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. So here it is: the exhibition is on for another week. That’s how long you’ve got to get the Rodin out and I’ll swap you the kid for it.’

‘That’s what you said when you told me to get the goddamn stamp.’

‘I’m not bloody ready for you. You keep that stamp safe, get the Rodin out and by then I’ll be ready to do the swap and I’ll be out of your hair. I’ll be out of everyone’s hair and gone for ever.’

‘I can’t see how it can be done. It’s a museum, not some two-bit private gallery. They’ve got excellent security, I presume.’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. And you have a reputation to live up to, Honeysett. You got into the Telfer place all right. Just a bit careless on the way home, I’d say. You got the Penny Black out of Connabear’s place. You’ll manage this one too. And if not then you haven’t lost a thing, all you have to do is explain to mummy dearest that you fucked up and her boy is toast.’

‘Let me talk to the boy. I must have confirmation that he’s alive before — ’

‘You don’t need a fucking thing, all you need to do is shut up and deliver. You do as you’re told and that’ll keep your letter box free of nasty surprises.’

‘I won’t need any reminders, thanks,’ I assured him.

‘Good boy. Now get cracking, you got work to do. I’ll be watching.’ The connection was cut.

‘Well? What did he say?’ Annis asked impatiently. ‘What does he want now?’

I sat down heavily. ‘They want me to steal a sculpture in exchange for Louis.’

‘What?’ Tim and Annis said almost together.

‘There’s a temporary exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery. It’s got a bronze of a dancer by Rodin in it and they want me to nick it.’

Tim groaned with heavy premonition. ‘What next, the crown bleeding jewels?’

‘Our last task, apparently. We’ll exchange the stamp and sculpture for the boy.’

Annis looked straight into my eyes and gave a minute shake of the head. ‘Victoria Art Gallery, that’s. . big.’

‘Big mistake, if you ask me,’ Tim insisted.

‘I told Jill to expect complications and last-minute glitches, but I’m not sure how she’ll take a setback like this.’

‘I’ll tell her, if you like,’ offered Annis. ‘I’m better with the tears and tissues.’

‘Thanks, I appreciate it. Tim?’

Tim had been staring out of the window. ‘Hn? What?’

‘The Victoria Art Gallery?’

‘Oh yes. Utter madness.’

‘This isn’t Norway, you know, where you can just waltz into a museum and help yourself to the Munch painting of your choice,’ Tim complained. ‘How often has it been nicked now? Three times? You get the feeling they don’t like The Scream much. Perhaps we should see if the exhibition goes to Oslo.’

We were leaning on the balustrade that runs along the Grand Parade, occasionally glancing up at the tall façade of the Victoria Gallery, trying to look casual in the annoying drizzle that had returned after a short interlude of broken cloud. Tim thought the guys who had dogged his steps for the past few days had for some reason given up following him. Who they were remained a mystery to him. I had a different theory, but kept it to myself. I thought it much more likely that after having lost Tim twice the incompetent pair had been replaced with a couple of specimens that knew what they were doing. I didn’t hold out much hope that we weren’t being watched right now.

Below us the river Avon fell noisily over the weir, swollen with days and days of near continuous rain.

‘We’ve got a few days,’ I reminded him urgently.

‘So you keep saying.’ Tim’s dense curly hair had plastered itself around his face in the wet, giving him an even hairier appearance. He didn’t look happy. ‘It’s sheer madness. I mean, look at it. The ground floor of the exhibition space is completely shuttered, the only way in is through the front door. So climbing in at street level is hardly going to work, is it?’ He poured scorn over my earlier suggestion that we might just smash a window and be in and out before anyone could shout ‘Thief!’ ‘If it was some piddly item in a glass vitrine then you could try a daylight smash and grab with a stolen motorbike waiting outside and take your chances. Drive the bike into the back of a waiting van outside the CCTV area and Robert’s your mum’s brother. But a statue like that must weigh three stone if you include the plinth. You can carry it but you won’t do much running with it. The first civic-minded art lover’s going to chuck her brolly between your legs and send you sprawling. Nah, not a chance. Well, let’s have a look-see then. But whatever you do don’t take your hat off. They’re bound to have CCTV in there. Once the Rodin’s gone walkies they’re going to have a close look at their videos — they probably keep about three weeks’ worth before they reuse them — and ours are going to be the two mugs CID will recognize.’ He forced a baseball cap on his own woolly curls. ‘Right, put on your reading glasses as well.’