Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Okay,’ agreed Tim. ‘You might be right but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Even in my maddest days I wouldn’t have considered a scheme like this. Clearing out someone’s safe at a private house or an office is one thing. But robbing a museum makes front page headlines. Do you realize that it’ll get flashed round the world? That the French are going to send Froggy Fuzz across the Channel to catch the guys who stole their beloved Rodin dancer? And you definitely do not want to fall into their hands, they have nasty habits by all accounts. Unlike us Brits the French take their art seriously. We could all end up in a chain gang breaking rocks in the Auvergne for thirty years. And I still need a reality check: am I really discussing this with Chris Honeysett, the painter, who hates art theft more than anything?’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said lightly, ‘sculpture is just what you bump into when you step back to admire a painting. And it was a French geezer who said that.’

‘That’s all right then,’ Tim said and rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘And here’s another thing: what’s it for? You can’t sell these kind of things, can you? I mean everyone will know it’s nicked. So what’s the point?’

‘No, you can’t sell it on the open market because it’s too high profile and you’ll never be able to stick it in your front room. Unless it’s already paid for, of course,’ I mused.

‘Stolen to order, you mean.’

‘Stolen to order and destined for some mafioso dacha in Russia or Turkey. To go with the 7-series Beemer in the garage that was probably nicked from a supermarket car park in Hull and driven on to the ferry to Holland before the owner even got his shopping through the check-out. And how damn clever to get idiots like us to do the dirty work. I bet you my spectacles they got the idea from the Japanese. Last year someone wanted to extract a ransom from a Japanese businessman but they didn’t abduct one of his family, they took the son of his chauffeur . Now there’s obligation for you.’

‘Did he pay up?’

‘No, he got a new chauffeur. What do you think? How could he not pay up? Who would have done business with him if he hadn’t? How could he have lived with himself, for that matter?’

And ‘living with it’ would come into it for us too. My Accumulated Guilt Quotient was already going through the roof. Louis had been snatched to get to me, to buy the services of Aqua Investigations. Whoever he was, he knew me, at least by reputation. I myself knew plenty of unsavoury individuals and had paraded their mental mug shots through my private gallery but no one stood out as an obvious choice for the face behind the voice. His voice reminded me of nobody and of nothing, it was too distorted over the phone, and if I really had met the bastard before, then that was deliberate.

The elderly couple at the table next to ours left and their place was taken by a man wearing a waxed jacket and a matching wide-brimmed hat. I looked across at his face. Around fifty and quite a bit paler than a man ought to be. I’d never seen him before, yet I began to feel uneasy and I motioned Tim with my head: let’s get out of here. As we rounded the corner towards the exit I looked back. The man was staring straight at me and from a distance of twenty-five feet our eyes met briefly, then his gaze slid over and off me, not interested, turning instead to the young boy carrying two steaming mugs towards his table.

‘What’s the matter?’ Tim wanted to know.

‘Nothing, paranoia’s setting in, that’s all.’

We had deliberately exited at the back of the market into the courtyard. The old Empire Hotel and the old police station — now thankfully Browns restaurant — the Guildhall and the covered market all backed on to what was now used as a private car park for council workers, restaurateurs and market traders. A man in dirty chef’s whites puffed at a small cigar by a door at the back of the Empire, a seagull flew over and scored a direct hit on a shiny blue Jaguar.

Tim sniffed the air and pulled a face. ‘This really stinks. There might be a way into the museum from back here but it would mean one hell of a climb.’ He turned his back on me and began walking away through the narrow passage between the hotel and the market building.

I went after him and tried to find something optimistic to say. ‘If a couple of guys with a ladder can nick a Munch from a museum in Norway then surely we must be able to pinch an itsy-bitsy Rodin in Bath.’

He wasn’t having any of it. ‘They do things differently in Norway. Must be the long winters. Or perhaps it’s the terrible folk music, but this is different. We can’t even reconnoitre the place properly. We won’t know if there’s a way in until we get there and getting there is probably just as risky as breaking in is going to be. I really don’t like this, Chris. I think it’s one break-in too far. The chances of getting away with it are minimal — and I just mean away from the museum , there’s no way we won’t get nicked for it later. And don’t look at me like that.’ Apparently I was looking at him like that. ‘It’s a lot to ask for a kid you never even met.’

I had never seen Tim less enthusiastic about any scheme I had proposed but I knew that without him my chances were nil. ‘If I didn’t know you any better I’d say you didn’t want to do it.’

‘Ha-bloody-ha. I’ll have a think but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it. Now I’m going to work.’

‘To work on what?’ I asked, too wrapped up in my own problems to function entirely in the real world.

‘Work. To work , Chris. I do have a job at the uni, you know, the kind that pays my bills. But I might be able to get away early today. I’ll come round and we’ll have another talk then.’

I opened my mouth for an answer but he was already dashing across the street through the traffic, waving without looking back.

October rain, what can you do with it? Shopping. I’d picked up a couple of ambitiously priced bottles of French red with deliberate absentmindedness then found myself contemplating the pretend summer of the supermarket. Time-warped summer vegetables from Spanish poly-tunnels and optimistic little salmon kebabs that really belonged on a sizzling barbecue couldn’t disguise the fact that people were leaving puddles of cold rainwater on the floor. I heroically turned my back on such anodyne fare, though happily bought the wine, left the supermarket and crossed to Green Street where I picked up a dozen venison sausages at the butcher’s. Having strapped my purchases to the back of the bike I puttered through the drizzle to Larkhall where at Tony’s greengrocer’s things were more in sync with the season. I stocked up with a string of shiny red onions, plenty of dirty carrots, knobbly potatoes, knobblier horseradish and an armful of ruby chard. By the time I pootled out of Larkhall the Norton had taken on the air of a French bicycle wobbling home from the market, with half a kitchen garden tied to the tank. I parked the bike in the muddy yard close to the house, untied my purchases and splashed dirt all the way from the front door through to the kitchen, plonking my purchases on the table where they joyfully tumbled from their bags. Yet the unhappy atmosphere seemed evident in the very pine-fragranced and lemon-freshened air. Deep in my irrational self I resented Jill and her son and their predicament, I resented all of it as an imposition and intrusion into my happy-go-lucky lifestyle. Never mind Tim’s reluctance, I couldn’t wait to break into the museum and swipe the silly little Rodin and give it to the bastard who’d snatched Louis.

Out of nowhere the nameless cat jumped on to the table and meowed in a low, self-possessed fashion at my purchases. Zabaglione, I thought, then dismissed it instantly. They’d end up calling him Zab.