Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

I lit the fire while Annis carefully stripped the wet clothes off him despite his howls of pain. We got him on to some folded blankets and under a duvet at last. Then I called Dr Marland, one of the few practitioners I knew who still did house calls, though she travelled with a minder after dark and charged accordingly.

‘Where’s the pain?’ she wanted to know.

‘Where exactly does it hurt?’ I asked Tim.

‘Lower back. And my left leg, behind the knee. I think I must have torn something there.’ I relayed all that.

‘Sounds very much like a prolapsed disc. Keep him where he is, in a position most comfortable to him, try it on the side with a cushion between his knees. Give him some painkillers and put a hot water bottle against his lumbar region.’

‘Okay. How long will you be?’

‘ How long will I be ? I’m not coming out for something like that and anyway, he’s not one of my patients! Get him to his own doctor when he gets some movement back. But he’ll need a physio more than a doctor.’

‘Why does his leg hurt though?’

‘That happens when the prolapse is to the back and the side, it presses on a nerve root. Okay? Bye.’

‘Wait! Just one more question: how long before he’s okay again?’

‘Hard to say. Couple of weeks’ rest, then a programme of exercises to strengthen the lower back. His back will be vulnerable for a few months. But the physio will explain all that. Goodbye, Mr Honeysett.’

And that, as they say, was that. I might not have had much of a plan for getting at the Rodin but the little I did have was lying groaning on my sitting-room floor with a slipped disc and would probably remain there for quite a while. I must have looked at Tim with a less than charitable expression because he started to protest.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Honeypot, but I didn’t exactly do it on purpose. And it happened while I was trying to rescue the Norton from the mud, so you can stop scowling at me. I think those guys have stopped following me, I didn’t notice anything suspicious today. But better hide the TT somewhere in your outbuildings just in case. Don’t want it scratched though. What’s that weird smell all of a sudden?’

I sniffed. ‘Charred onions. Special recipe.’

An additional layer of gloom settled on my mind as I scraped the onions into the bin and started over again, wielding the knife perhaps just a fraction more ferociously than before. I started off the sausages at the same time and put the water on for the spuds.

Annis came in from ministering to the safe breaker on the floor. ‘What now?’

‘You can wash the chard and peel the potatoes.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know it wasn’t but do it anyway. According to Dr Marland he won’t be breaking into museums for a while.’

‘She said that?’

‘Her very words.’ It also struck me that he might be unable to perform other acrobatics for quite a while but the unexpected pleasure I derived from the thought instantly made me feel guilty again.

‘It’s you and me then,’ she said, taking the peeler to the first pink-eyed tuber.

‘Yes,’ I said, looking across at her. ‘Just you and me. You and me making love in the shower, you and me cooking a meal together, you and me stealing sculpture from the gallery. The simple, everyday stuff of mature relationships. Got any ideas?’

‘One or two.’ Annis grinned idiotically as she whittled the potato in her hand.

‘Okay, I’ll leave it all with you then, shall I?’

I pretty much did exactly that for the rest of the day. Annis looked after Jill and she looked after Tim. She got some painkillers into him and tucked him up with piles of cushions. She even ladled the mash, laced with fresh horseradish, the venison sausages drowned in onion gravy and the steamed chard into him because sitting up to use knife and fork was still out of the question. This humiliating complication alone convinced me that the man was in serious pain. Later she went up to the studio and worked by the cool light of a couple of daylight bulbs until the wind picked up again and the noisy snapping of the tarpaulin drove her back to the house. I couldn’t even think of lifting a paint brush. Annis found me in bed, trying to control my anxieties with a hefty nightcap of Laphroaig. I watched her pull her clothes off and throw them into a pile under the window while she complained away about the draught and noise in the studio. I listened to her hum some atonal nonsense under the shower and admired her taut body as she towelled her strawberry hair by the bed. I simply couldn’t believe I had never told her that I loved her.

She bounced into bed, took the Laphroaig from me and emptied the glass down her throat. ‘Eeeeyuch! Do you know,’ she asked as she made her head comfortable on my chest, ‘what I like so much about making love in the afternoon?’

‘Do tell me.’

‘If you play your cards right you get to do it again in the evening.’

The sky was a little brighter when I brought Tim a cup of coffee in the morning.

He declared that his back had improved a bit overnight but soon disillusioned me again by explaining that ‘improvement’ meant he no longer had shooting pains in the back of the knee, not that he was about to clamber up the façade of the Victoria Art Gallery. Which made me realize once and for all that it would be me climbing into the museum, and since we had already ruled out getting in on the ground floor that meant I would have to acquire some cat-burglary skills pronto. And did I mention I’m not very good with heights?

I discussed it with Tim while we ate one of our favourite breakfasts of scrambled eggs with coriander leaf and huge dollops of brinjal pickle. ‘What about Annis?’ he asked.

‘She’s worse than me. She’s fearless on the flat but standing on a thick carpet gives her vertigo.’

‘You really are a pair of sissies. You’ll just have to find a way then. The back of the building is the obvious way in. There’s no security guard at night, which should tell you something.’

‘Like what?’

‘That they think nobody would be crazy enough to try it right under the noses of all the cops in Bath. Getting out and away will definitely be the challenge. You’d better come up with something soon, you’ve only got a couple of days until the exhibition ends. And you’ll have to find a getaway car in good time and stash it somewhere safe, not around here where Needham’s boys are likely to turn up for a bit of harassment. If you buy the car, or bike if you prefer, and they clock you on CCTV then they’ll trace it back to you, so you’ll have to steal it. And then you’ll need false plates. Not so easy any more but you can still get them off the internet. Make sure they’ll exactly match the year of the car or you’ll not get very far, the cops are fiendishly clued up on anything to do with plates.’

This was something else I hadn’t quite thought through. It would hardly do to turn up in one of our own cars and drive through the thickly surveillanced centre, if we ever got to drive away at all. ‘We could of course hold up the place and try and get it that way. .’ I suggested half-heartedly.

‘Now you’re really talking out of your arse. You’d be a little old man before they let you out of jail again. Even if you used a toy gun. I can recommend it only as the best way of getting yourself shot full of holes you don’t require. Think of something else,’ he said vehemently.

‘I didn’t really mean it,’ I assured him.

‘Glad to hear it, Honeypot. I certainly wouldn’t let you involve Annis in a hare-brained scheme like that.’

‘Let me?’ Something about the way he implied that he had any say in what Annis did or did not suddenly got my goat. ‘I doubt you’d have much say in the matter. If she decided to do it then I’d like to see you try and stop her,’ my goat said sharply.