Peter Lovesey: Bloodhounds

A local journalist he recognized as from the Bath Chronicle was at the corner of Bridge Street, by the entrance, waiting to hear the latest. So much for the puzzle the whole region was supposedly racking its brains to solve.

"Are you on this case, Super?"

"What case?" Diamond rapped on the door, annoyed by that "Super." The gallery wasn't open to the public yet, but the security team would be inside.

"The Turner. Has it been knocked off?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

"Come on, Mr. Diamond. I've got my job to do, same as you."

"Nothing to my knowledge has been knocked off," said Diamond.

"It's still there?"

"Far as I know."

"You must be taking it seriously. You must be worried that they mean to have a go."

"Do I look worried?"

He heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn; One of the great wooden doors opened a fraction, and part of a face was briefly visible, followed by the sound of static from a personal radio. The door opened widely enough to admit him. The reporter said something about cooperation, and then Diamond stepped inside, and the door slammed in the face of the press, if rather more heavily than the constabulary intended.

The last time Diamond had seen the black-and-white marble tiled vestibule was when the lower floor had been in use as the public library. Now both floors were used as galleries, and the permanent collection was upstairs. He was escorted up the stone staircase past some paintings of rustic scenes, most of them featuring sheep, or what were intended by the artists to pass for sheep, but could have been giant, cream-colored rats, or armadillos. Landscape painters, he decided, weren't on the whole successful with sheep.

Not the sort who spent his leisure hours looking at art, he'd never ventured up here before, and it was grander than he expected. At the top of the stairs was a tiled area surrounded by columns supporting the dome of the building, the underside of which was decorated in gilt with the signs of the zodiac. He stepped into the gallery, and was surprised by its size. It was a fine example of Victorian pomp, big enough for a ball-room, some fifty feet high, with a copy of the Parthenon frieze extending right around the walls below the glazed, arched roof that extended the length of the room. There were no windows. The pictures in their ornate gilt frames were attached to maroon-colored walls, and some were displayed on purpose-built units along the center of the room.

"Safe as the Bank of England, I would have thought," he remarked to Julie Hargreaves, who had got up from behind the attendant's desk to greet him. "I suppose he could try a Riflfi-styleentry from the roof."

A look of incomprehension crossed Julie's face, and he realized that the film Rififi must have been made before she was born. Not for the first time, he had to remind himself that his best support in the murder squad was female and not much over thirty. Julie was a colleague he could rely on absolutely. She was as bright as a brand-new coin, and it was a measure of her professionalism that he disregarded her good looks. He hoped it wasn't a measure of his advancing years.

"It was a film," he informed her. "Maybe you saw one called Topkapi? Same method of entry… No? Never mind."

"Two men spent the night on the roof," she told him.

"Two of ours?"

She laughed. "I hope so. There are two more up there now."

"I take it that the picture is still in place?"

"I expect you'd like to see it." She led him across the gallery to one of the display units in the center. "It's not so big as I imagined."

He looked at the fixings before he examined the painting. The Turner was secured to the wooden unit with nails driven through small metal plates projecting from the back of the frame. A thief equipped with a crowbar wouldn't take long to achieve his purpose, but no system has been devised that will withstand that kind of assault. Galleries are better employed installing alarm systems and strong locks.

As for the painting, he was less than impressed. It was a muted watercolor, a view of the Abbey from across the churchyard at an angle that to Diamond's eye was distorted, making the West Front outrageously taller than it is. He'd often sat on one of the wooden seats in the yard and looked at the building from that direction. Bath Abbey projected a sort of charm, but it had never pretended to be lofty. It wasn't as if the painting had other merits to compensate. He could see nothing remarkable in the pale blue and yellow ocher coloring or the brush-work. The total effect reminded him of a dull Sunday. Toward the bottom of the picture was an empty sedan chair with two attendants beside it, and elsewhere the artist had tried to add some interest by including several figures of women in long skirts.

"Would you hang it in your front room?" he asked Julie.

She smiled slightly. "I think it ought to be here, where everyone can enjoy it."

"Be honest. Turner may have painted some wonderful pictures, but this one is crap."

She said, "There's a lot worse. There's one on the wall over there called The Bride of Death that gives me the creeps. It's really depressing."

He told her that he was reclaiming her from John Wigfull, and the relief on her face was obvious. She preferred real people, even if it meant statement-taking, to looking at Victorian deathbed scenes. She called up one of the sergeants on duty downstairs and instructed him to take over in the gallery until her replacement arrived.

Polly Wycherley said over a cup of cafe au lait, "You didn't mind meeting here, I hope? It's one of my favorite places. I always think of dear Inspector Maigret here."

The call had come unexpectedly, before 8:30, when Shirley-Ann was in the shower and Bert was about to leave for work. He'd handed her the mobile phone and a towel and followed up with an intimate fumble that had made her squeak in protest. What it must have sounded like on the other end of the line she dreaded to think. Anyway, it hadn't stopped Polly from suggesting coffee at Le Parisien in Shires Yard.

Not knowing what the weather would do on a mid-October morning, Shirley-Ann had put on a pink trouser suit overprinted with what looked like large blackberry stains. She had bought it for a song last May in the Save the Children shop in Devizes, along with the white lamb's wool sweater that she was wearing under the jacket. Polly was less colorful, in a dark mauve padded coat. As it turned out, there was some fitful sunshine, so they sat under a red-and-white umbrella at one of the marble-topped tables outside. Faintly, from the interior of the cafe, came a song just recognizable as "J'Attendrai."

Polly was right. This little sun-trap tucked away between Milsom Street and Broad Street could have been lifted from the Latin Quarter. Le Parisien and the Cafe Rene existed side by side, and the waiters really were French. "To be truthful, I think of Rupert Davies lighting his pipe. You wouldn't remember him, dear. You're too young. It was in black and white, on Monday evenings."

"Television."

"And that elegant Ewen Solon, who played Lucas, his sidekick. A dreamboat in a porkpie hat. Soigne." Polly gazed wistfully across the yard. "I could have forgotten I was married for Lucas." She pulled herself together. "I wanted to talk to you about Monday night."

"The Bloodhounds?"

"Did you find it off-putting? We weren't at our best, and I didn't want you to go away thinking you wouldn't bother another time."

"I enjoyed myself immensely," said Shirley-Ann, and meant it.

Polly didn't seem to have heard. "Rupert really is the limit, with that dog. He's a much nicer man than he appears, but he makes no concessions to what I think of as decent behavior. He thinks we're all terribly bourgeois and deserve to be shocked, but that's no reason to let the dog misbehave." Her hand shook as she lifted the coffee cup.