Peter Lovesey: The Vault

Evan seemed not to have heard.

"Miss Redbird, the owner of Noble and Nude," Diamond had to repeat.

"What about her?"

"What about you, the evening she was killed."

"That wasn't me," he answered, his voice shrilling, close to hysteria. "You can't pin that on me, for pity's sake."

"We know she phoned you at seven forty-three and had a six minute conversation with you."

"You know that?"

"She tried the Brains Surgery first. It was about the paintings she'd just acquired, wasn't it, two watercolours in the style of William Blake?"

"If you know it all, why are you asking me?"

"It's up to you, my friend," said Diamond. "You can tell it to me now and I'll listen. You're the one with a lot to explain. Or you can go back to the nick with Sergeant Leaman and see what he can do."

Evan found that unappealing. The words began to flow again. "Peg and I knew each other pretty well. I won't say I was a regular in the shop, but I looked in from time to time. You could find useful things there. Once I bought a Victorian paintbox from her in beautiful condition. Five pounds. Treasure for me. Well, Peg phoned me Thursday evening, as you know. She'd put two and two together, of course-my interest in art materials. Remembered selling me a certain sketchbook years ago, an old one, almost unused. I can't tell you exactly when it was. Ten years? Fifteen? I don't know. I bet she knew exactly. Peg was nobody's fool. And she sold me an old book about the same time, the poems of John Milton. I wanted it for the blank sheets inside. Proper paper made from rags. Lovely for the style of painting I do. Got rid of it after. I only mention the book because someone came into the Brains Surgery with that book a few days ago."

"An American?"

"Tourist, wanting to know who owned it before him and willing to buy drinks to find out. You see how this all ties up? He asked me where I got the bloody book and I told him about Noble and Nude. He must have jogged Peg's memory. Well, on the phone to me she wasn't on about Milton. She wanted to know about the sketchbook, if I still had it. She was mighty keen to get it back, whatever the state of it."

This made sense to Diamond, who was adding a subtext of his own. That Thursday evening when she made the call to Evan, Peg had just discovered she had Mary Shelley's writing box in her shop. Little wonder she was desperate to recover the sketchbook it had once contained. Those drawings would create massive interest in the literary world, regardless of their competence. Marketed right, with maximum publicity, they would bring in a small fortune.

"I wasn't keen," Evan said. "Actually, I'd cut out all the blank sheets already, getting on for fifty, I reckon. When they're as old as that they need sizing before you can paint on them, and you don't mess about with single sheets. You do a batch of them together. So the sketchbook was in tatters really. The only sheets left were four or five used ones drawn on by the original owner, pencil sketches, rather dull still-life studies." He paused and something new crept in, a catch in the voice that promised bigger revelations. "Except one. This was right at the back, the last sheet in the book, as if the artist kept it for something special, unconnected with the boring old still life. An amazing page. I don't know what you'd call it. An elaborate doodle, I suppose, the paper totally covered in thumbnail sketches of mountains, snow scenes, little houses, forests, sailing ships, all interspersed with a strange mix of faces, men and women, some of them normal enough, others horrific, corpselike. The drawing was not good in a technical sense, but the effect of the whole thing was striking. It appealed to my imagination, anyway. I kept returning to it and finding new things. Actually it was inspirational. I really think it turned me onto fantasy, the great gothic horror themes of the nineteenth century, and led me to embark on this Frankenstein series."

"You know who the artist was?"

"Artist?" Evan smiled. "Artist isn't the word I would use. I haven't the faintest idea."

Diamond chose not to enlighten him at this point. "You wanted to keep the sketchbook because of this one drawing?"

"Exactly. I told Peg the truth, that the paper in the book was all used up now, and that was a mistake, because it was pretty clear I'd used it myself. She was getting very excited. You know how voices on the phone give away more than they realise. She was eager to know if I'd kept the old drawings, the ones already in the sketchbook. I said I thought I still had them somewhere. She wanted to come and see them. That night. I tried to put her off, but she wasn't having it." He looked down, his face still strained, as if he needed to gather himself before going on. "And then she shook me rigid. She told me about these two pictures she'd bought that afternoon. They were in the style of Blake. Clever fakes, she called them. She said she was planning to blow the whistle on them, get an expert to expose them. She asked me if I'd heard of the fraud squad. I was pissing in my pants. She didn't say so, but it was obvious she knew it was my work. She offered them to me in exchange for the remains of the sketchbook, with a promise that the deal would be confidential. Neither of us would speak of it again." Evan groaned at the memory. "She'd got me over a barrel. She could expose me as, em…"

"A forger."

He didn't like the word. "I've sweated blood over these paintings, getting them right. I study the text, immerse myself in the words. I'm not ripping people off."

"You're turning out fakes."

"They're originals. I haven't copied anything."

"Come off it," said Diamond. "You go to all the trouble of finding antique paper and covering it with size and backing them with paper that crumbles in your hands. You're passing them off as something they're not."

"I've never claimed they're Blakes. If people want to make that assumption, so be it. Look, I'm a painter. For years I did better things than these in my own style, miles better, and got no bloody recognition for them."

"But these are in demand. That's how you get your revenge, is it? When some expert thinks he's found an unknown William Blake?"

"That's out of my control."

Diamond found the reasoning specious, but he wanted to hear the rest of what happened, so he didn't pursue it. "Peg threatened to blow the whistle on you and you agreed to meet her?"

"What else could I do?"

"That evening?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"We agreed on nine-thirty. First I had to drive out here and collect the sketchbook. I kept it in the plan-chest, see?"

"Where did you meet?"

"She didn't want me coming to the shop. You know the old horse trough in Walcot Street, the one built into the wall? It's just a short walk from the shop. I drove down there and she got in the car. She had no transport of her own. She was carrying the pictures."

It chimed in neatly with Ellis Somerset's version, the conversation that had so upset him, about the meeting that sounded like a heavy date. "I'm expecting an offer tonight, if that doesn't sound indelicate."

"Did you make the exchange?"

"I tried. I had the remains of the sketchbook with me. I'd removed one drawing."

"The one you just described to us, with all the detail?"

Evan nodded. "I didn't think Peg Redbird knew it was in there, but she did. By God, she did. I told you she was smart, didn't I? When she first had the sketchbook in her hands she must have flicked through and found it at the back, same as me, and she remembered. She asked if I still had that crowded page from the back. Believe it or not, I find it difficult to lie. I said yes, but I wasn't willing to part with it. She could take the other drawings."

"She wouldn't agree?"