‘How much do you reckon we’re looking at?’ Morrison asked.
‘A few hundred thousand at least.’ He sighed. ‘I hope you’re not going to ask me to count it. I need to go and get some sleep.’
Morrison patted him on the shoulder. ‘That’s what I was gonna say. You head off and I’ll stay here until we get some more back-up.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
Collingwood knew he was too exhausted to drive. In the back of the squad car, he closed his eyes, but tired as he was, he doubted he would get much sleep. So far he’d kept his word to Jack Warr, but when Jack turned up on the CCTV footage from the gallery, Morrison would go mental. Jack had put him in a spot, and he had no idea how he was going to get out of it.
Jack and Maggie had just made some toasted sandwiches. They were both wearing dressing gowns after role-playing ‘James Bond’ in the bedroom. Maggie was still giggling at the memory of being called Miss Moneypenny in a terrible Scottish accent. Sex between them used to be hot, intense and full of passion, but as they got older it had become more relaxed. More loving. More fun.
Jack sipped his whisky, and Maggie hugged her mug of tea. She mentioned that she would need the car in the morning because she had an early start and wanted to take Hannah to school to give Penny a break.
Suddenly, Jack remembered that his burner phone was still in the car’s glove compartment. He quickly got up. ‘I’d better check if we need some petrol.’ Before Maggie could point out he was still in his dressing gown, he had picked up the car keys and hurried out.
He missed Marius coming down with the tray from his TV dinner with Penny. ‘I marked out the wall, Maggie, if you want to come and have a look. It’ll mean we take out the dining room door, board it all up, and make the hall much bigger. We open an arch here in the kitchen. It’s a supporting wall, so I’ll need an RSJ, but it’ll just be a couple of days, and we’ll do it for mates’ rates, of course.’ Marius demonstrated where the arch would be, then they went out into the hall to look at the door to the dining room. ‘It’s easy to block it off. Brick up the hole, plaster over it. It’ll really make the hallway bigger, and I could maybe put up a row of coat hooks.’
‘I think it’ll be perfect,’ Maggie said. ‘Which is good, because I’ve decided that when Charlie has his christening, instead of booking a restaurant, we can have a buffet here at the house. All I need to do is persuade Jack... you know what he’s like.’
As Marius went to his van he saw Jack driving off down the road but thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, heading towards Putney High Street, he was surprised to see saw Jack, in his dressing gown, leaning into a builder’s skip. Marius thought of pulling over, but then decided against it as he guessed Jack might be embarrassed to be caught late-night tipping. He smiled, shaking his head. ‘And him a cop’.
Jack smacked the burner phone hard against the side of the skip before it shattered. He then spread the pieces around the skip among broken window frames and general rubbish. Finally satisfied, he headed back home. He’d remembered to transfer all the photos and videos of the paintings in the back room at the gallery to his laptop, he’d just forgotten to get rid of the phone itself.
At the same time, three fire engines had finally got the fire at the Bond Street gallery under control. Ester Langton, wearing a hooded raincoat, stood on the opposite side of the road, watching a firefighter at the top of the turntable ladder pumping water through the smashed windows. The lower floors had mainly been untouched by the fire, while the two rooms on the top floor, where the fire had started, had been completely destroyed. But the water flooding down through the building was now destroying everything anyway.
Ester had remained calm, only becoming agitated when refused entry to the gallery. She closed her eyes, hoping she had already salvaged enough to finance her life without Detmar.
When Collingwood was woken at five in the morning by an irate Morrison, he immediately thought it was about Jack, but he quickly realised Morrison was ranting about a fire at the gallery.
‘It’s a fucking catastrophe. Get over there, Collingwood, and oversee the clean-up, check out the damage and get the CCTV footage. I’ll meet you at the station.’
Morrison hung up before Collingwood could reply.
Chapter 29
Jack arrived at the station after a frustrating journey, as the tube had been delayed and the bus was not even running. The canteen was not that busy, so he grabbed a tray and was passing along the line when Laura walked in.
‘Jack, can you grab me some brown toast? I’ll get us coffee.’
He ordered two more rounds of brown toast before his order of scrambled eggs and bacon was served.
‘Did you hear the news?’ she asked excitedly as he sat down with the tray.
‘It’s been a busy weekend; we had to take the family to meet the vicar for Charlie’s christening.’
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t tell me you haven’t seen it in this morning’s papers.’ Laura started spreading butter on her toast. ‘DCI Morrison identified the victim, the one from Portobello Road that you were asking about; turns out he’s a famous art dealer. And his boyfriend was arrested for the murder. It’s all over the news this morning and Morrison was on TV yesterday speaking from Scotland Yard.’
‘He must be creaming himself,’ Jack smiled. ‘That’s a big arrest.’
‘I know. And...’ She rooted around in her bag. ‘You’ll probably get one as well.’ Laura handed Jack a postcard. ‘It’s from Josh. He’s retired to Florida.’
Jack looked at the postcard, turning it over to read Josh’s message. This was the second thing in as many minutes Jack had to feign ignorance about.
‘He deserves it. I owe him a lot.’
‘So have you got a date for the christening?’ she asked, munching her toast.
‘A couple of months’ time. Maybe there’s a rehearsal too? We do one of those, don’t we? I wasn’t really listening. I guess you’ll be at that. And we’ll probably hire out a restaurant for a party afterwards. I think that’s what Maggie has in mind.’ Jack had eaten his large breakfast in the same time it had taken for Laura to eat her small one and he now had indigestion. He burped, apologised, then picked up his coffee. He really didn’t want to talk about the Detmar Steinburg murder anymore.
‘See you up there,’ he said, moving off.
Laura picked up the bacon fat he had left and folded a slice of brown toast around it. She thought about Jack’s interest in the man she now knew to be Detmar Steinburg. She knew something didn’t quite add up, but then, hardly anything did if Jack Warr was involved.
In the incident room, Jack, along with several other officers, was soon dealing with social services and legal aid for two teenage boys they were holding, while knives found in their son’s bedrooms were still being brought in by concerned parents. Each item had to be logged, dated and confiscated safely. Armani had been in DCI Clarke’s office for forty minutes, and Jack assumed they were discussing the possible repercussions from the death of the teenage gang member who had been questioned and released.
Laura was assigned a burglary that had occurred at a local pub early on Sunday morning. Thieves had broken in and attempted to smash open the till but the pub had very good CCTV cameras and, as the pub closed at eleven, it was quite an easy process to forward the footage to the right point, as the alarm had been activated at 2.15 a.m. It was late afternoon when Laura returned from the viewing room. By now, she had numerous photographs of the burglars which she was pinning up on the big noticeboard as Jack passed her desk on his way to the cells.