Grace stepped out, and returned a few minutes later holding two steaming mugs. ‘I really appreciate your moving so fast, Mr Stuart-Simmonds,’ he said.
‘Have to, Detective Superintendent, if we’re to have any chance of playing catch-up. You can be damned sure this has been carefully planned, and most of the items, if not all, are already overseas. What time does your briefing start?’
‘Eight thirty. I’d like to use this hour to learn as much from you as I can. If we could run through the highest-value items that have been taken from Mrs McWhirter’s home, what their identifying features are, and how rare they are. Also, in your experience, how they might have been transported, where they are likely to have been shipped to – and which agencies overseas are most likely to be able to help us locate them. Then you could help me set some parameters for my team, as well as giving us a crash course in how the global antiques world works.’
An ASDA lorry rumbled up the hill outside. The expert blew on his coffee, then sipped. ‘More to the point, how the global antiques black market operates – I think you’ll find that more helpful.’
‘I’ll be guided by you.’
‘What you have to understand is that small stuff such as low-value porcelain, jewellery, pictures, silverware – items worth only a few hundred quid – can be fenced easily in a city like Brighton, with all its antiques stalls and little shops. But these days important pieces are recorded on an international register, along with photographs and their details, which every reputable international dealer subscribes to. None of them would touch a stolen item on it with a bargepole.’
‘So that works in our favour?’ Grace said.
‘Yes and no. What happens in reality is the stolen items go underground, which is the bugger. Most, if not all, are likely to have been stolen to order or presold to private buyers. In twenty, thirty or fifty years’ time, if those buyers want to sell, the items will have long since dropped off the register.’
‘Where do we begin looking?’
‘I understand Mrs McWhirter’s brother is Gavin Daly?’
‘Yes.’
The antiques expert nodded. ‘He has a tremendous reputation. At one time he was one of the most important dealers in this country – and very respected.’ He smiled. ‘That’s not to say possibly a bit of a rogue.’
‘Oh?’ That piqued Grace’s interest.
‘Most of the old dealers in Brighton were. They operated an illegal cartel called the Ring, where they’d band together to rig prices at auction, for instance. But that’s not to deny Gavin Daly’s expertise. It’s clear from looking through the list of items taken from Mrs McWhirter that she had some jolly fine stuff. Clearly someone was advising her when she bought them – I would imagine her brother. But, like everyone, she’d have had some less good stuff as well.’ He raised a finger. ‘I think one of the first areas you should be looking at is the low-hanging fruit.’
‘Low-hanging fruit?’ Grace frowned and took a tentative sip of his scalding coffee. Light rain was falling outside and it felt chilly in the room. Almost autumnal. Outside, in the large open-plan detectives’ area, a phone warbled, unanswered. He felt desperately tired, and it was going to be a struggle to make it through the very long day ahead, although he had no option but to get on with it. And more importantly, he wanted to get on with it. He wanted the bastards who did this. Very badly.
‘Well, from the amount taken, and the size of some of the pieces, we can assume there were at least two men, probably three, if not even a fourth. In my experience, when hired hands are sent to steal to order, they almost always help themselves to some extra items not on the list, and pass them on to fences for a bit of extra cash.’ He blew on his coffee again. ‘Almost certainly Mrs McWhirter would have photos, taken for insurance purposes, of the contents in each room. If you can get hold of them, then you can check what has been taken and what is still there, beyond the high-value items her brother has already identified. If there are other items missing, then I’d put some officers out, with their photographs, around all the antiques shops, street stalls and car boot sales in the area, as well as getting them to carefully trawl through eBay.’
Grace made some notes. ‘When you say steal to order, that implies insider knowledge.’
The antiques expert nodded. ‘You said you found a knocker-boy leaflet in the house?’
‘Yes. Someone called R. C. Moore.’
‘This has all the classic hallmarks,’ Stuart-Simmonds said. ‘The knocker-boy charms his way into the house, and sees a treasure trove of beautiful things. He makes a note, and often takes surreptitious photographs. Then he sells on the address and a contents summary. Some of the big players have connections to the insurance companies – an employee they bribe within them – and they get the full inventory that way.’
‘Interesting,’ Grace said. ‘The one item that wasn’t insured was the pocket watch.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘For the very reason you’ve just told me. Gavin Daly reckoned if it was registered with an insurance company, it would be a target. No one knew it was there, in her safe. Also, it was an extremely well-concealed safe. He designed it himself as a double safe.’
‘Double?’
‘Yes, very ingenious. If you opened it, you would think that was it. But the wall at the back of it is false; you insert an Allen key, twist and it opens, and there is a second combination lock behind. Ordinarily that false wall would fool any burglar.’
The expert chewed the inside of his mouth for some moments. ‘If they didn’t know about the watch, then it won’t have been presold. Whether they handed it to whoever hired them or try to sell it themselves, a Patek Philippe from 1910 is a damned rare thing. I’d say finding possible buyers for that should be a major line of enquiry for you, Detective Superintendent. That watch will lead you to the perpetrators, for sure.’
‘If it surfaces,’ Grace said.
‘It will, I guarantee. It may be the biggest value item they’ve taken, but it’s also the most dangerous for them.’
25
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE. BUT IT HELPS!
Some offices had that sign up as a joke, but there was no sign here. You had to be crazy to do this job. Really, you did. Being crazy was probably the best qualification, Gareth Dupont thought. And he was crazy all right, he knew that. He’d done drugs, done time for GBH – the jerk he’d beaten up had deserved it for goosing his girl in a pub, but maybe it hadn’t been worth the two years he’d served in prison and the criminal record, he reflected. And more recently, he’d done serious time for burglary.
Gareth Dupont was thirty-three. He had handsome, olive-skinned looks and shiny dark hair from his mother’s Hispanic genes, along with a toned body from obsessive weight training in gyms and his passion for Salsa dancing. He’d made a shedload of money in a Spanish-based telesales stock market scam – most of which had gone up his nose – sold loft insulation until Friday, and now, at the start of this new week after the Bank Holiday, was selling advertising space in sports club magazines for the Brighton-based company Mountainpeak Publishing. In addition he had his sideline, which could, on occasion, become a nice little earner. Also, he talked to God a lot. Occasionally God talked back, but not as often as he would have liked. Recently, he reckoned, God was pretty displeased with him. Quite rightly. But hey, you couldn’t always be perfect. God had to understand that.
After school, he’d toyed with becoming a monk. Except, he realized at the last moment that he liked women too much. And booze. And coke. And the money to buy them. But the pull was always there. Something about a monk’s cell. A sanctuary. One day, but not right now. Right now, telesales gave him good money, which he needed because he was always skint by the end of every weekend, and all the more so after a long weekend. Skint and usually hungover. And today he was very skint and badly hungover.