A couple in their mid-forties were standing in front of a rather fine and clearly very old painting of two young lovers in period dress, in an ornate frame. The couple were being addressed by the fine arts expert Oliver Desouta, whom Grace recognized as a veteran of this show.
The woman was in a floral sundress with a wide-brimmed straw hat; the man, evidently her husband, with unruly brown hair and wearing a rumpled cream linen suit, looked like a newspaper reporter out of a 1950s movie. Both wore the eager, puppy-like expressions of so many people featured on this show, waiting for the magical pronouncement of the value of what they had brought along, that might – just – be life-changing for them.
Then the flamboyantly dressed Desouta said, ‘Are you familiar at all with the works of Jean-Honoré Fragonard?’
And Roy Grace jerked upright, almost spilling his glass of wine. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘What?’ Cleo asked.
But he leaned forward, riveted, without answering.
38
Sunday, 20 October
Perspiring heavily, on the sixth mile of his treadmill run, Piper was irritated by the sound of his phone cutting out the soundtrack of the fourth episode of series three of Game of Thrones playing on the television screen in front of him. He glanced down at the display and saw it was Robert Kilgore calling. He ignored it and carried on, finishing mile seven, then mile eight, ignoring three further calls from Kilgore, then dutifully doing his three minutes of cool-down.
When he was done, he stepped off the treadmill, went through his routine of stretches, then drank some cold water from the dispenser, debating whether to call Kilgore back or wait until the morning.
The phone rang again. Sweaty from his exertions, Piper answered curtly, ‘What do you want, Bobby? This had better be good to call me on a Sunday night.’
The soft Southern voice said, ‘This is good, boss. This is very good. You anywhere near a television?’
Kilgore knew full well his boss had a television in just about every room in the house, including all the toilets.
‘Why?’
‘Antiques Roadshow.’
‘Why would I want to watch that stupid show? A load of dumb fucking morons thinking they’ve found something of value in their attics or their dead granny’s handbag?’
Calm as ever, Robert Kilgore said, ‘I think you ought to take a look at tonight’s episode. Take a look right away, check it out on catch-up. Then call me back.’
‘What is this? Don’t play fucking games with me, Bobby. What is it?’
‘A solution to your mathematical puzzle. Remember the one you set me, sir? A few weeks back? Some kind of riddle, sir.’
‘I don’t do riddles.’
‘Beg pardon, but back in September you set me a riddle. Y’asked me if I knew the difference between five million and fifty million pounds? Remember?’
‘I did?’
‘The three Fragonards on your wall. Spring, Autumn, Winter. Anything coming back now?’
‘Uh huh. Kind of.’
‘Watch tonight’s Antiques Roadshow on catch-up or iPlayer or whatever. Then call me back, doesn’t matter what time. I don’t reckon I’ll be sleeping much and nor will you.’
‘I always sleep well.’
‘Watch that show and you won’t. Trust me. I’m guessing you’re gonna be awake all night.’
39
Monday, 21 October
Roy Grace had been woken around 2 a.m. by the pitiful squealing outside, somewhere close, of a creature being taken by a fox, and furious barking from Humphrey. Worried that a fox might somehow have got into their now well-protected chicken coop, he’d pulled on his dressing gown and slippers and gone outside, with Humphrey in tow, to check. But all was quiet in the coop. Probably an unfortunate rabbit.
Just as he’d drifted back into sleep, Noah had begun wailing from a nightmare. Cleo had gone to comfort him and carried him back into bed with them. From then on, Roy had lain awake pretty much all night, or so it now felt as he looked at the smart metal tracker ring Cleo had bought him for his last birthday to monitor his steps, sleep and all kinds of other metrics.
Just gone 5.45 a.m. and he was wide, wide awake. Too bloody awake. Cleo was sound asleep, as was Noah. Right now, with her advanced pregnancy, her obstetrician had advised her to get as much sleep as possible.
He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Then, after what seemed like a good half hour, but was only seven minutes according to his watch, he gave up, slipped as quietly as possible out of bed, to not disturb Cleo and their son, and walked through into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind him. Then he checked his sleep on the app on his phone.
Total sleep: 4.10
Efficiency: 50%
Restfulness: Pay attention
REM sleep: 24 minutes
Deep sleep: 32 mins
Shit. Thanks for that, Antiques Roadshow! A big day of meetings ahead to get through and on a fraction of the sleep he needed. He decided to deal with it the way he always handled stress, which was to go out for a run with Humphrey.
Half an hour later, on top of the Downs in the breaking dawn, maintaining a steady pace, with a happy dog bounding along near him, Grace was feeling a lot better, and thinking through what he had seen last night. The couple on the Antiques Roadshow, with the painting that the expert, Oliver Desouta, had become really animated about. He hadn’t gone as far as declaring it to be an original, but his message to the couple was very clear. That it might be.
They’d come over as pretty ordinary folk, telling Desouta how they’d bought a painting in a car boot sale, and then discovered there was another painting beneath. Grace didn’t think they were lying – why would they have been? If they were crooks, they’d never have gone public on that show, would they?
Oliver Desouta had told the couple that the painting could well be one of the four long-lost paintings Jean-Honoré Fragonard had created of the four seasons, a decade before the French Revolution and the Terror that followed under the regime of the maniac Robespierre.
Charlie Porteous had been murdered after openly touting around a painting he believed might be another in the same series by Fragonard, Spring.
The Antiques Roadshow was one of the most popular programmes on television, watched by many millions. Might whoever had murdered Charlie Porteous have seen it? And if not, might someone close to the killer have?
He needed to find that couple and interview them. Both to establish how they had come by this painting – if they’d told the truth on the show – and even more importantly, if the painting was genuine, how to safeguard them? He would get on it first thing tomorrow.
As he arrived back home, letting himself and Humphrey in through the garden gate, their newly acquired arrogant cockerel, whom Cleo had nicknamed Billy Big Balls, crowed loudly.
‘Go for it, Billy!’ Grace said. ‘But don’t take me on, because I’m a far meaner son-of-a-bitch than you’ll ever be!’
40
Monday, 21 October
After dropping Tom off at his friend’s to walk to school, at 8.15 a.m., Freya groaned in frustration at the roadworks that were causing a long back-up of traffic to the route she would have taken to her own school, to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic by cutting through the backroads of Patcham.