Jesus. Calm down.
She was shaking. Trying to think clearly. To get to her school she needed to turn right at the roundabout. If the car behind turned right also it would be a further indication it was following. She was almost tempted to climb out, walk up to it and ask whoever was in it what the hell they were doing. But of course they might not have been following her, and then she’d have looked stupid. And besides, the cars in front were moving again.
Finally, she reached the roundabout. As she exited, the Range Rover followed.
Another option was looming in a few hundred yards. Worthing, Lewes or to the direction of her school.
But she didn’t want the driver of the Range Rover seeing where she worked. Instead, she drove onto the A27, heading uphill in the direction of the Sussex University campus and Lewes beyond, but she had a plan if the Range Rover still followed her.
Shit.
It did.
A mile ahead, she knew, there was a slip road left, leading to yet another roundabout. She took it.
So did the Range Rover.
Fuck you!
What was its game? she wondered. Trying to intimidate her? Was someone going to get out and confront her when she finally stopped? She glanced at her phone on the passenger seat beside her. Should she dial 999 and ask for the police?
And say what?
Um, there’s a Range Rover that’s been behind me for a while, I think it might be following me. I think it might have followed me before. But I’m not sure.
The call handler would ask her for its registration, which she didn’t have.
She looked at the car clock. 8.42. She was due to take a Geography class at 9 a.m. She couldn’t go on playing this game, she needed to lose this bastard and get to the school. As she reached the roundabout, thinking wildly, it occurred to her what to do. The safe place.
She swung around to the right, reached another roundabout and took the second left, down the hill, past the old Sussex Police CID HQ.
The Range Rover was still following.
And now she was certain. And glad of her plan. Reaching the bottom of the hill, she braked sharply without indicating, and swung, almost too fast, into the entrance of the ASDA car park.
The Range Rover followed.
The superstore opened early morning, and as she had hoped, the car park was already fairly busy at this hour. She made a loop around, passing the filling station and heading towards the store itself. The Range Rover continued to follow as if attached to her rear bumper by a leash. Then Freya saw a space close to the main entrance. OK, Big Boy, showtime. Confront me here if you dare.
She drove straight in, turned the engine off and climbed out of the car defiantly.
And stopped in her tracks.
The Range Rover had pulled into a bay a short distance along, in the row behind, rear door and tailgate both open. A pert yummy-mummy, in skinny jeans and bomber jacket, blonde hair scooped through the back of a jockey cap, was busy unfolding a stroller. Through the rear door, Freya could see a toddler, swathed in pink, in a baby seat.
41
Tuesday, 22 October
Roy Grace, sipping a strong coffee, checked his watch, then, as if for back-up confirmation, checked the clock on the wall of the conference room. 9.01 a.m. He addressed Velvet Wilde and Norman Potting. ‘The action I gave you yesterday to find and interview the couple with the Fragonard painting on Antiques Roadshow. Any luck?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Wilde said. ‘We contacted the producer, Robert Murphy, who was understandably reluctant to give us the name of the couple. But when we explained the situation to him, and scanned and sent copies of our warrant cards, he was helpful and gave us their names, a Mr and Mrs Kipling. He’s a builder and she’s deputy head of Patcham High School. It wasn’t then hard to find their address in Mackie Crescent, Patcham — very coincidentally the previous residence of a former Sussex officer, Steve Curry and his wife Tracey.’
Grace smiled.
‘DS Potting and I visited Mrs Kipling late yesterday afternoon, sir,’ Wilde said. ‘She told us her husband was in London meeting with an auction house. At the time we spoke to her she’d not heard from her husband. She tried to call him while we were there but was unable to reach him. She left a message.’
‘What time was that?’ Grace asked.
She looked down at her notes. ‘5.35 p.m., sir.’
‘Have either of you heard from her since?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What did she tell you about the painting?’
‘She said her husband, Harry, had bought it in a car boot sale some weeks earlier, for twenty quid. At that time it was just a mediocre portrait of an old lady — which she hated. He told her he’d bought it because he liked the frame and thought they could put something else into it. When they took it home, they left it, unintentionally, exposed to the sunlight, because they’d pretty much forgotten about it — they buy a lot of bric-a-brac, it’s one of their hobbies. Then they saw that some of the surface painting had melted away and there was something else beneath. Her husband rang an art expert he’d done some building work for, Daniel Hegarty, to ask for advice on how to clean off the surface painting—’
Potting interrupted, ‘Daniel Hegarty is an old rogue! I nicked him years ago for forging vehicle logbooks.’
‘He’s come a long way since then, Norman,’ Luke Stanstead said. ‘He’s now considered to be an accomplished artist.’
Grace frowned and made a note in his notebook. ‘He’s been on my radar, too, but I can’t recall exactly when. Thanks, Luke.’ He nodded to Wilde to continue.
‘Freya — Mrs Kipling — told us that they’d heard Antiques Roadshow was coming to a venue in Sussex and they decided to take it there, to see if the painting beneath, which looked old to them, might be of any value.’
‘Did you believe her?’ Grace looked at both detectives in turn.
‘Yes,’ Wilde said.
Potting nodded. ‘I did, chief. She’s a nice lady, I didn’t get any sense of criminal activity. She is what it says on the tin.’
‘Best before?’ Wilde quipped.
42
Wednesday, 23 October
Shortly after 5 p.m., Archie Goff was as usual eating his evening meal perched on the toilet. Chicken tagliatelle — well, some chewy lumps of protein that might once have had some brief and horrible existence in a battery farm, interred beneath slimy tendrils of pasta — with steamed jam sponge and fast-congealing custard for dessert. The television was on in the background, and his cellmate, the Home Secretary, was in a gloomy mood, prodding his plastic fork around the vegetarian moussaka in his foil tray.
‘You all right, mate?’ Archie asked. ‘You don’t look too happy.’
‘Not had the best of days. My wife’s filing for divorce, and I met my brief earlier who didn’t have good news. Reckons I’ll be lucky if I get only ten years.’
‘Shit. Bummer about the missus — you love her?’
He shrugged, raised a hand and wiggled it in the air. ‘It’s the kids. Hate the idea of being one of those dads that gets to see them once every four weeks or whatever shit it is.’
‘Can’t the Home Secretary pull any strings?’
He gave a wan smile. ‘Very funny.’
At that moment, one of the duty officers on their wing, a broad-shouldered woman with short, spiky hair, appeared in their doorway. She wore the same deadpan expression as always, and whenever she spoke to any of the prisoners, her voice was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but faintly, nobody-home, robotic. ‘Mr Goff,’ she said. ‘You’re being released on bail. You will be free to leave after 7 a.m. tomorrow. The possessions you had with you at the time of your arrest will be handed to you then.’