There wasn’t much else of any real value in the room, from what he could see. A few family photos in nice frames, some vases filled with flowers, a large television, a pair of tall Sonos speakers. Then he focused on the painting hanging on the wall, which he’d photographed in detail, front and back, on Saturday night. Not his kind of thing, a bit chocolate-boxy in his opinion — he liked old Brighton prints, and some pictures that local modern artists painted of the broken West Pier and the beach huts along in Hove — a few of which he’d bought on the rare occasions when he’d had spare cash. Isabella really liked them, too, and that pleased him.
He worked quickly, lifting the painting off the wall and setting it down on the floor. Unwrapping the copy, he had to admit he was impressed by just how good a job the artist had done, even down to the detail on the back, and the identical thin string looped between two hooks. He’d have struggled to tell the difference, he reckoned.
Then he heard a car approaching outside and slowing down.
He held his breath, his brain momentarily paralysed.
Shit, no no no.
He saw the blue and yellow Battenberg markings of the front of the police car crawling down the hill and fell to his knees and out of sight, his heart knocking seven bells out of his chest.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
He cursed his stupidity in breaking his own golden rule of never entering a building without having a planned exit route. At the rear of the house was a garden, with a high fence around, which he wouldn’t be able to climb. His only way out would be through the front door or around the side of the house. Straight into the arms of the Plod.
He crawled close to the window on his hands and knees and risked a peep. There were two uniformed officers in the car, a bulky male in the passenger seat, the female driving, both peering at the house. The male was saying something, whether to his colleague or into the radio Archie couldn’t tell.
Shit.
He ducked down. Had they seen him? Had someone reported him? Had he triggered a concealed alarm?
You idiot. You idiot.
God, if they nicked him it would be goodbye to his dream, to everything. He’d be straight back in the big house, without passing GO. It would be goodbye to Isabella. And it would be goodbye to the £50,000 bail that his benefactor had put up — and would doubtless want back.
Shit, shit, shit.
He heard the rattle of the car’s engine. Listened for the sound of a door opening, his entire body throbbing. So much to lose, he was thinking. Isabella had taken next week off work and he’d booked a room for two nights in a lovely-looking hotel in the New Forest. He figured he could just make it work between his appearances at Brighton police station that were part of his bail conditions. Tomorrow he had planned to nip into the town centre and buy a ring and surprise her by proposing to her over dinner on their first night in the hotel. He’d had a lot of false starts in his life, he knew, he hadn’t been so clever in his previous choices of partners, but Isabella was the one. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, no question in his mind at all.
And no question in his mind at all that if he got done for burglary while he was out on bail, she wouldn’t be giving him any more second chances. He’d already used his last one up.
Then, to his immense relief, he heard the car drive on. Risking another peep over the windowsill, he saw the rear of the patrol car disappear down the street.
He hung the replacement up, all the time checking through the window. Then clumsily, in his hurry to get out of there, he pulled the bubble wrap around the original, securing it with the roll of gaffer tape he had brought along, followed by the brown paper, into a right mess of a parcel.
Checking he had hung the copy straight, he slipped out the back door, using the ruler and elastic band to replace the safety chain and then his tools to re-lock the door.
As he strode back up the hill, with his seemingly undelivered parcel, he was smiling. The Kiplings would never know. Job done!
All he had to do now was the handover in the pub car park at 8 p.m. tonight and he’d get the balance of the payment. Plenty enough to buy Isabella a nice ring, and to pay for a glorious week ahead in their New Forest love nest, loads of drinks, nice meals and wild sex.
And just maybe, his brief reckoned, because he hadn’t actually nicked anything at Hope Manor, and because prisons were overcrowded, he might get away with a suspended sentence when his trial came up in three months’ time.
Whatever. He planned to get that ring onto Isabella’s finger as quickly as possible. And a registry office wedding as soon after that as they could.
The future sorted. Well almost. He still needed one big job, the one that Hope Manor would have been, to pay for his daughter through veterinary college. Just that one final big one, and he had a list of houses to choose from. But for the next ten days, he didn’t need to worry about a thing.
He climbed back into the car with a big smile on his face. Happy days!
53
Saturday, 2 November
‘Happy days, boss!’ Robert Kilgore said, standing in Piper’s office and presenting him with the clumsily wrapped package. ‘As you Brits say!’
Piper, his face revealing nothing, as usual, took a pair of scissors from a drawer. He carefully removed the brown paper, cut through the gaffer tape securing the bubble wrap, and finally lifted the picture clear.
Kilgore beamed as his boss studied the front carefully, then turned it around and examined the back. Then the front again. Even though it was virtually impossible to read anything in his expression, Kilgore saw what he interpreted as the shadow of a flicker of doubt.
Then Piper brought it close to his face and sniffed.
An instant later he slammed it down on his desk. ‘This is a forgery,’ he said. ‘This is a fucking forgery!’
Robert Kilgore had seen his boss angry plenty of times over the past fifteen years he’d worked for him, but he’d never seen him as angry as this. He was like one of those fireworks that kept firing exploding bombshells into the air, each one bigger and louder than the previous.
Piper stood, apoplectic, behind his desk, the debris of bubble wrap and brown paper strewn around him, as he held up the painting again. ‘It’s a fucking forgery!’
‘This is what Archie Goff removed from the Kiplings’ living room wall, sir.’ It was partly due to his Southern breeding and partly due to the sheer coldness Piper exuded that he rarely, in all these years, used his boss’s first name. And Piper only used his last name when he was angry. He was seriously angry now.
Piper shook his head. ‘No, Kilgore, it’s what that toe-rag, Goff, told you he’d removed from the Kiplings’ wall. I know that Antiques Roadshow expert, Oliver Desouta, I’ve bought pictures from his gallery, and I called him on Monday morning, to ask him his opinion — what he really thought. He told me that while he would need more time to fully establish its provenance, that he was as certain as he could be, with his forty years’ experience of the art world, specializing in French old masters, that it was the genuine article. Didn’t you fucking smell it?’
‘I did not, sir, no. It was all wrapped up, as I brought it to you just now.’
Piper shook his head, all the explosions fired from his shell now, and sat back down, a dangerously simmering husk. ‘We bailed him out because he was recommended, you told me, as the finest house burglar in the county.’
‘That is correct, sir.’