‘Oh really.’ The voice softened dangerously. ‘I somehow thought you might say that. So maybe you would like to write this down so you can remind yourself any time you need to: so far the boy’s in one piece. If you don’t want me to send you bits of the annoying brat in the post to stiffen your resolve, Honeysett, then you’ll do as you’re told. You got that?’ The faint voice had become poisonous with anger. However much I tried I found it impossible to place it. It could be anyone, anywhere. I had always presumed the owner of the voice to be male, but the more I thought about it the less sure I could be even of that.
‘Got it,’ I confirmed.
‘You’re the one who fucked up the Telfer thing, so you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. So here it is: the exhibition is on for another week. That’s how long you’ve got to get the Rodin out and I’ll swap you the kid for it.’
‘That’s what you said when you told me to get the goddamn stamp.’
‘I’m not bloody ready for you. You keep that stamp safe, get the Rodin out and by then I’ll be ready to do the swap and I’ll be out of your hair. I’ll be out of everyone’s hair and gone for ever.’
‘I can’t see how it can be done. It’s a museum, not some two-bit private gallery. They’ve got excellent security, I presume.’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary. And you have a reputation to live up to, Honeysett. You got into the Telfer place all right. Just a bit careless on the way home, I’d say. You got the Penny Black out of Connabear’s place. You’ll manage this one too. And if not then you haven’t lost a thing, all you have to do is explain to mummy dearest that you fucked up and her boy is toast.’
‘Let me talk to the boy. I must have confirmation that he’s alive before — ’
‘You don’t need a fucking thing, all you need to do is shut up and deliver. You do as you’re told and that’ll keep your letter box free of nasty surprises.’
‘I won’t need any reminders, thanks,’ I assured him.
‘Good boy. Now get cracking, you got work to do. I’ll be watching.’ The connection was cut.
‘Well? What did he say?’ Annis asked impatiently. ‘What does he want now?’
I sat down heavily. ‘They want me to steal a sculpture in exchange for Louis.’
‘What?’ Tim and Annis said almost together.
‘There’s a temporary exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery. It’s got a bronze of a dancer by Rodin in it and they want me to nick it.’
Tim groaned with heavy premonition. ‘What next, the crown bleeding jewels?’
‘Our last task, apparently. We’ll exchange the stamp and sculpture for the boy.’
Annis looked straight into my eyes and gave a minute shake of the head. ‘Victoria Art Gallery, that’s. . big.’
‘Big mistake, if you ask me,’ Tim insisted.
‘I told Jill to expect complications and last-minute glitches, but I’m not sure how she’ll take a setback like this.’
‘I’ll tell her, if you like,’ offered Annis. ‘I’m better with the tears and tissues.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it. Tim?’
Tim had been staring out of the window. ‘Hn? What?’
‘The Victoria Art Gallery?’
‘Oh yes. Utter madness.’
‘This isn’t Norway, you know, where you can just waltz into a museum and help yourself to the Munch painting of your choice,’ Tim complained. ‘How often has it been nicked now? Three times? You get the feeling they don’t like The Scream much. Perhaps we should see if the exhibition goes to Oslo.’
We were leaning on the balustrade that runs along the Grand Parade, occasionally glancing up at the tall façade of the Victoria Gallery, trying to look casual in the annoying drizzle that had returned after a short interlude of broken cloud. Tim thought the guys who had dogged his steps for the past few days had for some reason given up following him. Who they were remained a mystery to him. I had a different theory, but kept it to myself. I thought it much more likely that after having lost Tim twice the incompetent pair had been replaced with a couple of specimens that knew what they were doing. I didn’t hold out much hope that we weren’t being watched right now.
Below us the river Avon fell noisily over the weir, swollen with days and days of near continuous rain.
‘We’ve got a few days,’ I reminded him urgently.
‘So you keep saying.’ Tim’s dense curly hair had plastered itself around his face in the wet, giving him an even hairier appearance. He didn’t look happy. ‘It’s sheer madness. I mean, look at it. The ground floor of the exhibition space is completely shuttered, the only way in is through the front door. So climbing in at street level is hardly going to work, is it?’ He poured scorn over my earlier suggestion that we might just smash a window and be in and out before anyone could shout ‘Thief!’ ‘If it was some piddly item in a glass vitrine then you could try a daylight smash and grab with a stolen motorbike waiting outside and take your chances. Drive the bike into the back of a waiting van outside the CCTV area and Robert’s your mum’s brother. But a statue like that must weigh three stone if you include the plinth. You can carry it but you won’t do much running with it. The first civic-minded art lover’s going to chuck her brolly between your legs and send you sprawling. Nah, not a chance. Well, let’s have a look-see then. But whatever you do don’t take your hat off. They’re bound to have CCTV in there. Once the Rodin’s gone walkies they’re going to have a close look at their videos — they probably keep about three weeks’ worth before they reuse them — and ours are going to be the two mugs CID will recognize.’ He forced a baseball cap on his own woolly curls. ‘Right, put on your reading glasses as well.’
I hesitated. ‘How d’you know I have reading glasses?’ I’d only got my first pair recently and was still a bit shy about it.
‘Annis told me. Let’s see ’em.’
‘The traitor.’ I took the glasses from their case and stuck them on my nose. I’d gone for the old-fashioned horn-rimmed specs. Well, it had worked for Cary Grant.
‘Annis was right, they do make you look intelligent. Okay, let’s go in.’
We crossed the road, dodging traffic, and entered through the heavy double doors. As soon as I stood in the foyer I felt like a schoolboy planning a prank. Tim pushed through the next set of double doors and into the downstairs exhibition space. I sauntered in after him, trying to look as though I wasn’t part of a double act. Immediately to the left was a counter where catalogues, slides and postcards could be bought. Thankfully the blue-suited, tightly permed woman behind the counter didn’t give us a second look. Along with half the planet she was too busy looking at a computer screen. There were a fair number of people walking about, silently or talking in low voices. I tried to appear casual and bored but failed miserably. The Rodin bronze in the centre of the room was all I saw. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It seemed to get bigger the longer I looked at it. We were going to steal that? A limb at a time perhaps. .
It was a male dancer, nude, yet curiously sexless. He stood on tiptoe on his right leg, with his other leg improbably high in the air, the right hand holding the foot; the left arm was flung into the air and his gaze appeared to be following that movement. I tried to imagine making that move and the thought alone made my tendons ache. The dancer’s face was deeply serious, which was hardly surprising; the model must have been trussed up like an oven-ready broiler to be able to hold that pose and it must have hurt like hell. It was simply called The Dancer and on loan from the foolhardy Rodin Museum in Paris. The bronze was very dark, nearly black in places, and looked extremely heavy. The foot of the figure that was in touch with the ground grew out of a highly polished mahogany base and the whole thing stood on a standard painted museum plinth in the centre of the long room. Several spotlights were trained on it from the gantry above but no particular security features were visible anywhere. It was a tantalizing twelve yards from the door which led to the foyer and the street. Maybe on a couple of skateboards. . a distraction burglary. . I fished out my mobile and took pictures from all angles. Photography was not allowed inside the museum, it said so everywhere, but there were enough people making enough noise to mask the annoying little ‘ketchee’ sound the camera made.