‘We did the Dyke Road Avenue House.’
‘Yeah? Any bother?’
‘No, there was no alarm, like you said. The dog wasn’t any trouble either, like you said it wouldn’t be.’
‘I do my research,’ Langiotti said. ‘You got some good gear for me?’
Dai pulled the first sack out; it clinked as he put it down, then he untied the neck and Langiotti peered in, taking a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and pulling them on. He removed a silver Georgian fruit bowl from the sack and held it up, turning it around until he could see the hallmark. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice.’
‘We took the Georgian silver — we identified it from the pictures you gave us from the insurance company. There was a nice-looking clock we saw that wasn’t on the list, but it looked good to us.’
‘Anything else that wasn’t on the list?’
The two Welshmen looked at each other and shook their heads.’
‘I wouldn’t want to find out you’d nicked something that you didn’t tell me about, know what I mean? That you’d kept something for yourselves, yeah? It’s when people try to flog stuff on the side that trouble happens. That’s how you get nicked, you know what I’m saying?’
Dai Lewellyn pointed at the two sacks. ‘Everything we took is in these.’
Langiotti took each item out, carefully setting it down on the trestles. Then he ran through the haul, checking each item against the insurance inventory, and jotting numbers down on his notepad. When he had finished he said, ‘Right, by my reckoning, I’ve got a market value here of forty-five thousand quid, less what I’ll have to knock off. We agreed ten per cent of value, right?’
The two Welshmen nodded.
‘Right, come across to my office and I’ll square up, and give you tonight’s address. Got a good one for you tonight, I have.’
Their eyes lit up greedily.
The Cunninghams took the two detectives into the rooms where items had been stolen, making an inventory as they went. But with the couple constantly interrupting and contradicting each other, it took some time for Roy Grace and Bill Stoker to get a clear idea of the sequence of events and of what had been taken.
The dining room had been the most badly affected. Caroline Cunningham pointed out, tearfully, the bare sideboard where much of the fine silver had stood, as well as a Georgian silver fruit bowl, which, she told them, had been in her family for five generations, and had stood in the centre of the fine oval dining table.
Back in the conservatory again and sipping another cup of coffee, Grace studied his notes and asked them to go through the events of the early morning once more. Crafty Cunningham said he was roused by a whimpering sound, which he thought was his wife having a nightmare, and happened to notice on the beside clock that it was just past 5 a.m.; then he went back to sleep. He went downstairs at 7.10 a.m. to find the burglars had broken in through the toilet window, which was along the side of the house. The glass had been cut neatly, rather than broken, which meant their entry had been almost silent. They had left via the kitchen door, which the Cunninghams had found unlocked.
Roy Grace stared out at the large, beautifully tended garden, with its swimming pool and tennis court, and did a quick calculation. The burglars had entered before sunrise. OK, it was logical for them to have broken in while it was still dark. But why at 5 a.m.? That risked that daylight would be breaking when they left. Why not much earlier in the night? Or was this the last of a series of houses the perpetrators were burgling last night? But if that was the case, surely the police would have heard of other burglaries by now — it was nearly 9.30 a.m.
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what time the intruders might have left?’ He addressed both the Cunninghams.
They shook their heads.
‘What time are your newspapers delivered?’
‘About a quarter to seven,’ Caroline Cunningham said.
‘If you could give me the details of your newsagent, we’ll check with the paperboy to see if he noticed anything unusual. Also, what time does your post normally arrive?’
‘About 7.30 a.m.,’ the old man said.
‘We’ll check with the post office also.’
Then the two detectives went back carefully over the inventory of stolen items, reading it all out to the couple and asking them several times if there was anything else that had been taken which they might have overlooked. It was clearly a big haul, and the burglars seemed to be professionals who knew exactly what they were taking.
As the Cunninghams showed the two detectives to the front door, thanking them for their help, Crafty suddenly said, ‘Oh my God, my stamps!’ He clapped his hand to his forehead in sudden panic.
‘Stamps, sir?’ Roy Grace asked.
Caroline Cunningham gave her husband an astonished look. ‘You didn’t check, darling?’
‘No… I… I… dammit, I didn’t!’
‘Where are they this week?’
Crafty looked bewildered for a moment. He stroked his chin.
‘My husband’s a stamp collector,’ Caroline explained. ‘But he’s paranoid about them. Twenty-five years ago his collection was stolen — we always suspected the housekeeper had something to do with it because he kept them hidden in a particular place in his den, and the thieves went straight to it. Ever since, he’s been paranoid — he changes the hiding place every few weeks.’
‘You don’t use a safe, sir?’ Roy Grace asked.
‘Never trusted them,’ Crafty replied. ‘My parents had a safe in their house jemmied open. I prefer my hiding places.’
‘I keep telling him he’s bloody stupid,’ his wife said. ‘But he won’t listen.’
‘What’s the value of your collection, Mr Cunningham?’ Bill Stoker asked.
‘About one hundred thousand pounds,’ he said absently, scratching his head now, thinking. ‘I… I had them under the carpet beneath the dining table,’ he said. ‘But then I moved them… um… ah, yes, of course, of course! I remember!’
With the rest of them in tow, he hurried through an internal door into the integral double garage. A large, elderly Rover was parked in there, along with an assortment of tools and two lawnmowers, one sitting on top of a hessian mat. He pulled the mower back and, like an excited child, knelt and lifted the mat.
Then he looked up in utter disbelief. ‘They’ve gone,’ he said lamely, looking gutted. ‘They’ve gone.’
Both detectives frowned. ‘You kept a hundred thousand pounds worth of stamps beneath an old mat in the garage?’ Bill Stoker said, incredulously.
‘They’re sealed,’ he said. ‘And there’s no damp in the garage.’
‘How easy would the stamps be to identify, sir?’ Roy Grace asked.
‘Very easy if someone tried to sell them as a single collection. They’re all British Colonial from the Victorian period and there are some very rare ones among them. But not so easy if they sold them individually or in strips.’
‘And you have them insured, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘No insurance stipulation about having them locked in a safe or a bank vault?’
He shook his head. ‘Only have to do that if the house is empty.’
‘Do you have any photographs of these stamps, Mr Cunningham?’ Roy Grace asked.
‘Yes, I do. I can make you a copy of the list the insurance company has.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the young detective said. ‘That would be very helpful. We’ll be organizing some house-to-house inquiries over the next few days.’
Afterwards in the car, heading back to the police station, Roy Grace said, ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
‘About the Cunninghams?’
He nodded.
‘He’s dodgy,’ Bill Stoker said. ‘Well dodgy.’