Burying the Past (20 page)

Fran was horribly aware that she was letting the conversation run away from her. She grasped at part of it as she led the girl out of reception into the body of the building. ‘Tell me how Freya is,' she said. ‘And then I must find a photographer and someone from the team investigating the case this is relevant to.' She paused, embarrassed. ‘Do you need special equipment or anything? A darkened room?'

The girl threw her head back and laughed. ‘It's not witchcraft, Ms Harman. Sometimes it's easier if I sit quietly on my own, but I'm not into what my partner calls jiggery-pokery.'

‘Come and sit in the office the secretaries use: they can organize a cup of tea while I deal with the formalities.'

Wren sat – dared Mark allow himself to use the word
perched
?– behind a vast new desk, which suggested a permanence about his appointment that made Mark suddenly and quite deeply resentful, as if he'd been usurped, and hadn't flatly declined the offer of temporary upgrading for himself. As for a chair for Mark himself, there was no sign of one.

Wren was tapping something – a small sheaf of papers – on his desk. Mark had an idea that the finger doing the tapping had been manicured. Fran would have asked reasonably why it shouldn't have been; Mark merely found it something else to loathe.

But not as much as being kept standing like a naughty schoolboy. He looked round for a chair and dragged it forward, sitting and ostentatiously crossing his legs and then, as Wren raised an eyebrow in his direction, his arms. ‘You sent for me, sir?' he asked, not quite insolently.

The finger moved to the TV remote. ‘This is not a good situation, Turner. Deal with it.' Wren seemed to signal that the interview was over by leaning forward and moving his mouse, eyes now fixed to the new computer screen.

‘To what situation do you refer, sir?' But even as he framed the question as pedantically as he could, he knew – with an absolute certainty – that it must be something to do with Sammie, Dave and the house in Loose.

Wren pressed the zapper, clicking the mouse with the other hand. ‘As I said, deal with it.' Not quite yawning with boredom, Wren picked up his mobile, not even bothering to look at the images he'd summoned up.

Kim was all bustle and stir, finding forms and documents Fran didn't know even existed – not bad for a woman who'd just arrived in the force. Ten out of ten for homework. She even wanted the Townend girl's prints and DNA, but received such a hostile look from the girl that she dropped the suggestion, coming up with protective clothing and gloves. ‘Everything in here is covered by surveillance cameras,' she said. ‘Do you want to come to the loo to change?'

Lina Townend flickered an ironic glance at Fran: this wasn't sitting quietly on her own, was it? At last she said, but with an amused edge to her voice, ‘Just now I need peace and quiet. Could you clear the room? Ms Harman may stay.'

Kim huffed and puffed her way out.

‘Such busyness.' Townend sighed. ‘OK, let the dog see the rabbit. What do you want me to check first?'

Fran shrugged. ‘You're in charge. But I'm most interested in that lovely desk and the very complicated cabinet. In particular, accessing the cabinet's compartments. And of course, we've no key.'

‘Sometimes it's a matter of knowing where to look,' Townend said quietly. ‘Sometimes,' she added more ominously, ‘it's a matter of waiting for the piece to tell you what it wants you to know.'

Fran managed not to scream. Possibly because the young woman had been reassuringly professional so far, this sudden attack of feyness seemed all the worse. As quietly as she could she slipped out of the store and returned with two stacking chairs. They might not be Hepplewhite, but at least both she and Townend could listen to the other furniture in comfort. To assist even further, she switched off her mobile.

But Townend, now changed, despite the cameras, into her paper suit with her pretty little dress slung on one of Lovage's chairs, was already absorbed in conversation with the writing desk. Fran was about to point out they'd already had the main drawer out and found nothing at all, as if had been thoroughly valeted, when as if from nowhere Townend was flourishing a tiny key. From somewhere came the image of Alice in Wonderland. Had the Tenniel illustration had Alice on one knee? It certainly wouldn't have had her lying on her stomach and then on her back inspecting a desk.

‘It's a very fine piece,' she declared. ‘As I told you, I'm no expert when it comes to furniture, but I'd have thought you were looking at three or four thousand for this.' She came up to sitting position with an ease Fran envied. ‘But I'm damned if I can find anywhere to fit this key.'

‘But – didn't you bring the key with you?'

Townend laughed. ‘Why would I do that? No, it was in the desk. In the drawer.'

‘But my forensic colleagues . . .' Fran stopped. She didn't think this young woman would relish the words
practically took it to pieces
any more than Caffy would have done.

‘Just didn't know where to look, that's all. I don't like to sound like some children's author talking about secret drawers, but often furniture has a drawer or cupboard within another in which to conceal especially precious items. Look, I'll show you.' Standing, she leant inside the drawer, putting her hand right to the back. ‘Put your hand where mine was, reach up and press. There.' She beamed at Fran's startled face.

‘Well, I'm blowed. Amazing. Thank you very much.'

‘Don't thank me till I've done the rest of the job – and found what this little chap belongs to.' She waggled the key.

‘I shall certainly thank you then.' As they started to strip the bubble wrap from Lovage's other pieces, she asked, ‘Do you get asked to do this sort of thing very often?'

‘This is the first time. Sometimes I get asked to tell an owner if a piece is genuine. Mostly I'm just a common or garden antiques dealer.'

Fran shook her head: there was nothing either common or garden about her. ‘How can you tell if a piece is genuine?'

‘How good's your hearing? Can you tell if someone's off-pitch? Because that's what it's like for me. First of all I know, then I look for reasons why I know. Does that make sense?'

‘Possibly. I think coppers have an equivalent nose.'

‘Good coppers,' Townend agreed darkly. ‘Now, how about this chiffonier?'

‘Why that?' Fran wanted to get on to the cabinet.

‘Because if I'm right, we're part of a game of hide and seek. One piece will lead to another. And the chiffonier's got drawers and cupboards for concealing the next clue. Now, will our little key work on that lock?'

‘Isn't that a bit of a long shot?'

‘Not really, because at that period there weren't too many variants in keys – not so many Burglar Bills around, plus maybe the servants were afraid lightning would strike them if they nicked anything. Here you go.'

Fran took the tiny key and tried it in the drawer. It turned easily. ‘Heavens, it might have been made for the lock.' Her face fell. The drawer was empty, even to Townend's experienced search. Likewise the cupboard underneath. ‘But clearly it wasn't.' She waggled it in despair.

‘But she wouldn't have concealed this key for nothing, would she?' Clearly, Townend was entering into the spirit of things. She flicked a smile at Fran. ‘Deduction, of course – nothing to do with intuition or dowsing. Let's see if there's anything here – yes!' She turned the drawer over to reveal another key taped to the underside. ‘Someone was enjoying this. Even misleading us, maybe.' She pointed to the key Fran was fingering resentfully. ‘What was the name Bruce gave me? Dr Lovelace?'

‘Not Lovelace. Lovage.'

‘Right. Dr Lovage. Did he make a living setting crosswords or something?'

‘She. She was a teacher when she lived round here. Caffy's probably told you we bought her old house.'

Townend shook her head. ‘Caffy just told me that there was a job and that I should contact you. She's not one for gossip. Professional to her fingertips, as I'm sure you know.' Her sudden frown was almost forbidding. ‘Anyway, let's move on to the next part of the puzzle. What does this little beauty fit?' She flourished the latest key.

In his situation, Mark would probably have been as annoyed as Wren had been: a TV news item putting your immediate second-in-command in a very poor light was the last thing you wanted when you were trying to feel your way into your post. With every journalistic cliché played for all it was worth, Mark was depicted as an arch villain, intent on evicting an innocent young woman, pregnant with his own grandchild, from her own home, while he basked at his ease in a sprawling Kentish mansion with a woman described as a live-in lover.

Unable to reach Fran – where the hell was she, with her phone switched off? – he called Ms Rottweiler, but could only leave a message. He was on the verge of calling Dave to demand to know his part in this travesty of the truth, when there was a knock on his door. His summons was peremptory, at very least, but Cosmo Dix, the strangest head of Human Resources he'd ever met, but no less admired and held in affection for that, came in as if assured of a welcome.

‘Darling Mark, I know, I know. And I know I'm not really PR, but the poor loves over there are all at sixes and sevens. Redundancies . . . Anyway, worry not: we can deal with this. Fire with fire, dear boy.'

Mark managed a laugh. ‘I don't have so much as a box of matches.'

‘Oh. Yes. You. Do. Heavens, I sound more like a pantomime dame with every breath I take.' He flapped a wrist, camply, drew up a chair, and became every inch a hard-boiled professional. ‘I have press contacts, Mark, but so do you – and especially Fran. That reporter who was being stalked a while back – Dilly Pound, she of
TVInvicta News
. She owes Fran big time – it's not everyone who saves your life. Get her to do a counter piece, presenting you as the victim. Heavens, you're reduced to living in a caravan, for God's sake.'

‘I'm not some hapless East European fruit-picker, though, Cosmo. I'm not living in a virtual shack. It's a veritable Blenheim Palace of a caravan.'

‘Get it off site. Move a few things into a tiny corner of your rectory. Look thin and haggard, not a hint of uniform anywhere. Talk movingly of needing to pay the starving workers toiling away to restore a delightful example of bijou domestic architecture. Stress the retirement angle – tilling your fields. Oh, and there's your skeleton – but it might be better not to dwell on that. Or even mention it. Let me think about that. Come on, Mark, what are you waiting for? Get on that phone now. One, shift the caravan. Two, call la Pound. I'll be back anon.'

Fran knew she should have been doing a million other things, but she couldn't bear to tear herself away from the evidence store. All the main items of Lovage's furniture had now been unwrapped and the next key found. All but the cabinet.

There wasn't a visible keyhole, of course, as Kim and her colleagues had discovered.

‘Don't say we've got to take it apart after all,' Fran breathed as Townend circled it, like a tiger kept from its goat by a strong fence.

‘Absolutely not. Never. Not in the way your colleague would like.' Townend stood still, head slightly cocked, as if literally listening. For what?

At last Fran said, ‘A friend of mine had a new car, big, sleek thing. He mastered the heating system, the music system, all those symbols and figures on the display that tell you you're about to land on Mars. But he couldn't work out how to fill the thing with petrol. There wasn't a lever inside, not that he could see, nor was there a keyhole on the flap covering the filler cap. One day – he was down to his last litre or two – he literally slapped the flap with frustration. And it opened, sweet as a nut.' Where had that come from? Nothing to do with Lovage though.

Townend beamed. ‘I wonder if that's what we've got to do here. Go on, slap it. Very gently, mind you – you don't wallop sixteenth-century Italian cabinets as if they're dodgy drinks dispensers.'

‘You mean I can help?'

‘Why not? If you don't mind any of your colleagues thinking you're off your head.'

‘They do already.' She waved to the surveillance cameras.

And started patting.

‘W
here the fuck have you been?' Mark demanded as she practically skipped along the corridor. ‘Doesn't matter! Turn round and keep walking.'

It was a long time since he'd spoken to her like that, and though he had every right to bollock her if she'd done wrong, these days rebukes felt personal, a threat to all she held precious. And for him to swear at her – she could only put that down to his hellish stress levels.

Once outside the building, she began, ‘What's the problem? I've been—'

‘I needed to find you urgently, and you'd disappeared from the face of the earth. Sammie's got us on the news. No time to swear. This is what Cosmo told me to do . . .'

She tried to take everything in. ‘So you've got the Winnebago moved?'

‘I even had to ask Sally to organize thank-you flowers and a bottle of fizz for Todd Dawes. Think of that. I've never had to ask her to do anything so menial before.'

‘Where are we living, then?' she asked stupidly.

‘I'm trying to explain. You know we talked about camping at the rectory – that's exactly what we're officially, and for tonight at least, doing. Caffy, who is next best thing to a white witch, has conjured from nowhere air beds and sleeping bags. We use the Pact team's cooking things and their loo. Caffy's also removed from the Winnebago all the clothes and toiletries – everything she thinks we'll need – and stowed them in the rectory. And we have to be on the road now, because Dilly's meeting us there – wants to go live on the six thirty local news. She's pulling all the strings she can, and meanwhile you're messing around somewhere or other with your sodding phone and pager off.'