Classic in the Barn (17 page)

‘Is that all right, Bea?' Gloria asked. I wondered what my father would have said if Mrs H. had addressed him as Tone. Then I decided I was getting old and stuffy.

‘Go ahead,' Bea said cordially.

‘I heard the phone ring. Polly always answered it herself, unless she wasn't here, so I didn't take any notice.'

‘Not even of the time?'

‘Oh yes. I just finishing off the kitchen worktops, so it would be about nine thirty. Polly went out a few minutes later and said she'd be back well before eleven if anyone called.'

Such as me, I thought, once more pleased. ‘And you heard what she said on the phone?'

‘Yes. And I heard her say that she'd come down straightaway.'

‘Nothing else?'

‘No. It was only short. There may have been a hello or something. I didn't know she was going to be killed.' Gloria suddenly looked much more like a human being.

‘Did she sound nervous? Pleased? As if she were speaking to a friend, or to a colleague?'

I felt I was sounding like Hercule Poirot, but I needed to know.

‘You could never tell with Polly. Very businesslike she was.'

I tried another tack. ‘Did you know Mike?'

‘No. I've only been with her two years.'

I could hardly ask her in front of Bea whether Polly had had overnight visitors, and I wasn't sure whether it was necessary anyway. If Polly had kept such secrets from Bea, she would have been just as careful in front of Gloria. I didn't seem to have taken things much further, and yet oddly I felt I was. Polly had sounded businesslike – didn't that at least tell me that whomever she'd met it was unlikely to have been Tomas Kasek?

When I returned to the farm, the smell of charred remains still hung heavily in the air, like the dull smell of ashes after a barbecue. Only, this one was a party I wouldn't have wished on anyone. It was a reminder that Tuesday night's conflagration had really happened, however much I longed to pretend that what was out of sight could temporarily be out of my mind too. I had to force myself to go into the farmhouse, where I knew reality would be waiting to greet me.

It was. Zoe and Len were working in my office. They'd given up on the initial HQ and decided on more comfort. The only consolation was that I didn't seem to be expected to take any part in what they were doing. They had apparently not regretted taking Andy up on his offer and declining Harry's, and nor had I. Accepting Harry's invitation into his parlour would be like three flies following a large spider into an unseen web. Len told me that Guy Williams had also offered space in one of his barns, which surprised and pleased me, but it would have been too ill-equipped to establish ourselves successfully, even temporarily. Andy's offer had the advantage of including equipment too. Len had apparently just returned from concluding negotiations. For negotiations read rent. Fair enough, of course, and Zoe was already installed at my desk, demanding from Len every detail of the figures he'd agreed – luckily, she has a gift for finances, as well as for things mechanical. Where Oxford University missed out, Frogs Hill farm cashed in.

After a while, hard at it, while they both shot rebuilding facts and figures at me, I began to reel, and so I took myself into the Glory Boot for a few minutes' breathing space. Even there I felt I wasn't offered escape, only reproach. Headlights stared at me accusingly, classic car posters of the forties and fifties pointed out to me that life could be joyous if only I didn't make such a hash of it, and Giovanni's pictures reminded me that the Glory Boot was a sacred trust and one that I seemed to be on the way to betraying. The name Harry Prince hovered over the whole Glory Boot like a sword of Damocles.

‘Sorry, Dad, I've let you down,' I heard myself mumbling.

No reply. Naturally enough. Even when he was alive, he'd been inclined to answer with a look or grunt, rather than words, if he thought he could get away with it. What wouldn't I give for one of those grunts now?

So, with great effort, I tried. ‘OK, Dad. Lagonda. An extra pocket carefully built in. Polly and Mike. What for? Dodgy car dealing? Money? Peter Winter told me there were rumours about missing money. What sort of money? Just missing – or dirty?' And suddenly I was there, able to raise my head in there without shame.

Dirty money, of course.
Money laundering
.

‘Thanks, Dad,' I said gratefully, and I could have sworn I heard a grunt in reply. Now all I had to do was take the ball and run like hell with it. The first person to take it to was Peter Winter, who had first mentioned it to me, and a soft cushion to land on first.

‘How's it going?' Peter asked, obviously thinking he knew exactly why I'd offered him lunch. With so much going on over the barn, I hadn't been at his disposal over his lost Merc and had even been forced to let the Lagonda question lie fallow until the next day so that I could pull my weight in the sorry mess of Frogs Farm.

I'd arranged to meet Peter in a pub near Holtham. It was crowded with Saturday drinkers and diners, but that helped in a way. No one would be listening to us when they had so much to say themselves.

‘I've got a couple of leads,' I white-lied. ‘Hope to have news soon.'

‘I meant about your barn,' he said mildly.

I'd read him wrongly. ‘Could be better.' I skated quickly over the rest of the dismal prospect before me and went on to talk about Andy Wells' offer of accommodation.

‘Funny chap,' Peter said meditatively. ‘I never took to him, but his heart seems to be in the right place.'

My own feelings exactly, although side by side with Andy's heart lay his self-interest. Ever since I'd seen him with Slugger Sam I'd been suspicious of him. As with the Lagonda, I felt there was something wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was.

‘Did you lose much in the fire?' Peter continued.

‘Bea's Lagonda, I'm afraid, and a couple of other casualties.'

He pulled a face. ‘That's bad.' He asked me a few more polite questions, and then added, ‘Any more news to give me on my Mercedes? I'm holding back on the insurance just in case it comes back pristine. Not much chance of that, I suppose.'

‘Unlikely, I'm afraid.' I waffled on about it probably being still in Britain, where cars were often stolen to order, given an innocent identity at a reception centre and then dispatched to a new owner either here or abroad. He didn't look happy, so I changed the subject hastily and went on to what really interested me. ‘Incidentally, you mentioned rumours about Mike and missing money. Any chance he could have been involved with smuggling cash out or in?'

This was a leap from Peter's earlier stance that Mike was merely a lively entrepreneur who occasionally went astray, but he took it on the chin. ‘Dirty or clean?'

‘Either.'

‘What makes you think the former?'

‘Your comments about the rumours, plus the number of journeys I'm told the Lagonda used to make to continental car shows.'

‘Why the Lagonda in particular?'

‘That could have been the car he used to stash it in. Under the boot floor, perhaps.'

‘It's possible.' He frowned. ‘Risky though. But that might have appealed to Mike. It would have been one way of shifting large sums to somewhere where no questions would be asked. Bit obvious, though, don't you think, to use a Lagonda? A daily driver would be less conspicuous.'

‘No,' I said flatly. ‘He had the excuse of car shows, remember.'

He considered this. ‘I could see him doing what you described just now – stealing cars to order. Not sure about the smuggling cash out.' He thought some more. ‘Mike was a “live for the day” chap. That's why we got on, I suppose. I'm quite the opposite. Mike might not have seen smuggling cash as fraud or laundering, just as common sense. And Polly would have disapproved, that's for sure.'

That was a drawback, I admitted to myself. ‘Perhaps she didn't know.'

‘Polly
would
know. She wasn't into fraud or risks, any more than I am. You have to realize the kind of woman she was. Straight as a die
and
observant. Mike wouldn't have got away with much under her eye – and nor, Jack, would Mike have wanted to. They were a team.'

FOURTEEN

Peter's words rang through my head as I drove back to Frogs Hill.
A team
 . . .
The kind of woman Polly was . . .
Did I know what kind she was? But did Peter, come to that? Astute though he was, he was the kind of friend who would see no wrong, unless he elected to, particularly if the object was a woman. He clearly worshipped Polly.
The kind of woman Polly was . . .
From TV presenter to quiet country life as the wife of a classic car dealer, possibly dodgy, and then to picture framer. Did that add up to a
kind of woman
? No. So perhaps this case wasn't so much about Mike, as the sort of woman Polly was. There could be many interpretations of that, as everyone might know a different Polly. Nevertheless, try starting at the beginning, I told myself. Focus on Polly. I began to warm to this idea. Begin with her daughter.
Right now
. I promptly turned the car into a driveway and drove back to Greensand Farm, hoping that I'd find Bea in on a Saturday afternoon. I was in luck.

‘Humour me.' I almost fell in the door in my haste as Bea opened it.

She looked, I flattered myself, pleased to see me. ‘You're in luck. I'm in a humouring mood.'

I prowled around in that puzzle of a house. Could the Polly I'd assumed her to be have lived with that threadbare carpet, or with the print of an Ernest Shepherd Pooh illustration next to a fine original oil painting of what looked like Aigues-Mortes in the Camargue?

Bea took me to the living room this time, where a tabletop littered with bank papers and spreadsheets testified to the muddle she was still obviously in. ‘Now, tell me what's bugging you,' she said. ‘Not still the Lagonda, is it?'

Although I'd told Bea on the phone that the Lagonda was safe, I'd sworn her to secrecy. ‘Yes and no,' I replied.

She grinned with some effort. ‘It's not top of my conversational agenda at present.'

‘Even if it's the way to find out why she was killed?' I asked gently. I wouldn't mention the secret pocket, not till I knew more about it. It could just have been fixed that way for safe carriage of something other than laundered money. Or maybe Polly's father had used it for smuggling drink or tobacco in his RAF days. A lot of that went on after the liberation of France towards the end of the war. Or perhaps Polly and Mike had simply used the pocket for extra cigarettes, when they were still dutiable in the heady days before the EU. I'd investigate money laundering first, however.

‘But is it the way?' she asked bluntly. ‘Does the Lagonda really have anything to do with her death?'

‘I don't know, Bea. What I need to know before I go any further is what Polly was really like as a person, not just as a mother. I'm judging her from the couple of times I met her, and from what I've been told since. That makes her an enigma.'

‘You make her sound like the Mona Lisa.' Bea began to look interested, to my relief.

‘Yes,' I said in surprise. ‘I suppose that's just it.' I remembered the cool smile in Leonardo's masterpiece. ‘But although I don't know what Mona's life was like behind that smile, this house doesn't say Mona Lisa to me.'

‘What does it say?'

‘That I wish I'd known her better.'

She looked at me in silence and then gave a slight nod as if to say: ‘OK. Acceptable.' ‘As a TV presenter,' she pointed out, ‘Mum was used to putting on the Mona Lisa grin.'

I thought back. ‘In
Passing Through
?' That was Polly's famous chat programme about celebs passing through London, ranging from politicians to pop stars.

‘A bit. But particularly in
I Know What I Like
, that art programme where she approached people in an art gallery and chatted to them about the pictures, especially the portraits. Mum was good at people. She'd find out why they liked such and such a picture, and she could worm reasons out of them that they didn't even realize themselves. I suppose that's why she took up framing in the end. The nearest she could get to
I Know What I Like
.'

‘But why marry someone so completely different to herself?'

Bea frowned. ‘Mum liked having fun. As a presenter you're hemmed in. With Dad she could relax, be herself, have fun, off to car shows and so on.'

‘Was he a bit of a comic? Did they laugh a lot together?'

‘Yes, but that wasn't the underlying link. They were just happy. Always let's do this or that. Something new and never something blue. See?' Bea looked up at me, and there were tears in her eyes.

‘And after your father died?'

‘That went. But it was slowly coming back. It
was
.'

I couldn't bear to look at her. I felt like crying myself. The waste, oh the waste.

I couldn't see Guy Williams moving me to tears, but he was my next port of call late that afternoon. I owed him a heartfelt thank you over the offer of his barn, anyway. He was working in his garden – somewhat of a busman's holiday, I thought. When I thanked him, he nodded, looking almost embarrassed.

‘Sorry about the fire, Jack. Bad do.'

‘Couldn't agree more.'

‘You could still take my offer up. You wouldn't have Andy Wells breathing down your neck.'

‘That's good of you.' I meant it. ‘Hard decision, but Andy's closer to home and already fitted out.'