Paternoster (27 page)

A shudder rattled through her body. Hammond.

She made herself a cup of tea, and left it untasted on the table while she sat, arms hugging her knees, frozen with fear. Her nerves were at snapping point, and she screamed when an alarm sounded in her flat. After a second or two, she realised it was only a phone ringing; not her usual phone, but one of the undercover handsets she stashed in the bottom of her wardrobe. Leaden legs carried her into the bedroom. As she pressed connect, she realised she couldn’t remember which persona she was meant to be on this number.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Isabel, it’s Roger. How you doing, girl?’

She let go of her breath. ‘I’m well, thanks, Roger. How are you?’

‘Mustn’t grumble. No one takes any notice anyway.’

She forced a laugh. ‘You got some information for me?’

‘Yeah, and it’s good. You ready?’

She tucked the phone under her chin and reached for a pen. Roger’s voice dipped as he passed on the information, as if that would fox any attempt at interception. ‘There was a Constable up for sale on the quiet eight years ago,’ he said. ‘The same one in that photo you sent me.’

‘Who sold it?’

‘Well, it wasn’t Christie’s, I can tell you.’ He broke off to cough. ‘Went underground and ended up with one of them Russian billionaires what can’t find enough to spend their cash on.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Some palace in Russia.’ Roger tutted. ‘They have that revolution to overthrow the big I ams, and what do they do, but go and make a mint and live in the palaces themselves. I ask you.’

‘Who facilitated the sale?’ Roger knew too much about Russian history and could drone on with his interpretation of the wrongs of Bolshevism for hours if unchecked.

‘Inside job. Knew who to go to to get it shifted, though.’ Roger coughed again. ‘’Scuse me. Been hacking like an asbestos miner since I gave up the fags. Interesting thing is, the owners got someone to do a copy of the painting before they sold it.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘This bit is. That painting, copy or forgery whatever you want to call it, was nicked about a year and a half ago.’

She tapped her pen on the notebook. ‘Who bought it?’

‘Collector who knew it was a fake. Didn’t pay top dosh for it, knew it was bent as a marmite sandwich.’

That surprised her. ‘They knew it was a fake? Surely whoever stole it would’ve made more passing it off as real?’

‘That’s the thing, Isabel. It was stolen to order. Insurance job, no questions, collector keeping shtum.’

‘Stolen to order?’ she echoed.

‘Very helpful they were, too. A bit careless where they left the security codes, that sort of thing. That’s the rumour on the streets, anyway. Might not be true, but the story doing the rounds is it was the easiest heist in Christendom.’

‘Thanks, Roger, that’s really helpful.’

‘So when am I going to see you, girl? It’s been ages. You used to take me some nice restaurants in Soho, as I recall.’

‘Next time I’m in London, I promise,’ she laughed. Thanking him again, she hung up, removed the SIM card from the phone and snapped it in two.

An insurance job. If the painting was a copy, the school must’ve been in on the sale and the insurance scam. It seemed they’d been paid twice: once when the painting was sold to the Russian collector eight years before, and again eighteen months ago when the insurance paid the full amount of the painting’s value. It was an audacious plan.

Armed with this new information, she set off to the Cheltenham Park School to confront Rosalind Mortimer. Her secretary tried to bar the way, but Rosalind herself came out of her office and allowed Eden inside.

‘I want to talk to you about the painting,’ Eden began. ‘The stolen Constable.’

‘I thought you might, when you asked about it and took that photograph away with you.’ The skin around Rosalind’s jaw was pouchy, and lack of sleep carved dark hollows around her eyes. ‘What do you want?’

This wasn’t the feisty madam Eden had become accustomed to; this was a pallid mannequin with its strings cut.

‘The painting that was stolen eighteen months ago was a fake, and that fake was painted to replace the original about eight years ago.’

Rosalind glanced up sharply. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I have friends on the wrong side of the law,’ Eden said, simply.

Rosalind pressed her fingertips into her eyes. Muffled, she said, ‘I wasn’t here when the original was sold and the replacement painted. That was my predecessor’s idea. I had no idea for quite some time, actually, and it was only a few years ago that she told me what she’d done. She was dying of cancer and felt the urge to confess.’ A humourless smile. ‘She said that they’d sold the painting for good reasons. The school needed new buildings, it didn’t have the money, parents were expecting more from the school but weren’t prepared to pay higher fees for improved facilities. So, they sold the painting and had a copy made.’

‘Why sell it on the black market? Why not take it to Sotheby’s or Christies?’

Rosalind’s mouth twisted. ‘The painting wasn’t the school’s to sell. It was gifted to us by a benefactor to hang in the school, but wasn’t ours to do with as we liked. That’s why there was a copy made, and the original was sold quietly.’ She barked a short laugh. ‘All we got from that painting was massive insurance bills and the need for state-of-the-art security. The privilege of hanging it on our walls cost us a fortune. Some benefactor. But the parents liked the kudos the painting lent the school, and by extension, them.’

She sucked in a deep breath and lolled her head back on her leather seat, as though weary of the whole thing. In a tired voice she continued, ‘The school did all right for a few years, then the same issues cropped up. New accommodation, parents demanding new classes, new labs, new sports facilities. You can’t just educate a child these days, stuff their brains with Latin conjugations and dates of battles, teach them how to do long division. They have to be fit and creative, have to do fencing and gymnastics and rowing and drama. We have to have facilities to do all of that on site: no sharing a stage with the local comprehensive. It all has to be here.’ She stared glumly out of the window where the diggers stood idle like frozen dinosaurs.

‘If these facilities ever get built, if people could stop digging up corpses every time they turn a sod, we might just have some new science labs by the next academic year.’

‘Paid for with the insurance on the stolen painting?’

‘By a squeak. We couldn’t increase the insurance on the painting because that would have meant having it valued, and any art expert trotting out here and taking one look at that painting would have known it was a copy. We got what it was valued at ten years ago: a fraction of what it was worth. It was just enough for the new building work.’

‘How much?’

‘Two million.’

Eden’s mind reeled. ‘Two million? That’s all?’

Rosalind shrugged. ‘It was a very competitive quote.’ She held Eden’s eye. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m still making enquiries, but I’ll have to pass my findings on to the police.’

‘About the painting?’

‘What else?’

Rosalind swivelled her attention back to the window, to the churned up soil and incipient foundations of the new buildings and didn’t speak again. Eden saw herself out.

Back at her car, she called Janice, Paul Nelson’s PA. She’d worked for him for years, presumably she knew a thing or two about large building contract jobs. After a few preliminaries, she asked outright, ‘Ball park figure to build from scratch a science block and gymnasium.’

Janice sucked in a breath. ‘You’d need a specialist firm. You wouldn’t get Joe Blogs who does your conservatory for that.’

‘Can you give me a rough idea what Paul’s company would price it at?’

Janice harrumphed a couple of times while she thought. ‘Depends on how big and how quickly, but you wouldn’t get much change from five million pounds.’

Eden only stayed long enough in her flat to shower and change her clothes. Assassins lurked in every corner; when a floorboard creaked she jumped out of her skin. Even stepping out of the shower took courage; she was convinced that a hand was about to spring out and grab her by the throat. Fear coopered her chest; every breath was tight.

She needed warmth and companionship, and the kind of reassurance that could only be found in six feet of archaeologist. Aidan found her sitting on the doorstep to his flat when he came home from work.

‘What’re you doing here?’ he said. ‘Pretending to be an orphan?’

‘Please can I come in, Aidan? I’m frightened.’

His face changed immediately, softening into concern. ‘Come on, you,’ he said, ushering her inside and up the winding stone staircase to his flat. She flung herself down on his settee. ‘What’s happened? God, Eden, you’re shaking!’

‘That phone message you heard the other day.’ The message from Miranda, telling her Little Jimmy was dead.

‘The spooky one?’ His hand was warm, holding hers as they sat side by side on the settee.

She nodded. ‘I got another one, threatening me. They mean it, and they can get to me, too. Especially now one of the gang’s been released.’

‘Shit.’

‘They’re trying to scare me, and it’s working.’

‘Oh, Eden.’ He wrapped his arms round her, pressing her face against his shoulder. He smelled of sandalwood and earth; his shirt was soft against her skin. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I can move, change identity again, and pray they don’t catch up with me,’ she said. ‘Or I can stick it out. They’re the sort that will be inside again before long. Hopefully they’ll manage to keep hold of them this time.’ She puffed out her cheeks, fighting exhausted tears. ‘They killed the man who saved my life.’

‘Saved your life? How?’

Disentangling herself, she unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off her shoulders. ‘This scar here: where my spleen was removed. He stabbed me in the stomach and nicked it. Internal bleeding.’ She pointed to two faint lines across her arms. ‘Here is where he sliced across my arms before he stabbed me.’ She unzipped her jeans and stepped out of them to show the two scars across her thighs. ‘And he cut me here. Then they tied me up and threw me in the back of a lorry. The driver was ordered to dump me in the Thames.’

‘Bloody hell, Eden.’ His fingertips traced the scars and her skin prickled. ‘And I believed for so long that you fell through a window as a child.’

‘I could hardly tell you the truth, could I?’ she said. ‘One of the gang got away and raised the alarm. Had even memorised the registration number of the lorry, that’s how they got to me in time.’ Her voice cracked. ‘He was a thick little shit, but he did that for me. He took the whole gang down, and they killed him.’

‘And now they’re after you?’

Eden nodded. She reached for her jeans and started to pull them back on. Aidan reached across and held her wrist. ‘Not so fast,’ he said, gently.

He stood and wrapped her in his arms, his breath feathering her hair. ‘You’re not in this alone,’ he whispered. ‘If you want us to run away, we’ll run away.’

‘Us?’

‘Yes, us.’

Her heart contracted. It had been so long since anyone had cared for her like this. A long time since she’d felt this safe.

Aidan continued. ‘It’s the weekend, so I’m going to run you a bath, and even put in some of my favourite bath oil, and I’m going to bring you a glass of wine and hand feed you peanut M&M’s while you have a soak. OK?’

‘Sounds good.’ As he went towards the bathroom, she called after him, ‘Can I play with your rubber ducks?’

He laughed. ‘No. The ducks are off limits. You always put them back in the wrong order.’

The bath water came up to her chin: deliciously scented and just the right side of hot. Eden knocked the plastic ducks with her toe and poked them about on the waves. Aidan frowned and popped another chocolate in her mouth, then two in his own.

‘I like the fact you’re a chocoholic,’ Eden said. ‘Some men don’t see the point of chocolate.’

‘I’m not some men,’ he said. Tracing the line of the scar on her arm, he said, sombrely, ‘You must’ve been so scared.’

‘I thought my time was up,’ she said. ‘I died in the operating theatre – twice – apparently. They wouldn’t let me go.’

Her gaze met his. His eyes were dark and serious. ‘I’m glad they didn’t,’ he said. ‘Wash your hair?’

She dunked her head under the water and he poured shampoo into his palm and massaged it over her scalp, working it in behind her ears and soaping the length of her hair.

She studied his face as he washed and rinsed her hair: that tender dimple in his cheek when he smiled, the thick dark hair that he wore just slightly too short; and a surge of affection caught her unawares.

‘Are you going to have a baby with your ex?’ she asked.

He put down the cup he was using to rinse her hair and knelt beside the bath, his face close to hers. ‘No.’

‘You said you’d think about it.’

‘I’m an idiot. I didn’t know what to say. She caught me completely by surprise. What should I have said?’

Eden shrugged. ‘Depends on whether you want to be a father or not.’

‘Do you? Want kids?’

Her heart thumped, she saw her skin jerking beneath the water. ‘I had one, once.’

The blood drained out of his face. ‘What? You have a child? Eden, how come …’

She cut him off. ‘I lost her.’

He slumped against the bath, his shirt spotting dark blue with water.

‘I was pregnant, had the scan, knew I was expecting a girl. We called her Molly. She died when I was six months gone. The hospital induced me, and we held her for hours. She was tiny and beautiful, and like a wax flower.’

‘We?’

‘I was married. Nick. Nice man.’

‘What happened?’

‘He hated my work, said he worried about me, that it was dangerous. It wasn’t: I met scumbags but I wasn’t doing the really hardcore undercover work then. He blamed me for Molly’s death, found someone else, and we got divorced.’