suspect she's just a teeny bit out of my league.'
'Nonsense!' snapped Betty. 'She's flesh and blood like everybody else. And she's been mourning for far too long. It's unhealthy.'
'I agree,' said Wilf. 'A fortnight should be plenty long enough.'
Betty glared at him. 'If you go first, I'll be eyeing up all the widowers at the ham tea,' she declared.
I changed my mind about the casserole. It wasn't just up to standard, it was exceptional.
Chapter Three
Gilbert Wood is my superintendent. Our careers can be compared to the early American rocket experiments. His kept going up, but mine just cleared the launch tower before toppling over and flying horizontally.
A few people thought I ought to be in his seat, but I wasn't one of them. We got on well together, worked as a team, with lots of mutual trust. It was more than that, though, we were good friends. I called into his office to tell him about the Chinaman and that I wanted Wednesday off.
'Another day off, Charlie? You had one two years ago. You realise you've only five months and twenty-nine days' holiday left now?'
'And a half. I only had half a day off two years ago. And if it turns out to be business on Wednesday I'll be putting in for expenses.'
Gilbert looked interested. 'Might it be business?' he asked.
I told him about the Rudi Truscott calls.
'Mmm,' he said. 'Sounds promising. Beamish is a super place. Doesn't half take you back. The kids couldn't believe we lived like that. God, there's a dentist's surgery just like the school dentist had. Scares you silly.' He gave a shudder at the memory of it. 'What does this Truscott do?' he asked.
'He was a lecturer at the art school. He taught me when I was there.
And Vanessa a few years later; but then he started making a reputation as a faker of old masters.'
Gilbert was about to speak but I held up a hand to stop him.
'I said he was a faker, not a forger. Legally, there is a difference.'
'Is he any good?' Gilbert asked.
'He will be,' I told him. 'He sells to dealers. What they do with them is their business, but there's probably a few Rudi Truscotts hanging in the galleries of Europe that are attributed to more famous names.'
'Sounds right up your street. Let me know what happens.'
'What about the Chinaman?' I asked him.
He thought for a second, then said: 'I'm not happy.'
'I didn't think you would be, but we've no information that they will try it on, just my instinct. If we grab them before they get near him there should be no danger.'
'Then it will be a lesser charge and it might not stick.'
'Does it matter?' I argued. 'They're only nematodes. It'll be a shock to their systems to get arrested before they do the job.'
'That's true.' Gilbert laughed at the thought of it. 'Scare the shit out of them and we are supposed to be in the crime prevention business.
But don't let them get near the Chinaman.'
I took the A61 through Leeds and then Harrogate and Ripon to avoid some of the tedium of the motorway. It's a rich, pastoral landscape up there; a different climatic zone to what I was used to. The scenery was fashioned by the meanderings of lazy rivers and the action of the plough, not gouged and bulldozed by glaciers. The people are different too, old money and new money, rubbing uneasily shoulder to shoulder.
This is Yorkshire's Cocktail Belt, and you can keep it.
Eventually I had to join the Al, that conveyor of salesmen's cars on their ceaseless, brainless dash to the next appointment. I made it to mine. I wonder how many didn't.
The Shepherd and Shepherdess was easy to find. It's a big pub but standards, thankfully, have not been diluted too much. Rudi was already there, sitting in a corner, facing into the room. He is a small man, with a tidy little beard. He was a lot greyer than when I last saw him. So was I. I bought myself an orange juice and lemonade and joined him.
'Hello, Rudi. You brought me a long way.'
'Thanks for coming. I'm grateful. I didn't know who else to turn to.'
The sentiment was the same but he didn't seem as distressed as he had done on the phone. I had a feeling that I was being set up. Before we talked about his problems there was something I needed to know: 'Have you heard from Vanessa lately? Any idea how she is?'
He shook his head. 'No. She left me for some sort of property developer. Pots of money. They got married.'
That was about as much as I already knew. 'Sounds like her type,' I said, as if I couldn't care less. Rudi didn't want to eat but I did, and I enjoyed making him wait and pay. I had a chicken and sweet corn pie with a salad. It was acceptable. Rudi wouldn't talk in the pub.
'Don't you think you are being just a little melodramatic?' I asked him. He didn't think he was, and insisted on us going into the open-air museum before he would talk. We rode on an old tram just like the ones I used to go to school on when Dad was stationed in Leeds. I stood and hung on a strap, even though we were the only two on it, because I'd always wanted to, but couldn't reach them when I was a kid.
'Okay, Rudi,' I told him, 'the tram's not bugged, so let's have it.'
He thought for a while, as if he didn't know where to begin. Then he said: 'You know the Art Aid exhibition?'
I knew it. It was the latest of a plethora of fund-raising events held on behalf of the Third World. Ten paintings by some of the greatest artists who ever lived were travelling the globe. They had toured the USA for a year and were now in Britain. They had just had a week in Leeds and had moved on to Newcastle. Shortly they would be heading for Europe. The art world was showing that anything rock music could do, it could do better. It was five quid a time and punters were queuing round the block to see them.
'Yes,' I said, 'I saw them three times. Mind you, I only paid twice the third visit was a perk of the job. I fiddled an invite to a private showing. That visit cost me half a week's wage.'
Another long pause. Then he went on: 'At the beginning of the American tour I received a commission to copy four of the pictures. They're not my normal school, but I accepted. I had to go out there, all expenses paid. They had to be perfect, not just the brush strokes and the canvas, the under painting and the composition of the paints had to be exact.' He looked at me and his face glowed with pride. 'Charlie, they were the best work I ever did.'
'They were copies, Rudi.'
'They were exact copies. Don't you remember what you once wrote when you were a student of mine? You said that every hundred years all works of art should be destroyed, so that the new generations of artists could re- create them, instead of constantly striving for new styles.'
'Bollocks! I said no such thing.'
'Yes, you did. And you were so right' 'Then I was being controversial. I was struggling to be a clever sod like all the other students.'
'No, Charlie, you were better than most of them would ever be.'
'So what's the problem? Didn't you get paid?'
'The problem is I did get paid,' he said. 'Normally I make about a thousand pounds a picture. They paid me forty thousand, plus expenses.
The extra money was for my silence, or else.'
I whistled through my teeth. 'What are you trying to tell me, Rudi?'
'I'm trying to tell you that my pictures are touring the world raising money for charity.'
I thought about it for a while, then I said: 'Are you sure? Have you checked them?'
'No,' he replied, 'I daren't go near them.'
