Ian Rankin! This revelation took Matthew and Pat by surprise, but at least they now knew where the painting had gone and whom they would have to approach in order to get it back. Once the name had been established, the third woman in the shop was able to tell them where Ian Rankin lived – not far away – and they prepared to leave. But Pat hesitated.
“That painting,” she enquired, pointing at the window display.
“Would you mind if I looked at it?”
Priscilla went forward to extract the painting from its position in the window and passed it to Pat. “It’s been there for rather a long time,” she said, fingering her pearl necklace as she spoke.
“It was brought in with a whole lot of things from a house in Craiglea Drive. Somebody cleared out their attic and brought the stuff in to us. I rather like it, don’t you? That must be Mull, mustn’t it? Or is it Iona? It’s so hard to tell.”
Pat held the painting out in front of her and gazed at it.
It was in a rather ornate gilded frame, although this was chipped in several places and had a large chunk of wood missing from the bottom right-hand corner. The colours were strong, and there was something decisive and rather skilful about the composition. She looked for a signature – there was nothing – and there was nothing, too, on the back of the frame.
“How much are you asking for this?”
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Priscilla smiled at her. “Not very much. Ten pounds? Would that be about right? Could you manage that? We could maybe make it a tiny bit cheaper, but not much.”
Pat reached into the pocket of her jeans and extracted a twenty pound note, which she handed over to Priscilla.
“Oh!” said the older woman. “Twenty pounds. Will we be able to change twenty pounds? I don’t know. What’s in the float, Dotty?”
“It doesn’t matter about the change,” said Pat quickly. “Treat it as a donation.”
“Bless you, you kind girl,” said Priscilla, beaming with approbation. “Here, let me wrap it up for you. And think what pleasure you’ll have in looking at that. Will you hang it in your bedroom?” She paused, and glanced at Matthew. Were they . . .?
One never knew these days.
They took the wrapped-up painting and left the shop.
“What on earth possessed you to buy that?” Matthew asked, as they left. “That’s the sort of thing we throw out all the time.
One wants to get rid of things like that, not buy them.”
Pat said nothing. She was satisfied with her purchase, and could imagine where she would hang it in her room in the flat. There was something peaceful about the painting – something resolved
– which strongly appealed to her. It may be another amateur daubing, but it was comfortable, and quiet, and she liked it.
They crossed the road at Churchill and made their way by a back route towards the address they had been given.
“What are we going to say to him?” asked Matthew. “And what do you think he’ll say to us?”
“We’ll tell him exactly what happened,” said Pat. “Just as we told those people. And then we’ll ask him if he’ll give it back to us.”
“And he’ll say no,” said Matthew despondently. “The reason why he bought it in the first place is that he must have realised that it’s a Peploe?. Somebody like him wouldn’t just pop into a charity shop and buy any old painting. He’s way too cool for that.”
“But why do you think he knows anything about art?” asked Pat. “Isn’t music more his thing? Doesn’t he go on about hi-fi and rock music?”
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Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve got that bad feeling again. This whole thing keeps giving me bad feelings.
Maybe we should just forget about it.”
“You can’t,” said Pat. “That’s forty thousand pounds worth of painting. Or it could be. Can you afford to turn up your nose at forty thousand pounds?”
“Yes,” said Matthew. “I don’t actually have to make a profit in the gallery, you know. I’ve never had to make a profit in my life.
My old man’s loaded.”
Pat was silent as she thought about this. She had been aware that Matthew did not have to operate according to the laws of real economics, but he had never been this frank about it.
Matthew stopped walking and fixed Pat with a stare. Again she noticed the flecks in his eyes.
“Are you surprised by that?” he said. “Do you think the less of me because I’ve got money?”
Pat shook her head. “No, why should I? Plenty of people have money in this town. It’s neither here nor there. Money just is.”
