table. “He was about to tell you about the Canaletto they got back.”
Ballantrae reached out absently and laid his hand on her thigh. “Absolutely right. Nothing to do with the diligence of the police, however. There was a multiple pileup on a German autobahn about a fortnight after Gerald Brockleston-Camber lost his Canaletto. One of the dead was an antique dealer from Leyden in Holland, Kees van der Rohe. His car was shunted at both ends; the boot flew open, throwing a suitcase clear of the wreckage. The case burst open, revealing the Canaletto behind a false lid. Luckily the painting was undamaged.”
“Not so lucky for Mr. van der Rohe,” I remarked. “What leads did they come up with?”
“Not a one,” Ballantrae said. “They couldn’t find anything about the Canaletto in his records. He conducted his business from home, and the neighbors said there were sometimes cars there with foreign plates, but no one had bothered to take a note of registrations.” He shrugged. “Why should they? There was no indication as to his destination, apart from the fact that he had a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of lire in the front pocket of the suitcase. Unfortunately, van der Rohe’s body was badly burned, along with his diary and his wallet. Frustrating, but at least Gerald got his painting back.”
Frustrating was right. This was turning into one of those cases where I was sucking up information like a demented Hoover, but none of it was taking me anywhere. The only thing I could think of doing now was getting in touch with a Dutch private eye and asking him or her to check out Kees van der Rohe, to see if we could come up with something the police had missed. “Any indication of a foreign connection in the other cases?” I asked.
“Not really,” Ballantrae said. “We suspect that individual pieces are being stolen to order. If anything, I’d hazard a guess that if they’re for a private collector, we’re looking at someone English. A lot of the items that have been stolen have quite a narrow appeal-the Hilliard miniatures, for example. And my Raeburn too, I suppose. They wouldn’t exactly set the international art world ablaze.”
“Maybe that’s part of the plan,” I mused.
“How do you mean?” Ellen Ballantrae leaned forward, frowning.
“If they went for really big stuff like the thieves who stole the Munch painting in Norway, there would be a huge hue and cry, Interpol alerted, round up the usual suspects, that sort of thing. But by going for less valuable pieces, maybe they’re relying on there being less of a fuss, especially if they’re moving their loot across international borders,” I explained.
Ballantrae nodded appreciatively. “Good thinking, that woman. You could have something there. The only thefts that fall outside that are the Bernini bust and Henry’s Monet, but even those two aren’t the absolutely prime examples of their creators’ works.”
“Can you think of any collectors whose particular interests are covered by the thefts?” I asked.
“Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t know personally, but I have a couple of chums in the gallery business. I could ask them to ask round and see what they come up with. That’s a really constructive idea,” Ballantrae enthused.
I basked in the glow of his praise. It made a refreshing change from Trevor Kerr’s charmlessness. “What’s the geographical spread like?” I asked.
“We were the most northerly victims. But there doesn’t seem to be any real pattern. They go from Northumberland to Cornwall north to south, and from Lincolnshire to Anglesey east to west. I can let you have a printout,” he added, jumping to his feet and walking behind his computer. He hit a few keys, and the printer behind me cranked itself into life.
I twirled the chair round and took the sheet of paper out of the machine. Reading down it, I saw the glimmer of an idea. “Have you got a map of the U.K. I can look at?” I asked.
Ballantrae nodded. “I’ve got a data disk with various maps on it. Want a look?”
I came round behind his desk and waited for him to load the disk. He called up a map of the U.K. with major cities and the road network. “Can you import this map and manipulate it in a graphics file?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. And promptly did it. He gave me a quick tutorial on how to use his software, and I started fiddling with it. First, I marked the approximate locations of the burglaries, with a little help from Ballantrae in identifying locations. I looked at the array.
“I wish we had one of those programs that crime-pattern analysts use,” I muttered. I’d recently spent a day at a seminar run by the Association of British Investigators where an academic had shown us how sophisticated computer programs were helping police to predict where repeat offenders might strike next. It had been impressive, though not a lot of use to the likes of me.
“I never imagined I’d have any use for one of those,” Ballantrae said dryly.
Ellen laughed. “No doubt the software king will have one by next week,” she said.
Using the mouse, I drew a line connecting the outermost burglaries. There were eight in that group, scattered round the fringes of England and Wales. Then I repeated the exercise with the remainder. The outer line was a rough oval, with a kink over Cornwall. It looked like a cartoon speech balloon, containing the immortal words of the Scilly Isles. The inner line was more jagged. I disconnected Henry Naismith’s robbery and another outside Burnley. Now the inner line was more like a trapezium, narrower at the top, spreading at the bottom. Finally, I linked Henry and the Burnley job with a pair of semicircles. “See anything?” I asked.
“Greater Manchester,” Ballantrae breathed. “How fascinating. Well, Ms. Brannigan, you’re clearly the right woman for the job.”
I was glad somebody thought so. “Have there been any clues at all in any of the cases?” I asked.
Ballantrae walked over to a shelf that held his computer software boxes and manuals. “I don’t know if you’d call it a clue, exactly. But one of the properties that was burgled had just installed closed-circuit TV and they have a video of the robbery. But it’s not actually a lot of help, since the thieves were very sensibly wearing ski masks.” He took a video down from the shelf. “Would you like to see it?”
“Why not?” I’d schlepped all the way up here. I wasn’t going home before I’d extracted every last drop of info out of Lord Ballantrae.
“We’ll have to go through to the den,” he said.
As I followed him back across the hall, Ellen said affectionately, “Some days I think he’s auditioning for Crimewatch.”
We retraced my steps back toward the kitchen, turning into a room only twice the size of my living room. The view was spectacular, if you like that sort of thing, looking out across a swath of grass, a river and not very distant hills. Me, I’m happy with my garden fence. As Ballantrae crossed to the video, I gave the room the once-over. It wasn’t a bit like a stately home. The mismatched collection of sofas and aria-chairs was modern, looking comfortable if a bit dog-haired and dog-eared. Shelves along one wall held a selection of board games, jigsaws, console games and videotapes. A coffee table was strewn with comics and magazines. In one corner, there was a huge Nicam stereo TV and video with a Nintendo console lying in front of it. The only picture on the walls was a framed photograph of James and Ellen with a young boy and girl, sitting round a picnic table in skiing clothes. They all looked as if the world was their oyster. Come to think of it, it probably was.
“Sorry about the mess,” Ellen said in the offhand tone that told me she didn’t give a shit about tidiness. “The children make it and I can’t be bothered unmaking it. Have a seat.”
She walked over to the windows and pulled one of the curtains across, cutting down the brightness so we could see the video more clearly. I sat down opposite the TV, where daytime TV’s best actors played out their roles as a happily married couple telling the rest of us how to beat cellulite. Ballantrae slumped down beside me and hit the play button. “This is Morton Grange in Humberside,” he said. “Home of Lord Andrew Cumberbatch. His was the Ruisdael.”
The screen showed an empty room lined with paintings. Suddenly, from the bottom left-hand corner, the burglars appeared. The staccato movements of the time-lapse photography made them look like puppets in an amateur performance. Both men were wearing ski masks with holes for eyes and mouth only, and the kind of overalls you can pick up for next to nothing in any army surplus store. One of them ran across to the paintings, pulled out a power screwdriver and unscrewed the clips that held the frame to the wall. The other, holding a sledgehammer, hung back. Then he turned toward the camera and took a couple of steps forward.
Recognition hit me like a sledgehammer to the stomach.
10
