gave a startled jump and literally looked left and then right, as if contemplating a runner. Then he collected himself and opted, boringly, for sulky belligerence.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I’m not here about the parking fines.’
He grunted and put the crate he was carrying into the back of the van.
‘What are you here about?’ he asked.
I asked him about the pottery fruit bowl he’d allegedly sold to the stallholder in Portobello Road.
‘Earthenware,’ he said. ‘Is that the stuff that looks like it’s not painted?’
I said it was.
‘What about it?’ he asked and stuck his finger in his ear and twisted it a few times. I wondered if his head was going to hinge open.
‘Where did you get it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at me like that, honestly I don’t remember. Some geezer traded it to me in a pub – I must have been half cut anyway because it was a fucker to shift.’
‘Look, I’m not interested in its provenance or anything,’ I said.
‘Its what?’
‘Its provenance,’ I said slowly. ‘Whether it was stolen or not.’
‘It was tat,’ said Kevin. ‘Why would anyone want to steal it – you couldn’t give it away.’
I gave him my card and told him to phone me if anything similar turned up. I took some encouragement in the fact that he didn’t just ostentatiously throw it away in front of me. I went back to the Asbo where Zach asked me if I’d got what I wanted.
I expressed my displeasure at the current state of my investigation as I started the car up and tried to figure out where the exit was.
‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in this bowl,’ said Zach. ‘It’s not exactly your objet d’art is it? It’s not even a very pretty colour.’
Which was when I remembered the statuette on the mantelpiece back at the James Gallagher’s house. That had been the same dull earthenware as the fruit bowl. I’m not an expert on Victorian knick-knacks but I didn’t think that was a common colour for a figurine.
‘Did James buy a statue as well?’ I asked.
Zach paused too long before saying. ‘Don’t know.’
Meaning yes but you don’t want me to know. Which meant one of two things: either Zach knew the bowl and the statue were connected or he just couldn’t not lie when asked a straight question. Either seemed equally likely.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to drop you off back at the house.’
‘Why?’ asked Zach suspiciously.
‘It’s all part of the service, sir,’ I said.
8
Southwark
This is police work: you go from point A to point B where you learn something which forces you to schlep back to point A again to ask questions that you didn’t know to ask the first time. If you’re really unlucky you do both directions in the worst snow since written records began and with Zachary Palmer offering you driving advice while you do it.
Portobello Road was struggling to stay open in the weather. Half the stalls had been dismantled and the remaining stallholders were stamping their feet and gritting their teeth. Fortunately, the entrance to the mews on Kensington Park Gardens had been swept clear by a parade of official vehicles.
The statue was on the mantelpiece in the living room, exactly where I remembered it, and had been dusted for prints but not deemed interesting enough to take away. There was even a cleaning lady called Sonya who was Italian and busy cleaning up the mess left by the forensics people under the watchful eye of DC Guleed.
‘Not that this is supposed to be our job,’ she said testily. Even if you’re family liaison it isn’t really your job to supervise the clean-up before the grieving relatives arrive. I guessed that US senators counted as a special case.
‘Has she been statemented?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Guleed. ‘We completely forgot to ask her about the victim’s movements because we’re just that unprofessional.’
I gave her the hard stare and she sighed.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The father phoned from the airport – I don’t think he’s taking it well.’
‘Trouble?’
Guleed looked over at Zach, who was rooting around in the kitchen for snacks. ‘I don’t think your friend wants to be here when the senator turns up.’
‘Not my problem,’ I said.
‘Oh, thank you so much for dumping him on me, then,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re happy now you’ve got your statue.’
‘It’s a very special statue,’ I said.
Only it wasn’t really, at least not in and of itself. It depicted the ever-popular ‘Venus-Aphrodite surprised by a sculptor and struggling to cover her tits with one hand and keep her drape at waist height with the other’ so beloved of art connoisseurs in the long weary days before the invention of internet porn. It was twenty centimetres high and only when I picked it up did I realise that it was not only made of the same material as the fruit bowl but also slightly magical. Nothing like the fruit bowl, but had we been talking radioactivity, then my Geiger counter would have been ticking away in a sinister fashion.
I wondered if James Gallagher had noticed the same thing. Was it possible that he’d been a practitioner? Nightingale had told me there was a whole American tradition of wizardry, more than just one in fact, but he thought they’d gone dormant after World War Two as well. He could have been wrong – it’s not like his track record in that area was particularly impressive.
Sonya, from a small village in Brindisi, said that she remembered the statue well. James had bought it from a man not far from where we were now. I asked if she meant the market but she said no, from a private auction at a house in Powis Square. I asked if she was sure of the address.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He asked me for directions.’
Powis Square was a typical late Victorian garden square with townhouses built around a rectangular park that had been rendered as shapeless as a duvet by the snow. Dusk was coming early under slate grey clouds as I parked the car, at an angle to the kerb, on the west side and counted numbers until I reached 25.
The facade was covered in scaffolding, the serious kind with tarpaulins stretched between the poles to keep the dust in – a sign that the money was gutting another terraced house. It used to be that you knocked through the ground-floor rooms but now the fashion amongst the rich was to rip out the whole interior. Surprisingly, given the weather, there were lights on behind the tarpaulins and I could hear people talking in Polish, or Romanian or something else Eastern European. Maybe they were used to the snow.
I stepped inside the scaffolding and made my way up the steps to the front door. It was open to show a narrow hallway that was in the process of being dismantled. A man in a hardhat, a suit and carrying a clipboard turned to stare at me when I entered. He wore a black turtleneck jumper under his suit jacket and the kind of massive multifunction watch that appeals to people who regularly jump from aircraft into the sea while wearing scuba gear. Or at least really wished they did.
Probably the architect, I thought.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked in tones that indicated that he thought it was unlikely.
‘I’m Peter Grant with the Metropolitan Police,’ I said.
‘Really?’ he said and I swear his face lit up. ‘How can I help you?’
I told him that I was looking into report of ‘disturbances’ at the address and had he noticed anything?
