“Yes. From what I’ve learned so far it’s fascinating. You’ve got the selling side. The customers with money who come in to find something different and then you’ve got the bit I like best. What I call the detective bit. Like the guy in Shoreditch, trying to find out where he finds his stock. I felt like James Bond.”
Francis Tack laughed. “Only you don’t get to carry a gun or kill anyone.”
“So, if you don’t mind me asking Mr Tack, how did you get into this business?”
“Well, my family have always been in the antiques trade. When I left school I followed in the footsteps of my father. Things were much easier then. You know my grandfather purchased the freehold of this shop in 1952. He bought it for £12,300. I’ve still got the original deed of sale. That was before Notting Hill became so desirable and property prices went through the roof. The money he paid for this place was peanuts when you consider it’s currently worth around £3 million although it does need a lot of renovation, which I can’t afford at the moment. Nevertheless, it was a very wise investment.”
“Up until you joined my ex-wife ran the place. But she divorced me threatening to get half of everything. Even told her solicitor she wanted one of my bollocks. Fucking bitch.”
Trevor laughed.
Francis didn’t tell his assistant the whole story. He failed to mention the reason why she had left him.
Since they got married Teri had run the shop, handled the accounts, and generally kept the money flowing in. This had allowed Francis to disappear on the pretext of buying trips, when half the time he was actually seeing other women. When she was made aware of his adultery, she left him.
Teri had always been careful with money whereas Francis had a habit of spending it almost as fast as it came in. So the divorce meant he needed to re-mortgage the shop. Suddenly his lifestyle changed and what had been a very high income, with loan repayments and alimony had shrunk to a middle class income.
At the age of fifty-three he still considered himself a ladies man. Five feet nine tall and tanned skin albeit from regular visits to a tanning salon. He was also grateful to still have a full head of hair, although for the past two years he had been dyeing it to hide the grey.
Before the divorce his plan was to retire and live in Spain but the change of fortune meant the move to a hotter climate would have to wait.
Chapter Twelve
THE GREEK RESTAURANT
Following the incident at the Five Bells pub, schoolteacher Barry Turner was in the ambulance with the medics desperately fighting to keep him alive. At the same time, four miles away the black Mercedes 4x4 pulled into the car park on Stonebridge High Street and the three men got out.
Kevin O’Connor walked round to the boot of the vehicle. He reached into a brown brief case and counted out ten of the fake twenty-pound notes from the stash of £5,000, put them into his wallet and closed the boot.
The three men walked up the road to the Greek Taverna restaurant.
The restaurant was a family run business. Originally it had been two shops that owner Stavros Kappas had bought twenty-two years earlier and converted into a restaurant himself. It had twelve tables plus in the corner was a small stage where live music acts and belly dancers performed on Saturday nights.
However, tonight was a Wednesday and the venue was only serving food and drink.
Seven of the tables were already occupied when the three men walked through the outer door, then through the inner door that served as a windbreaker.
They were shown to a table along the back wall by a waitress who sounded more East European than Greek.
The other occupants of the restaurant included a group of four in their fifties who looked like they were celebrating a birthday and two lots of families with young children. Three tables were young couples and a table close to where the three new arrivals were seated were two men, one in his fifties and the other probably in his mid-twenties. The two men were holding hands across the table and from the way he was dressed the older one had money. The most obvious thing being the Rolex Oyster gold watch wrapped around his left wrist and large gold bracelet on his right wrist. Kevin O’Connor knew enough to tell the difference between a fake Rolex and the real thing from twenty yards. And this was definitely the genuine article.
Kevin had also noticed the key fob with a Bentley emblem on the table and recalled a few minutes earlier he had spotted a Continental convertible in the car park.
Kevin and his two ‘business associates’, who were actually his sons Lennox, twenty-two, and twenty-four-year-old Tyson, looked over the menu and ordered the six course Mega Meze dishes. They also ordered two bottles of expensive wine. Price was not their main concern. After all, the money they would be handing over to pay for it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
As he waited the arrival of his starter, Kevin overheard a few words from the nearby table that made him pay attention. His two tablemates were chatting and he kicked them under the table. They understood immediately and the conversation they were having ended abruptly.
The main words the Irishman had heard so far were “painting”, “worth a fortune” and “poor old dear didn’t have a clue”.
Over his lifetime, Kevin had acquired many skills, one of which was to listen to other people’s conversations at the same time as appearing otherwise occupied and in a world of his own. He gave no clue he could hear what the two men were discussing but in truth, he was taking in every word he could with great interest.
As he
