I spent the day drying out the boat and washing the salt out of my hair and clothes. Next morning I rowed ashore early and ordered a double helping of bacon, egg, sausages and chips. I had bought a tabloid and was amusing myself by reading about the vicar who’d run off with the organist’s husband when a hand tapped my shoulder.
I turned. Harry Abbott’s lugubrious and unhealthy face gazed solemnly down into mine. The face smiled, revealing long yellow teeth. “Oh, God,” I said.
“I haven’t been promoted that high yet. I’m only a Detective Inspector, but that is very close to being God.” He reached over my shoulder and stole one of my chips. “I like chips for breakfast.”
“If you want some chips, order your own.”
He stole another. “I’ve already had a plateful. Very nice they were, too, with a spot of vinegar.” He sat opposite me and sprinkled vinegar on his stolen chip. “You’re looking very well, Johnny,” he said. “If I’d had my way, you’d still be in prison now.”
“So you failed.”
“Justice is like the pox,” he said, “in the end it gets everyone.”
“Very funny, Harry.”
He ordered himself a coffee and spooned sugar into the cup. He then lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “Did you know Jimmy Nicholls?”
“No.”
“He died of smoking, just like your mother. Were you upset by her death, Johnny?”
“Piss off, Harry.”
Detective Inspector Harry Abbott looks like a joke. He’s cadaverous, tall, grey, and apparently always at death’s door, but he’s a cunning sod. When he had interrogated me about the stolen Van Gogh he had come foully close to persuading me to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. I’d been innocent, but Harry had been relentless, almost persuading me that I had to be guilty. He is not a man to underestimate.
“How do you feel about some nasty-minded bleeder taking the kitchen scissors to your mum’s painting?” he asked.
“It pisses me off.”
“You always did like the painting, didn’t you? You pretended not to, but I knew you liked it. Me, now, I don’t understand it. I like a proper painting.”
“Tits and bums?”
He ignored that. “It occurred to me once that you might have nicked it because you liked it so much. Oddly enough I’m not so very sure that you did nick it now, in fact I’d even go so far as to say that I believe in your innocence, Johnny. Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age, or perhaps I’ve caught a nasty case of food poisoning from the milk of human kindness, but I really do believe that I did you an injustice all those years ago.”
“Then say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny.” He bared his horse’s teeth at me. “So tell me, you bastard, why didn’t you report an attempt on your life? I know it’s a miserable life, and probably not worth preserving, but we are mildly interested in murder attempts.”
I abandoned the rest of my breakfast. “Who told you about that?”
“Who the hell do you think told me?” Harry took the last sausage from my plate. “The Contessa, of course.”
“The Contessa?” The only Contessa I could think of was a make of boat. A very nice make of boat. I’d nearly bought a Contessa 32 once.
Harry shook his head in grief for my sanity. “The Contessa Pallavicini. Who else?”
“Jennifer Pallavicini?”
“Oh, of course, I keep forgetting. You’re a nob as well. You probably don’t use titles amongst yourselves. I suppose you call her Jenny-baby or Passion-knickers. Yes, Johnny. I mean Jennifer Pallavicini.”
“Bloody hell fire,” I said softly. I had thought I was the one earning pennies from heaven by not using my title, and all the time Jennifer Pallavicini was hiding her own? I felt stupid and astonished. “I didn’t know she was a Contessa,” I said limply.
“Her mother married the title, but she’s Lady Buzzacott now, so the daughter uses the handle. Mind you, those Italians seem to give away titles with their cornflakes, so perhaps it doesn’t mean anything.”
I gaped at him. “She’s Buzzacott’s stepdaughter?”
“You didn’t know that either?”
“No.”
Abbott was pleased with himself. He leaned back in his chair. “Surprised you, did I?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Well you can stop fancying her, you evil-minded bastard. She’s engaged to some Swiss businessman.”
“She doesn’t wear a ring,” I protested a little too hastily.
“That’s the modern way, isn’t it? Equality and all that rubbish. Or else she keeps the ring in a bank vault. The Swiss bloke must be a zillionaire.” He looked at me closely, then gave an evil grin. “You do fancy her, don’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Then it’s your lucky day, Johnny, because she wants to see you.”
“I thought she was in New York?”
Abbott rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Not everyone crosses the ocean by hanging rags on sticks. She flew back yesterday in Concorde. We’re going to meet the family, you and I. It’ll be very la-di-da. Are you sure you don’t want to put on a suit?”
“I’m sure.” I hated the thought of meeting the Buzzacott family, for I was in no mood for social politeness, but, by phoning Harry Abbott, I had condemned myself to whatever inconvenience followed. For Georgina’s sake.
Harry swallowed the rest of his coffee and snapped his fingers for the waitress to bring the bill. “It’s nice to be back on crime again,” he said happily.
“They took you off it? What are you now? In charge of school crossings?”
“I’m just a dogsbody,” he said mysteriously. “They just gave me this case for old times’ sake, and to save some other poor sod from looking up the files. So shall we go, Johnny boy? I’ve got a car outside. But pay the bill first.”
I paid, then joined Harry in a clapped-out Rover that he proudly claimed as his own car. We drove north and I wondered about a Contessa and whether she knew that the Swiss are rotten sailors. They’re good at making cuckoo-clocks, and presumably they can ski, but they’re sod all use at anything else. Except making money. And that was a depressing thought, so I tried to forget Jennifer Pallavicini. Instead, at Harry’s insistence, I told him all about Garrard and Peel, and how Charlie had saved me in the nick of time, and then, when Harry had sucked all the juice out of that, he told me golf stories all the way to Wiltshire.
We parked on the airport-sized forecourt of Comerton Castle. Two footmen ran down the steps to open the car doors. Harry smirked, and said he could get used to this style of life. We were ceremoniously conducted to the entrance hall where a pin-striped butler waited to greet us. He already knew Harry, but didn’t bat an eyelid at my dirty jeans and crumpled shirt. “Welcome to Comerton Castle, your lordship. If you would care to follow me?”
We did so care, following his silent footfalls through rooms big enough to hold fully rigged schooners. The ceilings were painted with riotous gods and the walls fluted with marble columns. The furniture was worth a small fortune, while the pictures on the walls would not have disgraced any gallery, though clearly Sir Leon did not consider them worthy of his own. Harry Abbott wet his fingertips and tried to smear back his thinning grey hair. “Not a bad pad, is it?” he confided in me, then jerked at his jacket and straightened his tie.
“Uncomfortable, Harry?” I asked.
“Christ, no. We coppers are always slumming with the nobs.”
The nobs were waiting in a glazed terrace filled with potted palms and comfortable sofas. Sir Leon and Lady Buzzacott smiled a gracious welcome. There was no sign of Jennifer. I made polite small talk. I agreed it was a lovely day, and such a change after the recent stormy weather. Yes, I had been to Sir Leon’s gallery, and had been very impressed.
