Clean Break (11 page)

“You pulled me out of a production meeting to tell me that?” he demanded.

“Not only that,” I said mildly. It was an effort. If he carried on like this, I reckoned there was going to be a five percent surliness surcharge on Trevor Kerr's bill.

“What, then?”

“You mentioned you'd had a round of redundancies,” I said.

“So?”

“I wondered if anyone who'd gone out the door had been subject to a golden handcuffs deal.”

There was a moment's silence. “There must have been a few,” he admitted grudgingly. “It's standard practice for anybody working in research or in key production jobs.”

“I'll need a list.”

“You'll have one,” he said.

“Have it faxed to my office,” I replied. “The number's on the card.” I cut the connection. That's the great thing with mobile phones. There are so many black holes around that nobody dares accuse you of hanging up on them any more.

I took out my notebook and rang the number Alexis had given me earlier. The voice that answered the phone didn't sound like
Lord Ballantrae. Not unless he'd had an unfortunate accident. “I'm looking for Lord Ballantrae,” I said.

“This is his wife,” she said. “Who's calling?”

“My name is Kate Brannigan. I'm a private investigator in Manchester. I understand Lord Ballantrae is the coordinator of a group of stately home owners who have been burgled recently. One of my clients has had a Monet stolen, and I wondered if Lord Ballantrae could spare me some time to discuss it.”

“I'm sure he'd be happy to do so. Bear with me a moment, I'll check the diary.” I hung on for an expensive minute. Then she was back. “How does tomorrow at ten sound?”

“No problem,” I said.

“Now, if you're coming from Manchester, the easiest way is to come straight up the M6, then take the A7 at Carlisle as far as Hawick, then the A698 through Kelso. About six miles past Kelso, you'll see a couple of stone gateposts on the left with pineapples on top of them. You can't miss them. That's us. Castle Dumdivie. Did you get all that?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said weakly. I'd got it, all right. A good three to four hours' driving.

“We'll look forward to seeing you then,” Lady Ballantrae said. She sounded remarkably cheerful. It was nice to know one of us was.

Richard didn't even stir when the alarm cut through my dreams at ten to six like a hot wire through cheese. I staggered to the shower, feeling like my eyes had closed only ten minutes before. Until I started this job, I didn't even know there were two six o'clocks in the same day. Richard still doesn't. I suppose that's why he suggested a club after the latest Steven Spielberg, enough popcorn to feed Bosnia and burgers and beer at Starvin' Marvin's authentic American diner. We'd been having fun together, and I didn't want it to end on a sour note, so I'd agreed with the proviso that I could be a party pooper at one. It goes without saying that we were still dancing at two.

Even a ten-minute power shower couldn't convince my body and my brain that I'd had more than three hours' sleep. Sometimes I wish I hadn't jacked in the law degree after two years, so I could have become a nine-to-five crown prosecutor. I put a pot of strong coffee on to brew while I dressed. Just what do you wear for a Scottish baron that won't look like a limp dishrag after four hours behind the wheel? I ended up with navy leggings, a cream cotton Aran jumper and a military-style navy wool blouson that I inherited from Alexis. I'd told her in the shop that it made her look too heavy in the hips, but would she listen?

By the third cup of coffee, I felt like I could be trusted to drive without causing a major pile-up. Not that there was a lot of traffic around to test my conviction. For once, it was sheer pleasure to motor down the East Lancs. Road. No boy racers wanting to get into a traffic-lights Grand Prix with my coupé, no little old men with porkpie hats and pipes dithering between lanes, no macho reps waving their mobile phones like battle honors. Just blissful open
road spread out before me and Deacon Blue's greatest hits. Since I was going to Scotland, I thought I'd better opt for the native sound. When I left the motorway at Carlisle, it was just after eight. I promised myself breakfast at the first greasy spoon I passed, forgetting what roads in the Scottish borders are like. There was nothing for the best part of an hour, and then it was Hawick. I ended up with a bacon and egg roll from a bakery washed down with a carton of milky industrial effluent that they claimed was coffee.

At a quarter to ten, I spotted the gateposts. When Lady Ballantrae had said pineapples, I was expecting some discreet little stone ornaments. What I got were two squat pillars topped with carved monstrosities the size of telephone kiosks. She'd been right when she said I couldn't miss them. I turned into a narrow corridor between two beech hedges taller than my house. The road curved round in a gentle arc. Abruptly the trees stopped and I found myself in a grassy clearing dominated by Lord Ballantrae's house. I use the term “house” loosely. At one end of the sprawling building was a massive square stone tower with a sharply pitched roof. Extending out from it, built in the same forbidding gray stone, was the main house. The basic shape was rectangular, but it was dotted with so many turrets, buttresses and assorted excrescences that it was hard to grasp at first. The whole thing was surmounted by an incongruous white belvedere with a green roof. One of Ballantrae's ancestors either had a hell of a sense of humor or a few bricks short of a wall.

I pulled up on the gravel between a Range Rover and a top-of-the-range BMW. What they call in Manchester a “Break My Windows.” Like Henry, Lord Ballantrae clearly kept the trippers' coaches well away from the house. By the time I'd got out of the car, I had a spectator. At the top of a short flight of steps like a giant's mounting block a tall man stood staring at me, a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. I walked towards him, taking in the tweed jacket with leather shooting patches, cavalry twills, mustard waistcoat and tattersall check shirt. He was even wearing a tweed cap that matched the jacket. As soon as I was in hailing distance, he called, “Miss Brannigan, is it?”

“The same. Lord Ballantrae?”

The man dropped his hand and looked amused. “No, ma'am, I'm his lordship's estate manager. Barry Adamson. Come away in, he's expecting you.”

I followed Adamson's burly back into a comfortable dining kitchen. Judging by the microwave and food processor on the pine worktops, this wasn't part of the castle's historical tour. Beyond the kitchen, we entered a narrow passage that turned into a splendid baronial hall. I don't know much about weapons, but judging by the amount of military hardware in the room, I'd stumbled upon Bonnie Prince Charlie's secret armory. “Through here,” Adamson said, opening a heavy oak door. I followed him through the arched doorway into an office that looked nearly as high tech as Bill's.

A dark-haired man in his early forties was frowning into a PC screen. Without looking up, he said, “With you in two shakes.” He hit a couple of keys and the frown cleared. Then he pushed his chair back and jumped to his feet. “You must be Kate Brannigan,” he said, coming round the desk and thrusting his hand towards me. “James Ballantrae.” The handshake was cool and dry, but surprisingly limp. “Pull up a seat,” he said, waving at a couple of typist's chairs that sat in front of a desk top that ran the length of one wall. “Barry, Ellen's in the tack room. Can you give her a shout and ask her to bring us some coffee?” he added as he dragged his own chair round the desk. “How was your journey?” he asked. “Bitch of a drive, isn't it? I sometimes wish I could ship this place stone by stone to somewhere approximating civilization, but they'd never let me get away with it. It's Grade Two listed, which means we couldn't even have satellite TV installed without some bod from the Department of the Environment making a meal out of it.”

Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't this. Lord Ballantrae was wearing faded jeans and a Scottish rugby shirt that matched sparkling navy blue eyes. His wavy hair fell over his collar at the back, its coal black a startling contrast to his milky skin. There was an air of suppressed energy about him. He looked more like a computer-game writer than a major land owner. He sat
down, stretching long legs in front of him, and lit a cigarette. “So, Henry Naismith tells me you're looking for his Monet?” he said.

I tried to hide my surprise. “You know Henry?” I asked. Let's face it, they both spoke the same language. Their voices were virtually indistinguishable. How in God's name do Sloanes know who's calling when they pick up the phone?

He grinned. “We met once on a friend's boat. When my wife told me about your call yesterday, I put two and two together. I'd already spoken to a reporter on the Manchester evening paper about these art robberies and when she mentioned a Monet going missing in Cheshire, I could only think of the Naismith collection. So I gave Henry a ring.”

“The reporter you spoke to is a friend of mine,” I said. “She passed your number on to me.”

“Old girls' network. I like it,” he exclaimed with delight. “She did the right thing. God, listen to me. My wife tells me that arrogance runs in the family. All I mean is that I'm probably the only person who has an overview of the situation. The downside of having locally accountable police forces is that crime gets compartmentalized. Sussex don't talk to Strathclyde, Derbyshire don't talk to Devon. It was us who brought to the police's attention the fact that there had been something of a spate of these robberies, all with the same pattern of forced entry, complete disregard for the alarm system and single targets.”

“How did you find out about the connections?” I asked.

“A group of us who open our places to the public get together informally …” I heard the door open behind me and turned to see a thirty-something redhead with matching freckles stick her head through the gap.

“Coffee all round?” she said.

“My wife, Ellen,” Ballantrae said. “Ellen, this is Kate Brannigan, the private eye from Manchester.”

The redhead grinned. “Pleased to meet you. Be right back,” she said, disappearing from sight, leaving the door ajar.

“Where was I? Oh yes, we get together a couple of times a year for a few sherbets, swap ideas and tips, that sort of thing. Last time
we met was a couple of weeks after I'd had a Raeburn portrait lifted, so of course it was uppermost in my mind. Three others immediately chipped in with identical tales—a Gainsborough, a Canaletto and a Ruisdael. In every case, it was one of the two or three best pieces they had,” he added ruefully.

“And that's when you realized there was something organized going on?” I asked.

“Correct.”

“I'm amazed you managed to keep these thefts out of the papers,” I said.

“It's not the sort of thing you boast about,” he said drily. “We've all become dependent on the income that comes through the doors from the heritage junkies. The police were happy to go along with that, since they never like high-profile cases where they don't catch anyone.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I offered to act as coordinator, and I spoke to all the police forces concerned. I also wrote to as many other stately home owners as I could track down and asked if they'd had similar experiences.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Including Henry Naismith's Monet, thirteen in the last nine months.”

I took a deep breath. At this rate, the stately homes of Britain would soon have nothing left but the seven hundred and thirty-six beds Good Queen Bess slept in. “That's a lot of art,” I said. “Has anything been recovered?”

“Coffee,” Ellen Ballantrae announced, walking in with a tray. She was wearing baggy khaki cords and a shapeless bottle green chenille sweater. When she moved, it was obvious she was hiding a slim figure underneath, but on first sight I'd have taken her for the cleaner.

I fell on the mug like a deprived waif. “You've probably saved my life,” I told her. “My system's still recovering from what they call coffee in Hawick.”

Both Ballantraes grinned. “Don't tell me,” Ellen said. “Warm milk, globules floating on top and all the flavor of rainwater.”

“It wasn't that good,” I said with feeling.

“Don't let me interrupt you,” she said, giving her husband's hair an affectionate tousle as she perched on the 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 pile-up 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.”