Drawing the Line (4 page)

Neither of us had said anything more. And no, I didn’t have any piercings. When I briefly contemplated a butterfly tattoo on my shoulder I thought of how pained he’d looked before and dropped the idea stone dead.

So I didn’t go down to the pub. Not after Griff had gone to the trouble of cooking a wonderful Chinese meal, complete with bits and bobs. Griff did things properly. And he was teaching me about wine, too – or rather, trying to. I could tell the difference between red and white, but that was about all. Oh, and rosé, of course. Too much lager when I was too young, he said, and seemed to think that if I drank lots of water I might clear my palate. Whether my palate improved I couldn’t say, but my skin did: I was becoming quite presentable.

Tuning the radio, he found some music he liked, though I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the hang of string quartets, and dozed while I finished the recipe clippings and thought about working on one of my stash of chipped and otherwise damaged china. But the sort of delicate brushwork I’d be doing needed the very bright light of the workroom, and I didn’t want to disturb Griff by getting up to leave the room. So I found
Northanger Abbey
, which he’d casually left on a Chinoiserie occasional table, and made a start. Not exactly your
Bridget Jones’s
Diary
. In fact – put it down to the big meal, the wine, the warmth of the room or those toiling violins – I did what Griff had done. Without the snores, I hope.

Until the burglar alarm went off. Very loudly.

‘Buggers, aren’t they?’ PC Baker sighed.

No, the Kent Constabulary hadn’t officially dashed out to our aid. No way. Seems there’s a policy about what constitutes urgent and what doesn’t. And breaking into an old man’s cottage doesn’t.

We owed our police presence to the fact that one of our neighbours was in the police. Tony Baker was not much older than me, with a motorbike he called a classic, which he only rode on special occasions. Bikes didn’t do much for either Griff or me, but as Griff said, it was nice in these blasé days to see anyone getting enthusiastic about something. Tony had heard the alarm – who this side of the Channel hadn’t? – and had seen me belting down the road yelling. So he’d come to join the party.

‘But you had your CCTV working?’ Tony continued, trying to sound official despite the fact he was wearing nothing but slippers and a towelling bathrobe in a rather nice shade of dark blue.

‘Indeed we did. And the video was loaded and working. So we should have footage of the perpetrator,’ Griff said, remarkably alert after his nap. ‘Thank goodness we’ve got all that electronic gadgetry. The camera’s activated as soon as the outer doors are locked.’

‘That’s the house doors?’

‘The gates, actually, since there is valuable stuff in the van. There’s a separate system for the house, which we
keep on all the time.’

‘Even if you’re inside?’

‘We can isolate different areas. Yes, we lock ourselves in. It’s the work of seconds to unlock and get out in the unlikely event of a fire,’ he added crisply, before Tony could so much as raise an eyebrow.

‘Shall we have a look at the video?’ Tony suggested.

Griff toddled off to find it, leaving me to make coffee. Tony looked as though he’d like to be macho and slosh down a double espresso, but accepted my offer of milky decaf, our preferred tipple at this time of night. It would have been more chic to call it latte, of course, but Tony didn’t seem to mind, especially when it came with some of Griff’s biscuits. I’d have preferred him not to take the last two shortbread fingers, but cheered myself with the thought that a cop with that discernment ought to be a bright cop.

We all thought he was until we were watching the video. And the alarm went off again.

This time there were two of us to give chase. Griff tried to make it three but Tony pushed him back, yelling to him to lock up behind us. I forgave him the shortbread. I’d have forgiven him almost anything for the sight of him vaulting the gates – not easy or elegant in a robe and birthday suit – in pursuit of our burglars. I followed more slowly; oh, yes, I’d learnt more at school about scaling fences than I ever had about the Norman Conquest. Or any of the books and plays Griff was always wanting me to try.

If I saw nothing, it seemed Tony didn’t do much better. If our village had run to street lighting we might at least have had some idea of what make of car was
involved. We chased after something that might have been a new style Fiesta but had to give up. We were still looking up and down the street when we heard a yell and a thump. And our burglar alarm started up again. Griff. It had to be Griff!

If we’d moved fast before, we flew now.

‘It’s all right. It’s all right. No damage done!’ he called cheerily, hauling himself to his feet.

A couple of front doors opened, light spilling into the street. No, no one had seen anything, as Tony was quick to establish. Or heard anything, though I found that harder to believe. Griff dusted himself down.

‘I thought I heard footsteps coming back this way,’ he said. ‘So I popped my head out of the door. I know. I’m sorry,’ he added, squeezing my hand. ‘He took a swing at me as if he was going to push past me, so I pressed the panic button.’

I slipped past. Better switch it off now, while we still had one or two neighbours on speaking terms with us.

So none of us had seen anything worth seeing, unless you count unlit cars and a person in a black hoodie: Griff couldn’t say whether it was a man or a woman. ‘That’s one of the prices you pay for freedom from light pollution,’ he sighed.

‘That bloody parish councillor and his obsession with amateur astronomy,’ Tony nodded, brightening when Griff produced a bottle of whisky and some glasses.

I shook my head at the whisky. I never knew how those people in films could gulp a tumbler wholesale. Just a sip burned my throat, and since I didn’t have to be one of the men, I could be girly and fish out an alcopop,
avoiding Griff’s eye. Tony didn’t seem to have a problem, though he did blink at the colour. Maybe wine would be more sophisticated.

‘So what’s on the movies tonight?’ he asked, waving the video.

If we hadn’t predicted what we’d see it would have been quite an anticlimax. We picked out black-clad figures – again, they could have been either sex – lit only by our security lights, the ones our councillor had tried to have banned on the ground of unnatural interference with his telescope. There’d been a terrible rift in the village, but after a spate of shed burglaries – yes, that’s right, garden sheds – a lot of people had succumbed and bought lights. Our councillor had subsided but was now waging war on drying washing and mowing lawns on Sundays.

Tony shrugged but didn’t seem inclined to make a move, even though Griff topped up his glass with just a miserly minimum. It was well past Griff’s bedtime so I wasn’t surprised when, after a couple of yawns he didn’t trouble to smother, he asked, ‘Are we able to hope, Tony, that you’ll be able to act in some official capacity on this evening’s events?’

‘I can put in a report, of course. But on the basis of this –’ he waved at the video ‘– I can’t see us getting very far. Can you?’

‘Not unless you have other criminals using a similar
modus operandi
,’ Griff agreed. ‘They create a disturbance. And then – they must know that The Law is sitting here looking at their video – they try again. And when they’ve lured him satisfactorily into the street, they make yet another attempt. Reminds me of my
apple-scrumping days,’ he added, smiling back at the past.

Tony didn’t look as if he bought Griff’s theory of cunning thieves with a plan. He gathered himself up with whatever dignity he could – not a lot, given his outfit – and made for the door. ‘One last question, Griff: you wouldn’t have anything especially valuable on the premises tonight? Something someone might have seen in your shop today?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Griff said blithely.

I didn’t bother asking Griff why he’d lied to Tony. He’d always said that unless you absolutely had to you should never volunteer information to anyone. Presumably his dictum included the police, even in the friendly form of Tony. The other reason was that I felt guilty, very guilty. On that deathly quiet afternoon at Detling, my little display of glee – OK, my very big display of glee – had probably caught the attention of every single person in our hall. Many antiques dealers pride themselves on their detection skills, hunting down provenances, for example. Had someone taken it into their head to find out why I was so happy? They could have found two reasons, couldn’t they? One of which, the frontispiece, spent the night under Griff’s half-tester bed, the other coming into my bed on my finger.

So what should we do with them the following morning? There was the shop’s safe for the ring, of course, but maybe that was too obvious. As for the frontispiece, if it were the genuine article, there was no way we could fold it and stow it in the safe too. Not that we had any time to waste discussing the problem: our late night had left Griff very slow and any attempts to speed him into the van were met with a grumpy snarl. So both items would stay where they were. Just as I’d herded Griff upstairs to clean his teeth, the phone rang. It was Mrs Hatch, who had looked after the shop yesterday.

‘Might one speak to Mr Tripp?’ Until I’d dropped into Griff’s world, I’d only heard voices like hers on old newsreels of Royalty: she certainly had more plums in her mouth than our Queen.

‘I’m sorry: Griff can’t talk just now.’ I didn’t spell out how literally true that was, though I was sure Griff would enjoy it when I told him later.

‘Is he not well?’

‘Bathroom,’ I confessed.

‘Oh, dear. Men’s troubles?’ she enunciated sympathetically.

I didn’t know much about men’s troubles, except that some blokes couldn’t get it up and others didn’t know what do to with it when they had, and I didn’t think either was Griff’s problem at the moment. More likely he was having difficulty with his Dentufix, or whatever held his plate in place. So I just said, ‘Hmm.’

‘Poor dear man. I was reading about this wonderful herbal cure – solves the problem without the need for an operation, they say. Or has it got too serious for that?’

I pinched my nose hard. I knew it was really a cure for nosebleeds, but it might work for the giggles. ‘He doesn’t tell me the details,’ I managed.

‘Of course not. No, indeed. I’d quite forgotten you weren’t his real granddaughter. Now, the reason I rang was that there were a couple of very unsavoury-looking characters hanging round the village yesterday. Two men. They spent hours in the shop. I thought you should know. My finger was poised over the panic button. Absolutely poised.’

‘What were they looking for?’

‘You never know with these types, do you?’

What types? ‘What did they look like?’

She dropped her voice as if she was going to say something rude. ‘Foreign, my dear. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were bogus asylum seekers.’

I tried not to bristle. Having come unpleasantly close to being down and out myself, if I’d had a spare coat I’d have gone and given it to someone really homeless. It wouldn’t have mattered a jot if they were foreign or English – after all, the English system hadn’t done me too many favours. So I took a deep breath.

‘What did they pick up and look at? Or ask to see?’ Tony would have been proud of me.

‘They didn’t touch, Lina. You know how I feel about people touching. But they hung around and peered.’ She got about three separate sounds out of ‘peered’, one of them definitely ‘ah’.

‘What at?’ Hell: I should have said, ‘At what?’

‘My dear, at everything!’

Really helpful, that. No wonder cops faked evidence, if they had witnesses like Mrs Hatch.

I ploughed on. ‘When did they come in?’

‘Oh, let me think. About midday. And then they drove off in a little car. Filthy dirty.’

No, she didn’t know what colour or have a clue about a registration number. Forget about its make: I doubt if she’d be able to identify anything smaller than a Rolls Royce.

She promised to be on her guard all day and rang off, sending her best wishes to Griff in a voice that sounded as if he were on his death bed with this mysterious unmentionable problem.

‘Silly old bat,’ Griff dismissed her when I told him.

This time I didn’t wince at his double-checking of locks and alarms. I helped him.

‘She’s always carried a torch for me, poor creature,’ he continued, as I drove down the village street. ‘Thank
goodness times have changed, Lina. Fifty years ago a man like me might have been grateful to a woman like that as a beard.’

‘A beard?’ Mrs Hatch didn’t have a problem with facial hair.

‘Camouflage.’

A hand gripped my stomach. I swallowed hard.

‘But don’t for a moment, dear heart, think that that’s why I invited you into my life! Please, please believe me! I asked you because I could see that
au fond
– that’s French for
at bottom
, another phrase for you to remember – you were a sweet child and because Iris had this absurd idea that I needed looking after as much as you did. And you do look after me, beautifully.’

I shook my head miserably. What was the difference between being a beard and being a carer?

He turned towards me, tugging against the seatbelt. ‘More than that – I do wish you’d stop this confounded van and look at me, Lina – you’ve become my friend.’

I pulled over. Usually I park well. This time I didn’t.

Griff put a paw on mine. ‘Lina, you are my best friend and I’m honoured by your friendship. I’m proud of you. I wish you were my blood daughter – or granddaughter or whatever. But no matter how closely we were related, I couldn’t love you more than I do.’

I squeezed his hand. He flourished his handkerchief, pressing it into my spare hand.

‘I don’t know why Iris thinks I look after you,’ I muttered. ‘The cooking, the washing and ironing – you do everything.’

‘That’s only because I have someone to do it for,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted me to turn into a
disgusting old man with stubble and stains on his trousers?’

I shook my head, my face still buried in his handkerchief. It was beautifully ironed and smelt of lavender. I’d made and stuffed the little sachets myself as a
stocking-filler
present last Christmas. I hope he heard what I said: ‘I wish you were my real dad. Or granddad. Because –’ But the words stopped coming. I never could say the words ‘I love you’. And I knew I wouldn’t stop looking for my real father, however much I loved Griff. Couldn’t stop.

Griff fished for another hanky, which he used himself. ‘Dear me: all this emotion before half the village is even awake! Come, Lina, start this transport of delight and drive us to our destiny!’

I did. It was a good job I could talk about Mrs Hatch’s suspicious characters as I drove along. ‘The trouble is, her description’s useless, and they don’t seem to have had any particular target.’

‘If they were pro’s they wouldn’t let her see if they had.’ He put on a middle-European accent. ‘“Take me to your silver! Show me your diamonds!”’

‘But a pro wouldn’t turn up on a day he’d know all the best stock would be with us in Detling.’

‘Unanswerable.’

‘And if they turned up at midday, they wouldn’t have known about either the ring or my frontispiece,’ I mumbled.

‘Is that what you’re worried about?’

‘I wasn’t exactly poker-faced when you lent me the cash,’ I said.

It took a moment or two to reply, as if he was arranging
things before he said them. ‘It did cross my mind, after all that performance last night. And I think we should keep an open mind. And be very careful. But young Tony promised to check the police records – and I wager he’ll come up with a gang who work that way regularly.’

‘Their
modus operandi
?’ I hazarded.

‘Well done.’ He patted the hand I’d left on the gear lever. ‘I do rather think you’ve inherited my love of words, my love.’

It was easy to laugh with Griff, and he embarked on a long series of risqué stories, including one about a male nude sunbathing beach described by one of Griff’s gay friends as his asparagus patch, which kept us in giggles as far as Detling. It was only the sight of several police cars in the trade car park that switched off our smiles.

‘’Allo, ’allo, ’allo,’ Griff said, going into old-fashioned village-bobby voice. ‘Wot ’ave we ’ere?’

They’d heard about my ring! The stallholder had accused me of sharp practice! If it hadn’t been for Griff’s kind hand on my shoulder, I’d have done a runner. But it seemed the very pressure brought me to my senses. In the antiques trade, it isn’t just
caveat emptor
(perhaps Griff was right about inheriting those words), but
caveat
seller, or whatever the proper Latin should be –
vendor
? That sounded more Latin. I’d have to ask Griff. Even thinking about him made me go sane. The police wouldn’t have come mob-handed for one woman. Something must have happened overnight.

Gossip: we’d soon pick up the details from the other dealers. And we did. Several versions. They ranged from
a huge robbery from all our stalls to a clever heist involving international art thieves and Old Masters. Since I couldn’t recall seeing a single painting worth nicking during the whole of my wanderings I discounted that. Pity. I hated it when little people like us were hurt, either physically or in our pockets. The big guys, now – I might have held them down while the Inland Revenue and the Fraud Squad did their worst.

In fact neither theory was right. It looked as if there might have been an attempted break-in, foiled by the security staff before it amounted to much more than vandalism. Just to make sure nothing had been taken, the police sent us to our stalls to check: there was to be no wheeling and dealing till they’d ticked us off their list. No Joe Public either, of course. Although outside there’d seemed to be hordes of officers, inside they were spread very thinly and took for ever to speak to each dealer. Imagine my surprise then, when Griff suddenly piped up about our incident at home.

‘What time was this, sir?’ The WPC, who didn’t seem to be much older than me, seemed really interested.

Griff gave a brief account, mentioning the heroism of Tony and the uselessness of our video evidence.

‘Do you still have the tape?’

‘Constable Baker took it with him – to see if he could get the images enhanced. Admittedly it was less in hope of finding our potential burglars, than of catching someone else’s actual thieves.’ He smiled, as if enjoying the balance of his sentence. He didn’t mention Mrs Hatch’s unsavoury customers until I prompted him.

‘They were sniffing round as if casing the joint,’ he concluded, a roguish smile creasing his face. He loved
stealing someone else’s trade lingo and using it himself.

The constable didn’t see anything to smile at. Instead she confirmed a couple of details, adding, ‘I wonder if your Mrs Hatch could identify the men from photographs. That would be very useful.’

Somehow I stopped myself leaping up and down and yelling that the two men were the innocent victims of prejudice. After all, they might just be a pair of local crooks – there were enough down in Kent, goodness knows – and justice ought to be done. Preferably before they nicked my precious page or the valuable, if less precious, ring. Oh, yes – and well before they’d laid their hands on Griff’s miniatures or Regency silhouettes or anything else he loved too much ever to sell.

It would have been nice if the police had had to hold back huge queues while they were conducting their enquiries, but the day was a repeat of the previous one. Another football match? I drifted over to ask Marcus. He was engrossed in his painting, looking like – hell, Griff would have told me who he looked like. That flash pianist whose music he said was out of fashion these days, the one who started the fashion for pianists to sit side on to the audience when they played. Whoever. Anyway, there he was, with a couple of women practically touching him up and a thin middle-aged man wearing more cosmetics than me ogling him. I’d always meant to ask why he didn’t do his painting at home. You wouldn’t catch me mending my china in full view. And now I realised why. Copeland was obviously using the gorgeous Marcus to attract customers, not just to see the work being done but to be allured by the young god
who was doing it. Men and women. Hell, did this mean the reason Marcus wasn’t specially interested in me was because he was gay too? Surely not. Unless he was using me as – what had Griff called it? – a beard. Sweat trickled down my back, like it did when I’d bought a wrong ’un. I’d have to ask Griff: he’d know.

Copeland was hovering discreetly in the background, ready to relieve Marcus’ fans of their money.

Trying to be polite, while I worked out what I was feeling, I flapped a hand. ‘Looks like another quiet day,’ I said.

‘It’s the play-offs for promotion to the premier league, of course,’ Copeland snapped, as if my presence might put people off. ‘Don’t you and that old queer ever read the papers?’

‘Not those pages, no,’ I said, prickly on Griff’s behalf. ‘I believe if you read the other pages you’d find the correct term was “gay”.’

‘It’s certainly queer that you’re living with him.’

‘We’re housemates, that’s what. Nothing queer about that.’

‘What do you when he brings his boyfriends home? That can’t be very edifying sight, not for a kid your age.’

If only I knew what
edifying
meant. I didn’t, so I simply snapped, ‘His sex life is no more your business than mine is.’ I wasn’t going to tell this brute about Griff’s occasional and very discreet away-days with friends. And certainly not about his long-term friend Aidan.

I turned pointedly away from Copeland, and drifted over to Marcus. I know: I was off my head. But I’ll swear the words came out of their own accord. ‘That drink we didn’t have last night – why not make it tonight?’

‘Because,’ came Copeland’s voice, ‘he’ll be packing up here, that’s why. Not making sheep’s eyes at a cunning little tart like you who he lets sweet talk him into selling my property at a crazy price. Just piss off, will you?’