“Sorry,” I said as if I was somehow to blame. “Looks like you were right.”
“Fuckin’ arshole,” she repeated two of the less extreme expletives at a thousand decibels, dropping the prints and bringing her knee up into my groin. I double up and she punched me in my left eye, the right one just catching a glimpse of one naked breast and a tuft of pubic hair as she allowed the robe to flap open for a split second before I toppled backwards down the stairs.
* * * * * * * *
Monday.
As I swung the big old Jag round I bumped a front wheel onto the curb scraping the nearside wing against a lamppost in the process. I didn’t stop. Another dent didn’t make much difference and I was in a hurry. The woman had sounded agitated when she called. Another damson in distress – or was it damsel? I wasn’t sure. English, along with most other subjects, except art, had never been one of my strengths. I swore at the dashboard putting my foot down and noticing the squeak from the accelerator pedal was still there despite having paid Grimy Gilbert in his dodgy railway arch garage a score to fix it. I swore again as the car lumped off the curb, the sloppy squelch of the shock absorbers inducing a sudden shooting pain in my lower lumber region. I re-ran the phone call in my head.
“Hello? Is that er..’ackney Marsh the confi…confer… whatjacallit investigator? Listen, I’m sorry, I’m a bit upset, like, ‘sniff’ I need some ‘elp, really I do. Me dau’gher’s gone missin’ and I don’t know wha’ ter do. No, I can’t go to the Old Bill…It’s a bit complicated. Yeah, I live in Armhurst Road, Dalston, 365 B. Yeah, I’m in nah. Yeah, all right. I’m Vera. Vera Smeddin’. She’s Danny. Short for Danielle. Danielle Smeddin’. OK. Fanks. I don’t know what ter do. All right. I’ll see you in a little bit, ‘sniff’ bye. Fanks. Bye.”
I rang the bell, stepping back with caution as I always would from now on, and looked up at the 4 storied Victorian building, a terraced house typically split into flats, a riotous patchwork of colour and texture created by landlords of differing nationalities, tastes and standards of care about maintenance. I heard footsteps on the stairs inside, bolts and locks being neutralized and the door, jammed in a warped doorframe quivered in protest as it was tugged open. A bottle blonde, sun bed tanned 50ish woman with her hair cut in a 1980s Sting style appeared in the doorway and seemed to freeze.
“Hello. Mrs Smeddin’? Or is it Smedding? With a G?” I asked?
“Yes. It’s Smeddin’ wiv a G. Are you Mr. Marsh?”
“That’s me. Hackney Marsh.” I extended my right hand, “A bit like a boy named Sue.”
The woman frowned, not getting the joke but I carried on with my introductory patter,
“My real name’s Henry. Hackney’s the nickname my mother gave me and it sort of stuck. She thought it quite appropriate as I was born on the Marsh on one of the football pitches and her name was Marsh. They weren’t playing at the time. The footballers, I mean. It was the middle of the night. Anyway, people don’t forget Hackney even if they want to. And they don’t forget me. My mates call me Hack, though that does sound like a nasty cough.”
My initial introduction to new clients was usually this same bright and breezy, cheerful, enthusiastic, and talkative pitch. I’d hoped it would put people at ease but so far had no proof that it did. It was also a bit of an effort as I wasn’t a naturally bright and breezy, cheerful individual at the best of times. I’d tried the serious, quiet, contemplative approach but all that did was induce in the client a state of verbal diarrhea, which was a real pain in the arse.
Mrs. Smedding shook my hand limply. “Er…are you all right?” I assumed she was referring to my physical condition rather than my mental stability.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about the crutch. I fell down some stairs the other day. D’you want me to go away?”
“No. No. Come in. Please.” With difficulty I followed her up the narrow staircase.
“Where did you hear about me?” I said to her wide posterior as it wobbled and swayed in front of my eyes. I wasn’t sure whether it was the close proximity of her bum or the way it wobbled and swayed that produced the sudden feeling of nausea that swept over me.
“Yeller Pages, under Private Investigators.” the bum answered.
“Right.”
The woman led me to a 2nd floor flat where she undid the Chub lock in the door, which I thought a bit odd as she’d only gone down to answer the street door.
“Just ‘ad this noo lock fitted. Can’t trust nobody round ‘ere,” she said as she opened the door with a Yale key. I noticed there were fresh wood breaks and paint chips on the door and the frame. “They’ll snatch the bloody drawers off your arse if you don’t watch out.”
I followed her along a narrow corridor past the boiled cabbage and chip fat stink of a small kitchen into a sitting room where she turned to face me. “Look, I’ve got a confession to make.”
“I’m not a priest.” I said, “Maybe you should have looked under ‘vicars’.” I was proud of my occasional bursts of quick, spontaneous wit – it made me feel as if I’d been written by Raymond Chandler but my possible new client didn’t seem all that receptive let alone impressed.
“No, what I mean is, my daughter isn’t missin’, though I suppose she is in a way.”
“Right.” (“Here we go again,” I thought, “Why do I attract all the weirdoes and nutters this side of the river?” That crazy bitch with the stud through her lip had shoved me down a flight of stairs and now here was another one with Mad Cow Disease probably about to start foaming at the mouth.) “Do you mind if I sit down? My back’s killing me.”
“No. Go ahead.” She pointed to a well-used armchair belonging to a well-worn 3piece suite, and plumped her 12 or 13 stone down in the one opposite picking nervously at her cuticles. “Blimey, that’s some shiner you’ve got there? You fell down the stairs, yeah?” she said un-judgmentally like the telling of lies was a quite acceptable part of everyday life and that my stairs episode was instantly recognizable as a bit of perfectly valid prime pork in a flaky pastry crust to be set before an insurance company claim department.
“Yes,” I said wincing as I lowered myself into the chair not wishing to elaborate about my accident.
I’d taken my tumble down the flight of stairs 5 days before when that crazy tart with the silver ring through her upper lip had kneed me in the balls and punched me in the eye. My eye had gone from red to purple to black, my testicles were no longer sore though I was weirdly more aware of them than before and my ankle had shown little sign of healing which I put down to age being that I wasn’t exactly a Spring Chicken.
Like most men, I’ll never understand women. All I’d done was confirm the crazy bitch’s suspicions about her husband carrying on with the woman from the tax office and as I plummeted backwards, I made a mental note not to show a client damning photographs in future while standing on their doorstep especially if the doorstep is at the top of a flight of stairs. Of course I knew the attack wasn’t personal - she’d just lost it and lashed out but somehow that didn’t help. The fall gave me a couple of cracked ribs, a twisted ankle, a black eye and sore testicles but I re-assured myself it could’ve been worse. She might’ve got really cross and punched me in the other eye as well. At least she’d paid me and said sorry and called an ambulance. And her gentleman caller, a massively built West Indian in boxer shorts, had helped me back up the stairs.
“So what’s the story?” I said, knackered by the climb up her bloody stairs and once again wishing I did something else for a living.
“I said about my daughter bein’ missin’ because I thought it might get you ’ere quicker.”
“You were right about that but how about you telling me the real reason you called me. You said your daughter was missing in a way. What does that mean?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So you said.”
“My daughter is missin’ in a manner of speakin.”
“Well, either she is or she isn’t. Anyway, if she isn’t why didn’t you just say what it was you really wanted when you phoned?”
“Because people worry more about missing girls more than they do about most things.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. Blokes didn’t usually go missing unless they fell asleep during ‘afters’ at the pub on a Saturday night or they’d been murdered. Usually they turned up next day in time for the Sunday roast. It was more often girls who performed their vanishing trick. Either they’d run off with someone twice their age or ended up sharing a squat with some lowlifes or legged it because they’d had enough of a loveless home life.
There had been one youth who’d gone on the trot but it didn’t take me long to work out that this was because he was a gay transvestite and couldn’t face his parents with such a revelation. By talking to them and a few of his friends it’d been relatively easy to piece 2 and 2 together and through various connections track him down to a flat in an up-market apartment block in Maida Vale. He was living with a gay solicitor transvestite who was about 20 years older and willing to pay quite a bonus on top of the usual 1,000 quid finder’s fee from the parents and the 20 quid an hour working fee plus expenses, to yours truly to keep things quiet. The solicitor only dressed in women’s clothes at home at the weekends and, as it was a Saturday when I finally paid the couple a visit, I’d found it a bit disconcerting chatting to two very elegantly attired and not altogether unattractive ladies who sounded like men for an hour or so.
“So what’s the story?” I said again.
“It’s a picture of my daughter what’s gone missin’.”
“A picture? Do you mean a photograph?”
“No, it’s a paintin’.”
“Right. What sort of painting?” I said for want of something better to say.
“A colour one.”
“Is it in oils or watercolour?”
“Like I said, it’s in colour.”
“OK. Is it valuable?” The question seemed irrelevant. I couldn’t think how such a painting could possibly be valuable.
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never thought about how much it might be worth. 20 quid? 30? I dunno.”
With some difficulty and a certain amount of pain, I dug my little sketchbook and biro out of my overcoat pocket and started doodling. It was an addiction. Doodling, that is. It helped clear my mind and maintain some semblance of sanity when dealing with some of the crazy people I seemed to come across in the business I found myself in. It also helped me think, oddly enough. Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and violin, that pain in the crotch Frenchman, Poirot, had his infuriating little grey cells and I, Hackney Marsh, the great East London Detective who, though a lot less famous than either of the aforementioned, was at least real and not just a pigment (figment?) of someone’s imagination, had my sketchbook and biro.
“It has sentimental value then? I mean, my fee’s considerably more than you say the picture’s worth.” She looked at me blankly. “I mean this painting of your daughter is something you value? Something you’re fond of?”
“No, not pertickerly. It’s all right, I s’pose. It does look like her from some angles, but the paint’s all thick like someone put it on with a trowel or somethin’. It’s all a bit hickerdy pickerdy,” I wrote ‘oil painting’ in the corner of the sketchbook page, “It’s not really my cup of tea, to be honest.”
“So why worry about it?”
“Because my daughter give it to me to look after before she left.”
“She’s not here then?”
“No she’s in Scotland but she’s back at the weekend and I’ve got to find the picture before she gets ‘ome.” The woman looked decidedly nervous.
“OK. Where did it disappear from?”
“It was up there,” She pointed to a blank piece of wall above the fire place highlighted by a dust rectangle and protruding screw, “That was where me kittens in a basket picture was. I preferred that really.”
“So why did you put the picture of your daughter on the wall if you didn’t like it?”
“To keep me eye on it. Danielle went on an’ on about me takin’ care of it so much she nearly drove me up the wall.”
“Right. So what happened to it?”
“Someone broke in an’ took it while I was at the shops. I usually put it under me bed when I go out but I forgot.”
“What else did they take? What else is missing?”
“Nuffink.”
“Really? So whoever it was, broke in just to take the picture?”
The woman nodded. “I ‘spose so.”
“Who painted it?”
“Danielle’s boyfriend, George Crone. He teaches evenin’ classes at London Fields Primary School.”
“Are they still together, Danielle and George?”
“Yes, as far as I know. He’s potty about her. He’s a bit posh but all right I ‘spose.”
“You’ve met him then?”
“’es been round for Sunday dinner and to take ‘er out a couple of times.”
“So he wouldn’t have taken it, then? I was thinking he might have in a fit peak if he was a spurned lover.”
“A what?”
“If she’d dumped him and he was upset.”
"Nah. It weren't 'im what took it. I know o' it was, dunni?
“Really? Who?”
“Tony Broadbent.”
To most people Tony Broadbent made the Kray twins look like the Flower Pot Men. “How do you know that?”
“My neighbour saw one of his ‘eavies, a bloke called Seth Crewe, walkin’ away from the flats while I was out. He was carryin’ something flat wrapped up in a bin bag under his arm. It must have bin the picture.”
“What on Earth would Tony Broadbent want with a piece of amateur art? He’s very wealthy and I happen to know he has his own art collection. It’s not quite the Saatchi collection, but old Charlie would give his back teeth to get his hands on a few of the pieces.”
“’oo?”
“It doesn’t matter. Look, it’s Monday so we have 5 days. I don’t know what I can do but I’ll make a few enquiries. It has to be said, though, that anything involving Tony Broadbent is better left alone.”
“Please get it back, Mr Marsh. My daughter was very pissed off when I told ‘er it got nicked.”
“I can’t promise. You’ve told her?”
“Yes. She was screamin’ at me down the phone. Fretenin’ to do all kinds of stuff.”
“Sounds like you an your daughter have quite a lively relationship.”
“Do what? Blimey. Is that me?” She caught sight of my sketch so I handed it to her. She took it and studied it closer. “That’s bloody good. I didn’t know you was an artist an’ all.”
“I’m not really though I did go to art school many moons ago. Do you want to keep it?”
“No fear. Drawin’s an’ paintin’s seem to bring me trouble. Is my nose really that fat?”
Monday afternoon.
"Can I speak to Tony Broadbent?” I said into my accursed mobile phone.
“Never ‘eard of ‘im. You must ‘ave the wrong number, Pal.” said a gruff voice at the other end.
“Just tell him it’s Hackney Marsh and remind him he owes me a favour.” The phone line crackled as someone covered the mouthpiece, then after a few seconds a much more cultured, exceedingly less goon-line and very familiar voice spoke.
“Hack, my old friend. How are you? To what do I owe the pleasure of this delightful but highly unexpected call and also, how the fuck did you get hold of this number, pray?”
“I need to talk to you…face to face would be preferable, Tony.”
“Indeed. You never know who’s listening in on these bloody things these days. Chad’s, in the Ballspond Road, tonight at 10 pm. How does that suit?”
“Fine.”
“See you there then.” The line went dead.
Monday evening.
‘Chad’s’, a lap and pole-dancing venue, was a converted pub painted entirely black with matching black windows and a bright blue neon sign above the door, outside which stood 3 shaven headed refrigerators in tuxedos when I pitched up at five to ten that evening. Two of the men were white and one black and I have to admit I approached them with a certain amount of caution.
“I have an appointment with Tony Broadbent. My name’s Marsh,” I announced with as much confidence and cool as I could muster. Without a word, the black fridge went inside while the other two closed ranks.
Fridge 1 smiled rubbing his polar bear sized paws together, “Bit parky tonight. What happened to you?”
“I fell down some stairs.”
“Right.” said Fridge 1 tilting his head sideways and looking closer at my shiner.
“What did the stairs get?” asked Fridge 2.
Fridge 3 came back out and held the door open. “I’ll take you up.”
“Hack, it’s good to see you. How long’s it been? It must be a few years.” Tony Broadbent, dapper as usual in his dark blue Huntsman suit and black Church’s tasseled brogue loafers stepped out from behind a heavy antique desk and crossed the room with his hand out-stretched. The teeth, bared by the magnanimous smile, were as brilliant white and gleaming as ever but the heavy moustache and thick wiry hair were streaked with a lot more grey since the last time we’d met.
“It’s six actually.” I said as we squeezed each other’s hands.
“Is it really? My God, where does the time go? Sit down old chum. Get comfy. What can we get you? Tea? Coffee? Your old Scotch and American? Whatever is your pleasure it’s ours to supply.”
“Just a glass of water, I have to take a pill.”
Broadbent gestured to fridge 3 and after he’d gone said, “What the hell have you done to yourself, Henry? Not been bashed about by someone’s husband, I hope?”
“No, it’s work related.”
“It’s a somewhat precarious line of business, the one you’re in, Henry, but you know my views on that subject. What can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure, Tony. Maybe nothing. How’s Nancy, by the way?”
“Absolutely fine, thanks to you and your nurse friend. She’s in her second term at university. We’re much closer since her Mother passed away. I suppose it’s only natural.
"Cancer is such a damning disease. It shows absolutely no mercy and kills indiscriminately. I’m only grateful Claire didn’t suffer long.”
“Maybe that was a kind of mercy. Anyway, Julie’s a bit more than just a nurse, which is why she was able to steer you in the right direction.”
“Quite. Senior ENT theatre Sister, wasn’t it? Christ, if I’d let that idiot surgeon operate the chances are Nancy’s face would be paralyzed instead of which a simple course of medication cured the problem.”
“Yes. If you remember, Julie said she wouldn’t let the guy operate on a dog or trust him to buy a bus ticket, mostly because he was drunk half the time.”
“It’s amazing the things one takes for granted, isn’t it? You naturally expect all surgeons to be at the very least competent merely by dint of their dedication but…it doesn’t bare thinking about. Anyway, you were saying or were about to say…”
I’d thought long and hard about what my opening line was going to be. I had to pick my way carefully despite Tony Broadbent and I having such a long history. Fridge 3 reappeared with a tray containing a percolator of coffee, a cup and saucer and a tall tumbler filled to the brim with iced water. “Thank you, Clive,” said Broadbent in a tone as if Fridge 3 had just delivered a life saving blood transfusion. “Now, how can I help you, Hack, old son?”
I told Broadbent of my meeting with the Smedding woman and about the missing painting. His expression became a frown of deep concern as he poured the coffee and placed a white linen napkin and the tumbler on the desk in front of me.
“So this, what was her name, Smedding, woman thinks I’ve stolen her painting? Now what on Earth does she think I’d want with an item of such obvious tat, albeit superbly rendered by Mr. Crone, I’m sure.”
“All she said was someone saw one of your blokes walking away from the flats where she lives with a picture-shaped parcel under his arm.”
“And which of my ‘blokes’ would that have been?”
“She said his name was Seth Crewe.”
“Really? Seth is a good man. At least, he’s never done anything to make me think otherwise. He’s been with the company for about a year and came highly recommended. He’s not actually the sharpest pencil in the case, but he’s reliable and loyal. However, he’s an employee and freelance isn’t allowed so I do take this incident very seriously.”
Broadbent talked as though his organization was totally legitimate and above board, and unless he was a more convincing liar than I gave him credit for, he seemed totally oblivious to the stolen picture episode.
“Tell you what I’ll do, Henry, (Broadbent always fluctuated between my nickname and my proper name) I’ll investigate the incident. There is no proof that Seth actually had the picture, you understand, apart from the sighting from a native and who’s to know what was in the parcel he was carrying, if indeed he had one at all? I’ll talk to him nevertheless and get back to you. OK?”
“I’d appreciate that, Tony. The old bat seemed a bit on the raving side, and her daughter sounds like she may be worse, but business is business and I can’t afford to turn much down.”
“Quite so, my friend. Still drawing, I see.” I’d absent-mindedly pulled out the sketchbook and had been drawing Broadbent as we nattered. “Let’s have a butcher’s hook, as they say in these parts.” I handed him the pad. “Bloody hell. Am I really as ravishing as that?” Broadbent beamed, as if he was preening himself in a mirror. “You really are a talented old bugger, Hack. You always were.”
“Do you still draw, Tone?” I said, quite glad the old fond feelings I had for my friend were still there under the thicker surfaces we’d both built over the last few years.
“Would that I had the time, old sport. Would that I had the time. Apart from having several businesses to run I also spend a good deal of time watching my back. There’s a constant need to on this side of the fence, so to speak. High intelligence quotas and subtlety aren’t the order of the day but stupidity and brute force are, so one has to be constantly on one’s toes.”
“You always were a bit of a ballerina, Tony.”
Tony laughed, “I always saw myself more as a Fred Astaire.”
The two of us spent the next half an hour reminiscing until the desk telephone rang. Tony lifted the receiver and stood up holding out his hand. “Good to see you, Henry. I must get on. Give your contact numbers to Clive on your way out. I’ll be in touch.”
Screwing up the parking ticket from the day before displayed on the Jag windshield and stuffing it into my pocket, I eased my aching body back into the car, and thought back over my friendship with Tony Broadbent. For some reason better known to whichever Gods might have been in the immediate vicinity when we’d first met at Camberwell Art school all those years ago, whatever it was that lived at the heart of Tony Broadbent began waving flags when it clapped eyes on one Hackney Marsh for the first time and vice versa. True we had some common interests – we both liked art and design and loved modern jazz, I played the guitar a bit and Tony did more than a passing imitation of Jazz singer, Mark Murphy, but our backgrounds were vastly different.
Tony, brought up in a middle class Northampton district, passed 6 O levels and two As at the local Grammar school and was already self confident bordering on arrogant by the time he turned up on the first day at the Victorian College Building in SE5.
As for me, I attended one of roughest, toughest Secondary Moderns schools in East London – not that they weren’t all pretty dangerous places but few of them could claim to have had 2 pupil-on-pupil murders take place on the school playground in broad daylight in the space of 3 years. I took 4 O levels passing in art and failing English, Geography and History, not having been allowed to sit the maths exam so appalling was my grasp of even rudimentary arithmetic. I managed to get into Camberwell on the strength of my drawing ability and the fact that my cousin, Tamsin, who worked at the college as a secretarial assistant, was screwing the principle and threatened to tell his wife.
4 years later, when we left the art school, the brash, flash Tony Broadbent talked his way into a job as a copywriter at the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, in Berkeley Square and pretty soon had shinned up the greasy pole to become one of the agencies creative directors on what was considered in those soppy, foppish days of the Nineteen Seventies to be a huge salary of 20 grand a year. He was put in charge of a creative group of some 20 people and was responsible for vetting their work and steering them in the right direction if he thought they hadn’t quite cracked an advertising brief. He was also required to present creative work to senior management in the agency and to clients. I saw him do this a couple of times and he oozed charm and charisma and was a spellbinding presenter, his natural wit and eloquence flowed as freely as a river in full flood. If anyone was destined for stardom in that heady, personality driven advertising world it was Tony Broadbent.
Then he met Saffron, a rich, spoiled super model and Cocaine user. No doubt spurred on by his enormous ego and insatiable desire for exotic women, Tony fell under her spell and within a month was off the rails. He became bleary eyed and unkempt. He didn’t turn up for important meetings when he bothered to go to the office at all. The creative teams in his group missed deadlines and the standard of their work began to drift. He was eventually replaced as a group head and soon after sacked from the agency, at which point Saffron also sacked him from his position of lover, sugar Daddy and drugs gofer. Saffron’s rejection of him severely damaged Broadbent’s chronic conceit and he pursued her relentlessly, calling her incessantly day and night, leaving messages on her answer phone, sending letters full of poetry attached to massive, over-the-top bunches of flowers to her flat in Pimlico. When she couldn’t stand it any more, she called him, screaming at him that unless he’d stopped chasing her, he’d be sorry. He took no notice and not long after, was attended to by a couple of professional wrestlers in a side street off Davis Street, Mayfair, late one rain sodden night. They skillfully beat him so that nothing showed and there was no lasting damage and after a couple of weeks at home in bed at his flat in Marylebone High Street, old Tone emerged unmarked, at least, on the outside.
Tony found himself unemployable in the advertising agency business and invested the money he’d made from the hefty payoff his contract had demanded from J. Walter Thompson, in a start-up post-production film company and soon took over the day-to day running of the business. Driven by a new ambition to prove to agencies that he could succeed without them he pushed himself hard and the business grew in leaps and bounds. He bought the building it was housed in Dean Street, Soho. Then he bought the building next door and one across the street and suddenly intoxicated by the property game, turned his attention to the East End, which was at the time being renovated and gentrified for the first time since Queen Victoria built rows of houses in the area and the many memorials to her beloved Albert including Victoria Park. He quickly became the owner of entire streets in Hackney, Bow and Tower Hamlets specializing in squeezing the growing Asian communities for almost everything they had, which wasn’t much to begin with, and hiring some fairly nasty Asian thugs to enforce his demands. Like the notorious Peter Rackman before him, Tony Broadbent’s name was soon on everyone’s lips, public and police alike. He was never linked directly to any crime, at least not in ways that were provable in court and his presence in the East End was felt rather than seen, but quite deeply felt.
My career had been far less spectacular. Not having anywhere near the front or confidence my friend seemed to possess in spades, I managed to hold down freelance positions in several grotty commercial art studios drawing anything from storyboards for advertising agency commercials to naff birthday cards for high-powered executive’s wives. I hated the experience and loathed most of the studio owners, who, according to the size of the limousines they drove around in seemed to make fortunes out of the rows of freelance slaves in what were described as ‘The Galleys’ on the studio floors.
In one such studio, a series of thefts took place. Things started to go missing from desks drawers, coat pockets and handbags. It was mainly money, which was stolen but my own transistor radio with which I used to listen to Radio 4 through headphones to relieve the tedium of the job also disappeared. The finger was pointed at the pretty Albanian cleaning/tea lady, the studio employed but I always found her to be a very pleasant woman, who despite her struggles with the English language was always cheerful.
“’Ello, ‘arck-en-ey. How is you do-ink this day? Still ‘ard at the verkink so usual?”
I refused to believe Jeleana was the guilty party especially when the studio owners son, Max, seemed to have turned everyone’s suspicions into a personal vendetta whenever she was out of earshot.
“Typical bloody foreigner, if you ask me,” (nobody had) “they come over here and steal our jobs then, as if that isn’t enough, they steal our bloody money and possessions, too. I just hope I’m the one who catches that slag at it. I’ll make her wish she’d never been born.”
Remembering a storyline from the TV series, ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet’, one evening I spread an indelible chemical on a ten-pound note and left it in my desk drawer. It was gone the next morning and in a meeting with Max and his father later that day, it was evident that Max had either become a member of the Gardener’s Question Time panel overnight or his green fingers were evidence that he was as guilty as sin. I simply asked Max for my money back there and then, a bold move that was to get both me, and the tea lady fired. Jeleana later told me that Max had cornered her one afternoon in the Xerox room and tried to kiss her but that she’d managed to push him away and that he’d got angry, calling her some pretty unpleasant names. I found my own name blacked by every art studio in the West End and realised the advertising business was as corrupt as any other and seemed to have it’s own style of Mafia network.
After a few visits to the Job Centre, or as it was called then, the Labour Exchange, and being turned down by a local removal firm on the grounds that I looked too weedy to lift wardrobes I got a phone call from one of my old studio comrades who, remembering how I'd tracked Max down as the office thief, asked me if I could help catch a peeping Tom who’d been bothering his girlfriend. I didn’t have anything else to do and the bloke said he’d pay £200 cash if I managed to catch the intruder on camera.
I did better than that. Borrowing an old weighted cricket net from a grounds man I knew at Dulwich College, I sat in an apple tree in the girl’s garden for 3 nights on the trot and on the 3rd, the peeping Tom came creeping up the garden path passing right beneath the tree. I waited till he’d positioned himself in peeping pose by ground floor bedroom window before taking a picture of him and flooding the garden with a nuclear explosion of light. The peeping Tom panicked and tried to run back the way he’d come but, as he passed under the tree again, I dropped the net entangling the creep like a trapped leopard. My studio friend, accompanied by his girlfriend’s brother and father appeared from the block of flats, gave me the cash and suggested I leave before they dealt with the peeping Tom in the good old-fashioned East End way of knocking seven bells out of him, which I gladly did. He turned out to be a married schoolteacher, scoutmaster and church council member. It seemed pure justice that he could now genuinely add pervert to his CV.
After that, Hackney Marsh’s reputation as a problem solver spread on the grapevine and my phone started to ring. I took to the work with a bizarre fascination and certainly seemed to have a natural knack for undoing some of the weird knots people tied their lives up in. I took a tiny office over a shop in Mare Street, one of Hackney’s most run down and seediest shopping streets, which doubled as a bus terminal. I designed myself a business card - a green background with my own thumbprint printed in yellow above the words:
HACKNEY MARSH
CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATOR
Matrimonial surveillance including photographic evidence; fraud/theft investigation; missing person searches; insurance surveillance; information gathering; general advice.
Fee: according to job.
277B, Mare Street, Hackney N1 7QX
Tel: 020 8595 8267
Mob: 07951 83 5559
I also hired Dillies, a pleasant, middle aged, staunchly Christian West Indian family woman with a white woman’s perm, from Dalston, who was nothing if not super efficient, could type at the speed of light, had a friendly but authoritative telephone voice, was not to be messed with: “No, you definitely said 2 sugars, Mr Marsh, an’ two sugars is what you got.” and, most importantly, could add up.
Tuesday.
The next day, after the Chad’s meeting, Dillies called over the partition that divided her corner of the office from mine, “I’ve got Tony Broadbent’s PA holding on.”
“What did she say?”
“She said Mr. Broadbent asked her to tell you that the matter is in hand but that there are some issues he’d like to discuss with you and can you meet him at the same place this evening at 9.30?”
“Tell her to tell him I’ll be there.”
Tuesday evening.
Fridge 3 showed me to the office where Tony Broadbent was sitting behind the antique desk with a grave look on his face. A sheepish-looking slightly less fridge-sized man was standing next to the desk with his hands behind his back. “Henry, Good to see you. Please sit down. This is Seth.”
The smaller fridge stepped forward and offered me his hand. “Ullo, Mr Marsh. Pleased to meetcha,” he said almost crushing my hand to mashed potato.
“Seth, please be good enough to tell Henry here what you told me last night exactly as you told it to me.” Broadbent said quietly.
Seth cleared his throat nervously, “A pal of mine told me that Danielle Smeddin’ had took the picture from a warehouse where he works and that it was worth a lot of money. He asked me to get it back for ‘im.”
“Why didn’t you just knock on the door and ask for it?” I said, “I mean, a big lad like you shouldn’t have had any trouble.”
Seth glanced uncertainly at Broadbent who nodded, “Carry on Sethy.”
“I did that. But that Danielle’s a right fruitcake. She come at me wiv a carvin’ knife.”
“Didn’t you recognize Danielle in the picture when you went back to collect it, so to speak, and that it wouldn’t be worth much?” I said, quickly realizing the question was futile and that Seth wouldn’t have known an amateur paint job from a Rembrandt.
Seth's brow furrowed like a freshy ploughed field and his head appeared to swell as if it was about to explode, “No, the paint was all sort of hickerdy pickerdy and I wouldn’t ‘ave known it was ‘er. I ain’t never seen ‘er wiv er clothes off before.” Tony Broadbent covered his face with his hands, turned sideways and pretended to sneeze.
“How did you know where to find it?”
“I didn’t, but I didn’t ‘ave to look very far. It was ‘angin’ over the fireplace.”
“So you delivered it to your friend?” I said, adjusting a few lines on my sketch of Seth to get the posture right.
“Sright.”
“And where’s this warehouse you mentioned?”
Seth looked again at Broadbent who nodded having recovered from his sneezing fit. “It’s over in Lion Mills, near Tescos on the Leytonstone Road.”
“What’s the company called?”
“Select Furnishin’ and Fine Art.”
“And your friend’s name?”
Broadbent nodded again.“John Smallstead.”
“And what does he do there?”
“‘es a ware’ouse technician.”
“What does that involve?”
“’e lugs fings about an’ that.”
“Gotcha. Thanks for your help, Seth. I think I’ve done now, unless there’s anything else you think I ought to know.”
“Ok, Seth. That’s all. You can get back to work. Thanks for your cooperation.” said Broadbent and when Seth had gone, “See what I mean? Not exactly Brain of Britain. Well, old chum, I hope that’s of some help and that you can convince this Smedding woman that I’m not in any way involved in the shenanigans. Seth has a pretty big flea nesting in his ear and is on a month’s probation. If I were you, I’d leave this one alone and let the Smeddings stew in their own juice. It all sounds like a real croc of shit to me. Someone’s telling porky pies, if not all the people involved. Mind how you go, Henry.”
Wednesday evening.
“That’s pretty good. Not much I can say really. Your pencil work is excellent. Do you paint much?” George Crone was leaning over my shoulder as I stood at an easel in the London Fields life class marveling that the hideousness of nude art models hadn’t improved one jot since his Camberwell Art School days and that, if anything, they’d got worse.
“Not any more. Not since art school really.”
“Which one were you at?”
“Camberwell.”
“Bloody Hell. So was I. When were you there?”
“I left in ’74.”
“I left in ’70. So we just missed each other. Keep up the good work.” Crone moved on to the next student, a fat lady in a flower print dress, which gave her the appearance of a floral gasometer.
In the canteen tea break I sat down opposite George Crone at one of the tables.I placed my business card on the table next to the teacher’s mug of coffee.
"Do you mind if we have a word?”
Crone picked up the card and examined it. “Christ!” he exclaimed.
“I didn’t think the design was that good,” I said, not failing to notice that the young man was visibly shocked. He didn’t say anything but swallowed hard.
"Relax,” I said, “I’m not the law. I don’t care what it is that you and Danielle have been up to, and there’s definitely something. I’m being paid to get the picture you painted of her back to her mother before the weekend, but before I go charging into Select Furnishing and Fine Art with both guns blazing I want to know what’s been going on. I mean, with the greatest of respect, I’m sure the work is magnificent on a personal level, but on the open market I’d take a guess that’s it’s worth about 6% of fuck all, am I right?” Crone nodded. “Then why is it such a desirable item to anyone outside of you and Danielle?”
Crone stared into his coffee for a moment. He had that familiar, pained look about him – the one that usually ended up saying: “It’s all such a mess,” or something similar, like most of my clients seemed to start out with.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” I suggested, “I’m a good listener and it may help to get it off your chest.”
Without a word Crone got up and walked out of the canteen. He was nowhere to be seen for the second half of the life class so I wandered round and gave a few unofficial words of encouragement to a few of the punters which they seemed to appreciate except a skinny bloke in his 50s and a Marks and Sparks cardie who obviously thought he was Van Gogh and didn’t need advice from an amateur like me. I told him I thought his drawing was really good but he just sneered so then I said, “Well, it is good. But it’s not that good,” and moved on.
Thursday morning.
A thick-set man in a brown work coat, with a football supporter shaven head and a curtain ring attached to each ear lobe appeared from behind a row of Victorian wardrobes in the maze of antique furniture which stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the open doors of the Select Furnishing and Fine Art warehouse. He stood in front of me with his feet astride blocking any further access and looking not much less threatening than the average Rothweiller.
“Can I help, you pal?” he said in a tone certainly more like a threat than a welcome.
“I’m looking for John Smallstead.”
“And who might you be?” I offered him my card which caused his face to crease into a particularly ugly sneer transforming his features into those of a large pig, “’ackney Marsh? Are you ‘avin’ a laugh’ or what?”
“I’m not very good at jokes this early in the morning,” I said, aware I was chancing my arm not to mention my neck, “Is he around?”
“Nah.”
“When will he be?”
“Dunno. I ‘ain’t ‘is keeper.”
“He does work here, then?”
“’e might.”
Quickly realizing that this particular session of University Challenge was going nowhere, I brought it to an abrupt end,“Right. When you see him, give him my card and tell him I’ll call back, would you?”
“What joo want to see ‘im abaht?”
“I want to talk to him about art. I understand he’s a bit of a collector. If he does show up in the near future tell him he can contact me at Snow Hill nick.”
I walked slowly back to the jag, looking at the sketch I’d done of the warehouse exterior, not surprised that John Smallstead hadn’t admitted his identity, confirming that he was up to something not quite kosher. I watched him in the mirror as I started the Jag’s tired old engine. I could almost hear the cogs in his brain whirling round at a billion revs a mili-second as he struggled with the knowledge that I was maybe too familiar with the most well known police station in London and what I might be intending to tell the desk sergeant, let alone Plod of a more senior variety. He started to move towards the car and I contemplated whacking my foot down on the accelerator pedal and getting out of town toute suite but some kind of insane curiosity coupled with the knowledge that the jag would almost certainly have stalled along with any modicum of credibility I might have possessed persuaded me to sit tight.
Miraculously, the driver’s side electric window lowered with a groan when I pressed the button and Smallstead placed his hands on the car roof and leaned his ugly mug uncomfortably close to mine.
“All right, smartarse. Stop pissin’ about an’ tell me what the fuck you want.”
“Danielle Smedding’s picture. I take it you are John Smallstead?”
Smallstead grinned a yellow grin. “S’right. She send you, did she?”
“No, I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the charming lady and I don’t relish the thought. Her Mother sent me.”
“That barmy old cow? What the fuck’s it got to do with her?” ”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. All I’m interested in is returning the picture to her and collecting my fee.”
"What makes you think I’ve got it, this bleedin’ picture or whatever?”
“I didn’t say I did, but as you ask, your courier, Seth Crewe, told me he gave it to you.”
“Wanker,” he said, probably referring to both Seth Crewe and me at the same time. “’e don’t know what time of day it is.”
“He said Danielle Smedding had stolen it from here and you’d asked him to get it back.”
“Some people will believe anyfink. But you’re out of luck, pal. I ain’t got the picture now, that’s if I ever ‘ad it and I ‘ain’t sayin’ I did. But if I did, an I ‘ain’t sayin’ I did, I would’ve ‘anded it on by now.”
“That’s a bit of a shame. Handed it on to whom?”
“I ‘ain’t tellin’ you that, not that there’s anyfink to tell if I didn’t have the picture in the first place, in which case there wouldn’t be nobody to ‘and it on to, would there? So wha’ever it is you want, pal, it ‘ain’t nuffin’ to do wiv me, right?”
“Right,” I said, “I’ll get out of your hair, then.”
Already aware Smallstead had no sense of humour to speak of, I eased my foot firmly down on the accelerator pedal and the Jag lumbered tank-like across the gravel driveway shrouding him in a cloud of dust. As I pulled up to turn onto the main road, I saw my host in the mirror again about 80 yards back pacing frantically up and down and talking into a mobile phone. Either that or he’d developed sudden chronic earache and had cupped his hand over the side of his head to try and relieve the agony. I found myself hoping that it was earache and that a giant queen wasp nestling against his eardrum and using her sting as an excavating drill had caused it. More likely he was calling the person he’d handed the picture of Dannielle Smedding on to, no doubt warning him that a slick, smart, intrepid sleuth by the name of Hackney Marsh was hot on his trail.
Later, Thursday morning.
“Hi Dill. Do you know a Gordon Fielding?” I said to the back of Dillies’s head as I entered the office, “Any calls?”
She stopped typing for a moment. “A Mrs. Smeddin called and wants you to call her back. The only Gordon Fielding I know of is the one who’s a member of Hackney Council and the Conservative Candidate for Hackney North, not that he’ll ever get in. Why do you ask?”
“He also has an antiques business over at Lion Mills. At least his name’s above the door.” Dill’s fingers went back to work on her keyboard and I sat down and typed Gordon Fielding into the Google search on my very used laptop. He was indeed a member of Hackney Council according to their website and was head of the environmental and planning department.
Thursday afternoon.
1930s built Hackney Town Hall looks like a stale Christmas cake. The huge, ugly slab of white icing and marzipan squats smugly behind a square lawn as the centrepiece of Mare Street, Hackney’s depressing main-street. Inside, appropriately, everything has the dark brown cloying feeling and texture of the average stale fruitcake.
“Mr. Fielding will see you now, Mr. Marsh. Please go in.” The pretty young brown girl sitting at the brown desk in the brown corridor on the brown first floor smiled and gestured towards one of the old brown oak doors. Getting in to see Gordon Fielding hadn’t been difficult. Having established he was in the building that day, and which floor he lived on, I just turned up and showed my card to the receptionist who called him on the internal phone. It had been a shot in the dark, backed up by a bit of instinct and I’d have put money on the fact that he was expecting me.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Marsh. What can I do for you? Please have a seat.”
Fielding didn’t get up or offer his hand in greeting and the row of 4 tatty, grey stacking chairs in front of his brown desk were about as welcoming as a row of dentist chairs. My card lay on the lined foolscap pad on his desk in front of his folded arms. His dark grey suit, though not quite Huntsman spec, was expensive and well-cut; the trendy thick framed glasses weren’t from Spec Savers and the silk and subtly patterned tie and Irish linen shirt didn’t come from anywhere in Hackney either. The ensemble, along with the piercing blue eyes, warned me to tread carefully. This silver haired 40ish, clean-cut, if slightly plump around the gills little man, wasn’t just your average local West Ham supporter but whatever game he was in he was a serious player.
“Hello, Mr. Fielding. Thank you for seeing me. Do you know a lady by the name of Dannielle Smedding?” straight in and no messing was my decided approach.
“Yes, I do. She used to work here at the Town Hall.” wasn’t the answer I expected.
“Used to?”
“She left some time ago.”
“Really? Did she go somewhere else? I mean, why did she leave?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss council personnel with anyone without their prior approval.”
“But she’s not personnel any more.”
“Or former personnel.”
“OK. I’m actually making enquiries about a painting that belongs to her which has gone missing.”
“Really? Is it valuable?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. It’s a portrait of her. I’m just interested in getting it back.” There wasn’t a flicker of response. “I have it on good authority that somehow, I’m quite sure accidentally, the painting went on to become part of your own collection.”
“Were that the case, I would’ve thought I’d have known about it.”
“And you don’t?”
“I certainly do not. Everything acquired by Select Furnishing and Fine Art is inspected by me personally and if accepted, catalogued. We have no such renegade painting, I can assure you. What’s the subject of the work again?”
“It’s a portrait of Ms. Smedding herself.”
“Really? We deal in antique works, Mr. Marsh – mainly Victorian landscapes and still lifes, that sort of thing - pictures respectable householders with impeccable taste may hang on their walls. I hardly think a portrait of Miss Smedding, no matter how attractive, would be of any interest to me or any of my buyers whomsoever.”
“Of course. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” I stood up and offered my hand, “I have to follow all leads, no matter how daft they may seem, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He also stood up and shook my hand with all the warmth of a dead fish. “May I ask where the information which led you here came from?”
I smiled, “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss a client’s affairs with anyone without their prior approval. Good afternoon.”
It had been a pretty quick interview. I hadn’t even had time to do a drawing of Gordon Fielding. There had been absolutely nothing in his immaculate, professional, ice-cool demeanour to make me suspect he was lying. But he was a politician, albeit a local one, and they all lied through their teeth as a matter of course.
Thursday, even later.
I asked Dillies if she knew anyone else who worked at the Town Hall and if she did, could she find out a bit more about Dannielle Smedding’s employment there and why it had come to an end. It turned out Dill’s daughter’s best friend worked there as a secretary and had known Danielle Smedding quite well and had mentioned her recently.
“Dannielle Smedding was sacked for stealing,” Dill said as if she was both judge and jury and wanted the death sentence, “Tasha, Elisha’s friend, said she wasn’t a very nice person – very aggressive and loud and given to swearing quite a lot.”
“When was this? I mean when was she sacked?”
“About a month ago, Tasha said.”
“What did she steal?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, she’ll be judged for it at the end of the day, silly girl.” A regular churchgoer, Dillies was obviously making reference to the Great Magistrate in the sky rather than the one at Old Street Magistrate’s Court.
I sat down at my desk, took an A4 layout pad and a couple of pencils from the drawer and started drawing. I sketched a deserted Beach scene stretching away into the distance with a couple of small boats hauled up on the shore, a lighthouse, and a couple of huts. I added the shape of a huge, rectangular building at one end of the beach and a row of distant pylons silhouetted against a dark stormy-looking sky. Dungeness had had such an everlasting effect on me ever since I was first taken there on a school Geography field trip when I was 14 that I often found myself drawing it from memory. I visited the place now and again when I was at a loose end and spent hour after hour making drawings.
Dungeness always reminds me of some kind of weird Polanski type film set. The bleakness of the scenery is almost overwhelming and the threatening semi-active Nuclear power station fits the atmosphere like a glove. It once occurred to me that the whole scene is like a kind of warning of how close Human Beings actually are to creating absolute destruction and devastation on their tiny planet. At least it did to my warped imagination. I’m just one of thousands of artists to whom Dungeness is a place of awesome beauty. The extraordinary power of the place is there for anyone to see but what an artist sees and feels doesn’t register to the average punter who probably thinks the place it’s just cold and boring and can’t wait for their next bag of chips.
The layout pad, amongst a few others lying about the office was almost full, every page containing a different drawing of Dungeness as I’d tried to capture its wonderful moodiness on paper over and over again. Drawing Dungeness from memory was also a useful therapy which occupied potentially interfering emotions while my mind sifted through the usual debris surrounding a case like a garden fork turning a pile of manure as I tried to get to the core of a problem.
The key to this was the understanding that unlike most detective stories where nothing is as it seems at first sight, in real life most things usually are. But all I had to do was get the picture of Danielle back to her Mother – if it still existed. Gordon Fielding’s fascination with it, if he had one, wasn’t my concern though endless ‘Boy’s Own’ type silly reasons coursed through my brain like a never-ending river.
If you were half my age, you’d remember Boys Own as THE fantasy boys comic of the 40’s and 50s packed with spies creating international mayhem and being brought to heel by blokes just like me except they were handsome, dashing, Oxbridge educated, experts in un-armed combat, skilled swordsmen, crack shots, speakers of fluent Russian, Urdu and Mandarin, could fly fighter planes at the drop of a hat, sky dive, swim to Olympic standard, drove F1 cars in their spare time and had names like Lance Sterling and Roger Bicep. Hackney Marsh didn’t quite have the same ring somehow.
Scenario 1: The paint George Crone had used on the portrait of Dannielle had been invented by a chemist friend of his and had the unique property that when it was mixed with heroin the drug was undetectable by a sniffer dog, so oodles of drugs could be smuggled in and out of the country disguised as oil paintings, the stuff being easily separated from the paint by applying a special solution smuggled in from Russia to the surface of the canvas. All George had to do was keep churning out pictures. He and Danielle had taken their idea in the shape of her portrait to Fielding, who was an international drug smuggler using his antiques business as a cover, but the three had got into an argument over who got what percentage of the profits from the enterprise. Danielle had taken the painting home and instructed her Mother to guard it with her life while she went to Glasgow to talk to other drug barons she knew. Fielding had decided to pursue the venture himself and had the painting stolen so that he could have the paint analyzed and produce his own works of drug art. He’d also offered George Crone a tidy bit of freelance, which was why the teacher had been so edgy when I’d tried to talk to him. He was obviously terrified what the apparently un-hinged Dannielle would do to him if she ever found out he was moonlighting.
Scenario 2: Dannielle had discovered while working at the Town Hall that Fielding had secretly given the go ahead to a new shopping and cinema complex close to the 2012 Olympic site and by-passed his own planning department so that he could share in the huge profits that would be made by the consortium which owned the complex, and of which he was a member. Dannielle had accidentally found plans and documents pertaining to the project on one of the council computers, had run them out and hidden copies in the back of the painting which she’d had hanging on the wall over her desk. She’d intended to blackmail Fielding but someone had seen her sealing the plans behind the picture and told Fielding who traced her access path on the council computer system to the documents she’d copied. He had Dannielle followed when she took the painting home then had it stolen.
Scenario 3: Fielding was actually Dannielle’s step uncle and had abused her as a child. She’d got the job at the Town Hall having discovered that he worked there and festooned the walls around his office with nude paintings of herself. She stuck post-it-notes containing cryptic messages to the frames: ‘beautiful but spoiled’; ‘innocent but feeling guilty’; ‘trashed’etc. Fielding had the paintings removed and destroyed but Danielle managed to keep one and told Fielding she was going to hang it in an exhibition about child abuse and that if pressed, she would reveal his identity as a child molester. Fielding had the painting stolen and destroyed.
Any of these scenarios may have explained the black Lexus 4WD with even blacker windows that tried to run me down in the deserted Sainsburys car park the night after my chat with Fielding. The supermarket was closed for refurbishment and I’d parked there to visit the Hope and Anchor pub on the corner of Cambridge Heath Road and the Whitechapel Road for a pint or two of Guiness. Despite my twisted ankle, my commando training kicked in and I managed to twist-vault myself out of its path, make it to the jag and write down the assassin’s registration number as the Lexus crashed the wrong way through the car park barrier and barreled off into the night leaving a white cloud of burnt rubber in its wake.
Except I didn’t have any commando training, was useless at PE when I was at school and as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a twist-vault. The Lexus episode never happened. Those sort of things never do except in The Bill or some other equally unconvincing TV drama where they seem to be as common as a cold.
It was a beat up Ford Mondeo that came a bit too close for comfort in Sainsburys car park, the driver probably pissed. He did exit the car park via the in lane but the barriers were up and there wasn’t so much a cloud of tyre smoke as a fog of exhaust fumes from the Mondeo’s knackered piston rings. I didn’t bother to take the reg. number but I did note the car was a dull red colour with one blue door on the driver’s side.
I couldn’t make head or tail of this stolen painting caper so I employed another old routine I sometimes used to try and solve the problem. If you take a dog for a walk and let it off the lead and it runs away, chase after it and ten-to-one it’ll run even faster. The more you run after it the further away it’ll get. Your only hope is to turn your back and head for home. If your dog is the best friend it’s supposed to be, before you know it, the mangy brute will be back at your heals licking your hand, realizing what a mistake it would be to bite the one that feeds it. If it doesn’t reappear at your side as if by magic then it doesn’t really love you and you’d be better off letting some other mug find the bugger and take pity on it. In short, I put the case out of my mind and waited for the answer to present itself, telling my brain that if it didn’t cough up I’d put a bullet through it and that it wouldn’t have lots of little grey cells floating about so much as dead ones.
Last thing, Thursday evening.
Drawing Dungeness wasn’t leading anywhere other than Dungeness so I went for a walk along the Regent’s Canal. I’d rented a flat from a leaseholder friend of mine on the New Crown Estate in Victoria Park Road so I had a key to a private gate onto the towpath. I walked as far as the Limehouse Basin from where you can see the Docklands Development and Canary Wharf in all its soulless glory before turning back. It was getting too dark to see anything of interest and the towpath is notoriously a mugger’s paradise.
Back at the flat I poured myself a hefty Jameson’s Whiskey, bunged a Steely Dan CD on, sat myself at my very second hand 1950s dining table and began idling through a book of Elizabethan portraits.
There were several paintings of the great queen herself, each one remarkably unlike the next. The thing that had always amazed me about historic portraiture was that the sitter’s likeness seemed to have been down to the painter’s interpretation. I mean, it’s not as if the artists couldn’t draw, though it has to be said that some of them couldn’t, but it was evident from the detail on the costumes that generally they could. I came across 2 portraits of Elizabeth on opposite pages. They were painted a little over a year apart, and though there were similarities in the two faces, the pictures could have been of two different people. A caption next to the two portraits then went some way to explaining the real reason for the differences in appearance of the sitter. According to the caption, it was up to the artist to ‘flatter’ the portrait sitter in any way which would: A. Enhance their own reputation as an artist, B. help them keep their head when all around were losing theirs. It was a pure case of one man’s nose being another man’s ear hole. It was while I was pondering all this that my Eureka moment actually arrived.
Friday morning.
“Mrs. Smedding?”
“Yeah. Who’s that?”
“It’s Hackney Marsh. I’ve got good news. I’ve got the painting. It’s a bit of a long story but I just rang to make sure you were in so I can come over and give it back to you. Mrs. Smedding? Are you there?”
“You can’t come over. I’m goin’ aat.”
“When will you be back?”
“I dunno. I’m goin’ away, like.”
“Really? Well, I need to talk to you before you go. I need to give you the painting and you need to give me some money,” The line went dead so I knocked on the door and shouted through the letterbox, “Surprise, surprise, Mrs. Smedding. Here I am, right outside.”
“Go away or I’ll call the police,” she yelled, sounding panicky.
“You don’t need to do that, Mrs. Smedding. They’re already on their way.”
I heard hurried footsteps inside so I stepped smartly to one side not wishing to repeat my backward gymnastic display. Getting through the outer door had been a breeze, having been at school with Ted, the milkman who, thick and gullible as ever, swallowed my tale of woe about losing my latchkey. The door opened and I was confronted with a very frightened looking Vera Smedding.
“Whatdja call the Old Bill for? I’ll pay yer. I ain’t done nuffink.”
“Calm down Vera. Look, I’ve got your picture back. I didn’t really call the Old Bill, I just wanted you to open the door.” She didn’t seem impressed. “Why don’t we go inside and have a nice cup of tea and a chat? I’m not going anywhere till we do.” Vera Smedding backed inside and I followed her down the hall to the sitting room with my precious parcel under my arm. “It’s a bit damaged I’m afraid, but I’m sure with a bit of TLC we can get it back to normal.” Vera still seemed very jittery, “When’s your daughter back?”
“Tomorrer.”
“That should just about give us enough time. It’s the frame that’s damaged more than anything.”
I pulled the picture out of the bin bag and laid it on the sofa. The frame was twisted with one edge hanging on by a screw at one end and the backing was flapping loose. “I really think you’re worrying unnecessarily, Vera.”
For some absurd reason I felt sorry for the daft old bat. A look of horror spread across Vera’s face. “What’s all that yeller stuff?” She was referring to a large stain across one corner of the canvas which partly covered her daughter’s left shoulder and breast.
“You don’t want to know. Anyway, the canvas is varnished pretty well so it should come out quite easily. It’s pretty lucky that nothing was dumped on top of it. It could have been much worse. As it is, the picture itself is in quite good nick.”
“Whatjamean?”
“It was found in a skip. As it happened the skip was pretty full and the picture was on top of a load of plasterboard and stuff. It could have been underneath.”
“Bloody ’ell. What was it doin’ in a fuckin’ skip?” Vera raised both hands to her face as she let go with the East End’s most common descriptive.
“That doesn’t matter for the moment. We need George Crone? He’s really the one who should take care of the repairs.”
“Yeah. I fink I’ve got ‘is number wrote daan somewhere. I’ll ‘ave to look for it.”
“Are you all right? Why didn’t you want to see me? Why are you so jumpy?” she was behaving like the proverbial cat on hot bricks.
“Some geezer came rand this mornin’. He was fumpin’ on the door an’ makin’ all kinds of frets.”
“What sort of threats? What did he look like? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did. I left a message wiv your secertary. I dunno how he got in frew the downstairs door.”
“Perhaps he knew the milkman.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“He was bangin’ on the front door and shoutin’ about the bloody paintin’. I didn’t answer the door. I was really scared.”
She started to cry and I stepped across the room and put my arms around her. She sobbed into my chest. I was met with a waft of cheap perfume, and I felt like I was cuddling a huge jelly. “Look, sit down and I’ll put the kettle on.” I urged the jelly towards the sofa, sat her down and went to the kitchen and filled the kettle. “Do you mind if I look around?” I repeated.
“No. ‘elp yourself. There ‘ain’t much to see. I ‘ain’t made the beds, either. It’s all a bit of a mess.”
“Which is Danielle’s room?”
“Opposite the bathroom.”
I plugged in the kettle and went exploring. As far as I could see, Danielle’s room could have been twinned with the skip where her picture was found. My good friend, Sammy Barns, who worked for Hackney Council Refuse and Recycling Department, found it. I needed someone to check out the couple skips I’d noticed parked at the side of the Select Furnishing and Fine Art building. The skips had Hackney Council markings on them so all Sammy had to do was drive his skip lorry in through the gates and no one would ask questions even he rummaged around a bit. Sammy found Danielle’s portrait in the second skip he looked in.
“What exactly did Danielle say about the picture before she left, Vera?” I handed Vera a mug of tea.
“She was in a tearin’ ‘urry. She was rushin’ about like a mad fing shovin’ stuff into a rucksack. She said she ‘ad to go to Scotland for a couple of days and told me I had to look after the paintin’ while she was away. She made me swear on my life that I wouldn’t let it out of my sight and not to let anyone into the flat. She really scared me. She was all wild eyed like she was well off ‘er rocker.”
“But what did she actually say about the painting? I mean how did she describe it?”
"I told you. She just said to look after it.”
“But look after what? How did she describe the painting?”
“She said it was under her bed. It weren’t though. It was leanin’ against the bedroom wall.”
“What was?”
“The bloody paintin’. I told you. As soon as I clapped eyes on it I knew what she meant. I’d seen it before loads of times when I clean up in there. She never lifts a bloody finger, the lazy moo.”
“Meant by what? What did she actually say?”
Vera was getting exasperated. “She said to look after the nood portrit under her bed.”
“Do you think she might have meant this one?” I pulled the bin bag off the picture I'd found under Danielle’s bed and held it up.
“Jesus. Where d’you get that?”
"It was under her bed where she said it was.”
“That’s a photo, innit?”
“No, it’s a painting, and if it’s by whom I think it is, it’s priceless.”
“What you mean it ‘ain’t worf nuffink?”
“No, quite the opposite. It’s worth a fortune.”
As far as I knew, Jack Vetriano had never painted a full frontal nude. The nearest he ever came to painting one at all was a side shot of a woman sitting on a bed holding a white telephone, which he called ‘The Arrangement.’ What I did know was that Vetriano was one of the most bankable artists in the world having completely upset members of the art establishment with his copying technique and use of scrap reference and then really incensed them when Charles Saatchi endorsed his work by collecting it himself. Vetriano’s painting then became a ‘must have’ in elite circles and was sought after by trendy millionaires all round the world. What I was interested in was how Danielle Smedding had got her hands on this one.
There was a sudden commotion at the front door like someone was using a steam hammer on it. “Open this fuckin’ door, you bitch, or I’ll smash it in. I know you’re in there.” I recognized John Smallstead’s voice despite him screaming like a cat with its tail slammed in a safe door. Then his tone changed somewhat, “Aaaaogh. Leggo. Fuck off. Ooooooow.”
I leaned the painting against the wall and went and opened the door. Fridges 2 and 3 held Smallwood dangling with his feet off the ground and his arms behind his back.
“Where d’you want it, Mr. Marsh?” said Fridge 2.
“I suppose you’d better bring him in. Best not leave him out there. We don’t want to be accused of disturbing the peace. Come to do your own dirty work this time, have you, John?”
Smallwood struggled but Clive tightened his already crocodile-jaw-like grip and gently issued an instruction to his captive, “Just behave yourself, alright? The more you wriggle the more it’ll hurt.”
“Would someone mind tellin’ me what the fuck’s goin’ on?” Vera wailed.
“That’s a really good question, Vera,” I said, “How about making us all a cup of tea, except our friend, Mr. Smallstead, here - I don’t think he’s earned one - and I’ll explain what I think has been going on?” Picking nervously at her cuticles again, Vera shuffled off to the kitchen.
There was a sharp knock at the door and I opened it to find a smiling Fridge 1 standing there with a not so smiling George Crone. “Special delivery for Mr. Marsh,” Fridge 1 announced.
Friday evening.
“Thanks for lending me Clive, Keith, and Toby, Tony. Debt repaid in full, I reckon.”
“Happy to oblige, old son. I trust their presence was effective.”
I was back in Tony Broadbent’s office again and Clive had just done his tea tray and iced water delivery.
“Just a bit. Christ, they’re a strong trio, those boys of yours.”
“You’re not kidding. Each of them has the strength of a Churchill tank. I’ll tell you what, Hack, I’m glad they’re on my side. Anyway, are you going to tell me the outcome of all this, or what?”
“It’s been a case of mistaken identity really. Vera Smedding was looking after the wrong painting.”
“You mean she should have had her eyeball on the Vetriano under her daughter’s bed?”
“Yep.”
“Not sure about old Jack’s stuff myself. Not really my mug of Gin. Still, if Charlie S likes it, it must be good,” Tony said with that familiar cynical twinkle in his eye, “And soppy old Seth was supposed to nick that one but instead got the amateur jobby.”
I nodded, “Smallstead told him to steal a painting of a nude sitting by a mirror from Vera Smedding’s flat and that’s what he did. After all, there it was, hanging over the fireplace. Job done.”
“Silly bugger. He’s daft as a brush, Seth is sometimes, but his heart’s in the right place, at least, I think it is. Not sure about his brain though.” Tony crossed his eyes and pointed to his head with one of his index fingers and at his raised foot with the other. We both laughed, “So how did this Dannielle filly get hold of the JV?”
“She didn’t.”
“Come again?”
“It’s a fake.”
“Really? The old plot really thickens then.”
“You could say that.”
“I must confess to being a bit lost, Hack old man. You sure you don’t want any coffee?”
“No, I’m fine with the water. The original painting was stolen from Vetriano’s studio in Glassgow. It’s called ‘Kate’. He’d only just added it to his online catalogue. I think prints start at about 250 quid.”
“I’d hazard a guess the original is worth a bit more than that.”
“Just a bit. Vetriano can virtually name his price these days.”
“It’s amazing how the art world has flourished these past few years, what with our Tracy and her bed, Damien’s diamond skull and so on and then Gormley’s no slouch either. If only things had been like that in our day, eh, Hack? You wouldn’t be having to scratch a living like you do and I, well, I wouldn’t be doing what I do.”
“But there have always been a billion talented artists out there, Tone. Who’s to say we could’ve cut the mustard?”
“We’ll never know, Henry. We’ll never know. Anyway tell me more. So we’re talking fakes here?”
“Just the one. But it probably would’ve developed into more if Danielle Smedding had got her way.”
“Yes?”
“The only problem was that the bloke who did the first one wasn’t all that keen to do any more.”
“This really is confusing. So who was the mystery artiste?”
“George Crone. He did the copy to prove a point.”
“Which was?”
“Like all art school trained people, well, a lot of them, he hates Jack Vetriano’s work.”
“Because JV’s basically a self-taught amateur, except that he can hardly be called an amateur with all the money he’s made. The truth is, Jack takes away what all art students deal in - the mystique of being an art student, which is believing they’re a cut above the norm, present company excepted, naturally. I may not be a Vetriano fan but as far as I’m concerned, he’s paid his dues. He worked his butt off and not because he wanted to be a wealthy bastard but because he loved what he did.”
“So did Peter Sutcliffe.”
“Why Hack, I do believe you’re a bit of an art snob. You spent too much time in those Godforsaken commercial studios; I reckon they corroded your soul, if not the entrepreneur in you.”
“The good bits of Camberwell rubbed off on me - the purist bits. I’ve never been much of a profiteer. Anyway, Danielle came across a picture of Vetriano’s ‘Kate’ in some posh magazine a couple of months after Crone had finished the portrait of her. She showed it to him and told him she really liked it because it looked real – more real than the portrait he’d done of her. He tried to explain about impressionistic painting, which rather fell on deaf ears. In short, they had a bomber row culminating in Crone saying he could paint as well as Jack and Danielle saying Crone’s work was crap by comparison to Vetriano’s and that he was talking bollocks.”
“Sounds like a charming lady.”
“Doesn’t she just? So Crone buys a full sized print of ‘Kate’ on line, shows it to Danielle and tells her he’s going to paint a copy and that she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between it and the original.”
“But they didn’t have the original.”
“Right. But she knew a man who did.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. We’re talking a real down and dirty, low life well-connected scum cow here, Tony – someone who’d do anything for a fast buck, and I mean anything.”
“Sounds like my kind of girl. Why haven’t I come across her?”
“You probably have. She worked here at Chad’s as a dancer. She went by the name of Scarlet.”
“Bloody Hell. I remember Scarlet. How could I forget? A bit of a racy bitch – like a hyena on steroids. Gave me the glad eye a few times but there was something a little, shall we say, unwashed about her.” Tony looked like he’d swallowed something particularly nasty for a moment,“She wasn’t here long, I’m glad to say. So that was Ms Smedding was it? Little wonder her Mother’s scared of her. I think I was a bit.”
“She did it all, artist’s model, page 3, prossie – that was how she and George Crone met.”
“You mean he was a client? I suddenly have the urge to shower. Just talking about this particular female makes me want to start scratching. Ugh, the thought of her being as close as she once was.” Tony pushed the top joint of his finger inside his shirt collar and tugged it away from his neck.
“Crone was a client in a manner of speaking. Danielle Smedding did a bit of modeling in art schools and evening classes and George Crone was in charge of one of them. Like I said, she’ll get her kit off at the drop of a hat.”
“So let me get this right. Our Danielle knows the party who stole JVs original ‘Kate’ painting?”
“She doesn’t just know them, she told them about the painting in the first place and how much loot they could make in certain foreign markets were they to get heir mits on it.”
“Sounds about as plausible as a Simon Templer storyline. As you know, I’m pretty well connected in the art scene and I’ve never come across even a whiff of goings on like that.”
“You wouldn’t have. This isn’t your top international ring of smooth and discreet art thieves, which, as you say, you’d find in any self-respecting Saint caper. These are pretty low-life scumbags. They don’t have a lot of finesse but they know what they want and they’ll do anything to get it. As I’m sure you know, valuable art theft is usually carried out for the purpose of ransom or on behalf of private collectors where the actual value of the work is not relevant and ownership is everything. Some of these so-called private collectors have so much wealth that money in terms of hard cash means sweet FA. The buggers actually steal from each other. There’s a load of stuff that’s been missing for decades. It’ll never be seen again. It’s sometimes used as currency for drug or weapons deals. It’s not surprising that Scotland Yard actually has an Art and Antiques Squad. Mind you, Danielle and her mates aren’t in the drugs cartel league, luckily for them.”
“I assume you mean lucky because they’d be long dead if they had been.”
“Right. So they decided to go for a quick buck from the artist himself.”
“You mean they tried to sell Jack his own painting back?”
“That’s right.”
Tony laughed, “Have you ever met him? Vertiano, I mean?”
“No. Like you, I’m not much of a fan and I don’t move in those circles, I‘m glad to say.”
“There’s that old snob in you showing again, Hack. I’ve met Jack a few times. He’s a lovely bloke - quiet, and sort of self-effacing. But he’s also as tough as nails. Pound to a penny he told Danielle and her band of brigands to fuck off.”
“More or less.”
“So the Danielle Smedding brigade now has two paintings – an original and a fake, neither of which anyone wants, right?”
“The brigade only knows about one painting. Two weeks ago, Danielle and George Crone took the fake painting to Glasgow. They drove up in a hired van and booked into an hotel, having arranged to meet the gang on the pretext that they needed to make sure the stolen painting was genuine. She fed them some load of crap about Vetriano having cheap copies of his paintings made while the originals are kept in a secure place. George was to pose as an art expert and an authority on Vetriano.”
“And they believed it?”
“According to Crone, yes. And this is the good bit - Danielle and Crone tell the gang that the painting has to be examined under special lighting conditions in a photographic dark room. They tell them the paint Vetriano uses can only be verified under certain lighting conditions. They arrange to use a darkroom with someone Crone knows at Glasgow University. The gang insists that one of them goes into the dark room with Crone and the painting. What they don’t know is that Danielle and Crone have concealed the fake picture behind a shelf unit in the darkroom the idea being that at the appropriate moment Crone will swop the paintings. Crone apparently did his homework and re-stretched the fake painting on a frame from the suppliers Vetriano uses. He even made sure the frame was stained the colour JV prefers and always uses. Crone fakes a problem with the darkroom lights and in the absolute dark swops the pictures over. When the lights kick on again he goes through the motions of examining the picture and confirms that it’s the real thing.”
“Blimey, Hack. All this is making my head spin. It sounds a bit like ‘Carry On Up The Art Auction’.
“It gets worse.”
“Don’t see how that’s possible but carry on, old socks.”
“Danielle and Crone come back to London with the painting which she stuffs under her bed while she figures out what to do with it. What she doesn’t realize is that George Crone lost his bottle there in the dark room and didn’t swop the paintings over.”
“Jesus. So they only have the fake?”
“Right. Crone is so worried what the gang would do to him if they find out they’ve been conned he decides he’d rather face the wrath of Danielle except he bottles that too.”
“I can’t wait for the next bit.”
“This Danielle must be something else. Crone is more scared than he was of the brigade of what she’ll do when she finds out the painting under her bed is the fake he arranges to have it stolen by his Brother-In-Law, a slimy small-time casual crook, one John Smallstead. When he knows Danielle is away for a few days, Crone describes the picture to Smallstead as a portrait of a nude sitting by a mirror and Smallstead, who doesn’t want to risk his own neck, gets his pal Seth to do the job for him. Seth, in his wisdom, knocks on the door to make sure no-one’s in but Danielle is still there. Seth, in his abundant wisdom, asks her to hand the painting over but, thinking the Glasgow gang has sent him, she goes for him with a carving knife. Seth runs off but goes back later and does the burglary making sure neither Danielle or her Mother are at home. He was supposed to steal a few other bits and bobs and turn the place over a bit to make it look like a real burglary but in his nervousness after his encounter with the cutlery and his excitement at finding what he thinks is the painting he’s supposed to steal hanging over the fireplace, he just grabs it and leaves.
“Crone goes to see Smallstead at the warehouse with the object of destroying the fake painting but when Smallstead shows him the portrait of Danielle instead he loses his rag. He goes outside and chucks the thing across the yard like a Frisbee. Smallstead actually laughed when he told me how the wind caught the painting and that it took off like a Japanese fighting kite. It curved right up in the air, changed direction, came whizzing down, hit the roof of an old caravan and crashed into the skip.
“Crone then gives Smallstead a picture of the Vetriano painting, which he should have done in the first place. Smallstead, who looks at paintings in the warehouse every day and has developed a bit of an eye, decides to check this one out. He shows it to Gordon Fielding who tells him it’s a Vetriano. Smallstead checks Vetriano out on the Internet where he finds not only that ‘Kate’ is probably worth a mint but that’s it’s been stolen, and, being the honest, down to earth crook he is, decides he wants the painting for himself. Then I show up at the Warehouse on my wild goose chase. After our conversation, Smallwood calls Crone and tells him to stay away from the Smedding flat if he knows what’s good for him and rather than trust Seth with another burglary mission, visits the place himself.
“I figured there must be more to all this than was meeting the eye and was a bit concerned about poor old Vera Smedding’s safety which was when I asked for your help. I was pretty sure there was another painting so I went back to Vera’s with what was left of Danielle’s portrait. What I really wanted was to have a look around and it wasn’t long before I found what was l suspected was there in the flat.”
“The Crone, stroke, Vetriano painting?”
"The very same. I’d stationed Clive and Toby on the next landing up not many moments too soon as it turned out. I’d also tracked George Crone’s address from a motor-mouthed and not particularly security conscious janitor at London Fields School and sent Keith off to pick him up, probably quite literally.”
“So the upshot of these shenanigans is what exactly, Henry?”
“Well, I’ve been paid. I did find the painting Vera Smedding wanted me to find after all. Vera’s happy, if a trifle confused. She has the painting she thinks she’d lost and she has the painting she should have been keeping an eye on that never actually went anywhere, so she’s safe from her maniac daughter although she visibly glazed over when I was trying to explain it all to her. I think she was glad to see the back of me. The only unhappy bunny in all this is George Crone. He’s still terrified what Danielle will do when she tries to sell what she thinks is her ill-gotten gains.”
“If I was him I’d leave the country or, better still, the planet. I hear Mars is very pleasant this time of year.” Tony seemed to be enjoying my little debrief immensely.
“While I was there, Crone, the daft bugger, tried to persuade Vera to let him take the fake with him, I assume so that he could dispose of it and still claim it had been stolen, but Vera wasn’t having any. She went bananas. She started screaming at him that he was nothing but trouble and that she thought he was stuck up and too bloody arty for his own good and that he ought to piss off and that if he didn’t she’d cut his bollocks off.”
“I thought the charming Danielle was the one with the sadistic tendencies.”
“Yes, well I had a glimpse of where she probably gets it. Toby had to protect Crone from Vera when she made a sudden lunge at him. Anyway, your boys escorted him and Smallstead off the premises, I had another cup of tea with Vera, she gave me some cash and I left, case closed.”
“What about the delightful Danielle? Doesn’t she return home soon?”
“What about her? I’ve done what I was paid for. The rest is nothing to do with me. I kind of feel a bit sorry for George Crone but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. As they say on Dragon’s Den, ‘I’m out.’”
“Very wise, if I may say so. All’s well that ends well, eh Henry? I insist, therefore, we have a little something by way of celebration. I happen to have a rather nice bottle of 12-year-old blended malt that’s desperately in need of being opened. What do you say?”
I didn’t need asking twice, having suddenly decided iced water was particularly un-cool. I stuffed the notebook and biro back in my pocket intent on drinking the Scotch not bloody drawing it.
Saturday morning, early.
I have one major criticism of 12-year-old malt whiskey – it slips down far too easily. I lost count of how many large ones I swallowed as Tony and I carried on the reminiscences we’d begun earlier in the week. Tony was more controlled and took his Scotch with ice but to me that’s almost sacrilegious. I took mine neat and I didn’t sip it as sparingly as you’re supposed to. Clive drove me home in Tony’s ruddy great Merc at about 2am. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself if a little blurred round the edges.
“You OK. Mr. Marsh?” Clive said with a grin as he helped me out of the car in the Crown Estate driveway.
“Sure am, Batman,” I said, feeling my own mug stretched into the Joker’s permanent fixed grin, “I reckon I can make the stairs even with my gammy leg. Funny, it seems to be hurting a lot less since your boss opened the Scotch, so you won’t have to carry me.”
As the Merc swept away and I fumbled for my keys, I noticed the old red Mondeo with one blue door parked in a bay a few yards away. I couldn’t be bothered to wrestle with questions about how the driver of such a crap heap could possibly live in such salubrious accommodation as the Crown Estate, Victoria Park, Hackney, and took careful aim at the Yale lock with the key.
“’ackney Marsh?” enquired a nearby Rhododendron bush. A swarthy looking man stepped out from behind the bush and into the light of the security door, “Maybe you don’t remember me. The only time we met it was a bit rushed. Anyway, I remember you.”
“That’s nice,” I said, dropping the keys and wrapping both hands as tightly as I could manage baseball bat style round the shaft of my crutch and lining up for an extremely unsteady impromptu one-legged Babe Ruth impersonation. The bloke stooped and picked up the keys.
“ee are, mate,” he said in a friendlyish tone as he handed them back to me, “You all right?”
“I would be if people stopped asking me the same stupid fucking question,” the whiskey said bravely on my behalf. “How come you know me?”
"My name’s Bill Keiley. Ring any bells?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the name Keiley. Your wife shoved me down a flight of stairs recently. Look if you’ve come here for vengeance I should warn you I’ve got a black belt in cowardice and one of my best friends is Tony Broadbent.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’ve got something for you. I was going to talk to you in the car park the other night but I thought it was a bit public then I found out you lived here,” his voice was shivering, “I’ve been waiting for hours and I think my nuts have turned to brass. I couldn’t wait in the car because it stinks of petrol. It’s not too bad when it’s moving but I have to have all the windows open.” Once again confusion reigned inside my cranium. “I owe you a bit of a favour, actually,” he continued, “You saved me from a fate worse than death, believe me.”
“Did I? How come?”
“You saved me from Danielle Smedding.”
“Christ, the whole world seems to suffer at her hands sooner or later. How the bloody hell are you mixed up with her?”
“She’s the one in the pictures with me that you took in the hotel room.”
“What, the one in the rubber mask and ice skates? What was she doing with…oh never mind. I thought you were having it off with some girl from the tax office.”
“She used to work there but she got the sack for nicking the petty cash. That and 'avin' it off wiv some council bloke called Fieldin' an' tryin' to blackmail 'im wiv some pictures of the two of 'em well at it in 'is office. Anyway, as soon as she thought she was goin’ to be mixed up in a divorce case, she gave me the elbow. I’m tellin’ you, Mister Marsh, it was such a relief.”
“Really? How so?”
“She’s just dangerous - crazy as a coot. Capable of any bloody thing.”
“Why didn’t you give her the elbow then?”
“Because she threatened to cut my dick off if I did. And she would’ve, believe me. Anyway, Audrey, that’s the wife, and I have decided to give things another go.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” I said, though I couldn’t have cared less, and idly wondered what happened to the big West Indian fellow in the boxer shorts, “I thought Danielle was going out with George Crone.”
“She was. She was also going out with Tommy McWhittle at the same time. View heard of him?”
“Does the Queen like Corgies? He’s a pretty hefty Glasgow villain, isn’t he?”
“You could say that. They suit each other, him and Danielle, both bein’ maniacs an’ all - 2 lunatics, together if you ask me. That’s where I met her – up in Glasgow. I used to work for Tommy. Did a bit of drivin’, bit of security, the odd burglary – that sort of thing.”
“Good for you.”
“Tommy was boss of the gang what stole the paintin’.”
“The Vetriano?”
“I dunno what it was painted in but apparently it was worth a fuckin’ mint. Anyway, there was 8 people involved. They tried to sell it back to the geezer what painted it but he told’em to fuck off. Then they wasn’t sure what they was gonna do wiv it. She, Danielle, comes back to London on some kind of business or other then turns up in Glasgow again a couple of days later with some story about how George Crone swapped a fake paintin’ for the real one which is down in London and that Tommy and her should leave the others with the fake and take off with the real one to Dubai where she knows she can sell it.
"This was just a private conversation between Tommy and her in ‘is penthouse but I was in the next room listenin’, like. He always trusted me, old Tommy did, but ‘e never trusted that loony mare, no way. Anyhow, old Tommy weren’t born yesterday. ‘e ain’t quite sure what she’s up to but’e knows it’s somethin’. So they have this big row, right? He calls ‘er a liar and all the names under the sun, she starts screamin’ and he belts ‘er one.’ Next thing, she runs into the kitchen, grabs a knife, runs back into the sittin’ room and sticks ‘im a couple of times. I go in there, drag her off ‘im and give’er an uppercut. She goes down like a sack of apples, Tommy’s unconscious, blood everywhere, I call an ambulance and fuck off sharpish. She’s in nick charged wiv attempted murder which might turn out to be murder cos they’re not sure he’s gonnna make it. Look, I dunno anythink about paintins but I’ve ‘eard that you do.” Keiley held up a small key on a numbered fob, “I’m the only one what knows where the paintin’ is. Like I said, Tommy trusts me. This is the key to a left luggage box on Inverness Station. What’s inside is yours. I ain’t got no use for it. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“You mean to tell me you've waited for hours, frezzing your nuts off, just to do me a favour? Sorry, but I find that a bit far fetched. Thanks but no thanks.”
“Come on, Mr. Marsh. You could retire. This paintin’ ‘ain’t no fake. You know that as well as I do. The uvver fing is, though I said me and the trouble and strife are getting back to gevver again, I don't really trust'er, know wha' I mean? And I was wonderin' if you'd keep an eye on 'er for a while. Just so's I can be sure she ain't bein' knobbed by nobody else but me, like. I fought you could take the paintin' as payment for your services, an that.”
“I’m afraid it is. A fake, I mean. I happen to know Danielle was telling the truth. George Crone did swap it with the real painting and I’ve no idea where the real one is. Anyway, I'm quitting this game and going back to art school so you'll have to find someone else to watch your wife.”
Keiley looked genuinely shocked. “You mean the paintin' in the left luggage is a fuckin' fake? You’re ‘avin me on.”
“I wish I were. It would be quite nice to retire on a bed of lolly but that’s not going to happen. Not this time.”
"You mean that cow was tellin’ the truth for once? Are you sure?”
“I’ll tell you how sure I am. The Regent’s Canal is just down the road. You can spit into it from the road bridge next to The Rose And Crown. Take my advice. Stop on your way past and chuck the key in the drink. Then forget all about paintings and stuff. Pretend it all never happened. That’s what I’m going to do. Goodnight."
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