Clean Break

9

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

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

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

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

One of Ballantrae’s ancestors either had a hell of a sense of humor or a few bricks short of a wall.

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

“The same. Lord Ballantrae?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Coffee all round?” she said.

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

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

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

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

“Correct.”

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

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

“What did you do then?”

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

“How many?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she said, giving her husband’s hair an affectionate tousle as she perched on the table. “He was about to tell you about the Canaletto they got back.”

Ballantrae reached out absently and laid his hand on her thigh. “Absolutely right. Nothing to do with the diligence of the police, however. There was a multiple pileup on a German autobahn about a fortnight after Gerald Brockleston-Camber lost his Canaletto. One of the dead was an antique dealer from Leyden in Holland, Kees van der Rohe. His car was shunted at both ends; the boot flew open, throwing a suitcase clear of the wreckage. The case burst open, revealing the Canaletto behind a false lid. Luckily the painting was undamaged.”

“Not so lucky for Mr. van der Rohe,” I remarked. “What leads did they come up with?”

“Not a one,” Ballantrae said. “They couldn’t find anything about the Canaletto in his records. He conducted his business from home, and the neighbors said there were sometimes cars there with foreign plates, but no one had bothered to take a note of registrations.” He shrugged. “Why should they? There was no indication as to his destination, apart from the fact that he had a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of lire in the front pocket of the suitcase. Unfortunately, van der Rohe’s body was badly burned, along with his diary and his wallet. Frustrating, but at least Gerald got his painting back.”

Frustrating was right. This was turning into one of those cases where I was sucking up information like a demented Hoover, but none of it was taking me anywhere. The only thing I could think of doing now was getting in touch with a Dutch private eye and asking him or her to check out Kees van der Rohe, to see if we could come up with something the police had missed. “Any indication of a foreign connection in the other cases?” I asked.

“Not really,” Ballantrae said. “We suspect that individual pieces are being stolen to order. If anything, I’d hazard a guess that if they’re for a private collector, we’re looking at someone English. A lot of the items that have been stolen have quite a narrow appeal-the Hilliard miniatures, for example. And my Raeburn too, I suppose. They wouldn’t exactly set the international art world ablaze.”

“Maybe that’s part of the plan,” I mused.

“How do you mean?” Ellen Ballantrae leaned forward, frowning.

“If they went for really big stuff like the thieves who stole the Munch painting in Norway, there would be a huge hue and cry, Interpol alerted, round up the usual suspects, that sort of thing. But by going for less valuable pieces, maybe they’re relying on there being less of a fuss, especially if they’re moving their loot across international borders,” I explained.

Ballantrae nodded appreciatively. “Good thinking, that woman. You could have something there. The only thefts that fall outside that are the Bernini bust and Henry’s Monet, but even those two aren’t the absolutely prime examples of their creators’ works.”

“Can you think of any collectors whose particular interests are covered by the thefts?” I asked.

“Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t know personally, but I have a couple of chums in the gallery business. I could ask them to ask round and see what they come up with. That’s a really constructive idea,” Ballantrae enthused.

I basked in the glow of his praise. It made a refreshing change from Trevor Kerr’s charmlessness. “What’s the geographical spread like?” I asked.

“We were the most northerly victims. But there doesn’t seem to be any real pattern. They go from Northumberland to Cornwall north to south, and from Lincolnshire to Anglesey east to west. I can let you have a printout,” he added, jumping to his feet and walking behind his computer. He hit a few keys, and the printer behind me cranked itself into life.

I twirled the chair round and took the sheet of paper out of the machine. Reading down it, I saw the glimmer of an idea. “Have you got a map of the U.K. I can look at?” I asked.

Ballantrae nodded. “I’ve got a data disk with various maps on it. Want a look?”

I came round behind his desk and waited for him to load the disk. He called up a map of the U.K. with major cities and the road network. “Can you import this map and manipulate it in a graphics file?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. And promptly did it. He gave me a quick tutorial on how to use his software, and I started fiddling with it. First, I marked the approximate locations of the burglaries, with a little help from Ballantrae in identifying locations. I looked at the array.

“I wish we had one of those programs that crime-pattern analysts use,” I muttered. I’d recently spent a day at a seminar run by the Association of British Investigators where an academic had shown us how sophisticated computer programs were helping police to predict where repeat offenders might strike next. It had been impressive, though not a lot of use to the likes of me.

“I never imagined I’d have any use for one of those,” Ballantrae said dryly.

Ellen laughed. “No doubt the software king will have one by next week,” she said.

Using the mouse, I drew a line connecting the outermost burglaries. There were eight in that group, scattered round the fringes of England and Wales. Then I repeated the exercise with the remainder. The outer line was a rough oval, with a kink over Cornwall. It looked like a cartoon speech balloon, containing the immortal words of the Scilly Isles. The inner line was more jagged. I disconnected Henry Naismith’s robbery and another outside Burnley. Now the inner line was more like a trapezium, narrower at the top, spreading at the bottom. Finally, I linked Henry and the Burnley job with a pair of semicircles. “See anything?” I asked.

“Greater Manchester,” Ballantrae breathed. “How fascinating. Well, Ms. Brannigan, you’re clearly the right woman for the job.”

I was glad somebody thought so. “Have there been any clues at all in any of the cases?” I asked.

Ballantrae walked over to a shelf that held his computer software boxes and manuals. “I don’t know if you’d call it a clue, exactly. But one of the properties that was burgled had just installed closed-circuit TV and they have a video of the robbery. But it’s not actually a lot of help, since the thieves were very sensibly wearing ski masks.” He took a video down from the shelf. “Would you like to see it?”

“Why not?” I’d schlepped all the way up here. I wasn’t going home before I’d extracted every last drop of info out of Lord Ballantrae.

“We’ll have to go through to the den,” he said.

As I followed him back across the hall, Ellen said affectionately, “Some days I think he’s auditioning for Crimewatch.”

We retraced my steps back toward the kitchen, turning into a room only twice the size of my living room. The view was spectacular, if you like that sort of thing, looking out across a swath of grass, a river and not very distant hills. Me, I’m happy with my garden fence. As Ballantrae crossed to the video, I gave the room the once-over. It wasn’t a bit like a stately home. The mismatched collection of sofas and aria-chairs was modern, looking comfortable if a bit dog-haired and dog-eared. Shelves along one wall held a selection of board games, jigsaws, console games and videotapes. A coffee table was strewn with comics and magazines. In one corner, there was a huge Nicam stereo TV and video with a Nintendo console lying in front of it. The only picture on the walls was a framed photograph of James and Ellen with a young boy and girl, sitting round a picnic table in skiing clothes. They all looked as if the world was their oyster. Come to think of it, it probably was.

“Sorry about the mess,” Ellen said in the offhand tone that told me she didn’t give a shit about tidiness. “The children make it and I can’t be bothered unmaking it. Have a seat.”

She walked over to the windows and pulled one of the curtains across, cutting down the brightness so we could see the video more clearly. I sat down opposite the TV, where daytime TV’s best actors played out their roles as a happily married couple telling the rest of us how to beat cellulite. Ballantrae slumped down beside me and hit the play button. “This is Morton Grange in Humberside,” he said. “Home of Lord Andrew Cumberbatch. His was the Ruisdael.”

The screen showed an empty room lined with paintings. Suddenly, from the bottom left-hand corner, the burglars appeared. The staccato movements of the time-lapse photography made them look like puppets in an amateur performance. Both men were wearing ski masks with holes for eyes and mouth only, and the kind of overalls you can pick up for next to nothing in any army surplus store. One of them ran across to the paintings, pulled out a power screwdriver and unscrewed the clips that held the frame to the wall. The other, holding a sledgehammer, hung back. Then he turned toward the camera and took a couple of steps forward.

Recognition hit me like a sledgehammer to the stomach.