Cop to Corpse

29

So much has happened since my last blog that I hardly know where to begin. You remember I risked my job by turning snoop and looking at the order book for the client I recognized as Heathrow man. I was on the point of pulling out of the whole shebang until it became clear how crucially Vicky needed the distraction. Against my better judgment I passed John Smith’s name on to my two friends. Vicky was at breaking point, poor lamb. Her husband Tim has been behaving more oddly than city break man and Heathrow man together. My guess is that his problem stems from the Iraq War. Post-traumatic stress, they call it, don’t they? On top of that came the bad luck of losing his taxi business in such cruel circumstances. Sometimes people just need time and space to get over their troubles and I hope this is the case with Tim. I don’t like to think what he gets up to when he leaves the house at nights. Well, to be honest I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Maybe he just walks the streets to clear his head of depression. I hope that’s all it is, for Vicky’s sake. She’s so certain he isn’t visiting some other woman that I have to believe her. What else can he be doing? When he left the army, did he smuggle out anything as a souvenir? Don’t go there, I keep saying to myself. Don’t go there.

Now we know where Heathrow man lives we’re better placed to find out more about him. I was willing to do some local research, but this time Vicky volunteered, saying she hadn’t contributed much up to now. Fine, I thought. The more she gets involved the better for her peace of mind. Compared to her difficulties at home this is child’s play. So Anita and I left her to it.

She delivered.

We met in the department store the next afternoon and Vicky looked a million times better than when I’d last seen her. For one thing she’d dressed in brighter, trendier clothes with a beautiful blue floaty scarf over a lemon-coloured top that she insisted she’d found in Help the Aged. A tight black skirt and suede boots completed the outfit. With her gorgeous looks and that amazing black hair she was radiant. And eager to tell us what she’d discovered.

‘After we spoke yesterday, I went to the house, just to see for myself, thinking John Smith is still away in Amsterdam so it ought to be safe to look round. While I was standing on the opposite side of the street, I had a piece of good luck. A woman drove up in a Volvo and got out with some shopping and went inside number 48, leaving the car on the drive. I don’t think she noticed me.’

I couldn’t stop myself interrupting. ‘What was she like — dark, shoulder-length hair, grey suit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could so easily be the woman city break man met in the pub. I wonder if they’re married.’

Vicky nodded. ‘I’ve never seen her before, so I can’t say, but from your description it’s well possible. At the time I was more interested in the car, thinking maybe it belonged to him and his wife was using it while he was away. I crossed the road and took a closer look and found I was right. There was a parking permit next to the tax disc on the windscreen. It said J. Smith.’

‘Nice detective work,’ Anita went. ‘A permit for where?’

‘The city museum.’

Anita blinked and pulled a face. ‘He’s a pointy-head? And I thought he looked quite dishy.’

I gave a shrug. ‘He could be both. Why not?’

Vicky picked up her story. She was dead keen to tell it. ‘I decided to go up there in the morning and see what else I could find out. I took the whole day off work. I’ve never been in the museum before.’

‘I have,’ Anita went. ‘School trip, years ago. Full of bones and fossils. No refreshments. Not my thing at all.’ She was definitely a little jealous of Vicky finding out things.

‘That’s what I was expecting, and to tell the truth it is like that, most of it, but there’s a Roman room, as you’d expect, with bits of pottery and some jewellery. I was the only visitor for the first hour and a half.’

Anita rolled her eyes. ‘You stayed as long as that?’

‘I was sleuthing, wasn’t I? I needed to talk to someone and find out for sure if John Smith worked there. In the end I found the word CURATOR on a door upstairs and I was looking at it, trying to think what to do next, when a woman came out of a door opposite and offered to help. I had to think quickly and I put on a foreign accent and asked what a curator does. She was a chatty sort and said it was a fancy name for the head keeper of the museum. He was her boss, but unfortunately he was away for a couple of days.’

‘Aha,’ Anita went. ‘Away where?’

‘In Cornwall. He has a cottage there and likes to escape sometimes.’

‘A bloody long way from Amsterdam.’

‘But we kept talking. She said she was the finds liaison officer, another fancy name. She’d put FLO on her door and since that day everyone called her Flo. Her job was set up to deal with all the stuff being found with those metal detector things people use in fields and on beaches. As you know, this area is stuffed with historical remains and the detector brigade are coming into the museum every week with objects they’ve picked up. Anything gold or silver and more than three hundred years old has to be reported because of something called the Treasure Act. She said she thought when she saw me that I might have brought in some artifact.’

‘Better than being mistaken for one,’ Anita went. ‘We’re none of us getting any younger. Did you find out if John Smith works there?’

‘Yes — and he’s her boss, the curator.’

We straightened up like meerkats.

Anita was frowning. ‘But he’s in Cornwall.’

‘That’s what he told her. We know better, don’t we?’ Vicky’s eyes were like new minted coins. ‘John Smith doesn’t want it known he’s in Amsterdam.’

‘What’s he up to, then?’

‘I think I’ve worked it out. I talked some more to this young woman, whose real name is Francesca, and she was telling me how exciting it can be when people get in touch. She never knows from one day to the next what will turn up. The best thing of all is a hoard. That’s when they discover something like a pot of Roman coins, up to fifty thousand of them. She’ll get called out to see them at the site. She arranges for them to be properly excavated by experts and then they’re brought back here in stages before being sent to the British Museum to be washed and evaluated.’

‘And is John Smith involved in any of this?’ I asked, already thinking I could see where this was going.

Vicky flashed a big smile at me. ‘You’ve got it. There’s a huge safe in his office in the museum and he makes sure the finds are locked away securely before being taken to London.’

‘Whose job is it to record the finds?’

‘The British Museum. They have conservators who wash them and separate them. It’s specialised work. Coins get stuck hard together over time. Some of them can be really rare and worth a lot of money and you probably know what I’m thinking.’

We did. By now we were all thinking along the same lines. It would be all too easy for a dishonest curator to pick out some special items that never get sent to London. The metal detectorist has no idea how many coins or objects there are in a hoard, and the British Museum staff only get to see what arrives there.

I was the one who said it. ‘These short trips to European cities could be John Smith selling coins and other finds to foreign collectors. It would explain why he never makes the booking himself and why his wife collects the tickets from city break man. Vicky, you’re brilliant. I think you’ve sussed it.’

Anita had been listening to this with awe. ‘A profitable little scam. How do we prove it?’

‘With help from Francesca,’ Vicky went. ‘She’s very knowledgable and I think she may have her suspicions already. If certain rare Roman coins are starting to be traded in Europe she’ll be alerted. When we tell her about the city breaks Anita has been arranging, she can check the dates Smith is supposed to have spent in Cornwall.’

‘Proving he’s on the take is going to be difficult,’ Anita insisted.

‘Not at all,’ Vicky went. She’d had longer to think about this than Anita and me. ‘Next time John Smith arranges another city break, we do what you did before, tip off the girls at the check-in and they can speak to the customs men. He’ll be caught with the goods on him. Whatever he says, you can’t export stuff like that without a licence.’

I was like, ‘Brilliant.’

Even Anita gave her a hug.

It’s so nice that we’ve all played a part and Vicky has brought it to fruition.

The sleuthing sisters will shortly wrap up their first case.

So what’s next?