Dead Man’s Footsteps

103

Abby, waiting on the leather sofa in Hugo Hegarty’s study, blew on her tea and sipped it. Then she took a biscuit. She hadn’t eaten any breakfast and felt in need of a sugar hit. Hegarty seemed to have been gone a long time before he finally returned.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said politely, and sat back down behind his desk. Then he looked at the stamps again for some moments. ‘These are all excellent quality,’ he said. ‘Mint condition. This is a very substantial collection.’

Abby smiled. ‘Thank you.’

‘And you’re looking to sell it all?’

‘Yes.’

‘What price do you have in mind?’

‘The catalogue value is just over four million pounds,’ she replied.

‘Yes, that would be about right. But I’m afraid no one’s going to pay you catalogue prices. Anyone who buys these will want a margin. And the better the provenance, the lower the margin, of course.’

‘Are you willing to buy them?’ she asked. ‘At a discounted price?’

‘Can you explain to me in more detail how they came to be in your hands? You said, last night, you were clearing out your aunt’s house?’

‘Yes.’

‘In Sydney, Australia?’

She nodded.

‘What was your aunt’s name?’

‘Anne Jennings.’

‘And do you have anything that can show me the chain of title?’

‘What do you need?’

‘A copy of her will. Perhaps you could get her lawyer to fax it to me? I don’t know what time of day it is there now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Middle of the night, I think. He could do that tomorrow.’

‘And how much would you pay me for the collection?’

‘With kosher chain of title? I’d be prepared to pay around two and a half. Million.’

‘And without? Cash on the nail, now?’

He shook his head with a wry smile. ‘Not the way I operate, I’m afraid.’

‘I was told you were the man I should come and see.’

‘No, not me, not any more. Look, young lady, I’ll give you some advice. Break this collection down. This is too big. People are going to ask you questions. Break it right down. There are a few dealers here in the UK. Take one plate to one of them, another plate to another one. Maybe go to a few dealers abroad. Haggle with them. You don’t have to take their prices if you don’t like them. Sell them quietly, over a couple of years, and that way you won’t pop up on any radar.’

He gathered the stamps up carefully, almost reverentially, and slipped them all back in their protective sheets.

Gutted, Abby said weakly, ‘Can you recommend any dealers here in the UK to me?’

‘Yes, well, let me think.’ He reeled off several names as he began putting the stamps back into the Jiffy bag. Abby wrote them down. Then he added, as if it was an afterthought, ‘Of course, there is someone else who springs to mind.’

‘Who?’

‘I hear Chad Skeggs is in town,’ he said, giving her a hard stare.

And she couldn’t help it. Her face turned the colour of a beetroot. Then she asked if he would call her a taxi.

Hugo Hegarty saw Abby to the front door. There was a frosty silence between them and she could not think of anything to say that would break it, other than a lame, ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘That’s the problem with Chad Skeggs,’ he retorted. ‘It never is.’

When she had left, he went straight back to his study and phoned Detective Sergeant Branson again. He didn’t have a lot more to add to his previous conversation, other than to give him the name of the young woman’s aunt, Anne Jennings.

Anything he could do, anything at all, to get one back on Chad Skeggs would not, in his view, be enough.