Picture You Dead

92

Wednesday, 6 November

Shortly before 8 a.m. the doorbell rang. Harry Kipling peered through the spyhole and saw two men in suits. Keeping the chain on, he opened the door a fraction. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Mr Kipling?’ A calm, direct voice.

‘Yes – who are you?’

Through the crack he saw a hand hold up a police warrant card.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace and Detective Inspector Branson of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, sir. May we come in? This is just a quick visit to check you are all OK.’

‘Yes, of course, thank you.’ Harry closed the door, slipped the chain from the lock and opened it again. Two smartly dressed men stood there, one white, with neat, close-cropped fair hair, the other taller, black and bald, wearing a flamboyant tie.

A few minutes later Harry and Freya were seated in the kitchen, just as last night, with the two senior detectives opposite them. Both of them had politely rejected Freya’s offer of tea or coffee.

‘I’m very sorry for your ordeal, Mr and Mrs Kipling, and for what your son was put through,’ Roy Grace said. ‘I’m sure it’s no consolation if I tell you violent domestic robberies of this type are extremely rare, and we are taking this very seriously indeed.’

‘What chance do you think you have of catching these people – and getting our painting back?’ Harry Kipling asked.

‘We’re drafting in officers to do a house-to-house in this area, looking for any home that has street-facing CCTV,’ Branson responded. ‘To see if we can get the vehicle’s registration.’

‘You think it was a Tesla?’ Grace butted in. ‘You told the officers who attended last night that an unfamiliar car, a Tesla, was parked outside your house and you gave them a description of the model, I believe?’

‘I did, yes,’ Harry confirmed. ‘I... I should have had the presence of mind to note the registration but I...’ He gestured helplessly.

‘Of course,’ Glenn Branson said with a warm, sympathetic smile.

‘We’ve already put in a request to the Control Room to check all CCTV and ANPR cameras for the registration plates of any Tesla driving in the area around the time of this attack on you all,’ Grace said. ‘Do you have a photograph of this painting?’

The Kiplings turned to each other, frowning. ‘Did we ever—?’ Harry asked. Then he remembered, of course he had. ‘Yes, I took several for an art dealer – they’re on my phone, I can ping them to you.’

‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘I understand there’s an organization called the Art Loss Register which has a worldwide reach. If we can send them an image of the painting, that would block off a number of avenues open to these thieves. We will get it circulated also to all dealers that we can find.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry said.

Grace glanced at his watch. ‘We’re going to have to leave, but we will be arranging to bring you both and your son into Sussex CID HQ later today, with your consent of course, to put each of you through a cognitive witness interview.’ He smiled. ‘That may sound a little alarming, but I assure you it isn’t. We’d like to have you all interviewed by trained officers. They might just be able to jog your memories for some tiny nuggets of detail that could make the difference between catching these offenders and not. Will you all be OK with this?’

Freya, nodding, asked, ‘How long will this take? I’m worried because Tom has diabetes and stress can play havoc with his sugar levels.’

‘We’ll make sure the interviewers are aware of that,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘We could arrange for a doctor to be in attendance if that would help?’

Freya nodded and looked at the Libre app on her phone. ‘I think that would be good, his sugar levels are going up and down crazily at the moment.’

Roy Grace stood up and Glenn Branson followed suit. ‘We’ll arrange for a car to collect you all later,’ the Detective Superintendent said.

‘We’ll be ready,’ Harry said, looking at him. He saw honesty there, genuine concern and something else he’d never imagined seeing in a police officer’s face. Genuine decency.

He saw it in the Detective Inspector’s face, too.

They cared, he realized. They really did bloody care.