Still Waters

Twenty

The trouble with south London, Grabianski had long decided, it was flat as Kate Moss. All those times his mum had walked him from common to common-Tooting Bec, Tooting Graveney, Wandsworth, Clapham-unbuckling him from his pushchair and encouraging him to run: if he hadn’t tripped across an upthrust root, looked away at the wrong moment, and smacked face first into a tree, he would have raced clear off the edge of the world.

Maybe that was why, Grabianski thought, ever since he had ceased to be a child, it was hills that drew him, mountains: the Lakes, Scotland, Snowdonia, the North Yorkshire Moors. His profits had gone on treks to the Tatra Mountains or Nepal, while Grice had been flirting with non-specific urogenital diseases in Benidorm.

And up here, high to the north of the city, Highgate, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, the open spaces were compounded of fold on fold of hills, sharp rises and sudden, unexpected declines, gullies and ravines. When he broke cover beyond the wayward thicket of tangled bush and trees and strode up toward the tumulus that marked the midway point between Kenwood and Parliament Hill, he truly thought he was Lord of All.

Another brisk ten minutes south, the sweep of the city below him, and he would be descending the thin diagonal path toward the bandstand and its attendant café, the D’Auria Brothers ice-cream and catering establishment, open all year round for quality food and fresh brewed coffee, pizza and homemade cakes a speciality.

When Grabianski, exultant, pushed his way in through the glass swing doors, Resnick and a young black man he didn’t recognize were sitting at one of the center tables, the young man just starting on what looked like a cappuccino, Resnick, small cup of espresso to one side, taking a plastic fork to a generous slice of raspberry and redcurrant pie.

Part of Grabianski’s instinct was to turn right round again and go back the way he’d come. But he knew that whatever that might achieve, it would be temporary, an exercise in deflecting the inevitable. Instead, he positioned himself at the end of the brief queue, ordered black coffee and a slice of pizza, waited while the pizza was microwaved, and carried his tray to where Resnick and Carl Vincent were sitting.

“Good walk?” Resnick asked.

Stirring sugar into his coffee, Grabianski assured him it had been fine.

Resnick made the necessary introductions and, not for the first time in his career, Grabianski wondered at the precise etiquette of shaking hands with someone who might well be about to arrest you and have you locked away for a generous five to ten.

“Carl’s helping me on this,” Resnick explained.

“This?”

“We thought, Jerzy, you might be in the mood to do a little, shall we say, trading? Man with your kind of interests-culture, ornithology-doesn’t want to wither away inside.”

Grabianski broke off a section of pizza. “Never was my intention.”

“Exactly.”

“Problem is …” Vincent intruded.

“Is there a problem?”

“Those Dalzeils, clearly down to you.”

Chewing, Grabianski smiled. “A little matter of proof?”

“We know you’ve been asking around, looking for a potential buyer.”

“What? Snatches of overheard conversation? Scarcely illegal.”

“How about possession?” Resnick said. “Two stolen paintings.”

Grabianski laughed: this was speculation, pure and simple. They didn’t have squit. “I’ve told you, Charlie, any time you like to turn up with a warrant, you can search my place from top to bottom. All you’ll find are postcard reproductions, maybe the odd photograph.”

“Fine,” Resnick said, leaning forward, “but what about the safety deposit box?”

A piece of pizza crust found itself wedged uncomfortably at the back of Grabianski’s throat; something about the expression in Resnick’s eyes made him uncertain now if they were bluffing or not.

“And then there’s always,” Resnick added almost nonchalantly, “the paintings stolen from the MoD.”

“What?”

“The Ministry of Defence.”

“I know what it means.”

“A hundred and sixty pieces missing altogether, though, of course, we’re not suggesting they’re all down to you.” Resnick smiled. “Just one or two. Your trademark, I suppose you’d say. Neat, well-planned, careful. Someone who walked right into the Ministry building, Quartermaster General’s office, large as life. One or two items walked out with him.”

“Coast Scene with Fishing Boats, ” Vincent said, “that was one of them. “Nicholas Matthew Condy. Not a name to me, but worth close to twenty grand apparently.”

“You know who the Yard’s marked down as selling that painting, Jerzy?” Resnick asked. “Your friend, Eddie.”

“Eddie?”

“Eddie Snow.”

Grabianski picked up his cup of coffee and sipped at it cautiously, mind working overtime. At the table alongside them, four Asian girls from a nearby comprehensive were arguing over their German homework, filling the air around them with tobacco smoke and laughter. A middle-aged woman with the puzzled moon face of a child was sitting with her carer, twisting a narrow length of scarf in and around her fingers in a seemingly endless pattern, tea and toast beside her untouched. Beyond the glass, solitary men and women sat with their dogs or children, and a man wearing padded cycling shorts and a maroon sweatshirt shouted into his mobile phone.

“Jerzy,” Resnick said, “we’ve got times, places, you and Eddie, not simply passing the time of day.”

“Acquaintance, that’s all. Someone I just met. Made his money in the music business, so I’ve heard.”

“Made his money brokering the sale of stolen and forged works of art,” Resnick said. “Arts and Antiques Unit at the Yard’s got a list long as your arm. Big business. National treasures. Sort of thing that gets taken seriously. You can bet the Yard’s been working on this for a long time. When they pull it all together-and they’re close-someone will be going down for a long time.”

Grabianski wished Resnick wouldn’t keep going on and on about prison that way; he’d done prison and Resnick was right, he hated it like nothing else. The loss of most things he held dear, space and light and air.

“It’s a fit up, Charlie,” he said. “That’s all this is.” He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

Resnick smiled, almost a grin, surprising Vincent by the extent to which he was enjoying the situation, savoring it even. “On our way down here, we called in on your pal Grice in Lincoln. Sort of early-morning wake-up call, though he’d been scrubbing out his cell a full hour by the time we were there. Asked to be remembered to you, naturally. Rot in hell, something along those lines, wasn’t it, Carl?”

“Close. No love lost, that was clear.”

“Always refused to sell you out till now, Grice. Even after what you did to him. That sort of villain, old-fashioned, it’s in his water. Ingrained. Never grass.”

“Kind you don’t see much any more,” Vincent said, “except on the TV.”

“But now we’ve explained the situation, he might see his way to giving us a little help. Anything rather than doing the rest of his time; no parole, he could be looking at three more years.” Resnick looked Grabianski square in the eyes and held his gaze till the other man blinked away. “He doesn’t want that. And you know, Jerzy, the number of jobs he could set at your door. Dates, addresses, times. For all he’s not the brightest of men, Grice’s memory seems to work a treat.”

Grice, Grabianski was thinking, that slimy little turd, he could see him doing everything they said and more.

“Eddie Snow,” Grabianski said, “you want me to set him up.”

Resnick and Vincent leaned back in their bright plastic chairs and smiled.