The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

TURNING THE TABLES by Judith Cutler

WAS GRIFF DYING? What if it was only those flashing and blinking machines that were keeping him alive? I didn’t dare count the number of wires and tubes that greeted me when I was summoned to his hospital bed.

Oh, Griff.

I kneeled beside the bed, and gently clasped the hand that wasn’t bandaged, pressing it to my lips. Griff, my rock, my stay, my dearest friend – how dare you leave me like this? My tears dripped on to the mottled old flesh.

“I’m sure someone could find you a chair, Lina dearest, even in this benighted hole,” he said querulously.

It wasn’t just machines then – it was Griff’s willpower that stopped him dying.

“I look a lot worse than I am, dear heart,” he continued. “I always did bruise easily, you know. Now, if you keep crying, your eyes will be puffy and bloodshot and you won’t look your best for this darling young registrar who’s keeping watch over me. I thought he was my guardian angel at first. Then he bent over me and I found that he smokes. A doctor, too. I told him off, believe me.”

“And what did he say to that?” I asked, diverted as he knew I would be.

“Told me to save my breath to cool my porridge. Dr Rankin. A fine young man, though his hair is more ginger than gold.” The hand I was holding shook mine gently. “Your mascara’s run, sweet one. Quickly – he wants to speak to you about me as my next of kin.”

Next of kin? As far as I knew Griff had no living relatives, but he often introduced me as his granddaughter. We both wished I could be, but in legal fact I wasn’t, since I was the natural daughter of some crazy Pot Noodle-eating lord. But I wasn’t about to tell a medic that, was I?

“What about?” I asked, my throat closing again. They didn’t want to harvest Griff’s organs, did they? I wanted him back, alive and kicking, not switched off so that others might live.

“Oh, you know…” He waved vaguely and fell asleep. Or so he would have me believe. If I knew Griff, he’d be watching and listening for every nuance of my encounter with the smoking quack.

Tough.

Perhaps Dr Rankin was on to him and his eavesdropping ways, or perhaps it was medical etiquette that prevented doctors talking across the patient as if he were already dead. Whatever it was, I was summoned by a sweet-faced Filipina nurse to a little room decorated so tastefully it would have made Griff scream with rage.

It was empty. I had to wait another seventeen minutes before Dr Rankin arrived, seventeen minutes I could have spent with Griff. And the damned peach and magnolia room wasn’t even big enough to pace.

Just when I’d got fed up waiting for one man, blow me if two didn’t arrive, practically getting jammed in the door. Both in their late-twenties, both tallish and trim – as if they both worked out. The first – Dr Rankin, I presume – was wearing not a white coat and a serious suit but a set of hospital scrubs. The other wore a washable polyester suit as if it were a uniform, and had a short haircut and big feet. Medicine, the law – all it wanted was the hospital chaplain to make the set.

They looked like two men after the same parking space.

“Ms Townend,” they began together. And stopped and glared. At each other. One fingered his stethoscope, the other waved his ID.

Despite not having had a drop for several days – Griff thought we should respect Lent and I was in favour of anything that cut back his drinking – I was decidedly tired and highly emotional.

At least the policeman should recognize a stop signal, so I held up my hand in his direction and pointed at the doctor. “You first. Before you say anything, I am not prepared to have Griff switched off.” I turned to the cop. “You’ll bear witness to that, won’t you?”

He nodded.

“What’s this about switching off Mr Tripp?” Rankin demanded.

“For his organs.” To show I wasn’t against the idea in principle, I flashed my donor card.

Rankin snorted. “Mr Tripp’s? We want fresh not pickled ones, Ms Townend. And we do in general prefer to wait until the patient dies. And – despite his poor hobnailed old liver – that could be for many years yet. I wanted to talk to you about taking him home, that’s all.”

It took a doctor to do that? My eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“Not so much home, perhaps, as somewhere he can get a moderate degree of care, with medical back-up if need be.”

“And won’t bed-block the dear old NHS,” I observed.

“Or,” put in the policeman, “be so likely to catch MRSA.”

I began to warm to him. “One of Griff’s friends,” I began – for friend read long-term partner – “might fund him a few days in a nursing home.” A very upmarket one, if I knew Aidan and his bank balance.

“Just the ticket. Let the ward clerk have details and she can set it up.” His bleeper went before he could frame any tender words, let alone say them, but I had the feeling that he was as little interested in me as I was in him; Griff’s perennial matchmaking had been inspired by his desire to get me safely married off (oh, yes, properly, in a long white dress in church) before he shuffled off, as he always put it, this mortal coil. One day I’d get round to looking up the quotation, but not yet, just in case it brought bad luck.

So now it was PC Plod’s turn – actually Detective Sergeant Will Barnes, according to his ID. “I understand Mr-”

“Griff. Do call him Griff. Everyone does. And in the circumstances, calling him Mr Tripp seems a bit too appropriate.”

“Except that he didn’t, Ms Townend. Trip, that is. He was pushed, very hard. And kicked, according to the medics. All after he’d been dragged from his van. And we’d like to know why.” His tone was decidedly less friendly; I’d no idea why.

“Have you asked him?”

“He says he’d been to a house sale.’

I nodded. “Yes, at Forley Towers, that ugly Victorian pile. It belonged to some recluse, and now her executors are selling everything up.”

“And you were-?”

“Not with him, obviously.” Or his attacker might not have lived to tell the tale. “I’ve been at our shop all day, repairing some Regency china.” The customer who’d asked me to restore the lovely Worcester chocolate cup wanted it done urgently, or I would never have let Griff go on his own. “What’s this all about, Sergeant? You’re not thinking that I might beat Griff up like that? Me? I’d die for him… if he’d let me, that is.”

He shuffled his feet, but coughed pompously. “Our information is-”

“That I have a criminal record. Well, check out how long ago it was, and see how long I’ve been a decent hard-working member of society. I’ve been with Griff through thick and thin for six years now. He’d have adopted me if he could.” He was a much better parent than my own father had ever been. “Why should I want to hurt the person I love most in the whole world?” My voice only went and cracked, didn’t it? Now I sounded more tearful than outraged – but perhaps, in the circumstances, that’s what I actually was. I grabbed a handful of tissues from a convenient little box someone had left on the arm of an easy chair for slightly different circumstances and scrubbed my eyes. For good measure I sat down heavily. And nearly disappeared in the squidgy upholstery.

Barnes fidgeted with embarrassment. “Has he any enemies? Do you know any reason why anyone else should attack him?”

“No enemies that I know of. You don’t need enemies to be robbed of something precious, do you? Just an opportunist thief or two. Someone who wanted what Griff had bought. And if Griff isn’t well enough to tell you, the auctioneers would know more about that than I do. All I had was this call saying Griff was here and I came straight over.” Though not without setting all the state-of-the-art alarms and locks that Griff insisted on, I have to admit. Even as he knocked on Heaven’s Gate he’d have wanted our precious stock protected – everything from Jacobean stumpwork to Victorian filigree. “I’d like to go back to Griff now.”

My attempts to get out of the chair made him drop his grim professional glare. Smothering a laugh, he even went so far as to help me lever myself out. He had nice firm hands, with a grip that you could rely on. And he let go the instant he ought.

So I said, “If he’s awake, I could ask what he bought. Otherwise, as I said, you’ll have to ask the auctioneer – only,” I added, looking at my watch for the first time since I’d arrived at the hospital, “it’s a bit late, isn’t it?” It was. It was nearly eleven at night.

“Can I offer you a lift home?”

I shook my head. Nothing short of an earthquake would get me more than ten yards from Griff’s side. I’d sleep on the floor beside his bed if necessary.

Griff looked much better the next morning, but was inclined to be tetchy, hardly surprising since there was nowhere this side of his hospital gown that wasn’t purple or red. Goodness knew what else his poor old body had suffered. I think he was relieved to hear that on receiving my phone call Aidan had booked him in for a week’s R & R at an exclusive nursing home to which a private ambulance would convey him.

“But it will be such a long way for you to come and see me, my loved one,” Griff observed wistfully. “And you know I don’t like you driving after dark.”

“If it makes you happier, I shall take up Aidan’s offer to stay overnight with him as long as you’re away from our cottage.” There! Griff would know the extent of my self-sacrifice, and possibly of Aidan’s – we’d never hit it off, maintaining an armed truce for Griff’s sake. “Now,” I said briskly, to cover any emotion, “it’d help the police if you told them what you’d bought at yesterday’s sale. It was obviously something that someone else couldn’t keep their hands off,” I joked.

“They could have had it and welcome. You know Mrs Davenport was asking for a games table to replace the one she had stolen? Well, I found one – pretty cheap, as it happens. A Victorian affair, with goodness knows how many drawers and curves wherever nature wanted a straight line. Rather vulgar, if you ask me, but then so was Mrs Davenport’s original. You might tell her I did my best, if she should happen to call. Lina, there’ll be a picture of it in the catalogue, won’t there? And I’m sure I left that in the glovebox.”

“You hadn’t been trying to carry the table on your own, had you?” I demanded, arms akimbo.

“What, when there were a couple of gorgeous well-muscled lads to put it straight into the van for me?” His poor swollen mouth headed for winsome, but didn’t quite reach it.

“So when was it stolen?”

He went to scratch his head but evidently thought better of it. “I can’t… yes, I remember! My mobile phone rang, and I pulled into a layby to answer it.” He flashed an almost impish smile – how many times had I had to shout at him when he’d tried to use his mobile when he was driving? “Someone opened the driver’s door – and Bob’s your aunt.”

“How did they know the number?” I asked, looking for a conspiracy.

“Because it’s painted on the side of the van, of course! Oh, Lina – it’s I, not you, who had the bang on the head.”

The door opened to admit a young man pushing a wheelchair.

“Ah, my transport of delight!” Griff exclaimed, submitting to having a nurse check that the number on his wristband matched that on the young man’s paperwork. Lest I feel a frisson of alarm, with wild fears of the attackers taking him where they could finish off what they had started, Aidan made a dramatic appearance, pressing me to somewhere fairly near his bosom and then hindering rather than helping the porter in his efforts to get Griff into the wheelchair. Aidan would go with him in the ambulance. I would follow in my car.

As soon as DS Barnes had finished with me, that is. He had just pulled his unmarked car up alongside mine, and was checking for the right change to feed to the meter. He pulled a face when I told him Griff was no longer at the hospital, but listened disbelievingly when I told him what had been stolen.

“Try and kill an old man just because he’s bought a table you wanted?” he squeaked. “You’re joking. Was it made of gold and lined with silver?”

“Wood inlaid with more wood, from what I can gather. There’s a picture of it in the auction catalogue – and that, according to Griff, should be in the glovebox of the van.”

“Which is currently in one of our car pounds. If you came with me, you could tell me all about it.” His smile was agreeable, but I had this rule never to trust anyone till I’d had Griff’s opinion of them. So I muttered something about not affording any more time in the car park – well, they charged as if lives depended on the parking fees – and told him I’d follow him, provided he would phone one of his police cronies to make sure Griff had arrived safely. He looked at me very hard. “You really are worried they’ll have another go at the old guy, aren’t you? OK, I’ll get on to it.”

The Tripp and Townend, Antique Dealers van sat rather sadly in the corner of the pound, as if it felt personally responsible for the trickles of blood on its paintwork. DS Barnes had already donned disposable gloves and was fossicking round inside, displaying a neat bum to the world. But he came up with nothing, and, seeing me the far side of the barrier, waved to his mate to let me in.

“Are you sure about the catalogue?”

“Griff was. But then, he’s over seventy and has been beaten about the head, so he might have got it wrong. In any case, it hardly matters – the auctioneer must have loads left over.”

“If I get hold of a copy and bring it over to your shop, can you tell me all about the table? Not until you’ve seen that Griff’s all right and tight, of course. And he has arrived safely – well, he would, with a couple of our lads riding shotgun, as it were.”

“You set up motorcycle outriders?” Forgetting my manners, I reached up and gave him a smacking thank-you kiss – but only on the cheek.

Much as I would have liked to spend the day holding Griff’s hand, he pointed out that we had a business to run. As luck would have it, it was a very quiet day, and I could have stayed. However, since I had time on my hands, I could spend a lot of it texting or emailing fellow-dealers, asking if they had ever had similar experiences to Griff’s. Of course, the police were probably checking through their records for exactly the same information, but I had an idea that some of our colleagues would only have called in the fuzz if they’d had the Crown Jewels stolen.

I never spent much time at school, and Griff’s best efforts to help me write what he called a lady-like script had failed. But he had taught me keyboard skills, so I could run off a list for DS Barnes. Neat columns: items stolen; when; where; value; from whom (I nearly typed who from but that would have made Griff grind his teeth); police action. As I’d suspected, only about half of the twenty or so robberies had been reported to the police, and none of the objects had ever been recovered. Nor had they shown up elsewhere in the UK, at auctions or at antiques fairs.

Just as I was locking up for the day, Barnes appeared, looking, in a much more expensive suit, rather sleeker than he had yesterday. His expression of concern told me that I didn’t. Well, the floor beside Griff had proved harder than I’d expected so I’d not slept a lot.

“What I thought was,” he began, “is that I could run you over to see Griff, we could all have a chat, then I could run you back here and we… Well, maybe we should have a bite to eat somewhere.”

I didn’t directly reply but said, “If Griff sees me looking like this he’ll have an instant relapse. Can you give me five minutes to change?”

“An hour if you like. So long as you leave me in here to look round… it’s like a museum, isn’t it? An Aladdin’s cave?”

But he still hadn’t had Griff’s approval so I said, truthfully, “It’ll be freezing in here in five minutes. Come into the house – there’s some nice stuff in there, too.”

And I didn’t let him see what burglar-alarm code I tapped in either.

What we kept in the house was stuff we couldn’t sell in the shop because it was slightly damaged or the provenance was dubious or else was so lovely neither of us had the heart to sell it. So while I was taking a risk, it was smaller than leaving him with all the highly collectable items in the shop. In any case, I hadn’t told him about the CCTV that operated even inside the house if we wanted it to, so I could watch him while I was putting on a better top and applying what Griff, after years in the theatre, always called slap. It took longer than five minutes, but no more than eight, and I even had time to brush my hair. Will had done no more than gaze with what looked like open-mouthed wonder at a couple of small Impressionist oil paintings – standing back, getting close to, but never touching. Which was fortunate, since they were wired into a very loud alarm system indeed.

It only took forty minutes or so to reach the nursing home, which looked and smelled far more like a posh hotel than the repository for incontinent old codgers Griff had always feared ending his days in. He had a single, en suite room, with a TV and couple of easy chairs, in addition to the upright one on which he was enthroned and a bed that did its best to disguise its high-tech lifting and tilting mechanisms. The décor was almost as bland as that in the bad-news room at the other hospital, but the standard of the reproductions on the wall was much higher.

Aidan was sitting beside him reading aloud, something his consciously mellifluous voice was well suited to. He stopped, inserting a bookmark and closing the volume with just enough of a snap to show he was not used to being interrupted in mid-paragraph. My smile and his were as bland as the wallpaper, something I suspected Will noticed.

He shook hands first with Aidan and then very gently with Griff. “The bruises are coming out, I see.”

“Why not? I did years ago,” Griff said with a beam. Then he touched his cheek. “I’ve not seen my face yet – they sent a minion to shave me and throw in a haircut as a bonus.”

The expression on Aidan’s face told me he expected to see the freebie added to his bill. But he had the decency to make himself scarce so that both Will and I could sit down. Will produced the auctioneer’s catalogue.

“My reading glasses hurt my nose,” Griff complained. “That’s why dear Aidan was reading aloud.”

“What a good job I remembered these,” I said, burrowing in my bag. “Here, try these lorgnettes. They came with that job lot of spectacle cases, remember? They may not be quite your prescription but they have a certain something, don’t you think?” I waved the pretty turquoise-and-white-enamelled Victorian hand-held specs before me, pressing a little button so that the lenses popped out.

“My sweet girl, what a gem you are!” Griff took them and peered this way and that. “You see, you adjust the focal length by moving them closer to or further away from your eyes. How clever. And how very pretty. Dear child. Now I can see whatever it is you wish to show me, young man,” he added, taking the catalogue and opening it. “Ah – there’s the wretched games table. What on earth could there be about such a monstrosity that someone should go to such lengths to get hold of it? Why, a quiet word to me beforehand and the promise of a drink afterwards and I wouldn’t have bid so high. Or indeed at all. Mrs Thingy could have waited for another – as indeed she will have to now.”

“And why indeed should they have stolen twenty or so others in the last twelve months?” Will asked. “At least, that’s what Lina’s research shows.”

Griff shot me a keen glance. “Do our friends know that the police might see this list?”

Will coughed. “Just at the moment we’re interested in the thieves, not their victims, Mr – Griff. And I gave Lina my word that I would only interview people who had already reported the thefts to their local police.”

“Very well. I hope you will keep it.”

“Of course.” He sounded sincere enough. He patted the catalogue photo. “Now, if these are gaming tables, am I right in thinking that they would have been in casinos or clubs?”

“Games tables. Probably in private homes – no TV in those days so you made your own entertainment,” Griff explained.

Will jotted. “Okay. Now, to me this just looks like an ordinary table with a chessboard inlaid on the top. Am I missing something?”

“Sometimes the chessboard part swivels round to reveal a backgammon well. Or some have side drawers for pieces and counters. I dare say some even have secret drawers, so that someone who knows where they are can cheat. None are terribly valuable, not unless they’re made by a famous manufacturer.” Griff didn’t volunteer how much he had paid, still less how much he would have asked Mrs Davenport to pay.

“Yet someone wants shedloads of the dratted things. And hides them away.”

“Or, more likely, young man,” Griff said, closing the lorgnette and waving it to emphasize the point, “has had them out of the country within the hour. Look at the places they were stolen… Ipswich; Plymouth; Southampton; loads round here in Kent.”

“But why on earth should they want them abroad?”

“It seems to me,” I said, as Will and I walked back to the car park, “that the only way of finding out why these tables are going abroad is to buy one and follow it.”

“Follow?” He frowned. “I suppose we could always hide a tracking device in it. So how could we make sure that there’d be a games table on the market soon?” He let me into his car before going round to the driver’s side, just as if Griff were watching to make sure he had good manners.

“Easy,” I said. “So long as you don’t want a kosher one.”

“Do I want to know what you mean by that?” It was hard to tell in the darkness whether he was serious or not.

“No names, no pack drill. I know a couple of dealers who would put together – using authentic bits and pieces – a games table that would convince most punters. And so long as it was me – it was I – who bought it, knowing it was a fake, that wouldn’t be a problem, would it? In fact,” I added, “wouldn’t it be all the better for being dodgy? It would mean that whoever bought it just wanted any old rubbish, not a really good one.”

“I’m not sure I follow your logic.” he grinned. “But I don’t think you’d be involved. It’d be one of our officers.”

“In the antiques world everyone knows everyone else. You put a police officer in there and whoever wants the table would be on to him in thirty seconds.”

“Or her,” he corrected me. “Someone who looked like you. You could do the bidding and then the officer could take your place in the van. There’s a whole department at Scotland Yard devoted to fine art theft – I’m sure they’ll want to be involved.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Games tables aren’t exactly fine art. And I have this feeling that it’s not the art value the thieves are interested in.” Griff always insisted that I had a bit of the divvy about me, in other words an instinct for what was real and what was fake.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know… But maybe we’ll find out.”

Smudger Smith operated at the shady end of antiques dealing. If asked, he might say he was into recycling before it even got fashionable. What he did was take a nice table top, say, the legs of which had been ruined by something like a fire or woodworm. Then he’d find a set of legs of the same wood, but not necessarily even from a table, and marry them up. He might even make his own table legs, and artificially age them, or make them from old wood from yet another item.

We met in a pub in a town some way from both our bases, and cash was exchanged in the used fivers and tenners he demanded, all courtesy of the police. What they’d say when I couldn’t provide a receipt I’d no idea – but ask Smudger to put anything on paper and he’d have disappeared before you could blink.

“How soon d’you want it?”

“The next furniture sale in Canterbury.” I was dead sure that if I’d asked him how he was going to fix it he’d have been outraged. “Plenty of little drawers and a couple of cupboards, if you can manage it,” I added. “‘You know the sort of thing.” My hands conjured the sort of mini-turrets and curlicues and cabriole legs that Griff particularly loathed.

But that was all right because I made sure Griff knew nothing about it.

A week later Will popped into the shop with some news. “We’ve had a couple of writing bureaux reported as missing,” he said. “Could there be any connection?”

“What period?”

“One’s seventeenth-century Italian.”

“Wow, you’re talking serious money there. Collectors would have your hand off.” I tugged an idea from my brain. “It would have one thing in common with those tables – it would almost certainly have secret drawers. Very secret. Will, has anything else gone missing over the last few weeks? So valuable your specialized squad would be on to it?”

He jotted in his notebook. “I could find out. Any news of your table?”

“It’ll be ready for next week’s sale.” I handed him the money I hadn’t had to spend, thanks to my haggling skills. “Sorry – my contact doesn’t do receipts.”

“So you could have kept the whole lot and I’d have been none the wiser.”

“I would,” I said shortly. When I was younger I’d have taken the lot and lied myself blue in the face. But not after six years with Griff. I changed the subject. The problem would be keeping Griff away from the auction now he was back on his feet. I might have to talk to Aidan.

“You don’t think Will’s a bit too good to be true?” I asked Griff, when Aidan, always the perfect host, had gone to bring fresh toast.

Griff was staying with him for an extra week’s convalescence when he’d been signed off by the private hospital. Then Aidan – prompted by me – thought they might go for a nice cruise somewhere exotic. Half of me was delighted: a break was just what Griff needed. The other half was desolate. But at least it meant he wouldn’t be at the sale.

“You’re not losing your heart to him, are you, sweet one?”

I licked my index finger and collected a few crumbs from the pristine cloth. “It’d be very easy to.” Eventually I looked him in the eye. “You wouldn’t recommend it?”

But Aidan was returning.

“Just make haste slowly,” Griff whispered.

Having bought Smudger’s games table – he’d actually done such a good job I would have had to look twice to see it was a wrong ’un – all I had to do was deliver it to a smallish, brownish man at another remote location. Having shown him the hidden drawer, a cunning device that made him suck in his breath quite sharply, I gave it a farewell pat, and tried to think no more about it. After all, I had a few questions of my own to ask. Smudger wasn’t the only one with skills he didn’t talk about. There were people out there who could copy the Kohinoor Diamond, others who could knock up a Leonardo cartoon the man himself would have been proud of. I didn’t dare approach them directly, of course, because I wasn’t supposed to know of their existence. But I did discover that a guy known as Provo, since he could even provide a convincing provenance for his fakes, had been especially busy recently, though no one knew why anyone should want a whole load of Nicholas Hilliard miniatures. There was another rumour that there was a glut of games tables up in the north, something I could with a clear conscience tell Will, who made another note and sucked his pencil.

Being trussed up in the back of the van wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal, was it? Not that I’d be trussed up very long. There’s a trick to bracing your wrists when you’re tied up – I told you I didn’t go to school much, but I learned a lot of things not on the national curriculum. While I worked on the rope, I seethed with anger. The police were supposed to have replaced me as I left the auction rooms with a lookalike, because though I may now be law-abiding, I didn’t see that my getting beaten up like Griff needed to be part of the deal. But the cop they sent was a woman who’d played rugby for England, all five foot eleven of her and goodness knows how many stone. Twice what I carry, that’s for sure. Will and a couple of other plain-clothes officers had been hard put not to laugh. So I’d been the tethered goat, after all. I’d seen the table loaded into the back of the van, driven off, and someone had called on our business mobile – the one with its number painted on the side of the van.

Everything had gone more or less according to plan. Possibly less, actually.

The difference was that when I’d pulled over to a layby to take the call and been rushed by a gang of heavies, they hadn’t duffed me up and left me for dead, taking just the table. They’d picked me up and shoved me in the back of their van.

The only light came round the edge of a badly fitting door.

I’d no idea where they were taking me. I couldn’t very well ask them because they’d taped my mouth when they’d tied up my hands. And for good measure one of them had stamped on my mobile phone.

So what would they do with me? They didn’t want me, just the table. What if they decide to dispose of me? I had a sudden vision of disappearing from the face of the earth, never being found for Griff to grieve over and bury. But I couldn’t indulge in tears, self-pitying or otherwise, because something was happening.

The van slowed, went over a cattle grid, drove up a gravelled drive, and stopped. Feet walked round to the back doors. I lay as if I were still unconscious. There was a scrape and a curse as the table was removed. I was locked in again.

While I knew in my head that Will and his colleagues must know exactly where I was, my heart told me I wanted to be free as soon as possible.

Should I get my hands free now?

No. Already footsteps were approaching the van, heavily, as if they were carrying the table, so I went back to inert mode. I didn’t even protest when one of them kicked me to make sure I was still out cold. I just flopped back into the position they’d found me.

But the moment the van started – down that drive and over the grid again – my hands were free. Then my feet. I didn’t bother with my mouth. There wasn’t any time for that. It was time to check out that table.

I had to hand it to Smudger; if I hadn’t known exactly how to unlock that hidden section, I’d never have managed it. But I did. And found the little device, not much larger than a flattened pea, was sharing the space with another small object, small as the palm of my hand, wrapped in chamois leather. It fitted in my bra, not comfortably but at least unobtrusively. The chamois bag went back where I’d found it, a handkerchief inside folded to roughly the right size and shape. It wouldn’t fool anyone taking more than a casual glance, but perhaps that was all they would give it.

Then – miracle of miracles – I realized that you could open the doors from the inside. I could leap out the moment the van stopped. Or I could if it wasn’t locked from the outside.

At last we drew to a halt and I decided it was time to make a run for it. I ran at the doors, pulling on the handles and pushing outwards as hard as I could. Free!

Someone was trying to grab me. Fist-fighting was something I knew all about, and I winded one of them and kicked another so hard he might not need family planning for a week or so. It was only as the red mist in my head cleared that I realized that I’d only gone and assaulted a couple of police officers – and was now pinioned very firmly myself. It was the somewhat breathless arrival of Will that saved me the inconvenience of being arrested.

“Ostensibly they were only exporting furniture, you see,” I explained to Griff on the phone that night, pleased to have used a word he’d spent a long time explaining to me. “No one was interested in the odd bit of Victorian mahogany or burr walnut. And even if Customs had gone poking around, they wouldn’t have found the secret compartment. So the thieves could transport all sorts of small items that would never have got export licences. Some jewellery, but mostly miniatures. I’ve never had a Hilliard in my hands before, Griff. You should see the colours!” I didn’t embarrass him by telling him where else the tiny painting had been.

“Are you sure you’re all right, dear heart?”

“I’m absolutely fine.”

“Which means you’re not.”

“It means this time I am. I might even be in line for a reward. Because not only were the gang using the tables they stole to get priceless stuff out of the country, replacing them with copies, they then used the tables to bring in the drugs that are sloshing around Glasgow and Newcastle at the moment.”

“Well, I’m blowed. So how are you going to celebrate?”

“I shall have a very good haircut. When they taped my mouth they got some of my hair stuck too and I look a bit patchy. Griff, you’re breaking up,” I lied. “I love you!”

And then it was an early night for me and the teddy bear Griff had given me. Will had invited me to dinner, but I never did like threesomes. And in my heart I still resented his wife for being so much larger and taller than me that I’d had a very nasty few hours.

Still, I told myself as I applied cream to my sore face, it’s not every girl who can say that she’s clasped Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to her bosom, and lived to tell the tale.