False Picture Page 14

She dived into her handbag to produce a mobile phone. ‘Just checking. Liam’s phone is out of juice, so he’s contacting me through Zander.’ She sighed. ‘No more news. I keep hoping … but I know it’s ridiculous. He can’t possibly be here before six, and maybe not till just after.’

  ‘You must be looking forward to it. Where is he taking you tonight, and will he want Maggie in tow? Do you think I should take her off somewhere else?’

  ‘I suppose so. I certainly don’t want her around when I’m with Liam. She doesn’t think of anyone but herself. It’s all “me, me, me!” She never gave a thought to how I’d feel, being left all by myself in a strange place.’

  Bea sought for something else to say. ‘What do you plan to wear tonight?’

  ‘I brought something dressy with me, though it doesn’t really matter what I wear, because Liam’s not like that. He loves me for myself, and despises those girls who spend all their time and money in beauty treatments, and starving to make themselves thin.’

  Bea smiled, but didn’t comment. Was the girl really that naïve? ‘You’ll be wanting to get back to the hotel to change.’

  Somehow she got the girl to her feet and out on to the pavement. Charlotte stared around her. ‘The waiter in the square said this is the main shopping street. It’s not very grand, is it? More like a country town.’

  ‘But more than adequate.’ Bea pointed across the road. ‘Have you been in any of the churches, or the cathedral? There’s a wonderful Michelangelo statue which you ought to see.’

  Charlotte wasn’t interested in the statue, or in churches – however old and beautiful. ‘We mustn’t be late. Maggie said we’d meet back at the hotel to change before we go out to meet Liam. I’m really looking forward to a ride in one of those horse-drawn carriages.’

  Bea thought, but did not say, that Charlotte was living in cloud cuckoo lane. But there, perhaps Liam would treat her to a good evening out. Hopefully.

  Back at the hotel Bea learned that yes, Maggie had returned and gone up to their room already, and that there were no messages for any of them. Bea went up to the top floor with Charlotte and made sure Maggie let the girl into their shared room, before going into hers next door.

  She had a quick shower and put on a new-ish trouser suit in her favourite silvery-grey, wishing that Maggie hadn’t borrowed a dull pink jacket that would have been ideal to go over it. It was about time that young lady learned that what was Bea’s did not necessarily also belong to Maggie.

  She was brushing her hair when the internal phone rang.

  Erik the Red, speaking faster than usual. ‘Mrs Abbot, a strange thing. Has someone come to your door? No? A young man came a few minutes ago, with a bouquet of flowers. He asked if the two girls, Charlotte and Maggie, were booked in here. When I said that they were, he wanted to go up to their room. Naturally, I refused. He then asked to use our toilets, which are in the basement. He did not return to the hall and he is not now in the toilets. Perhaps he has tried to go up the stairs without permission?’

  At that moment there was a knock on Bea’s door. ‘I think he’s just arrived. If I need help …?’

  ‘I shall be with you in one minute.’

  The knock came at the door again, and a man asked, ‘Are you there, Charlotte? Maggie?’

  Bea cradled the phone and opened her door, but there was no one there. A fire door closed off the short corridor to the right, which led to the other penthouse room. Bea pushed the door open and saw a huge bouquet of flowers in the hands of a tall man, who was now tapping on the girls’ door.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked Bea, stepping through the fire door to confront the intruder. He was so large that he loomed over her. How soon would Erik be able to get here?

  The door to the girls’ room opened, and Charlotte’s head appeared. She looked puzzled. ‘Who …?’

  ‘Herman, very much at your service,’ said the young man, pressing the bouquet upon her.

  Charlotte gaped. ‘Oh, but … I mean, we weren’t expecting you yet. Liam said we were to meet you at six in the market place.’

  ‘I thought it would be charming for us to become acquainted before, so that we will all have a perfect evening. With two such beautiful ladies, this will be a time to remember, no? May I not enter?’

  ‘Afraid not, no,’ said Maggie, her head appearing above Charlotte’s. ‘We don’t know you from Adam and …’

  ‘Of course we know him,’ said Charlotte, protesting. ‘Liam said his friend Herman would be meeting us and here he is.’

  Was Charlotte taking the opposite point of view because she was annoyed with Maggie for leaving her on her own that afternoon? Charlotte tried to open the door, but Maggie blocked her. The young man pushed at the same time.

  Bea thought it more than time to intervene. ‘Girls, girls! Unseemly behaviour, don’t you think? The hotel will have to call the police if you invite a strange young man into your room.’

  ‘The police?’ Herman took a quick step back.

  ‘The police?’ echoed Maggie, frowning.

  ‘How ridiculous,’ said Charlotte. ‘He’s a friend of Liam’s, so of course he’s welcome to—’

  ‘Not to visit you in your room,’ said Bea in her best schoolmistressy tone. ‘Now, Mr Whoever, if you’d like to wait downstairs in the hall, the girls will be downstairs soon … after they’ve checked that you are who you say you are. After all, they only have your word for it that you’ve ever met Charlotte’s boyfriend. How long have you known him, by the way?’

  ‘Not long,’ mumbled the young man, reddening. The outlines of his face and figure were beginning to blur with good eating and drinking, and he was on the verge of becoming flabby. He was expensively but casually dressed, exuding enough aftershave to asphyxiate everyone in reach. He looked at the door to the stairs, shifting from one foot to the other.

  Bea said, ‘Where did you meet Liam?’

  ‘In a bar; what you call a public house. Holidays. London. Last year.’

  ‘So you know him well? What’s Liam’s surname, may I ask?’

  ‘It’s Forbes,’ said Charlotte, also reddening. ‘Mrs Abbot, you are totally out of order. It’s no business of yours if my fiancé arranges for me to meet one of his friends, is it?’

  Bea noted that Liam had just been promoted from ‘boyfriend’ to ‘fiancé’ and winced.

  ‘Look!’ Charlotte flourished the outsize bouquet of flowers. ‘He’s brought me some beautiful flowers.’

  The fire door opened and Erik appeared, gesturing the intruder should leave. ‘I’m afraid hotel rules … we cannot allow guests to entertain men in their rooms … sure you understand …’

  Herman departed with good grace.

  ‘Well!’ Charlotte flung herself back into the bedroom. Bea followed, closing the door behind her. The key was in the lock, and she turned it.

  Maggie plumped down on the big double bed. She was wearing Bea’s pink jacket over a pink top, and a long grey skirt. She looked presentable, her hair still chestnut in colour, though growing out to its natural dark brown. ‘He didn’t know Liam’s surname and I don’t believe he’s a real friend.’

  ‘So what?’ Charlotte blustered, hiding the worm of suspicion. Charlotte was wearing a white peasant-style blouse, embroidered in red and blue, over a black skirt. She looked bunched up and uncomfortable. ‘Liam sent him to look after us.’

  Maggie wasn’t so sure. ‘How did he know we were in this hotel and on this floor?’ She answered her own question, becoming indignant. ‘Charlotte, you’ve been on the phone to Zander, and arranged it through him? How could you tell someone to come up to our room without consulting me?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Charlotte twitched her blouse off her plump shoulders, and then hitched it up again. ‘Liam’s using Zander’s phone because his own is out of order. Liam said he had a friend called Herman who’d collect us from the hotel and take the presents off our hands so that we’d be free to go out on the town and enjoy ourselves. I don’t see any
thing wrong in that.’

  Maggie was still frowning. ‘But Charlotte, this Herman obviously isn’t a great friend of Liam’s, or he’d have known—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Charlotte snapped. She attacked her mop of hair with a brush, making it fly around her head in a fuzzy halo, hiding her face. ‘Herman’s perfectly charming and I’m sorry you don’t like him. I’m delighted he’s going to squire me around. You can stay here all alone and sulk, if you don’t want to be seen out with him.’

  Bea made her voice soft to defuse the tension in the air. ‘What’s worrying Maggie is the realization that you two have been set up in a scam, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to spend the night and the next few years of your lives in jail.’

  ‘Wha … at?’ Charlotte dropped her hairbrush and parted her bush of hair to look at Bea from under it. ‘What on earth …? You evil woman, how dare you!’

  Maggie had gone pale. ‘Mrs Abbot, what do you mean? We haven’t … honest, we haven’t—’

  ‘Let’s put it this way,’ said Bea, as calmly as she could. What if she’d got it wrong, and the ‘gifts’ for Liam’s friend were just a coffee set and a tin of shortbread? ‘You two girls have carried items through Customs on behalf of a friend who failed to accompany you at the last minute. These items are to be handed over to a man you don’t know, by arrangement with your absent travelling companion. What does that sound like to you?’

  ‘Doing a favour for a friend. And why not?’ Charlotte was belligerent.

  ‘The first thing a Customs officer will ask you is, “Did you pack your bag yourself?” And you will say—’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Charlotte nodded like a toy puppet.

  ‘And then he’ll unwrap the “gifts” you were taking through Customs for your boyfriend—’

  ‘Fiancé!’

  ‘And what will he find? Not a coffee set and a box of shortbread, I’ll be bound.’

  Charlotte flushed with anger. ‘You’re being ridiculous. Liam showed me the coffee set. It’s quite beautiful, Royal Worcester, all gold and hand painted.’

  ‘You put it straight away into your case?’

  ‘Yes. After he’d put some extra packing around the cups. He was worried they might be broken in transit.’

  ‘You saw him do that? He took the box out of your sight for a while and returned it to you, all sealed up?’

  Charlotte was silent. She pulled a hank of hair across her mouth and bit on it.

  Maggie heaved the suitcase she’d borrowed from Bea on to the bed. ‘There’s one way to settle this.’

  Charlotte squawked. ‘You can’t, Maggie. That’s my suitcase and—’

  ‘It’s not your suitcase. It’s the one we borrowed from Mrs Abbot. We haven’t even got keys for it, remember?’ Maggie threw back the lid. Charlotte had unpacked and hung up her own things, and all that was left in the case was a large cardboard box, gift-wrapped and beribboned. Maggie ripped off the ribbons, ignoring Charlotte’s cry of alarm. Under the gift-wrapping was a stout box in tasteful dark blue with gold lettering on it.

  Inside the box was a layer of tissue paper.

  Maggie threw that aside, and there were a number of bubble-wrapped objects, each one carefully positioned on a bed of more bubble-wrap. Each one Sellotaped into position.

  ‘There you are, you see!’ Charlotte had located her glasses and put them on. She was furious. ‘Now look what you’ve done. How am I going to explain to Liam that you’ve ruined his gift-wrapping?’

  Bea’s pulse was racing. There was no picture here, so it must be drugs that the girls were smuggling. ‘The packets are all pretty much the same size and shape. Where are the saucers, the cream jug and sugar bowl that you’d normally expect to see?’

  ‘Why, underneath, I expect,’ said Charlotte, reluctantly coming to look.

  Bea picked up the nearest object and tore open the bubble wrap to reveal a small gold snuffbox, finely tooled. She turned it over and saw – or thought she saw, could she trust her eyes? – the logo for Fabergé on the back.

  She collapsed on to the nearest bed. Her throat was dry.

  Maggie seized another little bundle and unwrapped that, too. Another gold box, this time with a delicately painted miniature on the lid.

  Charlotte said, ‘I don’t believe it!’ Was she going to cry?

  ‘How many …?’ asked Bea.

  Maggie counted. ‘Nineteen. I don’t understand.’

  ‘If I’m right,’ said Bea, ‘these were stolen in a burglary not long ago. A burglary in which a man was killed.’

  Maggie put both hands over her mouth.

  Charlotte’s phone rang. Moving like a sleepwalker, she took it out of her handbag and flipped it open. ‘Charlotte here. Is that you, Liam? What have you got us into? There’s no coffee set in the box you gave me to—’

  Maggie snatched the phone from Charlotte, and shut it off. ‘Forget it! Whatever he’s got to say now, it’s only going to lead us into more trouble. Think, Charlotte! Think! He’s set us up. We’re looking at years in prison!’

  Monday afternoon

  Rafael was furious at being interrupted at work. Hadn’t he told that cretin not to phone him unless it were a matter of life and death? Liam was panicking, babbling. Out of control.

  The girls had rumbled what they were carrying.

  Rafael thought fast. ‘Whereabouts are you?’

  ‘Just coming into Brussels. I’m not taking the train on to Bruges, no way. The girls will blab to the police, and they’ll be waiting for me on the station when I arrive.’

  ‘Stop right there. Calm down.’ If ever there was a time for Rafael to think quickly and calmly, this was it. First things first. ‘What did the girls actually say?’

  ‘That they’ve found out what’s in the coffee set box.’

  ‘Not the other?’

  ‘The tin that Maggie’s carrying? Charlotte didn’t say. We got cut off.’

  Rafael tried to concentrate. ‘Get off in Brussels, go and have a coffee in one of the cafés in the station. Wait for me to ring back. I’m going to phone my contact, find out what’s going on.’

  He cut off the phone. His boss put his head round the door, eyebrows raised. Rafael was needed. He did his best to smile. ‘An emergency. A friend in trouble. One quick call should sort it.’ He turned his back on his boss and punched numbers.

  Eleven

  Monday late afternoon

  Charlotte collapsed on to the bed in a crumpled mess, hair tangled, blouse askew. ‘I can’t believe Liam knew about this. He owed someone a favour to help close a deal.’

  ‘Who was this friend? Someone at work?’

  Charlotte wasn’t listening. ‘He simply couldn’t have known what was in the box.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Maggie. ‘Either way, he took you for a ride.’ She whirled her own case on to the other bed. ‘So, what am I carrying? Philip’s picture?’

  ‘What picture? Do you mean our Philip? What on earth are you talking about?’

  Maggie pulled out a gift-wrapped box, about half the size of the one which had once contained a coffee set. She tore off the wrappings, handing them to Bea as she did so. This time Charlotte didn’t object, though her lower lip came out in mutinous fashion.

  ‘It can’t be the picture. It’s not big enough,’ said Bea, thinking about drugs again. Oh, what had Philip got himself into?

  Inside the box were some more bubble-wrapped packages, each one larger than the gold boxes they had uncovered before, but slimmer. Maggie unwrapped the first. A gold-framed miniature on ivory stared up at them, a sweet-faced, pink-cheeked young girl in a white mop cap with a pink bow on it.

  ‘What the …?’

  Bea put on her reading glasses. She unwrapped another with fingers that trembled. Another miniature, this time of a young man in doublet and hose, leaning against a marble pillar. He was holding a carnation in one long-fingered hand. ‘Looks Tudor to me.’

  Maggie swore under her breath.

 
Bea’s mouth was dry. ‘Are these from a museum, do you think?’

  Maggie dropped the miniature she’d been holding as if it had bitten her. ‘What do we do? Phone the police?’

  Bea started to shake her head, reconsidered, and went back to shaking it. ‘Explanations would be difficult and you’d be owning up to smuggling. Let’s think this through.’ She went to the door, unlocked it. ‘We’re assuming the stuff’s genuine, but maybe it isn’t. I’ve seen boxes like this in an exhibition in Somerset House, and their value is out of this world. I can’t believe these are genuine. Perhaps they’re copies with no real worth.’ She hoped against hope that she was right. Bea held up the key. ‘I’m just going to get my handbag from next door, make one phone call. I’ll lock you in till I get back, to make sure Herman doesn’t get at you.’

  Herman wasn’t in the corridor. She didn’t think he would have been. Erik the Red was far too cautious to allow that young man out of his sight again. Would it be a good idea to ask Erik to call the police? No. Definitely not. They’d be stuck this side of the Channel with a load of stolen goods, without any good explanation as to how they’d come by them. Of course, if Liam could be lured to Bruges so that the police could arrest his contact here … but first things first. She needed to find out if these really were stolen goods.

  She found her mobile and the card Mr Goldstone had given her. Fortunately he was at home and willing to speak to her.

  ‘Mr Goldstone, I’m in Bruges trying to remedy a nasty situation which my young protégées have got themselves into. They were asked to carry presents through Customs for a friend … yes, I know, it was incredibly silly of them. One of the presents was supposed to be a valuable coffee set, a present for the friend’s business contact over here. It turns out that the package contains gold boxes.’

  The cracked, elderly voice put the right question. ‘How many?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘There should be twenty.’

  ‘Nineteen, each one swathed in bubble-wrap. There is also a box of miniatures. Do you know anything about those?’

  The ancient voice grew stronger, reflecting the authority of the man. ‘My friend Leo was killed for a collection of miniatures a couple of months ago. My dear lady … my very dear lady … forgive me. I must sit down.’