Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(23)
Thirteen He hadn’t seen it as a sightseeing tour, but that was what it was turning into. Instead of ushering Resnick up to the third-floor office which she shared with two other officers and a deficient air-conditioning unit, Jackie Ferris walked him through the narrow side-streets of Whitehall into St. James’s Park. Beyond a heavy scattering of shirt-sleeved tourists, tufted ducks, and pink flamingos, the broad swathe of the Mall stretched from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch.
“Any excuse to get out, Charlie, you know what I mean? Too much of the job spent in artificial daylight, staring into VDU screens.”
Resnick nodded, noting the tones of the North East still lurking at the back of her now largely neutralized voice. Sunderland? Gateshead?
“Once around the lake and then we’ll find somewhere to sit, that all right for you?”
It was fine.
He had first met Jackie when she was a sergeant in the Fraud Squad, seconded to help him out with an investigation into an insurance company scam involving two associate directors, one head of sales and three-quarters of a million pounds. She still wore the same glasses, round and steel-framed, the same or similar, but the Top Shop jacket and skirt had been exchanged for a Wallis suit with the faintest of stripes, a blouse the color of fresh chalk, shoes with a broad buckle and low heel.
“How come the switch?” Resnick asked as they were crossing the bridge over the water. “Arts and Antiques. Promotion aside.”
“I’d been taking this Open University course. Humanities. One of the modules was History of Art. After all that time with ledgers, spreadsheets, it appealed. Figures still, but a different kind. Besides, me mam wouldn’t let us sit down to us tea of a Sunday without the Antiques Roadshow was on tele.” Seeing her smile, Resnick caught himself wondering why there were still no rings on her left hand. “More of a music man, aren’t you, Charlie?” she said.
Resnick nodded.
“Jazz, isn’t it?”
He nodded again, grateful that she made it sound more like an eccentric affliction than a disease.
There was an empty bench between a trio of stocky Germans poring over their map of London and a man of indeterminate years whose clothing gave off an aura of chronic alcoholic abuse.
From her shoulder bag, where they were jammed between mobile phone and electronic organizer, she fished a packet of Bensons and a slimline lighter. “Not entirely social, Charlie, that was what you said.” She tilted back her head and let the smoke drift out onto the air.
Resnick asked her what she knew about Dalziel and she told him, ticking off his major influences and principal works along the way.
“These days, what are the chances of his stuff coming up for sale?”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“But if it did, there are people who’d be interested?”
She angled her head to look at him. “This is legit?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Hmm. Less easy. Museums, galleries, count them out, of course. But private collectors, there’d be a few.”
“Abroad?”
“Most probably.”
The Germans brought over their map and asked directions to Shepherd’s Market; Jackie told them, clear and precise, and they went on their way.
“How would I find them, these prospective buyers?”
“Through an agent, a dealer.”
“Even though he or she would know, presumably, they were stolen?”
“Not many, but some. Supposing the money was right.”
“And it’s a specialist field?”
“Oh, yes.”
Resnick nodded. “So here I am sitting with my Dalzeils …”
“More than one, then?”
“A pair.”
“You’d be looking to make contact with someone interested in late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century painting, Impressionism, British art in general.”
“And how many … I mean, are we talking a lot of people here or what?”
“Known to us, major players, half a dozen.”
“You could let me have the names?”
Jackie Ferris pursed her lips and exhaled. “You know how it is, Charlie. These days especially. Nothing for nothing. But, yes, I’m sure we could do a deal.”
The girl in gold leggings talking to Eddie Snow was so thin you could have sucked her up through a straw. Grabianski stood there for several moments watching, sharing the corner door-space of the Market Bar with a tall black guy sporting silver and lime green. The black guy looking out, Grabianski looking in.
Eddie Snow was sitting on a stool pulled up to the bar, the girl standing close beside him, Eddie’s forefinger easing its way along the cleft of her behind. Above their heads, what looked like several generations of wax cascaded down from heavy iron candle holders. Today Eddie was wearing his black leather trousers with a black roll-neck top, the sleeves pushed back along sinewy arms.
The room was shaped like an L, high-ceilinged, tables ranging along both outside walls beneath windows opening out on to the street. Not late enough to be really crowded, the space between tables and bar was thick enough with drinkers that Grabianski had to excuse himself to pass through.
The old man in the corner aside, the mouth of whose white beard was stained ginger with nicotine, Grabianski thought he and Eddie Snow were the oldest in there by at least ten years.