Fakes and Lies Read online

  Mark untied the string and opened the paper, disclosing a small painting, half finished, of the Madonna with the Christ child and St Anne. ‘I thought one Madonna would be much like another in a church, so I asked my friend here to look after it for me. I didn’t know anybody with a big enough safe, apart from Father Bennett. And I knew he had someplace to lock up the church silver so I thought he might as well lock this up as well.’

  ‘And you never thought to tell anyone.’

  ‘Well, I was going to tell Bee, but then all that happened and, to be honest, I felt a bit embarrassed about it. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d pinched it. That’s why I brought Father Bennett along today, so he can tell you what I told him when he took the painting for me.’

  Gently, Karen turned it over. ‘There’s no backing board,’ she said.

  ‘Well, no, there wouldn’t be. He’d not finished it. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t need one on a work like this. Freddie sometimes put something on just to cover up the gesso on the back. So he could stick his picture labels on to it. His attributions, he called them.’

  Karen must have been staring at him because the man shifted uncomfortably under her gaze.

  ‘We just thought we were helping out,’ Father Bennett said. ‘It was part of that young woman’s legacy – no harm meant.’

  Vin thanked them, and told them that they were going to have to make a formal statement about it. But no, tomorrow would do.

  ‘Attributions,’ Karen said. ‘Attributions, so that it had provenance. I think we’ve been talking to the wrong people.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Binnie confessed,’ Naomi said thoughtfully as she sat back down beside her husband, who was watching the late film. ‘Karen says he seems to be enjoying himself, telling everyone just what he did and how. He killed Toby Elden and Antonia Scott, said it was all at the instigation of Graham Harcourt but that he did the actual work.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘That’s what he called it, Karen said.’

  Alec leaned back against the sofa cushions. ‘You think he’s mad, bad or just … I don’t know, what are the other options? Evil?’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘I think that’s open to interpretation,’ she said. ‘Evil acts, evil man? Somehow that takes away the responsibility, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe so. And any news on Harcourt?’

  ‘As yet, no. But the man has money and resources and could be anywhere by now. Private plane or boat, he could have crossed the Channel from any number of locations. The alert was out pretty fast but it would have taken a couple of hours to reach isolated airfields, and we both know there are any number of marinas or even little coves up and down the coast that a small boat could leave from. No one to notice.’

  ‘True,’ Alec said. Even a tiny motor launch would be enough; it could rendezvous with a larger vessel a mile or so out to sea and even if the coastguard noticed it, chances were it would not be thought of as remarkable.

  ‘Alfie is already looking at his business dealings. Reckons I can help out with the research,’ Naomi said.

  ‘And you’re looking forward to that, I can tell.’

  ‘I might well be.’ She smiled. ‘Karen reckons they can swing it so Alfie gets brought in as a consultant. Informally, but, well … we make a good team, don’t you think?’

  She settled beside him, enjoying the feel of his arm around her shoulders. ‘And Bee is going to be all right, I think. She’s moving back with her aunt for a while. Patrick is showing signs of improvement, and all will be as right with the world as it can be.’

  ‘Except for the dead, the damaged and the lost,’ Alec said.

  ‘Except for those,’ Naomi agreed.