Next, I rang the gym. Don, the manager, told me Dennis had been in earlier, but had gone off a couple of hours ago suited up. “If he comes back, tell him I’ve been visiting the gentry and he needs to see me, double urgent. I’ll be at home,” I said grimly.
That left his home. His wife, Debbie, answered on the third ring. She’s got a heart of gold, but she could have provided the model for the dumb blonde stereotype. I’d always reckoned that if a brain tumor were to find its way inside her skull, it would bounce around for days looking for a place to settle. However, I wasn’t planning on challenging her intellect. I just asked if Dennis was there, and she said she hadn’t seen him since breakfast. “Do you know where he is?” I asked.
She snorted incredulously. “I gave up asking him stuff like that fifteen years ago,” she said. Maybe she wasn’t as thick as I’d always thought. “To be honest, I’d rather not know what he’s up to most of the time. Long as he gives me money for the kids and the house and he stays out of jail, I ask no questions. That way, when the Old Bill comes knocking, there’s nothing I can tell them. He knows I’m a crap liar,” she giggled.
“When are you expecting him back?”
“When I see him, love. Have you tried his mobile?”
“Switched off.”
“He won’t have it turned off for long,” Debbie reassured me. “If he comes home before you catch him, do you want me to get him to give you a bell?”
“No. I want him to come round to the house. Tell him it’s urgent, would you?”
“You’re not in any trouble, are you, Kate?” Debbie asked anxiously. “Only, if you need somebody in a hurry, I could get one of the lads to come round.”
Like I said, heart of gold. “Don’t worry, Debbie, I’m fine. I’ve got something I need to show Dennis, that’s all. Just ask him to come round soon as.”
We chatted for a bit about the kids, then I rang off. I knew I should go into the office and pick up Trevor Kerr’s list of former employees, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it. I switched on the computer and loaded up Epic Pinball. I thrashed the ball round the bumpers and ramps a few times, but I couldn’t get into it. My scores would have shamed an arthritic octogenarian. I decided I needed something more violent, so I started playing Doom, the ultimate shoot-‘em-up, at maximum danger level. After I got killed for the tenth time, I gave up and switched the machine off. I know it’s as bad as it can get when I can’t lose myself in a computer game.
I ended up cleaning the house. The trouble with modern bungalows is that it doesn’t take nearly long enough to bottom them when you want a really good angst-letting. By the time the doorbell rang, I’d moved on to purging my wardrobe of all those garments I hadn’t worn for two years but had cost too much for me to dump in my normal frame of mind. A disastrous pair of leggings that looked like stretch chintz curtains were saved by the bell.
Dennis stood on the doorstep, grinning cheerily. I wanted to smack him, but good sense prevailed over desire. It seemed to have been doing that a lot lately. “Hiya. Debbie says you’ve got something for me,” he greeted me, leaning forward to kiss my cheek.
I backed off, letting him teeter. “Something to show you,” I corrected him, marching through into my living room. Without waiting for him to sit down, I smacked the tape into the video, turned on the TV and pressed play. I kept my back to him while the robbery replayed itself before our eyes. As the two burglars disappeared from sight, I switched off the TV and turned to face him.
Dennis’s expression revealed nothing. I might as well have shown him a blank screen for all the reaction I was getting. “Nice one, Dennis,” I said bitterly. “Thanks for marking my card.”
He thrust his hands into the trouser pockets of his immaculate pearl gray double-breasted suit. “What did you expect me to do? Put my hand up when you told me what you was looking into?” he said quietly.
“Never mind what I expected,” I said. “What you did do has dropped me right in it.”
Dennis frowned. “What is this?” he demanded angrily. “You know the kind of thing I do for a living. I’m not some snow-white straight man. I’m a thief, Kate, a fucking criminal. I steal things, I have people over, I pull seams. How else do you think I put food in my kids’ mouths and clothes on their backs? It’s not like I’ve been keeping it a big fucking secret, is it?” “No, but…”
“What’s wrong? You’re quick enough to come to me for help because I can go places and get people to talk that you can’t. You think I could do that if I wasn’t as bent as the bastards you chase? What is it, Kate? You can’t handle the fact that one of your mates is a crook now you’re faced with the evidence?” I found myself subsiding onto a sofa. He was right, of course. I’ve always known in the abstract that Dennis was a villain, but I’d never had to confront it directly. “I thought you weren’t doing this kind of thing anymore,” I said weakly. “You always said you wouldn’t do stuff that would get you a long stretch again.”
Dennis threw himself on to the sofa opposite me. A grim smile flashed across his face. “That was the plan. Then everything came on top, like I told you. Kate, I could get five for that. My kids shouldn’t have to suffer because I’m a villain, should they? I don’t want my kids not being able to go to university because their old man’s inside and there’s no money. I don’t want my family living in some bed-and-breakfast doss-house because the mortgage hasn’t been paid and the house has been repoed. Now, the only way I know to make sure that doesn’t happen is to salt away some insurance money. And the only way I know to get money is robbing.”
“So you’ve been doing these art robberies,” I said. “That’s right. Listen, if I’d have known that you’d done the security on Birchfield Place, I wouldn’t have gone near the gaff. You’re my mate, I don’t want to embarrass you.”
I shook my head, “If I recognized you, Dennis, chances are someone else might, especially if they put the tape on the box.” He sighed. “So do what you have to do, Kate.” He met my eyes, not in a challenge, but in a kind of agreement.
“You don’t think I’m going to shop you, do you?” I blurted out indignantly.
“It’s your job,” he said simply.
I shook my head. “No it’s not. My job is to get my client’s property back. It’s the police that arrest villains, not me.”
“You’ve turned people over to the dibble before,” Dennis pointed out. “You got principles, you should stick to them. It’s okay, Kate, I won’t hold it against you. It’s an occupational hazard. You work with asbestos, sometimes you get lung cancer. You go robbing for a living, sometimes you get a nicking. There’s nothing personal in it.”
“Will you get it into your thick head that I am not going to grass you up?” I said belligerently. “The only thing I’m interested in is getting Henry Naismith’s Monet back. Anyway, you’re only a small fish. If I want anybody, I want the whale.”
Dennis’s lips tightened to a thin line. “Okay, I hear you,” he said grimly. I didn’t expect him to fall to his knees in gratitude. Nobody likes being placed under the kind of obligation I’d just laid on him.
“So cough,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple,” he said, taking his time over pulling out his cigarettes and lighting up. “I haven’t got it anymore.”
“That was quick,” I said, disappointed. From what Dennis had told me about his previous exploits in the field of executive burglary, it often takes some time to shift the proceeds, fences being notoriously twitchy about taking responsibility for stolen goods that are still so hot they risk meltdown.
Dennis leaned back in his seat, unbuttoning his jacket. “A ready market. That’s one of the reasons I got into this in the first place. See, what happened was when I realized this court case wasn’t going to go away, I put the word out that I was looking for a nice little earner. A couple of weeks later, I get a call from this bloke I know in Leeds. I fenced a couple of choice antique items with him in the old days when I was pursuing my former career. Anyway, he says he’s heard about my bit of bother, and he’s got a contact for me. He gives me this mobile phone number, and tells me to ring this bloke.