Ring of Guilt Read online

  ‘But he and Griff are friends: surely he should have challenged him first? And isn’t there a difference between just and justifiable?’ I frowned, trying to remember, not just trying to make a point.

  He probably thought I was cleverer than I am. He smiled, making the jam quiver. ‘Absolutely.’ But his face became very serious again.

  ‘What else did Douggie say? Sir Douglas,’ I corrected myself.

  ‘He – he did make one or two allegations which I’m sure are also baseless.’

  I pondered. ‘He and Griff go back for years, so I’d guess they were about me.’ He flushed. I was right. ‘About my background? Can’t really help that, can I? Or about my restoration work? Well, that’s absolutely legit. Sometimes I even do it for museums. I can show you the files I keep on everything. No, it’d be the fact he thinks I’m leading Griff astray – a little gold-digger. Sorry. Only I mean –’ I took a deep breath, and plunged in – ‘metaphorically, not literally.’

  Griff nodded across the table – I’d got the words right. ‘Of course she’s neither, Will. I couldn’t love her more if she were my own flesh and blood, but she’s a partner in this business, not least because of her restoration skills. In times like this, sales can be hard to come by, and she brings in a good steady income. And she’s—’ He stopped because I’d kicked him under the table. Whatever else he said about me, the last thing I wanted him boasting about was my being a divvy. I didn’t think such an odd activity would raise me one centimetre in Will’s eyes.

  Which were getting steadily harder as Will waited.

  ‘She’s a genius at selling,’ Griff continued as smoothly as if he’d intended to say that all the time.

  Will nodded.

  Usually in a situation like this if the phone rang we let the machine take it. But this time Griff decided to lift the receiver. From the edgy politeness he adopted, I knew at once who it must be. Probably the only man in the world he was deeply jealous of. Then he said, very clearly, so I knew Will was meant to clock it, ‘Quite so, my lord. Just have any items you want her to value to hand, and I’m sure she’ll oblige. You can expect her some time this afternoon, Lord Elham.’ He almost bowed as he cut the call.

  You should have seen Will’s face.

  Of course, Will wasn’t to know that Lord Elham was my biological father, and one of the most disreputable men I know – well, anyone employed by Titus Oates had to be on the iffy side of dodgy. Despite being generally pretty much of a parasite, he’d actually done me a really good turn not so long ago, which explained why Griff was being polite. Or perhaps he thought Will would understand that I was a really pukka dealer if I was employed by what he might suppose was a noble lord.

  And he would have been right. Will, who’d got round to wiping the jam away, had pretty well sat to attention. Griff resumed his place, and poured more coffee, remaking, just as Will tasted his, ‘Dear one, your father rings at such unpredictable hours.’

  So why had the old bugger undercut the whole charade?

  Because now he’d made Will first choke and then become rigid with politeness. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I had no idea—’

  ‘I prefer to stand or fall on my own reputation,’ I responded, truthfully, though it sounded pretty pompous, come to think of it. ‘Now, back to my rings, if you don’t mind. It’d be better if you, not Griff, told Sir Douglas that they were genuine purchases and that I could have them back.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. But I think I should take the receipts with me.’

  I was on my feet in a second. ‘I’ll photocopy them for you,’ I said. I quite liked Will, but he was still a policeman, and as such still suspect.

  As I returned from the office, he produced a little evidence bag. ‘I’d prefer the originals.’

  ‘In that case I shall need a receipt for the receipts,’ I said, trying to sound a bit quirky but meaning it all the same. ‘Make it out to Ms Lina Townend, please.’

  ‘You don’t use your title, ma’am?’

  ‘That is my title.’

  He wrote and then looked up at me. ‘I – I hope you don’t mind my asking, ma’am, but I wonder – I know it’s a silly thing, but—’

  ‘Look, Will, I’m the daughter of a lord: so what?’ I dug round for one of Griff’s useful quotations. ‘Cut me, do I not bleed?’ I think it was a bit of Shakespeare. Whatever it was, Will looked impressed.

  ‘OK. Look, earlier you said something very odd about wanting to talk about your body.’

  Griff grinned. ‘Beautiful as Lina is, she’s not narcissistic, Will. She referred, I should imagine, to what appeared to be a corpse in a field. She called it in, but then the body disappeared.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and I assumed you wanted to tell me what happened next. I don’t like loose ends, you see.’

  Still looking as if he was about to tug out all his hair, he made a note of the date and other details and promised to follow it up. ‘I could pop round and update you,’ he said, sounding almost as if he was asking permission.

  ‘That would be excellent,’ Griff told him. ‘But you should phone ahead. We work away from home a great deal.’ Why did he wink at me? And why, for goodness sake, did he somehow drift us both into the village street and say admiring things about Will’s car? Hell, flirting with a pretty actor was one thing, but pretending to know about CO2 emissions was quite another. But then he drifted away, leaving the two of us together. Blow me if Will didn’t get all blushful again.

  I was getting cold. ‘I’ll look forward to hearing from you then,’ I said, a bit too crisply, as if he was a client I wanted to put the phone down on. So I added, ‘If my father needs me, I’d better go. I always take him supplies, you see – food and drink.’

  He was all concern. ‘Is he housebound, then?’

  ‘Not exactly. If you ask Griff, he’ll say he likes being waited on, and Griff’s usually right.’ Damn, now I was talking too much.

  ‘I – er, I’ll see you, then.’ He let himself into his car.

  ‘Sure. See you soon,’ I added, just because that’s what you say, isn’t it?’

  He smiled this huge smile. ‘See you soon!’ And drove off, looking at me, not into his rear-view mirror. It’s a good job our village street’s quiet, or he might have had some explaining to do when he got back.

  That night my three o’clock moment featured Will, in shocking pink drag, kicking the body’s head across a field as if it was a rugby ball.

  FOUR

  My father’s address was Bossingham Hall. Will Kinnersley would have been really impressed. But Lord Elham had been relegated to one wing, where he lived alone with loads of tat he’d managed to squirrel out of the main body of the building before the trustees brought in the valuers and their legal team. Much of the stuff hadn’t been worth moving in the first place, but mixed in with the rubbish there were some really good pieces. Not that he knew the difference. The deal was that I sold some of these from time to time to keep him in champagne and other items his pension wouldn’t rise to.

  Although his default expression was cunning, this afternoon he was looking less shifty than usual. Almost trustworthy. And decidedly cleaner. I might have been worried – perhaps I ought to have been – but since I’d been managing his diet and compelling him to have his hair cut from time to time there was an all round improvement. More often than not he shaved and he remembered to change his shirts and trousers before they became items even the Oxfam shop would have shuddered at. He’d even learned to use the washing machine I’d organized for him, and though he’d never have admitted he liked anything except Pot Noodles, he seemed to enjoy the casseroles and curries I filled his freezer with. He certainly told me when he was running low.

  But he was still a master forger, I had to remember that, and was possibly the most neglectful father on the planet, though I had to admit he’d never been actively bad – no abuse or anything like that, or I’d never have gone within ten miles of the place. In fact he never saw – never had seen
– any of his thirty other children, as far as I knew. That didn’t mean he didn’t, of course. And there was no doubt that some might have been attracted by the trust I’d insisted he’d set up for us all with some decidedly ill-gotten gains – wasps as well as genuine bees, however, swarming round the family honey pot, if you could call it a family, of course.

  Today he actually ventured outside to greet me as I pulled up outside his wing – it was approached by a truly dreadful lane from the hamlet of Bossingham. He claimed his trustees were supposed to maintain it, and would have liked me to stir them up a bit. But since my van’s suspension was the only one regularly at risk, and since I knew how much he’d diddled them out of over the years, I refused to get involved.

  Since I hadn’t had time to cook, I’d stopped off for some supermarket Healthy Option meals, which I unloaded.

  He peered at them. ‘Your cooking tastes much better,’ he bleated, but he cheered up when I lifted out a couple of boxes of champagne. The clouds came down when he saw all the packets of green tea, however. A loud dislike of the stuff was about the only thing he and Griff had in common. I actually shared it, but since I bullied them into consuming huge quantities, I couldn’t really admit that it wasn’t nectar in a cup.

  ‘I found some jewellery you might like to look at,’ he said, when I’d stowed the last ready meal in the freezer.

  Had he indeed? And where might that have come from? I knew of at least two highly unofficial ways into the main hall, in addition to the authorized one covered by CCTV cameras – so the trustees knew how often he went into his ancestral hall. On the other hand, they didn’t have any jewellery on display. There was always the Aladdin’s cave of the huge attic space, of course – I’d never had a really good rummage up there because I wasn’t sure where my father’s section ended and the trustees’ began. My father wouldn’t have bothered, of course – what was his was his and what was theirs was his too, so long as it wasn’t in a tightly locked cabinet with CCTV trained on it.

  He reached into the fridge for a bottle of champagne.

  ‘I’ll just make us a cup of tea and then I’ll take a look,’ I said firmly. Although one of the very few things I’d inherited from him was a taste for bubbly, the last thing I wanted was to get fuddled with booze. I always needed my wits about me when it came to dealing with the old guy, not to mention the clean driving licence Griff and I depended on.

  He pulled a face, but found a couple of cleanish cups and saucers: one of his funniosities was only drinking out of china cups, never thick mugs. He went so far as to carry the tray through to his living room, dominated by a widescreen HD TV set and a wonderful table which would have seated twenty. It bore the white rings of so many wet-bottomed glasses I’d given up trying to rescue it; it needed proper restoration from the furniture equivalent of me. It was on this table he’d put a couple of ancient shoe boxes, which he opened with a flourish.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘What do you think of them?’

  I couldn’t work out the tone of his voice. Was he asking for my professional opinion? Or seeing if I could detect some expert forgery? Or even giving them as a present?

  I soon dismissed the last thought. My father didn’t do presents, any more than he did affection. We never exchanged a hug or a kiss, any more than I called him Dad or Father, or whatever you should call a Lord. As for the second, if he and Titus were up to something – if Titus was trying to use me as a fence – I’d walk out of his life forever. So I’d best assume it was my usual job, choosing a saleable item or two, pop them on our stall and giving him the money, minus my commission, when I’d got rid of them.

  I plunged a hand in and came up with some chains, all hallmarked – a good sign. As part of my partnership with Griff, I’d learned all the hallmarks, so I knew I was dealing with Victorian stuff made in Birmingham. It didn’t look very exciting, design-wise, and some of it was very worn. Then there were some little boxes for individual pieces. Nestling in the bottle green velvet of the first was a worn man’s signet ring. Birmingham 1894. A gold bangle came next. Bristol, 1887. And so on and so on. There was an engagement ring, touchingly worn on one side only by the wedding ring it had nestled against. It was pretty, but none of the pin head stones was big enough to give it wow factor a century and a bit later.

  ‘What do you think?’ he repeated.

  ‘To be honest, the best thing might be to sell them as scrap gold – prices are pretty high these days. I know someone who’d give a fair price.’

  ‘Try the other box,’ he urged, sounding disappointed.

  ‘Are these the family jewels? The odd tiara?’

  He shook his head. ‘As if the blasted trustees would let me anywhere within sniffing distance!’

  The gold in that box was much later – 1930s, with some nice deco pieces. I always think rings look better against skin tones, so I shoved one in the form of a bow made up of baguette cut diamonds on to my right hand, tilting it backwards and forwards to catch the light.

  ‘This is much better, though I’d have to clean it to get a better idea of value – it looks as if someone’s been rolling it round in the cow shed. And this watch – wow, it’s Cartier. That should bring in a few bottles for you.’ When he still didn’t speak, I asked, ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘Oh, here.’

  ‘Where here?’

  ‘My wing.’

  I stared at him, an eyebrow raised, as one of my foster mothers used to stare at me when she knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth. Or indeed any of it.

  ‘I thought they might be there.’ Though of course he still didn’t say where. ‘When my nanny died, she didn’t have a family and she hadn’t a will. So the housekeeper put everything together behind a cupboard while the legal chappies hunted for someone to pass it on to. Then the war came so I suppose they forgot. It’s a miracle the soldiers they plonked in here didn’t find it.’ It was an even greater miracle that my father had remembered it.

  ‘You must have been pretty young when she died,’ I prompted him.

  ‘God, yes. Only a nipper. Ready for prep school and all that. But Nanny Baird turned up her toes and that was it.’ My father didn’t do emotion any more than he did affection, but I’d have sworn there was a note of tenderness I’d never heard before.

  ‘Was she old?’

  ‘She looked old to me, of course – positively ancient. But I doubt if she’d be more than forty. Not one of those aged retainers you hear about. And this was hers.’

  There was no doubt this time: his voice was definitely sad. Perhaps my father really had once been fond of someone.

  I shook my head sympathetically. ‘So you don’t want it sold or melted down, then.’ So why was he showing it to me?

  ‘Thing is, Lina, you’ve been making me think, what with one thing and another. And then there’s this TV programme about ancestors. You know, people finding out about relatives they’ve never met. I wouldn’t mind finding out about Nanny Baird’s family.’

  ‘Not yours?’

  ‘Can read all about them in the Muniment Room,’ he said, scornfully. ‘Just names, not real people. Not to me. Mother, now – she was beautiful, I remember that, decked out in all the diamonds she brought over from the States as her dowry.’

  ‘Dowry?’ I echoed.

  ‘Oh, yes – it was pretty well an arranged marriage, just like these Asian kids are forced into. You remember – we saw it on the news the other day. She brought enough money to pay off the family mortgages, he gave her a title. And when she’d produced an heir and a spare, she skipped off to Paris or somewhere. And he went back to his boyfriends. Good job they had me as the spare – the heir dropped off his perch when he was still a nipper, of course. Don’t remember him – just have this vague recollection of people being sad, and arguments and stuff.’

  ‘How come you’ve never told me any of this before?’ I asked – wondering, actually, why I’d never cared to look it all up. After all, I could easily have got acces
s to the Muniment Room now everyone working at the Hall knew I was his daughter.

  ‘Not really interested. A long time ago, after all. But – you know, since that business with that rotter you got involved with – I’ve been thinking more about family. And that led me to Nanny Baird. And finding out her family. And giving them this stuff. Thing is,’ he said, leaning closer, as if afraid the ancestral walls would give him away, ‘Nanny Baird was a widow, not some Norland trained virgin. What if she had children we didn’t know about? They should have this lot – even if it’s not worth anything.’

  I could have done with some of that champagne. My head was all swirly and I felt quite sick. I should have been glad I’d managed to awaken in him some long dead feelings, I suppose, but I wasn’t. I just felt a huge, fierce anger that he now cared enough to find someone else’s children, when he’d never cared a snap of the fingers for me.

  ‘I don’t supposed you could find – are you all right, old girl? You’re sure?’

  I made myself nod.

  ‘All a bit of a shock, I suppose, hearing about your grandma. I wonder if you look like her. No portraits in the Hall, of course – there were plans afoot, to get someone in, but then what with the war and the divorce and everything . . . And she’d be pretty well persona non grata, of course. Tell you what, forget this stuff for a bit – unless you know some chappie who would do a bit of private eye work, for me – and we’ll go and see if there are any photos anywhere.’

  It slowly dawned on me that my father realized something had upset me and he was trying to make it better. I made an effort too. ‘We should pack it away first – that ring and the watch deserve better than being shoved in with the rest.’

  He picked up the watch. ‘You know, I have an idea this was my mother’s. I wonder if she gave it to Nanny Baird – or if it was nicked. Same as the diamond ring. Not the sort of thing you’d expect a nanny to have, eh?’