The customer, one of whose eyes was hypertrophic and staring up at the ceiling, scanned Strike and Robin superciliously with the other as he went out of the shop. Ramsay inclined his head as the man passed, like a footman. Once the door had thudded shut, Ramsay stripped off his white gloves and strode to Strike to wring his hand, his demeanour no less frenetic than it had been with his customer.
‘When you called this morning, I thought, “at long bloody last”. Ray of hope, it really was. Ray of hope. I’ve been reading up on you. Couldn’t have asked for – I’ve been at my wit’s end, to be honest. You might be the godsend I’ve been hoping for.’
‘This is Robin Ellacott, my partner,’ said Strike.
‘How d’you do, how d’you do?’ said Ramsay. His eyes dropped from Robin’s face to her breasts and moved back again as he shook her hand in turn. ‘Lovely – I mean – what would you like to do first? Look around, or—?’
‘Yeah, let’s look around,’ said Strike.
‘Right, yes – Laura, you can take lunch now,’ Ramsay called to the sulky sales assistant. She disappeared through the door behind the desk, coming back a minute later with her coat and handbag, and left, setting the bell tinkling again.
‘So,’ said Ramsay, spreading his hands wide, ‘this is the shop floor, obviously, hahaha – I’ll show you the vault. This way.’
Ramsay led them to the black door behind the desk, Strike, by far the largest of the three, moving carefully so as not to topple any urns off their tables.
‘As you can see,’ said Ramsay, pausing to point up at the camera over the door leading to the vault, ‘state-of-the-art security. Camera covering the shop and another one over the door outside – alarm – iron blinds over the windows at night – and down here’ – it took him two attempts to open the black door, which fitted poorly into its frame; on the second shove, it opened to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading down to the basement – ‘we’ve got the vault.’
He flicked a light switch and illuminated both the stairway and a cramped basement area. The steep wooden stairs creaked as the threesome descended. The small space below smelled slightly of mould and looked as though it had been fitted out on the cheap, many years previously. The steel door facing them had a second keypad beside it and a wheel handle; to the right was a door that stood ajar to reveal a cramped toilet, and to their left was a sink, some laminate cupboards bearing mugs and a kettle, and a couple of wall pegs.
‘We’ll look away,’ said Strike, as Ramsay moved to tap in the code on the keypad.
‘Oh,’ said Ramsay distractedly, ‘yes – thank you.’
When the door had audibly swung open, Strike and Robin turned back to see the place where William Wright had died.
The vault, illuminated by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the low ceiling, was high enough for an average-sized man, if not Strike, to stand upright in, and deep enough to accommodate a man of the same height lying down. The walls were of brick, and lined with currently bare shelves. The vault contained nothing except five crates of varying sizes, all stamped with the name Gibsons, which Strike knew to be a minor auction house. He took out his notebook.
‘Those,’ said Ramsay, pointing, ‘are the crates the Murdoch silver came in… all stolen,’ he said, staring around at the shelves, ‘and I’d never even seen it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes… it was supposed to arrive on Friday at lunchtime. I came here to receive it,’ said Ramsay, as though the silver had been a visiting potentate, ‘but Gibsons had lots of deliveries that day, so it was delayed, and I had to go back to work. Pamela called later to say it had arrived…’
‘Pamela is…?’
‘Pamela Bullen-Driscoll. My sister-in-law – my wife’s sister. She was helping us out at the time, with Rachel being so ill. Gone back to her own business now.’
‘You had houseguests over the weekend, didn’t you?’ asked Strike.
‘That’s right, and I couldn’t leave Rachel alone with them, so I didn’t come in over the weekend.’
‘But you were here on Monday morning, when the theft was discovered?’
‘Oh, yes, because I wanted to see John Auclair myself.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Very important silver collector,’ said Ramsay. ‘Very wealthy… he’d asked me to put the Murdoch silver aside for him to view, before we offered it to anyone else. That’s why Pamela never took it out of the vault, just unpacked it and put it on the shelves…
‘I came down here – opened the door… and it was all gone… and Wright – well, Knowles,’ said Ramsay, pointing at the floor, ‘was there. Face down. His hands were missing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It didn’t look real.’
‘Face down, you say,’ said Strike, who was making notes.
‘That’s right. And there was dried blood around the head and…’
