As Elizabeth was slumped, sobbing, in her plastic chair, I mentioned to Lesley that, as Kuldesh was dead, and his accounts had been frozen, he wouldn’t have paid his rent for this month. This got her attention. If there is one thing local councils like more than the Data Protection Act, it is money.
I told her that I would gladly pay what was owed. Felt, in fact, that it was my duty. Minutes later I had a printed invoice in my hand: £37.60 for rental of council storage garage Number 1772, Pevensey Road, Fairhaven.
I told Lesley that payment would be forthcoming, thanked her for her efficiency and led Elizabeth out of the double doors to freedom.
Elizabeth was very complimentary, and we agreed in future to leave the KGB to her, and local councils to me. Everyone has to have a speciality. For example, I asked Elizabeth how we were going to get into the lock-up without a key, and she laughed.
I suggested that if we were going to have a poke around, we should call Nina Mishra. If we don’t find the heroin, we might find something else that would lead us to it, and Nina would have a better idea of what to look for. Elizabeth accused me of having a ‘girl-crush’ on Nina, which is probably true. I like strong women. Not bodybuilders, but you know what I mean. Anyway, Nina agreed to come and meet us after her morning lectures.
We wandered down to Pevensey Road; it’s just off the front. I asked Elizabeth if she thought we’d be invited to the wedding if Donna and Bogdan ever got married, and she said, ‘Can’t you concentrate on heroin for two seconds?’
There were two rows of garages, facing each other. Bright green doors, security notices fixed to each one. Two or three of them had their doors open, and from within you could hear banging and sawing. We walked down the middle of the garages, stepping aside occasionally to let the seagulls walk past, until we found Number 1772.
Elizabeth took something from her bag, I didn’t see exactly what, but it was a thin piece of metal. She placed it in the garage lock and gave it a sharp nudge with the palm of her hand, then pulled the garage door up and open.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Some sort of treasure trove, I suppose. The sort of thing you’d see in a Disney cartoon, gold and jewels and doubloons. But really there were just old cardboard boxes stored against the walls, each with a number scribbled on it. We were taking the lid off the first few boxes when Nina arrived in a taxi and joined us.
She was wearing a very beautiful pin in her hair.
We didn’t find the heroin, of course. If we’d found it before now, I would have said, I promise. If I had a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of heroin on my dining-room table, I wouldn’t be going on about hairpins and bodybuilders.
There were all sorts of things in the boxes. Old watches, jewellery, even a couple of Picasso prints. Elizabeth asked if Nina could find a good home for any of it, but Nina was of the view that a lot of it was probably stolen, and that the first stop ought to be the local police station, and I said we were going there tomorrow. Elizabeth asked if the Picasso prints were valuable, but Nina took one look at them and said they were fairly obvious forgeries, so Elizabeth and I should take one each, which we did. Mine is a sketch of a dove and is currently propped up on the mantelpiece. There is a man in Haywards Heath who does very good framing, so I will take it there next time I’m visiting. I will pretend it is real, of course. I suppose that’s how people get away with forging things? It suits everybody to pretend it’s real.
By the way, earlier I might have given the impression that, while I like strong women, I don’t like bodybuilders. I didn’t mean that at all. Bodybuilding is not for me, but I see why you would enjoy it. It’s healthy fun, which is the second-best sort of fun there is.
Now you might think that the afternoon was a disappointment, but far from it. Elizabeth says that this garage is our trump card. All we have to do is hint that it exists during the lunch on Sunday and keep it under surveillance afterwards. They will all have the capacity to find it, and they will all want to take a look.
And, of course, if someone doesn’t take a look, we can assume they already have the heroin.
That’s Elizabeth’s thinking, and she has asked Nina to come to the lunch to help her drop the hint. Nina seemed terrified and thrilled in equal measure. Which, I suppose, is also how I’ve felt non-stop since I met Elizabeth.
So tomorrow we are going to see SIO Regan. The more information we have before the Sunday lunch, the happier Elizabeth will be. Not that she seems especially happy at the moment. There was a funeral today, an unusual one. I will tell you more about it when I have worked out what I think.
