Chapter 2: Picture This

       Randal

      ‘You know, these are really good,’ I said, examining the nearest pictures on the wall of the small gallery. ‘The artist’s taken traditional papercutting and collage techniques to a whole new level.’

      ‘I’ll take your word for it – all this arty stuff isn’t my cup of tea or why I’m here,’ Charlie Clancy replied absently, scrolling through his phone to find a photograph of the woman whose work was being exhibited and whom he hoped to meet that evening. ‘I just need to get Tabitha Coombs to believe I’m interested in including Champers&Chocs in an article on successful local internet businesses, and I’ll be in there.’

      ‘But you might learn something useful, because her work is very revealing when you look beyond the flowery paper lace borders,’ I suggested. ‘The subjects can be quite dark – see this one?’ I pointed to the nearest. ‘At first glance, it’s a park scene by a duck pond, with people sitting on the bench, but if you look closer, they’re clearly homeless and one is drinking from a bottle.’

      ‘Never mind the artwork,’ Charlie said impatiently. His mischievous expression under his mop of dark curls was exactly the same one he’d worn when we were schoolboys and he was plotting some prank that would get us into deep trouble. Nowadays, as an investigator and presenter for the long-running TV programme Dodgy Dealings, it was other people he dropped into the soup. We were in a similar line of business, though generally it was the big holiday com-panies’ shortcomings I exposed.

      ‘There’s Tabitha Coombs over by the archway through to the other room, the tallish one who looks like Cher on a bad day,’ he added.

      At a guess, the woman was somewhere in her mid-thirties, her waist-length cocoa-brown hair worn loose, with a fringe that framed her face and touched straight, black brows. She had high cheekbones, a narrow, aquiline nose, pale complexion and a generous mouth.

      ‘She’s quite striking, in a slightly witchy kind of way,’ I said.

      I was certain that the gallery was too crowded and noisy for her to have heard me, but something made her glance our way at that moment, her gaze direct from eyes of a surprisingly light, almost lilac, grey.

      ‘Her friend Kate, my informant, is the cute blonde with pink streaks in her hair, standing next to her.’

      ‘Hardly a friend, now she’s blabbed to you?’ I suggested.

      ‘Tabitha Coombs thinks she is, that’s why she confided in her. But Kate says she and her husband were friends with Tabitha’s fiancé, Jeremy, for years before they got engaged and though they didn’t much like her they just had to put up with her.’

      ‘Generous of them,’ I commented drily.

      ‘She said Tabitha was probably cheating on her fiancé with the owner of Champers&Chocs, as well as being involved in the scam, so maybe she’s got some kind of axe to grind. But I don’t really care what’s driving her, so long as she’s willing to introduce us. Then the rest is up to me.’

      Before Kate had contacted him, Charlie had already had a tip-off from a disgruntled Champers&Chocs customer about cheap fizzy wine being sold for vintage champagne, so she had given him an easy way into his investigation.

      ‘Never look a gift-snitch in the mouth,’ I said.

      The two women parted company and Kate slowly drifted across in our direction in a casual sort of way, talking to one or two people en route.

      When she reached us, Charlie introduced us.

      ‘This is my friend Randal Hesketh – his family home is nearby, so I invited him along just for the ride. Randal, this is Kate.’

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Kate said, all flirty smiles and big, pale blue eyes with fluttering eyelashes. I supposed she was pretty enough, but since she wasn’t in the least my type her flirting didn’t have any effect on me. This seemed to disconcert her.

      ‘Are you ready to introduce us to your friend?’ Charlie asked.

      She made a moue that looked so cutesy she’d probably practised it in the mirror a million times. ‘As I’ve already said, she’s not a friend, it was just that Luke and I had to tolerate her after she and Jeremy got engaged. But I always felt there was something wrong about her – and my instincts are usually right.’

      ‘Then let’s get on and find out the truth,’ he said. ‘Do you remember your story, about how we got talking and you found out I was a journalist for Lively Lancashire magazine, though I’d walked into the gallery by chance?’

      Kate nodded. ‘So I told you a bit about the artist and her day job as a packer in a warehouse, and then offered to introduce you. Got it,’ she said.

      She gave me another of those flirty glances. ‘Are you coming, too, Randal?’

      ‘No, I’ll stay here; it’s none of my business,’ I said, feeling a distaste for the whole Judas situation. I may be in a similar line of work, going undercover to get film footage for the independent TV programme I work for, Hellish Holidays, but it’s more impersonal.

      ‘See you later,’ I added to Charlie.

      I took a glass of water from a passing tray, since fizz wasn’t my thing, whatever it was labelled as, and surveyed the gallery. It was still crowded and buzzing, so the exhibition seemed to be a success. I noticed red ‘Sold’ stickers had been affixed to several picture frames too and, on impulse, bought one myself that had taken my fancy as we entered. It was of a helmeted woman in a chariot-like wheelchair, entombed in a Sleeping Beauty tangle of flowering briars. A figure was hacking his way in, but he looked more like the Grim Reaper than a handsome prince.

      I’d just paid and arranged to have it delivered to my family home in the nearby hamlet of Godsend after the exhibition had ended, when Charlie came back looking pleased with himself.

      ‘Got what you wanted?’

      He nodded. ‘She’s agreed to ask her boss if I can have a tour of Champers&Chocs and do a short interview, so I can include it in an article on local entrepreneurs. He won’t be able to resist the publicity, but I could see she wasn’t keen on the idea. Then the fiancé – that bloke she’s talking to now – showed up and