Ring of Guilt (2 page)

To look at him picking through balls of yellowing newspaper and dropping them in a black bin-liner as if he couldn't bear to touch them, no one would associate Griff with hard bats and hard balls. But even though the weirder patterns of the cricketers' strips for the short forms of the game enraged and amused him in equal measure – Griff was a white flannels man – he was, as I was coming to realize, something of an expert. I was trying to equate this dear dapper elderly gentleman with the killer wicketkeeper he assured me he once was when he laid a hand gently on mine.

He must have taken my silence as a sign that I was unhappy. ‘My sweet one, I'm so sorry. I keep forgetting that Christmas was not a good season for you.'

It wasn't, actually. In fact, it was pretty crap. While my mates, such as they were, were loaded with goodies, many pretty unsuitable, as I now see, my various foster mothers resorted to toiletries and sensible and useful clothes. God, those dreadful shoes . . . Even then I suppose I dimly realized they were doing their best, but that wasn't likely to cheer me up. It wasn't until I came into Griff's life that Christmas meant beautiful things for me too – some practical but many wonderfully frivolous.

I hugged him tightly. ‘It is now,' I said truthfully. ‘It really is. And that's the most important thing.'

‘I'm glad to hear it. And I think it may have come early this year. Look at this.' Once again he plunged his hand into the yellowing crumpled mess, and came up with a ring. He looked at me, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘Did you know this was here?'

I shook my head. ‘It was just a load of tat – you can see the rest of it. Some EPNS spoons, an old mincer – see, you have to clamp it to a table top and there's a bit missing, I think. But I knew I had to have it. Had to. Despite the other bidders,' I said.

There wasn't much wool I could pull over Griff's eyes. ‘You pushed the lot up to what?' he asked.

‘A pound,' I admitted. ‘A whole pound.'

While Griff fetched his jeweller's eyeglass, I peered at the ring. It was gold, really bright – not quite the colour of Indian gold, but far more intense than modern stuff. At some time it had been bent slightly out of shape. What looked like brightly coloured beads had been set into it. Everything about it said ordinary. In my heart, I knew it was special. Just don't ask why.

‘What do you make of it?' Griff asked, eyepiece already in place.

I passed him the ring, but he didn't take it. As usual when I'd come up with something out of the ordinary, he was setting me a little test – in the kindest way, of course, not like school at all. And the more he wanted me to do well, the better I was.

‘Very old? Really old? When you fished it out I thought it might be a piece of cheap tat. Crude. Especially where they've set these pretty beads.' I touched them. ‘Or not beads? It's important, isn't it?' I said seriously. ‘I can tell by the way you're looking at me, Griff – nothing to do with my being a divvy.' Rather like a water diviner finding water, sometimes I can pick up some valuable item really cheap because something inside tells me it's good, when no one else has realized it's a treasure.

‘But something made you bid for the lot in the first place, my angel child. And risk a whole pound in the process,' he added, with his usual twinkle. ‘And maybe a little of your gift has rubbed off on me.' He opened the fridge door with a flourish and produced a bottle of champagne. ‘Somehow I just knew there'd be something to celebrate.'

I was happy to drink the fizz, but had to ask one thing. ‘What are we celebrating?'

‘Ah, I wish I knew exactly. Gold, of course. And I suspect those beads are actually uncut gems. Possibly it's medieval, but I can't be sure. It might be older. I'm afraid we shall have to ask an expert.' It wasn't often Griff admitted defeat.

‘Your friend at the British Museum?'

‘Why not? We could go up together and see a show. I believe there's a very good play on at the Old Vic. What on earth have I said, dear one?'

‘We don't have to go to the War Museum again, do we?' I was horrified to hear a little-girl quiver in my voice. Last time we'd been to the Old Vic, on the grounds that the Imperial War Museum was in walking distance, Griff had thought it would be helpful to give me a practical history lesson, to start putting some of what I knew about everyday objects into some sort of context. I knew it was good for me, but it didn't stop me having nightmares for weeks afterwards. I alternated between seeing rats in the First World War trenches and being a Holocaust victim rounded up for the gas chambers. Poor Griff got quite used to hearing me scream my head off at three in the morning, and it wasn't good for him, not at his age, because he would insist on getting up and making me cocoa.

‘Not if you don't want to. And perhaps we'd prefer a different theatre. Let me look into it. Meanwhile, you'll be able to see those gorgeous medieval tiles I was talking about . . .'

This time when I screamed my head off at three in the morning it was because I saw the body in the field get up, tuck its head under its arm, and run towards our van.

I
half expected the police to come banging on our door to ask further questions about the disappearing body or to say it was all a hoax, and that I must be more careful about dialling 999 next time. But they didn't. I read the papers and watched the TV news with more interest than usual for a few days; I even Googled for unexplained incidents that might not have reached the national media. I had to accept that it was a false alarm. I should have been pleased, of course – and not just for the young man. I wouldn't have fancied being a witness at an Inquest, let alone in a trial.

All the same, I didn't like loose ends hanging around. I wanted to know the rest of the story. I managed to find the road on Google Earth, swooping in close enough to spot my lay-by. And Griff's map-reading lessons meant I could trace any convenient footpaths or bridleways the young man might have legged it down, until they all disappeared into thick woodland. There was one odd thing – I didn't recall a road where the OS said there was one. My memory had always been a bit weak, of course, though Griff's efforts to improve it had made a huge difference. But I might have been taking tap-dancing lessons for all the good any of this research did me.

All the time – every moment I wasn't really concentrating on something else, such as repairing the tusk on a Meissen elephant for one of our regular clients – I beat myself up. As I told the reproachful figure still frozen on my mobile phone, I should have stopped and gone to help. What if he'd really been ill or been hurt? What if I could have saved his life?

Griff kept on looking at me a little anxiously, and once or twice had his mouth open, as if he was going to ask me something. But he said nothing, and, knowing better than to interrupt me when I was on a really tough assignment, spent a lot of time ensuring that the new addition to our team, Mary Walker, knew everything there was to know about the new stock I'd bought on purpose – unlike the ring, of course. We kept quiet about that.

When she first started to help out in the shop, we'd been afraid Mrs Walker – somehow we never used her first name – might be over-anxious. After all, she'd been wrongly sacked from her last job, and it couldn't have been easy stepping into the shoes of a victim of an armed robbery. (I'd never actually liked poor Mrs Hatch, her predecessor, at all, but all the same being literally scared to death – she'd had a heart attack and never recovered – isn't nice.) As it was, Mrs Walker had taken to the work like the proverbial duck to water. While Mrs Hatch had given the impression she was begrudging us every second of her time when we were away at fairs or auctions, Mrs Walker pretty well shooed us off so she could take her place amongst all the goodies. She also knew her way around our mail order system, and helped out with that when she had time on her hands. She'd even helped wash and catalogue some of the stuff I'd bought at the auction, though she'd drawn the line at the smelly box of kitchen items.

‘Mrs Walker reminds me of you, in a way,' Griff said over supper one evening.

I blinked. Much as we liked each other, I couldn't see a retired teacher having much in common with someone my age who'd systematically skived off school.

‘She's always so keen to learn,' he explained. ‘But where you make intuitive leaps and back them up afterwards, she's a book-learner first and appreciates things second. You did well to choose her, sweet one; you complement each other.'

I'd asked her to work for us because ages ago she'd been kind to me when a bit of kindness was just what I needed. Griff and I had fallen out over something, and I'd stormed out of his life for ever (as if!), though it was a couple of days neither of us ever referred to. The other reason was that before she'd been sacked from the job she loved, she'd been the victim of bullying, and I'd been so often on the receiving end of that, I knew it wasn't funny. Oh, and there was the small matter of desperately needing someone to look after the shop while Griff and I were doing other things. So I didn't really deserve Griff's praise.

‘Anyway, she's more than happy to cover for us for a couple of days. And guess what the postie brought today! Two tickets for a show, my love. So next week we shall journey to London with as much pomp as whatever the rail company's called these days can manage. We shall have lunch with dear Douglas, and pick his impressive brain about your ring – yes, my sweet, your ring it is! You paid a whole pound for it, remember. And then we shall go and see
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
One of my old friends is in the ensemble, so it is possible that we shall go back stage afterwards, and meet some of the stars. I only hope that none of them will steal your heart and take you away from me. All those handsome young men . . .'

Sometimes when he said things like that he wrung my heart. This time I suspected a twinkle in his eye.

There was one in mine, too. ‘Handsome young men? More likely to steal yours, aren't they?'

There was one man, handsome or otherwise, that Griff wouldn't let me meet. Not his choice, he insisted. Occasionally someone would knock on the door very early in the morning – apparently, in the days before Griff became security conscious, he'd just appear in the kitchen, and would sometimes be helping himself to breakfast before Griff realized there was anyone else in the house. Apparently he scraped an existence rooting round boot sales and selling likely items to people like Griff. Any profits went to keeping a small float for the next fair and buying rough cider. He relied for food on people like Griff, as well as the burgers and such the boot-fair punters discarded. I heard his tap early one morning; Griff slipped a little note under my door telling me to have a lie-in.

Since the mystery guest had once seen my bedroom curtains twitch and hadn't returned for six months, I simply had to do as Griff said and wait for Griff's call before coming downstairs.

This morning, despite the cold, when I was allowed down the kitchen window was wide open and the extractor fan whirring full-time.

‘I'm sorry, angel.' Griff was rubbing the table with that surface cleaner that's supposed to kill all germs. ‘Our friend X's personal hygiene leaves much to be desired.'

‘You mean, he stinks,' I said in my head. But not aloud. If it hadn't been for Griff, I might have been a female X, without X's eye for a bargain. ‘Has he brought anything interesting?'

‘You tell me.'

He unwrapped a filthy newspaper, producing a pair of tiny bowls, both with a single silver foot. I didn't need to turn them over. ‘Late-ish Ruskin,' I said. ‘Very pretty. Hallmarked Birmingham 1929. A matched pair, so we get more than twice the individual value . . . Griff, you did pay him enough, didn't you?' I asked, doing sums in my head.

‘Dear one, if I paid him enough, he'd die of alcoholic poisoning in a week. I pay what he asks, though we both – we all three – know it's not enough. But as he says, he knows if he has a problem, he can always come here.'

The obvious place to sell them was Detling Antiques Fair, our last fair before our trip to London. We might not like the site, one of the windiest in the country, but we couldn't miss the event itself. At least we had the privilege of an inside stall, but there were a lot of poor dealers who could only afford an outside pitch. Some had marquee-sized tents, plus heaters. Others just huddled like the roadside refugees you sometimes see on TV, selling stuff I honestly couldn't see why anyone should want to buy. But then, since punters collected all sorts of stuff I wouldn't have given houseroom to even when it was new and clean, I suppose they made a living.

One man who certainly made a living drifted by as I put the finishing touches to the lights on our stall. Titus Oates. Aged somewhere between forty and sixty, and so ordinary looking no one would ever manage to put together an e-fit of him, he had a stall in the darkest corner, away from the main drag. I wouldn't have described him as a mate, and he barely acknowledged my existence, but we did each other good turns occasionally. I kept schtum about his dead dodgy business; he'd tip me the wink about things I might find useful.

This time, as we nodded to each other, he touched the side of his nose. ‘Word on the street is you've lost your touch, doll. Bought a load of tat at that house clearance last week. And you're supposed to be a divvy.'

‘On a fishing trip, are you, Titus? What fetched up in the shop or in the rubbish bin is for me to know and you to keep quiet about.'

He slapped his thigh. ‘So you did get something good? I laid a fiver you would.'

‘To be honest – and I know it's a word we don't often use, Titus – I don't know.'

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Hey up, there's one of the filth over there. Don't want him seeing you and me together and doing the sums about me and your dad, do we?' He disappeared before I could agree. Master forger and Cheshire Cat, our Titus. And employer of my disreputable father, Lord Elham.