Page 22 of Hang on St. Christopher

I got to my feet. “Just another couple of quick questions and then we should head on,” I said. “You don’t know if Mr. Townes had any other source of income apart from the painting?”

“No. I don’t think so. Why do you ask that?” Mrs. Franklin wondered.

“He was driving a Jaguar, and he was wearing a rather expensive jacket,” Crabbie said.

“Oh, yes, he was always very well dressed, was Mr. Townes,” Mrs. Franklin said.

Mr. Franklin shook his head. “Were youse listening to me? I don’t think he even had a bank account. He was always paid in cash for his work, and he told me once that he went to Belfast to settle his electricity bill. But you don’t have to do that if you have a bank account, do you? They do direct debit, don’t they? Cash only. Very strange in this day and age.”

Mrs. Franklin shook her head. “You and the banks, Kenneth, please.”

“Indeed. Well, thank you both very much. Here’s my card. Call me if you can think of anything else that might help us with our inquiries. Anything at all.”

We left the Franklins to it and recrossed the road.

“Search the house?” Crabbie asked.

“Search the house,” I agreed.

I sent off a constable to call the electric company and find out about these cash payments for his bills, and I called in the standard background check to HQ to see if we could locate Mr. Townes’s passport, driver’s license, game license, gun license, or any criminal record.

“We haven’t discussed motive,” Crabbie said as we walked through Mr. Townes’s front door.

“Motive?”

“If it wasn’t a carjacking gone wrong.”

“Ach, it could be any number of things. Jealous husband? Financial troubles? Trouble with the local bookies?”

Crabbie didn’t look convinced by any of those explanations. But it was way too early to speculate about any of that. I sighed. “Aye, Crabbie, might be a tricky one even if it is only a simple carjacking. I bet we find the car burned out with enough petrol in the tank to get a real inferno going and wipe out all the recoverable forensic evidence.”

“That’s a bet I wouldn’t take,” Crabbie said, quickly adding, “Not that I would ever take a bet.”

“No.”

Crabbie rubbed his hand across his chin. “With no forensic evidence at the scene, no eyewitnesses, and potentially no forensic evidence in the car, this may be a hard nut to crack.”

“That’s why they called for the best, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the best was on holiday in Spain, so they have to make do with you and me,” Crabbie said with only the barest hint of a smile.

CHAPTER5

THE PICASSOS

The house was a big Edwardian job overlooking the water. It was a furnished rental, so the old leather sofa, stiff-backed chairs, and grandfather clock did not reflect Mr. Townes’s personality. Neither did the fussy flowery wallpaper and the thick red carpeting, which looked prewar.

There were four bedrooms upstairs, but three of them had apparently been converted into storage rooms for canvases and paint. Townes’s bedroom was a spartan room at the back, with a single bed and a chest of drawers. In a cupboard, there were some shirts, a black polo-neck sweater, a couple of T-shirts, and a raincoat. A second bespoke suit from Browne and Company. This one was also a linen cotton blend, cream-colored, light and soft to the touch.

The entire back area of his house had been converted into an art studio. It was in a rather nice conservatory with a huge skylight and big south-facing windows overlooking the lough.

Townes’s paintings were all over the shop and weren’t terribly interesting. Portraits of local people and landscapes in the mold of Jack B. Yeats. The colors didn’t leap out at you, and the people in the pictures were rather lifeless (but then, in all honestly, so were most of the subjects around these parts).

Crabbie and I searched the house peeler-style: thoroughly, carefully, professionally. But it looked as though it had already been depersonalized thoroughly, carefully, and professionally. No passports, no driver’s license, no video-club ID. We didn’t find any letters or blackmail notes or gambling receipts. No little black book detailing affairs, no diary, no eye-opening porn stash, no regular porn stash.

I put on a pair of latex gloves and went out to his bin. Rummaging through that, I didn’t find any receipts either, not even from a supermarket.

“He might be a man who just doesn’t keep receipts,” Crabbie said.

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