Clean Break

“How did you find out about the co

“A group of us who open our places to the public get together informally…” I heard the door open behind me and turned to see a thirty-something redhead with matching freckles stick her head through the gap.

“Coffee all round?” she said.

“My wife, Ellen,” Ballantrae said. “Ellen, this is Kate Bra

The redhead gri

“Where was I? Oh yes, we get together a couple of times a year for a few sherbets, swap ideas and tips, that sort of thing. Last time we met was a couple of weeks after I’d had a Rae-burn portrait lifted, so of course it was uppermost in my mind. Three others immediately chipped in with identical tales-a Gainsborough, a Canaletto and a Ruisdael. In every case, it was one of the two or three best pieces they had,” he added ruefully.

“And that’s when you realized there was something organized going on?” I asked.

“Correct.”

“I’m amazed you managed to keep these thefts out of the papers,” I said.

“It’s not the sort of thing you boast about,” he said dryly. “We’ve all become dependent on the income that comes through the doors from the heritage junkies. The police were happy to go along with that, since they never like high-profile cases where they don’t catch anyone.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I offered to act as coordinator, and I spoke to all the police forces concerned. I also wrote to as many other stately-home owners as I could track down and asked if they’d had similar experiences.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Including Henry Naismith’s Monet, thirteen in the last nine months.”

I took a deep breath. At this rate, the stately homes of Britain would soon have nothing left but the seven hundred and thirty-six beds Good Queen Bess slept in. “That’s a lot of art,” I said. “Has anything been recovered?”

“Coffee,” Ellen Ballantrae a

I fell on the mug like a deprived waif. “You’ve probably saved my life,” I told her. “My system’s still recovering from what they call coffee in Hawick.”

Both Ballantraes gri

“It wasn’t that good,” I said with feeling.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she said, giving her husband’s hair an affectionate tousle as she perched on the table. “He was about to tell you about the Canaletto they got back.”

Ballantrae reached out absently and laid his hand on her thigh. “Absolutely right. Nothing to do with the diligence of the police, however. There was a multiple pileup on a German autobahn about a fortnight after Gerald Brockleston-Camber lost his Canaletto. One of the dead was an antique dealer from Leyden in Holland, Kees van der Rohe. His car was shunted at both ends; the boot flew open, throwing a suitcase clear of the wreckage. The case burst open, revealing the Canaletto behind a false lid. Luckily the painting was undamaged.”

“Not so lucky for Mr. van der Rohe,” I remarked. “What leads did they come up with?”

“Not a one,” Ballantrae said. “They couldn’t find anything about the Canaletto in his records. He conducted his business from home, and the neighbors said there were sometimes cars there with foreign plates, but no one had bothered to take a note of registrations.” He shrugged. “Why should they? There was no indication as to his destination, apart from the fact that he had a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of lire in the front pocket of the suitcase. Unfortunately, van der Rohe’s body was badly burned, along with his diary and his wallet. Frustrating, but at least Gerald got his painting back.”

Frustrating was right. This was turning into one of those cases where I was sucking up information like a demented Hoover, but none of it was taking me anywhere. The only thing I could think of doing now was getting in touch with a Dutch private eye and asking him or her to check out Kees van der Rohe, to see if we could come up with something the police had missed. “Any indication of a foreign co

“Not really,” Ballantrae said. “We suspect that individual pieces are being stolen to order. If anything, I’d hazard a guess that if they’re for a private collector, we’re looking at someone English. A lot of the items that have been stolen have quite a narrow appeal-the Hilliard miniatures, for example. And my Raeburn too, I suppose. They wouldn’t exactly set the international art world ablaze.”

“Maybe that’s part of the plan,” I mused.

“How do you mean?” Ellen Ballantrae leaned forward, frowning.

“If they went for really big stuff like the thieves who stole the Munch painting in Norway, there would be a huge hue and cry, Interpol alerted, round up the usual suspects, that sort of thing. But by going for less valuable pieces, maybe they’re relying on there being less of a fuss, especially if they’re moving their loot across international borders,” I explained.

Ballantrae nodded appreciatively. “Good thinking, that woman. You could have something there. The only thefts that fall outside that are the Bernini bust and Henry’s Monet, but even those two aren’t the absolutely prime examples of their creators’ works.”

“Can you think of any collectors whose particular interests are covered by the thefts?” I asked.

“Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t know personally, but I have a couple of chums in the gallery business. I could ask them to ask round and see what they come up with. That’s a really constructive idea,” Ballantrae enthused.

I basked in the glow of his praise. It made a refreshing change from Trevor Kerr’s charmlessness. “What’s the geographical spread like?” I asked.

“We were the most northerly victims. But there doesn’t seem to be any real pattern. They go from Northumberland to Cornwall north to south, and from Lincolnshire to Anglesey east to west. I can let you have a printout,” he added, jumping to his feet and walking behind his computer. He hit a few keys, and the printer behind me cranked itself into life.

I twirled the chair round and took the sheet of paper out of the machine. Reading down it, I saw the glimmer of an idea. “Have you got a map of the U.K. I can look at?” I asked.

Ballantrae nodded. “I’ve got a data disk with various maps on it. Want a look?”

I came round behind his desk and waited for him to load the disk. He called up a map of the U.K. with major cities and the road network. “Can you import this map and manipulate it in a graphics file?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. And promptly did it. He gave me a quick tutorial on how to use his software, and I started fiddling with it. First, I marked the approximate locations of the burglaries, with a little help from Ballantrae in identifying locations. I looked at the array.

“I wish we had one of those programs that crime-pattern analysts use,” I muttered. I’d recently spent a day at a seminar run by the Association of British Investigators where an academic had shown us how sophisticated computer programs were helping police to predict where repeat offenders might strike next. It had been impressive, though not a lot of use to the likes of me.

“I never imagined I’d have any use for one of those,” Ballantrae said dryly.

Ellen laughed. “No doubt the software king will have one by next week,” she said.

Using the mouse, I drew a line co