‘Fox doesn’t have the paintings,’he said calmly.
‘What do you mean? I handed them over to him.’
‘No you didn’t. I gave you the canvases that covered the real ones.’ His face broke into an impish smile. ‘Fox has the Paris street scene and the other two losers. The real ones I slipped behind the crate.’
‘Brilliant. You sure had me fooled.’ She looked at him for a long moment, obviously weighing the implications. ‘So, sooner or later, once Fox finds out he’s been tricked, he’s going to come back, right?’
Kingston nodded. ‘Hopefully sooner rather than later. Thing is, when he does, we must be ready for him. He’ll be furious—my guess is that he won’t hesitate to use that gun if he has to. But that could all be in our favour.’
Her brief moment of elation over, Jamie’s expression was sombre again. ‘In our favour! What will he do when he comes back, then? We’re sitting ducks down here.’
‘First we have to find a place to hide the canvases.’ He reached behind the crate and took out the three loose canvases. ‘Hold these for a moment, would you?’ he said, handing them to her. He took off his jacket, laying it across the wooden crate, the inside lining facing up. ‘This should work for the time being,’ he said.
Jamie watched as he smoothed out the back section of the nylon lining. Neatly hidden by pleats was a long zipper that extended all the way across the back lining. ‘It’s called a “poacher’s pocket”,’ he said, taking the canvases from Jamie and carefully folding them loosely in two so as not to risk cracking any of the paint. He winked. ‘Big enough to hide a brace of partridges.’ He slid the paintings into the pocket and closed the zipper, folding the pleats back in place. ‘There,’ he said, looking up, satisfied. ‘That should out-fox Fox.’
‘Clever,’ said Jamie. ‘So what are we going to do when he gets back?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’he said, going to the ladder and climbing to the top.
She watched as he took the Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and started to lever the screwdriver blade under one of the metal straps that secured the ladder to the ledge of the trapdoor. In thirty seconds the strap was swinging free. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without this little baby,’ he said, moving over to the second strap. ‘Glad they used nails and not bolts,’ he mumbled. Soon, the second strap was loose. Slowly he descended the ladder that was now movable. At the bottom, he gripped the rung level with his knees with both hands and suddenly jerked the ladder upwards. Sliding on the edge of the ledge surrounding the trapdoor, it struck the underside of the door with considerable force making a loud thump. He put the ladder back in position, looked at it for a second, then said, ‘Next time Fox pokes his nasty face down here, he’s going to regret it.’
‘I’m starting to get the idea,’said Jamie.
‘It’s not the greatest,’ said Kingston, ‘but given the vast number of choices, it’s the best I can come up with on the spur of the moment. It’ll depend mostly on timing and a simple cue from you which we can work out.’
For the next couple of minutes, Kingston demonstrated how they would deal with Fox. He went over it twice to make sure each of them knew exactly what had to be done, then they settled in for the wait.
Kingston sat on the wooden crate, Jamie on the trunk, ready to get into their positions the minute they heard the slightest sounds overhead.
‘I’m sorry that I got you into this damnable situation, Jamie.’ Kingston said, shaking his head.
‘Look, Lawrence, neither of us had the faintest idea that there could be any real danger in coming down here—nothing like this—so don’t blame yourself. In a way, I should carry the blame for not having seen through Fox, not believing that the paintings could be here.’
Kingston shrugged. ‘Under different circumstances we might have been able to make a deal with Fox. Let him have the paintings if he would agree to walk away. Somehow I don’t think that’s an option any more. The man’s a psychopath and he knows damned well that, given the chance, the first thing we’d do now is to call the police.’
‘I know it’s too late now, Lawrence, but perhaps it would have been a good idea to let someone know we were coming down here. Not a soul knows we’re here.’
‘There are quite a few things I wish I’d done differently, Jamie. I regret not having been more forthright with you and keeping stuff to myself. In all fairness, Ferguson should have been in on our discovery, too. He helped us find all of this.’ He paused, looking up the ladder, thinking. ‘I did try to call him by the way,’ he said, turning back to her.