Chapter Thirteen
It was mid-morning and Aster was on the road driving north to Birmingham. The traffic was busy and she was zipping along in her Mini Cooper. She had a list of three separate suppliers, none of whom had replied to her phone calls or answered her e-mails beyond providing her with a price list. Digging deeper, she was concerned when she couldn’t find any proper company records about them and digging even further, she was surprised to find that the Department of Trade and Industry hadn’t raised any red flags about these companies. Incompetent, red tape bureaucracy or something else? Aster was inclined to go with institutional cock-ups. In her experience, people were mostly useless.
Eventually she peeled off the M40 and headed into the city. Weaving between the buses and lorries, Aster headed to her first address.
As Aster navigated the tangle of busy city streets, her mind was churning. These fabric suppliers were proving irritatingly elusive. Despite her best efforts to make contact and arrange a proper visit, they seemed determined to keep her at arm’s length. It didn’t sit right. If their business was above board, what reason could they have to stonewall her so thoroughly? They weren’t prepared to send samples and they didn’t have showrooms. The only option was to purchase online, but Aster wasn’t a fan of playing by someone else’s rulebook.
The address she pulled up to was nondescript, just another industrial unit amidst a sprawl of similar buildings. No signage, no indication of the business within. Aster’s instincts screamed that something was off. She sat for a long moment, eyeing the shuttered windows and deserted car park. Not exactly the welcoming storefront of a legitimate textile wholesaler.
With a sigh, Aster climbed out of her Mini and approached the grimy metal door, rapping sharply. No response. She tried again, the hollow clanging loud in the eerie quiet. Nothing. Looking around there appeared to be no signs of life from any of the other units. Heading back to the car, she jumped in and drove around to the back of the large unit. Sure enough, there was a simple back door and no prying eyes. Parking beside a disused skip and a pile of tyres, Aster got out and tried the back door. This too was locked, but only by a simple padlock. Grinning to herself she returned to the car. Dipping down to the puddle by her tyres, she scooped up a handful of thick mud and smeared her front and back licence plates, then leant into the car, removing a small velvet pouch from the glove compartment.
Whilst her fellow students had taken a gap year after their degree to build elephant shelters or mend school toilets, Aster had headed to Asia and learnt the fine art of breaking and entering, sleight of hand and the subtle art of misdirection. Rather than rescuing elephants, no doubt a noble endeavour, Aster mastered wealth redistribution. She quickly learnt who had too much and was reluctant to even share a smile let alone any of their obscene wealth. She’d quickly relieve them of their burden and share it with those slum dwellers who slept on earthen floors, eating one meal a day if they were lucky. Hobbling on twisted limbs, sharing their fire with Aster, and helping her with their language, Aster had spent months feeling happier than she had in years.
She had travelled to Birmingham and wasn’t going to turn back now without answers. Glancing around to ensure she was unobserved, she made swift work of the rudimentary lock. The door swung open with a rusty groan as she stepped through the dirt and plastic wrappers that had accumulated at the back of the warehouse.
Inside, the cavernous space was dark and musty. Aster fumbled along the wall until she found a light switch. Fluorescent tubes flickered and hummed to life, revealing towering metal shelves stacked with boxes and bolts of fabric. The air was thick with the smell of mothballs and stale dust.
Wrinkling her nose, Aster ventured deeper into the warehouse. She ran her fingers over the stacked textiles, marvelling at the uncanny similarity to the Hiverton muslin. To the untrained eye, they would be indistinguishable. Pulling out her phone, she snapped a few quick photos of the stock, the shelving, the general layout. She walked along the aisle looking at other items. Clothes from Dior, bags from Balenciaga. Everywhere she looked was the sort of items that people paid very good money for. This was either stolen or counterfeit. She took more photos for Clem to look at. Her sharp-eyed sister would be able to tell her quickly if these were the genuine article or not, but Aster felt certain that Chanel didn’t keep their inventory stored in quite such disreputable premises.
She was so engrossed in her investigation, she almost didn’t hear the crunch of tyres on gravel outside. Aster sprinted towards the back door as the front door banged open and she ducked behind a pallet of large packing boxes. Crouched behind the crates, her heart pounded as heavy footsteps entered the warehouse.
‘How many more times do I have to tell him to turn the bloody lights out?’ muttered a man furiously.
Aster held her breath, her mind racing. She was cornered, and if she was caught trespassing, it would put the whole investigation at risk. Not to mention that Ari would be furious. She needed a distraction, and fast.
Thinking quickly, she waited until the man’s back was turned, then grabbing a pair of scissors off the nearest shelf, she hurled them as far as she could towards the other side of the warehouse. They landed with a clatter, and the footsteps immediately headed in that direction.
‘Who’s there?’ shouted the gruff voice.
Seizing her chance, Aster bolted for the back door, keeping low and silent. She slipped out into the wan sunlight, easing the door closed behind her with the barest click. And then she ran, not stopping until she reached her Mini. Throwing herself into the car, she grabbed a balaclava from the glove compartment and dragged it over her head before gunning the engine. Screaming into reverse, she threw the little car into a three-point turn as she screeched around the front of the warehouse.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the front door flung open as a heavy-set man with a crooked nose ran out, shouting curses at her.
Only when she was out of the industrial estate did Aster allow herself to breathe and then laughed to herself. Removing her hood, she joined the flow of traffic and soon pulled into the car park, where she hid amongst the cars and cleaned off her licence plates. That had been too close. She couldn’t afford any slip ups going forward. But her close call had only affirmed her suspicions - these suppliers were definitely hiding something. And she was more determined than ever to uncover what it was.
Consulting her list, Aster plugged the next address into her GPS, which turned out to be a nondescript retail shop, not even fabrics. She frowned at the generic ‘For Lease’ sign in the window. This was supposed to be the headquarters of a major textile distributor. It looked more like a shell company, an empty facade with nothing behind it.
Aster’s suspicions only deepened as she pulled up to the third and final supplier on her list. Another unremarkable storefront, this time a shabby charity shop with a few sad mannequins in the grimy window. She sat in her car, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she surveyed the street. Three different addresses, three different businesses, but the same aura of neglect and subterfuge.
Frustrated and in need of a moment to collect her thoughts, Aster pulled into a nearby roadside café. The cheerful jingle of the bell above the door was a stark contrast to the eerie silence of the abandoned storefronts. Aster slid into a worn vinyl booth and ordered a cup of tea, hoping the familiar ritual would help clear her head.
But when the steaming mug arrived, Aster hesitated. She toyed with the handle, turning the cup around and around, but couldn’t bring herself to take a sip. Her mind was too busy spinning with the implications of what she’d uncovered.
Three supposed fabric suppliers, all nothing more than empty fronts. Two had no stock, no staff, no sign of the thriving business their sales figures suggested. One was a warehouse full of hooky goods. It was a web of misdirection and deceit. Aster’s instincts were screaming that something was very, very wrong. This was no mere case of textile smuggling or copyright infringement. The scale of the deception, the elaborate lengths taken to conceal the true source of the fabric - it all pointed to a far more sinister game.
But what? And more importantly, who was the puppet master pulling the strings? Aster had a sinking feeling that the answers to those questions would prove more dangerous than she’d bargained for. She needed more information, but the usual channels of investigation seemed woefully inadequate in the face of such a sophisticated operation. Aster was going to have to get creative, to think outside the box if she wanted to unravel this mystery.
As she sat, lost in thought, Aster’s gaze fell on her still-full mug of tea. A sudden realisation hit her like a punch to the gut. She hadn’t taken a single sip, not because she was too preoccupied, but because some part of her was afraid. Afraid of being drugged, of losing control, of waking up confused and vulnerable like she had that night at the club.
Aster felt a flush of anger and shame. She’d always prided herself on her strength, her resilience. But now, a simple cup of tea in a roadside café was enough to make her hands tremble. She hated this new weakness, this chink in her armour.
Abruptly, Aster pushed the mug away and slid out of the booth. She couldn’t sit here wallowing in self-pity. She had work to do, and letting her fear control her would not get it done.
As she strode out of the café and back to her car, Aster silently berated herself. She needed to get a grip, to push past this irrational paranoia. She’d always been resourceful, and she’d never yet met a challenge she couldn’t tackle head-on.
But even as she revved the engine and pulled back onto the road, Aster couldn’t quite shake the lingering unease. The incident at the club had left scars, invisible but deep. And as much as she hated to admit it, they were affecting her more than she’d realised.
Aster gripped the steering wheel tighter, jaw clenched with determination. She would deal with her own demons along the way. She had to. There was too much at stake to let her personal baggage slow her down.
But as the miles ticked by and the city gave way to open countryside, Aster couldn’t escape the feeling that she had taken on too much. She had thought that the fabrics issue was going to be quickly resolved, but what she had seen suggested that this was the tip of a larger issue. On top of that, she had made a promise to herself to get the nuns’ oil painting back and she really needed to deal with Marcus Barrie no matter how much she wanted to avoid it.
Biting down on her concerns, she placed a call to Nick and was gratified when she was answered immediately.
‘What’s up?’
‘I need to go out to India. This situation is worse than I thought.’
‘Tell me more.’
As Aster explained what she had discovered, Nick listened in silence.
‘And what do you think you can do in India?’
‘Ask questions. Get a sense for where the problem lies. At this stage, all I want is more intel and I don’t think I'm going to find it online. I think we need to go to the source and see what they say at the coalface, so to speak.’
‘Very well, when do you want to leave?’
‘Can I have a week? I have some other things going on that I need to be here for.’
‘Do I need to know what they are?’
‘No.’
There was a pause and then Nick sighed. ‘Very well. Let me know when you want to travel and I’ll put things in place for you.’
Hanging up, Aster smiled to herself; she enjoyed dealing with Nick. She always cut straight to the chase and now Aster rang her other favourite phone companion.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello, Otto.’ Otto’s abruptness always made Aster want to waffle just to wind her up. She loved the fact that Otto was even more abrupt than she was.
‘Stop playing with chit-chat. What do you want?’
Grinning to herself, Aster applied herself to the matter at hand. When she had spoken to Mr Adams in the auction house, he had said that the house had a twenty-year unblemished reputation. That could only mean one thing. Something major had happened twenty years ago. Aster hadn’t found anything obvious and so she had tasked Otto to dig a little deeper amongst her contacts.
‘Did you find out what Spencer Auctions were covering up?’
‘Of course I did. They were one of several houses that had unwittingly sold some Hebborns passing as a Matisse and a Reynolds.’
Aster shrugged, the name meant nothing.
‘And?’
‘Pah. Your education. Eric Hebborn was a notorious forger who duped everyone.’
‘In your league?’
‘Clearly not. He was discovered!’
Aster tried not to laugh. Otto’s pride on this subject was monstrous, but also warranted. Luckily for Aster, Otto carried on talking, so Aster was spared having to hide the smile in her voice. ‘It’s a matter of public record, but Spencer Auctions have done a very good job of keeping their name out of most of the reporting. They were lucky that they were relatively smaller players, whereas Sotheby’s and Bonhams caught most of the media attention.’
‘Right,’ said Aster thinking quickly, ‘that’s our way in. Gather a team together. All we need to do is cast sufficient doubt on the authenticity of the painting and point out that Spencers have fallen for forgers before.’
‘I agree. But we need more. We need to control the telephone bids as well.’
‘Bugger, you’re right.’
‘Of course. But I have already found a solution.’
As Otto explained her solution, the miles sped away and Aster drove along the motorway back to London, delighted that everything was falling into place. Now maybe she could devote a little time to identifying her rescuer. Every day she found herself thinking about him and realised she was beginning to get obsessed by the man. Seeing him that time at the auction house had given her fresh memories and she had found that he had increasingly taken up too much of her attention. He was all she saw at night when she went to sleep and the first person that came to mind when she woke up. There was nothing she hated more than an unsolved puzzle and she knew that she would have to run a facial recognition program soon. The problem was that felt like cheating.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Aster quickly rewound the conversation. Otto had been talking about the team she would bring in to work. ‘You’ll knock out all bids except for your own.’
‘Correct. Now, I need to work and talk to people that are paying attention. Goodbye.’
And with that admonishment, she hung up. Aster grimaced and then imagined his face smiling down at her, her thoughts racing away from her.
Enough. She had work to do.