CHAPTER 4: DUST NEVER SETTLES
Within the next hour, the two detectives and an ambulance, were parked on the parched grass near the back door. The medics were giving treatment to a bruised and injured David Batten. They said he needed hospital treatment but in their opinion, would recover. He had a bad head wound and a broken finger. They did get to talk to him before he was whisked away.
Whist they awaited the arrival of a crime unit from Newcastle, they sat out on the front veranda so as not to contaminate the house and shed area. The story was still sketchy but it appeared that David Batten heard a noise a couple of nights ago, from his back stable, and knowing that both his staff were gone, went out with a torch to investigate. He was thinking a fox or some animal, only to find three men. When challenged, one jumped him and then intense pain and nothing. He woke up, bound, and bleeding, in a farm house kitchen. They had a blindfold of some description over his eyes so he couldn’t see them but he could still hear. Something about his Turner painting should fetch a good price and one more job. He resisted a bit when they pulled him up and here membered the hanky falling off his head when he was man handled out the back. The last thing he remembered was something like they will never find him in this place.
Jack Grogan mentioned the missing vase to his superior, and they assumed that could be the job that was mentioned. A state wide search would be conducted and whatever avenues they could, but it often end up a dead-end. However this did have an ending. Television had given coverage of the story and the missing items a good go, and one motorist remembered a station wagon next to his when he was getting fuel in Maitland. As he walked into pay, a man in the back of that vehicle briefly recovered a big item in the back, and the observant motorist remembered the top of a big vase. He casually noted the registration then rang the police. They caught the vehicle with a road side camera, and soon many police vehicles converged on it at the Gosford exit. One Ming vase and one Turner painting were amongst the contents.
William Benson had just returned from the small hospital in town, after visiting his neighbour. He sat on his kitchen chair with a coffee and reflected on his vision that started this chain of events. All finished now, he hoped, although there was the one little thing that niggled him. Maybe two things. What about the hat that was down by his creek? The other was the vase. That was a bit of a surreal issue. Especially as he was planning to do something about it! He disliked that woman but business was business. At the CWA supper, he had gone and he felt the need to have it. Not to take but to buy or trade. He had a Tang vase, similar in size, although not the same. He flirted in a verbal sense with her about selling, and she laughed it off saying he needed a lot of cash or something appropriate, to do business with her. That meant there was hope and whilst he didn’t have cash of the sort she would be bound to want, he did have something else.
Iris Kemp liked things she could show off, and at the supper he noticed a small
sculpture on a table. Pseudo Greek in design of a nymph playing a flute. He knew and she would know that it was less than 100 years old, not 2,000, but her friends were never told that. William used to be in antiques in his early days and he saw many good and many bad items. Some how he had kept a few and one in particular was also given to him by a business man for helping acquire bits and pieces over those early years. It was a small alabaster relief of a Roman goddess and it was old. Not from the Roman times but probably Georgian. He had it in a box. It was not his thing and he saw a possible trade. A matching piece to his vase would be nice.
The night it was stolen was the night he had planned to ring her and ask to discuss such a transaction. He put off calling that night and then the next day he heard, the whole town heard, of what had befallen her Ming vase. When she finally got it back in the weeks ahead, he perhaps would ask her. Not now. It was all too raw.
The hat was another issue. He didn’t know how it got where it was found, but he knew it was Alice’s, because she was wearing it when they met at the creek last week and when they parted. He took a billy can and mugs, and with a small fire, made a cuppa for them both. If her husband found out that William had been seeing his wife, it could have been ugly. There was nothing that wasn’t above board. They just used to talk. She needed someone to talk to and he just happened to be that person. It was a platonic friendship, never even kissed her, just a friendly hug on parting. He would try and ask her one day about the hat.
Jack told Hank that the reason for him coming to town was not a police concern and wouldn’t be mentioned to his wife. She came back from her sister’s place and apart from the distress for her employer, never indicated anything else amiss. Jack had his feelings about the matter though, and was sure she knew there was something going on. Maybe Rebecca was one of a line of many something's going on. Their problem.
Six months later, Jack’s wife casually mentioned to him that she got out early from a boring tea party put on by Iris. Pride of place, she saw, was a small alabaster statuette of some Roman goddess or other. When Jack asked her about the Chinese vase, he was told it was nowhere to be seen. Last week something else caught his eye. It was a new painting in the Town Council art gallery, a Turner, that looked very familiar. A wise move on David Batten’s part.
The town had its limitations and it had its interesting points. Always something happening. Yes, he thought, dust never settles.