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The woman hesitated, but then gave in, opening up the bag so that Paige could see. Inside was a small painting on an oval backing, with a silver frame. Another antique?
“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” the man said. “If this is stolen, we didn’t know that when we bought it just now. We were assured that everything had provenance.”
“Who assured you?” Paige asked.
“The guy selling all this,” the woman replied. “Look, this is all some big mistake. Can we go?”
“Leave the bag,” Christopher said.
That got another moment of hesitation, but the woman set it down on the stairs. The two of them practically ran out of the building then. Paige’s attention was already back on the stairwell. The more she saw of what was going on here, the more she wanted to talk to Glenn Harper.
She and Christopher headed up to his apartment. The door was open, and it was clear that several people were inside. Apparently, he welcomed anyone, any customer, who wanted to come in.
Paige and Christopher approached the door quietly. From the doorway, Paige could see a large, open plan apartment decorated in an elegantly expensive style, mostly in greys and off whites to create a modern, monochrome effect. It didn’t really work, though, because of the antique furniture set out around the place.
It was almost like a showroom, with chairs and tables set out at intervals, smaller items stacked up on top of them. Paige saw crystal vases and small cases with jewelry, a couple of old wooden chests and even a painting or two. People moved among it all hurriedly, most looking over their shoulders as they did it as if afraid of being spotted.
The only man not browsing stood at the heart of it all like a ringmaster at a circus, clearly in charge of the whole thing. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his thirties, with features that seemed both handsome and slightly forgettable at the same time. He was wearing a three-piece suit that seemed as antique as some of the objects around him, perhaps to lend the whole thing an air of legitimacy. Paige knew instantly who he had to be.
“Glenn Harper?” she called out, stepping into the apartment.
His reaction to the name gave him away, recognition and then fear crossing his face in short order. “Run!” Harper called out.
The other people there took one look at Paige and Christopher and ran for the door in a panicked stampede that meant that Paige had to throw herself back just to avoid being knocked to the floor. She saw Christopher shouldered out of the way by a big man. Christopher got a grip on his arm, but the big man pulled free and kept running.
In the middle of that distraction, Glenn Harper made a run for it.
He sprinted across the floor of the apartment, heading not for the door but for one of the windows. Paige set off after him, just a few paces behind but it felt like a huge distance. In just seconds, Harper was out onto a fire escape, heading down it with the speed of someone who had done this kind of thing before.
Paige followed, determined not to lose sight of him as he continued down towards ground level. Harper slid down the last ladder towards the ground, not bothering with the rungs, and then ran for a motorbike parked at the rear of the building in an alley. It was obvious that he’d worked out his escape route ahead of time.
It was just as obvious that Paige wasn’t going to get to him before he reached it.
“Stop!” she commanded, lifting her gun. The problem was that she couldn’t just shoot him. He might be a potential murderer trying to run away, but he wasn’t posing an immediate threat. Paige had to come up with another option.
She found herself looking down at the carriage clock that she’d picked up outside, testing the weight of it in her hand. There was no time to think this through, no time to weigh up the likely consequences of it all. Instead, Paige drew back her arm and pitched the clock at Harper as hard as she could.
It hit him flush on the skull just as he was starting the motorbike, the impact enough to knock him sprawling and to utterly destroy the antique all at the same time. Paige didn’t have any time to think about that, though, because she was already making her way down to ground level.
Even as she did so, Christopher came around a corner into the alley. He’d obviously gone the other way when Harper had started to run. He stood over the fallen man, covering him while Paige got out her handcuffs.
“Glenn Harper, you’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Paige stood outside one of the Arnville PD’s interview rooms, watching Glenn Harper through a sheet of one-way glass and trying to get a sense of him.
Behind her, the robbery/homicide department of the Arnville PD was working across an open plan office, stacks of files set out on desks, detectives sitting there working. A couple of them were talking to people who were obviously witnesses in various crimes while strip lights provided harsh lighting overhead. To Paige, it was a reminder that the world was bigger than just the investigations that she and Christopher embarked on. The only crimes she’d solved so far had been with him, but there were plenty of others out there. She couldn’t forget that.
She also couldn’t forget that she and Christopher were there on sufferance, because the Arnville PD didn’t want the FBI creating too much negative publicity for the town. They’d been willing to let the two of them use an interrogation room, but Paige doubted that it would go much further than that.
“What do you make of him?” Christopher asked from beside her. Well, not quite beside her. There was a distance between the two of them, which wouldn’t have been there before they had kissed, as if he were afraid that getting too close to Paige would lead to a repetition of that moment.
Everything about him had been like that since that moment. In every conversation, it had been as if he was pushing Paige away, not trusting her anymore, not wanting to risk even a moment of closeness or informality. Most of the time, it seemed as though he could barely even agree with her, which made the fact that he was asking her opinion now feel strange.
Even so, Paige did her best. “He looks calm on the surface, even if there are small things that suggest he’s nervous underneath,” Paige said. “He’s making small movements and then catching himself as if aware that he doesn’t want to give much away. He’s trying to keep a neutral expression, but he keeps glancing towards the glass.”
“Is that the way a killer would react?” Christopher asked.
