The Ghost Portrait: Every masterpiece hides a secret (An O'Malley & Swift Crime Thriller Book 12) by K.T. Galloway

Author:K.T. Galloway [Galloway, K.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A.W.E. Publishing
Published: 2025-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Tink had never really liked auction houses. Not that she’d been in many, and certainly not any in her adulthood. Her mum and dad had dragged her to a few growing up, their house stuffed to the rafters with old tat. Or objet d’art as they called it. Walking up to the old barn housing The Montford Auction House, in the middle-of-nowhere, Essex, Tink could just picture her dad in his tweed cap and her mum in her pearls and made a mental note to invite them over for dinner when the case was solved and she had the spare time to roast a lamb with rosemary sprigs and proper gravy.

She brushed down her bright yellow jacket and headed for the front door, hoping that the clientele had changed since she’d last been to a show. It wasn’t the art that Tink didn’t like, that part she got. The paintings, the sculptures, the antiques. She could appreciate the history and the craftsmanship. It was the people that got under her skin. The less-than-subtle once over from onlookers. Are you wearing the right clothes? Does your bag cost more than a couple of months’ wages? Are your jewels real? Even though most of the time they were all huddled together in an old, dusty cattle shed, if you weren’t one of them, you were elbowed to the back of the room and shunned. Tink’s parents wore the right clothes, but somehow the old money could smell the desperation from the charity shop Mulberry Bags and the holy Burberry scarves. When Tink was old enough, she’d decided to go against the grain and wear what she loved and not what she thought would impress others. Because she’d seen first-hand that it didn’t work.

“Hello?” She pushed on the door, despite the closed sign.

It squeaked on its hinges and juddered to a halt half-way open. Squeezing inside, Tink smelt the musty scent of antiques and something faintly chemical and was thrown right back to being an awkward fifteen-year-old. She headed for the rows of auction items out on display and reminded herself that she was a police officer who was very good at her job.

“Hello,” she called again, stepping between a walnut cabinet and the back of a Victorian looking armchair.

Accoutrement littered the surfaces of all the chests and cabinets. Small snuff boxes hidden beside vases probably worth more than Tink’s car. She fought the urge to nudge a glass decanter off the edge of a tall boy with her pinky finger and listen to it smash on the bare concrete floor. But maybe she wasn’t doing a good job of hiding her compulsion because a voice rang out softly through the large space.

“Can I help you?”

Tink peered around, trying to find the owner of the voice, but the room looked empty of people. A shuffle of movement and a head peered around the wings of the armchair right beside her. Tink started, a hand rushing to her chest.

“Christ on a bike,” she yelled. “You made me jump.

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