Castle Killing

by Alec Peche

  "Jo thinks Nick is the type to chase a noble objective like returning a treasure to the original owner. I sent her the words of our Italian guy to see if they mean anything to her."

  Soon there was a response, from Jo,

  'The words don't bring anything of meaning to me, but I thought of something else. Do you think the Scottish police would let you see the cell phone of the man that tried to push you off the castle wall? Maybe there's a matching picture or something else to direct your search?'

  Wow, that was a brilliant suggestion. Why hadn't she thought of it? She replied her thanks and searched her purse for the card of Detective Inspector Campbell and dialed his number. After a lengthy conversation, he agreed to allow Jill to view the phone. Glancing at her watch, she knew Nathan would arrive at any moment, and she needed to get there before the Detective Inspector left for the day.

  It was about two miles away as the crow flies, but the castle stood between her hotel and the police station, so she'd grab a cab. Looking up at Michael and Nicole, she said, "I met Detective Inspector Campbell after the man tried to push me over the castle walls; he investigated the case. He's agreed to let me view the man's cell phone, and we have reason to believe that he knew of whatever treasure Nick was searching for. I'm going to try, and take a picture of everything I find on the phone and I'll share with you."

  "Can we join you at the police station?" Nicole asked.

  "No. The detective was very specific; he indicated that I should leave the other members of my team behind. My request was unusual, and I think if he has too much time to think about it, he'll change his mind and deny my viewing the phone."

  "Will you at least take one of our phones and take pictures with it?" Michael asked.

  "I'll take it, but if I'm pressed for time and it takes too long to snap pictures with two different cell phones, I'll rely strictly on my phone. Any last minute advice on what I should look for?"

  Nicole and Michael both replied at the same time with the word, "Painting". Then Michael gave Nicole the go ahead and she added, "Sculpture, coins, jewelry."

  Chapter 32

  Jill nodded and left the bar heading to the hotel lobby to call a cab. She ran into Nathan just entering the lobby.

  He walked over to her for a quick hug and kiss and said, "Hey babe, have I got stories to tell you."

  Jill smiled and thought, wait till you hear my story about being kidnapped. Instead, she said, "I need to run over to the Police Scotland building. Detective Inspector Campbell has agreed to let me examine the cell phone from the guy that tried to push me over the castle wall. Can I catch up with you in an hour or two?"

  "Why don't I come along," Nathan suggested, turning to head for the exit.

  "When the detective agreed to let me examine the phone, he specifically said I could not bring anyone with me, and I want to hurry and get there before he has time to think and change his mind."

  "What if the phone's locked?"

  That question stopped Jill in her tracks.

  "Then I guess I'm screwed as Henrik's niece has returned to Germany," Jill said as she leaned in to kiss Nathan goodbye before moving towards the exit. She waved at him and added, "I should be back in about two hours at the most," as she disappeared through the exit door.

  'Oh well', thought Nathan. His new information about her case would have to wait until she returned. Maybe he'd stop in and see what Michael and Nicole were up to while he waited for Jill's return.

  Jill found a taxi outside and entered the vehicle saying "14 St. Leonard's Street."

  After a short ride, she arrived at police headquarters. A man at the entry desk directed her to the second floor unit of the Specialist Crime Division as the location for DI Campbell.

  Clearly, DI Campbell had been notified of her arrival, as he was waiting for her when the elevator door opened.

  "Dr. Quint, I didn't think I would see you again as the murder of your friend was solved."

  "Well, yes, we know who murdered Nick and who tried to kill me, but we don't know the motive and that's been bothering me," Jill said thinking she would lose her stellar reputation as a forensic pathologist if he found out she was looking for some treasure legend.

  He stared at her as if trying to decipher what she was thinking, so she asked, "Do you know the motive for my friend's murder?"

  "No, and it's not in my jurisdiction. The attempted murder of you is related to your relationship with the murder victim in Cardiff, but what exactly in that relationship made you a target, I'll never know without interviewing our dead suspect which I can't do. There was nothing in his possession that clued us into his thinking. Does it bother you not knowing his motive?"

  "No," Jill replied. She added, "It doesn't change the fact that the suspect is dead and I have no further worries."

  "Then why are you here? Why are wanting to see his phone? I am a detective you know, and your explanation seems weak. I know I wouldn't waste my time on a vacation in California trying to figure out a suspect's motive, so there must be more to the story, than you're telling me."

  "You're an excellent detective, and I'm not willing to share my reasons with you because it has zero relation to Scotland and I don't want my reputation as a knowledgeable private investigator to be tarnished by my answer. Let me say, I'm on as we say in the States, 'a wild goose chase' that I'm too embarrassed to share with a formidable Detective Inspector such as yourself," Jill said holding out air quote marks with her hands.

  "You Yanks are really full of bull aren't you?" he replied. "I have a full caseload, so I'll let it go, but don't hesitate to call if you need help." Then pulling a cellphone out of his pocket, he directed her towards a small room and handed her the phone once she was inside.

  "You've got one hour, and that's it," Campbell said and turned to leave.

  "Did the man have a family? I'm wondering why you still have the cell phone?" Jill asked just thinking of the question.

  "Like your friend, he seems to have no family, or at least not one that we've located so far."

  "Hmmm, that's unusual. What are the odds of two men having no family? In the case of our friend we simply we're missing his full name, although once we had that, he still had no family. How odd!"

  "Yes, well I'll leave you to the phone," DI Campbell said as he closed the door to the room that he'd shown Jill to.

  'Okay, here comes the moment of truth,' thought Jill. Was the phone locked? The man worked for a secret organization, but then she thought he was rather stupid for trying to push her off the castle wall not seeing his own peril flying at him. She'd bet that the phone was unlocked.

  She pressed the on button, but nothing happened. Great the battery was dead. She looked into the package that DI Campbell had handed her, but there was nothing more inside. She got up to exit the room only to find she was locked in. Okay, this must be an interrogation room used for suspects. She knocked on the door but no one came. So she went back to her purse and pulled out her cell phone and called the DI. Explaining her two problems he apologized for forgetting the door was locked and promised to round up the chargers from his fellow DIs and bring them to her. She was hoping that Scotland as a part of the European Union would have similar technology for charging cell phones. A few minutes later he appeared with several chargers and a spare key so she wouldn't find herself locked in again.

  Fortunately, one of the chargers fit, and he left to return the others to his co-workers. Again, the anticipation ramped up inside her as she hit the power button after plugging in the phone. The phone went through its start-up machinations and then came alive to Jill's huge grin.

  The phone was unlocked.

  She looked at the emails first, and like Nick's phone, they were in at least two languages. After a quick test, she could find no easy way to forward all of the emails, so she left them and moved on to the texts and what she saw there excited her.

  There was a string of texts involving a photo, but it was no ordinary photo. It was a photo of a
painting of a public square, probably in Venice, and from Jill's uneducated eye, perhaps seventeenth or eighteen century. Yes, this might be the treasure.

  She couldn't figure out how to forward the series of texts to herself, in part because the options on the phone were in Italian she guessed. So she took a photo of the texts related to the painting. From there she used Google to translate the word 'photo' into Italian and soon found herself scrolling through the phone for the word 'fotografie'. Landing on the photo section of Girard's phone, she began taking photos with her cellphone of his photos from about twenty photos before the Venetian painting to about twenty photos after. No sooner had she finished, then the door opened, and DI Campbell entered to say he was being called out on a case and he needed to return the phone to the evidence room.

  Jill stood up handing him the phone, "Thank you for letting me view Mr. LeRoux's phone."

  Clearly, the DI was in a hurry to get to his crime scene as he said, "I need to return this phone, can you find your way out of the building?"

  "Yes."

  They parted ways, and Jill approached the elevator she'd arrived on when the DI called out from the other end of the corridor, "Oh and Dr. Quint, I hope you'll brief me sometime soon over what you're looking for," and then he disappeared through a doorway.

  Jill mumbled, “Not unless I need to as my reputation would suffer if there wasn't really a treasure here.”

  Twenty minutes later she was back in the hotel. She briefly glanced in the bar but didn't see Nathan there, so she took the stairway to their room and after unlocking the door found the room empty. She pulled out her phone to text him as perhaps he went to another place with Nicole and Michael as they hadn't been in the bar either. They would have a lot in common she thought with the art world.

  He replied that he was indeed with the two Germans, two blocks away in an Irish pub. Address in hand, she headed out the door to meet them.

  Chapter 33

  She found them with beers, enjoying watching a musical group set-up for that evening's performance. The pub was loud and with music later, there would be no chance for conversation.

  After exchanging pleasantries, Nicole asked, "Did you find something?"

  "The Mother Lode, I think, as they say in the United States."

  The two Germans looked at her in puzzlement and then thinking through her words Michael smiled and said, "Oh, you mean you found a gold mine."

  "Yes," Jill replied. "Take a look at this," she said holding out a photo on her phone of the painting on Girard's phone.

  Michael muttered something in German and then added, "Yes indeed the Mother Lode. That's Canaletto's Piazza San Margherita, missing since 1940 when the painting's owner fled Amsterdam. It's one of the most famous paintings still missing. On today's art auction market, it probably has a value of about nine million euros, which is about ten million I believe in United States dollars. In the nearly eighty years since WWII, there have been rumors of the painting’s sightings, but all leads in the past have led nowhere."

  "Would Nick or Girard have been able to sell the painting?" Nathan asked.

  "No, it's registered with a site that tracks stolen Nazi artifacts," Nicole said. "Of course they could likely find an off-office market site and sell them for perhaps eighty percent of the painting's value to a private collector."

  "So where is this painting?" Nathan asked.

  "I don't know," Jill replied, "But I took a picture of the text message that includes the picture. The message is in the Guernésiais language, and I didn’t want to take the time to translate it. I also took photos of the before and after photographs to see if we could identify the location.”

  Michael rubbed his palms together and said, “Finally, a solid clue. This picture is exciting!”

  “Why? We don’t know where in the world this painting is located,” Nathan said.

  “We know the painting exists and that fact by itself is important,” Nicole replied. “Just having a recent photograph of the painting is proof that it exists; the mobile phone containing that photo was likely manufactured in the last five years or so. Would you agree with that?”

  Both Jill and Nathan nodded.

  “So now we move into finding where this painting is located,” Michael suggested. “That is if you’re interested in the search Dr. Quint? We would love to have you join as you have skills and technology we don’t.”

  “We’re due to fly home in about thirty-six hours, and we both have commitments at home. I’ll join you in the search up until I’m scheduled to leave Scotland. Nathan, you have appointments tomorrow, and rather than joining you in the distillery tours and viewing more of this lovely country, I’ll stay here and work with Nicole and Michael.”

  Nathan looked mostly resigned at her response. She was a bloodhound when sniffing a mystery. Besides she’d hit her limit in whiskey tasting. He had two appointments tomorrow that he didn’t want to miss – he was meeting with the artist that designed the labels for the most prominent distillery in Scotland in the morning. It was Shangri-La for him, basically meeting a contemporary in a similar field. In the afternoon, he was meeting with another distillery that was considering hiring him to design their labels. It would be another venture into spirits label design, and he had a feeling that the morning meeting would give him a better appreciation for the afternoon meeting. He would have liked to have Jill along with him for the company, but he admitted she would have had significant time to kill during his two meetings.

  He nodded his agreement, “Yes that will work." Jill’s beer arrived, and they settled into a conversation about the painting. Michael and Nicole took turns giving details about the painting, the artist, and the gallery owner that fled Amsterdam. The owner had died a decade ago, but there were still heirs that had rightful ownership of the painting. Jill had seen a Canaletto painting in the Getty Museum when she lived in Los Angeles, and she really liked the artist for his realistic portrayals of Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. The art historians educated her in that period of art, and she felt like she had a private docent tour of the artwork of the Venetian paintings.

  After finishing dinner, they walked back to the hotel. Nathan settled an arm around Jill's neck, and she winced hoping that he didn’t notice her discomfort. It seemed that the area between her neck and shoulder was sore from where the Italian man had shocked her that afternoon. She’d have to look in the mirror to see if there was a mark. She knew she might have a burn where the electrical charge touched her skin. They got back to their hotel room, and Jill made use of the bathroom before heading down to the hotel pub to work with her German colleagues. She glanced in the mirror and was not surprised to see a burn mark. She supposed she owed Nathan an explanation before he discovered the mark on his own.

  She exited the bathroom and walked over to the sofa where Nathan was sketching a label. Sometimes he was working on a project for a client and other times he was just doodling. She sat down next to him and he looked up surprised. He’d thought she'd rush down to the pub to search for the painting.

  “I haven’t taken the opportunity to tell you about something that happened during my lunch break,” Jill said tentatively.

  There must have been something in her voice as he looked at her suspiciously.

  She decided to tell the whole story in a rush and then wait for him to ask questions or criticize her actions.

  “I was tasered by an Italian guy that was a friend of Girard LeRoux and likely Nick. The Germans spoke with him, and he offered some clues as he knew both Nick and Girard were hunting for a treasure, but he didn’t know what kind of treasure. He’s left and gone back to Italy.”

  Nathan stood there mute from all the emotions roiling through him. He tried to focus on the most important question which was, “Were you injured?”

  “Not really. He made sure I didn’t injure myself when I crumbled to the ground. I think I might have a small burn from the electrical charge, but it’s fine.”

  “So why don’t
the police have him in custody?”

  “Because I didn’t call them and report the incident.”

  “Why?” Nathan asked though he wanted to ask other questions.

  "In part because I wanted Michael or Nicole to interview him about Nick and Girard. You know I don’t speak Italian, so I had to use my phone to translate; thus we had a very rudimentary conversation. Michael speaks Italian and so spoke with him at length, then he left."

  “Did you learn anything from him?”

  “He had keywords that don’t necessarily make sense- Northern Europe or UK, treasure, quarry or quail, and concentration camp or just camp. I’m not sure where the words came from perhaps Michael knows.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police while he was speaking to Michael? You had the perfect opportunity.”

  “It seemed a complication that would interfere with our vacation. He did his best to make sure I wasn’t hurt, he mostly seemed sad that I didn’t have secret information from Nick for a treasure of some sort. I guess they weren’t very good at sharing the secret between this man, Girard and Nick.”

  “How did you explain your meeting him to Michael and Nicole?”

  Jill thought that this was going better than hoped. She’d expected Nathan to be angry that she hadn’t immediately called for help, but he seemed to be handling her explanation well.

  “I told them I recognized him from the castle and that we chatted but I was having a hard time communicating given the language barrier, so after I introduced them I left the hotel for lunch and a large glass of wine.”

  “Dr. Quint, you do some amazing things,” he said leaning over to kiss her.

  She returned the kiss grateful that he wasn't angry with her decision making. It's what made her love him; he took the time to reason through decisions rarely letting his emotions dictate his responses.

  She thought it was best to move on and so said, “Thanks. I’m going to drop off my stuff and head back to the pub downstairs to see if we can figure out where this priceless painting is.”