by L. C. Tyler
So, there it was. He mixed with criminals but, since he was a bit of a criminal himself, this was not very surprising. Similarly, it was not surprising that people who were generally in favour of the environment did not like him. The second video was coming to an end, and I was just about to log out when something about the footage struck me as odd. So I replayed it.
Then I replayed it another ten times.
At first, as you watched the video run through, there wasn’t much to go on. This was not professional footage by any standards. Davidov is seen leaving an anonymous hotel. The quality of the picture was lousy, as if captured on a mobile phone or a very cheap camera held by somebody who had no idea what they were doing. Davidov looks this way and that, trying to work out how to get through the crowd. People shout things at him in German, because that is the country he seems to be in. There is also a voice saying something in English, but you can’t quite make out what. Goo-stone mounds? Ghost time mines? Something of the sort. Only as Davidov pushes forward, does the often-repeated phrase become more or less understandable.
‘What about the Goldstein diamonds?’ somebody calls.
Davidov stops dead, frowns and looks into the crowd, searching for something. Then he presses on, almost against his will, propelled by one or two of his people, who have suddenly appeared. The camera pans back across the crowd of protestors. Towards the back I catch a quick glimpse of a familiar face. On the sixth or seventh viewing I am certain. It is Jonathan Gold. Each time, he smiles at the camera for an instant and then turns away. But, each and every time, it is Jonathan Gold all right.
There was only one way of following this up. I went back to Google and typed in, with no small amount of interest, ‘Goldstein diamonds’.
I was planning to find Ethelred and tell him what I had discovered, but I found my way barred by a Danish child.
‘Your brother says you’re not a detective,’ I said. ‘And in any case, I’m not answering any more stupid questions today. Clear off.’
Her lower lip started to tremble. A tear began to well up in her eye. She was building up for a massive, heart-rending sob. This made me feel sort of uncomfortable. I suddenly realized that this was, perhaps, what guilt felt like.
‘OK, OK, just make it snappy,’ I said.
‘That was my intention anyway,’ she said, taking out a sheet of paper and a pencil. ‘Shall we begin?’
So, some advice for you: never trust small blonde girls with large, tearful blue eyes. Don’t trust any of them. Got that? OK, then . . .
‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘What do you want to know? Would you like me to tell you who killed Mr Davidov?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think my daddy already knows that.’
‘Does he now? I thought he was in the commercial section of the Danish Embassy, not a detective.’
‘He has to say that’s what he does,’ said the girl.
‘And what is he really?’
‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
‘OK. He really works for the Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste,’ she said.
That obviously made things a lot clearer.
‘What?’ I said.
She repeated it.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.
‘He’s a spy,’ she said, ‘but nobody is supposed to know.’
A bit more advice. If you are a spy and are reading this, don’t tell any blonde-haired girls with large, tearful blue eyes. Got that? OK, then . . .
‘So why is he here?’
‘I think to watch the fat man.’ She frowned with concentration. ‘I wanted to go to Disneyland.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘But your father doesn’t actually kill people, eh?’
‘No,’ said the blonde girl. ‘It was my brother. I’m going to send this to the police.’
She handed me the piece of paper. It read: ‘My brother Henning killed the fat Russian man and nice Jonathan. Please arrest him now.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘isn’t your brother going to be annoyed when they arrest him? He’s obviously being framed.’
‘Yes, but he won’t know it’s me,’ she said. ‘The note is anonymous. I haven’t signed it.’ She pointed to the blank space at the end.
‘Good point,’ I said. ‘But I still wouldn’t do it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the real murderer,’ I said confidentially, ‘is a man called Herbie Proctor.’
She looked at me contemptuously.
‘And you really believe that?’ she said.
OK, off to tell Ethelred about the Internet, then.
I thought of saying ‘Yes’ – but then I didn’t. Small blonde girls can be very scathing.
Twenty-four
Elsie appeared worryingly pleased with herself. I knew that look and how often it had, in the past, spelt trouble, though not usually for her.
I had been sitting peacefully in the garden, enjoying the afternoon sun. I would have been quite happy to stay there undisturbed, but Elsie had stuff she needed to tell somebody.
‘There’s this thing called the “Internet”,’ she began.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve come across it. You don’t need to do that thing with your fingers to show the word is in inverted commas. Disapproval of one or two aspects of the twenty-first century and a complete ignorance of modern technology are not the same. Just because I don’t wear a hoodie and my underpants don’t show above my trousers, it does not follow I am unacquainted with the Internet.’
‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘I do have to point out, however, that you wear brown brogues with industrial-strength soles. You wear checked flannel shirts in the summer. All your jackets are made of tweed, except for the linen ones. I am not in a position to comment on your underpants, but let’s just say I have my suspicions.’
‘Nevertheless, I do know what the Internet is.’
‘OK – now on the “Internet”, is this thing called “YouTube”. Don’t pretend to have heard of it.’
‘It has videos on it. And stop doing that thing with your fingers.’
‘A good guess,’ said Elsie with a patronizing nod. ‘Yes, it has videos posted by random people. There were some of Davidov. There was one of him making a speech and there was one of him being heckled by people – some of them wore gorilla masks, though I’m not sure why.’
‘And your point is?’ I asked.
‘The pictures looked as though they had been taken by somebody on their “mobile phone”.’
I looked at her pointedly.
‘OK, I’ll stop doing that thing with my fingers,’ she conceded with some reluctance. ‘The point is that one of the hecklers was Jonathan Gold. He kept calling out: “What about the Goldstein diamonds?” Davidov looked really worried.’
‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘I’d be worried if I had them.’
‘You know about them?’
‘A bit,’ I said. ‘They are famously unlucky jewels.’
I explained to Elsie what I knew – I’d taken an interest in the story because it had seemed to me that it might contain the plot for a future novel. Even as I retold it, it struck me that it contained a nice combination of irony and hubris. Back in 1914, the Czar had commissioned what was to be the finest necklace ever made. A St Petersburg jeweller began a search for the highest-quality gems from all over the world. The outbreak of war in August that year made his task more challenging, but throughout 1915 and 1916 he was still designing, buying, assembling. By March 1917 it was complete. Legend has it that he arrived at the Winter Palace with the jewels and his invoice just as it was being stormed by the communists – but that would mean he delayed invoicing for six months. What seems to have happened in fact is that between the February and October Revolutions he pressed the various administrations for payment. Strangely, none of them thought it was a priority. It was inevitable that after the Bolsheviks came to power he would be arrested. He was shot some time in 1918. He
was the first victim of what became known as the unluckiest necklace in the world. Somebody smuggled it out of Russia and in the twenties and thirties it was owned by a succession of rich Americans. One, an actress, had a bad fall while filming on the United Artists lot and never worked again. A stockbroker bought it for his wife in 1929, and jumped from his office window twenty storeys above Wall Street a month later. It travelled back across the Atlantic when it was sold to a German banker named Goldstein in 1935. He lost it when he fled Germany after Hitler came to power. The necklace finally vanished around the end of the war. It was believed to have gone home to Russia, but nobody knew for sure. Then, out of the blue, Davidov’s wife appeared in public wearing something that seemed to be the Goldstein diamonds. There’s just one blurry photograph, which Davidov quickly claimed was costume jewellery modelled on an old Russian design. The necklace, whatever it was, never reappeared. It was just after that that the disaster at Yacoubabad occurred and only a little later that Davidov lost one of his key political contacts and the investigation into his activities began.
‘So,’ I concluded, ‘maybe Davidov has them or had them – who knows? There is of course another theory that they ended up in the pocket of some lucky GI, who chanced on them as the Allies advanced eastwards, and that they are at the bottom of a drawer in Milwaukee WI or Bolder Creek CA.’
Elsie looked slightly miffed. She obviously resented the fact that I had heard of her diamonds.
‘There’s a lot about them in the “newspapers”,’ I said.
‘Stop doing that thing with your fingers,’ she said. ‘It’s really irritating. Anyway, there have been one or two stories in the papers lately saying that if Davidov had the diamonds it pretty much proved his links with the Russian underworld and he would not be permitted to join the Manchester United Supporters’ Club, let alone buy shares.’
‘I know,’ I said.
Elsie’s look indicated that I knew too much for my own good.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘So,’ Elsie said, either accepting or ignoring my apology, ‘Gold knew something about the diamonds.’
‘Everybody except you knew about the diamonds, Elsie.’
‘Davidov looked dead worried though,’ mused Elsie. ‘I’d say Davidov had still got the diamonds, and Gold had proof.’
‘All that? On the basis of a fuzzy twenty-second clip on YouTube?’
‘Yup,’ said Elsie. However wrong Elsie’s last snap judgement may have been, it rarely makes her doubt the next one.
‘In which case,’ I said, ‘Gold would have been in a position to end Davidov’s hopes of buying a major club.’
‘The plot thickens,’ said Elsie. ‘If Gold was trying to blackmail Davidov, that would be a powerful motive. Davidov seems to have had other people murdered for standing in his way.’
‘But nobody has suggested he carried out any killings personally,’ I said.
‘But Davidov could have thought it worth paying Gold off?’
‘In which case,’ I said, ‘the thing that was in Davidov’s white envelope might have been cash to shut Gold up?’
‘You heard them arguing,’ said Elsie. ‘What did they say?’
What indeed? There they had been in the small, stuffy sitting room. Gold had his fist raised. Davidov was laughing.
‘That’s not going to help get it back,’ Davidov had said.
‘You really don’t understand what I could do to you, do you?’ Gold had replied.
I had assumed that it was a physical threat that Gold was making. But of course – there were other types of threat. Then they saw me. We had had a brief conversation about Russian superstitions. Davidov had made his joke about things that were unlucky for him being unlucky for others too. Gold had scowled. I departed. But thinking back, yes, I was sure that Gold had been quite agitated, Davidov relatively calm. Weren’t blackmailers supposed to show an icy detachment? My fictional ones always did. They rarely needed to shake their fists. That’s the problem with real-life crime: people don’t know how to do it properly.
‘What did they say?’ asked Elsie.
‘They stopped speaking as soon as I came into the room,’ I said.
‘Didn’t you listen at the door first?’
‘No.’
She snorted derisively.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t listen at doors.’
‘Everybody listens at doors.’
‘No, they don’t.’
Elsie was prepared to consider this idea briefly before dismissing it as fantasy. She looked at me pityingly.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’ve also discovered something interesting. Jones worked for a company taken over by DGE.’
Elsie looked blank.
‘Davidov Global Enterprises,’ I said. ‘They took over the firm he worked for and then defaulted on the company pension scheme, leaving Jones pretty much penniless.’
‘And Jones would have held him responsible?’
‘I’m not sure he even connected DGE and Davidov,’ I said. ‘So many firms just go by their initials these days . . .’
‘That’s the problem – the hotel is full of people with only half a motive,’ said Elsie. ‘Maybe we should go back to the idea that somebody broke into the hotel?’
‘The hotel was locked and the receptionist swears nobody came or went that night. As we know, the receptionist was, unusually, the only staff member in the hotel until the kitchen staff arrived in the morning. There’s no evidence of a break-in – no sign of a locked window having been forced. Therefore it was somebody already in the hotel,’ I said.
‘What about the receptionist then?’ Elsie asked.
I shook my head. ‘A married man with children. No evidence he ever met Davidov or Gold before. He was expecting the manager to return to the hotel that night, so it isn’t even the case that he knew in advance that his comings and goings would not be noticed. By the time the manager phoned him to say that he wouldn’t be back until morning, Gold was probably already dead. Up to that point the receptionist was expecting his boss to walk through the door at any moment.’
‘We are sure the manager couldn’t have sneaked back unnoticed?’ asked Elsie.
‘He and his wife were staying with friends. There were apparently others at the dinner that night, so he has no shortage of witnesses.’
‘What about the live-out staff?’
‘They would have found it easier to get into the hotel, but the receptionist says he would have seen them if they had made their way upstairs to the guests’ rooms.’
‘So it has to be a guest?’
‘Probably,’ I said.
‘I still don’t know which,’ said Elsie. ‘Though I would like it to be Herbie Proctor. We know he has some links with Davidov.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘The police do think so,’ said Elsie. ‘Why were you so keen to talk to Davidov anyway?’
‘Was I?’ I said.
‘Yes, immediately after Gold’s murder.’
‘Oh, research – I just thought I might introduce some sociopolitical comment into my next book. Rankin does that sort of thing all the time.’
‘That’s different. Rankin’s a highly respected prize-winning author,’ said Elsie.
‘I almost won a prize once,’ I said.
‘A long time ago’ said Elsie.
‘Yes, a long time ago.’
‘Pedersen wanted to talk to Davidov too, apparently.’
‘Really?’
‘Pedersen is actually working for the Danish secret service. At least, according to his daughter – though she did, now I think of it, swear me to secrecy.’
‘The Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste?’ I enquired.
‘If you say so,’ said Elsie.
‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ I said. ‘It would certainly explain why he might have been interested in Davidov. It doesn’t mean that he killed him, though. It just means it’s easier to understand what he was doing here. Of course,
his daughter could be making it up.’
‘It still gets us no closer to knowing who committed either murder,’ Elsie continued. ‘Jones has a motive, but probably doesn’t know it; Taylor’s too wet; Brown has no apparent connection with anyone; the Danish family seem above board. Bingo! It has to be Proctor.’
‘It would help,’ I said, ‘to know what Proctor had deposited at left luggage.’
‘I’m not risking a nocturnal foray again,’ said Elsie with feeling.
‘Have you noticed something, though?’ I said.
She looked round the garden. ‘There’s nothing there to notice,’ she said.
‘That’s the point.’
‘Stop being a dickhead, Tressider,’ said Elsie, ‘or I’ll knee you in the groin. What are you talking about?’
I edged away and said: ‘Just use your eyes, Elsie. There’s no policeman.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess they’ve relaxed security,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure why.’
We both looked round the garden. Nothing stirred.
‘So, it’s over the wall then?’ she said.
‘Let’s try the gate.’ There was something fishy about this.
We walked over to the gate, until now firmly locked, even in my early pre-murder days at the hotel. I twisted the handle and it swung silently open.
‘A bit too easy?’ I asked.
‘Let’s go anyway,’ said Elsie.
We slipped through the gate . . .