by Adam Carter
“Did she say that, sir?”
Payne hissed and I smiled. That was a confession if ever I heard one.
“No,” I said. “But she did anyway. You don’t have the finesse to break into the display case the way the thief did. My guess is Miss Payne told you to make a smash and grab; then dump the diamond somewhere it wouldn’t be found. Correct?” I asked either of them.
Neither replied.
“So,” I asked again, “why didn’t you steal it?”
“Because someone beat me to it,” Shoreham said despondently. Payne hissed again, but Shoreham barked, “What? It’s not as though we stole it. It’s not illegal to plan to do something, then not do it. No, Detective, we didn’t steal the diamond.”
“What about the mention of Shenna Tarin?” I asked. “You both dropped the name.”
“We were going to frame her,” Shoreham said before Payne could stop him. “Sort of anyway. If we made it look as though Tarin and Watts had stolen the diamond, no one would be looking at us.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a nasty revenge for you.”
“Aside from a full confession,” Payne said tautly, “I’d like to see you prove it.”
But the truth was I didn’t much care for their manipulation and failed games of revenge. I knew they hadn’t stolen the diamond. It was why Payne had been acting so odd when I had first spoken with her. I reckon at the time she hadn’t been contacted by Shoreham and assumed he had indeed succeeded in stealing it. Only afterwards she would have spoken with him and discovered the truth, which was also why she had agreed to come meet me at the museum. Since she was innocent, she had nothing to lose. But she would still have been afraid I might have pieced together the circumstantial evidence of her connection to Benny Shoreham. Wielding that, I could have arrested her, albeit falsely, which would have perhaps destroyed her career and even her upcoming marriage.
But the truth was she and Shoreham were likely innocent.
“What happens now?” Payne asked warily.
“Now? That depends whether I entirely believe you, or whether further evidence just happens to rear its head. But for now, I go talk with someone else. For the moment, you’re off the hook.” I walked slowly away. “For the moment.”
CHAPTER NINE
I had left it a few hours before speaking with anyone else. Payne and Shoreham kept to themselves during this time, with the occasional argument with Watts. Shenna meditated for the most part, by the looks of her, while Harkett wandered around as though still performing his rounds. Watts himself just grew angrier and angrier, argued with anyone he happened to meet, and looked as though he was verging on a heart attack. For my part, I wanted everyone to stew and sweat, so I found an empty section of racking and had a lie down. Other than that, I just followed people around and spied on them, which was good fun.
Eventually, I decided it was time I spoke with someone else and opted for Bob Harkett. He was still walking when I found him, and considering he was easily the eldest of us I was surprised to discover he was also the one with the greatest store of energy.
He had not even loosened the collar of his uniform.
“Mr Harkett,” I said. “Got a minute?”
“By the taste of this air, I’d say we had at least several minutes, sir.”
Humour in the face of death. I rather admired him for that.
“Just wanted to talk to you about your job. At least this way, they can’t retire you.”
“I’d not looked at it that way. Your idiocy in letting the door close has some benefit, you’re saying?”
“Just looking on the bright side.”
“I said I didn’t want to retire, Detective, not that I wanted to die for it.”
“Sorry. I just figured your work was your life.”
“My work is important to me, yes. I take pride in what I do and always perform my duties to the best of my ability. That’s what annoyed me when they told me they were getting rid of me. It’s not about loving the job, sir, it’s about them owing me more than just a by-your-leave and a boot out the door.”
I had not heard him speak like this before and reasoned the vault might have introduced some panic to his brain.
“Is that why you considered stealing the diamond?” I asked.
“I considered stealing it?”
“I know you were looking into a buyer for it. Six months ago.”
“Oh. That.”
He did not sound particularly concerned that I’d found him out.
“Care to tell me about it?” I asked.
“I don’t suppose it matters now.”
“Now you’ve been sacked?”
“Now we’re going to die.” He looked at me strangely. “As I said, my work was never my whole life, Detective.”
I waited for him to continue.
“Yes,” he said, “I was angry how they were treating me. So I put out some adverts in newspapers. I was very discreet about it,” he said proudly. “I wanted to see whether anyone would be willing to buy it.”
“What did your advert say?”
“’R U looking 2 bye diamond?’ You see, I used abbreviations and didn’t mention the Teardrop by name.”
He was right about it being discreet. I wondered how Shenna had managed to find him and once again began to suspect her of having something to do with the theft.
“I also attached a picture,” Harkett said. “I didn’t know how to crop the picture, but the background was a bit blurry anyway so it was difficult for people to see it was in a museum.”
“I can’t see how anyone found you out,” I said dryly.
“Someone found me out?”
“Well I knew about it, didn’t I? All right, so you put out an ad. Did you have any takers?”
“Not from the advert, no. But I did make some enquiries at a few jewellers, but no one was interested. After a week or so I realised how petty I was being so forgot all about it. When it was stolen, of course, I was a little pleased, even though it made me look bad. But I was already going by this point, so it didn’t much matter how I looked.”
“And I don’t suppose you have any idea who stole it?”
“You asked me that this morning. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.”
“Shame.”
The more I was talking to these people, the more they were convincing me it wasn’t them. It was all well and good crossing people off my list, but if I ended up crossing them all off I wouldn’t be making an arrest. But I couldn’t think Harkett would be able to give me anything else to work on.
Leaving him to his rounds, I decided it was time to play some more mind games with someone else.
*
“Are you out of your mind?”
Water splashed the area before me and I started. It was a shame, since I had such a good little fire going. Shenna stood over me, bottle of water in hand, true anger to her eyes.
“Fire burns oxygen, you idiot,” she said. “We don’t have enough air as it is and you’re burning it away.”
“I was cold.”
“Where did you even find the kindling?”
“Just papers lying around. They’ve been here so long, no one’s going to miss them.”
“No one’s … You’re burning the museum’s records?”
“Shen, you worry too much. If we’re all going to be dead soon, what does it matter what I burn?”
She sank to the floor opposite me, keeping the final wisps of the fire between us. I was not surprised to learn she had brought a bottle of water in here. Shenna was a survivalist: there were likely many things she carried on her person at all times. Unless one of those was nitro-glycerine, however, they wouldn’t do her much good in getting out.
“This is a mess, Matt. Isn’t it?”
She looked tired, dishevelled. Nothing ever bothered Shenna, which was what I had always found attractive about her. I had never seen her so emotionally destroyed and I felt sorry for having put her through this.
“We’ll survive,” I told her.
She laughed sourly. “How?”
“Hold our breaths. A really long time.”
For a moment she looked at me as though working out whether I was making a joke. Then she laughed, properly laughed, and the sound was the sweetest I had heard in a long time. “I’ve missed you, Matt.”
“I don’t think I’d miss me.”
“You’re not me.”
“No. Shen, how are you? I mean, really, how are you? I get you’re successful, I get you’re on the straight and narrow now. But how is Shenna Tarin, the human being?”
“Shenna Tarin is miserable. If you want me to be completely honest, Shenna Tarin has been miserable ever since she was sent to prison. Once the trial was over, all the fun left her life and during her time inside she wised up. She decided she couldn’t go through life pretending she was a teenager. So when she got out she cleaned up her act and to all her friends and family she was at last doing great.”
“But she’s not?” I said.
“My life’s empty. I have so many things now, but none of it means anything. What’s the point in money, Matt? You collect it, you invest it, you spend it on the things you like. I know I sound stuck-up because I’m someone who actually has money, but aside from paying the bills and having a little left over, what’s the point in it?”
“Oddly enough, I’ve been asking myself that same question lately. My money goes to Gemma, to my bills and food. After that, all I do with money is gamble. I don’t save, don’t invest, don’t spend it. So long as Gemma has a good life, I don’t much care about it either.”
“But you surely can’t have a lot left over though.”
“Depends how much I win.”
“You still play poker?”
“Yep.”
“Still good at it?”
I shrugged. “I played Watts last night. Now there’s a bad player for you.”
“I don’t want to talk about Watts.”
For one moment I’d entirely forgotten she knew him in her past life. “Sorry. I take it you didn’t much like him.”
“I think I just said I didn’t want to talk about him.”
“Sure.”
Shenna stared into the remains of my dead fire and said, “I can see why Liz divorced him. You know he tried it on with me?”
“Watts?”
“Several times.”
“Did he ever hit you?”
“If he did I would have gone to prison for aggravated assault. No, he was just a creep. And I don’t think he’s changed much. He was always watching me, you know? Everything I did, wherever I was working, he was there gazing at me with those ugly eyes of his.” She shivered. “You heard enough about Watts yet?”
“Sorry.”
“You apologise a lot lately, Matthew. It’s not good.”
I paused. “Sorry.”
She looked at me dourly.
“Shen,” I said, knowing I had no right to ask but deciding I had nothing to lose. “Shen, if we get out of this – when we get out of this, I mean. Let’s show some optimism here.”
“When have you ever been optimistic?”
“Fine. If we get out of this, you want to maybe think about picking up where we left off?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Picking up where we left off … It’s been too long to do that, Matthew. It’s been so long I think we’ve both changed. Well, I know I have anyway.”
“I’ve grown less trusting.”
“Is that possible?”
“I no longer trust my waistline to fit inside my trousers.”
“You’re a weird guy, Matthew.”
“If we can’t pick up where we left off, Shen, what say we start afresh?”
“Start afresh?”
“From scratch. Get to know each other all over again. It wasn’t the most conventional of whirlwind romances we had before. This time we could do it properly.”
I had no idea how she would react and tried not to think too much about it. My heart was pounding in anticipation of her response, but I refused to even hear it. As the silence stretched on, I became aware my blood was burning more fiercely than the sickly fire Shenna had already doused. I was all but praying she would not throw water on this fire as well, but I could not see why she wouldn’t. We were both still young and neither of us had any idea what we wanted out of life. But Shenna Tarin was beautiful inside and out and I could not imagine her seeing anything in me now that the thrill of the chase was over.
“What we had,” she said, “was of the moment. It’s a part of who I used to be. I’m not going back to that. If you chased me all over again, would we end up in bed?”
“Probably.”
“The only difference is I’m no longer a thief. I’m sorry, Matthew, but that life’s gone.”
“Then maybe I’ve changed as well. Maybe I’m a swell guy now.”
She sighed sadly. “You were good for me, Matt. You were, and nothing can take that away. But do you know why I was crazy about you?”
“Because you loved playing dangerously?”
“Because you were clever, resourceful and brilliant. No one had ever come close to identifying me, let alone catching me. But there was something about you, something the other detectives lacked. I should have moved cities, like I’d done before. I should have moved cities as soon as you came along. But I didn’t. And you were the end of me.”
“I’m still clever, resourceful and brilliant.”
“I don’t doubt. But you don’t surprise me any more, Matthew. Don’t take that in a bad way; no one surprises me any more. But you’ve fallen into a rut and that’s where you’ll stay until you retire. I’ve no doubt you’re a good detective, but look at us. You’re jumping from suspect to suspect and still don’t have a clue who stole the Teardrop. And to top it all off you’ve got us all locked in a vault and now we’re all going to die. That’s not good planning, Matthew, that’s incompetence.”
“And there’s no room in your life for incompetence?”
“I know it doesn’t matter what I say. I could promise you whatever you want to hear, but that wouldn’t be me, Matthew. I can’t lie to you. I wish I could, but I have to be honest with myself.”
I rose. “Then I should get back to my investigation.”
“Why? We’re all dead, Matt. What does it matter?”
“Because I have to be true to myself as well. And I’d like to go to my grave having solved my final mystery.”
“Matthew, I …”
“If I had time, Shen, I’d prove myself to you. I’m sorry I’m not the man you want me to be.”
“And I’m sorry I’m not still crooked.”
I left her to her memories and went to find Watts. I won’t say I wasn’t annoyed, nor that I wasn’t upset. In truth, I was so badly torn apart inside I almost gave up on the entire case. But it gave me something to focus on, something other than Shenna’s need to be entirely truthful with me.
I checked my watch. We had already been in the vault for several hours and the air was beginning to thin. My time with Watts would be short, but it would also bring to a close all my interrogations. After that, I was reasonably sure I would be able to name the thief. I could not help but feel it would be too little too late to save myself in Shenna’s eyes.
That part of my life, it seemed, was gone forever.
CHAPTER TEN
“So, tell me about your day.”
Ralph Watts looked over at me with an expression that could have soured holy water. He was flustering badly by this point but I did not regret my comment. Call me cruel, but I’ve never passed up the chance to see someone almost explode with indignation.
“Mr Blake,” he said from where he was sitting on a crate. “I’ll have you know I don’t appreciate such glibness after everything that’s happened.”
I glanced around. There were many ways to define ‘after everything that’s happened’ and none of them were good. Even the
promise that we were all going to die of asphyxiation was not helping me sort out the entire mess the investigation was becoming. One of them was guilty, I knew it. Proving it, however, had become something of a challenge.
But I had to stay optimistic. If I allowed everything to get me down, the thief would walk away laughing. Feasibly, it still could have been any of them, but after everything Shenna had said to me only an hour earlier I was of a mind to start another fire and to hell with the air.
Forcing Shenna from my mind, I tried to concentrate on the man before me. When we had walked into this room, Ralph Watts had no idea what was going to happen, which made the torment I was putting him and the others through far sweeter.
“Tell me about the Teardrop,” I said, sitting comfortably on a storage box. “After all, there’s nothing much else we can do.”
My words did not placate him, but nor were they meant to. I knew all about the Teardrop, obviously. But talking would take our minds off our impending deaths so it was hardly a bad idea. He said something about the Teardrop, but I wasn’t really listening because I didn’t much care. I probably even answered him, but whatever I said was hardly going to help us find it. In fact, it surprised me how passionately Watts could still talk about the jewel, especially since he was likely never going to see it again.
“Hey,” someone called, not kindly. “Why are you two still going on about that stupid diamond?”
I eyed Shenna dispassionately. In the hour or so since I had last seen her, she had succumbed to the lack of oxygen, just as the rest of us had. Shenna Tarin, so cool and collected, was sweating with the thought we were all going to die. I felt guilty for having put her through any of this, but she was tough. She would get over it. Besides, she had hurt me and I wasn’t that cut up about putting in a little hurt of my own.
“Because, Miss Tarin,” I said, “I am a detective and I’m going to find out who stole it.” I paused. “If it’s the last thing I do.”
“You did not just say that.”
I grinned, taking obscene relish in seeing Shenna not in control of the situation. It was potentially the first time in her life she was in such a state – or possibly the second, if we’re including the time I sent her down.