The baroness allowed her imagination some free rein. Maybe the bastard meant to keep her in this room until she died like the captive in John Fowles’ The Collector. She then had the even worse memory of the horrible things done to the kidnapped hero in the film of Stephen King’s Misery.
At this she decided to get a grip, shook her head vigorously and wondered once again what day it was. Clearly she’d been drugged when captured on Wednesday evening; there was no natural light and her watch had been removed, so she had no idea how long she’d been in this room. Would the police by now be taking her disappearance seriously? Would there be any media interest? She recalled uncomfortably that in the past, when involved in causes célèbres that had catapulted her temporarily onto front pages, she had merely a walk-on part: other people’s corpses had taken centre stage. She hoped that this time any new notoriety she might achieve would not involve her being murdered.
***
With the help of a small army of police wrenched from other enquiries, Milton was able within twelve hours to piece together the last known movements of all the disappeared. Like the baroness, Hortense Wilde, Gavin Truss, and Anastasia Holliday had gone missing with their cars; like Fortune and Pringle, Herblock and Marilyn Falucci Lamont had last been seen together hailing taxis. Jake Thorogood, it seemed certain, had been pushed into a car outside his own front door. They had all disappeared within a twenty-four-hour period between Thursday and Friday evenings.
Every few hours Milton had to emerge from the Yard to be snapped by a hundred cameras and give a report to an hysterical mob of reporters demanding to know what he thought had happened, who was responsible, had there been a ransom demand, when he expected to find the missing dignitaries, what was taking so long, and what was being done to protect the other likely victims. Inside were teams of police dealing with equally hysterical enquiries from luminaries of the art establishment who were cowering in their offices and homes demanding police protection.
‘We are doing everything we can,’ Milton told the media in his best stiff police manner, ‘but our resources are limited and our priority must be the missing. We suggest that anyone who fears they might be a target should take obvious precautions. Keep your doors locked and don’t open them unless you know who’s outside. Travel only in groups. And, yes, I’m sure the general public will be quite safe visiting museums and art galleries. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go back to work.’
***
Mary Lou rang Amiss first thing on Friday morning. ‘I’m in a state. Are you in a state?’
‘Sure am.’
‘I know our old girl’s been in danger before, but this seems much worse.’
‘Certainly does.’
‘Can you write?’
‘Nope. Can you broadcast?’
‘I have to. But it’s hard.’
‘How do you think Ellis is?’
‘Knackered. How’s Rachel?’
‘Well, obviously she’s less upset about Jack than you and I would be, but she’s sharing in the general gloom. Plus, school is driving her mad.’
‘She told me that dreadful story about wanting to take the kids to see some art. Now I know this isn’t important at the moment, but it occurred to me this morning that maybe I could give her some support.’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Worrying about Jack’s got me guilt-ridden about not being enough of a warrior for decent values. Do you think it would help if I offered to do my celeb number and come and talk to her class about art? We could show them pictures and talk about great art being cool and I could do my black role-model bit.’
‘I think even her headmaster would have a problem killing off that idea, Mary Lou. You’re a star, in more ways than one. Send her an email: it’ll be a tiny light in the encircling darkness.’
‘Oh, good. Now, as Jack would persist in saying improbably, “I must fly.”’
***
Amiss spent the whole morning reading newspapers and blogs and watching news channels. An alien doing the same would have concluded that on this strange planet nothing mattered but the art world and its denizens, for those who control rolling news seem incapable of focusing on more than one story at a time. The weather was cold and wet, but unfortunate reporters were interviewed outside galleries under dripping umbrellas trying to talk up any evidence of fear or panic they’d uncovered. Photographs of the missing abounded, many showing them socialising with each other in Venice, Vienna, Paris, New York, LA and London and various other playgrounds, which caused the more perceptive viewers to spot that this was indeed an incestuous and opulent world that had little to do with traditional notions of artists starving in garrets.
Of course the media were disappointed that the kidnapper hadn’t got hold of a Grade I art celebrity. ‘Will It Be Damien or Tracey Next?’ wondered one headline hopefully. ‘Terror of the Museum Bosses’ trumpeted another, running a photograph of Sir Nicholas Serota looking particularly thin and drawn. ‘Nigella’s Husband In Hiding’ screamed a third, reporting breathlessly that Charles Saatchi—a man so reclusive he avoided even his own parties—had not been seen for at least a week. Excited by the loss of Herblock and Marilyn Falucci Lamont, and having heard that Jeff Koons was in Europe, the American press were similarly optimistic that he might yet be snatched.
***
Pooley had had a difficult conversation with Anastasia Holliday’s parents in Australia. After the initial shock, there had been an outpouring from her mother about how her lovely girl had fallen into bad company and why it was a tragedy she had abandoned surf for shit—at least, that was what Pooley uncomfortably thought she said. Should they immediately fly to London? Optimism said no, pessimism said yes, cautious policeman said why not give it another day before deciding.
The most recent boyfriend had agreed to come to the Yard, where Pooley had interviewed him briefly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We’re both from Oz, but I hardly know Annie. But great bird, great body, lol and all that. As for the art, if you ask me, she’s been taking the piss and milking those dipsticks for all she could get.’
Closer questioning elicited the information that Anastasia thought Fortune and Pringle wankers and that he’d never heard her speak of any of the other missing people. He added helpfully that she had confided in him that she was running short of another fucking thing to do with anything that emerged from her body, but that she’d said hopefully that while she’d exhausted piss, shit, and everything else that came out of her clacker, maybe there was still some mileage in sweat and chunder if she could work out how to produce them without too much effort.’
‘Chunder?’
‘Vomit.’
Pooley, who despite years as a policeman had never succeeded in sloughing off all inhibitions, hid his revulsion, thanked him profusely, promised to do everything he could to find Anastasia and to report back tomorrow, and rushed back to his office to investigate an intriguing message. It was ten minutes later when he pressed ‘Print,’ waited impatiently, grabbed the pages, and raced to Milton’s office. ‘There’s another. At least I think he’s another, even though he’s a hedge fund manager.’
Milton looked exhausted. ‘What do you mean, “I think he’s another, even though he’s a hedge fund manager”?’
Pooley was excited. ‘I mean other people didn’t make the link. He’d been missing a few days but I Googled him and saw he’d been buying a lot of very expensive art. Look. There he is: Charlie Briggs. Snapped at a Sotheby’s art auction with a model.’
Milton scanned the pages. ‘He paid £5 million for what?’
‘A Fantona. Lucio Fantona. Look. That’s it.’
There was a pause. ‘He paid £5 mill for a plain canvas with a slash in the middle.’
‘He did.’
‘With cretins like that running our financial affairs,’ said Milton heavily, ‘it�
��s no wonder we’re in the state we’re in.’
Pooley was almost dancing with impatience. ‘Shouldn’t we add him to our investigation? He was also last seen hailing a taxi.’
‘When?’
‘Thursday evening. The security man at his office said he’d left around half nine.’
‘If we do, how many’s that? Ten?’
Pooley counted them on his fingers. ‘Jack, Sir Henry Fortune, Jason Pringle, Anastasia Holliday, Hortense Wilde, Jake Thorogood, Chester Herblock, Marilyn Falucci Lamont, Gavin Truss, and now Charlie Briggs. Yes, ten.’
‘I’d better go and tell the AC we’ve reached a nice round number. That might stop him going on about coincidence. After that we try to find out what connections there are between the missing and Sarkovsky. At this stage, the preliminary interviews are down to you and me. I don’t trust anyone else.’
***
Amiss’ afternoon went the way of his morning. Hour by hour, he watched and read every aspect of the lives of the missing being picked over. A sombre tone was adopted by most commentators, who concentrated on what the world owed these people of talent and discernment, with the occasional dissenter opining that they were opportunists who had made fortunes out of endorsing, creating, or buying rubbish. Innumerable celebrities from the art world shared their grief and pain at the fate that had befallen their beloved friends. The social media, on the other hand, were dominated by gossip and rumour and sick jokes and sniggers about sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.
Late afternoon, the news that Charlie Briggs was thought to be the tenth victim of the same kidnapper cheered everyone up no end, as it enabled them to begin speculating about the safety of every modern-art collector in London. It was a bonus that he was young and good-looking and frenzied attempts were made to link him with Anastasia Holliday, clips of whose frank accounts of what she did with her orifices and her bodily fluids were being held until after the nine o’clock watershed. For now, they were majoring on shots of her falling out of nightclubs.
What confused everyone was where the baroness came into it. In her speech to the House of Lords about contemporary culture, she had trashed the critics and dealers and curators and art schools for being part of a vast liberal conspiracy to destroy everything that made art great and make fortunes along the way. And there were a couple of clips of her being rude on news programmes that made riveting viewing. One tabloid christened her ‘Baroness Battle-Axe.’ This gave rise to speculation that she was the kidnapper, a suspicion the assistant commissioner was beginning to share.
The sane took the view that she was an unlikely possessor of a paramilitary wing, but as stories came out about her involvement in high-profile murder cases in Cambridge and London, a significant proportion of those following the story on twitter decided there was no smoke without fire and that she could be some kind of secret agent, except there was no consensus on whom she might be working for.
None of St. Martha’s staff was prepared to be interviewed, but the desperate hacks roaming its grounds found a few students who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. ‘The mistress is, like, cool,’ was the quote most of the media ran with. A few dusty peers emerged from the Lords to say pompous things about the baroness being a fine woman known for her integrity and her eloquence. A BBC producer who had discovered Amiss had been a close associate of the baroness in several of her better-known adventures rang to beg him for an interview.
‘It would,’ he said primly, ‘be inappropriate,’ and ended the call before the man had the wit to ask him why. The truth was that by now Amiss was so terrified for her that he didn’t trust himself to keep his composure in public.
Chapter Six
It was mid-afternoon before Milton was finally put through to Mrs. Chester Herblock in her Manhattan home. She sounded hyper. ‘Hey, they say you’re an English policeman, right?’
‘I am.’
‘So what do I call you, Mr. Policeman? Over here everyone’s “Officer.”’
‘That’ll do fine, Mrs. Herblock.’
‘So what can I do for you, Officer?’
‘It’s to do with your husband’s disappearance.’
‘His what?’
‘Oh, I do apologise. I assumed you’d been told by the NYPD. It was their job.’
‘I’ve haven’t been around to be told anything, Officer.’ She giggled. ‘I’ve been holed up with a friend and we haven’t been taking calls. Only just got home. Chester’s hardly ever here anyway, so who’d know he was missing.’
‘I’m afraid he hasn’t been seen for three days and no one has any idea where he is.’
‘Don’t you worry, Officer,’ she said happily. ‘He’ll be off with that Lamont bitch. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, my husband is serially unfaithful with bitches of one kind or another, beautiful or sexy or rich. This one’s called Mar-il-yn Fal-ucc-i La-mont. I’ve been expecting him any day now to tell me she’s going to be my replacement. Do you know about replacements in my world, Officer?’
‘I can’t say that I do, Mrs. Herblock. Indeed I don’t really know what your world is.’
‘It’s the cosmopolitan art world, Officer, in which people like my husband drift around arty places from Bel Air to Buenos Aires networking and making a fortune in collusion with dealers and curators to persuade ignorant rich people to waste their money on worthless trash. They also trade up in wives according to their beauty or their money or their performance in bed. I’m the sexy third Mrs. Herblock and I signed a pre-nup. Chester’s had his fun and now he’s thinking of his future.’ She laughed again. ‘Poor Chester. He finds being only a multi-millionaire a bit constricting. It’s time for me to make way for a billionairess.’ She paused. ‘That’s Lamont,’ she said helpfully. ‘Lucky woman. She was married to an elderly billionaire who croaked while she was still young enough to enjoy the legacy.’
‘Oh,’ said Milton, lacking anything else to say.
‘So what do you wanna know, Officer?’
Milton pulled himself together. ‘There is reason to believe that several people connected with the art world have been kidnapped, Mrs. Herblock, including your husband.’
‘What about the rich bitch?’
‘She’s disappeared…that is, Mrs. Lamont has gone missing too.’
‘They were screwing at the Dorchester, right?’
‘They were both staying in the Dorchester, Mrs. Herblock.’
‘In the same suite?’
‘No.’
‘Next door?’
‘I think so.’
‘Of course. After all, money’s no object.’
‘But please, Mrs. Herblock, my job is to find them. Is there anything you can tell me that would help?’
‘Nope. I haven’t heard from him for days, but that’s nothing new. Off with the old, on with the new, that’s Chester Herblock, whether he’s dealing with wives or art. But one way or the other, money will be involved. Plenty of it.’
***
‘Mrs. Herblock had met Sir Henry Fortune at some art event,’ said Milton to Pooley. ‘She described him as an asshole. She’d also heard of Jason Pringle as someone Herblock occasionally did business with and she heard him mention Anastasia Holliday as a hot new talent.
‘“I looked her up,” she said, “and saw that even if she didn’t seem to have any talent, she was certainly hot, so it was no surprise Chester was taking an interest.”
‘When I got her to focus on Oleg Sarkovsky, she remembered him vaguely as the guy Herblock told her was a real sap, that he could shovel any shit off on to him and make a bomb. Then she began to laugh. Apparently he’d been literally successful with shit. Although it was gold-plated. Someone called Terence something-or-other.’
‘Rings a bell. But did she have anything useful otherwise?’
‘No. But at least we�
��re clear there was a Sarkovsky connection. Herblock’s PA was more helpful. She seemed rather more bothered about his disappearance than was his wife and told me he’d made a lot out of Sarkovsky even though Sarkovsky drove a hard bargain. She reckons he’d have earned several million in commissions.’
Pooley gulped. ‘Several million? Sarkovsky must have been buying hundreds of millions worth.’
‘And some of it he was buying from Herblock’s bit on the side.’
‘Marilyn?’
‘Yes. Apparently Sarkovsky bought about $150 million’s worth of conceptual art off her last year on Herblock’s recommendation. Herblock got ten percent.’
‘So it’s in his interests that prices be high rather than low?’
‘It certainly is, Ellis. And no, I don’t understand it either. Anything from your end?’
‘Nothing, except that Sarkovsky had some slightly fraught dealings with Pringle and Thorogood.’
‘In their capacities as dealer and art critic?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is all ludicrously incestuous.’
‘This world is. Apparently although Thorogood was an art critic and innocents like us might think he should be independent, he acted as a kind of authenticator for dealers. Well, for Pringle, anyway.’
‘I don’t know why we find this kind of thing surprising,’ said Milton gloomily. ‘I saw a TV programme recently that told me that in the States academic economists were happy to earn a packet from sitting on the boards of companies they wrote about. So what did Thorogood do for Pringle that involved Sarkovsky?’
‘According to Allegra from Pringle’s gallery, there was some sort of row about graffiti art. Pringle sold Sarkovsky what he thought was a genuine Banksy.’
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