48
As they progressed along frosty Bond Street, Clifford was looking in the shop windows. Most had been cleared of their expensive trinkets. But it was something to do while Dorothy’s so-called partner – the man whom Clifford always thought of as ‘The Spouse Mouse’, being unable to keep his actual name in her mind – held forth:
‘Of that place,’ he was saying, ‘it really can be said, “le patron mange ici.”’
If by ‘that place’ he had meant the restaurant in which they’d just eaten Christmas lunch, the remark might have been tolerable, but he had taken them all to some other French restaurant unpromisingly located near Tottenham Court Road, which, as he rightly said, had been ‘deeply disappointing’. An apology might have been in order; instead he was claiming the credit for knowing about other, better places.
They were now, as he pompously had it, undergoing their ‘post-prandial penance’. A walk. It was three-thirty, and they were heading north along Bond Street. Clifford had dragged them over this way. She would not have done so, had the Mouse not said, as they’d quit the restaurant, ‘I suppose you’ll want to avoid Mayfair, Vicky.’
He wasn’t allowed to call her Vicky.
The Mouse had clearly been under orders from Dorothy to behave over lunch, and when he said, ‘So it was effectively down to you – your phone call – that the armed response unit was sent?’ Dorothy had been trying to signal him not to ask this.
‘The decision was taken by an Assistant Commissioner,’ said Clifford. ‘But it was at my suggestion.’
The Mouse said, ‘I’m not sure I could have made that suggestion, or taken that decision.’
Clifford was quite sure he couldn’t have.
Dorothy said, ‘Victoria knew the girl was dangerous, darling. She had to make that call.’
‘No,’ Clifford said. ‘I didn’t know she was dangerous. I couldn’t decide about that. But she had one fixture in her life, and that was the man who masqueraded as her father.’
‘It was, you know, love,’ Rachel Reade put in, with a rather fetching sad smile.
Clifford said, ‘It occurred to me that Reynolds was going to be undermining her …’
‘Profoundly,’ Dorothy put in.
Clifford wasn’t sure whether she preferred her friends when they were being antagonistic as opposed to (as they would say) ‘supportive’. But she supposed she ought to be grateful, particularly for the companionship of Rachel Reade, who had insisted on moving in with her, and cooking numerous casseroles, while the papers were full of the whole business – as indeed they still were.
‘You see,’ Rachel was explaining to Dorothy and the Mouse, ‘Anna Samarina had attempted to find another anchor in her engagement to John-Paul Holden. But when that failed she was thrown back on her father.’
Clifford had suggested as much to her in the days after the shooting, but there was really no ‘you see’ about it, because the understanding of one human by another was surely a matter of the finest nuance. She believed that Reynolds overestimated the influence he was likely to have over the girl. Possibly he believed she loved him, and was therefore safe. This negative assessment of hers was influenced by the fact that Reynolds had been wrong about Quinn being ‘on the take’. But he had been nearly right about that, and he had been absolutely right about a good deal else.
Part of Rachel Reade’s programme of support had involved the two of them jointly trying to value Clifford’s paintings, and Clifford hadn’t minded looking at art now, having solved the problem of Quinn’s small painting.
She had seen him carrying a wrapped-up painting when climbing into a taxi on Berkeley Square on the evening of Friday 14 November. She had seen him by accident. She thought he had already left for the north, but it seemed he had collected a painting on the way. Five days before, he had been the guest of the Russians in the south of France – the trip she was not supposed to know about. His one material aspiration was to own good art. It would have been pushing it – even for Quinn – to have accepted a painting temporarily ‘to preserve good working relationships’; to have made a pretence of being corrupt. If he had tried that, he would have needed authorisation from Croft, and no such authorisation had been asked for or received. Her suspicion that he might have given way to temptation had been minute. But she hadn’t dared ask him about the painting he’d been carrying because she might have provoked a lie. While Quinn had certainly withheld data from her, he had not – as far as she knew – lied to her. She believed she would have been able to tell if he ever did lie, and she couldn’t bear the thought of it.
Even so, forty-eight hours after the shooting of Anna Samarina – it was the day on which they’d arrested Robin Dutta, who’d confessed to the killing of John-Paul Holden – Clifford had called Charlie Quinn. She’d told him about the painting in the cupboard, of which he’d been unaware. She asked him to tear back the paper, and it turned out he knew the painting. It was by the famous Victorian landscapist, Atkinson Grimshaw, a smaller version of a painting of Scarborough Harbour that was in the Scarborough Art Gallery. Charlie Quinn had been almost tearful when he unwrapped it. Here was a version of his favourite painting by his favourite artist. ‘It must have been for my birthday,’ he’d said gauchely, but probably correctly.
Victoria had then called Hugh Jenkins, ex of Art and Antiques. Had Quinn ever mentioned acquiring this work? With some reluctance – ‘Because I still think George is going to wake up’ – Jenkins explained that he had advised Quinn of the availability of the painting, and loaned him half the asking price of thirty thousand pounds. The old man would have it for his ninetieth birthday, and until he died. Jenkins would then pay Quinn fifteen thousand for full ownership of this work by an artist he, too, very much admired.
Bond Street was largely deserted. It was a cold day of white sky. They had stopped outside Tiffany’s, whose window featured a display of miniature, chalet-like white houses draped in diamond necklaces. The backing to the display suggested it was night-time in the fantastical, alpine realm. The necklaces must be paste, Clifford reasoned. Too much risk of a burglary on Christmas Day.
Clifford led them west, via Grafton Street and Hay Hill, into Curzon Street, where she saw a foreign-looking gent affectionately watching the automatic closure of his Rolls-Royce’s boot. He was communing with his car, as a better alternative to going into some big house for a lavish but perhaps boring family party. She thought of Quinn’s car. A GPS tracker had been fixed into the wheel arch, so the Russians had known he’d been in Carlton. The damage to the underside of the car was still a mystery, but she believed he’d driven through the woods to look for Caldwell, or possibly for the body of Caldwell, which had still not been found.
Clifford had now brought them to the north end of Down Street.
‘Oh, Vicky dear,’ Rachel Reade said, in a disappointed tone, having seen the street sign.
Rachel Reade was allowed to call her Vicky.
Behind the two of them, Dorothy and the Mouse were going over what had been said at lunch. Dorothy was trying to answer his questions before he put them, in a possibly provocative way, to her fragile friend.
‘So Samarin’s in custody?’ he was saying.
‘In a secure psychiatric unit, yes. They found him on the Embankment, you know that.’
‘He was about to jump into the river?’
‘And he’d taken a lot of pills.’
Clifford looked along Down Street. The church showed no sign of having hosted a Christmas service. The tapas bar was closed. Nobody had parked on the few parking spaces. There were just the opposing cliff faces of cavernous but reserved mansion flats, largely unoccupied, since London wasn’t the right place to be on Christmas Day. Not for the well-off.
… And there was the closed-down Tube station. A man stood outside it. He was therefore also outside the Mini-Mart, which was possibly open, because the man seemed illuminated, in the dying day, by a spilled light.
‘And they still don’t know who
shot George Quinn?’ the Mouse was asking.
‘Weren’t you listening at lunch?’ Dorothy was saying. ‘They’re now almost certain it was the English security man, Porter, but Samarin had told the girl that he himself did it.’
‘Why?’
‘To stop her speaking out. She was probably on the point of doing that. But Samarin knew she wouldn’t say anything if she thought he’d done it.’
‘And how do they know this?’
‘Oh God, Geoffrey—’
That was the Mouse’s name.
‘I’m sorry, I’m genuinely baffled.’
‘Samarin’s told them. He’s co-operating.’
‘He might just be saying that.’
‘No. They believe him.’
How strange, Clifford thought, to be them, engaged in this perpetual conclave. The man outside the Mini-Mart had not moved; he was looking upwards.
Dorothy was correct in her explanation, as far as it went. What she’d missed out was that it was Reynolds who had made the crucial breakthrough in the questioning; the crucial dart. Samarin hadn’t volunteered the information about what he’d told his supposed daughter. He had been totally silent, until Reynolds had put the suggestion to him. At this, the dam had burst, because Reynolds had been correct, and Samarin, something of an intellectual snob, had respected that.
Samarin was happy to admit a course of action that had – he said – been intended only to keep them together, for the sake of the girl’s mental health. Another way of putting it would be to say he had exploited her love for him in order to buy her silence. At what point, he had told his daughter the lie … that was not clear. Probably very late on. It was also unclear at what point she had learned that Samarin was not her true father. Probably she had known, in some way, for years.
The girl had fired at Reynolds at the very moment she’d been shot. This was evident not only from the spent cartridge, but also the CCTV footage. The bullet that killed her had also deflected her aim, and this had taken some of the heat out of the public outrage. Reynolds apparently maintained that Samarina would not have fired had the armed officers not been present. So was Clifford wrong to have asked for SO19, the Firearms Command, to be sent? She did not believe so for a minute. She had not had the chance to put the case to Reynolds because he – knowing she was responsible for the intervention – had refused to speak to her since the shooting. Everything she knew of his subsequent role, she’d had from Croft, or other officers. (Croft had taken her out to dinner – rather daringly at HIX Mayfair this time – to congratulate her on her own ‘dart’, the one concerning Robin Dutta.) Reynolds was no longer a semi-flyer, he was airborne, albeit controversially. He had taken a risk in order to crack the case, and as far as he knew, he was risking himself rather than the girl. He had turned away from her pointed gun to warn off the Met men, and he had got points for that. Chivalry was not dead after all.
In the village of Carlton, Reynolds had discovered the motive for the cover-up; he’d had the crucial insight into the behaviour of Samarin, and this had set the man talking – for a while. Samarin had offered some help before lapsing back into his monumental depression.
‘ … And the other Russian?’ the Mouse was saying.
‘Rostov,’ said Dorothy. ‘They can’t find him. They think he’s gone back to Russia.’
‘And the security man is the one who they arrested in Marseille a few days ago?’
‘Well done, Geoffrey. His name is Porter, and he shot his way out, killing four French policemen.’
Geoffrey had no French tag for that.
That Porter had been taken into custody was also down to Reynolds, and his mixture of flare and doggedness. Having learnt that Porter was an amateur motor racer, Reynolds had mentioned his name to the editors of some of London’s more traditionalist motor-racing magazines (because Reynolds had Porter down as a traditionalist). One of them – the editor of something called Motor Sport World – came back with a ten-year-old letter to the magazine complaining about excessive safety precautions at some racing event. It was signed ‘G. B. R. Porter, Aix-en-Provence’. The copy of the original had been kept, and a fuller address appeared on that: the name of a small village outside Aix. This was, or had subsequently become, Porter’s bolthole, and it was from there that he had been taken into custody at Marseille. It wasn’t Reynolds’ fault that Porter had then escaped.
49
The man who’d been standing outside the Mini-Mart was now approaching. When he saw Clifford his walk slowed; but he kept on coming, and he passed her by without a word. Rachel Reade said, ‘Vicky, darling, wasn’t that Blake Reynolds?’
But Victoria’s phone was ringing. She answered it. A man said, ‘Oh hello, it’s Mr Henderson here, from St Michael’s Hospital.’
Mr Henderson. Because she hadn’t been able to get rid of him, and consultants were not called ‘doctor’.
‘I’m sorry to bother you on Christmas Day. I’m calling about George Quinn—’
As he spoke on, Clifford looked back down the street towards the retreating figure of Reynolds. It had meant something to her that Reynolds – evidently alone on this Christmas Day – had returned to commune with the scene of their exciting December. She was now further gratified that he was turning his head and looking back at her. His expression from this distance was quite unfathomable, but she would settle – at the moment – for that one backward glance.
About the Author
Andrew Martin is a novelist and journalist. His critically praised ‘Jim Stringer’ detective series began with The Necropolis Railway in 2002. Murder at Deviation Junction and Death on a Branch Line were shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award and, in 2008, Andrew Martin was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. The Somme Stations won the 2011 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award. The latest book in the series, Night Train to Jamalpur, was published in 2013.
By the Same Author
Bilton
The Bobby Dazzlers
The Jim Stringer novels:
The Necropolis Railway
The Blackpool Highflyer
The Lost Luggage Porter
Murder at Deviation Junction
Death on a Branch Line
The Last Train to Scarborough
The Somme Stations
The Baghdad Railway Club
Night Train to Jamalpur
Copyright
First published in 2015 by
Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2015
All rights reserved
© Andrew Martin, 2015
Cover design by Faber
Cover image © FPG/Getty
The right of Andrew Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–28822–9
The Yellow Diamond Page 26