The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  Daniel arrived with two steaming cups. She preferred a shot of espresso in the morning but she wouldn’t be churlish.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What is your plan?’ He’d obviously decided it was pointless to try and dissuade her.

  She sipped the diluted version of the tarriness she wanted. ‘At this point I am going to arrange a meeting with the English solicitor who is acting on behalf of the party offering the Pearls for exhibition.’

  ‘You sound as though you’ve created some emotional distance for yourself.’ He looked impressed. ‘You’re a constant surprise.’

  ‘Daniel, I’ve had a score of years to teach myself how to be unemotional. There has to be a reason for denying myself the most basic of human traits and maybe this is it; perhaps life was preparing me for this hunt.’

  He nodded, eyes narrowing. ‘You do believe him to be alive, then?’

  She frowned and tapped her blunt nail against the cup. ‘In my line of work you assemble facts first. You gather everything that is obvious about a piece: its size, shape, distinguishing marks, all of its aspects on display such as gems if it’s jewellery, style of painting if it’s an artwork, type of stone if it’s a sculpture and so on. You look for any labelling or marks that might reveal its era or maker. Then your knowledge comes into play – what do you know about this sort of piece that might hint at its origins, era, value? Finally, instinct is allowed to roam: what is your expert gut telling you?’

  ‘Instinct is last,’ he said, pulling a face of doubt. She watched his gaze dart around; he seemed on edge.

  ‘Perhaps in your line of work it comes first but I make early decisions with what I can see as my platform. And all I can see in my situation is that the Ottoman Pearls that belonged to my family … to me … that I personally witnessed being thieved by Ruda Mayek have re-emerged. But I know nothing about what’s happened to them, or to him – other than your claims – since November 1941 when I climbed down from that tree outside the villa. I’m not sure that answers your question. The point is, he could be alive and if he is, I will find him.’

  She sipped her coffee and he waited, perhaps sensing she hadn’t finished. ‘You’ve now confirmed he did go to Terezín and that he then went on to use all of his cruel skills in the death camps, but I have no factual evidence of that or his survival of the war. He could have sold the Pearls, or buried them and someone else dug them up; he could have given them to a third party … And any of those scenarios could have occurred since 1941. So, I have to rely on facts – what I personally know. And what I know now is that my only link between the Pearls and Mayek in this moment is the English solicitor. Yesterday, if you’d asked me, I couldn’t have remembered his name – that’s how little attention I paid. But I have his card. Mr Partridge, my superior at the museum, mailed it to me.’ She flinched a smile at the memory of poor Mr Partridge’s stammering response in the frigid silence while they were all still staring at the fat, creamy pearls. Katerina returned to a frown. ‘The solicitor has chambers at Lincoln’s Inn Fields,’ she continued.

  ‘Do you even know where that is?’

  ‘Does it matter? It’s London and it’s where I’m now returning.’

  ‘What about work?’

  ‘I’m not due back at the Louvre for a fortnight. This is my time now and I plan to spend it well.’

  ‘Let me come with you.’

  She cut him an irritated glance. ‘No.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why would I? You’re a liar, remember. I don’t feel secure.’ Pain smarted in the narrowing of his gaze as if he’d been genuinely wounded by her remark. ‘I will never lie to you again.’

  She heard the truth in the grittiness of his voice; it hurt him to have to say it, to admit again to his deliberate beguilement. Katerina suspected that Daniel didn’t want friendship. He wanted more. And in this she felt a genuine sadness. There had only ever been three men in her life: one she’d witnessed murdered; the second now lived in Switzerland as a respected physician, loved by his family, and his peacetime needed no rekindling of war memories. They would continue to exchange brief letters for the celebration days they marked – his for her Rosh Hashanah, and she remembered him in December for Christmas festivities. The third she rarely spoke openly about.

  Each was too important in her mind and there had never been the right mindset for a fourth. Daniel, she could see, was having thoughts that she might be the woman who could save him from himself. He likely saw similarities in their reserved, secretive personalities; he recognised shared pain, and now Ruda Mayek bound them in grief. She could feel his admiration building, crashing against her like waves on a rock, but she had to make him understand that she was an island, isolated, and she planned to remain that way, especially if being imprisoned for murder was to be her final sorrow.

  ‘Daniel, I appreciate that promise of truth but there’s another promise that would mean as much to me.’

  ‘Name it.’ He sounded confident.

  ‘Don’t fall in love with me,’ she warned.

  He had reached for his cup but put it down again. No, he hadn’t expected that caution. He dipped his head to gaze into the black liquid, as though expecting to find answers in its darkness. ‘A little late for me to be making that promise, I’m afraid,’ he admitted, without looking up. ‘I don’t have my spy guard up, Katerina. You’re sitting in front of a helpless man now. I’m like all the men who have surely loved you and you’ve dissuaded, and all of those you didn’t even know about who have likely been fascinated by you on sight, intrigued by you, demented by you with your chilly self-containment.’

  ‘I don’t mean to —’

  ‘I know,’ he assured her. ‘It’s your defence but I don’t have that specific armour. I thought I was impenetrable, as you probably think you are.’

  ‘I am, Daniel. Why are you looking around – are you expecting someone?’

  He gave her a scowl of disdain.

  ‘Then look at me.’

  He offered his pained gaze.

  ‘I have no susceptibility to being romanced, or to falling in love. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but …’ She shook her head. ‘He took it all away from me.’

  He smiled sadly and looked at her for a long time before nodding gently. ‘It’s a state of mind, Katerina, and as long as you let him control your mind, he’s winning. He might as well have shot you dead all those years ago in the forest. As blinded as I am by the need for revenge, I can assure you that love is a state of mind too … and you can find that mindset.’

  She gave him a look that conveyed her disagreement but he was not to be deterred.

  ‘Some lucky fellow is going to come along when you’re least expecting it and all the while you’re convinced you’re a fortress, he’s going to cross the moat and scale the walls and batter down the stronghold around you.’

  She gave a mirthless chuckle at the metaphor. ‘Well, we shall see.’

  ‘But it’s not me?’ He clearly needed her to say it.

  Katerina took a slow breath and shook her head. ‘No shiny chain mail or white steed,’ she observed, hoping the lightness would help.

  It did. As sad as he looked to her, she admired that he dredged up a smile.

  ‘It doesn’t change that I want to help hunt him. Mayek has been the poison eating away at my life too for a decade.’

  ‘All right. I’ll hear your advice, because you’ve got all the appropriate experience. But Daniel, if and when the time comes, I go to him alone.’

  He gave a sigh as if resigning to her. ‘Only if I am convinced you’re safe.’

  Katerina felt a fresh spill of vexation that he was once again staring past her. ‘I go alone,’ she repeated. Her tone sounded like the stab of an icicle and he flung up his hands in what looked to be defeat.

  19

  LONDON

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields was a surprise. As a scholar of antiquity, Katerina had read up what she could about their destination but it was nevertheless a delight to lay her g
aze upon the more than 300-year-old square that was designed and laid out by none other than Inigo Jones. Once home to noble families in the seventeeth century, it was here that the Royal College of Surgeons found its place and where one of the Inns of Court resided and men of the law had their chambers.

  Having told Daniel this fact, she continued, ‘Of course it didn’t always have such lauded residents. There was a time that it was crowded by day with beggars, vagrants and cripples selling their mendicants and by gamblers, thieves and prostitutes at night.’

  They’d emerged from the Underground station, pleased they didn’t have to use the lift but could ascend to street level via its escalator. As they arrived onto High Holborn, Katerina mentioned that this tube station had stored various precious artefacts from the British Museum during the Blitz. ‘Daniel, are you listening?’

  He looked distracted, scanning the street as they emerged from London’s depths, frowning with a spy’s suspicion.

  ‘I can tell I’m boring you.’

  ‘You could never bore me,’ he replied, taking her elbow in a friendly and non-proprietorial manner. ‘I am listening to all your interesting stories. I happen to know that it also used to be the interchange between trams and tubes before the London tram network closed a decade or so ago.’

  They were walking towards their destination based on directions she had scribbled out. She cut him a wry glance. ‘I forget London is familiar to you. I don’t need these directions?’ She held up the note.

  ‘I know where we’re headed,’ he said.

  ‘Are you quite sure? Because I’m convinced I could have got us to where we’re going faster. You’ve taken us a very roundabout way, and what was the curious business of getting on and then suddenly dragging me back off the train on the Underground?’

  ‘I told you, I thought taking a different line might be faster.’

  ‘Was it?’ She frowned. ‘I counted two more stops.’

  ‘My mistake.’ He offered no more and seemed to want to change tack. ‘I thought you’d enjoy this route that gives you a look at the area.’

  She let her interrogation drop away.

  ‘New Oxford Street to our backs,’ he continued. He pointed. ‘Keep walking that way and we’ll reach your British Museum. And we’ll approach from Chancery Lane so you can walk beneath the famous Gate House.’

  ‘There were turnstiles here somewhere, I gather,’ she said, ‘that kept cattle enclosed once upon a time when this was little more than grazing land. And in the Royal College of Surgeons they supposedly had or perhaps still have gruesome exhibits including the skeletons of an Irish giant who was well over eight feet tall at his death and an Italian dwarf who wasn’t much taller than two feet.’ She grinned at his raised eyebrows. ‘Ah, is this it?’ she said with wonder as they entered a grand archway with vast wooden doors at its end.

  ‘Welcome to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Wait there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought I’d take a photo,’ he said, pulling out one of the new-fangled Instamatic cameras she’d seen in shop windows. ‘May I?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe I’d like to build some happier memories for you. Wait there. Just one or two – you’ll thank me in time.’ He skipped a few steps back, ignoring the exasperated workers who had to flow around them. He turned to face her, clicked a few times, looking up in between each shot and urging her to smile but she wouldn’t oblige.

  ‘I think of London as enormous,’ she admitted, as the camera was put back in his pocket and she walked on a few steps. She was delighted to see how the enclave opened up onto an airy square of mansions around lawns and gardens. ‘And yet nothing ever seems that far away; to think my old flat at Bloomsbury is easy walking distance, and so is the West End and Covent Garden.’

  ‘The famous Hatton Garden diamond district is over there,’ he said, pointing east. ‘Temple Church, spiritual home of the Knights Templar, not far either.’

  ‘All the beautiful railings were torn down for the war effort. I wonder if they’ll ever replace them?’ She didn’t need him to answer. ‘Do you know I read that Samuel Pepys used to stroll with his wife through these gardens and Charles Dickens was a lawyer’s clerk here. Rumour says that during spring he enjoyed spitting cherry stones onto the heads of the legal fraternity.’ She sighed at his chuckle. ‘Sir Thomas More would also roam these streets. Don’t you love touching history, Daniel?’

  If he answered, she didn’t hear it. She scanned the several-storeyed buildings, a hotchpotch of architectural styles because of constant additions and renovations down the centuries. People were moving in all directions although the signs that asked them to remain off the grass were being diligently observed; the British were the most obedient of peoples, she noted. But around them moved a restless stream of bewigged barristers, harried-looking solicitors, she presumed, nervous clients searching for legal advice and a swarm of workers carrying files and briefs to and from various offices, entering and exiting the busy square from various gates. To her there was an atmosphere of brisk tension. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to be quickly, yet no one broke into a run or openly showed impatience to another.

  She only noticed now that Daniel had lingered near the entrance and he pointed to a shop window that she hadn’t noticed, to their backs as they’d entered the arch. ‘This is the bookshop to the legal fraternity. Centuries old, and has been here at Archway since the 1800s, apparently. They lost all their books twice during the war.’

  It was an odd nugget of information, him sounding distracted as he spoke, but she smiled and pushed on, walking them down one of the gravel paths. ‘So, we’re looking for … oh, there it is,’ she said, pointing to a door that was painted a jolly green and stood out from the narrow and dirty brown-red bricks of its walls and the swoop of iron railings that curved away from it onto the street. ‘This is where his offices are.’

  They approached and she was suddenly glad Daniel had insisted on accompanying her; this solicitor was her only link to the Pearls and whichever dark hiding place they had emerged from. Perhaps Daniel would see, hear or glean something she may otherwise miss; every nuance now felt important.

  He nodded, glancing around self-consciously as she knocked. A young man opened the door, formally attired, clean-shaven and offering an enquiring smile.

  ‘Good morning. May I help you?’

  ‘Er, yes. I would like to see Mr Summerbee, please.’

  ‘Come in, please.’

  They followed into what looked to be a warren of offices but he guided them through a door into a hushed reception room. ‘I’m one of his clerks. Is he expecting you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, but I’ve come from Paris to see him. I’d be happy to make an appointment,’ she said, already suspecting her presentation and charming manner would get her a meeting with the solicitor shortly, if not immediately.

  ‘Please have a seat. He’s extremely busy but I’ll just have a quick word with his secretary. May I have your names, please?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘I’m Severine Kassel and this is a colleague, Mr Daniel Horowitz.’

  Daniel had clearly noted the warmth she’d shown the man and whispered from the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, he’s toast.’

  ‘He’s sweet,’ she remarked, noticing the slight glance of mistrust angled at her by the plain secretary as the clerk was explaining their presence. The woman wore her hair scraped viciously off her face into a high bun. She mused that if the secretary lost the thickrimmed tortoiseshell glasses, loosened her bun or not make such a prune of her mouth, she’d be attractive. It was clear the secretary was not favouring the cold call but Katerina could tell from his body language that the young clerk had won through. He returned and she looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Miss Bailey is finding some time for you. It may be a few minutes, but he will see you.’

  ‘That’s excellent. Thank you so much, er …’

  ‘I’m John Honeywil
l.’

  ‘Lovely name. Thank you.’ She smiled broadly and he returned it with a blush.

  ‘I’ll, er … leave you with Miss Bailey.’ He glanced, embarrassed, and departed to the sound of Miss Bailey tapping an angry rhythm on her typewriter.

  ‘Mr Summerbee won’t be long,’ she called out.

  ‘Thank you,’ they said together, although Daniel could pull a face of feigned terror without being seen and Katerina widened her eyes to caution him not to make her laugh.

  Clearing her throat, she began removing her gloves and scarf. She’d packed lightly for this trip but she was wearing her favourite coat of the cleanest A-line, in a mustard yellow with a small collar and an invisible fastening at her shoulder. It only just grazed her knees. She’d daringly paired it with the darkest of sage-green woollen tights and matching gloves, and while she had toyed with the idea of a hat, it may have intimidated the presumably conservative legal man they’d be meeting, so she’d opted for a green, mustard and ruby paisley headscarf.

  They heard a phone buzz and Miss Bailey answered, ‘Yes, sir.’ She looked across at them. ‘I can show you in now.’

  She stood and they followed down a short, carpeted passageway regarded by the line of sitters in baronial-type portraits on either wall before Miss Bailey’s thickly woollened legs stopped before a door and knocked gently.