by Tim Ellis
‘Mossad agents don’t have last names, huh?’
Emilia laughed. ‘See, I told you she would not be fooled.’
One of the men spoke to the professor in Hebrew.
‘They want to kill you,’ she said. ‘They think you know too much.’
‘I’d like to see them fucking try.’
‘Do not worry. I have told them that they would have to kill me first, and they will not do that.’ She shouted at the man in Hebrew.
He lowered his eyes.
Kline had never seen Emilia behave like that before and said, ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I have been a Mossad agent for many years. Of course, I am far too old to be a field agent now, but I offer knowledge and advice where I can. “Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety,” – that is our motto.’
‘What do I know too much about?’
‘The treasure.’
‘Why?’
‘If we find the treasure down there, they will take it back to Israel.’
‘So, that’s what it’s all about? You don’t want the Germans to have it, because you want it.’
‘We would never allow the Germans to have it under any circumstances. It does not and never has belonged to them – they stole it.’
‘It doesn’t belong to you either. What about all the people it does belong to?’
‘They are long dead. Also, many of those people were Jewish, anyway.’
She thought about it. If the treasure really was down in the mine, did it really matter who claimed it? She agreed with Emilia – the Germans shouldn’t get it. She wasn’t getting any of it, and trying to give each item back to its rightful owner would be a fucking nightmare and probably take a hundred years. ‘And what will the Israelis do with it?’
‘Why don’t you come back to Israel with us and see for yourself. You are one of us, anyway.’
‘One of who?’
‘Jewish.’
‘Who says so?’
‘I do. Kline is from the Hebrew “kleyn”.’ She spelt it. ‘It means small.’
Kline stuffed some bread and cheese into her mouth. ‘Well, they got that right.’
‘In the past, your name was anglicised. Do you remember having any Jewish relatives?’
She thought for a moment. ‘No. I had a great-great grandfather called Augustus Kleyn. Whether he was Jewish or not, I have no idea.’
‘We are going down into the salt mine. You can come with us if you want to, or you can go back to England.’
‘I’ve come this far. I may as well finish the journey and take a look at this treasure that everybody’s been talking about.’
‘It will be dangerous.’
‘So, what’s new?’
Emilia nodded, and spoke to the Mossad agents as if she was giving them orders.
‘They don’t look happy.’
‘They are never happy.’
***
As well as a horde of forensic officers, uniformed constables and a pathologist, two detectives turned up – Detective Inspector Erica Holm and Detective Sergeant Carl Fisk.
Fisk organised the people and access to the crime scene while Holm questioned Rodney. She had short light brown hair with blonde streaks, a thin friendly face and rimless glasses. In his unbiased opinion she looked more like a businesswoman than a detective, but he was sure he only thought that because he hadn’t really met many female detectives – well, none to be exact.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘Before we arrived.’
‘I parked my car in the staff car park, and . . .’ He told her everything that had happened – it wasn’t much. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her about the landlady at the Hand and Marigold and what had transpired the previous evening.
‘What happened to your face?’
‘A husband found me in bed with his wife.’
‘You’d better give me the details.’
‘I don’t think my poor excuse for a love life is relevant.’
‘I’ll decide what’s relevant, and what’s not.’
He told her what had happened, but he didn’t mention the landlady.
‘Things didn’t go according to plan, did they?’
‘Not really, no. In fact, I’m not very lucky where women are concerned.’
‘What about the cases everyone was working on?’
‘The details of each case should be on those,’ he said, pointing to the whiteboards. ‘But someone’s wiped them clean. Deirdre – that’s the woman hanging upside down – should have the files of the active cases on her desk.’
Holm passed him a pair of plastic gloves and said, ‘Put those on and tell me if any of the files are missing.’
He slipped the gloves on and rifled through the files. It all seemed to be in order except . . . ‘The paperwork on my case is missing.’
‘What are you working on?’
‘A missing wife and daughter for one of your lot.’
‘Oh?’
‘A DI Quigg from Hammersmith.’
‘I’ve heard of him. Any luck?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘You’d better tell me all about it. There’s a cafe two doors away, isn’t there?’
‘The Java Joint.’
‘Come on.’
She told DS Fisk where she was going, and then directed Rodney down the stairs.
He was glad to be out of the office. The killer had done terrible things to Deidre and Sue. He didn’t like to think of himself at a time like this, but he wondered if he still had a job. He’d have to ring Mick Amato or Ron Dring and find out what they planned to do with the agency now.
‘A mug of coffee for me,’ he said to Lottie – the cafe owner. ‘And . . . ?’
‘Milky tea for me, please,’ DI Holm said. ‘I’ll have two pieces of white toast as well.’
‘Butter or marge, love?’
‘Butter, please.’
‘I don’t know how you can eat anything after seeing what we’ve just seen,’ he said to her after Lottie had gone.
‘Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. So, what do you mean: “Yes and no”?’
He told her all about the house being bought by Lancer Communications, the forwarding address in Canada, the re-directed telephone number, Caitlin Hughes being Sally Tompkins from Fairlight in East Sussex, about her parents being murdered and Sally being taken into care . . .
‘What else do you know about Lancer Communications?’
‘Nothing. I rang Deirdre yesterday and asked her to find out what she could about them.’
‘Do you know if she found out anything?’
‘I didn’t get back from Fairlight until gone seven o’clock last night.’
‘And you went home?’
‘No, I stayed at a pub in Bermondsey.’
‘Which one? We obviously need to check your alibi.’
‘You don’t think . . . ?’
‘I don’t think anything, Mr Crankshank. It’s procedure not to believe anything anyone says until we’ve confirmed they’re telling the truth.’
‘The Hand and Marigold. I met a woman called Anastasia Scripps for dinner.’
‘Is this the woman whose husband caught you in flagrante?’
‘Yes.’
‘You could press charges for assault . . .’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So you slept alone?’
‘Is that important?’
‘Just making sure I’ve got all the facts.’
‘The landlady – Julie Fotheringale – joined me.’
‘I thought you said you were unlucky in love.’
‘I had dinner with a goddess and slept with a warthog.’
‘Surely, you could have said no.’
‘You haven’t met the landlady. She’d have thrown me out into the street without my clothes.’
Lottie brought their drinks and
Holm’s toast.
‘Thanks, Lottie,’ he said.
‘I have the feeling that if you’d come back to the office you would be lying up there as well.’
‘I was thinking that as well.’
‘Have you spoken to DI Quigg yet?’
‘No, I planned to ring him today.’
‘Didn’t he tell you anything about Lancer Communications?’
‘He didn’t know anything, said he saw the name once on one of his wife’s business cards before she became pregnant and gave up work. To be honest, he knew very little about his wife – because he was a workaholic.’
‘Occupational hazard in our job, I’m afraid.’
‘It seems that being a police detective is a very hazardous job.’
‘For sure. Okay, where do you live?’
He told her.
‘I’ll send a squad car round there to check it out. In the meantime, you and I will go and see DI Quigg and see what he’s got to say for himself.’
‘What about Lancer Communications?’
‘I’ll get my partner onto that.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Barbican Art Gallery was a big ugly building, and he didn’t really have time to take a tour of the Pop Art Design exhibition, or immerse himself in the Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. Neither did he have the time or inclination to visit the cinema, the theatre or the exhibition hall.
He wandered into the Barbican Centre and knocked on a few doors until one opened outwards and nearly re-arranged his face.
‘Yes?’ a middle-aged woman with messy hair and a huge hairy dark-brown mole on her top lip asked.
‘I’d like . . .’
‘You want to go to the enquiries desk or . . .’
He produced his warrant card. ‘I need to talk to someone about an employee.’
She pointed down the hall to the bank of four lifts. ‘You want the Corporate Human Resources department on the seventh floor.’
‘Thank you.’
He pressed for a lift, but when one arrived he discovered that it wouldn’t go to the seventh floor unless he had a key. He went back and banged on the same door again, but stood further back this time.
‘You again?’
‘I need a lift key to get to the HR Department.’
‘I could have told you that.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘You never asked.’
‘Can I have one?’
‘One what?’
‘A lift key.’
‘Employees only.’
‘Can you ring someone in HR and ask them to come down and get me?’
‘You think I’ve . . .’
‘I could arrest you for obstructing a police investigation.’
‘I’ve never been in a police cell before. Are they really as bad as people say?’
‘Worse.’
‘You’d better come in then. Have you got a business card?’
He passed her one.
‘If I don’t meet my deadlines I’ll refer my boss to you.’
‘And I’ll tell your boss how you bent over backwards to help me, and that you deserve a promotion and a pay rise.’
She laughed, picked up the phone and dialled an internal number. ‘Like that’s going to work.’ Someone answered. ‘I’ve got a lost police inspector called Quigg down here who needs to come up there . . . Okay, I’ll aim him towards the lifts.’ She put the phone down. ‘Someone is on their way down to collect you.’
‘Excellent.’
He carried on standing there.
‘Would you like a massage or maybe your toe nails clipping as well?’
The corner of his mouth went up. ‘Sorry, I’ll walk along to the lifts, shall I?’
‘Did somebody forget to wind you up this morning?’
‘Something like that.’
An attractive woman in her mid-thirties wearing a light blue skirt and jacket, white blouse and a patterned bra underneath appeared. ‘Inspector Quigg?’
‘Detective Inspector.’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Inspectors – inspect, detectives . . .’
‘. . . Detect?’
‘It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but I think you’re making progress . . .’
She grinned and offered her hand. ‘Astrid Ryman. Please follow me.’ She led him into a lift and pressed for the seventh floor.
‘Astrid seems like a cold and frigid name. You don’t look like an Astrid – more like a . . .’
‘Are you flirting with me, Detective Inspector?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s against regulations to flirt with supermodels during working hours.’
‘Really?’
The lift arrived on the seventh floor. She stepped out into a glass and stainless steel labyrinth of offices, and led him to one of them.
‘You work in a goldfish bowl.’
‘The architect has imposed his nightmare on ordinary working people. Would you like tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please.’
She pressed a buzzer and asked for one coffee. ‘What is it I can help you with?’
‘Frank Bernado.’
‘Does he work for us?’
‘Did?’
‘How long ago?’
‘He died a couple of years ago.’
She typed the name into her computer. ‘Yes, here we are. Frank Bernado. He worked in the exhibitions department. What would you like to know about him?’
‘What have you got?’
A skinny boy wearing a pink shirt that was a number of sizes from ever fitting him brought his coffee in and left.
‘Well, he was one of the original workers. When the Barbican opened in 1982, he was employed in exhibitions.’
‘And he’s been here ever since?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s rare to have someone work for us for so long. He retired in 2005 at the age of eighty-four – way past the official retirement age.’
‘Any disciplinary problems?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘What about his annual appraisals?’
‘Hard-working, conscientious, helpful.’
‘Next of kin?’
She navigated to another page. ‘Brigitte Bernado, 67 Haberdasher Street in Hoxton, but if she’s as old . . .’
‘Yes, I imagine she’s passed away as well. Not least, because he re-married in 1998.’
‘We have no record of that.’
He stood up. ‘Well, thank you . . .’
‘There’s something here about distinguishing marks. He had a tattoo on the inside of his left arm, which he describes as a concentration camp number from Wansleben am See . . . Is that in Germany?’
He pulled a face and shrugged. ‘I suppose it must be. Do you think there are people who still work here in the exhibition department that might remember Frank?’
‘I can check. What’s it all about anyway?’
‘The murdered woman in Bleeding Heart Yard.’
‘You’re investigating that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you were famous when I First saw you.’
‘Hardly. I pop up on television from time to time and give the public tidbits of information relating to my current investigation, but other than that I’m just a regular guy.’
‘Do you want my number?’
‘Do you want me to want your number?’
‘Are you married?’
‘No, but I have a complicated love life.’
‘I’m not complicated.’
‘I like uncomplicated.’
She passed him her number on a fluorescent green Post-it note. ‘I’ll wait for your call.’
He slipped the note into his pocket. ‘What about Frank’s workmates?’
‘Follow me.’
She took him back down to the entrance hall in the lift.
; They ambled outside and along the walkway to the Exhibition Centre. Once inside, she slipped through a side door and into the middle of the building that the public never saw. There were a mishmash of workrooms and storage rooms grouped around a central column like something resembling the coliseum – only without the blood and the lions.
She found a grizzled grey-haired man in a room with paintings stacked in upright shelving units. ‘Arthur, you remember Frank Bernado, don’t you?’
‘Worked with him for about ten years, miserable bastard that he was.’
‘This is Detective Inspector Quigg. Can you tell him what you know about Frank?’
‘What’s to tell? We worked together, we ate lunch sitting on crates together, we went our separate ways when we walked out of here. I told him about my life, he didn’t tell me anything about his.’
Quigg took over the questioning. ‘What about his wife and daughter?’
‘He had a wife and daughter?’
‘Yes. Did you know he got married again in 1998?’
‘No. That means his first wife must have died.’
‘That’s my assumption.’
‘Ten years I worked with him, ten years and he never said his wife had died. People get time off when someone dies. He didn’t take no time off.’
‘Did he ever speak about the tattoo on the inside of his left forearm?’
‘You mean the number?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, I saw that just one time when he’d rolled up the sleeves of his overalls to wash his hands. He told me to mind my own fucking business – excuse my French, Miss Ryman.’
‘That’s all right, Arthur. I’ve heard worse.’
‘I didn’t mind my own business though. I kept on at him because I’d heard my father talk about those numbers. He was one of the men who liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration on April, 15 1945 – said it was the worst thing he’d ever seen, and he’d seen some things in the war. Anyway, he had nightmares every night until the day he died – God rest his soul.’
‘You’re saying that the tattooed number was a concentration camp number?’
‘I ain’t saying that at all. So, I kept on at him, and in the end he said that he was in a concentration camp on the outskirts of a small village called Wansleben am See. Okay, I said, but I had my doubts . . .’
‘Why?’
‘There was no way in hell Frank was Jewish. My dad told me about those numbers, and the number that Frank had tattooed on his arm was a Jewish number.’