The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Sammy,’ Brock said softly, ‘I’m afraid Dr Waverley is right. They will surely want to check what they’re given.’

  ‘And if that’s the case . . .’ Waverley automatically swept at the lock of hair ‘. . . as James says, it’s really quite astonishing that we were able to get so far in just twenty-four hours. It would certainly fool someone without access to technical tests. But an expert, with a portable microscope, that’s much more problematic.’

  The room was silent for a moment, then Brock said, ‘Your professional opinion, Dr Waverley. Is it worth trying?’

  Waverley hesitated, then shook his head regretfully. ‘If it were my wife, I wouldn’t risk it. I wish very much I could say otherwise, but I think there’s at least a fifty per cent chance they’d smell a rat.’

  Starling’s face dropped. Waverley looked sadly at him. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Starling. We did our very best.’

  Starling looked round the room at each face in turn, then lowered his eyes. ‘No, you’re right, Tim. I can’t risk it either.’ He sounded tired and defeated.

  Reluctantly Waverley folded the false cover back into its cardboard packing, slid it into the envelope and returned the envelope to his briefcase. He began to take off the gloves. Starling rose to his feet and said he had to go to the toilet. At the table, Waverley paused and reached back into the briefcase. ‘I think it would be best, Chief Inspector,’ he said, holding up the white envelope, ‘if you kept this in your possession. It is, after all, a very good copy, and we don’t want any mistakes.’ He smiled ruefully and handed it over to Brock, who put it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  They waited for Starling to return, his shoulders bowed. ‘OK, Sammy?’ Brock asked, and he nodded. ‘All right.’ Brock turned to the SO10 men. ‘What will they do, at four, when they ring?’

  ‘Step one, try to separate Mr Starling from us. Step two, separate the stamp from Mr Starling. Our priority is to prevent the first happening. Everything flows from that. You got your mobile, Mr Starling? Batteries charged up?’

  Starling produced it from his hip pocket. The other man took it from him and began opening it up.

  ‘Encouraging they want to use this,’ Gallows went on placidly. He had an unruffled calm about him that seemed to soothe Starling.

  ‘You’ll be able to trace their call?’ he asked.

  ‘I doubt that will help, Mr Starling,’ Gallows said. ‘But we’ll be able to hear all your conversations. And if all else fails and you need to talk to us, just dial a number, any number, and we’ll be connected to you.’

  ‘Won’t they be able to tell?’ Starling asked doubtfully.

  Gallows shook his head. ‘OK, Tony?’

  The other man had the phone in pieces now on the table in front of him. ‘Yeah.’

  Gallows reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a plastic pouch from which he emptied a coil of wires and attachments on to the table. ‘Member of Rotary, are we, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, we are now.’ He picked out a lapel pin and attached it to Starling’s jacket, then slipped a piece of equipment into Starling’s inside pocket. ‘And this is so you can listen to us.’ He offered a small pink plug and showed him how to insert it into his ear. ‘Make it the side you don’t use for the phone. OK?’

  As they fussed over him, Kathy wondered if, in some other part of the city, Eva was also being prepared for that moment.

  Heath had reassembled the mobile phone, and handed it back to Starling, who took it gingerly, as if it might explode.

  ‘What do I do now?’ he asked.

  ‘What would you do if we weren’t here?’ Gallows replied.

  He considered that. ‘Go downstairs and look at the lots until they closed the room, I suppose. Then go for a walk or something, till it’s time for the auction.’

  ‘Then that’s exactly what you should do.’

  Brock agreed. ‘You can give this electronic stuff a trial as you go, Sammy,’ he said. ‘You’ll soon get used to it.’

  Sammy Starling straightened upright and began to walk slowly to the door, then stopped and turned to face them all. ‘I just want to say . . .’ his voice was little more than a whisper, and they had to strain to hear him ‘. . . that I’m very grateful for what you’re all doing. When Eva and I are reunited . . . I hope we can find a way to express our thanks properly.’ He turned and walked out of the room, poking at his ear.

  ‘Nice to see some manners these days,’ Gallows murmured to Heath.

  ‘Yeah,’ the other replied, getting heavily to his feet. ‘Touching.’

  When they had gone, Brock turned to Melville. ‘How did his fundraising go?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Remarkably smoothly, considering the shortage of time. It’s really rather frightening, how rapidly the assets which have taken a lifetime to accumulate can be valued and disposed of, if people put their minds to it. It was easier than—No, I’m sorry, that’s a macabre thought.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I was about to say that it was easier than dealing with a deceased estate. Mr Starling’s bank has transferred the sum of 1.15 million pounds sterling into a special Cabot’s account, against the properties in Surrey and London, including contents, his two cars, and various securities and investments held by the bank. I think they got an astonishing bargain, incidentally, but the poor chap had no choice, within the time constraints. A further two hundred thousand has been guaranteed against some investments he holds, we will purchase his entire stamp collection for one hundred thousand, and we’re currently waiting for written confirmation from his partner in a Portuguese property venture that he will deposit one hundred and fifty thousand against Mr Starling’s share. Total one point six million. The buyer’s premium and VAT add twenty-five per cent to the bid price, so that gives him a top bid of one million, two hundred and eighty thousand pounds. That should be enough.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  Soon after one thirty people began to take their seats for the auction, and by ten to two the room was full. On the floor above, Kathy watched their faces on the TV monitors, picking up the atmosphere of increasing anticipation. Desai came over and sat beside her.

  ‘I went down to have another look at lot fifteen in the flesh,’ he said.

  ‘Does it look like a million pounds?’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s absurdly primitive, like something from a child’s toy post office, imitating the real thing. When I was looking at it, I thought, The people who made this had built a world empire but they hadn’t even invented a proper bicycle, let alone the telegraph.’

  James Melville joined them. ‘Nearly time,’ he said. Did you get a chance to view the real lot fifteen, Sergeant?’

  Desai nodded. ‘We were just talking about it. I don’t know if it was just my imagination, but I thought perhaps it did look different from the thing the lab made up.’

  ‘Forging stamps isn’t as easy as you’d think, although plenty of people have tried.’

  On the screens a stir went through the people in the auction room as Cabot’s staff took their seats at the telephone and postal-bid tables. There were four cameras within the hall, one focused on the auctioneer’s dais, one on the front of the audience where Sammy Starling and the young man from Cabot’s were seated, and the other two panning slowly around the room, guided by an operator sitting at a console in front of Kathy.

  Melville pointed out some of the people who were known to him, collectors and their agents, regulars at Cabot’s auctions, and clients who had expressed an interest in particular lots. He identified someone who was there to bid on behalf of a well-known newspaper proprietor, another representing the German philatelic museum in Frankfurt, who were interested in a valuable set of 1914 German New Guinea stamps overprinted by Australian occupying forces.

  The camera moved on, and they watched the faces on the screens, expectant now, sensing the approaching hour. Sammy Starling’s face came into focus.

  He had spent a
n hour walking slowly along the Victoria Embankment, stopping frequently to stare at the river flowing darkly by. A couple of minders had trailed him at a discreet distance, and he had spoken to no one except for a desultory conversation with Gallows on his transmitter.

  He was now the most immobile person in the hall, staring fixedly ahead while the rest of the room shifted and whispered, flicking the pages of catalogues, trying to identify interesting-looking buyers, speculating on the big items.

  ‘Mr Conway’s taking his place,’ Kathy called, watching the attention of the audience riveting on the auctioneer. Brock and the others took their seats in front of the screens.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,’ Conway’s voice came over the loudspeaker, clear, suave, authoritative. ‘Welcome to day one of Cabot’s Summer Stamp Auction. The lots today are British Commonwealth, excluding Great Britain. Lots one to fourteen are an exceptionally fine group from Bermuda, beginning with lot one.’

  An appreciative murmur came from the floor as an assistant brought lot one forward to the platform and held it up; the show had begun.

  The first five lots, though rare, were an overture, allowing Conway to get into his stride, the audience to become entirely focused. After twenty minutes they reached the first major item, lot six. Conway’s voice seemed to take on a greater firmness as he introduced it.

  ‘Lot six, the first Perot issue of 1849. This is a one penny black on bluish grey, Stanley Gibbons catalogue number zero two, with clear to large margins, some suspicion of thinning, but nevertheless a superb example and the finest of the two known Perots of 1849. It is illustrated on the back cover of your catalogue. Only eleven Perots are known to exist, five in black and six in red of which one dated 1848 in black, and two in red of 1853 and 1854, are in the Royal Collection. This example was discovered in 1904 and is listed in Ludington’s. A fuller history of the Perots is provided on page eighteen of your catalogues.’

  Conway paused, the introduction over. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, who will open the bidding at forty thousand pounds sterling?’

  After two hectic minutes, in which telephone bids vied furiously with bids from the floor, lot six, estimated to fetch £80,000, was sold for £113,000.

  ‘Poor Sammy!’ Kathy murmured. On the screen, his image remained immobile as he stared unblinkingly straight ahead, oblivious to all the excitement around him.

  After forty-five minutes, lot fifteen was brought to the front of the room. A murmur from the audience was audible over the loudspeaker. This was potentially the biggest item of the day, and Conway rose to the occasion, summarising the history of the Canadian Cover in the most dramatic terms. He opened the bidding at the reserve. ‘Three hundred thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen. Do I have a bid?’

  There was a satisfied murmur, a silence, and then a gesture from the postal-bids tables. They were off.

  At six hundred thousand, an increasingly fraught competition between the postal bids and several bidders in the audience reached a kind of impasse. Conway sensed a shift of mood and tried to revitalise the flagging pace. ‘At six hundred thousand . . .’ he said, frowning. ‘Number forty-eight.’

  On the second monitor they saw Starling raise his card for the first time.

  ‘Six ten.’ Conway, relieved, pointing briefly at Starling. ‘Number twenty-two.’

  There was a silence, then one of the telephone bidders made a sign.

  ‘Six twenty!’

  Another telephone operator signalled.

  ‘Six thirty,’ and they were away again, several other cards in the room joining in. By seven hundred and forty thousand they had dropped out and Starling was left as the sole bidder within the room, pitted against the two telephone bidders. All three made their bids slowly, letting the tension rise at each new step, Conway skilfully filling the gaps with comment and encouraging banter while the two telephone operators consulted with their unseen customers. At eight hundred and fifty thousand, one of the two looked up to Conway and shook his head slowly and deliberately.

  ‘Eight fifty I am bid,’ Conway said, indicating the other telephone operator. ‘Am I bid eight sixty?’ He looked expectantly at Starling. The whole hall did the same, staring with fascination towards the stiff-faced man, who gave no sign that he had heard or was in any way involved with this. Watching him on the screen, it seemed to Kathy that there was something heroic in Starling’s composure. In that situation, knowing how much more was at stake than his fascinated audience suspected, Kathy doubted that she could have retained such control over the timing of every gesture. Unless, of course, he didn’t care.

  ‘Eight fifty-five?’ Conway prompted, playing to Starling’s reluctance.

  ‘Eight fifty-five?’

  Finally Starling’s card lifted, and a sound of people taking a deep collective breath came over the loudspeaker in the upstairs room.

  ‘He was quite a poker player, I believe,’ Brock said.

  The man at the telephone whispered and raised his hand almost immediately.

  Once again Starling dragged out his own counterbid, which, when it finally came, was accompanied by another great sigh from the room.

  ‘They’re on his side,’ Brock said. ‘Willing him on. One of us against some faceless tycoon in Tokyo or Toronto.’

  The bidding dragged on in five-thousand-pound steps, each painfully attenuated by the stoic figure at the front of the hall, until they reached nine hundred thousand pounds. This time it really did seem as if Starling had reached his limit. Conway urged, he teased, he created silences against which the whole room strained, but Starling moved not a muscle. Finally, reluctantly, Conway moved into his final patter.

  ‘Nine hundred thousand pounds I am bid, for lot fifteen, the telephone bid, going once . . . going twice . . .’

  Starling lifted his card majestically above his head and said, in a clear voice that his opponent might well have heard over the telephone line, ‘One million pounds.’

  There was a stunned silence, and then a wave of applause swept round the room.

  As it died away, all attention turned to the telephone operator. He sat hunched over his instrument, free hand covering his forehead as he spoke urgently with his customer, repeating, waiting. He looked up at Conway, who was repeating the bid. He shrugged, he spoke again into the phone. Then, finally, he lifted his head, eyes bright, and gave a nod to the stage. The audience drew in its breath. For a moment the auctioneer seemed at a loss. He blinked, then recovered and said calmly, ‘One million and five thousand, ladies and gentlemen.’ He turned towards Sammy and repeated, more firmly, ‘One million and five, I am bid.’

  Starling responded immediately, as if he had fully expected this. He lifted his number card. From those close enough to see, scattered applause broke out.

  ‘One million and ten,’ Conway said.

  Again the telephone bidder took an age to respond. He seemed to be interrogating the operator about his opponent, and the man was tugging at his hair as he whispered rapidly into the mouthpiece. Then he nodded again to Conway.

  ‘One million and fifteen.’

  Sammy’s hand came straight up again. On the TV monitor his face had taken on a pugnacious expression, lower lip thrust forward. He didn’t flinch when his bid was topped once again, and immediately brought up his numbered card.

  Yet the unseen telephone bidder was equally tenacious, and slowly, still in five-thousand-pound steps, the bidding reached one million one hundred thousand, then one million two hundred thousand.

  When Sammy reached one and a quarter million, someone in the audience, unable to contain themselves, let out a whoop of excitement. Conway paused, and the expression on his face, one eyebrow somewhat raised, sent a ripple of laughter round the room, which turned into a roar. It seemed to break the tension, which had become almost intolerable. Perhaps, too, it broke the heart of the man hanging on the other end of the phone line. He heard it quite clearly over the satellite link, sighed and quietly told the Cabot’s operator
that enough was enough. He picked up the renewed roar of applause that greeted this, and sadly put down the phone.

  ‘Quite a performance,’ Brock said, watching Starling on the monitor, rising to his feet to the cheers of the room. He stepped out into the central aisle and stood for a moment, letting them all see his face. There was no sign of excitement or triumph there, and its impassivity startled those close enough to see, so that their clapping faltered. He began to walk unhurriedly up the aisle to the door. Brock glanced at his watch. ‘Two minutes to three. Better tell our people outside the building. We want photographs of everyone who leaves between now and four.’

  A few minutes later Sammy Starling appeared at the doorway to the upstairs room. At close range he looked more stunned than composed, his eyes unblinking, breathing shallow. At his shoulder the young man who had sat beside him in the auction was grinning with excitement. Behind him, two security men in uniform brought in a plastic pouch, which they laid reverentially on the table in the middle of the room.

  Starling stared down at the tiny envelope. ‘It is very strange,’ he said, ‘to see everything you possess boiled down to just that.’ He looked at Brock. ‘They’ve cleaned me out. They couldn’t have got any closer to what I was worth if they’d been my fucking accountant.’

  Another man had appeared at the doorway, solemn-faced and bearing a sheaf of documents. He gave a respectful little cough. Sammy turned to him and said wearily, ‘I hope you’re not expecting a tip, sunshine.’

  The man gave a wan smile. ‘Of course not, Mr Starling,’ he murmured. ‘The total damage is the bottom figure, here . . .’

  Sammy looked, shrugged. ‘Not a problem, old son.’ He flashed his brilliant white teeth.

  Fresh coffee was brought up, the Cabot’s people retired, and the room settled into a tense wait. While Brock and the SO10 officers conferred on possible contingencies, Kathy sat down beside Starling.