Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

  Brock exaggerated his frown of confusion. ‘But . . . he was in London, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but I emailed him the photos that Emerson had, so that he could ask Toby Beaumont at the hotel if he could identify any of the people. And John—that’s his name, John Greenslade—noticed the similarity between the man in the San Francisco photo with Maisy, and the one with the family group in the 1956 picture. So he hopped on a plane and came over to help me identify him. He had a pass for the Widener Library, where the archive was, and that’s how we found Gennady. I couldn’t have done it without him.’

  Aha, Brock thought. She was beaming an open smile at him, hands held palms up, like a magician who’s just performed a neat trick demonstrating there’s nothing up her sleeve.

  ‘That was extremely public-spirited of him, to rush across the Atlantic just to give you a hand.’

  She had the grace to fully blush this time. ‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it? He’s fascinated by the case, and . . . he’s a great admirer of yours, Brock. I’d really like the two of you to meet up.’

  Good grief, he thought, she doesn’t need my approval. Surely she doesn’t see me as some kind of father figure, does she? But he was touched all the same.

  ‘And does he figure in your MI5 report?’

  ‘No, I left him out too.’

  Brock nodded. Their food arrived and there was an interval while they sorted out salt and pepper and cutlery and began eating. Kathy seemed to be extremely hungry.

  ‘Well now,’ Brock said when he’d finished, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, ‘it was a brilliant discovery, but where exactly does it leave us?’

  ‘Nancy nursed her mother, Maisy, in the last years of her life, before she died last summer. My guess is that they talked about the old days, and Maisy gave her the photograph and told her about Chelsea Mansions and about their friendship with a Russian official called Gennady Moszynski. Now, if you google “Chelsea Mansions”, you get the hotel, but you also get lots of references to Mikhail Moszynski and his marriage to Shaka Gibbons. Imagine how astonished Nancy would have been. She must have been very curious to find out if he was related to her parents’ friend.’

  ‘But why keep it a secret from Emerson? Why not talk to the hotel people about it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s interesting. Emerson wondered if there was something she didn’t want to talk about, perhaps that she’d been abused or something like that.’

  ‘She looks relaxed enough in the picture, doesn’t she?’ Brock stared intently at the photograph. ‘I wonder if there’s anything else it can tell us. If we had the original we could have got the lab to check it.’

  ‘I had the same thought. I brought the original back with me and gave Emerson a copy. Also, there’s another interesting possibility,’ she said, and told him about the dates of Gennady’s visit to San Francisco and Nancy’s birth.

  ‘Intriguing,’ Brock said. ‘But let’s not jump to conclusions. And I’m not sure we could get the lab to check their DNA without alerting Dick Chivers.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Kathy frowned. ‘Sean Ardagh seemed interested in the date of the photo.’

  ‘Fifty-six,’ Brock mused. ‘A big year for the spooks, I think. That was the year Burgess and Maclean turned up in Moscow. And the year Krushchev made a secret speech to the Party Congress, denouncing the cult of Stalin. People thought it would signal a thaw in the Cold War, but it didn’t. There were riots in Georgia, then Poland and later Hungary, all put down by Russian tanks.’

  Kathy had her laptop out, looking up 1956 on the web. ‘Elvis released his first gold album,’ she said. ‘Jackson Pollock died in a car crash.’

  ‘What was happening in April?’ Brock asked. ‘When Gennady was in London?’

  Kathy searched for a moment. ‘Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco . . . the first episode on CBS of As the World Turns . . . first demonstration of video tape . . . British navy diver Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb vanished in Portsmouth harbour . . . heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano retired . . . Got it. There was an official visit to the UK by the Russian leaders, Bulganin and Krushchev. On the twenty-sixth, the day of Nancy’s birthday, there was a big banquet lunch held for them at the Mansion House in London. You can see a video of it.’

  ‘So Gennady was probably in the official party, and met up with Nancy’s parents in Chelsea. How did they manage that, I wonder? They must have been in touch.’

  ‘But it’s all so long ago.’ Kathy was scrolling down through the 1956 calendar. ‘And then in October there was the Suez Crisis. Toby mentioned that. He called it the end of innocence. He was in the army then.’

  ‘I wonder if he can tell us anything more about what happened that April.’

  ‘He told John that he didn’t recognise the people in the photograph.’

  ‘Yes, but still, we might be able to jog his memory. I think it’s time to pay a visit to Chelsea Mansions.’

  ‘I’ve been banned, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t. You’d better stay out of trouble, Kathy. I’ll do this alone.’

  Brock paused at the corner of Cunningham Place, gazing over at the bulk of Chelsea Mansions as if for the first time. He’d been hardly conscious of the place when he’d been there before, at night, his head spinning with fever. Now it stood, its brick gables glowing blood-red in the sun, with all the confidence and swagger of the late Victorian age. It was too overbearing for Brock’s taste, too full of bluster, but he could see how it might appeal to a rich Russian whose father had perhaps told him as a boy about the grand London house in which he had once stayed.

  He mounted the hotel steps and went in. Deb put her head around the sitting room door, her mouth full. She gulped, choked, then swallowed.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Brock introduced himself and she cried out, ‘Thought I recognised you! Of course, on telly. I’m Deb.’

  ‘Hello, Deb. I wondered if Colonel Beaumont might be able to spare me a few minutes.’

  ‘Of course. We’re just having a staff meeting—Toby!’ She threw open the sitting room door and Brock caught a glimpse of people sitting on plump faded armchairs, holding mugs of tea and plates of cake.

  It took a few moments for Toby to struggle to his feet and make his way out to peer at the visitor through the dark discs of his glasses.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Toby!’ Deb cried, as if she’d just conjured up the most wonderful treat.

  ‘Ah! Of course. Welcome, welcome. You’ll have some tea? Julie has made us Dundee cake. One of her best, straight from the oven. Come, come. Let’s go into the office.’

  Brock followed him, a rather precarious figure leaning on his stick, but with the broad shoulders of a once powerful man. He indicated seats and said, ‘So we meet at last. Obviously we’ve been following events closely. John Greenslade will be very disappointed to have missed you—one of our guests, but of course you’ll know all about that. He’s disappeared somewhere for a few days. Taken a great interest in you, Chief Inspector. Yes, he will be disappointed. So what can we do for you?’

  Deb bustled in with a tray. ‘Here we are. Do you need me too?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘By all means,’ Brock said, ‘if you can spare the time.’

  ‘Certainly! I don’t think the troops will mutiny while I’m away, will they, Toby?’

  Toby chuckled. ‘We have a first-class team here, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘A family,’ Deb added. ‘And are you quite recovered now?’

  Brock looked at her in surprise, and she explained, ‘John kept us informed. He went to the hospital to see you when you were in a coma, did you know that?’

  ‘No. I had no idea.’

  ‘So how can we help you?’

  ‘I should make clear that I’m off-duty at the moment, and this is just to satisfy my curiosity about some secondary features of the case that have been bothering me.’

  ‘Can’t let it go, eh
?’ Toby nodded approvingly. ‘The new chap hasn’t been to see us. What’s his name?’

  ‘Superintendent Chivers.’

  ‘Yes, that’s him. Getting anywhere, is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not up to date with the investigation.’

  ‘Cutting you out, are they?’ Toby shook his head. ‘Turf politics, I suppose. So what are these secondary features?’

  Brock took out the 1956 photograph and handed it to him.

  ‘Yes,’ Toby said. ‘John showed me this. That’s Chelsea Mansions in the background, right enough, but I couldn’t tell him who the people were. Not that I could see the relevance, frankly.’

  ‘We’ve always wondered if Nancy had a particular reason for wanting to stay here,’ Brock said. ‘And it appears that she did. We’ve now established that this is Nancy in the photograph, aged sixteen, and those are her parents. So she’d been here before.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Deb took the photograph for a closer look. ‘I suppose it could be her . . . But she never mentioned this to us.’

  ‘That’s strange, isn’t it? I believe your aunt owned a hotel here in Chelsea Mansions, Colonel.’

  He waved his hand. ‘Toby, please. Yes, my father’s aunt, Great-Aunt Daphne, next door at number seven.’

  ‘So it’s possible that these people were staying at her hotel. Certainly Nancy would have remembered being here with her parents. That’s presumably why she was so eager to stay here. And yet, having come all this way, she didn’t mention it to you?’

  ‘That does seem strange,’ Toby agreed.

  ‘Would you still have your great-aunt’s hotel records, visitors’ books, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. John had a poke around in our attic, but I don’t think he came up with anything like that.’

  ‘Would you have been here at that time, Toby? April 1956?’

  He frowned in thought. ‘Shouldn’t think so. I was in the army by then.’

  ‘There was a visit by the Soviet leaders to London that April.’

  ‘Oh, I do remember that—B and K, Bulganin and Krushchev. The papers were full of it. I remember the Daily Express ran articles instructing readers on how to say “Hello, how are you?” and “Did you have a nice trip?” in Russian, in case they bumped into any of the official party in the street. But no, I’m sure I wasn’t in London then. I would have been up at Catterick.’

  Brock wasn’t altogether convinced by the way he dismissed the idea, but it was hard to read Toby’s expression, behind those dark lenses. ‘Pity. I was hoping you might have been the photographer.’

  ‘Sorry, no. But look, this is ancient history. What’s its relevance?’

  He said it with a sudden vehemence, and Brock sensed an undercurrent of impatience, even anger in the man. Money troubles, perhaps. The place looked as if it was on its last legs.

  ‘Why are you wasting your time with this?’ Toby was going on, his voice hardening. ‘You and I both know what lies at the heart of it all. You had the answer in your hands. Money is what this is all about, the gangster Moszynski’s money, and the sickness and corruption that flows from that.’

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you? I believe he tried to cheat you.’

  ‘I detested him.’ Toby sat up straighter in his chair, sticking out his chin defiantly, and Brock had a glimpse of what he would have been like in the army, twenty years before.

  ‘He was one of those men who have no history, no tradition. They are opportunists who exist only in the present, preying upon those around them and using their money to spread corruption. And at the heart of that corruption squats that poisonous toad, Hadden-Vane. You had him, Brock! You had him in your grip, and he slipped away, thanks to corruption!’

  He reached for a folded newspaper and slapped it down on the table in front of Brock, who saw the picture of Hadden-Vane, beaming smugly at the camera, and the caption, MP cleared. The short article stated that Scotland Yard had confirmed that Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane was not considered a person of interest in the murders of Nancy Haynes and Mikhail Moszynski. An unnamed source claimed that investigations on British soil had now been concluded and that a request to send detectives to continue inquiries in Moscow and St Petersburg had been rejected by the Russian government.

  ‘You’ve been duped.’ Toby sank back into his chair. ‘Outflanked and outmanoeuvred. The toad’s too wily for you.’

  And perhaps it was true, Brock thought, as he walked back through Belgravia and Victoria. Or perhaps it was just the paranoia of an old soldier who had been defeated by the brutal realities of civilian life.

  The officer at the reception desk at Queen Anne’s Gate had been told to expect him, and immediately showed him up to his old office, where Superintendent Chivers offered him a coffee and a seat. Chivers seemed unabashed to be in occupation of Brock’s old room. It was just an office after all, but still it seemed rather eerie, with the old clutter of books and papers swept away and someone else at Dot’s desk outside, as if Brock were dead and returning as a ghost to see how the world was coping without him. Extremely well, seemed to be the answer.

  ‘Yes, just putting the final touches to the report,’ Chivers said. ‘Then it’s up to the politicians if they want to pursue it, which I doubt.’

  ‘So it was the Russians all the time?’

  ‘Yes, a rerun of the Litvinenko case, except that they varied their method to hide the fact. No exotic poisons this time. They hired a local sub-contractor, Peebles, to do the dirty work.’

  ‘How did they get onto him?’

  ‘Through Danny Yilmaz’s cousin, Barbaros Kaya. We can’t prove it, but we’re sure he’s had drug dealings with Russian mafia from the Caucasus. That seems to be the link. We think they were used by an FSB faction that wants to ingratiate itself in the Kremlin by bringing Moszynski’s money back to Russia.’

  Brock wondered if Sean Ardagh had inspired this idea. ‘And will they do that?’

  ‘That depends on which side of the fence Vadim Kuzmin chooses to jump. He holds the reins now. We’ve had the fraud boys working on the accountant, Freddie Clarke, but he’s giving nothing away.’

  ‘And Nancy Haynes?’

  ‘Peebles mistook her for Marta Moszynski. They wanted rid of her too—apparently she still has some influence with Putin because of her dead husband, Gennady Moszynski.’

  ‘The MI5 theory,’ Brock said.

  ‘Yes.’ Chivers scowled at Brock, irked by his lack of enthusiasm. ‘You have a problem with that, Brock?’

  Brock took the 1956 photograph out of his pocket and showed it to him. ‘This turned up. It’s Chelsea Mansions, and that’s a teenage Nancy Haynes and her parents. The other man is probably Gennady.’

  ‘What?’ Chivers peered at it. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Reasonably. Not so as it would stand up in court.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Nancy’s companion, Emerson Merckle, had a packet of her old photographs.’

  ‘Well . . . what am I supposed to make of it?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Chivers stared at it for a while, then pushed it aside and gave Brock a grim smile and shook his head. ‘Brock, you bugger, you always do this.’

  ‘Do what, Dick?’

  ‘Try to complicate things. You’re never satisfied with the simple answer. You’ve always got to look for a more complicated explanation, a more interesting and original explanation. Well, you’re wrong. Remember Occam’s razor, Brock—the simplest of two theories is to be preferred.’

  Brock hadn’t seen Chivers so worked up. He seemed to have touched a nerve.

  ‘My report is about to go to Sharpe,’ Chivers went on. ‘Don’t muddy the waters, please.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Brock put the photograph back in his pocket and got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the update, Dick.’

  Chivers showed him to the door. ‘Any time, Brock. You’re looking well, by the way. Still on sick leave?’

  ‘Another week, the
doctor says.’

  ‘Best not to rush things. Not sure what they’re going to do with this place. Someone said they were thinking of selling it. Shame if they did. Close to HQ but conveniently out of sight. I’ve become quite attached to it.’

  Feeling like a displaced person peddling a worthless trinket, Brock decided to give the photo one last try. He took the tube across the river to the Elephant and Castle and walked down to Amelia Street, where SERIS, the Specialist Evidence Recovery and Imaging Services unit, was based, and with them Morris Munns. Morris, whose myopic gaze through thick-lensed glasses seemed so at odds with his ability to conjure hidden information from crime scenes, grabbed him in a hug.

  ‘We thought we’d lost you,’ he cried. ‘The Marburg Pimpernel. The lads ran a book on your survival. I lost a packet.’

  ‘You betted against me?’ Brock said, shocked.

  ‘It’s called hedging,’ Morris chuckled. ‘Come on, you can buy me lunch while you tell me about this private job.’

  Over a Thai chicken salad Brock showed Morris the photograph. He peered at it, turned it over, sniffed it.

  ‘Over fifty years old? So what am I meant to find?’

  ‘The reason why this picture killed two people. No, I honestly don’t know. Anything you can tell me about it. For instance there’s a distinctive lapel badge on that bloke at the back. We think he may be Russian, the other three American, the background Cunningham Place in Chelsea. We don’t know who took the picture. We believe the date is on or around the twenty-sixth of April, 1956.’

  ‘Okay. I suppose you’ll say this is urgent, only I’ve got a backlog of weeks.’

  ‘Your other customers don’t come back from the dead to buy you lunch, Morris.’

  After they parted Brock rang Kathy. He told her about Chivers’ report and then, as he was about to ring off, she mentioned that John Greenslade was flying back from America that night, and could the three of them meet up for dinner the next evening? He wasn’t wildly enthusiastic, but he sensed her eagerness and agreed.

  When he got home he felt edgy and unable to settle. Later, after grilling a fish fillet for his supper, he sat in the window bay that projected out over the lane, watching the trains pass by in the twilit shadows of the cutting down below. He had a novel on his knee, but was unable to concentrate on it. Too many characters, he thought, none of whom he cared about, and too clever by half. Which was what Chivers would say about him. Quick and clean, was Chivers. Get the job done. Occam’s razor.