After the disastrous attempt to retrieve some Indian knife for Grey and his silver candlesticks from Sarah at The Old Curiosity Shop, he and Stokes had run like the devil himself was chasing them. Sarah’s disappearance just as he pulled the trigger had scared him more than he’d ever admit to anyone. They'd leapt into the waiting car, both as white as sheets and speechless, with the exception of Stokes screaming ‘Drive!’ at the young Nigerian waiting for them in the Peugeot round the corner.
They’d returned to the apartment, empty-handed, the pistol heaved into the Thames, sinking to the silty bottom, joining countless others under the murky waters of history. Stokes made his way to the liquor cabinet, pouring two substantial tumblers of whisky. Grabbing the drinks and the bottle, the men collapsed onto the couch.
‘What the fuck was that?’
Sinclair shook his head, ‘It’s the work of the devil, that’s what it is.’
‘Fuck off. How the fuck am I meant to tell Grey what happened? Jesus, he’s going to kill us.’ Stokes drained his glass, refilled it, and knocked it back a second time, emptying the bottle. He wiped the nervous sweat from his brow and stubbled head. ‘She did just disappear didn’t she? Fuck, if you hadn’t of fired that bloody gun we could’ve searched her place for the stuff. Now we are well and truly fucked. You really are from another planet, aren’t you.’
Sinclair sat silently, sipping the malty amber liquid, taking the time, even now, to enjoy the best grog he’d ever had. A thousand times better than the stuff he’d drunk back in Bruce Bay. Idly, he wondered if Sweeney kept any of the good stuff for himself, only selling the swill to the miners. The abuse from Stokes rolled off his back and his anger simmered unseen.
From the depths of Stokes’ jacket pocket came a shrill ring. Sinclair couldn’t help but stare in fascination at the bizarre magic box making the sound which Stokes now held in his hand, a name prominently displayed in a lit rectangle.
‘Shit, it’s Grey.’
He stood up, his face alternating between shades of fear and subjugation. He stabbed at the phone.
‘Yes? ... no, we didn’t get it ... no, she said she’d already handed it over to Christie’s ... there was a little trouble.’ He winced, before carrying on, glancing at Sinclair, ‘Yeah, the new guy shot her ... no, no one saw us.’ Then there was silence from Stokes for an uncomfortably long time. Sinclair drained his whisky, confident he knew what the magic box was saying to his companion, and he wanted to be ready. Stokes swallowed loudly, before finally speaking again into the phone, ‘Yep, I understand, no problem. I’ll handle it.’ The phone disappeared back into his jacket.
Sinclair rearranged his solid bulk on the couch, every sinew ready for whatever was about to come his way, his inbuilt survival mechanism ready to kick in at the slightest provocation.
‘Another drink?’ Stokes asked, moving towards the cabinet, his hand back inside his coat.
‘Nah, mate, I’m right,’ Sinclair replied, his empty tumbler in his left hand, as if he were about to pass it to Stokes to put away. Sinclair stood up at the exact same moment Stokes withdrew a knife from his cavernous pocket, and slashed at thin air.
THE EXPERTS
When Richard Grey eviscerated the clerk, the only armed security guard present had fired wildly. Hitting an arm had successfully incapacitated the crazed man, but it would have been a lot simpler had his shot taken the man’s life.
* * *
The Metropolitan Police spent five hours at Christie’s, investigating the incident. Every witness was meticulously questioned: where they were; what they heard; and what they saw.
Don Claire and Jay Khosla had retreated to Don's office to run damage control with the PR team. The adage that all publicity was good publicity was debatable in this case. It was not good business to have one of your best customers gut one of your employees, on stage, in the middle of an auction, streamed live across the Internet.
Ryan Francis and Gemma Dance were detained like the rest of the auction attendees, but had been funnelled into the boardroom with the other key Christie’s employees, to be interviewed last due to their connections with Richard Grey and the katar. There, they spent several of those hours talking with Andrew Harvard and Patricia Bolton, supervised by a lone constable, who’d given up trying to follow their convoluted conversation.
‘So they’re a pair,’ Ryan muttered, not for the first time. They’d all taken to repeating themselves, incredulous at what they’d witnessed earlier.
‘Sarah said she knew that it was part of a pair that some lord owned ...’
‘Lord Grey?’ interrupted Ryan. Patricia shot him an annoyed look.
‘Yes, Lord Grey – but that it had originally belonged to the Raja of Nahan, in India. That was what she was told by the seller –’
‘But we’ve no evidence,’ Andrew interjected, also earning him an exasperated look from Patricia.
Patricia, unfailingly loyal to her friend, replied, ‘If Sarah were here, she’d be able to tell us more, but she’s not, so this is all we have to work with for now.’
‘Surely the police will have to look into whether Grey is involved in Sarah’s disappearance?’ Andrew offered.
Patricia fiddled uncomfortably with her coffee mug, and mumbled noncommittally, memories of the bizarre conversation with Sarah fresh in her mind. Patricia was pretty sure she had travelled back in time, the same as her parents, but there was still the nagging fear that Grey had hurt her. ‘I’m sure after today they’ll be all through his dealings with a fine tooth comb,’ she muttered.
Andrew, misunderstanding Patricia’s reluctance to discuss Sarah’s disappearance, put his arm around her shoulders. He wanted to comfort this woman who’d so recently agreed to be his girlfriend. His once-despairing, and now jubilant, mother had all but taken out a full-page ad in The Times, telling the world. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d already started knitting booties.
‘If only the police would let us see both knives, to compare. Looks like Grey was right all along; that Sarah’s katar is the mate to the one his grandfather bought from Christie’s in the forties.’ Ryan shuffled his papers till he came to his copy of the auction receipt.
‘It says here that Mrs Elizabeth Williams was the seller, and that it sold for just over two hundred pounds at the Red Cross and St. John Fundraiser. The file only had sale and purchase receipts, not a photo unfortunately. I’d need to see the original auction catalogue, and hopefully that has a picture. It’s a shame we never got to see the original catalogue before this ...’
They were interrupted when the constable was finally given the nod to collect Patricia for her witness statement.
‘Seriously, how much longer are you going to keep us here?’ Gemma demanded, tilting her chin defiantly in the face of the uniformed man.
‘Sorry, but we have to talk to all the witnesses tonight; you'd be surprised at how much time warps your memory.’
He escorted Patricia out of the room to one of the offices the police had commandeered, and handed her over to a plain-clothes detective, one younger than she expected. He walked her through the process until they reached the issue of Sarah’s disappearance, ‘What can you tell me about the whereabouts of Sarah Lester?’
‘Nothing. I’ve told the police everything I know.’
‘You haven’t told me. So humour me, and fill in the gaps,’ Detective Sergeant Owen Gibson spoke encouragingly.
‘You’ve got to be joking? It’s ten o’clock at night, I’m tired and hungry, and, to be honest, I just want to go home and have a bath. You clearly weren’t here when it happened. I’m never going to get the sight of that poor man’s stomach splitting open like an overripe grapefruit. His blood went everywhere. And all you want to do is ask me about Sarah? I’m quite sure it’s all on file.’ Turning away, she gazed unseeingly through the opaque glass of the office door.
Detective Sergeant Gibson read through his notes, his eyes gritty, his cheap suit crumpled from the late hour. Being surrounded by
such ostentatious opulence confirmed to him that the world wasn’t fair – the last thing he needed was one of these rich tossers making his job any harder. ‘Miss Bolton, I appreciate that you are tired but, as you can see, I’m not currently sitting in front of a computer to check the veracity of your story. This will go much faster if you fill in the blanks for me. So I’ll ask you again, and if you choose not to answer this time, I’ll be forced to move this interview to the station, where it will take much longer. I can assure you I’m well acquainted with long nights, and it’d be no trouble to resume this conversation there. So, what can you tell me about the disappearance of Miss Lester?’ He waited, his point driven home by his chewed pen poised above his notebook.
Biting the inside her cheek, Patricia considered her options. An honest answer would be taken as backchat; feigning no knowledge was unlikely to be believed; which left using a version of the truth the easiest answer. Taking a deep breath she replied, ‘Well, you know both her parents disappeared? One of the last things she told me was that she’d heard a rumour that her father was in India ...’
Gibson started to interrupt. ‘No, you wanted me to answer you, so let me finish. She heard a rumour – where from I don’t know, she didn’t say. Anyway, I haven’t seen her since just before the shooting in the shop. Whether she ran off when they came in, I don’t know. But maybe she took off to India to find her father. If someone was shooting at you, and you knew the police hadn’t caught them yet, would you go back to work?’
Gibson massaged his temples –this was starting to give him a headache. He scribbled a few words in his notebook, before looking at Patricia. ‘Thank you Miss Bolton, we’ll be in touch if we need more information. You’re free to go now.’
Patricia stood and left the room without a backward glance. Harvard was waiting outside the office, his interview over too. All around them, others were gathering up their belongings and streaming towards the lifts. ‘Come on, we’ll take the stairs’ Andrew offered, motioning towards the door, away from the herd of tired interviewees waiting to make their exit.
Ryan and Gemma were now the only ones left in the opulent boardroom. They’d each had a cursory interview with a constable, with the police satisfied they were of no interest, being ostensibly ‘on the same team’.
‘What do you think, Gem?’
‘I think I need a bath,’ she answered smartly, her black pencil skirt crinkled beyond what she considered acceptable.
‘I meant, what do you think about Grey? Going berserk like that? Now that the others are gone do you think the police will let us have a look at the two knives?’
Gemma looked aghast, ‘I can’t actually believe you’re thinking that. Honestly, you have a one-track mind. You and your antiquities! The last thing I want to see is a knife covered with someone’s stomach contents. That’s appalling. Suffice to say, we shan’t be dealing with Mr Grey for quite some time now. God knows if we’ll ever see a penny of what he owes the firm. That’ll give the Accounts Receivable team something to do. I’d prefer to just leave now.’
THE ADVISOR
‘What have you done with her then?’ he asked, sinking into one of the leather chairs, amber liquid sloshing dangerously near the rim of his glass.
‘She’s with Mrs Abbott, in one of the upstairs rooms. Did you want to speak with her?’ Captain Doulton’s hands were barely steady as he poured himself a generous measure of scotch into a matching glass.
‘No, she’s in the best hands. Tell me about the body. I suppose I should have a look myself, but hearing it from you may well suffice.’
Doulton closed his eyes, and the scene replayed itself in his head. The Indian girl screaming, as if hell had taken up residence in the house. Looking past Sarah’s shoulder. The body. A solitary fly circling lazily around the body, waiting his turn at the still warm flesh of Simeon Williams. He shook his head, trying to dispel the image. ‘It was a mess. He was in his uniform, sword just within reach. He must have been surprised, and overpowered by someone far stronger. Much as I disliked Williams, there’s not a chance he would have just sat there – not without a fight anyway, if you know what I mean.’
Albert Lester remained seated, sipping the fine single malt he had shipped in from Scotland. Ostensibly, he ordered it for the Governor General, but actually consumed far more himself. Whisky numbed his feelings and memories. He never drank himself into a stupor – that was how you ended up dead in this country. No, he drank just enough to forget that this was not the life into which he’d been born. He drank to forget a wife and a daughter. A daughter he’d given up hope of ever seeing again. Until ... until he’d heard about the peculiar Sarah Williams. The Sarah Williams who’d fired a shot from a rifle, killing a rogue tiger intent on mauling one of the local members of Indian royalty. Nice English ladies didn’t do that. Nice English ladies would have fainted. ‘What’s happening with his body?’
‘It’s been moved to the doctor’s rooms. I’ve asked him to have a look at Simeon, and maybe give us some more information on his death ... although it’s bloody obvious that if someone cuts you from navel to neck, you’re going to die. Sorry for being so blunt.’
‘No need to apologise, Captain. He wasn’t liked, and after the chaotic events of last night, anybody could’ve taken a knife to him – but to be taken by surprise, that seems more unlikely. I’ll talk with Miss Williams when she has recovered in a day or two – no point distressing her further now. Thank you, Captain.’
Captain James Doulton returned his glass to the tray, and took his leave, pulling the heavy door shut behind him. Leaning against it for a moment, he closed his eyes. The image of Simeon Williams flickered behind his eyelids. The scent of death lingered in his nostrils. He’d hoped the peat of the whisky would have chased it away. An odd fellow that Albert Lester, he thought, as he gathered himself to return to his men. For some of them, it would have been the first time they’d seen such a brutal murder. He was used to death; his posting to India these past four years had seen to that. So he was well equipped to counsel his men. But dealing with Lester? There was something off about him. Doulton struggled to understand the man, especially his role in the Empire. The Governor General and Lester were inseparable. There was no doubt he had an uncanny way of predicting trouble in the colony but, apart from that, he didn’t seem to fit in. Doulton shrugged it off; it was above his pay grade to worry about the man.
He set off to debrief his men, wiping warm perspiration from his face. Long years in India and still its cloying heat invaded every part of his being. The heat was intoxicating, but had the devious ability to send you mad should you succumb to its wily ways.
THE VISITOR
Albert Lester, the grey-haired missing proprietor of The Old Curiosity Shop, father of Sarah, and husband of Annabel, sat in his rosewood chair, gazing at the room around him, its overt grandeur now as familiar as his own face. There had been a time once where every item here would have caused his heart to race. The value, rarity and provenance of the furniture alone would be worth a staggering sum on the open market. A market yet to exist. A market one hundred and fifty years away, give or take a decade. The workmanship was like nothing he’d ever come across in his day, unless you took into account pieces on display at Hampton Court or Windsor Castle. And it killed him that there was no possibility of him ever being able to deal in these things. All his life he’d been a wheeler and dealer. His life revolved around buying and selling antiques and bric-a-brac. “Buy low, sell high, always leave a bit in it for the next guy”, that was his motto. He’d never for a moment imagined that his daughter would follow in his footsteps. All that money spent on her education at the best schools and university, and she’d turned out to be a damn second-hand dealer.
A single tear wound its way down his face. There’d been a point early on, where, for one more moment with his family, he would have given up this lifetime full of antiquities. But he’d so fallen in love with this life, a daily Boy’s Own adventure, that he hadn’t h
ad the time, or perhaps the inclination, to find a way back. Five years of pondering his predicament had provided some theoretical answers, which he had shamefully refused to investigate further. And now his daughter had just proved one of them – that you could come and you could go. Or so he fervently wished. He wouldn’t know for sure until he spoke with the distraught Sarah Williams – if it was indeed her, and not his daughter, Sarah Lester. He couldn’t very well go barging into her room to ask.
Lester knocked back his whisky and left the room, other errands barging in on his jumbled thoughts. The moisture ring left by the cold glass was the only trace he’d been there. If anyone had sought evidence of the existence of Albert Lester prior to his appearance in India in the early 1860s, they would have been disappointed. He was merely a visitor to this place, this time. A visitor who’d been unable and, in turn, unwilling, to leave.
THE MOTHER
Annabel Lester sat at the scrubbed table, reopening the bible, its inscription sweeping across the page in bold strokes. Hesitantly she reached out towards the ink. Her finger brushed the swirl of the ‘S’ of the word ‘Sarah’.
Of all the possibilities, this was the one she’d never anticipated. She recalled her first days in New Zealand; how she would have traded her soul to the devil to see her daughter once more. The nights she’d spent shivering in squalid shacks, hiding from men who thought her fair game without a husband to protect her, were never far from her mind. She’d been stunned by the extraordinary and unimaginable path her life had taken. But for the grace of God, she could have become a lady of the night, a harlot, plying her wares to every drunken sailor, soldier and sinner who had coin to pay her, had she not been rescued from the streets by Reverend Howard Cummings.
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