Killing the Emperors (7 page)

‘So she ignored your advice?’

‘Not completely,’ said Amiss. ‘I rang her just before she went with him to Marrakesh and she admitted being slightly perturbed. Myles had called her from Iraq to say he’d heard a few bad things about him from some old SAS-hand.’

‘But that didn’t make her cancel the trip.’

‘No. “I think this might be make-or-break weekend,” she said. “But for now I must fly. Like Chambers Dictionary, I’m Morocco bound.”’

Milton sighed and reached for the last piece of pizza. ‘And what happened in Morocco?’

Amiss took another mouthful of red wine. ‘She called me on Saturday evening to explain that every prospect pleased and only Sarkovsky was vile. On the plus side, she was in the Churchill suite in La Mamounia, had seen some fine Islamic architecture, been massaged with all manner of fabulous unguents in the spa, had eaten outside in a balmy breeze, and when she rang she was sitting on her private terrace, smoking a superb cigar, drinking a fine brandy, and gazing at the enormous garden which Winston Churchill pronounced the loveliest place in the world.’

‘And the minus side?’

‘The food was disappointing and she couldn’t get it into Sarkovsy’s thick head that Islamic art and architecture were worthy of admiration. Relations were already strained when he had a call that put him in a terrible mood. He’d a few by then and he fessed up. Turned out he’d an art adviser he’d been keeping secret from Jack because, as he put it, he didn’t think she was very fresh about art and he’d secretly spent a few hundred million behind her back on Hirsts and Emins and Koons and the rest of the usual suspects. Still, she’d been troubling him with her negative comments about conceptual art so he’d had an independent evaluation of the art he’d bought through the said adviser. He’d just been told his collection had gone down drastically in value.’

‘She didn’t sympathise, I suppose?’

‘She sure didn’t. She told him it served him right. That had he bought art of intrinsic value of the kind she had been trying to educate him to appreciate, he would have a collection of which he could be proud, but that by going for the trophy shock-and-awe art recommended by people without taste or scruple, he had landed himself with a load of dross which would probably be worth nothing in ten years time. And serve him right. If he had any sense, she said, he should sell the lot now.’

‘That didn’t go down well?’

‘It didn’t. He threw a tantrum and stormed off. She retired to her magnificent suite to commune with the ghost of Churchill.’

‘And what did Churchill recommend?’

‘More brandy. But she was sufficiently rattled to ask me to locate Ellis and find out if he’d learned anything more about Sarkovsky. She had a feeling that he might be having business problems.’ He gestured at Pooley. ‘Over to you, Ellis.’

‘He was indeed having business problems. I met her a couple of days after she got back to tell her to drop Sarkovsky, but she said he didn’t appear at all on Sunday and had sulked all the way back to London on Monday, so that in effect they’d dropped each other. She then admitted she might be tempted if he relented and repeated an earlier offer to take her on an adventure tour up the Amazon, so I gave the unexpurgated story. There were good reasons to think he’d had a business partner blown up just because he wanted one hundred percent of the company.’

‘He wasn’t just getting his retaliation in first in the manner of Russian crooks?’ asked Milton.

‘My sources didn’t think so. They’re not very judgemental in Russia, but apparently they were a bit shocked because he and the business partner had been friends from childhood.’

‘So how did he get away with it?’

‘Bribery.’

‘And the journalist who allegedly was murdered?’

‘Was a young investigative reporter from the local paper who was concerned about medical supplies bound for local hospitals being hijacked on an industrial scale and diverted into the black market.’

‘The link with Sarkovsky?’

‘Apparently she had evidence his trucking company was involved. But once again, the police dropped the case before any charges could be brought.’

‘And the wife?’

‘Turns out she was backed up by the first ex-wife, who said he used to get violent when he didn’t get his own way and once nearly strangled her. But, mysteriously, they both withdrew their evidence after their dogs were shot. That was the evidence that worked with Jack. “He had his ex-wives’ dogs shot!” she cried. “That’s it. No one who would have dogs shot deserves the benefit of the doubt. Why, he might strangle Horace if he said something rude to him. I don’t mind taking risks for the sake of St. Martha’s, but I’m damned if I’m going to have my parrot put in jeopardy.”’

Milton laughed. ‘How very Jack. But I still don’t really get it, Robert. Surely if Sarkovsky was crazy and wanted to get rid of her he’d have done what Russians do and ordered a drive-by shooting or poisoning with ricin or something. He’s hardly got her locked in a cellar while he decides what to do with her. I also don’t get it about the others. Where do they come into it? Why would he have it in for them as well? Aren’t they the art establishment Jack despises?’

‘I don’t understand either. Except that he’s a psycho.’

‘OK,’ said Milton. ‘I’ll start enquiries.’

‘Enquiries? Shouldn’t you be breaking down the doors of Sarkovsky’s houses with battering rams and giving him the third degree?’

‘This is London, Robert. Not Moscow. We wouldn’t get search warrants on the basis that he and Jack had a row in Marrakesh several weeks ago and that he’s got a dodgy reputation. Anyway, we’re not keen in the Met to make enemies of incredibly rich people who can afford top-of-the-range lawyers. But I’ll talk to the AC
Asap
.’

‘Do you think you’ll get anywhere with him, Jim?’ asked Pooley.

‘Very likely not. But the commissioner’s away so I’ve no choice.’

‘You‘d better hurry up before Sarkovsky nabs the next one,’ said Amiss.

‘You don’t think he’s finished?’

‘He’s a thorough sort of bloke from all I’ve heard. If I were you, I’d be warning all the curators and dealers and artists and wankers in London to batten down the hatches and hide under their beds.’

Milton’s phone rang. ‘Yes…shit!...yes…yes…yes…why do you think it’s connected?...yes…yes…yes…Try to find out if there’s a connection with Oleg Sarkovsky….Oleg Sarkovsky. A London-based Russian billionaire…OK.’

He disconnected. ‘We need to go back to the Yard, Ellis. An American art consultant and one of his clients has gone missing from his London hotel for a few days. Even the AC’s taking it seriously now.’

Chapter Five

‘What the hell’s an art consultant?’ asked Milton, as they sped back to the Yard.

‘Give me a minute.’ Pooley speed-dialled Mary Lou. ‘What the hell’s an art consultant, darling? Some American bloke called Chester Herblock’s gone missing and that’s his job title…yes…yes…yes…yes…OK…Thanks…No, no, but I think Sarkovsky’s behind it…I don’t know…Could be a very late night… Me too…’Bye.’

‘Mary Lou says art consultants are top-of-the-range advisers hired by the rich and ignorant to make them appear discriminating. They choose the art; you pay the bill; they get a big commission. The more you pay, the bigger the commission. She’s heard of Herblock. He’s a mega-rich celebrity art consultant. It’s a grand name for an art adviser.’

‘So he could be the person who advised Sarkovsky to buy the stuff Jack loathed,’ said Milton. ‘OK, Ellis. Take charge. I have to go and report to the AC. Hell, I wish the commissioner wasn’t away. The AC will inevitably find our theory about Sarkovsky fanciful.’

Pooley had just finished reading the reports of the disappearance of Herblock and the woman with whom he’d been staying at the Dorchester when he was told that no one could find Gavin Truss, the head of the Central London School of Art, who hadn’t been seen anywhere since leaving his office for the preview party at Pringle’s gallery. Pooley knew who he was. He’d seen the baroness demolish him on
Newsnight.

***

The confrontation had arisen because of the baroness’ allegation in her Lords speech that—because of the cancer of conceptualism—art schools had long since ceased teaching their students anything worth a damn and should be denied as much as a penny of taxpayers’ money. Gavin Truss—who had spent a quarter-of-a-century teaching the subject and for a decade had been head of the Central London School of Art—was small and superior, with a manner and tone that—rather like the baroness—denoted his utter certainty in the rectitude of his opinions. Having had a few of her more trenchant remarks quoted at him, he sat back in his chair, tugged his little curly beard like a lucky charm, and told the presenter that Lady Troutbeck was a classic philistine in an outdated institution who pontificated about what she didn’t understand. What students learned in his establishment was priceless.

‘Over to you, Lady Troutbeck.’

‘What do you teach them?’

‘What do you mean, what do we teach them? They come to learn, not to be taught. And they learn to be the artists they know they can be.’

‘So you don’t teach them anything?’

‘We give them space. We give them the chance to find themselves. We let them think about how to express themselves.’

‘Dr. Truss,’ said the baroness, ‘children come to you from school hoping to create. Your job is to give them the skills that enable them to find themselves. Do you teach them to draw?’

‘I told you, it’s about learning, not teaching.’

‘I do beg your pardon. Do you make available to them someone from whom they can learn to draw?’

‘We don’t do that kind of thing any more. Drawing is a craft. Not an art.’

‘Would that apply to painting? Or sculpting?’

‘Of course. If people want to be craftspeople, let them go to craft classes in a technical college. If they wish to be artists, let them come to me.’

‘So let me get this clear, Dr. Truss. Young people arrive at your establishment wanting to be artists and mostly not knowing how to draw or paint because their schools have given up on such old-fashioned accomplishments. They have no skills, are subsidised by the taxpayer who thinks they’re there to acquire some, yet you teach them nothing because you despise the basic skills that no decent artist can do without.’

‘We give them space, Lady Troutbeck. We give them space to fly with their inner selves.’

‘Very well, Dr. Truss. Let’s look at it from another perspective. Give me an example of how a school like yours produces someone you regard as a great artist.’ She paused for a second. ‘Let me be specific. I know he didn’t go to your college, but tell me what Damien Hirst—whom you have described as an artist of the first rank—
learned
at Goldsmith’s College. I know he genuinely wanted to be an artist, despite scoring an E in his ‘A’ level, he rather amazingly got to art school, he probably wanted to learn to do a bit of drawing and painting, but they were not on offer. What was there for him? Or was he entirely self-made and could have done just as well without art college.’

The baroness would later brag to her friends of how she had set the sap up for this and how, like a low-hung fruit, he fell into her basket.

‘Ah, Damien,’ he said. ‘He has genius, of course, but he would be the first to explain that without Goldsmith’s College, which I’m not ashamed to say led the way for the rest of us, he would not be what he is today.’

‘And his inspiration was?’ asked the presenter.

‘Michael Craig-Martin, his tutor.’

‘From whom he learned?’

‘The essence of conceptual art,’ said Truss, reverentially. ‘Michael provided the revelatory moment that released Damien from the constraints that glorified draughtsmen would have imposed on him—through his incomparable articulation of n
eo-conceptualism.’

‘Which is?’

Truss laughed. ‘You don’t even know that? It’s the insight that anything can be a work of art.
’

‘We’re short of time, Dr. Truss,’ said the presenter. ‘Please give us the revelatory moment.’

‘Years before Damien became his student, Martin had exhibited what Damien later explained as ‘
the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture’ that he just couldn’t get out of his head.’ Truss bent his head for a reverential moment. ‘You can’t imagine how dramatic it was. High on a wall in an empty gallery, Michael installed a glass half-full of water on a small shelf attached to a wall. He called it
An Oak Tree
. In an accompanying leaflet, he asked himself if it was just a case of the emperor’s new clothes, but then explained that this was not a glass of water, but “a full-grown oak tree.” He had changed it into an oak tree.’

‘But he hadn’t,’ observed the baroness mildly.

‘You understand nothing,’ said Truss. ‘As Sir Nick Serota himself pointed out, appreciating all art requires an act of faith comparable to believing that in transubstantiation, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.’

‘But you’re an atheist,’ said the baroness.

‘Yes.’

‘So you don’t even believe in Jesus, let alone in transubstantiation.’

‘That’s different,’ said Truss. ‘That’s not art.’

‘Nor, apparently,’ said the baroness, looking at the producer making a ten-second gesture towards the fascinated presenter, ‘is anything we taxpayers would wish to pay you to impart to the young art.’ She slowed down her delivery. ‘Michael Craig-Martin was a trustee of the Tate when Tate Britain filled a room with his talentless scribbles and vacuous conceits. You betray your students, Dr. Truss. You betray us. And, like Sir Nicholas Serota, who indulges you all, you betray art.’

***

The baroness woke up, peered into the darkness, put two fingers in her mouth and emitted an ear-splitting whistle. Almost instantly, the neon lights came on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness. ‘Now would breakfast run to coffee and something decent to eat?’

‘Coffee, yes. And bread.’

‘Eggs?’

‘If you promise you won’t sing.’

‘I promise.’

‘Then you can have an egg. One.’

‘How were you thinking of cooking it?’

‘You wait.’

The baroness allowed herself to fall into a reverie about eggs. She remembered the perfect scrambled eggs she had had on Sarkovsky’s yacht, and the excellent Eggs Benedict she had had at the Wolseley with Robert Amiss a few weeks previously, as they prepared themselves for their expedition to Tat Modern. What would Robert be thinking now? Or Mary Lou? Or St. Martha’s? Or Myles, if he had heard? If she could make no sense of it, how could they? ‘Stop it, old girl,’ she said to herself. ‘That way madness lies. As Kai Lung said, “
When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen.” For now, just survive. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.’

Her custodian spoke, and they went through the bathroom, lights-out, business with the door, and lights-on routine. The coffee was instant, but at least it was strong. The egg was hardboiled and without salt. And the bread had no butter. But it was food, and the baroness was grateful for it. Having returned her mug and the eggshells, she had to fight off a perverse urge to break into ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning,’ but suppressed it on the grounds that her lifeline was the tenuous deal with her mysterious provider. Telling herself that she might at some juncture have to make a run for it, she forced herself instead to do a few exercises that did not look too ridiculous and lay back on the bed and decided to recite Shakespearean soliloquies. As an intellectual exercise, she tried to take the plays in alphabetical order. She couldn’t remember a single line from
All’s Well That Ends Well
, Anthony and Cleopatra yielded only the dismaying ‘All is lost!/This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me,’ but
As You Like It
was a winner.

Although of a cheerful disposition herself, the baroness had always enjoyed the melancholy Jacques’ ‘All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players’. On this occasion, though, while she maintained her spirits for most of the six ages of man, she could hardly bear to get through the seventh, and she momentarily feared she might cry as she finished with: ‘Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion,/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’ This would be a hell of a way for everything to end. In or out of this room.

Although not much given to worry or
pointless speculation, she couldn’t fight off the feeling that whatever Sarkovsky had in mind, it was unlikely to be kind. After all, in Myles’ call from Iraq the day before she was kidnapped, hadn’t he asked if she’d heard any more from ‘that psycho’? He was calling him that, it emerged, because of well-founded rumours he’d heard about the methods he used in settling some personal grudges. She had assured him gaily that Sarkovsky had not reappeared and could be forgotten about and had laughed it off when he told her to be careful.

The baroness allowed her imagination some free rein. Maybe the bastard meant to keep her in this room until she died like the captive in John Fowles’
The Collector
. She then had the even worse memory of the horrible things done to the kidnapped hero in the film of Stephen King’s
Misery
.

At this she decided to get a grip, shook her head vigorously and wondered once again what day it was. Clearly she’d been drugged when captured on Wednesday evening; there was no natural light and her watch had been removed, so she had no idea how long she’d been in this room. Would the police by now be taking her disappearance seriously? Would there be any media interest? She recalled uncomfortably that in the past, when involved in
causes
célèbres
that had catapulted her temporarily onto front pages, she had merely a walk-on part: other people’s corpses had taken centre stage. She hoped that this time any new notoriety she might achieve would not involve her being murdered.

***

With the help of a small army of police wrenched from other enquiries, Milton was able within twelve hours to piece together the last known movements of all the disappeared. Like the baroness, Hortense Wilde, Gavin Truss, and Anastasia Holliday had gone missing with their cars; like Fortune and Pringle, Herblock and Marilyn Falucci Lamont had last been seen together hailing taxis. Jake Thorogood, it seemed certain, had been pushed into a car outside his own front door. They had all disappeared within a twenty-four-hour period between Thursday and Friday evenings.

Every few hours Milton had to emerge from the Yard to be snapped by a hundred cameras and give a report to an hysterical mob of reporters demanding to know what he thought had happened, who was responsible, had there been a ransom demand, when he expected to find the missing dignitaries, what was taking so long, and what was being done to protect the other likely victims. Inside were teams of police dealing with equally hysterical enquiries from luminaries of the art establishment who were cowering in their offices and homes demanding police protection.

‘We are doing everything we can,’ Milton told the media in his best stiff police manner, ‘but our resources are limited and our priority must be the missing. We suggest that anyone who fears they might be a target should take obvious precautions. Keep your doors locked and don’t open them unless you know who’s outside. Travel only in groups. And, yes, I’m sure the general public will be quite safe visiting museums and art galleries. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go back to work.’

***

Mary Lou rang Amiss first thing on Friday morning. ‘I’m in a state. Are you in a state?’

‘Sure am.’

‘I know our old girl’s been in danger before, but this seems much worse.’

‘Certainly does.’

‘Can you write?’

‘Nope. Can you broadcast?’

‘I have to. But it’s hard.’

‘How do you think Ellis is?’

‘Knackered. How’s Rachel?’

‘Well, obviously she’s less upset about Jack than you and I would be, but she’s sharing in the general gloom. Plus, school is driving her mad.’