Killing the Emperors (8 page)

‘She told me that dreadful story about wanting to take the kids to see some art. Now I know this isn’t important at the moment, but it occurred to me this morning that maybe I could give her some support.’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Worrying about Jack’s got me guilt-ridden about not being enough of a warrior for decent values. Do you think it would help if I offered to do my celeb number and come and talk to her class about art? We could show them pictures and talk about great art being cool and I could do my black role-model bit.’

‘I think even her headmaster would have a problem killing off that idea, Mary Lou. You’re a star, in more ways than one. Send her an email: it’ll be a tiny light in the encircling darkness.’

‘Oh, good. Now, as Jack would persist in saying improbably, “I must fly.”’

***

Amiss spent the whole morning reading newspapers and blogs and watching news channels. An alien doing the same would have concluded that on this strange planet nothing mattered but the art world and its denizens, for those who control rolling news seem incapable of focusing on more than one story at a time. The weather was cold and wet, but unfortunate reporters were interviewed outside galleries under dripping umbrellas trying to talk up any evidence of fear or panic they’d uncovered. Photographs of the missing abounded, many showing them socialising with each other in Venice, Vienna, Paris, New York, LA and London and various other playgrounds, which caused the more perceptive viewers to spot that this was indeed an incestuous and opulent world that had little to do with traditional notions of artists starving in garrets.

Of course the media were disappointed that the kidnapper hadn’t got hold of a Grade I art celebrity. ‘
Will It Be Damien or Tracey Next
?’ wondered one headline hopefully. ‘
Terror of the Museum Bosses
’ trumpeted another, running a photograph of Sir Nicholas Serota looking particularly thin and drawn. ‘
Nigella’s Husband In Hiding
’ screamed a third, reporting breathlessly that Charles Saatchi—a man so reclusive he avoided even his own parties—had not been seen for at least a week. Excited by the loss of Herblock and Marilyn Falucci Lamont, and having heard that Jeff Koons was in Europe, the American press were similarly optimistic that he might yet be snatched.

***

Pooley had had a difficult conversation with Anastasia Holliday’s parents in Australia. After the initial shock, there had been an outpouring from her mother about how her lovely girl had fallen into bad company and why it was a tragedy she had abandoned surf for shit—at least, that was what Pooley uncomfortably thought she said. Should they immediately fly to London? Optimism said no, pessimism said yes, cautious policeman said why not give it another day before deciding.

The most recent boyfriend had agreed to come to the Yard, where Pooley had interviewed him briefly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We’re both from Oz, but I hardly know Annie. But great bird, great body, lol and all that. As for the art, if you ask me, she’s been taking the piss and milking those dipsticks for all she could get.’

Closer questioning elicited the information that Anastasia thought Fortune and Pringle wankers and that he’d never heard her speak of any of the other missing people. He added helpfully that she had confided in him that she was running short of another fucking thing to do with anything that emerged from her body, but that she’d said hopefully that while she’d exhausted piss, shit, and everything else that came out of her clacker, maybe there was still some mileage in sweat and chunder if she could work out how to produce them without too much effort.’

‘Chunder?’

‘Vomit.’

Pooley, who despite years as a policeman had never succeeded in sloughing off all inhibitions, hid his revulsion, thanked him profusely, promised to do everything he could to find Anastasia and to report back tomorrow, and rushed back to his office to investigate an intriguing message. It was ten minutes later when he pressed ‘Print,’ waited impatiently, grabbed the pages, and raced to Milton’s office. ‘There’s another. At least I think he’s another, even though he’s a hedge fund manager.’

Milton looked exhausted. ‘What do you mean, “I think he’s another, even though he’s a hedge fund manager”?’

Pooley was excited. ‘I mean other people didn’t make the link. He’d been missing a few days but I Googled him and saw he’d been buying a lot of very expensive art. Look. There he is: Charlie Briggs. Snapped at a Sotheby’s art auction with a model.’

Milton scanned the pages. ‘He paid £5 million for what?’

‘A Fantona. Lucio Fantona. Look. That’s it.’

There was a pause. ‘He paid £5 mill for a plain canvas with a slash in the middle.’

‘He did.’

‘With cretins like that running our financial affairs,’ said Milton heavily, ‘it’s no wonder we’re in the state we’re in.’

Pooley was almost dancing with impatience. ‘Shouldn’t we add him to our investigation? He was also last seen hailing a taxi.’

‘When?’

‘Thursday evening. The security man at his office said he’d left around half nine.’

‘If we do, how many’s that? Ten?’

Pooley counted them on his fingers. ‘Jack, Sir Henry Fortune, Jason Pringle, Anastasia Holliday, Hortense Wilde, Jake Thorogood, Chester Herblock, Marilyn Falucci Lamont, Gavin Truss, and now Charlie Briggs. Yes, ten.’

‘I’d better go and tell the AC we’ve reached a nice round number. That might stop him going on about coincidence. After that we try to find out what connections there are between the missing and Sarkovsky. At this stage, the preliminary interviews are down to you and me. I don’t trust anyone else.’

***

Amiss’ afternoon went the way of his morning. Hour by hour, he watched and read every aspect of the lives of the missing being picked over. A sombre tone was adopted by most commentators, who concentrated on what the world owed these people of talent and discernment, with the occasional dissenter opining that they were opportunists who had made fortunes out of endorsing, creating, or buying rubbish. Innumerable celebrities from the art world shared their grief and pain at the fate that had befallen their beloved friends. The social media, on the other hand, were dominated by gossip and rumour and sick jokes and sniggers about sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

Late afternoon, the news that Charlie Briggs was thought to be the tenth victim of the same kidnapper cheered everyone up no end, as it enabled them to begin speculating about the safety of every modern-art collector in London. It was a bonus that he was young and good-looking and frenzied attempts were made to link him with Anastasia Holliday, clips of whose frank accounts of what she did with her orifices and her bodily fluids were being held until after the nine o’clock watershed. For now, they were majoring on shots of her falling out of nightclubs.

What confused everyone was where the baroness came into it. In her speech to the House of Lords about contemporary culture, she had trashed the critics and dealers and curators and art schools for being part of a vast liberal conspiracy to destroy everything that made art great and make fortunes along the way. And there were a couple of clips of her being rude on news programmes that made riveting viewing. One tabloid christened her ‘Baroness Battle-Axe.’ This gave rise to speculation that she was the kidnapper, a suspicion the assistant commissioner was beginning to share.

The sane took the view that she was an unlikely possessor of a paramilitary wing, but as stories came out about her involvement in high-profile murder cases in Cambridge and London, a significant proportion of those following the story on twitter decided there was no smoke without fire and that she could be some kind of secret agent, except there was no consensus on whom she might be working for.

None of St. Martha’s staff was prepared to be interviewed, but the desperate hacks roaming its grounds found a few students who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. ‘The mistress is, like, cool,’ was the quote most of the media ran with. A few dusty peers emerged from the Lords to say pompous things about the baroness being a fine woman known for her integrity and her eloquence. A BBC producer who had discovered Amiss had been a close associate of the baroness in several of her better-known adventures rang to beg him for an interview.

‘It would,’ he said primly, ‘be inappropriate,’ and ended the call before the man had the wit to ask him why. The truth was that by now Amiss was so terrified for her that he didn’t trust himself to keep his composure in public.

Chapter Six

It was mid-afternoon before Milton was finally put through to Mrs. Chester Herblock in her Manhattan home. She sounded hyper. ‘Hey, they say you’re an English policeman, right?’

‘I am.’

‘So what do I call you, Mr. Policeman? Over here everyone’s “Officer.”’

‘That’ll do fine, Mrs. Herblock.’

‘So what can I do for you, Officer?’

‘It’s to do with your husband’s disappearance.’

‘His what?’

‘Oh, I do apologise. I assumed you’d been told by the NYPD. It was their job.’

‘I’ve haven’t been around to be told anything, Officer.’ She giggled. ‘I’ve been holed up with a friend and we haven’t been taking calls. Only just got home. Chester’s hardly ever here anyway, so who’d know he was missing.’

‘I’m afraid he hasn’t been seen for three days and no one has any idea where he is.’

‘Don’t you worry, Officer,’ she said happily. ‘He’ll be off with that Lamont bitch. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, my husband is serially unfaithful with bitches of one kind or another, beautiful or sexy or rich. This one’s called Mar-il-yn Fal-ucc-i La-mont. I’ve been expecting him any day now to tell me she’s going to be my replacement. Do you know about replacements in my world, Officer?’

‘I can’t say that I do, Mrs. Herblock. Indeed I don’t really know what your world is.’

‘It’s the cosmopolitan art world, Officer, in which people like my husband drift around arty places from Bel Air to Buenos Aires networking and making a fortune in collusion with dealers and curators to persuade ignorant rich people to waste their money on worthless trash. They also trade up in wives according to their beauty or their money or their performance in bed. I’m the sexy third Mrs. Herblock and I signed a pre-nup. Chester’s had his fun and now he’s thinking of his future.’ She laughed again. ‘Poor Chester. He finds being only a multi-millionaire a bit constricting. It’s time for me to make way for a billionairess.’ She paused. ‘That’s Lamont,’ she said helpfully. ‘Lucky woman. She was married to an elderly billionaire who croaked while she was still young enough to enjoy the legacy.’

‘Oh,’ said Milton, lacking anything else to say.

‘So what do you wanna know, Officer?’

Milton pulled himself together. ‘There is reason to believe that several people connected with the art world have been kidnapped, Mrs. Herblock, including your husband.’

‘What about the rich bitch?’

‘She’s disappeared…that is, Mrs. Lamont has gone missing too.’

‘They were screwing at the Dorchester, right?’

‘They were both staying in the Dorchester, Mrs. Herblock.’

‘In the same suite?’

‘No.’

‘Next door?’

‘I think so.’

‘Of course. After all, money’s no object.’

‘But please, Mrs. Herblock, my job is to find them. Is there anything you can tell me that would help?’

‘Nope. I haven’t heard from him for days, but that’s nothing new. Off with the old, on with the new, that’s Chester Herblock, whether he’s dealing with wives or art. But one way or the other, money will be involved. Plenty of it.’

***

‘Mrs. Herblock had met Sir Henry Fortune at some art event,’ said Milton to Pooley. ‘She described him as an asshole. She’d also heard of Jason Pringle as someone Herblock occasionally did business with and she heard him mention Anastasia Holliday as a hot new talent.

‘“I looked her up,” she said, “and saw that even if she didn’t seem to have any talent, she was certainly hot, so it was no surprise Chester was taking an interest.”

‘When I got her to focus on Oleg Sarkovsky, she remembered him vaguely as the guy Herblock told her was a real sap, that he could shovel any shit off on to him and make a bomb. Then she began to laugh. Apparently he’d been literally successful with shit. Although it was gold-plated. Someone called Terence something-or-other.’

‘Rings a bell. But did she have anything useful otherwise?’

‘No. But at least we’re clear there was a Sarkovsky connection. Herblock’s PA was more helpful. She seemed rather more bothered about his disappearance than was his wife and told me he’d made a lot out of Sarkovsky even though Sarkovsky drove a hard bargain. She reckons he’d have earned several million in commissions.’

Pooley gulped. ‘Several million? Sarkovsky must have been buying hundreds of millions worth.’

‘And some of it he was buying from Herblock’s bit on the side.’

‘Marilyn?’

‘Yes. Apparently Sarkovsky bought about $150 million’s worth of conceptual art off her last year on Herblock’s recommendation. Herblock got ten percent.’

‘So it’s in his interests that prices be high rather than low?’

‘It certainly is, Ellis. And no, I don’t understand it either. Anything from your end?’

‘Nothing, except that Sarkovsky had some slightly fraught dealings with Pringle and Thorogood.’

‘In their capacities as dealer and art critic?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is all ludicrously incestuous.’

‘This world is. Apparently although Thorogood was an art critic and innocents like us might think he should be independent, he acted as a kind of authenticator for dealers. Well, for Pringle, anyway.’

‘I don’t know why we find this kind of thing surprising,’ said Milton gloomily. ‘I saw a TV programme recently that told me that in the States academic economists were happy to earn a packet from sitting on the boards of companies they wrote about. So what did Thorogood do for Pringle that involved Sarkovsky?’

‘According to Allegra from Pringle’s gallery, there was some sort of row about graffiti art. Pringle sold Sarkovsky what he thought was a genuine Banksy.’

‘Banksy? That graffiti artist who stencils rats and monkeys onto buildings? How can you sell them?’

‘It’s complicated. Pringle sold Sarkovsky a seaside hut with a stencilled dangling man that was supposed to be a Banksy, but though Thorogood said he agreed with Pringle that it was the genuine article, other critics thought it was a fake and, anyway, it turned out to be a protected hut that couldn’t be removed from its location. Sarkovsky wanted his money back, but Pringle was dragging it out and trying to make him take payment in kind. Apparently, he was offering other less well-known graffiti artists, but Sarkovsky was having none of it. It was the big brand names or nothing for him. Allegra said Sarkovsky was very fierce and shouted a lot over the phone.

‘Then I talked to Thorogood’s girlfriend. She’s relatively new, but she remembered he’d been a bit shaken by some Russian threatening to have him shot. Obviously, Thorogood didn’t think he meant it, but he was a bit scared.’

‘Is that it?’ asked Milton.

‘No. I talked to Sir Henry Fortune’s PA as well. She said rather loftily that while he had never heard of Sarkovsky, Sir Henry was a very famous man who would have been known and respected by everyone in the art world.’

Pooley looked at his watch. ‘I need to go. I’m on my way now to see Charlie Briggs’ sister and then Gavin Truss’ wife.’

‘And I’ve got a number for Marilyn Falucci Lamont’s next-of-kin. The AC’s out this afternoon but I’m to see him at six. Maybe by then we’ll have enough connections made to force the stubborn bastard to take Sarkovsky seriously.’

***

It was Charlie Briggs’ sister Brenda, who’d been staying with him for a few days, who’d reported him missing. Pooley went to the Docklands penthouse to interview her.

‘Sorry about this,’ she said in a strong Yorkshire accent, as she ushered him towards a sofa. ‘It’s a bit depressing.’

Pooley looked around curiously. The room had magnificent views across the Thames, but inside was cheerlessly minimalist. ‘It needed a woman’s touch,’ she said. ‘All Charlie did was buy whatever ’e were told to buy by whoever were ordering him round. You wouldn’t believe the rubbish ’e came home with. Look at that.’ She pointed at a canvas leaning against a wall.

‘May I look at it?’ asked Pooley and went over and turned it round.

‘That looks like a vandalised canvas to me,’ she said. ‘But having seen some of the stuff ’e’s paid a fortune for, it’s probably worth a bomb so I’d better not throw it out.’

‘It’s by a famous artist called Lucio Fantona, Ms Briggs, and I think it’s worth a few million.’

‘Not to me it isn’t. Bluddy rubbish.’ She sat down on a nearby sofa and he joined her. ’For fuck’s sake,’ she said, ‘what does our Charlie know about art? ’E’s only showing off because he thinks ’e has to. ’E don’t know nothin’ about culture. We never had no money and we wasn’t educated neither. ’E’s out of his depth, poor lamb.’

‘He’s been buying a lot of art, M. Briggs,’ said Pooley.

‘Stop this Ms. Briggs rubbish, will yah? I’m Bren. Brenda Briggs. Known to everyone as Bren. I’m the thick one. Charlie’s the brains.’

She stopped and considered that statement. ‘Well, the brains when it comes to making money. Charlie’s a bit short of brains when it comes to spending it, if you ask me. Krug and girls and now stupid art by people who can’t draw or paint.’ She looked Pooley in the eyes. ’E’ll be OK, Charlie, won’t ’e?’

‘I very much hope so, Ms. Briggs.’ He caught her glare. ‘Sorry, Bren. But we need all the information we can get. I know nothing about your brother except that he makes a fortune in financial services and that he collects art. And, as I’ve explained, it’s the art that seems to be linking the people who’ve disappeared. Please tell me anything you know. What, for instance, was...is…Charlie like with money?’

‘I noticed that “was” turning into “is,”, Inspector Pooley. Or can I call you something ’uman?’

‘Ellis.’

‘Ellis? Never ’eard of Ellis. Sounds as posh as your accent.’

Pooley, who had put long hours into trying to modify his Etonian vowels, winced. ‘It’s a family name from way back. Sort of religious. A bit Welsh.’

‘OK. Like Charlie’s named after Granddad. Now why did you say “was”?’

‘No reason. It’s just that we’re a bit frantic trying to find out what all these people were doing before they disappeared so I put them in the past tense. I think they’ve been kidnapped. I’ve no reason to think anything worse.’

She put her head on one side, circled her thumbs around each other and said, ‘OK. I hope you mean that.

‘Now you asked about money, and I can see why, because we’d never ’ave thought Charlie would be rich. ’E were crap at everything at school apart from the maths, where ’e were brilliant, so ’e managed to get to uni. A first for our family.’

‘He sounds like one of those geniuses who set up Google or Facebook.’

‘You’ve got it. One of those…what do they call them these days? Sort of autistic lite?’

‘Aspergers?’

‘That’s it. Charlie weren’t too good at understanding people, but he certainly understood…’ She looked fearfully at Pooley. ‘Now you’ve got
me
talking about him like he were dead.’

‘It’s OK, Bren. We’re talking about his life before now.’

‘OK, Ellis. Charlie understood figures and then ’e understood computers and they and ’im were supposed to understand how the world worked. And the world were all about money, and Charlie did things on the computer and ’is firm turned them into money. And ’e got huge money. And ’uge bonuses. And then ’e were given a bit of the company and ’e made even more.’

‘What did he do with it?’

‘’E hadn’t no interest in money. ’E’d have given it all away. Our parents wouldn’t move, but ’e bought their council ’ouse for them and gave them as much as they’d take. Same with me. Bought me a nice ’ouse and my nail business and I’m doing fine. Me and my ’usband, we don’t want nothing more.

‘Charlie would have given most of it to charity but ’e had to do the flashy things that made the crazies ’e worked with respect him. Otherwise they’d have bullied ’im even more like they did when ’e was at school. It’s all big dick stuff in that world.’ She adopted a child’s voice: ‘“Yah, boo, sucks. I wasted more money than you did.”’

From further questioning it emerged that Briggs had no steady girlfriend, few friends, and that left to himself his idea of relaxation was to play computer games. But being emotionally reliant on a few of his colleagues who were conspicuous consumers he went out with them for extravagant evenings with expensive girls. Not having any desire for fast cars or yachts or travel, buying art seemed to be the easiest and quickest way to placate his self-appointed advisers.

‘Did he know a Russian called Oleg Sarkovsky?’

‘Never heard of ’im.’

‘Or a favourite art dealer? Or did ’e go to auctions?’

‘There was someone advised him. What was his name? Jason summat.’

‘Pringle.’

‘That’s it. ’E said ’e were very learned. And I know they went to auctions, because Charlie said ’e enjoyed bidding. Said it gave ’im a buzz.’

‘Thank you, Bren. I was going to ask if I could send in a team to search the apartment for anything that might be useful, but seeing there’s so little here, if it’s OK with you I’ll do it myself now. Won’t take long.’

‘Anything that’ll help get Charlie back.’

All that Pooley could find that was remotely of interest were a few sale catalogues from major London auction houses with scribbles on them. He said goodbye to Bren Briggs and took them away with him.