The hawk is dead, p.29
The Hawk Is Dead, page 29
Located on the north-east corner of the Principal Corridor of Buckingham Palace, next to the Chinese Dining Room, the Indian Room had tall windows with crimson drapes, giving views across the front courtyard and Green Park, and a magnificent vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined with mostly empty, magnificent inlaid walnut display cases. These were currently in the process of being filled with over three hundred of the most beautiful, lethal and indestructible swords and daggers ever made.
All the blades were different. Some were curved, some wide, some narrow, some with serrated edges, and many with engraved inscriptions. All of them were ornately jewelled but that didn’t detract, in Rose’s view, from the purpose of each of these weapons – which was to kill other human beings in hand-to-hand combat. Many were designed to inflict even more catastrophic damage to the internal organs when being withdrawn from the human torso they had just penetrated, than the entry wound itself.
One of Rose’s first tasks when she had joined the Royal Collection team was to help pack away the contents of the Indian Room into wooden boxes for safe keeping, while the entire floor underwent the renovations. Now she was helping to put everything back up, and ticking each of the six hundred items off on the inventory checklist she had commenced for Lorraine McKnight. And at the moment she was on her own in here.
That inventory was a job that would take the twenty members of the Royal Collection Trust to whom Lorraine had delegated the task many months. Rose would be long gone before then. Long before any of the items the three of them had taken were declared missing.
And besides, who would miss them, really, anyway? Just a relative handful of items worth a few dozen million pounds – a paltry sum when the entire Royal Collection was worth untold billions.
Four years ago, when she’d begun the task of packing up the swords, daggers and armour in here, she had gazed around the display cases, imagining how some of the items had been used, and the wounds they might have inflicted. Nothing in here was purely ornamental. Everything was for maiming and killing. Slicing off heads and limbs, filleting and disembowelling victims. All the fun of the fair!
Almost every single item here had been presented to the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, during his 1875 tour of India. Swords and guns made a good diplomatic gift in those days – they showed off your nation’s power and its technology. Back then the Indian nation was the world leader in sword and dagger technology, through the manufacturing technique of watered crucible steel. It made an Indian weapon the one you’d want to be holding in a sword-fight, because nothing was going to break it. Nothing. And it would be so sharp, you could have shaved with it.
She knelt close to a tiger skin on the carpet and lifted RCIN 11288 – a sword in its scabbard – out of a box. As she did so, she again winced in pain and had to take a break for a few seconds. Then she slid out the heavy, curved sword, with the blade engraved, and almost gasped out loud at its sheer beauty.
It had been a Coronation gift to King Edward VII from the Maharaja of Jaipur, and was decorated with over seven hundred diamonds, in gold settings backed with silver foil, with a total weight of two thousand carats. The scabbard and hilt were gold, enamelled in blue, green and red.
She ran her forefinger along the side of the blade, very carefully.
Rose had so many favourites in here. Among them a Katar, inventory number RCIN 11408, a punch dagger with a thickened armour-piercing tip and velvet hilt. But her favourite of all was RCIN 11289, the Ibrahim dagger. She knelt, stifling another jab of pain from her rib, and lifted it out of the box where it had been stored for the past four years. Then she removed the dagger from its scabbard and held it up. It made a distinct clack-clacking sound as she did so. She loved that sound.
And she loved the shape of this dagger. It flowed, like a jet fighter, a gleaming arc from the jewelled hilt, curving down then upwards to the armoured tip. It was utterly wonderful. And what she loved about it best of all was the groove, cut in sections along the centre of its blade, each containing rows of tiny pearls that rolled along, clack-clacking into each other. They were not just decorative, they were there for a sinister purpose. With good reason they were called ‘The Tears of Allah’ or ‘The Tears of the Afflicted’.
She stood up in the empty room and slashed at an imaginary opponent, the pearls clack-clacking, unable to stop herself crying out, as her rib felt like it had just pierced her midriff. Then, her eyes watering from the pain, she looked at the blade. Imagined it slicing through an enemy’s tunic and then his belly, with no resistance, like a hot knife through butter. She could see his eyes wide with shock and pain, hear his grunt as she twisted it, ripping through his liver and intestines. But most of all she loved the thought that, as he sagged to his knees in agony, haemorrhaging blood internally, light dimming in his eyes, he would be completely unaware that the priceless pearls that had just rolled through his guts and were not there solely for ornamental purposes were now ripping out parts of his vital organs as the dagger was withdrawn.
As she stepped forward and slashed again, she heard a polite cough, and spun round, to see the lean, elegantly suited figure of the humourless Deputy Keeper of the Privy Purse, Michael Innes, standing in the doorway. There was a distinctly disapproving expression on his face.
‘Planning someone’s demise, Rose? Don’t you think we’ve had a high enough body count in the Royal Household for one week?’ His snide voice really irritated her.
‘With respect, sir, it is actually one week and a day ago.’ She smiled, unable to hold back her cheeky reply.
‘Not really a laughing matter, is it?’
‘Not really, no, sir.’
‘Their Majesties are extremely upset – and understandably worried. The Lord Chamberlain has suggested they decamp to Scotland where they can be away from all this and in safety.’
‘That sounds a sensible decision, sir,’ she said.
He nodded, then asked, ‘Inventory check going all right?’
‘It will be a long process.’
‘Sir Jason is very concerned – he tells me he had a sleepless night. Lorraine McKnight phoned him late at his home and reported to him the number of items unaccounted for. Appalling – how can this have happened? You do realize quite how serious this is? We’re not talking a couple of trinkets that have fallen through the cracks – this is part of our nation’s heritage – and a significant part of its wealth.’
‘I’m sure they will all turn up, Sir Michael. Things have been a bit chaotic. I don’t think some of the workmen here quite appreciate the importance of all the items in the Royal Collection. The way some of them have been handled is frankly alarming.’
‘It shouldn’t be, Rose,’ he said, coldly and levelly. ‘The Royal Collection Trust team are paid to look after all the items. If any of the workmen here have mishandled them, this is your team’s fault, not theirs. Perhaps if you took your job a little more seriously rather than playing with daggers, there might be fewer items missing.’
He spun on the heels of his black spit-and-polished Oxfords and strode off.
Rose gave him two fingers behind his back. ‘Wanker!’ she whispered under her breath.
Then she slid the knife back into its scabbard, lifted it up and placed it carefully back in its rightful position in the cabinet. Having done that, she stood back and looked around at the swords and daggers she’d returned to their places in the cabinets, so far. And smiled. Could there be any museum in the world that had a collection quite as beautiful as in here?
This room was truly a hymn to killing.
Smoke had told her she was weird. Maybe she was, but he was one to talk. Her wartime buddy who’d had her back. Friend. Co-conspirator. And now big problem. But conversations with her boss had cleared the way forward and she knew what she had to do.
Smoke and Lorraine McKnight. Two big problems. One would have been eliminated last night if . . .
If she’d not screwed up.
If that stupid, blind old bat hadn’t sent her flying.
She had planned to try again today. But when she’d woken this morning she felt still shaken up by the accident – cycling was out of the question today. Instead she’d gone to work by Uber, and she felt every damned pothole in the road, in that crappy little electric Prius.
She glanced at her watch. It was coming up to 2.20 p.m. For some days she had considered the unguarded lift entrance up on the footmen’s floor to be the perfect way to get rid of a problem. But right now, she needed to sort two problems.
Both were threats. Smoke because he was a loose cannon. McKnight because of her insistence on an inventory check. Which Rose could manage for a while. But a limited while.
The lift could only be used once.
Which of the two did she need to get rid of the most urgently?
It boiled down to maths. She had to split all proceeds with the others. Smoke, with his erratic behaviour, posed a big risk. With Lorraine McKnight she just had to keep obfuscating until she disappeared – and the plans for that were all in place.
Smoke first was the best plan. Followed by a fast exit.
She ran a finger down the blade of the Maharaja of Jaipur’s sword again. This time she drew blood, but only a small drop. She kissed it away.
You are right, Mr Smoke. Sorry, Lance Corporal Smoke. About what you said. About me being weird. Perhaps, you’re just about to find out exactly how weird.
79
Tuesday 28 November 2023
‘It’s not going to happen, boss.’ Glenn turned into Westbourne Villas in Hove and pulled into a parking bay. ‘Cheer up!’
Grace glanced at his watch. It was 2.15 p.m. ‘History repeats itself. Isn’t that right? The lesson of history is that man does not learn the lesson of history,’ he replied gloomily. He’d been brooding on his conversation with Greg Mosse for the past hour, while Branson drove them down from London. It was clouding his thoughts, preventing him from focusing fully on the case.
Branson shook his head. ‘The man is not up to the job. ACC Downing is smart and so is the Chief.’ He slowed and turned into a parking space, halted the car and switched off the engine. Then he put out an arm and gave Grace a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘They’ll see through him. It won’t happen.’
‘I wish I had your optimism.’
‘Have as much of it as you like – help yourself, dig deep.’
Grace smiled. Then he frowned again as they climbed out of the car into a strong wind, and looked at the faded cream paintwork of the Regency corner building.
There were several steps up to a door that was long overdue a lick of dark blue paint. To its right was an entry-phone panel with a row of names. Branson pressed the one for ‘S. Kendall’ and a few moments later they heard her voice, no friendlier than it had been in the prison interview room yesterday.
‘Yes?’
They entered a messy communal hallway, illuminated by a meagre, bare lightbulb. The floor was covered in leaflets from local takeaways and food delivery companies, and two padlocked bicycles were propped against a flaking wall.
Moments later a door to their right opened, and Shannon Kendall summoned them in, barely uttering a word of greeting. She looked little different to yesterday, pale, wearing a faded jogging top, tracksuit bottoms and worn trainers. The flat was small and sparsely furnished, a large window with black vertical blinds looking out across the busy Kingsway towards the sea. The white paint on the walls looked reasonably fresh, and the flat felt inviting, compared to the dowdy common parts of the building, Grace thought.
She led the two detectives up a short staircase to a mezzanine, where there was a whole bank of monitors in front of a semicircular desk. A rucksack was slung over the back of her chair, and a large plastic bottle of water was on the worktop beside her keypad. All the time she eyed them as if suspicious of their motives.
‘How’s it going, Shannon?’ Grace said, trying to break the ice. ‘Good to be home?’
‘Do you know anything about miniatures, Detective Superintendent?’ she asked, glancing equally at Glenn Branson.
‘Miniatures?’ Grace replied.
‘Hans Holbein the Younger?’
He stared at her blankly.
‘Wasn’t he a painter?’ Glenn Branson said.
‘Didn’t realize you were so cultured,’ Roy ribbed.
‘His name came up in a pub quiz a few weeks ago,’ Branson retorted with a grin.
‘OK, you guys know about the dark web,’ Shannon said, ‘so I won’t bother giving you the kindergarten guide. You know it’s also formed of layers that keep peeling away as you delve deeper into it. The first few layers take you into marketplaces. There are plenty of legitimate products on sale, but it’s more about illegal ones – mostly drugs, counterfeit goods, weapons and stolen data. Then there’s a whole layer for untraceable communications for the likes of whistle-blowers, political activists, and people living in countries where there is strong censorship or no freedom of speech.’ She swigged from her water bottle before continuing.
‘Then a whole section of forums and chat rooms – ranging from everything from basic hobbies to the really nefarious places you do not want to visit, like photos and videos of cannibalism, fatal accident victims and crime scenes. Another focuses on the dark side of sex in all its variants, one of which is sadomasochism, which gets increasingly dark and nasty. Then the full English of kiddy porn – I don’t even want to think about that.’
For the first time since he had met her, Grace saw a flash of emotion in Shannon Kendall’s face – it was revulsion.
‘Then we have tools and services for hacking – such as malware and stolen IDs and other credentials. Buried even deeper beneath all this we find international arms dealing – at a nuclear level. Stuff like enriched uranium for sale. And down in the weeds, very cleverly concealed in the midst of all that shit, is what might interest you two detectives.’
‘Which is, Shannon?’ Grace asked.
‘High-end stolen works of art. And I’m talking very high-end. Collectors happy to pay millions for works they know to be stolen and they know they can never display publicly or sell – at least not for a few generations.’
‘We’ve come across people like that,’ Glenn Branson said.
Shannon nodded. ‘Oh yes. The thrill of ownership of some work of art of international interest – of knowing they are the only people in the world who can see it – to some people that’s better than the best sex.’ She smiled.
‘OK,’ Grace said.
‘That’s why I asked you about Hans Holbein. Well, to be correct, Hans Holbein the Younger.’ She looked pointedly at Branson. ‘Did “miniatures” ever come up in a pub quiz?’
He shook his head.
Becoming increasingly animated, Shannon said, ‘The camera wasn’t invented until the mid-1820s – and the internet a little bit later . . . Before then, if you wanted to know what someone you had never met looked like – and you had the money to pay for it – you would hire a miniaturist. They would paint a watercolour portrait of them and send it to you—’
‘Is this art lesson necessary, Shannon?’ Grace asked.
‘Very,’ she replied. ‘With respect, please hear me out. In 1539, Henry VIII was anxious to strengthen England’s position in Europe. An alliance with the Protestant German states, through a marriage with either Anne of Cleves or her sister, both related to the Duke of Cleves, would have been a smart move to counteract the power of the Catholic Hapsburgs, who were dominating much of central Europe at the time.’ She took a swig from her water bottle, but did not offer either of them a drink. ‘His third wife, Jane Seymour, had conveniently died and he was free to marry again. The Duchy of Cleves were totally on board, and commissioned Hans Holbein the Younger to paint miniatures of both Anne of Cleves and her sister. It also appears – although there is no hard evidence to prove it – that they encouraged Holbein to be somewhat flattering and he duly obliged – probably out of fear of being beheaded. The portrait Henry VIII subsequently received might, in today’s idiom, be deemed to have been photoshopped. When The King actually saw her in the flesh for the first time, he felt deceived and was furious. He went ahead with the marriage, purely for political reasons, but history tells us the marriage was never consummated.’
‘She was beheaded?’ Branson asked.
Shannon shook her head. ‘Henry wasn’t a fool, he needed the alliance. They divorced and had an amicable – almost brother-and-sister – relationship for the rest of her life. She actually outlived all his other wives, quite some feat.’ She took another swig of her water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘One of the miniatures I’ve just described is in the Royal Collection; it’s the only one of Anne of Cleves in existence and it’s of incalculable value. The RCIN is 422297. It is also currently the subject of an international auction on the dark web. Bids have been invited from a known group of collectors around the world. So far there are four bidders. One in Georgia, one in Taiwan, one in the USA and one in Argentina. Because of its historical significance and provenance, it is likely to sell for well over £2 million, which is the current bid.’
Grace and Branson looked at her in astonishment. ‘You know all this for certain, Shannon?’ Grace asked.
‘Do you think I’m making it up?’ she demanded.
Grace shook his head. ‘No. Are you able to establish who is actually selling it?’
‘I’m working on that now,’ she said. ‘Whoever it is knows how to cover their tracks extremely well.’
‘Shannon,’ Branson asked, ‘how computer savvy would someone need to be to access and navigate the dark web well enough to do what you’ve just told us?’
She looked pointedly at them. ‘What do you guys think? To go as deep as whoever this is, you’d need to be able to write code, Roy.’
Grace frowned. ‘Computer code?’
‘Yes, you’d have to code – write – a program that would squirrel its way deep into the dark web. A coding language like Python, which is currently a popular one as it’s relatively user-friendly.’
