Killing the Emperors

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  Amiss got up, sat on the arm of her chair, and put his arm around her. ‘Do you feel like quitting?’

  ‘No, I feel like fighting. But on a ground of my own choosing. No one can make much of a difference at my level without support from the top. I need to keep my head down, pass my probation period, and find myself a job in a school run by people who encourage aspiration and achievement.’

  The phone rang and Amiss rushed to it. ‘Ellis. Yes…Of course there must be a connection…It’s much too much of a coincidence. Idiots…OK, I’ll do that...Yes, of course…Straightaway.’

  ‘Ellis still can’t persuade anyone that there could be a link,’ he told Rachel. ‘He reckons if I tip off the press anonymously and get them speculating, it might help. Let me just hunt out my cloak and my dagger while I think of some way of leaking that doesn’t make me seem like a complete nutter.’

  Chapter Three

  Around the time Miss Stamp had first been twittering at Amiss, Jack Troutbeck had woken up in an unaccustomed state of befuddlement. Instead of hurling herself out of bed to attack the day, she opened her eyes slowly, but since she was in pitch darkness, that didn’t help. She could remember getting into her car in London to drive to Cambridge and then an arm coming from behind her with something that smelled sweet. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said to herself. ‘Chloroform! How quaint.’

  Sitting up, she flailed around looking for a lamp or a light switch: finding neither, she threw back her head and bellowed, ‘Where the hell am I? Someone put on the light.’

  Someone obliged almost immediately, and neon lighting flooded the room. A few seconds later it went off again, then on again, giving the baroness no time to see anything except that she was in small, plain room. After a couple of minutes of flickering, she shouted irritably, ‘Stop doing that, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Feerst say please,’ ordered a disembodied, guttural voice.

  The baroness started. ‘Who and where the hell are you?’ The lights continued to flicker. ‘I said stop doing that,’ she yelled.

  ‘I say you feerst say please, Laidee Troutbeck.’

  ‘So you did. Please stop doing that whoever you are.’ The lights stopped flickering.

  ‘You thanking me.’

  ‘That’s pushing it,’ she snarled.

  ‘You thanking me or light go on off again. In o-maj.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘O-maj. Martin Creed.’

  ‘Martin Bloody Creed? Turner Prize.’ The baroness groaned. ‘I remember. He won with The Lights Going On and Off, didn’t he? Now would you kindly explain what has brought about this elaborate practical joke?’

  ‘I explain later. Maybe.’ As the lights began to flicker again, the baroness muttered ‘Thank you,’ with a bad grace, and they stayed on.

  ‘Now why am I here and who are you?’

  ‘You prisoner. No escape or you want crazy Albanian kill you. They look to you, they listen you all time, all day, all night. Have knives. Machine guns.’

  The baroness looked around her, observed that there was a CCTV camera and that the only window appeared to be covered with corrugated iron, tested one door that led to a windowless bathroom and another which was firmly locked. She guessed she was in a portacabin.

  ‘I see. And who is my genial host?’

  ‘You know who I am, Laidee Troutbeck.’

  ‘It’s Oleg, isn’t it?’

  ‘I Sarkovsky.’

  ‘Oleg, I know we parted brass rags…’

  ‘What means this?’

  ‘I know we had a row, but is that a sufficient reason to kidnap and imprison me? And, indeed, to address me so formally.’

  ‘Situation formal. You discover later. Now, you wait.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It is secret.’ He sniggered. ‘You say much. Now I say. I deep also. And busy man. I go. Goodbye.’

  ***

  The baroness’ rant to her friends about the iniquities of Sir Henry Fortune and Jason Pringle had included the information that Fortune was regarded by the deferential art world as a person of such eminence that even Sir Nicholas Serota himself could not have looked down on him. True, he had never been in charge of a major art collection, but he made sure everyone knew that his record in running fashionable museums abroad was second to none. He had managed to get himself appointed to curate several major exhibitions in British museums and also served as an international artistic adviser to a variety of galleries and arts councils with the occasional visiting professorship thrown in. An invaluable committee man who could be relied upon to know who would be the winners in any internecine fighting in the art world, his complete lack of artistic integrity served him well. The baroness had actually remarked that whatever you thought of bloody Sclerota, he seemed genuinely to believe his own noxious propaganda, while Fortune would have his own granny cleft in twain and exhibited in formaldehyde if that won him another cushy job.

  Sir Henry was very thick with Pringle, with whom he’d been an item since they were students at the Courtauld Institute. It was reputed that it was Pringle who first gave him the nickname ‘Bubbles,’ which he hated but which stuck, even now that his red curls had long departed. Although it was common gossip that Pringle’s insatiable appetite for redheads and Fortune’s less frequent mooning after darkish teenage hunks occasionally caused massive rows in which there was much accusation and counter-accusation about gingers and rent-boys, their partnership seemed rock solid. As unkind people said, they had too much in common ever to split, particularly their shared view of art as a means to promote Fortune and Pringle. It was no accident that Fortune frequently acquired for one or other of his museums a work by a young artist whom Pringle was promoting—a guaranteed method of putting prices through the roof. When he was in London, Fortune stayed with Pringle in his Kensington penthouse and, loyally, they talked each other up at launches and art fairs. Pringle might have lacked the Midas touch of Charles Saatchi, but he was rich. He gave disproportionate but not exclusive attention to those he fancied and had a keen and cynical eye for artistic trends.

  The police had been told that although both men were to speak on Thursday night at the opening of an exhibition in Pringle’s gallery of works by his latest wunderkind, neither had shown up and both were unreachable by phone. Mid-morning on Friday, leaving Serafina, the intern, in charge, Allegra, the gallery manager, had gone to Pringle’s apartment and had rung the door-bell, but though she had brought with her the spare key her boss kept in the office, she was too scared of what she might actually find to put the key in the lock. When she consulted the hall porter, he told her it was more than his job was worth to leave his post. ‘If you want my advice, Miss, though don’t quote me, you should call the cops.’

  When she got back to the gallery Allegra nervously called 999, but she was hesitant and slightly incoherent, and initially she was dismissed as a bit of posh totty who was getting worked up about nothing.

  After midday, there was a near-hysterical call from the head of an art college. Where was Sir Henry Fortune? He was supposed to be giving the awards to the prize pupils and making a speech, but staff, students, parents, and notables had already been waiting half-an-hour and there had been no word. If Allegra didn’t know where to find him, what was to be done?

  Allegra couldn’t help the lunch date stood up by Pringle either, but the two calls had stiffened her spine, and after consultation with Serafina, who was even posher than she was and much more confident, she rang 999 and made a fuss.

  By late afternoon, the spare key had been picked up and by half past six Pooley had a report. There was no one in Pringle’s apartment and no sign of anything untoward. Two suitcases in the spare room with Fortune’s name tags had been unpacked and his clothes were neatly hung-up and put away. A half-drunk bottle of champagne in the fridge suggested they might have had a quick
stiffener before leaving for the gallery, even if there were no glasses to be seen. The porter recalled them leaving and said he assumed that, as usual, they would be hailing a black cab. He also unbent sufficiently to mention that Pringle’s cleaner had been upset this afternoon that he had neglected to leave her wages on the kitchen table.

  The police were sufficiently impressed by the grandeur of Pringle’s apartment and by his friend’s knighthood to spread the story around when they got back to the Yard. Pooley had been making so much fuss about the baroness that he was one of the first officers to hear from the missing persons unit that another nob—indeed two nobs—had disappeared. However, his attempts to suggest any link had fallen on unreceptive ears.

  He and Amiss were disappointed that the newspapers and news channels he had called had shown little interest. However, the evening newspaper ran with a small story by its arts correspondent speculating on why Fortune and Pringle were not to be found. Had those indefatigable patrons of the arts been deflected from the gallery because they were in hot pursuit of some startling new talent with which to engender shock and awe in the art world?

  The police called the wunderkind whose big event had been marred by his mentors’ absence to enquire if he’d any useful information. It took his assistant some time to fetch him, for they were immersed in the difficult process of making a video showing his struggles to make a video, and at the time of the call, the artist was standing on his head in the nude, trying to keep a banana wedged in his bum while balancing a basket of tropical fruit on his feet. He had given up on trying to hold a pineapple in his mouth, for even with some judicious surgery, the fruit had proved wholly uncooperative. When the phone rang, he had just got his teeth around a large plum. It hurt a bit because of the lacerations caused by the pineapple, but he’d got a good grip on it.

  He was furious at having to take the call, but he hid his disgruntlement, bemoaned his inability to help, and instead expressed his gratitude for all that these two inspirational legends of the art world had done for him and people like him. He did not mention that he thought Pringle treated him like a whore.

  Back at work, he resumed his earlier position with some difficulty, the assistant jammed the banana and plum back into position, balanced the basket on his feet, and covered the entire ensemble with imitation snow flakes. The theme was climate change but the artist was becoming desperate at his inability to think of a knock-out title. For the moment they were running with Climate Carmen (after Carmen Miranda). Then he had a moment of inspiration. He spat out the plum. ‘Not a banana,’ he cried. ‘What was I thinking of? Buy a feather. Now.’

  His assistant looked at him in bewilderment.

  ‘A feather?’

  ‘A feather.’

  ‘What kind of feather?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ cried the wunderkind as he tumbled to the floor. He sat up and ran his fingers through his plentiful red curls. ‘A feather from a cock. And make sure it’s a big one.’

  ‘From a cock?’

  ‘Yes, you idiot. A cock. Like in hen. I’ve just realised this work is to be called Cocktail Climate. We’ll substitute the feather for the banana.’

  The assistant’s weariness and irritation left him in an instant. ‘Oh...My…God!’ he said. ‘That’s perfect. You’ll be a dead cert for the Turner.’

  ***

  The media got good and interested on Friday evening, when Jake Thorogood’s editor, who had been expecting copy from him all day for his Saturday art column, eventually tracked down his current squeeze and found she hadn’t been able to get hold of him since Friday morning. They had been having a leisurely breakfast when Thorogood answered the doorbell. He had stuck his head back in the kitchen and said he’d be back in a moment and never came back at all. She thought she’d heard a car driving off, but couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of was that Thorogood wasn’t given to leaving the house in February clad only in a nightshirt and silk dressing gown.

  Thorogood worked for a major liberal newspaper, was an able intellectualiser of modish opinions, was often photographed sharing a joke with art-world celebrities, and was therefore one of the media’s own. Even the tabloids were interested, for they quickly discovered that Thorogood, Fortune, and Pringle had together made the reputation of Anastasia Holliday, the leggy blonde who had recently made abject art the talk of the town with her inventive ways of using her bodily fluids and her unselfconscious Australian coarseness. Attempts by journalists to get hold of Holliday drew a blank, and it was not long before she had also been added to the missing persons file. No one had seen her since her brief attendance at the event at Pringle’s gallery at which he and Fortune had been no-shows.

  Grave articles in the fashionable press about all that was owed to these icons of artistic experimentation had as their counterpoint pages of photographs in the tabloids of work the subs particularly despised as confidence tricks. As Amiss observed to Rachel, one mightn’t think much of the popular press, but when it came to seeing that talentless rubbish was talentless rubbish, the lowliest hack was likely to show better judgement than the panjandrums of the art establishment. He recalled the baroness referring to Thorogood as the Judas Iscariot of art criticism, her contention being that he knew what was good and beautiful but didn’t have the balls or integrity to stay loyal to it.

  The art world, the press, and the police were now as one in believing that some lunatic had a grudge against contemporary art. Was there somewhere some more traditional artist running amok? A stern finger of suspicion was pointed at the Stuckists, a few of whom were pulled in for questioning. The disappearance of the baroness confused the picture and therefore she was mostly ignored. Hysteria went up a notch when Dr. Hortense Wilde’s husband said she’d gone out to the garden centre first thing Saturday morning and hadn’t been seen since.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Amiss, when Pooley rang him. ‘I know her. Ghastly woman.’

  ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘Met her at the in-laws with Jack the other week. Complicated story.’

  ‘We need a council of war, Robert. You seem to know a lot about these people. Jim’s back from Paris. I’ll find out how he’s fixed and get back to you.’

  ‘Now Hortense Wilde’s gone missing,’ Amiss told Rachel when she got home.

  ‘You’re kidding.’ She shuddered. ‘That was a really appalling evening.’

  ‘It sure was.’

  ***

  The evening had started well. Apart from that brief period when her daughter’s wedding had caused Dr. Simon to turn into an hysterical seeker after perfection, Amiss was very happy with Rachel’s clever, warm-hearted parents. The baroness clearly liked the house, which was sprawling, comfortable, and bookish. She enthused about their garden and approved their brand of gin. She and Martin Simon turned out to have a common interest in military history, from which they moved on to great war paintings and art in general. As Amiss fetched the baroness another drink, the doorbell rang. ‘Hannah will get that,’ said Simon. ‘It’s just our new neighbours. They moved in today and we thought it would be kind to offer them dinner. They seem pleasant enough.’

  Hortense Wilde was long and thin with a face so elongated that she reminded the baroness of a Modigliani. Over drinks, there were polite questions about where she and her rather crumpled husband had moved from and why. The baroness, on her best behaviour, had affected interest even though she wasn’t the centre of attention. The trouble started over dinner when Hortense asked Amiss what he did. ‘Er, I’ve had quite a few jobs,’ he said, ‘but most recently, I’ve been writing a bit.’

  ‘What do you write?’

  ‘I do some journalism, but mainly I’m trying to concentrate on novels. Crime novels.’

  ‘And are you published?’

  ‘Yes. My first came out a few months ago and I’m finishing the second.’

 
She laughed tinnily. ‘I’m afraid I won’t have read you. I don’t go in for popular fiction. Is it all sex and sadism?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said the baroness, who had suddenly lost interest in the conversation going on to her left. ‘Robert doesn’t write penny dreadfuls. He writes entertainingly for intelligent people.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ said Wilde. ‘But I’m afraid I’m more interested in serious issues.’

  ‘Here’s a serious issue then,’ said the baroness, who was already spoiling for a fight and thought she might have spotted a promising foe. ‘Why is the art world peddling so much crap these days? Robert and I were in Tat Modern today and it was crammed full of rubbish. Now admittedly, that’s to be expected from the gormless artistic elite. But Martin told me a story just now about how far this disease has spread. Go on, Martin.’

  Martin Simon, always a man to avoid any kind of confrontation, looked nervously at her. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Jack. Hortense mightn’t be interested.’

  ‘Any sane person should be interested. Nay outraged. Go on. Go on. If you don’t, I’ll have to give her a mangled version of it.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said meekly. ‘Jack was expressing an interest in contemporary art earlier, Hortense, so I told her about visiting the new National Museum of Art in Cardiff when I was there on business last week. I was particularly taken by the work of a distinguished eighteenth-century painter called Richard Wilson. However part of one of his interesting landscapes was obscured by a huge pile of small cardboard boxes—six-and-a-half thousand to be exact, as this was a reaction to the local council’s plan to build six-and-a-half thousand new houses. They were bird boxes, as the Welsh title meant something like “Birds of a feather flock together.” What amused me was that they came in flat packs and had to be assembled by the museum staff.’