Killing the Emperors

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘You’re just an old-fashioned cultural Marxist, Hortense, isn’t that it?’

  ‘’Why is progressive good?’ asked Anastasia. ‘Isn’t good good and crap crap?’

  ‘Anastasia,’ asked Fortune, ‘do you know what you are saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that a lot of modern art is rubbish. And that includes what I do myself.’

  ‘I’m going to ignore that,’ said Fortune. ‘It’s patently untrue. If it were rubbish, Jason would not have exhibited and dealt in it, Jake would not have endorsed it, and I would not have purchased it for public view.’

  ‘Oh, yes you would,’ said the baroness and Anastasia together. Fortune ignored the baroness. ‘You’re upset, Anastasia. It’s understandable. We’re all under strain. Let’s get back to the Olympics.’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ said the baroness. ‘Leaving this Eliasson creature out of it, the art associated with it is an unmitigated disaster.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ asked Marilyn. ‘That guy Kapoor’s a genius. Don’t you get the magnificence of Orbit.’

  ‘Genius?’ cried the baroness. ‘Anish bloody Kapoor has provided the Olympic Park with a four hundred foot erection of red squiggles—a helter-skelter—that people can climb up. At a cost of more than twenty million quid! Admittedly, it’s paid for by Indian steel billionaires, but we have to put up with the world thinking we think it’s art.’

  ‘How can you so fail to appreciate a magnificent monument to instability?’ asked Hortense.

  ‘Very very easily,’ said the baroness, breathing heavily. ‘Kapoor’s become the high priest of fairground art. Look what he did mucking up rooms in the Royal Academy by shooting shells of red wax from a cannon. Oh, yes, and giving another over to distorting mirrors. He’s a funfair sort of guy. That’s why Nicholas Bloody Serota is such a fan.’

  Pringle burst into tears. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I just want to be out of here.’

  Exhausted, everyone fell silent.

  ‘Laidee Troutbeck to Diary Room. Now.’

  As the baroness trudged off, she wondered if she could cope. She was an optimist, so she didn’t really believe that she would be sending someone to their death. But she was also a realist, who knew it was possible. And she also knew that while she was a woman of strong opinions and a deep sense of right and wrong, she was unhappy being what now appeared to be a hanging judge. She knew equally that the easy way out would be to refuse to choose. But she knew too that this would be a contemptible route. ‘I never expected,’ she said to herself, ‘to be forced into making Sophie’s Choice. But if that’s what’s going on, that’s what I have to do. They may not be children, but I will try to protect the most innocent. And, of course, myself.’

  Chapter Ten

  It was two a.m, and Morrison and Sarah were on patrol.

  ‘I felt bad about Sarah Byrne,’ Milton had said to Pooley earlier that day, ‘but I know what a lazy bastard Morrison is and I knew he’d want time off and I wasn’t going to pander to him. Anyway, we’re overstretched.’

  Morrison was indeed aggrieved. ‘He’s got a nerve, expecting us to patrol by the Thames again,’ said Morrison. ‘Aren’t we allowed any time to get over the shock of findin’ a stiff?’

  ‘I guess it’s regarded as part of our job, Vernon.’

  ‘I think we should get a special allowance for it.’

  ‘Like a bonus?’

  ‘Well, not like a bonus. More like compo. We sure need some extras now they’re slashing overtime.’

  As instructed, they walked all the way around Parliament Square, gingerly avoiding the remaining few protestors’ tents. ‘Effin’ layabouts,’ said Morrison. ‘Honestly, some people have no work ethic.’

  Byrne let that pass. They crossed the street and began to walk by the House of Commons. Morrison jerked his head in the direction of Oliver Cromwell’s statue. ‘Now there’s a bloke who knew what to do with layabouts. Off with their heads. That’d sort them out. He’d have known what to do with all the wankers cheatin’ on their expenses too.’

  ‘It’s nice when it’s crisp like this,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Crisp? Bloody cold if you ask me. We shouldn’t have to be out poundin’ pavements in this weather. All that crap about takin’ us out of cars so we could mingle with the public.’ He waved crossly at the House of Commons. ‘What effin’ public? Everyone’s gone home.’

  ‘There may be more people on the other side of the river, Vernon.’

  ‘I don’t want more people,’ he said mutinously. ‘And I don’t want to walk all the way to that bloody Tate Modern. No one will know if we don’t.’

  ‘It’s our job to do it, Vernon. We should cross Westminster Bridge now.’

  ‘‘I dunno what makes you such a glutton for punishment, Sarah. Why do you want to look for trouble?’

  ‘The Sarge said…’

  ‘I don’t care what the Sarge said. It’s OK for him, nice and snug back at HQ while he orders the likes of us to trudge the streets. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a slave.’ He puffed up his chest. ‘I’m not going any farther without a tea and a sausage sandwich. We’ll go to the cabbie shelter at Embankment and I’ll cross the river then.’

  Not for the first time, Byrne fantasised about kicking Morrison right in the middle of his paunch. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but we’d better make it quick.’

  No one’s temper was improved by their being refused service at the cabbie shelter, but Morrison eventually got hold of a sausage in a fast-food joint in Villiers Street, and Byrne was able to steer him towards Waterloo Bridge. ‘We’ve got to walk fast, Vernon, or they’ll want to know what’s been keeping us.’ She accelerated. Knowing himself to be in the wrong, Morrison sulked. Wearily, for she was no more a fan of late-night walking than was he, she drew on the old reliable ploy. ‘So did you decide which train to buy, Vernon? You were very conflicted when we talked about it last.’

  The monologue went on and on and on, but it allowed Byrne to think about what she had to think about, which was mostly child care arrangements. The division of labour between her mother and mother-in-law was beginning to show fault lines. She wrestled with her choices, as Morrison wrestled with his, until Tate Modern hove in view.

  ‘You ever been to this, Sarah?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I’ve been to the other Tate. Tate Britain. I used to go there sometimes with my school. I really liked it. Specially the Turners.’

  Morrison snorted. ‘I’ve seen them too. Good stuff. But I’ll never go again since I went to see the Turner Prize years back.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because it was bloody crap, that’s why. Just a bare room with a light goin’ on and off. I think the artist even had the bare cheek to call it Lights Goin’ On and Off. If you ask me, he was having a laugh. When I went home I wrote a letter sayin’ that if that was the best they could do they didn’t deserve any of my taxes. That modern art. A toddler could do it. And as for this Tate Modern? Did you know they’re fillin’ it with Damien Hirst’s rubbish? The idea is that during the Olympics foreigners will be shown the best of British art. They’ve even had to reinforce the floors because of all them animals and fish he’s had killed for his so-called art. It’s not right. I mean I know I eat them, but that’s different. It’s natural.’

  They left the street and walked towards the building. The area was deserted. Even the large grassy area in front of it seemed unoccupied. ‘Too chilly there for winos,’ said Morrison. ‘OK, let’s walk round it like the Sarge said and then we can get the hell out of it and go back to base.’

  It was then they saw the large, rectangular object that seemed to be obstructing part of the entrance. ‘What’s that?’ exploded Morrison. ‘They’re leavin’ their stupid art outside now where anyone can smash
it up. For God’s sake, it’s made of glass. Any bloody vandal could take a brick to it. No trouble. Not that it’d be any loss.’

  Byrne found her torch and switched it on. ‘Oh, God, Vernon. Look. It’s a naked woman. Floating.’

  They surveyed the object. ‘It’s one of them Damien Hirst things, isn’t it,’ asked Morrison. ‘Didn’t he do a dead shark in a tank like this? But this isn’t a dead shark.’

  ‘It isn’t. It’s a dead woman.’

  ‘It’ll be a mannequin, won’t it?’

  Byrne crouched beside the vitrine and shone her torch up and down. ‘Don’t think so, Vernon. Look. Her mouth’s wide open. And you don’t get mannequins with bunions.’ She shone her torch around the side. ‘Vernon! There’s a card here.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Hommage to Hirst. And underneath—The Physical Impossibility of Creating Art When You’ve No Fucking Talent.’

  ‘It’s another one of ‘em. Isn’t it?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ said Byrne, her voice quavering. She ran to the grass. While she was throwing up, she could hear Morrison on the radio explaining to their sergeant that they’d found another ‘omidge stiff.’

  ***

  When the reveille began, the baroness immediately sat upright. Anastasia was stretching beside her. Fearfully, she looked vainly for the person she was afraid would be no longer there. ‘Has anyone seen Hortense?’

  ‘She must be in the bathroom,’ said Truss, looking at the space beside him.

  The baroness jumped out of bed and went outside, checked the bathroom and kitchen, called ‘Hortense’ and stuck her head back inside the bedroom. ‘I can’t see her.’

  Visibly panicking, everyone tumbled out of bed. It took only a minute before they all stopped looking and collapsed onto the sofas.

  ‘He’s killed her,’ said Pringle. ‘That’s two gone. Why didn’t we notice?’

  ‘The drinks must be spiked,’ said Briggs. ‘Or they’re piping some kind of soporific gas into the bedroom to put us under.’

  ‘We can’t sleep there again,’ screamed Marilyn.

  ‘We’ll have to, hon,’ said Herblock. ‘It’s that or the Albanians.’

  ‘So we just go into a gas chamber knowing that if we wake up in the morning, another one will be gone.’

  ‘The thing is not to panic,’ said the baroness. ‘We don’t know what happened either to Hortense or to Jake. It’s really very unlikely that they came to harm.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Anastasia. ‘We’ve got to try to keep cheerful and hope for the best. No point in moping. I’ll get washed now and put the kettle on.’

  ***

  When Pooley rang, Amiss been reading obituaries of Jake Thorogood and further information about the missing all morning. Although everyone agreed he was a fine writer and very knowledgeable about art, the newspapers were divided on the subject of Thorogood. His own paper, of course, had a whole page of hagiography along with a fine piece he had written on Rembrandt some years before. That he had almost completely changed his tune on conceptual art in the early noughties was explained as a road to Damascus experience that demonstrated his intellectual curiosity and his embracing of the new and challenging. More unkind papers hinted that his change of mind might have had to do with his association with the fashionable rich. Suggestions of corruption were only hinted at, for Fleet Street tends not to trash the dead until after what it considers a decent interval—especially if the departed is a journalist—but there were carefully-chosen photographs of him with the rich and famous who had money to burn on art.

  Max Thorogood had issued a short, formal statement through his solicitors expressing shock and distress at the news, hope that the other missing people would soon be found, and asking for privacy for his family, whom he had taken away to an undisclosed location to avoid the gathering hordes. Thanks to a tip-off from a policeman, a tabloid had got hold of the current girlfriend, who put on a good performance at being grief-stricken. Since his death was such a hot topic, there was a rumour that some newspapers were rummaging around in his affairs with a view to running exposés. The tabloids were in ecstasy.

  ***

  Pooley found a moment to call Amiss. ‘It’s grim news, Robert. Hortense Wilde’s murdered and it’s another Hommage—this time to Hirst.’

  ‘Oh, God. Not bisected?’

  ‘No. It was the shark. Not the cow. She was suspended in formaldehyde. Naked. Her husband hasn’t got here yet to identify her, but there was no mistaking her from the photographs I’ve seen. But this is off the record for now.’

  ‘And then there were eight!’

  ‘I must rush, Robert. Sorry. I’m going to be interviewing Gervase Wilde shortly. Mary Lou’s phone is off so I’ve left a message just asking her to call you. Can you look after her? She’s already very fragile. Please nurture her.’

  He left Amiss in what was now his customary dislocated state, pursuing news on the Internet, desperately wishing his wife worked in an office rather than a classroom and so was contactable, and checking his iPhone every couple of minutes in the hope of a message from Myles. It was a consolation when Mary Lou called. She was as frightened by the news as he was, but her suggestion of lunch promised trouble shared.

  ***

  ‘This one’s certainly unusual,’ said the pathologist, who arrived shortly after Hortense’s formal identification by her husband. ‘There are no signs of trauma to the body and she didn’t drown, so my guess is she was smothered. Then they wedged her mouth open so it’d stay that way after rigor set in. Then they popped her into the formaldehyde. She looks pretty good really. Even peaceful. Apart from the open mouth. Like one of those animals you’d see in a modern museum. ’

  ‘Quite,’ said Pooley.

  ***

  ‘I’ve never even heard of Oleg Sarkovsky,’ said Gervase Wilde. ‘What’s he got to do with Hortense? Why would he want to murder her? What harm could she have done to him. She is…was just a scholar.’

  ‘We were hoping you’d be able to tell us, Dr. Wilde. Sarkovsky is a collector and we’ve reason to believe he’d fallen out with Jake Thorogood and some of the other missing people.’

  ‘I don’t know Hortense’s world that well, Inspector. I’d go to art events with her sometimes, but we’re both hard-working academics who spend much of our spare time on research into our own specialities.’

  ‘Can we just talk about the people who disappeared at the same time as she did, Dr. Wilde? I know this is a terrible time for you, but we need all the information you can give us. We need to stop this maniac.’

  Wilde seemed shell-shocked, but he tried to focus. ‘Very well. Everything’s a bit of a blur, but take me through the names and I’ll help if I can.’

  ‘I’ll start off alphabetically. Charlie Briggs.’

  ‘Never heard of him until he went missing.’

  ‘Sir Henry Fortune.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I met Henry quite a few times at private views—especially at Jason Pringle’s gallery. Hortense really admired Henry and Jason, and she’d have gone to exhibitions Henry curated whenever she could. All those years ago, she thought he’d been hard done by in not being given the Tate to run, but she changed her mind when she saw how Nick embraced the forces of progress. The man’s a genius.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had any business dealings with Sir Henry?’

  ‘She gave lectures at some of his events abroad and she had him a few times to give talks to students about what curating is all about. But that would have been that. Not business in any real sense.’

  ‘Chester Herblock?’

  ‘She got to know him recently. Through Jason, I think.’ He frowned. ‘I think he asked her to talk to some collector he thought needed advice.’

  ‘You don’t know who the collector was?’

>   ‘I don’t. Though she did say something about his English being bad and that he seemed very ignorant and uncouth.’

  ‘So it could have been Sarkovsky?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible.’

  ‘What kind of advice was she giving?’

  ‘I think Herblock was his art consultant and whoever it was wanted to buy something Herblock thought he shouldn’t. He brought in Hortense to point out the limitations of the artist.’

  ‘What artist?’

  ‘I don’t know. There were quite a lot of artists of whom Hortense disapproved. She is...was…an international expert on post-colonialism and masculism in European art.’

  Pooley repressed the urge to say, ‘There’s no answer to that,’ and instead asked: ‘Anastasia Holliday?’

  ‘She knew of her through Jason and she admired what she knew of her innovative art. I think they met when Jason took Holliday to a lecture of Hortense’s.’

  ‘Marilyn Falucci Lamont?’

  ‘I never heard her mention that name.’

  ‘You’ve talked about Jason Pringle. Jake Thorogood?’

  ‘Funny, that. She usen’t to think much of Jake as a critic. He was initially terribly stuck in his attitudes, no concept of cultural theory, talked up what he should have moved beyond and was shockingly resistant to the YBAs, so they didn’t get on. But he improved a lot in the last few years and they had a rapprochement.’

  ‘Lady Troutbeck?’

  ‘We met her once at our neighbour’s. Frightful reactionary. It’s a terrible thought that my poor Hortense probably spent her last days on earth in the company of such a ghastly, rude philistine.’ His eyes glistened with tears. ‘This is very upsetting for me, Inspector. Are we nearly finished?’

  ‘Just Gavin Truss to go, Dr. Wilde.’

  ‘Well, of course she and Gavin were great friends and allies at the cutting-edge of the avant-garde. Both—like me—were intellectually formed in the crucible of the Frankfurt School.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Could you elaborate?’