The Yellow Diamond

by Andrew Martin

  ‘Eh, ça va?’ Christophe had said into the phone. He received, and made, a lot of calls. At the start of this one, he had put his hand over the phone to tell Hayley he wouldn’t be long, but then he’d sat down on a bench by the ornamental pond to continue talking, so she’d had to sit down next to him, feeling spare. He was saying into the phone, ‘So we double-check, yeah?’ because he would sometimes slip into English. Hayley believed the conversation was to do with his work.

  ‘Christophe’s French, obviously,’ Hayley’s mother said. ‘Is that relevant? He’s a designer for video games. He does the backgrounds. He specialises in weather, doesn’t he, dear?’

  The detective ran his hand through his hair. He was greying. He looked at Hayley’s mother, and while moving his eyes in that direction, he glanced at Hayley, who gave him the signal again.

  ‘Mrs Buckingham,’ he said, ‘I must insist that you remain absolutely silent throughout this whole process, even when your daughter is not speaking.’

  Hayley’s mother nodded.

  ‘I should tell you, Mrs Buckingham,’ the detective continued, ‘that could easily take two or three hours.’

  Hayley’s mother nodded again. But a moment later, she said, ‘Perhaps it’d be best if I sit in the other room.’

  When she’d left, the detective gave Hayley a look – a nice little twinkle – that said, ‘Well, that’s got rid of her.’ It was the ‘absolutely’ that had done it; and he hadn’t called her Patricia. Of course, there’d be a row about it later.

  Hayley carried on, trying to edit her emotions. On another bench to the right there’d been a woman with a baby on her knee, and she was talking into her phone. She was foreign in some way. ‘I think you have enough black thing darling,’ she’d said. ‘Thing’, not ‘things’. Must have been speaking about clothes. Then a very tall man had walked past, with a terrier that was pulling on its lead, so the tall man kept yanking on the lead and shouting, ‘Heel, Baxter, heel!’ in an American accent. ‘Give the poor animal a break,’ Hayley had thought. Then, because she was angry at Christophe, she’d tried to think of someone she might call or text. In the end, she’d texted her boss, Sue, because the embargo date had been left off the press release about 67 Dover Street coming onto the market. That didn’t really matter. Journalists always ignored embargo dates, but sending the text had been something to do.

  She needn’t have bothered because Christophe was still rabbiting on in French. Hayley tried her best not to mind. She always tried to see something good in everyone, and she had decided that the good thing in Christophe was that he did not look down on her for being a property PR, although of course it might simply be that he hadn’t taken on board what she did for a living, being so obsessed with himself.

  It was then that she’d realised she was being watched by a really gigantic bird sitting on the parapet of the ornamental bridge. He (… had to be a ‘he’, being so grotesque) had looked like an angel gone wrong, and she believed she had known then that something terrible was going to happen.

  She gave the detective a heavily edited version of all that, but she did mention the bird, a pelican – and immediately felt a fool for doing so.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘The bird’s irrelevant.’

  ‘No,’ said the detective. ‘I’m glad you mentioned it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said, smiling.

  She had turned towards the bench to the right again to see a new person – a man – in place of the foreign woman. ‘Now he’s definitely English,’ she had thought, and he didn’t have a mobile phone either. He wore half-moon reading glasses and he was unfolding the Financial Times. She watched him as he started to read with much smoothing-out of the paper. Probably a bit OCD. There was a beautiful lamp near the bench. It had been illuminated – together with the other antique gas lanterns in the park – shortly beforehand. It was possible the man had selected the bench because of the gas lantern.

  The detective was writing quickly now, which pleased her.

  After a few seconds, the man on the bench lowered the paper and took out a packet of cigarettes: a very unusual packet, brownish. He took out a cigarette and tapped the end of it on the packet. You saw people do that in old films. He was a handsome older man with swept-back grey hair, pinstriped suit … old school. Even though he might have been sixty, he wore black boots with elasticated sides. She liked his boots, and obviously so did he because he kept glancing down at them when he was supposed to be reading. So either the boots were new, or he was a vain article, or both. Then he’d apparently noticed a spot of dirt on one of them, and he’d taken out a handkerchief, a good one, shaken it, and rubbed at the spot of dirt on the toe of his boot. He then lit his cigarette and carried on reading, and she carried on watching him. Under the jacket he wore a sort of quilted waistcoat. Huskies she thought those things were called. Under that, she could see a light-blue shirt and a dark-blue tie. She had been thinking that her father ought to dress like that, instead of trying to look half his age with that leather jacket.

  At this point, Hayley had pulled out the comb that held her hair. This had been for the benefit of Christophe. It was a test. The previous time she’d done this in his presence – the day before, on South Audley Street, Mayfair – he had stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and briefly kissed her. She had quite liked that: as if he were arresting her. But this time, he simply carried on his conversation. He had said into the phone, ‘Comme ci, comme ça,’ and she recalled thinking that in a minute he’d probably be saying ‘Ooh la la.’

  It was exactly then that she had heard the sound of something … not loud but like something being unleashed; something almost unstoppable. But it had been stopped – by the man on the bench, who was now lying on the pathway. Everyone in the park was running away and screaming – and, again, it was not from the loudness so much as the force of the sound. Never mind a spot of dirt on the man’s boots; now his suit would be completely ruined, she’d thought, ridiculously. In the half-light of the park, she had the idea that the man’s shadow was creeping from his body and making a getaway, but that was simply the blood pouring out of his head, and he had twice moved his arm towards his head, like a sleeper in the middle of a bad dream. Christophe was swearing loudly over and over again, and all the birds were flying up from the lake. But the pelican remained on the bridge, still staring at her.

  ‘The pelican,’ said the detective, as if he had read her mind (because she hadn’t mentioned the bird this time around). ‘It was on the parapet of the bridge, and so facing the man on the bench?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hayley, wondering where on earth this could be going.

  ‘So the bird would have seen what was behind the man on the bench immediately before he was shot?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘Then … what would it have seen?’

  She tried to remember what was behind the bench. She mentioned a flower bed … actually more like a little island of quite high bushes.

  ‘Anybody in that vicinity at all?’ asked the detective.

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t tell,’ and she was close to tears now.

  A little while later, when the detective was packing up, Hayley asked him, stupidly, ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘I’m off to interview that pelican,’ he said. He looked at her, and only when she laughed did he laugh himself. She liked that, and his name came back to her: Reynolds. Detective Inspector Blake Reynolds, and the man who’d been shot was a colleague, but apparently not exactly a friend, of his. His name was Quinn: Detective Superintendent George Quinn.

  3

  Reynolds’ next appointment was actually with a man named Chamberlain, a solicitor who lived in the privileged eighteenth-century residential complex called Argrove. He met Reynolds by the front door. It was three o’clock on the afternoon of Monday 8 December and the sky was already darkening over Mayfair.

  Chamberlain had led Reynolds down a long c
orridor with very solid-looking doors along one side. They appeared to be aiming towards a Christmas tree decorated with small blue lights.

  ‘You must never say The Argrove,’ Chamberlain had warned Reynolds, and Reynolds had promised not to. ‘Four Prime Ministers have lived here,’ said Chamberlain and he had proceeded to name them. ‘Also many famous writers …’

  … and Detective Superintendent George Quinn, in whose elegant, small bedroom they now stood.

  The room was almost higher than it was wide, like a booth, an effect increased by the vertical stripes of the wallpaper, which was red and gold, like Christmas wrapping. The bed was a three-quarter bed, expensive-looking, with a head that curved away from the pillows – scrolled might be the word, Reynolds thought. The fireplace was a working fireplace, with wood and coal waiting to burn. A very easy room to go to sleep in, thought Reynolds, especially if you’d been at the whisky that stood on a silver tray on the pedestal table next to the slumped but stylish green couch. On this tray there were also two unopened packets of old-fashioned fags: Capstan (‘Full Strength’, they were marked, just to reassure the purchaser) and a silver tankard engraved ‘Old Myrmidons Society’.

  Reynolds held his detective’s notebook. With pen poised, he asked, ‘Do you know what the Old Myrmidons are, Mr Chamberlain?’

  ‘It was his college dining society. He was at Merton, I was at Christ Church. They’re colleges at Oxford University,’ Chamberlain added for good measure.

  There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece that looked the genuine article – made in the actual days of carriages – with some invitations propped behind it. People called things like Mr and Mrs Henry Sykes would be ‘at home’ on a certain day. There was a letter informing Quinn that he was about to be invited to drinks on Thursday 11 December at the London Library in St James’s Square. Keep the date free, sort of thing. It was from ‘The Directors of the Society of Plyushkin’s Garden’. Not Pushkin but Plyushkin. There was no sign of the actual invitation.

  Chamberlain was telling Reynolds about how he’d met Quinn at some sherry party in Oxford back in 1973. They’d both been reading law, and everyone assumed Quinn had a great future as a barrister. Chamberlain himself had become a solicitor, but Quinn had amazed everyone by going into the police – everyone, that is, who had not heard of a certain inspirational uncle of Quinn’s who’d been a great hero of the colonial police in India. Later, Chamberlain had inherited leaseholds on two flats in Argrove, and he’d sublet this one to Quinn.

  ‘Any idea about the Society of Plyushkin’s Garden?’ Reynolds asked Chamberlain, who frowned.

  ‘Sounds like some secret society out of John Buchan,’ he said, ‘an old-fashioned adventure story, you know.’

  Reynolds considered telling Chamberlain that he had not only seen the film of The Thirty-Nine Steps, he had also read the book. He looked again at the letter. Surely, Plyushkin’s Gardeners couldn’t be very secret if they were proposing a drinks party? There was also a small silver sports car on the mantelpiece, and a fancy glass ashtray.

  Chamberlain said, ‘You’re a northerner, aren’t you? Like Quinn?’ by which he meant ‘not at all like Quinn’. Quinn had grown up on a country estate near York; Reynolds had grown up on a housing estate in York.

  ‘I can’t say our paths ever crossed up there.’

  ‘Well,’ said Chamberlain, ‘he’s a good deal older than you. His mother was the daughter of a baronet, you know.’

  Reynolds did know that, although he wasn’t sure what being a baronet involved, let alone being the daughter of one.

  ‘But the title goes down the male line,’ Chamberlain added sadly. He contemplated Reynolds. ‘Of course, he was a colleague of yours.’

  ‘Yes, but we never worked together directly. I knew him more by … reputation.’

  Everyone in the Met knew Quinn by reputation.

  They entered the bathroom, which was all white tiles, old-fashioned and very clean, like a small mortuary. Reynolds opened the bathroom cabinet … and this was why the bathroom looked empty. Everything was inside the cabinet. It was no doubt the sight of medicines and pills – together with a lot of upmarket soaps and hair products – that prompted Chamberlain to say, ‘One dares hardly ask, but what are his chances?’

  When Reynolds had first called Chamberlain, introducing himself as being from the West End Murder Team, Chamberlain had said, ‘But Quinn’s not actually dead, is he?’ as if this was something Reynolds had overlooked. Chamberlain had then asked, ‘How is he?’ and Reynolds had said, ‘He’s in a coma.’ Chamberlain, to do him credit, had sounded appalled at that, and Reynolds had regretted not having couched it in gentler terms, but then a coma was a coma: it was difficult to put a positive gloss on it. However, Reynolds now did try to be a bit gentler:

  ‘Difficult to say. According to the consultant …’

  ‘But is it an induced coma?’ Chamberlain cut in.

  The coma had been induced by the bullet that had lodged in Quinn’s brain. He was now under armed guard at St Michael’s Hospital in Fulham. His life had been saved by the swift arrival of the air ambulance. Helicopters had changed the face of murder investigation in the past ten years. Helicopters and CCTV … But there’d been no CCTV in St James’s Park. The bullet had been fired from a pistol of fairly small calibre: 6.35. No cartridges had been found, but the angle of entry into Quinn’s head indicated the piece had been fired from a clump of bushes behind the bench on which Quinn had been reading his paper. The guy from ballistics, who had presumably evaded all gender-equality awareness training, said, ‘A woman could have handled that gun.’ He’d also said that some weapons training was probably required to hit such a small target as the human head from that distance; that or very good luck.

  The shootist must then have mingled in with the panicked people – mainly tourists – who’d been charging about in the half-light as Quinn lay bleeding near the ornamental pond. The clump of bushes had been behind and a little to one side, so the bullet had entered the back of Quinn’s head obliquely, hence coma rather than death. The bullet remained inside Quinn’s head. It was unsafe, as yet, to remove it. The prospects of a full recovery were slight.

  Seeing that he would get no joy from a medical bulletin, Chamberlain asked, ‘Any leads so far?’

  ‘Lots,’ said Reynolds, which was another way of saying ‘None’.

  Quinn was a highly successful murder detective. There were any number of bad men who wanted him dead. That was assuming the shooting was not related to the new Operational Command Unit Quinn had created.

  ‘I suppose you can’t go into detail,’ said Chamberlain.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Reynolds. He was looking at something in a tube that was not toothpaste. ‘Geo. F. Trumper,’ Reynolds read, ‘Luxury Shaving Cream … Sandalwood’; and there was a heavy, old-fashioned safety razor, i.e. not that safe, and razorblades jumbled in a little dish. Reynolds reached into the cabinet, picked up the shaving cream and unscrewed the top. So that was what sandalwood smelt like: lemon. The whole flat, Reynolds now realised, was permeated with that smell combined with stale cigarette smoke. The combination was not unpleasant.

  They walked through to the living room. A fireplace with coal and wood recently burnt, and – resting on top of the firewood basket – back numbers of the Financial Times plus magazines: Reynolds saw Bonham’s Magazine, Mayfair Resident, Classic Car, Tatler, among others – the kind of magazines you’d get in the foyer of an upmarket corporation. He picked up the bundle and riffled through a magazine called Allure. The cover featured a Fabergé egg on a white background. It promoted watches, handbags, cars, food. Everything seemed to be taking place against the deep blue of the Mediterranean or the lighter blue of the Caribbean.

  The paintings on the wall of Quinn’s place showed country scenes of about the same vintage as Argrove. Two men in long coats and tricorn hats appeared to be negotiating over a horse in a field. It seemed likely they were good paintings, but whereas Reyn
olds rather prided himself on being well read, he knew he was out of his depth when it came to pictorial art.

  When Quinn had got tired of solving murders, he’d moved into the Arts and Antiques Squad for a while. With his track record he’d had carte blanche to do what he liked. He’d managed to spend a lot of time in Florence, and it was there that he’d bought a panama hat on expenses. That was a famous incident because the hat had cost about three hundred pounds.

  Bookshelves were set into alcoves either side of the fireplace. A lot of novels, nothing too out of the way: the works of Greene, Burgess, both Amises, Hollinghurst. Mainly British writers, but also Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Nabokov and Gogol. Among the non-fiction, Reynolds noted The Gentleman’s Suit by Hardy Amies, The Oligarchs by David Hoffman, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism by Philip Augar, The Oxford Dictionary of Finance and Banking.

  There was one room left … and it was all clothes: suits mainly, on basic metal racks, which somehow suggested that the suits were more important than the decor of the flat.

  ‘He was – is – very particular about clothes,’ said Chamberlain, ‘and he’s not shy about criticising the dress of others. He had a field day with me, as you can imagine.’ This was Chamberlain fishing for compliments, since he appeared perfectly well dressed to Reynolds. ‘He once told me off for wearing a jumper over my shoulders. I said, “Well, it might turn cold, you never know,” and he said, “Make a decision now about whether it’s going to turn cold or not.” He thought it inelegant to make a contingency arrangement, you see. By the same token he always told me not to keep my glasses on a cord round my neck.’

  Sure enough, Chamberlain did not keep his glasses on a cord around his neck. They were on his nose. Reynolds thought of the suit he himself was currently wearing. He’d bought it in a sale at Marks & Spencer. It was ‘wool-rich’ according to the label, but he doubted that would cut much ice with Quinn. He had spoken to Quinn twice, and the first time had been clothes-related. Quinn had come up to him in an incident room, and told him his coat, which was over the back of his chair, was touching the floor, and the floor was dusty. Reynolds had thanked him, and Quinn had walked off. His red socks had been particularly noticeable. Reynolds had been on the North London Murder Team at that point, and one of his colleagues had said, ‘That guy cracks me up,’ but nobody had actually laughed because Quinn was the doyen of the murder teams. That was why he had the pick of the special ops command units when he decided on a change of scene.