Chelsea Mansions bak-11

by Barry Maitland

‘A family,’ Deb added. ‘And are you quite recovered now?’

  Brock looked at her in surprise, and she explained, ‘John kept us informed. He went to the hospital to see you when you were in a coma, did you know that?’

  ‘No. I had no idea.’

  ‘So how can we help you?’

  ‘I should make clear that I’m off-duty at the moment, and this is just to satisfy my curiosity about some secondary features of the case that have been bothering me.’

  ‘Can’t let it go, eh?’ Toby nodded approvingly. ‘The new chap hasn’t been to see us. What’s his name?’

  ‘Superintendent Chivers.’

  ‘Yes, that’s him. Getting anywhere, is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not up to date with the investigation.’

  ‘Cutting you out, are they?’ Toby shook his head. ‘Turf politics, I suppose. So what are these secondary features?’

  Brock took out the 1956 photograph and handed it to him.

  ‘Yes,’ Toby said. ‘John showed me this. That’s Chelsea Mansions in the background, right enough, but I couldn’t tell him who the people were. Not that I could see the relevance, frankly.’

  ‘We’ve always wondered if Nancy had a particular reason for wanting to stay here,’ Brock said. ‘And it appears that she did. We’ve now established that this is Nancy in the photograph, aged sixteen, and those are her parents. So she’d been here before.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Deb took the photograph for a closer look. ‘I suppose it could be her… But she never mentioned this to us.’

  ‘That’s strange, isn’t it? I believe your aunt owned a hotel here in Chelsea Mansions, Colonel.’

  He waved his hand. ‘Toby, please. Yes, my father’s aunt, Great-Aunt Daphne, next door at number seven.’

  ‘So it’s possible that these people were staying at her hotel. Certainly Nancy would have remembered being here with her parents. That’s presumably why she was so eager to stay here. And yet, having come all this way, she didn’t mention it to you?’

  ‘That does seem strange,’ Toby agreed.

  ‘Would you still have your great-aunt’s hotel records, visitors’ books, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. John had a poke around in our attic, but I don’t think he came up with anything like that.’

  ‘Would you have been here at that time, Toby? April 1956?’

  He frowned in thought. ‘Shouldn’t think so. I was in the army by then.’

  ‘There was a visit by the Soviet leaders to London that April.’

  ‘Oh, I do remember that-B and K, Bulganin and Krushchev. The papers were full of it. I remember the Daily Express ran articles instructing readers on how to say “Hello, how are you?” and “Did you have a nice trip?” in Russian, in case they bumped into any of the official party in the street. But no, I’m sure I wasn’t in London then. I would have been up at Catterick.’

  Brock wasn’t altogether convinced by the way he dismissed the idea, but it was hard to read Toby’s expression, behind those dark lenses. ‘Pity. I was hoping you might have been the photographer.’

  ‘Sorry, no. But look, this is ancient history. What’s its relevance?’

  He said it with a sudden vehemence, and Brock sensed an undercurrent of impatience, even anger in the man. Money troubles, perhaps. The place looked as if it was on its last legs.

  ‘Why are you wasting your time with this?’ Toby was going on, his voice hardening. ‘You and I both know what lies at the heart of it all. You had the answer in your hands. Money is what this is all about, the gangster Moszynski’s money, and the sickness and corruption that flows from that.’

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you? I believe he tried to cheat you.’

  ‘I detested him.’ Toby sat up straighter in his chair, sticking out his chin defiantly, and Brock had a glimpse of what he would have been like in the army, twenty years before.

  ‘He was one of those men who have no history, no tradition. They are opportunists who exist only in the present, preying upon those around them and using their money to spread corruption. And at the heart of that corruption squats that poisonous toad, Hadden-Vane. You had him, Brock! You had him in your grip, and he slipped away, thanks to corruption!’

  He reached for a folded newspaper and slapped it down on the table in front of Brock, who saw the picture of Hadden-Vane, beaming smugly at the camera, and the caption, MP cleared. The short article stated that Scotland Yard had confirmed that Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane was not considered a person of interest in the murders of Nancy Haynes and Mikhail Moszynski. An unnamed source claimed that investigations on British soil had now been concluded and that a request to send detectives to continue inquiries in Moscow and St Petersburg had been rejected by the Russian government.

  ‘You’ve been duped.’ Toby sank back into his chair. ‘Outflanked and outmanoeuvred. The toad’s too wily for you.’

  And perhaps it was true, Brock thought, as he walked back through Belgravia and Victoria. Or perhaps it was just the paranoia of an old soldier who had been defeated by the brutal realities of civilian life.

  The officer at the reception desk at Queen Anne’s Gate had been told to expect him, and immediately showed him up to his old office, where Superintendent Chivers offered him a coffee and a seat. Chivers seemed unabashed to be in occupation of Brock’s old room. It was just an office after all, but still it seemed rather eerie, with the old clutter of books and papers swept away and someone else at Dot’s desk outside, as if Brock were dead and returning as a ghost to see how the world was coping without him. Extremely well, seemed to be the answer.

  ‘Yes, just putting the final touches to the report,’ Chivers said. ‘Then it’s up to the politicians if they want to pursue it, which I doubt.’

  ‘So it was the Russians all the time?’

  ‘Yes, a rerun of the Litvinenko case, except that they varied their method to hide the fact. No exotic poisons this time. They hired a local sub-contractor, Peebles, to do the dirty work.’

  ‘How did they get onto him?’

  ‘Through Danny Yilmaz’s cousin, Barbaros Kaya. We can’t prove it, but we’re sure he’s had drug dealings with Russian mafia from the Caucasus. That seems to be the link. We think they were used by an FSB faction that wants to ingratiate itself in the Kremlin by bringing Moszynski’s money back to Russia.’

  Brock wondered if Sean Ardagh had inspired this idea. ‘And will they do that?’

  ‘That depends on which side of the fence Vadim Kuzmin chooses to jump. He holds the reins now. We’ve had the fraud boys working on the accountant, Freddie Clarke, but he’s giving nothing away.’

  ‘And Nancy Haynes?’

  ‘Peebles mistook her for Marta Moszynski. They wanted rid of her too-apparently she still has some influence with Putin because of her dead husband, Gennady Moszynski.’

  ‘The MI5 theory,’ Brock said.

  ‘Yes.’ Chivers scowled at Brock, irked by his lack of enthusiasm. ‘You have a problem with that, Brock?’

  Brock took the 1956 photograph out of his pocket and showed it to him. ‘This turned up. It’s Chelsea Mansions, and that’s a teenage Nancy Haynes and her parents. The other man is probably Gennady.’

  ‘What?’ Chivers peered at it. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Reasonably. Not so as it would stand up in court.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Nancy’s companion, Emerson Merckle, had a packet of her old photographs.’

  ‘Well… what am I supposed to make of it?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Chivers stared at it for a while, then pushed it aside and gave Brock a grim smile and shook his head. ‘Brock, you bugger, you always do this.’

  ‘Do what, Dick?’

  ‘Try to complicate things. You’re never satisfied with the simple answer. You’ve always got to look for a more complicated explanation, a more interesting and original explanation. Well, you’re wrong. Remember Occam’s razor, Brock-the simplest
of two theories is to be preferred.’

  Brock hadn’t seen Chivers so worked up. He seemed to have touched a nerve.

  ‘My report is about to go to Sharpe,’ Chivers went on. ‘Don’t muddy the waters, please.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Brock put the photograph back in his pocket and got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the update, Dick.’

  Chivers showed him to the door. ‘Any time, Brock. You’re looking well, by the way. Still on sick leave?’

  ‘Another week, the doctor says.’

  ‘Best not to rush things. Not sure what they’re going to do with this place. Someone said they were thinking of selling it. Shame if they did. Close to HQ but conveniently out of sight. I’ve become quite attached to it.’

  Feeling like a displaced person peddling a worthless trinket, Brock decided to give the photo one last try. He took the tube across the river to the Elephant and Castle and walked down to Amelia Street, where SERIS, the Specialist Evidence Recovery and Imaging Services unit, was based, and with them Morris Munns. Morris, whose myopic gaze through thick-lensed glasses seemed so at odds with his ability to conjure hidden information from crime scenes, grabbed him in a hug.

  ‘We thought we’d lost you,’ he cried. ‘The Marburg Pimpernel. The lads ran a book on your survival. I lost a packet.’

  ‘You betted against me?’ Brock said, shocked.

  ‘It’s called hedging,’ Morris chuckled. ‘Come on, you can buy me lunch while you tell me about this private job.’

  Over a Thai chicken salad Brock showed Morris the photograph. He peered at it, turned it over, sniffed it.

  ‘Over fifty years old? So what am I meant to find?’

  ‘The reason why this picture killed two people. No, I honestly don’t know. Anything you can tell me about it. For instance there’s a distinctive lapel badge on that bloke at the back. We think he may be Russian, the other three American, the background Cunningham Place in Chelsea. We don’t know who took the picture. We believe the date is on or around the twenty-sixth of April, 1956.’

  ‘Okay. I suppose you’ll say this is urgent, only I’ve got a backlog of weeks.’

  ‘Your other customers don’t come back from the dead to buy you lunch, Morris.’

  After they parted Brock rang Kathy. He told her about Chivers’ report and then, as he was about to ring off, she mentioned that John Greenslade was flying back from America that night, and could the three of them meet up for dinner the next evening? He wasn’t wildly enthusiastic, but he sensed her eagerness and agreed.

  When he got home he felt edgy and unable to settle. Later, after grilling a fish fillet for his supper, he sat in the window bay that projected out over the lane, watching the trains pass by in the twilit shadows of the cutting down below. He had a novel on his knee, but was unable to concentrate on it. Too many characters, he thought, none of whom he cared about, and too clever by half. Which was what Chivers would say about him. Quick and clean, was Chivers. Get the job done. Occam’s razor.

  THIRTY-THREE

  M orris had rung Brock in the middle of the following morning, arranging to meet him at a Latin American deli in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, the first covered shopping centre in Europe back in 1965, and subsequently voted London’s ugliest building, now awaiting demolition. It had a gloomy subterranean feel to it which depressed Brock’s spirits, but Morris seemed perversely cheerful, sitting with a large bag of groceries by his side. Brock ordered a coffee and joined him.

  ‘Can’t stop long,’ Morris said. ‘But I needed to stock up for our samba party tonight.’

  Brock raised an eyebrow but said nothing as Morris took an envelope out of the carrier bag, extracted the photograph and laid it down on the table in front of them.

  ‘It’s printed on a Kodak Velox paper that was available from the mid-fifties into the sixties, consistent with your date. If the April twenty-six date is correct, the length and angle of shadows indicate the picture was taken at around four in the afternoon, this being Chelsea Mansions on the north side of Cunningham Place, right?’

  Brock nodded, and Morris took some enlargements from the envelope.

  ‘The lapel badge you mentioned is a five-pointed star, approximately ten millimetres across, resembling the gold star which Heroes of the Soviet Union were entitled to wear. The man wearing it has an area of scar tissue on his left temple which appears to be caved in, as if from an industrial accident or war wound. You could get a pathologist’s opinion on that, and on some Soviet-era dental work he seems to be sporting.’ Morris pointed to a close-up of the man’s smiling mouth.

  ‘The other man, who you say is an American, appears to be rather well off and possibly involved in international travel and business. He’s wearing a Rolex GMT Master wristwatch, the first watch to show two time zones at once, first released in 1954.

  ‘The woman at his side is also well heeled, dressed in what looks to be a Dior A-line costume. But her taste in jewellery seems a little unconventional and artistic. The younger woman is carrying a posy of flowers-a mixture of what looks like roses and some other type, like Michaelmas daisies. She’s also holding something else in her left hand…’ He produced an enlargement. ‘Maybe a cigarette or spectacle case. She’s much more informally dressed than the others, who look as if they’ve been to some sort of function.’

  ‘There was a banquet lunch for visiting Russians that day,’ Brock said.

  ‘There you go then.’ Morris turned the photo over to look at the back. ‘Notice the faint brown smudge. It’s a vegetable glue, as if there was once an accompanying note or card stuck to the back of the photo, so we did an ESDA electrostatic scan.’

  Morris flicked through the contents of his envelope to a grey photograph across which black lettering was visible. ‘ESDA picks up the faintest compression marks, in this case caused by something being written on another piece of paper with the photo underneath.’

  Brock read the message: Dear Ronnie and Maisy, What larks! Love, Miles

  ‘You’re a magician, Morris.’

  Morris gathered the material up, put it back in the envelope and handed it to Brock. ‘Happy hunting, mate.’

  After he’d gone Brock remained at the table going over the contents of the envelope while he finished his coffee. Ronnie and Maisy were Nancy’s parents, he remembered, but who was Miles? He examined the enhanced enlargements that Morris had made of the faces of the four people in the photograph, and he thought of Kathy’s theory about Gennady as he studied them. The two American adults were long-skulls, tall and of slender build, whereas the Russian was a round-skull Slav, short and stocky. Brock looked at the girl’s bone structure, the cheeks, the chin, and pondered. Finally he checked his notebook for the number of someone he knew well in forensic services. He got out his phone and made the call, asking for a special favour.

  As Brock turned into Cunningham Place he saw two men emerge from the Moszynski entrance porch. One was the security guard, Wayne Everett, who hurried ahead to open the rear door of a Maybach Zeppelin for the other man, Vadim Kuzmin, who appeared angry and impatient. The limousine eased out of its parking spot and surged away at speed.

  Brock continued towards the porch, climbing the steps and pressing the button on the entry phone. A female voice responded and he said, ‘Detective Chief Inspector David Brock, Metropolitan Police, to see Mrs Marta Moszynski.’

  ‘One moment, please.’

  It took considerably more than that for the voice to come back. It sounded anxious, and hesitant in its use of English. ‘I’m sorry. Mrs Moszynski is not well enough to see you, sir.’

  ‘Tell Mrs Moszynski I have information concerning her husband.’

  A hesitation, then, ‘Mr Moszynski was her son, sir, not her husband.’

  ‘I’m talking about Mr Gennady Moszynski, not Mr Mikhail Moszynski.’

  ‘Wait, please.’

  Eventually there was a click and the door opened and the maid indicated for him to come in. As he entered the hall he
was struck again by the scale of the internal transformation that had been worked on the original buildings. The whole of the middle house had been gutted to create a central atrium with stairs, lift and galleries rising through five storeys to a glass lantern, with a multi-tiered lighting feature suspended within it. When he’d seen it before, at night, with the glitter of hundreds of tiny lights, it had seemed flashy but rather dazzling, like the foyer of an exotic gaming club. But now, with the lights turned off and no one around, it seemed merely overblown and pretentious.

  He followed the maid across to the glass lift which rose with a faint hum to the third floor, where they walked around the gallery to overscaled double doors which the maid tapped, then opened. This was Marta Moszynski’s private apartment, with a generous sitting room from which doors led off to other rooms. The old woman was sitting in an armchair by the windows overlooking the square, surrounded by a blue haze of cigarette smoke. She turned and regarded Brock’s approach with a stubborn scowl that might have been modelled on Krushchev.

  Brock took the seat facing her and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Moszynski. How are you today?’

  She tapped her cigarette slowly on the heavy glass ashtray at her side. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me why Mikhail chose this building to live in when he came to London.’

  The question seemed to throw her, and she shook her head.

  ‘Did his father tell him about it? Because Gennady was here, wasn’t he?’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Marta growled, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Go away.’

  Brock took a copy of the photograph out of his pocket and offered it to her. Reluctantly she reached out a knobbly hand and took it, then made a great play of picking up her spectacles from the small table at her elbow and putting them on.

  ‘That’s Gennady at the back, see?’ Brock said.

  She frowned and peered closer. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. Here’s a larger picture of his face. It was the twenty-sixth of April, 1956, and they were standing in front of this building.’

  ‘No,’ Marta repeated, and her head was shaking again, with movements so jerky and violent that Brock wondered for a moment if she might be having some kind of fit.