The Stone Wife

by Peter Lovesey

  “We still represent them. And the tablet may come up for sale again.”

  “Not for some time, it won’t.”

  “We wouldn’t want to alert the other great museums of the world. And we wouldn’t want to be pushed to some exorbitant price by someone acting for the seller. Or the auction house.”

  “Does that happen?”

  “It’s not unknown in the provinces. They call it bouncing a bid against the wall. They artificially inflate the bidding.”

  “On the assumption that someone will go higher?”

  “Or has unlimited resources.”

  “How much would the British Museum have gone to?”

  The eyes opened wide in shock. “I’m absolutely not authorised to tell you.”

  This time Diamond didn’t press. He’d asked out of curiosity, no more. “But you would have won eventually?”

  “I assume so.”

  Diamond was deflated. He’d begun to believe all the secrecy was about shielding some sinister Mr. Big, an oil-rich Russian with mafia connections, or an African dictator with blood money to bury in objects of art. “So what can you tell me about Professor Gildersleeve? Would he have been bidding on his own account?”

  “I can’t say for certain, but from his whole demeanour I gathered this was a personal matter, as if he was on some sort of mission to own the tablet. It became so obvious that I almost felt guilty topping his bids. He couldn’t have known he was up against one of the great institutions of the world.”

  “And do you know of any other parties with an interest?”

  “Obviously America and Japan, who were bidding by phone, but they stopped at ten thousand.”

  “I mean was there any hint of other interest before the auction?”

  “I heard of none, but the sale was widely publicised in academic circles.”

  “Were you tipped off that Gildersleeve was a bidder?”

  “No.”

  “You seem to know all about him.”

  “Only by reputation. I did my homework before coming here. When they identified him as the man who was shot, I recognised the name. He’s the author of several books on Chaucer.”

  “Could he have been bidding for some rival museum?”

  “I doubt it. My firm belief is that his interest was personal, which is why he challenged the gunmen.”

  “Makes sense,” Diamond said. “Did you get a good look at them?”

  “No more than anyone else.”

  “Did you notice the one who first produced the gun?”

  “I was far too caught up in the auction to notice anyone except Professor Gildersleeve. Your attention is all on the rival bidder and the auctioneer.”

  Understandable. Diamond glanced across the room, his thoughts moving on. He’d got what he needed from Sturgess. “Unless there’s something else you can tell me, I have no further questions.”

  Sturgess didn’t need any more encouragement to move off fast.

  Diamond called Bath Central and asked if there was any progress tracking the getaway van. A world-weary voice told him nothing had been reported and without a registration number or even the make, he shouldn’t get his hopes up. They couldn’t do hard stops on all the silver vans across the city. Maybe if it had been stolen they would find it abandoned later. Professional robbers generally arrange for a car change along the escape route.

  All down to CID, then, he told himself. What’s new?

  In the far corner of the auction room, several of the team were at work interviewing witnesses. They had commandeered some elegant chairs and small tables that could have been Chippendale or Sheraton for all he knew. DI John Leaman and DC Paul Gilbert had joined Ingeborg and appeared to be getting through at a good rate.

  He went over.

  “Any description worth having?” he asked Ingeborg when she’d finished with her latest.

  “Zilch so far, guv,” she told him. “Everyone remembers what the villains were wearing and not much else.”

  “The balaclavas.”

  “And the T-shirts and jeans.”

  He stood with arms folded, listening to the latest witness. Ingeborg was good at this, cutting through any useless prattle to get to the real point of the interview and doing it with charm and precision. But she wasn’t getting much for her efforts.

  It was Paul Gilbert who summoned Diamond by tilting the chair away from the table and saying, “Guv, I think you should hear this.”

  His witness was a small, sharp-featured woman in her fifties with hair streaked red and green and makeup that was meant to tone but hadn’t.

  “This is Miss, em …” Gilbert paused to look at his notes.

  “It doesn’t matter a hoot,” the woman said. “Everyone calls me the glass lady.”

  “Alice Topham,” Gilbert read out. “From Brighton.”

  “Long way to come,” Diamond said.

  “I go to all the sales,” Miss Topham said. “There’s always glass worth buying. Some of the best lots still hadn’t been reached when the interruption came. I suppose I’ll have to wait for another day. But I want it on record that I was the successful bidder for the Jubilee Commemoration dish. In all this chaos, things could easily go astray.”

  “Tell Mr. Diamond what you were saying about the man who stopped the auction,” Gilbert said.

  “Him?” she said with distaste. “It was my bad luck to be right behind him. He was annoying me because he wouldn’t keep still, blocking my view. Twitchy, checking his pockets. You don’t want movement in an auction. All I could see half the time was the back of his neck. This was before he pulled the mask over his head.”

  Gilbert prompted her again. “But what did you tell me about it?”

  “The hairline was uneven. Some kind of scar had stopped it from growing normally.”

  “This is helpful,” Diamond said. “Was there a shape to the scar?”

  “It was roughly circular and concave, like a little crater on the moon, if you follow me. I expect he’d had a carbuncle removed at one time.”

  “How big?”

  “No more than that.” She made a shape with her thumb and forefinger about the size of a penny. “Most people wouldn’t notice, but I have an eye for detail. It’s my business, you see.”

  “Do you remember anything else about him?”

  “I only had the back view.”

  “Try to remember.”

  “Now you’re asking. The hair was dark and straight and starting to go grey, quite long, almost covering his ears, but I could see where the lobes should have been. There weren’t any. I’m always wary of men without lobes. There’s an old superstition that murderers have no ear lobes.”

  “He wasn’t the killer. He didn’t fire the shot,” Gilbert said.

  “He’s one of the gang, so he’s just as culpable,” the glass lady said and turned to Diamond for support. “Isn’t that so?”

  “We could charge him, yes. What about the others?”

  “I couldn’t see their ears under the balaclavas, could I? They came in wearing them.”

  “I was interested to know if you spotted any other detail.”

  She shook her head. “As soon as they appeared, I ducked behind that harpsichord over there.”

  “You go to all the sales, you said. Have you ever seen anything like the lump of stone they were after?”

  “Anything and everything,” she said.

  “Stone objects?”

  “Bird baths, statues, even a headstone once. If it’s old, it has a value and a price. Personally, I only buy glass. It’s prettier and easier to get home. Have you finished with me, because I’d like to pick up my dish and get on the road?”

  “We may contact you later to identify the scar if we make an arrest.”

  “I hope you will, and soon. I’d like to see them locked away for the rest of their undeserving lives.”

  She went off in search of the auctioneer. Diamond watched the red and green streaks until they were lost to view behind an
oak sideboard. “This is shaping up as one of the wackiest cases I’ve been involved in,” he said to Paul Gilbert. “The Wife of Bath. A glass lady. A gunman with a moon crater on the back of his neck. A guy afraid to speak the name of the British Museum. What next?”

  4

  No one was under any illusion that the three hitmen were Chaucer scholars. Everything pointed to professionals, even though the job had been botched. But finding them wouldn’t be easy. Basically, the only description Diamond had was that the first robber had longish dark hair, a scar on the back of his neck and no ear lobes.

  “This will be tough,” he warned the team at the first briefing. “I don’t need to tell you snouts go silent when the crime is murder. We’ll try. We bloody have to. But we may need a better way.”

  “Crimewatch?” Paul Gilbert said, ever eager to contribute.

  Everyone except Gilbert saw the glint in the boss’s eyes that said Crimewatch was a non-starter, but the youngest, greenest member of CID pressed on. “It would make great television, reconstructing the auction.”

  “No question.”

  “It’s a massive audience.”

  Diamond was patient with him. “But there’s only so much information Joe Public can provide. We interviewed everyone who was there.”

  “All we’d end up with,” Ingeborg added, “would be a list of suspicious characters from other auctions.”

  “A thousand other auctions,” John Leaman said.

  “A few hundred, anyway,” Ingeborg said.

  Gilbert’s shoulders sank. “It was only a thought.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” Diamond said. “I’m always open to suggestions.”

  A few looks were exchanged. Everyone else in the team had been cut to shreds at some point in the past for coming up with a half-baked idea.

  “The way I look at it,” Leaman said, “we don’t just want to find the three who held up the auction. We’re looking for the guy who hired them.”

  “Too right we are.”

  “Whoever he is,” Keith Halliwell said, “he’s not a happy bunny.”

  Gilbert returned to the fray like a boxer bouncing off the ropes. “What was he hoping to get out of it? Even if the hold-up had succeeded, all he’d end up with would be a lump of stone.”

  “An antique lump of stone,” Ingeborg said in a measured, bored voice, “linked to one of the most famous poems in the language and valued at over twenty grand by the British Museum.”

  Everyone except Gilbert felt the force of the putdown.

  John Leaman repeated his mantra: “We need to find the guy behind all this.”

  “Agreed,” Diamond said. “So who would have an interest in acquiring a carving of the Wife of Bath?”

  “Another museum?” Gilbert said.

  “Get real,” Halliwell said. “Museums don’t hire armed robbers.”

  “Some nutty professor, then.”

  “Another? We already have one and he’s dead.”

  “Well, it has to be some weirdo.”

  “There’s a question that always comes up when a well-known work of art is stolen, and we need to ask it, too,” Ingeborg said. “Why do they do it?”

  “To sell on to a third party?” Halliwell said.

  “Or demand a ransom?” Leaman said.

  “An insurance scam?” Gilbert said.

  “Was the stone insured? I doubt it,” Leaman said.

  “Never mind,” Diamond said. “This is good. Brainstorming. Keep it rolling.”

  “The best scheme I ever heard of was the Mona Lisa theft from the Louvre,” Leaman said.

  Gilbert screwed up his face. “Is this a joke?”

  “No. It’s a fact.”

  “When was this?”

  “About a hundred years ago,” Ingeborg said. “It couldn’t happen these days.”

  “It was still the cleverest art scam there’s ever been,” Leaman said. “The main thief was an Italian glazier who helped construct the protective glass box it was housed in, so he knew exactly how to beat the security. This heist was three years in the planning. They stole other works from the Louvre before they went for the big one. The glazier went in with two accomplices dressed in workmen’s clothes on a day the gallery was closed for cleaning, hid in a storeroom and walked out next morning with the painting.”

  Ingeborg shrugged. “The cleverest ever? I dispute that. Anyway, it wouldn’t be possible in the twenty-first century with modern security.”

  “But do you know the motive?” Leaman said. “That was the brilliant part.”

  “Give it to us, then,” Ingeborg said in a bored voice, well used to being trumped by the team know-all.

  “The whole thing was masterminded by a crook called Valfierno who’d worked out this method. He’d used it before in Argentina and Mexico. He would hire an insider—in this case, the glazier—to steal the original. News of the theft would get into the papers. Then—this is the brilliant part—he would sell copies to rich collectors who believed they were buying the real thing. They were clever forgeries painted by his accomplice, a skilful artist called Chaudron. In the two years the Leonardo was missing, Valfierno sold six Mona Lisa forgeries to rich American collectors at three hundred thousand dollars a go. Big money in 1911. The fall guys each believed they secretly owned the most famous painting in the world.”

  “How was it detected?” Gilbert asked.

  “All this time the glazier had kept the original rolled up under his bed. Stupidly he tried to cash in by offering it to an art dealer in Florence. He was caught and jailed and the painting was returned to the Louvre, putting an end to Valfierno’s clever scam. They could have gone on indefinitely selling fake Mona Lisas to rich mugs.”

  “There’s always a reckoning,” Ingeborg said.

  “Not in the art world, there isn’t,” Diamond said. “Fewer than ten percent of art thefts are ever detected.”

  “We’re on a loser, then,” Leaman said.

  You didn’t say that kind of thing in Diamond’s CID meetings.

  There was an uncomfortable silence before the main man said, “I’m going to take the last remark as a joke. A few minutes ago you were all supplying theories. Come on.” He snapped his fingers.

  Leaman said, “I thought my Mona Lisa story was a good example.”

  “It can’t teach us much about the present case. They’d be hard pushed to sell forgeries of the Wife of Bath.”

  “The theft of the Stone of Scone was closer to what we’re talking about,” Halliwell said.

  “Stone of what?” Gilbert said.

  “Before your time. And mine, come to that. The ancient coronation stone nicked from Westminster Abbey in the 1950s.”

  “Political,” Ingeborg said. “That was all about Scottish nationalism.”

  “The practical problem of shifting a bloody great rock was the same.”

  “True. But there the resemblance ends.”

  “So, what’s your theory?” Halliwell asked Ingeborg.

  “It’s about single-minded people, collectors, who covet great works of art. They don’t want them in public galleries being enjoyed by everyone. They want the thrill of having the stuff all to themselves. Thousands of precious artefacts have been stolen over the years and never recovered. They can’t be sold on. They’re too well known. Van Goghs, Picassos and Rembrandts. It’s possible our mystery man is a secret hoarder.”

  “With an Aladdin’s cave piled high with stolen treasures?” Leaman said with a curl of the lip.

  “Doesn’t matter where he stores it. Collector’s mania is a recognised condition.”

  “You think he has a stack of stone carvings at home?”

  She sighed and spread her hands. “Listen, guys, all I’m suggesting is that we focus our investigation on the brains behind this operation.”

  “Ingeborg is right,” Diamond said, before anyone else chipped in. “The paymaster is our main target. We’ll investigate everyone with a conceivable interest in acquiring the st
one.”

  “Excuse me,” Leaman said.

  “What’s up?” Diamond said.

  “That was my suggestion.”

  “What was?”

  “You said Ingeborg is right about investigating the paymaster.”

  “It’s bloody obvious, isn’t it?” Ingeborg said to him. “I didn’t think we were reduced to scoring points off each other.” But she’d just scored a good one off him.

  It was clear to Diamond that the brainstorming was at an end. Nothing more would emerge while they were sniping at each other. He liked his team and valued them, but bright people tend to think their opinions should carry the day. “This doesn’t mean we let the gunmen go free. I’m thinking one or more of us may need to go undercover.”

  Conversation ceased while they all considered their options.

  When Keith Halliwell spoke, it was to say, “High risk.”

  Diamond didn’t say a word.

  Halliwell was supposed to be Diamond’s back-up, the senior man. “There’s a fine line between getting on the inside and aiding and abetting. We all know about certain high profile cases where the officer concerned got too involved. The law doesn’t take kindly to cops bending the rules.”

  Diamond knew he should have discussed this first with Keith. The man was speaking sense. But it was still a cause for anger that his deputy’s first reaction had been so negative. “You’ve made your point,” he said, tight-lipped. “Whoever takes this on will need to be ultra careful.”

  They wouldn’t be queuing up to volunteer.

  “Anyone wants to speak to me, I’ll be in my office.”

  What followed was to become a classic “I was there” episode to be endured at the time, cherished in the memory and relayed to generations of CID officers who came after. Diamond stepped into his office and closed the door. Actually “slammed” would be a better word. Immediately came an almighty thump followed by the sound of glass shattering and a roar of mingled pain and outrage giving way to a passage of swearing the like of which had not been heard in Manvers Street in twenty years. Then silence.

  There was no rush to assist.

  Consciences were being examined. Everyone could picture the scene inside. They should have seen it coming and warned the boss. He’d stumbled, staggered, made a grab for the only thing within reach and brought his computer screen crashing down with him.