‘That call I made to you... let me get it up on my laptop because it’s freaky.’
He hesitated before following Maggie out. ‘I told you last night about how important it was, Mags. You hit the nail on the head. I’m sure I don’t need to see it.’ But Maggie wasn’t going to be deterred.
Maggie had left her laptop on Jack’s desk. She sat in his chair as she brought up the articles on Joe Orton, his murder and the suicide of his partner Kenneth Halliwell. Jack leaned in as she scrolled through one article after another, and then, on the screen, they saw Halliwell’s paintings.
‘Ironic, isn’t it? Because of the murder, Halliwell’s paintings have finally become worth buying, not that I think they’re very nice.’ Maggie turned off her laptop. ‘You know something, Jack. You didn’t watch the whole of The Third Man; and I know you were too tired to listen the last time I explained it to you. But the film is basically about a friendship. One man tries to trace his friend in Vienna after the Second World War and discovers he’s now a criminal, involved in the drug trade, so he hunts him down, finally cornering him in the sewers.’
‘And?’ Jack said, getting up from the desk.
‘Well, I have a theory. Adam actually describes Detmar Steinburg, or whatever his name is, as being in a similar relationship to Joe Orton. He was his dealer, wasn’t he?’
Jack nodded, frowning.
‘Mags, where are you going with this?’
‘Let me just think this through. I asked if you thought Adam could have been involved in Steinburg’s murder. Only then you weren’t sure he was even the victim.’
‘That’s why I went to the gallery. To find out if Steinburg was alive. To be honest, until I saw the body in the ICU, I wasn’t sure whether Adam was the victim.’
Maggie swung round in Jack’s swivel chair and reached out to take his hand. ‘You know something, Jack. I think Adam was warning you not to trust him, and at the same time, I think he was tipping you off... no, that’s not the right word... giving you some insight into his dealer because he was already planning to leave him.’
‘You could be right.’
‘I think he cares for you too, Jack, in whatever blunted emotional way he can.’
He took her by the hands and drew her up to stand, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Maybe,’ he said dubiously. ‘And I didn’t tell you about Helga.’
She was at the gallery trying to collect money she was owed, a hundred thousand quid... in fact, I told her to get out before the police arrived. According to Ester, she was a valued client, making introductions to rich collectors. She was obviously working for Steinburg... he even rented the property in Haslemere for her. She lied, of course, denying ever knowing him and swore she did not know where Adam was. She said vanishing was what he always did.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘I think the further away you are from this entire situation, the better. You mustn’t get roped in any more than you already have been.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Jack tapped her laptop. ‘And thank you for this. It’s incredible that a woman as intelligent as you can be bothered with an ignorant prat like me.’
‘I am bothered because I love you. And yes, you may be ignorant, but you’re good, kind... and sexy as hell in that James Bond get-up you had on last night. I couldn’t wait for you to come home.’
‘When I did you were fast asleep.’
‘I’m wide awake now, Detective Warr.’
Collingwood and Morrison were searching Steinburg’s luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking the river by Chelsea Bridge. Two forensic officers were also present, moving from one exquisitely furnished room to another. Collingwood stood in the centre of a huge drawing room, where large portraits dominated the walls, while Persian rugs were scattered over a polished, wide-planked mahogany floor. Dominating the room was a white marble-topped coffee table stacked with design and art books, with a Murano glass bowl filled with fruit in the centre.
‘How the other half lives,’ Collingwood muttered as he wandered around the room. Morrison picked at his nose, looking around in distaste. ‘This apartment block is mostly occupied by Russians. There’s an underground car park with more flash motors in there than you’d get at a motor show, and I bet these paintings are all worth millions.’
Morrison walked out into the corridor and stood by the entrance to the kitchen, which was yet another designer showcase with floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted cabinets and a chrome double-doored fridge alongside a marble-topped island with four high stools.
‘It’s so clean, it looks as if no one uses it,’ Collingwood said, opening a cupboard to see stacked tins of caviar. But Morrison had already walked out.
They next toured the two bedrooms, and again, the decor was extraordinary, with the draped floor-to-ceiling velvet curtain matching the ornate bed canopy. More paintings were hanging on the walls, and when they opened the wardrobe doors, the array of garments was like a high-end gentlemen’s outfitters. Opening the bedside drawers, they found an array of drugs and, to Morrison’s obvious disgust, a variety of sex toys including enormous strap-on dildos.
They found more drugs in the white marble bathroom en suite. One cabinet was filled with hair treatments and shampoos. Morrison held up a hairpiece, grinning. ‘This is called a spider, I think. Imagine all this money, and he’s freaked out about going bald.’
Collingwood was too tired to laugh. He had only managed a couple of hours sleep at the station before starting again early that morning.
The forensic officers, wearing white protective suits, were working in Detmar Steinburg’s office when Collingwood and Morrison joined them. Like the rest of the apartment, it was beautifully furnished with an antique desk and wall-to-wall cabinets. A large wall safe had been revealed behind a large oil painting. The officers had emptied the drawers of the desk, and numerous documents were already bagged and tagged, ready to be examined at the station.
‘Can you open the safe?’ Morrison asked.
‘Still working on it,’ one of the SOCOs told him.
Morrison followed Collingwood into the one room they had not yet looked through. This, they quickly ascertained, was Kurt Neilson’s. Although it had been fashionably decorated, it was dominated by his hideous paintings and collages, along with an easel and boxes of paints and brushes. The fitted carpet was covered in paint stains, and numerous half-squeezed tubes of oil paint littered the floor.
Collingwood searched around the bed, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the smell of urine and the dark stains. Beside it was a leather overnight case. Collingwood gestured to Morrison as he lifted it onto the bed and got a wave of musky perfume as he opened it. He carefully removed two silk monogrammed cream shirts, underwear, socks, folded grey cashmere trousers and a white silk-lined jacket. In a small leather zipped case was cologne, shaving equipment, a brush and a comb.
‘These have to be Steinburg’s,’ Collingwood said.
‘Could be Kurt’s ready-to-run case,’ Morrison suggested.
‘I doubt that, Sir. The shirts are monogrammed and too small for him. He’s six feet four. Plus, they’re too expensive for Kurt.’
Next, Collingwood unzipped the side panel and took out a passport in Detmar’s name, plus Eurostar tickets for Paris, invitations to various formal events and a hotel booking at the Ritz, all dated days before the victim had been found.
‘Ester Langton said she’d been trying to trace him for weeks, believing he was abroad. He never left London,’ Collingwood said.
They were called back into the master bedroom as one of the techies had finally managed to open the safe. It was stuffed with cash: stacks of banknotes in various currencies, each secured with a banker’s strip.