“May I ask if you have an appointment, sir? Assistant Commissioner Sandilands appears to have no further appointments scheduled for this morning.”
“No, I haven’t, but if he’s in the building, he’ll see me,” the gent told him confidently and passed his card over.
Sir James Truelove, it announced, giving a home address in Suffolk and a town address in Albany, Piccadilly.
The desk officer was an inspector working light duties while recovering from an injury. He was experienced and aware enough to fill in other details for himself. Truelove. Minister for Reform and Education. Generally expected, in the course of his ascent to the highest office in the land, to become the next Home Secretary with overall responsibility for the Forces of Law and Order. Police, Special Branch, Secret Services, the keys to the Tower of London, all in his hands. Sandilands’ future boss? His own future boss? The inspector’s voice took on a more respectful tone.
“I’ll let Commissioner Sandilands know you’re here, sir.” He picked up the telephone and kept an impassive face as Sandilands barked back at him.
“You’ve got who down there? Truelove? Hell’s bells! No … no … quite right, Hawkins. Bad timing, though—I’ve got a meeting with Flying Squad in ten minutes. Darned nuisance, but you’ll have to show him up, I’m afraid. Yes, yes. Right away. Just make time for me to order up a couple of mugs of tea and straighten my tie.” A throaty Scottish expletive accompanied the slamming down of the receiver.
“The assistant commissioner will be delighted to see you directly, sir,” the inspector said with unctuous formality as he signalled for an escort. “But first, your briefcase. Would you mind passing it over, sir? And the keys? A necessary nuisance, but it shouldn’t take long. Charming weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say? June can be so uncertain …”
“ALWAYS A PLEASURE to see you, Sandilands,” the minister murmured, shaking Joe’s hand. Again, Joe was taken aback by the workaday roughness of the hand, which seemed at odds with the suave appearance of the rest of the man. “We don’t meet often enough. Both busy men, of course, but we must make time. I’m back in London for the next four weeks and insist you meet me for lunch at my club.”
A constable appeared with a tray while the two men were still on their feet exchanging pleasantries. “Ah! Thank you, Smithson,” Joe said. “That’ll be all. I hope you can drink Assam, sir?”
The minister grabbed a mug, helped himself to two lumps of sugar, stirred, sipped, exhaled with pleasure and sipped again. “Nothing like a pot of Typhoo at this time of the morning!” Grasping his tea with the casual assurance of a stonemason, the spoon tucked away behind his thumb, he strolled over to the window and looked out, admiring the view as Lily had done an hour earlier.
“Third floor, is this? Not much higher to go! Got your eye on one of the turrets, have you?” His grin was quizzical, his tone light, his meaning all too clear.
“I don’t really care where they put me, so long as I can see a tree or two,” Joe said, shrugging away the challenge.
The minister peered out at the full-canopied ranks of greenery below. “Quite agree! Country men like us—we take our spring, our vigour, from growing things. We have a physical need for green arteries across the city, the parks which are its lungs. Whoever decided to plant London plane trees along the Embankment last century certainly knew his business. Coming on well!”
“You’re right. Of all trees, they have the knack of surviving all the city can throw at them,” Joe murmured blandly, wondering when the man was going to get to the point. Was it possible that he’d just turned up at his office to say, “Hello, I’m back in town, why don’t we have lunch together”? An unlikely waste of time. Still, you didn’t rush a minister.
“It’s all to do with the bark, don’t you know,” the time-waster went on, apparently preoccupied by the view. Or was he simply avoiding looking Joe in the eye? “That dark, dappled, camouflage colour they develop is due to the pollutants in the air. They absorb the nasty bits and when the moment comes, they shed the infected bark and leave a gleaming pure trunk underneath. Clever stuff, eh? I love the plane. Hardy, resilient, useful. And, you know, they have a certain air of authority—some might say magnificence.”
“Just the right tree to plant outside Scotland Yard, then,” Joe remarked. “The Met would seem to perform the same function as the London plane.”
This sally was greeted by a shout of laughter. “Cleaning up the filth while remaining unsullied by it all?”
“That and the magnificent authority you mention, sir.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’m not imposing myself on you this morning to test you on your arboricultural knowledge. Or to invite you to dabble in further pollution.” He left a pause in deferential recognition of Joe’s recent sticky contact with the underbelly of English society. “My business is a personal one, Sandilands.”
It was always likely to be. Everything was personal with Truelove when it came down to it. Joe recognised that his foreboding was about to be justified. The affair this man had involved him in some months earlier had proved a sensitive one. The minister had emerged with an enhanced reputation and a further department in his portfolio of power. The police officer had just managed to hang on to his job. And there was always the nagging resentment that the man held a place of authority and, Joe admitted, regard amounting to affection, in the life of the girl he loved. Dorcas talked unselfconsciously of her patron’s interest and support, acknowledging—without resentment, it seemed—that she owed her budding career to the Truelove family endowment; his good will and his cash were essential for paving the way to her academic goal. It was more than resentment that Joe felt towards this charmer. He didn’t deceive himself. There was a heap of jealousy and a dash of impotent rage in the mix. The perfect scenario for a clash of antlers.
He put his head on one side and wondered if the Lord of the Glen would ever stop pawing the ground and declare himself. He hadn’t until this moment realised that the man had been chattering on to hide his unease. Wondering what earth-shaking crisis could make this man uneasy and alarmed by the admission that it was of a “personal” nature, Joe feared the worst.
Fancifully, he waited for the minister to smack him with a glove and suggest they throw their wigs down on the duelling green in the square outside Parliament. At dawn. “First blood,” would he demand, or “à l’outrance”? Joe was already choosing his second and deciding that cool, ruthless James Bacchus would fit the bill admirably.
“Fact is … I need to ask a favour of you … No, nothing at all untoward,” Truelove added hurriedly, catching the slight narrowing of Joe’s eyes. “It amounts to two hours of your time—at the most.” And, with an awful echo of the comforting phrase Joe had just used to Lily, “It’s a small task and—who knows?—you may even enjoy it. Do you know Christie’s—the auction house in King Street?”
“I do indeed. I’ve spent many happy hours there over the years. My old uncles collected—and sometimes sold—works of art, antiques, valuable books there. They took me along as a young thing and trained me in the art of survival in the shark’s pool that is an auction house. I still dabble occasionally. Yes, I know it.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I was well briefed.” The glancing look, complicitous, humorous, was meant to suggest that his informant was Dorcas and invited comment. Joe gritted his teeth and wondered how much more the wretched girl had confided about his life and character. He glowered and maintained a cold silence.
Truelove took a catalogue from his briefcase and handed it to Joe. “Page twenty-seven.”
Before opening it, Joe inspected the cover and read: