She shook her head. ‘No, I should, but jewellery has always been my weaker area of knowledge.’
‘Carob beans! The Greek name for the carob pod was keration. They discovered every carob seed weighed almost exactly the same — a fairly consistent 0.197 grams. The traders were able to use them as counterweights when buying diamonds, gold or gemstones.’
‘Not a lot of people know that,’ she said, mimicking Michael Caine. ‘You’re a mine of information today. So you have one of your oligarch or Far Eastern clients lined up for it?’
He shook his head, with an expression of mock horror. ‘Dear lady, this stone is far too identifiable. Yes, one of my oligarchs would buy it, but he wouldn’t pay top dollar because he knows he would struggle to sell it, without risking rather too many questions. Considering all the trouble you’ve gone to purloin it, and the potential earnings from it, we need to have it very subtly altered — re-cut it. Cosmetic surgery on an old lady, shall we call it?’
‘And you can get that done?’
‘Oh yes, but not here — we wouldn’t want to take that risk. We need a — shall we say — friendly diamond cutter safely tucked away abroad. I have the right man in Mumbai. I’ll just pop it in my jacket pocket and hop on a plane. Then we’ll have to get it shipped to the Gemological Institute of America for assay — that has to be done on every stone above half a carat. After that, we’re good to go. Put it out to auction to my network of private buyers. Magnificent diamond with possible royal provenance. What’s not to love?’
‘Your expenses, perhaps? Flights to Mumbai? New York?’
Gary van Damm shrugged. ‘Small beer. And I’m afraid here’s another expense, and this does not come cheap.’ He reached down under his desk and produced what looked, for an instant, the identical twin of the diamond on the velvet pad. It was in a small black box. ‘A very fine replica of the stone you’ve brought in, don’t you think?’
He placed them side by side and then performed a magician’s sleight of hand trick, switching them so fast, so many times, that she lost track of which was which. And when he removed his hands she could not tell, at first look, which was the real one and which the fake.
He gave her a questioning look.
‘It’s good! An amazing job just from those close-up images I sent you,’ she said.
‘Good enough, right?’
It was good enough. It would go into the box of Granny’s Personal Chips, and perhaps lie there for decades, if not centuries, so long as no one had any reason to question the authenticity. Just like so many of the paintings and precious objects in Buckingham Palace they had taken and replaced with forgeries in recent times. ‘I’m honestly not sure which is which!’
He picked up one with his fingers and laid it back on the velvet pad. ‘This one.’
She could see it now, the full magnificence of it: an individual presence even, an almost magical quality. It looked brighter, truer than its pale imposter. ‘Awesome!’ she said. ‘It really is quite awesome and fitting for our retirement plan!’
He nodded and interlocked his hands, as if he himself was locked in thought. A faraway expression on his face faded after some moments into a dreamy smile. ‘Yes. Yes it is. I’ll tell you something: you’ve brought me some very fine diamonds in the past, but this — this is the one to die for.’
48
Friday 24 November 2023
Jon Smoke’s mobile rang. The caller’s number was withheld — which indicated it was probably one of his team or a member of the Royal Household. On the rare occasions when either gave out their number, it would be to someone trusted and on a strictly need-to-know basis. For everyone else on the outside, the starting point would be a landline call to the main Buckingham Palace switchboard.
He was seated on a wooden chair in the white wooden kiosk outside the Garden Entrance to the West Wing, where he had gone for his lunch break, and was swigging lukewarm coffee from a flask. It was a place the RaSPs sometimes used for their rest periods instead of their common room in the Royal Mews. Through the window he had a magnificent view over the Palace lawns towards the lake. One of the gardeners was grinding across on a very old-fashioned ride-on gang mower, carving beautiful stripes.
One thing for sure, this palace, with its well-tended grounds, wasn’t exactly a shithole. And he should know, he’d worked in some real shitholes after leaving the Army. After joining the Met Police, he’d ended up on the Armed Response Unit attached to the Violent Crimes Task Force, dealing with knife and gun crime in the worst parts of East Croydon and environs. A few words in the right ears from his old army commanding officer, Jason Finch, had seen him transferred to the Royalty and Specialist Protection team. And with it, the opportunity for a very cushy future had presented itself. But that was how life worked, wasn’t it? One day you got a smack in the mouth. Another day, you got a box of chocolates. Or a beautiful oval diamond on a velvet pad.
It had taken him a long time in therapy, after returning from Afghanistan, to even consider the idea of a relationship. But Chloe, an estate agent, who he’d first met in the local pub, understood and had his back. Maybe she had it too much, he worried. She thought he was a better person than he really was. But, hey. Pick your battles, right?
She knew him just as a copper who protected the royals. She didn’t know that he was part of a very small group of people within the Royal Household who had recently become extremely wealthy. She was aware he intended to move permanently away from England to a life in the sun, and she was happy about that, and about the prospect of a new start in Dubai. She liked the idea of setting up her own estate agency in a country that was always warm — with potentially a large supply of wealthy clients.
But for some months now he had begun to tire of her. Nothing he could put a finger on, just the spark had gone. Time to move on.
Besides, he liked Dubai for an altogether different reason — one he couldn’t tell her about. Dubai was one of the few places in the world that had both sunshine and a pleasant lifestyle, if you have the means — but, even more importantly, a little neglectful in their extradition treaty with the UK.
He took a suck on his tobacco-flavoured vape, inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke out as he answered the phone with a curt, ‘Yes?’
A petulant voice said, ‘I know what you’ve done.’
He recognized the voice immediately. The caller had made no attempt to disguise it. And Jon Smoke was in no hurry to respond. Instead, he took another drag on his vape while contemplating this curve ball that had come at him out of the blue.
Another smack in the face.
Back in Afghanistan, after Scottie’s horrific death, he’d had his own way of dealing with further smacks in the mouth. From then on while on patrol he took no prisoners. There’d been a night when they’d confronted five Taliban fighters. Still crazed with fury over Scottie, he’d made sure none of them had survived. He’d had help from another soldier who also had skin in that game. Her name was Rose Cadoret. She had killed two of them herself.
‘I know what all of you have done and I know who all of you are.’
‘Is that so, Geoffrey?’ Smoke replied.
‘I’m owed a Royal Victorian Medal. I’ve been passed over for it three times now. It was awarded to a woman last week, for God’s sake! She’s done nothing compared to the service to Their Majesties that I’ve given. Claire Tavender. I mean, really?’
‘You feel you’re owed a medal?’
‘I don’t feel I’m owed a medal,’ Geoffrey Bailey said. ‘I am owed a medal. Fifteen years. I’m absolutely fed up seeing just about everyone else in the Royal Household get one award or another, and yet me, I get nothing. I’m due to retire in six months — and I bloody well want a medal. I deserve it, surely? I was Page of the Backstairs to the late Queen for ten years. Now I’m serving Their Majesties in the role of footman, and yet I’m feeling ignored. You have the ability to make it happen, and don’t try to deny it!’