She had planned to try again today. But when she’d woken this morning she felt still shaken up by the accident — cycling was out of the question today. Instead she’d gone to work by Uber, and she felt every damned pothole in the road, in that crappy little electric Prius.
She glanced at her watch. It was coming up to 2.20 p.m. For some days she had considered the unguarded lift entrance up on the footmen’s floor to be the perfect way to get rid of a problem. But right now, she needed to sort two problems.
Both were threats. Smoke because he was a loose cannon. McKnight because of her insistence on an inventory check. Which Rose could manage for a while. But a limited while.
The lift could only be used once.
Which of the two did she need to get rid of the most urgently?
It boiled down to maths. She had to split all proceeds with the others. Smoke, with his erratic behaviour, posed a big risk. With Lorraine McKnight she just had to keep obfuscating until she disappeared — and the plans for that were all in place.
Smoke first was the best plan. Followed by a fast exit.
She ran a finger down the blade of the Maharaja of Jaipur’s sword again. This time she drew blood, but only a small drop. She kissed it away.
You are right, Mr Smoke. Sorry, Lance Corporal Smoke. About what you said. About me being weird. Perhaps, you’re just about to find out exactly how weird.
79
Tuesday 28 November 2023
‘It’s not going to happen, boss.’ Glenn turned into Westbourne Villas in Hove and pulled into a parking bay. ‘Cheer up!’
Grace glanced at his watch. It was 2.15 p.m. ‘History repeats itself. Isn’t that right? The lesson of history is that man does not learn the lesson of history,’ he replied gloomily. He’d been brooding on his conversation with Greg Mosse for the past hour, while Branson drove them down from London. It was clouding his thoughts, preventing him from focusing fully on the case.
Branson shook his head. ‘The man is not up to the job. ACC Downing is smart and so is the Chief.’ He slowed and turned into a parking space, halted the car and switched off the engine. Then he put out an arm and gave Grace a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘They’ll see through him. It won’t happen.’
‘I wish I had your optimism.’
‘Have as much of it as you like — help yourself, dig deep.’
Grace smiled. Then he frowned again as they climbed out of the car into a strong wind, and looked at the faded cream paintwork of the Regency corner building.
There were several steps up to a door that was long overdue a lick of dark blue paint. To its right was an entry-phone panel with a row of names. Branson pressed the one for ‘S. Kendall’ and a few moments later they heard her voice, no friendlier than it had been in the prison interview room yesterday.
‘Yes?’
They entered a messy communal hallway, illuminated by a meagre, bare lightbulb. The floor was covered in leaflets from local takeaways and food delivery companies, and two padlocked bicycles were propped against a flaking wall.
Moments later a door to their right opened, and Shannon Kendall summoned them in, barely uttering a word of greeting. She looked little different to yesterday, pale, wearing a faded jogging top, tracksuit bottoms and worn trainers. The flat was small and sparsely furnished, a large window with black vertical blinds looking out across the busy Kingsway towards the sea. The white paint on the walls looked reasonably fresh, and the flat felt inviting, compared to the dowdy common parts of the building, Grace thought.
She led the two detectives up a short staircase to a mezzanine, where there was a whole bank of monitors in front of a semicircular desk. A rucksack was slung over the back of her chair, and a large plastic bottle of water was on the worktop beside her keypad. All the time she eyed them as if suspicious of their motives.
‘How’s it going, Shannon?’ Grace said, trying to break the ice. ‘Good to be home?’
‘Do you know anything about miniatures, Detective Superintendent?’ she asked, glancing equally at Glenn Branson.
‘Miniatures?’ Grace replied.
‘Hans Holbein the Younger?’
He stared at her blankly.
‘Wasn’t he a painter?’ Glenn Branson said.
‘Didn’t realize you were so cultured,’ Roy ribbed.
‘His name came up in a pub quiz a few weeks ago,’ Branson retorted with a grin.
‘OK, you guys know about the dark web,’ Shannon said, ‘so I won’t bother giving you the kindergarten guide. You know it’s also formed of layers that keep peeling away as you delve deeper into it. The first few layers take you into marketplaces. There are plenty of legitimate products on sale, but it’s more about illegal ones — mostly drugs, counterfeit goods, weapons and stolen data. Then there’s a whole layer for untraceable communications for the likes of whistle-blowers, political activists, and people living in countries where there is strong censorship or no freedom of speech.’ She swigged from her water bottle before continuing.
‘Then a whole section of forums and chat rooms — ranging from everything from basic hobbies to the really nefarious places you do not want to visit, like photos and videos of cannibalism, fatal accident victims and crime scenes. Another focuses on the dark side of sex in all its variants, one of which is sadomasochism, which gets increasingly dark and nasty. Then the full English of kiddy porn — I don’t even want to think about that.’
For the first time since he had met her, Grace saw a flash of emotion in Shannon Kendall’s face — it was revulsion.
‘Then we have tools and services for hacking — such as malware and stolen IDs and other credentials. Buried even deeper beneath all this we find international arms dealing — at a nuclear level. Stuff like enriched uranium for sale. And down in the weeds, very cleverly concealed in the midst of all that shit, is what might interest you two detectives.’
‘Which is, Shannon?’ Grace asked.
‘High-end stolen works of art. And I’m talking very high-end. Collectors happy to pay millions for works they know to be stolen and they know they can never display publicly or sell — at least not for a few generations.’
‘We’ve come across people like that,’ Glenn Branson said.
Shannon nodded. ‘Oh yes. The thrill of ownership of some work of art of international interest — of knowing they are the only people in the world who can see it — to some people that’s better than the best sex.’ She smiled.
‘OK,’ Grace said.
‘That’s why I asked you about Hans Holbein. Well, to be correct, Hans Holbein the Younger.’ She looked pointedly at Branson. ‘Did “miniatures” ever come up in a pub quiz?’
He shook his head.
Becoming increasingly animated, Shannon said, ‘The camera wasn’t invented until the mid-1820s — and the internet a little bit later... Before then, if you wanted to know what someone you had never met looked like — and you had the money to pay for it — you would hire a miniaturist. They would paint a watercolour portrait of them and send it to you—’
‘Is this art lesson necessary, Shannon?’ Grace asked.
‘Very,’ she replied. ‘With respect, please hear me out. In 1539, Henry VIII was anxious to strengthen England’s position in Europe. An alliance with the Protestant German states, through a marriage with either Anne of Cleves or her sister, both related to the Duke of Cleves, would have been a smart move to counteract the power of the Catholic Hapsburgs, who were dominating much of central Europe at the time.’ She took a swig from her water bottle, but did not offer either of them a drink. ‘His third wife, Jane Seymour, had conveniently died and he was free to marry again. The Duchy of Cleves were totally on board, and commissioned Hans Holbein the Younger to paint miniatures of both Anne of Cleves and her sister. It also appears — although there is no hard evidence to prove it — that they encouraged Holbein to be somewhat flattering and he duly obliged — probably out of fear of being beheaded. The portrait Henry VIII subsequently received might, in today’s idiom, be deemed to have been photoshopped. When The King actually saw her in the flesh for the first time, he felt deceived and was furious. He went ahead with the marriage, purely for political reasons, but history tells us the marriage was never consummated.’