Cleo shot a glance at the stack. ‘So are your royal besties going to be called on to give evidence at the trial?’
‘I hope not. Rose is going to plead guilty as part of her bargaining, and I would hope Sir Tommy and Fiona, villains though they may be, will have the decency not to expose Their Majesties to that. I mean, they are totally bang to rights and it would only involve The Queen — but I very much doubt that will happen. The evidence against them is strong and three of their five suitcases we pulled off the plane to Dubai were full of pretty much priceless items from the Royal Collection. Including the missing Vermeer, Holbein’s miniature portrait of Anne of Cleves and the entire rest of Granny’s Personal Chips.’
‘Minus the one fake?’
He nodded. ‘Yep. Minus the one that got away and one that didn’t.’
‘People do pack things by mistake, don’t they, my love?’
He shrugged. ‘It happens.’
‘Like the fleece gilet you packed last year when we went to Corfu in August?’
‘Exactly! We also struck lucky with the information that Rose Cadoret gave us about a storage unit in a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. There were two packing cases full of items from the Royal Collection, including pictures, jade ornaments, sculptures and small items of furniture. They were due to be shipped to the Magellan-Laceys’ new address in Dubai, labelled as “personal items”.’
They looked at each other and both burst out laughing. ‘It’s surreal,’ she said. ‘This whole thing.’
‘It is.’
‘But what is brilliant is how much stuff you’ve recovered.’
‘Much of that was thanks to Rose Cadoret singing.’
‘And you recovered most of the money they received from what they had sold and delivered?’
‘We got all their Bitcoin wallets, where the money was hidden, off their phones. Sir Tommy’s code was cracked by one of our brainboxes in Digital Forensics — Charlotte Mckee. The code was a combination of his and his wife’s initials and the date they joined the Palace.’
‘And Rose Cadoret gave you hers?’
‘And Jon Smoke’s. So all the cash they made has been returned to the Keeper of the Privy Purse.’
‘Sir Jason Finch?’
‘Yes. One of my prime suspects, originally. Even more so when we heard he was away with his wife in Amsterdam. We thought they might be selling diamonds, but it turns out one of their daughters has opened a restaurant there with her partner, and they’d gone to the launch to support the couple. Then our suspicions deepened when our Financial Investigator discovered a cash deposit of three quarters of a million pounds into his bank account. But that turned out to be legitimate. They were in the process of selling a number of paintings Sir Jason had inherited. One of them was by Landseer — he had a picture by him that was very similar to one in the Royal Collection.’
Humphrey turned his head and licked Grace’s hand. The dog’s tongue felt like wet sandpaper.
‘Humphrey loves you!’ Cleo said. ‘He loved you from the moment he first saw you, remember?’
‘Just like you did!’
Cleo punched him. ‘Don’t get too big-headed or you’ll need a larger hat. Tell me more about the diamond you’ve just said was missing and the fake.’
‘Good old technology again,’ he said, a tad smugly. ‘Triangulation on Fiona Magellan-Lacey’s phone put her in Hatton Garden. A building where there are five major players in the diamond industry. Thanks to the woman I got released from prison on licence, we know who she has been doing business with.’
‘The woman released from prison — you mean Shannon Kendall?’
He nodded. ‘She’s delivered everything we could have wanted — and more.’ He gave his wife a big smile. ‘It didn’t take long for Nick and EJ to work out from that triangulation, that Fiona had met one of the diamond dealers in that location on several occasions. She made the mistake of having lunch at a nearby restaurant with him on one of those visits, enabling the team to identify him. His name is Gary van Damm. When he was arrested, about to board a flight to Mumbai, he had one of the diamonds from the famous collection of Granny’s Personal Chips in his jacket pocket.’
Cleo leaned forward and picked up her glass of Rioja. ‘I read in the Daily Mail that in addition to Charles liking his Martini, Camilla likes red wine — Pomerol is her favourite. So we don’t quite match Their Majesties.’
‘We’re a little less regal?’ Roy Grace suggested.
She nodded in agreement. ‘But no less charming! You are my Prince Charming, and that’s as regal as you need to be!’ She hesitated. ‘God that sounds cheesy!’
‘Cheesy is good!’
She grinned. ‘Did Sir Tommy — and all of them — seriously think they would get away with it?’
Humphrey licked his hand again. ‘You know, I actually think they were big-headed enough to think they would. And the Magellan-Laceys very nearly did.’
‘But they hadn’t reckoned with my very smart husband.’
‘Those are kind words, my darling. I don’t know how much is down to me, and how much is down to the mistakes they made.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know who said it, but it’s very apt: The walls of a prison aren’t just made of concrete and steel, they are also built from the lost hopes and the silenced dreams of those within.’
‘But we get a behind-the-scenes tour of Buckingham Palace, by Her Majesty The Queen out of it? That’s not rubbish, is it?’
‘Not complete rubbish, no.’
‘I do actually think, on rare occasions, this is one, that being married to a homicide detective isn’t all bad.’
Grace raised his glass. ‘Nor is being married to someone who spends her days with dead people!’
They clinked glasses again. Grace ate the last of the four olives in his Martini and sipped from the glass. ‘This is a seriously good one,’ he announced, with a big, contented smile.
‘Dead for a ducat,’ Cleo said.
‘Dead for a what?’ Grace responded.
‘Hamlet.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘I know Shakespeare’s not your thing.’
‘Dead for a what? Tell me?’
‘It’s a line by Hamlet. No one is quite sure of the meaning. A ducat was a gold coin — worth a fortune at the time. It could mean that killing Polonius was worth it. Maybe the modern equivalent would be, dead for a diamond.’
‘Three people dead — for a diamond? Or a bit more besides just a diamond or two...’ Grace added.
‘A bit more, yes.’
‘But never enough.’
‘Can you ever have enough diamonds?’
‘You know what Gandhi said?’
Cleo frowned: ‘About what?’
‘It was something along the lines of the world can provide enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed. I think that deserves another drink,’ Roy Grace added.
Cleo smiled. ‘I’m with you. And I really don’t think that’s being greedy.’
‘Not at all!’
She looked at him for some moments, with a big smile, ‘I think that’s why I love you.’
‘So it’s not my good looks, my charm, my skills as a detective?’
Cleo shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not, my love. It’s because sometimes, just sometimes, you like being naughty too!’
He raised his Martini. ‘I’ll drink to that!’
The moment they clinked glasses, there was a cry from Molly on the baby monitor. Cleo jumped up. ‘I’ll check on her.’
As she walked out of the room, Grace noticed an unopened envelope on the floor. He put his glass on the table, leaned down and picked it up, then tore it open and removed the card inside.
It was a cheap Christmas card, Santa and his reindeer. Inside, above the message of goodwill, was a handwritten one. It read: