Sober music played in Webster’s ear.
“David Brooks.”
It was rare for a lawyer to take a call direct, and Webster realized that he hadn’t expected to be put through at all. He began by giving Brooks the same account of himself he had given Mrs. Mehr, and the words sounded empty as they came out of his mouth.
“Your name was in some of the reporting. I wondered if I might ask you some questions.”
“Ikertu, you say?”
“Yes.”
Brooks gave a grunt, its meaning not clear; it could have been approval or contempt. “I’m not going to tell you anything without an instruction from my client.” His voice was flat and all on one note, and he left the “g”s off the end of words. “Have you spoken to my client?”
“I have. She didn’t want to talk.”
“Then neither do I.”
“Of course. Although it’s not really about Mr. Mehr’s affairs. I wondered if you knew anything about the investigation in Iran. Whether anything had been decided.”
Brooks sniffed. “What has that got to do with Darius Qazai?”
I wish I knew, thought Webster. “Mehr was his employee, in a sense. There are rumors that Mehr was in Iran on Qazai’s business.”
For a second or two Brooks said nothing. “You have a very strange job.”
“On occasion.”
“Hm.” Another sniff. “You’re investigating Qazai.”
“Yes and no. I’m… Look, this is more than I should say, but Qazai is doing a deal. He’s hit a bump, and thinks someone somewhere is saying things about him that aren’t true. I want to make sure that those things aren’t connected to what happened to your client.”
Brooks thought for a moment, grunted again. Webster could hear him tapping keys in the background.
“I’m not going to tell you anything. Obviously. But I will say—and I don’t think this qualifies as privileged or surprising information—that the investigation in Iran, such as it is, is not being conducted to the standard expected by Her Majesty’s justice system.”
“Was he really robbed?”
Brooks seemed unable to answer without a substantial pause. Webster waited. “Mr. Webster,” he said at last, “it is possible, one might suppose, on the balance of probabilities, that every now and then in Iran a normal antiques smuggling ring, during the normal course of its business, is called upon to murder an English art dealer. My own personal belief is that all this was far from normal. Thank you for your interest. Goodbye.”
And before Webster could squeeze in another question, he too had gone.
THE BAKERLOO LINE WAS deadly slow and by the time he reached the school, five minutes late, Elsa and Miss Turnbull had already begun their meeting. Elsa gave him a severe look as he took a seat next to her on one of the tiny children’s chairs.
It wasn’t at all unusual, Miss Turnbull told them when they had explained the problem, for children of this age—especially girls—to have quite intense relationships with their friends. She had noticed that Phoebe and Nancy seemed to be spending a lot of time in each other’s company, but hadn’t realized that Nancy was feeling put-upon, still less upset, and if she was worrying about it at home and dreading school as a result then something would have to be done. What had worked in similar situations was to talk to all the boys and girls about the importance of having lots of different friends and playing together as a class, and to make sure that at playtime Phoebe wasn’t allowed to keep Nancy to herself. Elsa, Webster could tell, wasn’t wholly satisfied.
“Happy?” he said as they walked across the empty playground.
“We’ll see.”
“She seems to have the measure of it.”
“I was hoping she might have a word with Phoebe’s parents.”
“If they’re anything like their daughter they probably won’t listen.”
Elsa shrugged.
The school was half a mile from their house, and for a while they walked in silence, Elsa half a pace in front of Webster, her head down and full of thoughts.
“Why were you late?” she said at last.
“I’m sorry. The Tube was buggered. We were stopped at Paddington for five minutes.”
“Then you should have left five minutes earlier.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should have left enough time. I know you. You take it to the last minute and then you rush out and expect the world to fall into place for you.”
There was a park opposite their house: a square of grass, a sandpit, a climbing frame and a seesaw, and this afternoon it was full of small children bouncing around each other like atoms in a jar. Webster saw Nancy first, hanging off the climbing frame by her legs, while Daniel carefully shoveled cupfuls of sand onto a growing pile on the grass.
As they reached the gate he touched Elsa’s arm and she turned to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really.”
“It’s OK.”
“Do you fancy a couple of nights in Italy? The week after next. After Cornwall. I’ve been invited by my dodgy billionaire.”
“To his house?”
“To his big house. On Lake Como. It has its own Wikipedia page.”
She smiled. “Who would look after the kids?”
“The nanny? Your mom?”
“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. We’ve never been away in the week. I think I should stay here, for Nancy.”
“I was hoping you could tell me what in heaven’s name drives these people. I’m out of my depth.”
“You’ll be fine. They don’t want a therapist.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Elsa collected the children from the friend who had picked them up after school, and together they walked back home. As they turned in to the short path leading to their house Webster reached up to hoist Daniel down from his shoulders and started feeling in his pockets for his key.
“Have you got yours?” he asked Elsa.
“You’re hopeless. Yes.”
As she reached for the lock, something caught his eye.
“When does the recycling go?”
“Wednesdays. Tomorrow.”
“Did we put any out?”
“There was loads.”
Webster looked at the empty box and wondered who had done the work, and on whose behalf.
TWO DAYS AFTER HIS calls to Mehr’s widow and David Brooks, Webster received a package. It had come by mail—stamped, not franked—in an A4 manila envelope addressed with a printed label that bore no clue to its sender. Inside was a report, of sorts, printed on a single sheet of plain paper in plain, black type.
There was no title, and no introduction, but the moment Webster saw it he knew what it was. It was a private report into the death of Cyrus Mehr, and a very direct and unexpected document it was. Whoever had written it appeared to have seen the police file, and as he read Webster found himself wondering which of his competitors, if they were responsible, had such excellent sources in Iran.
Mehr, it said, had been invited by the Cultural Heritage Association of Iran to spend three weeks helping to catalog the treasures of the Golestan Palace in Tehran, a place so vast and run so inefficiently (some said corruptly) that the true extent of its largely chaotic collection was unknown. It was not unusual for foreigners to be asked to collaborate in this way, and Mehr, an expert above all else in carpets from the Safavid dynasty, whose kings had built the palace, was an entirely plausible candidate.
He had left London on the 15th of February, a Thursday, arrived in Tehran the next day and spent his first week working, staying at a hotel in the north of the city and calling his family at least once a day (the report didn’t make clear whether the Iranians or the Mehrs had provided this piece of information). On the following Saturday he had flown to Isfahan, telling his colleagues that he was going to meet a dealer he knew who had called to offer him a particularly rare, fine prayer rug from the sixteenth century. At around noon he had checked into his hotel and then taken a taxi immediately to Joubareh in the north of the city, a journey of fifteen minutes.