‘No one is threatening her. I haven’t spoken to her for days.’
‘Yes, but any threat to her boys, as she calls them, makes her anxious. The quartet is her lifeline.’
‘Would she fight to defend it?’
‘Like a tigress.’
‘I’ll watch out, then,’ Diamond said as he took another mouthful. ‘This is good. The chef gets five stars from this critic.’ He looked straight into Douglas’s brown eyes. ‘And what’s in it for you, apart from your twenty percent?’
For a moment, Douglas was lost for words. He wasn’t used to such bluntness. ‘The quartet are my friends, for one thing, and immensely talented for another. They need a manager, and I do my humble best for them.’
‘Isn’t there ever a time when you wish you were one of them?’
‘Not in a million years. I don’t have a musical bone in my body. Between you, me and the blessed Valerie, it’s an ordeal sitting through their concerts, but I have to show the flag.’
‘Yet you know the music business.’
‘From top to bottom. That’s my job.’
‘Your talent.’
Douglas smiled. ‘Kind of you to say so, but I don’t think one should confuse the gift of the gab with the gift of the gods. What they have is genius.’
More than a hint of envy lay behind those words, in spite of what had been said, Diamond decided. ‘Are they your biggest earners?’
‘I shouldn’t really say, in fairness to my other clients, but it’s blindingly obvious. Yes, they keep the wolf from my door, bless them.’
‘If they stopped performing for any reason, you’d feel the draught?’
‘And I’d know the door was open and the wolf was coming in. It happened, of course, when Harry went AWOL. Quite a crisis, that was.’
‘What’s your theory about what happened?’
Douglas leaned so far across the table that he had to stop his tie from straying onto his raspberry tart. ‘This is strictly between you and me. Not even the sainted Valerie should be a party to it. He played a heck of a lot of poker, rather badly. You know what they say? If you’re invited to join a game, look around the table and if you don’t see a sucker, get up and go, because it’s you.’
‘He lost badly?’
‘Catastrophically badly and the sort of people he played with let the debts run up to a ridiculous level and then called them in. Several times he asked me for payment in advance for concerts that weren’t even in rehearsal yet. I did my best to help him out, poor fellow, because I could tell he was terrified.’
‘Under threat?’
‘No question.’
‘Do you think his creditors killed him?’
‘Sadly, I do.’
‘How would that have helped them?’
‘Pour encourager les autres. You don’t mess with the mafia.’
‘Is that who they were?’
‘He called them the mob. “The mob have called time on me,” were almost the last words he used to me. When I told the Budapest police, they seemed to take it as a reason to drop the case.’
‘When exactly did he speak these words?’
‘On the phone shortly after they arrived in Budapest.’
‘Did the others know he was in hock to the mafia?’
‘It’s hard to tell. The group dynamic is complex. They appear to respect each other’s privacy, but they spend so much time together on tour that they must have an idea of everyone’s comings and goings. I’m in a privileged position because I hold the purse-strings. Occasionally they need bailing out. I’ll get a call asking if I can transfer some funds urgently.’
‘Which of them have called you?’
‘All, from time to time.’
‘What does Cat spend her money on?’
‘You name it. She’s a shopaholic. You should see the luggage she brings back.’
‘And Anthony?’
Douglas gave the benign smile of a father figure. ‘The poor boy is hopeless with money. He’ll give it away. He visits call-girls and the smart ones get the measure of him and demand gifts of jewellery and exorbitant fees. It’s happened in several cities. Cat tries to keep tabs on him, but it’s not possible all the time and she can’t follow him into all the sordid addresses he visits. I wouldn’t ask her to.’
‘Which brings us back to Ivan,’ Diamond said. ‘He strikes me as the sort of guy who looks after number one. I can’t imagine him going to you for help.’
‘You’re right in a way,’ Douglas said. ‘There’s never an emergency. When he requires an advance it’s as an investment.’
‘In what?’
‘Hasn’t he told you? He’s a chess player.’
‘That much I know. Does he play for high stakes?’
‘I doubt it. No, he deals in chessmen. When the quartet are on their travels, Ivan always has a few beautiful handcrafted chess sets with him. He sells them to the people he plays with — at a handsome profit. If you’re fanatical about the game, these gorgeous carved figures are irresistible, I’m told.’
‘I see. So the investment you mentioned is to stock up with chess sets?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Who is his supplier?’
‘Someone from Russia or the Ukraine he knows from years back. Must be Russia, come to think of it, because he wants his cash in roubles. It’s the black economy, I’m sure. None of this nonsense over VAT, or whatever tax they operate there. I turn a blind eye.’
‘And it’s big money, is it?’
‘Pretty impressive. And of course he’s paid in the local currency.’
‘There’s a chess club here in Bath, but I doubt if the members are in that league financially.’
‘He has contacts all over the world and some of them are very rich men. They tend not to be the sort who join the local chess club. But you’d have to ask Ivan if he’s done any business locally.’
‘I don’t want him to get the idea I’m in league with the taxman.’
‘Do you play chess yourself?’ Douglas asked.
‘A bit. I know the moves.’
‘Offer him a game. Give him a chance to show you how good he is. He never ducks a challenge. He’s a chess junkie.’
‘And do you think he’ll talk as we play? I’d like to ask him about the Russian connection.’
‘Be sure to get your question in early, then. He doesn’t take long over a game.’
The afternoon session at the Michael Tippett Centre should have felt flat, coming, as it did, the day after the concert at Corsham Court. But Ivan suggested they were ready to play the Grosse Fuge in its entirety and, strange to relate, the challenge energised them all. The Everest of quartet music was written originally as the finale of String Quartet Opus 130 in B flat major, but Beethoven’s publisher persuaded him later to substitute a less demanding movement, and the Fuge was republished as a stand-alone work. Unlike anything else Beethoven created for strings, incomprehensible to many of his contemporaries, this overwhelming piece leaps forward musically into dissonance. Stravinsky famously called it “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.” Strident, tempestuous, uneven, it makes huge demands on each player. Only in the fifth and final part does the composer relent a little and show harmony emerging from the skewed rhythms and variations.
They finished exhilarated, their spirits lifted.
‘I’ve got the shakes,’ Mel said.
‘Tell me about it,’ Cat said. ‘This must be an electric chair I’m sitting on. Hey, no one ever got a better sound out of the Amati than you did just then. Listen. I swear it’s purring.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And you guys on the end weren’t rubbish, either. What do you say, Anthony? Was that the best yet?’