Straight. Part 15

'Crime to many is not crime but simply a way of life.

If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don't apply to you.'

'Infinite sadness is not to trust an old friend.'

'Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.'

'I hate rapists. I imagine being a.n.a.lly a.s.saulted myself, and the anger overwhelms me. It's essential to make my judgement cold.'

Further on I came unexpectedly to what Elliot Trelawney must have meant.

Greville had written, 'Derek came to dinner very stiff with broken ribs. I asked him how he managed to live with all those injuries "Forget the pain and get on with the party," he said. So we drank fizz.'

I stopped reading and stared out at the autumn countryside which was darkening now, lights going on.

I remembered that evening very well, up to a point.

Greville had been good fun. I'd got pretty high on the c.o.c.ktail of champagne and painkillers and I hadn't felt a thing until I'd woken in the morning. I'd driven myself seventy miles home and forgotten it, which frightening fact was roughly why I was currently and obediently sticking to water.

It was almost too dark to read more, but I flicked overtone more page and came to what amounted to a prayer, so private and impa.s.sioned that I felt my mouth go dry. Alone on the page were three brief lines: May I deal with honour.

May I act with courage.

May I achieve humility.

I felt as if I shouldn't have read it; knew he hadn't meant it to be read. May I achieve humility . . . that prayer was for saints.

When we reached my house I told Brad I would go to London the next day by train, and he looked devastated.

'I'll drive you for nowt,' he said, hoa.r.s.ely.

'It isn't the money.' I was surprised by the strength of his feelings. 'I just thought you'd be tired of all the waiting about.'

He shook his head vigorously, his eyes positively pleading.

'All right, then,' I said. 'London tomorrow, Ipswich on Friday. OK?'

'Yerss,' he said with obvious relief.

'And I'll pay you, of course.'

He looked at me dumbly for a moment, then ducked his head into the car to fetch the big brown envelope from Greville's house, and he waited while I unlocked my door and made sure that there were no unwelcome visitors lurking.

Everything was quiet, everything orderly. Brad nodded at my all-clear, gave me the envelope and loped off into the night more tongue-tied than ever. I'd never wondered very much about his thoughts during all the silent hours; had never tried, I supposed, to understand him. I wasn't sure that I wanted to. It was restful the way things were.

I ate a microwaved chicken pie from the freezer and made an unenthusiastic start on Greville's letters, paying his bills for him, closing his accoun$ declining his invitations, saying sorry, sorry, very sorry.

After that, in spite of good resolutions, I did not attack my own backlog but read right through Greville's notebook looking for diamonds. Maybe there were some solid gold nuggets, maybe some pearls of wisdom, but no helpful instructions like turn right at the fourth apple tree, walk five paces and dig.

I did however find the answer to one small mystery, which I read with wry amus.e.m.e.nt.

The green soapstone box pleases me as an exercise in misdirection and deviousness. The keyhole has no key because it has no lock. It's impossible to unlock men's minds with keys, but guile and pressure will do it, as with the box.

Even with the plain instruction to be guileful and devious it took me ages to find the secret. I tried pressing each of the two hinges, pressing the lock, twisting, pressing everything again with the box upside down. The green stone stayed stubbornly shut.

Misdirection, I thought. If the keYHole wasn't a lock, maybe the hinges weren't hinges. Maybe the lid wasn't a lid. Maybe the whole thing was solid.

I tried the box upside down again, put my thumbs on its bottom surface with firm pressure and tried to push it out endways, like a slide. Nothing happened. I reversed it and pushed the other way and as if with a sigh for the length of my stupidity the bottom of the box slid out reluctantly to halfway, and stopped.

It was beautifully made, I thought. When it was shut one couldn't see the bottom edges weren't solid stone, so closely did they fit. I looked with great curiosity to see what Greville had hidden in his ingenious hiding place, not really expecting diamonds, and brought out two well-worn chamois leather pouches with drawstrings, the sort jewellers use, with the name of the jeweller indistinctly stamped on the front.

Both of the pouches were empty, to my great disappointment.

I stuffed them back into the hole and shut the box, and it sat on the table beside the telephone all evening, an enigma solved but useless.

It wasn't until I'd decided to go to bed that some switch or other clicked in my brain and a word half-seen became suddenly a conscious thought. Van Ekeren, stamped in gold. Perhaps the jeweller's name stamped on the chamois pouches was worth another look.

I opened the box and pulled the pouches out again and in the rubbed and faded lettering read the full name and address.

Jacob van Ekeren Pelikanstraat 70 Antwerp There had to be, I thought, about ten thousand jewellers in Antwerp. The pouches were far from new, certainly not only a few weeks old. All the same . . . better find out.

I took one and left one, closing the box again, and in the morning bore the crumpled trophy to London and through international telephone enquiries found Jacob van Ekeren's number.

The voice that answered from Antwerp spoke either Dutch or Flemish, so I tried in French, 'Je veux parler avec Monsieurlacob van Ekeren, s'il vous plaa.'

'Ne quittez pas.'

I held on as instructed until another voice spoke, this time in French, of which I knew far too little.

'Monsieur van Ekeren n'est pas ici maintenant, monsieur.'

'Parlez vous anglais?' I asked. 'I'm speaking from England.'

'Attendez.'

I waited again and was rewarded with an extremely English voice asking if he could help.

I explained that I was speaking from Saxony Franklin Ltd, gemstone importers in London.

'How can I help you?' He was courteous and noncommittal.

Do you,' I said baldly, 'cut and polish rough diamonds?'

'Yes of course,' he answered. 'But before we do business with any new client we need introductions and references'

'Um,' I said. 'Wouldn't Saxony Franklin Ltd be a client of yours already? Or Greville Saxony Franklin, maybe? Or just Greville Franklin? It's really important.'

'May I have your name?'

'Derek Franklin. Greville's brother.'

'One moment.' He returned after a while and said he would call me back shortly with an answer.

'Thank you very much,' I said.

'Pas du tout.' Bilingual besides.

I put down the phone and asked both Annette and June, who were busily moving around, if they could find Jacob van Ekeren anywhere in Greville's files 'See if you can find any mention of Antwerp in the computer,'

I added to June.

'Diamonds again!'

'Yup. The van Ekeren address is 70 Pelikanstraat.'

Annette wrinkled her brow. 'That's the Belgian equivalent of Hatton Garden,' she said.

It disrupted their normal work and they weren't keen, but Annette was very soon able to say she had no record of any Jacob van Ekeren, but the files were kept in the office for only six years, and any contact before that would be in storage in the bas.e.m.e.nt. June whisked in to confirm that she couldn't find van Ekeren or Pelikanstraat or Antwerp in the computer.

It wasn't exactly surprising. If Greville had wanted his diamond transaction to be common knowledge in the office he would have conducted it out in the open.

Very odd, I thought, that he hadn't. If it had been anyone but Greville one would have suspected him of something underhand, but as far as I knew hpe always had dealt with honour, as he'd prayed.

The telephone rang and Annette answered it.

'Saxony Franklin, can I help you?' She listened. 'Derek Franklin? Yes, just a moment.' She handed me the receiver and I found it was the return of the smooth French-English voice from Belgium. I knew as well as he did that he had spent the time between the two calls getting our number from international enquiries so that he could check back and be sure I was who I'd said.

Merely prudent. I'd have done the same.

'Mr Jacob van Ekeren has retired,' he said. 'I am his nephew Hans. I can tell you now after our researches that we have done no business with your firm within the past six or seven years, but I can't speak for the time before that, when my uncle was in charge.'

'I see,' I said. 'Could you, er, ask your uncle?'

'I will if you like,' he said civiUy. 'I did telephone his house, but I understand that he and my aunt will be away from home until Monday, and their maid doesn't seem to know where they went.' He paused. 'Could I ask what all this is about?'

I explained that my brother had died suddenly, leaving a good deal of unfinished business which I was trying to sort out. 'I came across the name and address of your firm. I'm foUowing up everything I can.'

'Ah,' he said sympathetically. 'I will certainly ask my uncle on Monday, and let you know.'

'I'm most grateful.'

'Not at aU.'

The uncle, I thought morosely, was a dead-end.

I went along and opened the vault, telling Annette that Prospero Jenks wanted all the spinel. 'And he says we have a piece of rock crystal like the Eiger.'

'The what?'

'Sharp mountain. Like Mont Blanc.'

'Oh.' She moved down the rows of boxes and chose a heavy one from near the bottom at the far end. 'This is it,' she said, humping it on to the shelf and opening the lid. 'Beautiful.'

The Eiger, filling the box, was Lying on its side and had a k.n.o.bbly base so that it wouldn't stand up, but I supposed one could see in the lucent faces and angled planes that, studded with diamond stars and given the Jenks's sunlight treatment, it could make the basis of a fantasy worthy of the name.

'Do we have a price for it?' I asked.

'Double what it cost,' she said cheerfully. 'Plus VAT, plus packing and transport.'

'He wants everything sent by messenger.'

She nodded. 'He always does. Jason takes them in a taxi. Leave it to me, I'LL see to it.'

'And we'd better put the pearls away that came yesterday.'

Oh, yes.'

She went off to fetch them and I moved down to where I'd given up the day before, feeling certain that the search was futile but committed to it all the same.

Annette returned with the pearls, which were at least in plastic bags on strings, not in the awkward open envelopes, so while she counted and stored the new intake, I checked my way through the old.

Boxes of pearls, all sizes. No diamonds.

'Does CZ mean anything to you?' I asked Annette idly.

'CZ is cubic zirconia,' she said promptly. 'We sell a fair amount of it.'

'Isn't that, um, imitation diamond?'

'It's a manufactured crystal very like diamond,' she said, 'but about ten thousand times cheaper. If it's in a ring, you can't tell the difference.'

'Can't anyone?' I asked. 'They must do.'

'Mr Franklin said that most high-street jewellers can't at a glance. The best way to tell the difference, he said, is to take the stones out of their setting and weigh them.'

'Weigh them?'

'Yes. Cubic zirconia's much heavier than diamond, so one carat of cubic zirconia is smaller than a one-carat diamond.'

'CZ equals C times one point seven,' I said slowly.

'That's right,' she said, surprised. 'How did you know?'