Straight (8 page)

Koningin Beatrix? he had written. Just the two words and the question mark. I wondered idly if it were the name of a horse, if he’d been considering buying it; my mind tended to work that way. Then I thought that perhaps he’d written the last name first, such as Smith, Jane, and that maybe he’d been going to Ipswich to meet a Beatrix Koningin.

I returned to the horse theory and got through to the trainer I rode for, Milo Shandy, who inquired breezily about the ankle and said would I please waste no time in coming back.

“I could ride out in a couple of weeks,” I said.

“At least that’s something, I suppose. Get some massage.”

The mere thought of it was painful. I said I would, not meaning it, and asked about Koningin Beatrix, spelling it out.

“Don’t know of any horse called that, but I can find out for you in the morning. I’ll ask Weatherby’s if the name’s available, and if they say yes, it means there isn’t a horse called that registered for racing.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Think nothing of it. I heard your brother died. Bad luck.”

“Yes ... How did you know?”

“Nicholas Loder called me just now, explaining your dilemma and wanting me to persuade you to lease him Dozen Roses.”

“But that’s crazy. His calling you, I mean.”

He chuckled. “I told him so. I told him I could bend you like a block of teak. He didn’t seem to take it in. Anyway, I don’t think leasing would solve anything. Jockeys aren’t allowed to own racing horses, period. If you lease a horse, you still own it.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Put your shirt on it.”

“Loder bets, doesn’t he?” I asked. “In large amounts?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He said Dozen Roses would trot up at York on Saturday.”

“In that case, do you want me to put a bit on for you?”

Besides not being allowed to run horses in races, jockeys also were banned from betting, but there were always ways round that, like helpful friends.

“I don’t think so, not this time,” I said, “but thanks anyway.”

“You won’t mind if I do?”

“Be my guest. If Weatherby’s lets it run, that is.”

“A nice little puzzle,” he said appreciatively. “Come over soon for a drink. Come for evening stables.”

I would, I said.

“Take care.”

I put down the phone, smiling at his easy farewell colloquialism. Jump jockeys were paid not to take care, on the whole. Not too much care.

Milo would be horrified if I obeyed him.

In the morning, Brad drove me to Saxony Franklin’s bank to see the manager who was young and bright and spoke with deliberate slowness, as if waiting for his clients’ intelligence to catch up. Was there something about crutches, I wondered, that intensified the habit? It took him five minutes to suspect that I wasn’t a moron. After that he told me Greville had borrowed a sizable chunk of the bank’s money, and he would be looking to me to repay it. “One point five million United States dollars in cash, as a matter of fact.”

“One point five million dollars,” I repeated, trying not to show that he had punched most of the breath out of me.
“What for?”

“For buying diamonds. Diamonds from the DTC of the CSO are of course normally paid for in cash, in dollars.”

Bank managers around Hatton Garden, it seemed, saw nothing extraordinary in such an exercise.

“He doesn’t ... didn’t deal in diamonds,” I protested.

“He had decided to expand and, of course, we made the funds available. Your brother dealt with us for many years and as you’ll know was a careful and conscientious businessman. A valued client. We have several times advanced him money for expansion and each time we have been repaid without difficulty. Punctiliously, in fact.” He cleared his throat. “The present loan, taken out three months ago, is due for repayment progressively over a period of five years, and of course as the loan was made to the company,. not to your brother personally, the terms of the loan will be unchanged by his death.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I understood from what you said yesterday that you propose to run the business yourself?” He seemed happy enough where I might have expected a shade of anxiety. So why no anxiety? What wasn’t I grasping?

“Do you hold security for the loan?” I asked.

“An agreement. We lent the money against the stock of Saxony Franklin.”

“All the stones?”

“As many as would satisfy the debt. But our best security has always been your brother’s integrity and his business ability.”

I said, “I’m not a gemologist. I’ll probably sell the business after probate.”

He nodded comfortably. “That might be the best course. We would expect the Saxony Franklin loan to be repaid on schedule, but we would welcome a dialogue with the purchasers.”

He produced papers for me to sign and asked for extra specimen signatures so that I could put my name to Saxony Franklin checks. He didn’t ask what experience I’d had in running a business. Instead, he wished me luck.

I rose to my crutches and shook his hand, thinking of the things I hadn’t said.

I hadn’t told him I was a jockey, which might have caused a panic in Hatton Garden. And I hadn’t told him that, if Greville had bought one and a half million dollars’ worth of diamonds, I didn’t know where they were.

 

“Diamonds?” Annette said. “No. I told you. We never deal in diamonds.”

“The bank manager believes that Greville bought some recently. From something called the DTC of the CSO.”

“The Central Selling Organization? That’s de Beers. The DTC is their Diamond Trading Company. No, no.” She looked anxiously at my face. “He can’t have done. He never said anything about it.”

“Well, has the stock-buying here increased over the past three months?”

“It usually does,” she said, nodding. “The business always grows. Mr. Franklin comes back from world trips with new stones all the time. Beautiful stones. He can’t resist them. He sells most of the special ones to a jewelry designer who has several boutiques in places like Knightsbridge and Bond Street. Gorgeous costume jewelry, but with real stones. Many of his pieces are unique, designed for a single stone. He has a great name. People prize some of his pieces like Fabergé’s.”

“Who is he?”

“Prospero Jenks,” she said, expecting my awe at least.

I hadn’t heard of him, but I nodded all the same.

“Does he set the stones with diamonds?” I asked.

“Yes, sometimes. But he doesn’t buy those from Saxony Franklin.”

We were in Greville’s office, I sitting in his swivel chair behind the vast expanse of desk, Annette sorting yesterday’s roughly heaped higgledy-piggledy papers back into the drawers and files that had earlier contained them.

“You don’t think Greville would ever have kept diamonds in this actual office, do you?” I asked.

“Certainly not.” The idea shocked her. “He was always very careful about security.”

“So no one who broke in here would expect to find anything valuable lying about?”

She paused with a sheaf of papers in one hand, her brow wrinkling.

“It’s odd, isn’t it? They wouldn’t expect to find anything valuable lying about in an office if they knew anything about the jewelry trade. And if they didn’t know anything about the jewelry trade, why pick this office?”

The same old unanswerable question.

June with her incongruous motherliness brought in the typist’s chair again for me to put my foot on. I thanked her and asked if her stock control computer kept day-to-day tabs on the number and value of all the polished pebbles in the place.

“Goodness, yes,” she said with amusement. “Dates and amounts in, dates and amounts out. Prices in, prices out, profit margin, tax, you name it, the computer will tell you what we’ve got, what it’s worth, what sells slowly, what sells fast, what’s been hanging around here wasting space for two years or more, which isn’t much.”

“The stones in the vault as well?”

“Sure.”

“But no diamonds?”

“No, we don’t deal in them.” She gave me a bright incurious smile and swiftly departed, saying over her shoulder that the Christmas rush was still going strong and they’d been bombarded by fax orders overnight.

“Who reorders what you sell?” I asked Annette.

“I do for ordinary stock. June tells me what we need. Mr. Franklin himself ordered the faceted stones and anything unusual.”

She went on sorting the papers, basically unconcerned because her responsibility ended on her way home. She was wearing that day the charcoal skirt of the day before but topped with a black sweater, perhaps out of respect for Greville. Solid in body, but not large, she had good legs in black tights and a settled, well-groomed, middle-aged air. I couldn’t imagine her being as buoyant as June even in her youth.

I asked her if she could lay her hands on the company’s insurance policy and she said as it happened she had just refiled it. I read its terms with misgivings and then telephoned the insurance company. Had my brother, I asked, recently increased the insurance? Had he increased it to cover diamonds to the value of one point five million dollars? He had not. It had been discussed only. My brother had said the premium asked was too high, and he had decided against it. The voice explained that the premium had been high because the stones would be often in transit, which made them vulnerable. He didn’t know if Mr. Franklin had gone ahead with buying the diamonds. It had been an inquiry only, he thought, three or four months ago. I thanked him numbly and put down the receiver.

The telephone rang again immediately and as Annette seemed to be waiting for me to do so, I answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

A male voice said, “Is that Mr. Franklin? I want to speak to Mr. Franklin, please.”

“Er ... could I help? I’m his brother.”

“Perhaps you can,” he said. “This is the clerk of the West London Magistrates Court. Your brother was due here twenty minutes ago and it is unlike him to be late. Could you tell me when to expect him?”

“Just a minute.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Annette what I’d just heard. Her eyes widened and she showed signs of horrified memory.

“It’s his day for the Bench! Alternate Tuesdays. I’d clean forgotten.”

I returned to the phone and explained the situation.

“Oh. Oh. How dreadfully upsetting.” He did indeed sound upset, but also a shade impatient. “It really would have been more helpful if you could have alerted me in advance. It’s very short notice to have to find a replacement.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but this office was broken into during the weekend. My brother’s appointments diary was stolen, and in fact we cannot alert anybody not to expect him.”

“How extremely inconvenient.” It didn’t seem an inappropriate statement to him. I thought Greville might find it inconvenient to be dead. Maybe it wasn’t the best time for black humor.

“If my brother had personal friends among the magistrates,” I said, “I would be happy for them to get in touch with me here. If you wouldn’t mind telling them.”

“I’ll do that, certainly.” He hesitated. “Mr. Franklin sits on the licensing committee. Do you want me to inform the chairman?”

“Yes, please. Tell anyone you can.”

He said goodbye with all the cares of the world on his shoulders and I sighed to Annette that we had better begin telling everyone as soon as possible, but the trade was to expect business as usual.

“What about the papers?” she asked. “Shall we put it in
The Times
and so on?”

“Good idea. Can you do it?”

She said she could, but in fact showed me the paragraph she’d written before phoning the papers. “Suddenly, as the result of an accident, Greville Saxony Franklin JP, son of...” She’d left a space after “son of” which I filled in for her “the late Lt. Col. and Mrs. Miles Franklin.” I changed “brother of Derek” to “brother of Susan, Miranda and Derek,” and I added a few final words, “Cremation, Ipswich, Friday.”

“Have you any idea,” I asked Annette, “what he could have been doing in Ipswich?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard him mention the place. But then he didn’t ever tell me very much that wasn’t business.” She paused. “He wasn’t exactly secretive, but he never chatted about his private life.” She hesitated. “He never talked about you.”

I thought of all the times he’d been good company and told me virtually nothing, and I understood very well what she meant.

“He used to say that the best security was a still tongue,” she said. “He asked us not to talk too much about our jobs to total strangers, and we all know it’s safer not to, even though we don’t have precious stones here. All the people in the trade are security mad and the diamantaires can be paranoid.”

“What,” I said, “are diamantaires?”

“Not what, who,” she said. “They’re dealers in rough diamonds. They get the stones cut and polished and sell them to manufacturing jewelers. Mr. Franklin always said diamonds were a world of their own, quite separate from other gemstones. There was a ridiculous boom and a terrible crash in world diamond prices during the eighties and a lot of the diamantaires lost fortunes and went bankrupt and Mr. Franklin was often saying that they must have been mad to overextend the way they had.” She paused. “You couldn’t help but know what was happening all round us in this area, where every second business is in gemstones. No one in the pubs and restaurants talked of much else. So you see, I’m sure the bank manager must be wrong. Mr. Franklin would never buy diamonds.”