The Gilded Seal

‘Still wearing Chanel?’ Tom smiled as he stepped back and let Eva into the room.

‘If that’s a line, it’s a bad one,’ she sniffed, brushing past and then wheeling to face him. In the intermittent neon glow she looked even more striking than he remembered: dark oval eyes glinting impetuously, an almost indecently suggestive mouth, shimmering black hair held off her face by an elasticated white band and tumbling down on to olive-skinned shoulders that might have been modelled on a Canova nude.

‘I heard you’d gone straight.’ She sounded sceptical.

‘I’d heard the same about you,’ he said softly, trying to keep his eyes on her face rather than tracing a line from her slender ankles to her skirt’s embroidered hem and the suggestive curve of her legs. Now, as when he’d first met her, she radiated sex. It wasn’t deliberate, it was just the way she was. The animal dart of her pink tongue against her lips, the generous heave of her breasts under her black silk blouse, the erect nipples brushing the material, the open thrust of her hips. Sex seasoned with a hint of unpredictability and a dash of temper for good measure.

A pause.

‘It’s good to see you again, Eva.’

He meant it.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

Her tone didn’t surprise him. Their break-up had been messy. She’d been hurt. No reason she should be anything other than cold with him now. In fact, it made things simpler.

‘Same as you. Looking for answers.’

‘He’s dead.’ Her voice was hollow. ‘What more of an answer do you want?’ She paused, her eyes boring into his. ‘Go home, Tom. You’re not needed here. You’re not wanted here.’

‘He left a message before he died.’

‘I know.’ She gave a sad nod. ‘They showed me the photos.’

‘Then you saw who it was addressed to?’

‘You two and your little codes and secrets.’ Her bottom lip, pink and full, jutted out indignantly, nostrils quivering.

‘It was never like that,’ he insisted.

‘Yes it was. Rafael only ever invited me in when it suited him. And even now that he’s dead, nothing’s changed.’ Tom remembered now that she’d always insisted on calling her stepfather by his first name.

‘What was he mixed up in?’ Tom pressed.

‘I don’t know. Things were never simple between us.’ She fixed him with an accusing stare. ‘You walking out on me didn’t help. It forced him to pick sides.’

‘Is this about Rafael, or us?’

Eva flew forward and slapped Tom across the cheek, the sharp crack of the blow echoing around the room.

A pause.

‘Feel better?’ Tom asked slowly, rubbing his face.

‘Go home, Tom,’ she said wearily.

‘He came to see me in London.’

‘What?’ This, finally, seemed to have registered.

‘Three or four weeks ago. I don’t know what he’d got himself involved in, Eva, but I think he was in trouble and that he wanted my help. He stole part of a Napoleonic dinner service. An obelisk. What was he up to?’

She looked down, the toe of her black patent leather shoe poking absent-mindedly through the debris strewn across the floor.

‘He lied to us, Tom.’ She glanced up, looking unsure of herself for the first time. ‘He lied to us all. I could tell from his voice. He’d signed up for another job.’

‘For Milo.’ Tom nodded, thinking back to the unfinished letter M scrawled in blood across the base of the well. ‘Have you checked the drawers yet?’

‘What do you mean?’

He pulled one of the drawers out, emptied what remained inside it on to the floor, and then released a small catch underneath. The bottom of the drawer folded back, revealing a hidden compartment about an inch deep. It was empty.

‘He used to hide things he was working on in these,’ Tom began, before realising from the expression on Eva’s face that this was yet another secret Rafael had not chosen to share with her. Maybe she had a point after all.

‘Open them,’ she muttered hoarsely.

There were six drawers, but like the first, they were empty. All except the final one. This opened to reveal a painting. A painting that a small part of Tom had almost been expecting to find. There could be no doubt now that the two cases were connected.

‘Is that a da Vinci?’ Eva exclaimed.

‘It’s the Madonna of the Yarnwinder,’ Tom confirmed grimly as he carefully lifted it from the drawer. ‘But it’s not the original. That was stolen a few days ago by Milo. This must be one of your father’s forgeries. I expect that’s what his killers were looking for when they turned this place and his apartment upside down.’

‘You mean all this was for a stupid painting?’ Her voice broke as she gestured, the sweep of her arm taking in the ransacked room but also, Tom knew, the invisible trail of blood that led to the courtyard on the other side of the city. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to keep her emotions in check. He said nothing, giving her time to regain her composure. As she lowered her arm, Tom caught a glimpse of the silver bracelet he’d given her many summers ago, before she hurriedly tugged her sleeve back down to cover it. Perhaps she hadn’t totally banished those times from her mind after all.

‘They didn’t take everything,’ he said gently. ‘They left you this –’

He handed her the photo he had found on the floor. This time there was no holding back her tears.

FIFTEEN (#ulink_2392de96-076a-52aa-8475-ba495f6a8948)

South Street, New York

19th April – 3.26 p.m.

As soon as she was certain that the doors had closed behind her, Jennifer let out an angry cry and struck her fist against the side of the elevator. The noise echoed up the shaft above her like thunder presaging a heavy storm. How could she have been so stupid? Lewis had just been fishing and she’d grabbed the bait at the first time of asking. She’d even knocked the guy over. On camera. What would Green say? Assaulting civilians was not exactly how the Bureau liked to handle its PR. If it wasn’t so bad, it would almost have been funny.

Less funny was how Lewis had known she would be there. Had someone leaked her schedule? Unlikely, given she had only arranged to see Hammon after leaving Razi earlier that morning.

Maybe it was just an unfortunate coincidence. After all, years swimming through the lurid waters of popular scandal had given Lewis and his kind a nose for a story somewhat akin to a shark’s for a wounded seal. He would have smelt the blood in the water from the other side of the city.

The doors whirred open. A camera flash exploded, momentarily burning an image on to the back of her retina. A corpse sprawled on the floor in front of the reception desk. Two bullet wounds in her back suggesting she’d been gunned down as she tried to run away. A dark shadow of blood beneath her, matting her long blonde hair with dark streaks.

‘Who the fuck let you up here?’ A man stepped into her field of vision. He had a mottled complexion, a deep scar across the bridge of his nose and a lazy right eye.

‘Special Agent Jennifer Browne, FBI.’

The man glanced at her ID and then looked up again, his chin jutting out defiantly. Judging from his greying brown hair, she guessed he was maybe forty, forty-five years old. Behind him, she saw two people from the coroner’s office flip the girl over before lifting her into a body bag and zipping it shut.