The Gilded Seal

‘Something like that.’

‘What does that make you, I wonder?’

Dorling paused to reflect before answering, the pulse in his temple fractionally increasing its tempo.

‘A businessman. Same as always.’

There were other words dancing on the edge of Tom’s tongue, but he took a deep breath and let the moment pass. He had his reasons. Dorling’s firm of chartered loss adjusters was the first port of call for Lloyd’s underwriters whenever they had a big-ticket insurance claim to investigate. And during the ten years that Tom had operated as an art thief – the best in the business, many said – Dorling’s company had co-operated with the police on countless jobs which they suspected him of being behind.

All that had changed, however, when word had got out a year or so back that Tom and his old fence, Archie Connelly, had set themselves up on the other side of the law, advising on museum security and helping recover lost or stolen art. Now the very people who had spent years trying to put them both away were queuing up for their help. The irony still bit deep.

Tom didn’t blame Dorling. If anything he found his shameless opportunism rather endearing. The truth was that the art world was full of people like him – crocodile-skinned and conveniently forgetful as soon as they understood there was a profit to be made. It was just that the memories didn’t fade quite so fast when you’d been the one staring down the wrong end of a twenty-year stretch.

‘Who’s inside?’ Tom asked, nodding towards the castle entrance.

‘Who isn’t?’ Dorling replied mournfully. ‘The owner, forensic team, local filth.’ The slang seemed forced and sat uneasily with Dorling’s clipped sentences and sharp vowels. Tom wondered if he too felt awkward about their past history and whether this was therefore a deliberate attempt to bridge or otherwise heal the gap between them. If so, it was a rather ham-fisted attempt, although Tom appreciated him making the effort at least. ‘Oh, and that annoying little shit from the Yard’s Art Crime Squad just showed up.’

‘Annoying little shit? You mean Clarke?’ Tom gave a rueful laugh. In this instance the description was an apt one, although Tom suspected that it was a term Dorling routinely deployed to describe anyone who hadn’t gone to the same school as him, or who didn’t feature on his regular Chelsea dinner-party circuit.

‘Play nicely,’ Dorling warned him. ‘We need him onside. We’re co-operating, remember, not competing.’

‘I will if he will,’ Tom shrugged, unable and perhaps unwilling to suppress the hint of petulance in his voice. Clarke and he had what Archie would have called ‘previous’. It didn’t matter how much you wanted to draw a line and move on, sometimes others wouldn’t let you. Tom felt suddenly hot and loosened his coat, revealing a single-breasted charcoal-grey Huntsman suit that he was wearing with an open necked blue Hilditch & Key shirt.

‘There’s one more thing you should know,’ said Dorling, pausing on the threshold, one foot outside the house, the other on the marble floor, his square chin raised as if anticipating a blow. ‘I had a call from our Beijing office. They only just heard, but Milo’s out. The Chinese released him six months ago. No one knows why.’

‘Milo?’ Tom froze, not sure he’d heard correctly. Not wanting to believe he had. ‘Milo’s out? What’s that got to do … you think this is him?’

Dorling shrugged awkwardly, his bluff confidence momentarily deserting him.

‘That’s why I called you in on this one, Tom. He’s left you something.’

TWO (#ulink_b1bf87a8-8292-5008-964c-fa33c2b354c5)

New York City

18th April – 7.00 a.m.

They hit traffic almost immediately they turned on to Broadway, brake lights shimmering ahead of them like beads on a long necklace, umbrellas bobbing impatiently along the sidewalk. The rain, thick with the evaporated sweat of eight million people, crawled in greasy rivulets down the glass, flecking Special Agent Jennifer Browne’s faint reflection in the passenger-side window as she sipped coffee from a polystyrene cup.

Most agreed that she was a beautiful woman, perhaps even more so since she’d broken thirty, as if she’d somehow grown into the slender, elegantly curving five foot nine frame that had made her appear a little gawky when younger. She had light brown skin and curling black hair, her father’s African American colouring having been softened by her mother’s Southern pallor. But her large, honeyed hazel eyes were pure Grandma May, a fierce woman who claimed to have met the devil on two separate occasions; once on the ship over from Haiti, the other on her wedding night. To her regret, Jennifer had been too young to verify either of these stories with her grandfather before he’d died.

And yet despite what others said, Jennifer had never really considered herself to be attractive, citing her younger sister as an example of a far more natural and intuitive beauty. Besides, she’d never been that concerned with what people thought about how she looked. It was, after all, a poor proxy for character, which is what she preferred to be judged on.

She stifled a yawn, the mesmeric fizz of the wipers across the windshield exposing the effects of too many late nights. She certainly could have done without today’s early start. Then again, she’d not had much choice. Not when FBI Director Green himself was calling the shots.

‘This is taking for ever,’ she said restlessly as they shuffled forward another few feet and the caffeine began to bite. ‘Cut across to Eighth when you hit West Fourteenth.’ She glanced up and caught the driver eyeing the firm outline of her breasts in the mirror.

‘Sure thing.’ He nodded awkwardly, his eyes flicking back to the road.

She sat back, her annoyance with the driver offset by her amusement at herself. Only nine months in and she was already well on her way to being a real New Yorker – not only irrationally impatient but also utterly convinced of her ability to navigate to any point in the city faster than anyone else. Not particularly attractive traits, perhaps, but ones that nonetheless gave her a sudden sense of belonging that she hadn’t felt for a long time. Too long.

Twenty-five minutes later they turned on to West 89th Street and drew up outside the elegant façade of the Claremont Riding Academy, the oldest continuously working stable in the state, according to the sign fixed to the wall outside.

Jennifer scanned the street – Green’s usual security detachment was already there, a lucky few sat in one of the three unmarked Suburbans, the rest sheltering in the doorways opposite, water dripping on to their shoulders and the toecaps of their polished shoes. He was early. That was a first. Whatever he wanted, he clearly didn’t plan to hang around.

She stepped out of the car, a long coat worn over her usual urban camouflage of black trouser suit and white silk blouse. Not the most exciting outfit, she knew, but then she’d learnt the hard way that people would grasp at anything to categorise you into their rigid mental taxonomies. Certainly, given how hard it was to make it as a woman in the Bureau, let alone an African American woman, she’d rather be classified as frigid than as a potential fuck, which, convention had it, were the only two points on the scale that female agents could operate at. Besides, in a way it suited her – it was one less decision to make in the morning.

A ramp covered with a deep carpet of dirt and wood shavings led up to the riding school itself. She made her way inside, suddenly aware of the smell, an incongruous mixture of horse and leather and manure amidst Manhattan’s unforgiving forest of steel and concrete and glass. There was a time, she mused, when the whole city would have smelt this way, when the clatter of hooves and the foghorns of ships arriving in the harbour had signalled the forging of a new city built on hope and ambition. She decided she liked this smell. It seemed somehow real. Permanent. Relevant.

Ahead of her a single horse was trotting robotically in a wide circle defined by the space between the walls and the bright blue pillars supporting the whitewashed brick ceiling above. A young girl was perched unsteadily in the saddle, golden braids peeking out from under a pristine black velvet helmet. An instructor was standing in the centre of the school, swivelling on the heels of his scuffed brown riding boots as he followed the horse round and round, occasionally bellowing instructions.

‘Excuse me,’ Jennifer called, as the horse rode past and the man turned to face her. ‘I’m looking for Falstaff.’

‘Falstaff?’ He eyed her curiously as he walked over, his muscled thighs sheathed in pale cream Lycra jodhpurs. ‘You’re here for Falstaff?’

She nodded firmly, hoping that he had not noticed the slight uncertainty in her own voice. Green’s call had been hurried and muffled by the sound of a passing siren. Seven thirty a.m. Claremont Riding Academy. Ask for Falstaff. Don’t be late.

‘How many times? Keep your heels down,’ The instructor suddenly barked, his eyes fixed beyond her shoulder. Jennifer glanced behind her and saw the young girl blush crimson as she wheeled away, heels firmly pressed down against her stirrups, braids bouncing frantically off her shoulders. The instructor’s searching gaze followed her as she circled past, his face set into a disapproving frown.

‘Yes, Falstaff. You know where I can find him?’

The man glanced at her sceptically, before giving a vague nod to his right.

‘They’re waiting for you upstairs. First floor. Back and right. That’s it. Good girl. Hands out in front. Now remember your posture. It all comes from the posture.’

With a faint word of thanks, Jennifer headed over to the spot he had indicated. A wide, curving ramp led up to the stabling floor above, the stone worn and gouged by generations of hooves and over-indulged Upper West Side kids.

Two more of Green’s men were positioned at the top of the ramp, transparent earpieces snaking inside their collars. They waved her down a central aisle that led to the far end of the stables, narrower passageways containing loose-boxes leading off to the left and the right. The boxes themselves were painted white and in various stages of decay and disrepair, with wooden slats missing or broken and the wrought-iron railings thick with rust and overpainting. Saddles, reins and various other pieces of tack and frayed rope were hanging haphazardly from the peeling walls or slung over skewed gates. A stereo dangled from an overhead beam, the music clearly more to the taste of the Mexican workers mucking out than the horses whose mournful heads she could see peering over the stable doors.

Another of Green’s men was waiting for her at the end of the main aisle. He silently steered her to the right. The sound of voices drew her to the final stall where a tin plate was attached to the door with twine. A name had been punched into it with a blunt nail – Falstaff.

Jennifer frowned, momentarily disconcerted. She’d assumed Falstaff was someone whose parents had either had an irrational love of Shakespeare, or a questionable sense of humour. Not a horse.

With a shrug, she stepped into the box. Jack Green had his back to her and was locked in conversation with two smartly dressed men, one noticeably older than the other. The younger man looked up sharply when he saw her. Picking up on his cue, Green spun round to greet her.

‘Browne.’ He gave her a fleeting smile. ‘Good.’

Green was one of those cookie-cutter DC insiders who seemed to roll off a secret production line in some rich white neighbourhood on the outskirts of Boston. Crisp creases in his suit trousers, ironed parting in his brown hair, plump cheeks, perfect teeth and irises like faded ink spots on crisp linen sheets, his gaze constantly flitting over your shoulder, in case someone more interesting should come into the room behind you.

He’d lost weight since the last time she’d seen him, adding substance to the Bureau gossips who contended that he’d recently re-married and that his new, much younger and richer bride, had him on a treadmill three times a week. True or not, he still had a way to go; the material around the top button of his trousers was buckling under the stress of holding his stomach in. And if there was a new wife, she’d certainly done nothing to improve his taste in ties, this morning’s offering a garish blend of different shades of orange.

‘Morning, sir.’ She shook his hand.

‘Thank you for coming. I know it’s early.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ she said generously. ‘I normally go for a run at this time anyway.’

He gave her a look that was caught somewhere between sympathy and admiration, before gesturing first towards the older man, then his younger companion.