The Manhattan Puzzle

Was there anyone she could call?

She knew a few of the other wives from the Institute well enough to go to coffee mornings with them, but she’d never had a phone call from any of them complaining that their husbands were missing.

There was only one person she really trusted; Rose. Their husbands had been involved with the bank for about the same time. And she was also looking after Alek for the weekend.

Most of the wives she knew from BXH were far too competitive to show any weakness publicly. Whenever she’d met them they talked about who was going to Ascot, what they were going to wear, the private schools their children attended, or their holiday homes in the south of France or Tuscany.

Having worked in Istanbul for years, for the Foreign Office, before retiring early after an incident in Istanbul, Isabel felt like an outsider when it came to the things those people seemed to be obsessed with.

She headed for her wicker chair in the conservatory. She had an hour before her coffee date with Rose and the handover of Alek to her for the weekend. It had been a big decision to leave him with Rose. One she’d doubted ever since, if she thought about it for more than a minute.

But everything was ready. And Sean had been so definite that it would be good for them both. She deserved three nights of peace. That was what he had said.

And he was right. She pushed the shard of doubt away.

Within twenty-four hours they’d be back to normal. She’d forgive him. He’d talk about the big merger and finally finishing the project that would secure the Institute’s future, their future. And that would be it.

A crunching sounded from the garden, as if someone was walking out there. She turned to the window and took a deep breath.

9 (#ulink_696730b7-1289-55d4-94ff-a5530341feff)

Henry Mowlam turned to the screen on his left. The hum of the office in Whitehall had hardly changed in the past few years. The only noticeable difference was that the screens they were watching at the monitoring stations were thinner and the light was yellower, more natural, it was claimed, though Henry didn’t believe it.

The secure PDF on his screen was the oldest military archive file he had ever accessed. At the top there was a summary by a Royal Engineers Major. Below was a handwritten report in a thin spidery scrawl enlivened by occasional twirls and flourishes. The name at the top was Captain Charles George Gordon.

Henry scrolled down the document.

It was a personal account of the destruction of the Summer Palace of the Xianfeng Emperor of China in Beijing during the Second Opium War in October 1860.

‘On the night of the 20th we were carrying out Lord Elgin’s orders and came upon a remote palace building, which had not been destroyed up to that point due to its location on an island and its small size. I ordered only the porcelain to be removed and the building to be left intact, but one of the Sergeants took it upon himself to break through a trap door and loot an underground room. He arrived back while we were loading up the boats. He was carrying a green jade statue, about the size of an owl. I confiscated it in the name of Barkers & Son, Bankers, whose kin had been tortured and murdered by the Chinese, and whose shipment of opium had been lost on the Pearl River six months before.’

Henry closed the PDF. Barkers & Son were one of the early manifestations of the BXH banking conglomerate. Henry switched to his right-hand screen and studied the report on Lord Bidoner that had recently been emailed to him.

So this was where Bidoner was going to invest the ill-gotten loot he’d escaped with after the Jerusalem incident. It couldn’t be proven that it was an attempt to provoke a war and then profit from the surge in certain shares of companies, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Henry still seethed at the thought of how much money Bidoner had made. He read the report again. It stated that Lord Bidoner had already built up a shareholding in BXH that should have been notified to the authorities, but hadn’t. And now he was doing more buying through nominee accounts.

What was he up to?

BXH was definitely in trouble, on the blocks for an immediate takeover. If that didn’t happen, the bank could very well be taken over by the US Government. And if that happened Bidoner would lose his investment.

Was there something going on that he didn’t see?

He read the email from Lord Bidoner to the CEO of BXH, which they had intercepted. It requested an inventory of the bank’s artworks. It also stated that Lord Bidoner had an artistic interest in a jade statue that the bank was rumoured to have in its possession since the time of the Second Opium War.

He turned to look at the report from Captain Charles George Gordon. Was Bidoner looking for the statue mentioned in this report? It certainly looked like it.

But why?

10 (#ulink_05c38a5d-2ac6-5205-9e3c-b5602fc63bd3)

Isabel went to the back door and looked out, her face close to the window. She could feel the cold leaking through the glass. She moved away. The noise could have been a neighbour’s cat, hunting for mice. Or it could have been an early rising burglar. She checked the back door was locked, rattled the handle. Hopefully whatever it was would go away.

A memory of the thugs who had chased her and Sean from the hotel in Istanbul came back to her.

She put the back door key on the top of the mahogany dresser. The doorbell rang. It was one of those old-fashioned bells that emits a buzz for as long as the person outside wants it to. Whoever was pressing it clearly wanted an answer quickly.

She was at the door in seconds.

Had Sean lost his key?

Through the stained glass front door window she could see a bulky shape. It was Sean! He’d lost his keys. Her heart thumped like an overexcited schoolgirl’s. She swung the door open and froze, her body temperature cooling fast.

It wasn’t Sean. It was a young man with streaky blonde hair and purple skin eruptions, a before specimen from a magazine ad for acne treatment.

As he stretched his hand out to her she felt stupid at having opened the door so quickly. She could easily have checked in the security viewer. She stepped back and got ready to close the door, fast.

Mr Streaky Blonde’s suit was light grey. It had thin lapels and it looked way too tight, bulging in all the wrong places.

‘James Kilfeather, from Gold and Ferry in the City.’ He smiled at her, like a salesman who’d just seen his next bonus appearing in front of him.

The look on her face must have taken him by surprise. He stepped back, his expression changing from friendly to troubled in a second.

‘Is Mr Ryan here?’ He glanced over her shoulder.

Had Sean made an appointment he hadn’t told her about?

‘No, he’s not. I’ll tell him you were looking for him.’ She tried to sound friendly, but all she wanted was for him to go away.

That was when she saw the clipboard. It was one of those big blue plastic ones with a shiny silver clip to keep the papers down. Under the clip there was a sheet with printed boxes, as if he was about to fill something in. He was holding it as if it was his raison d’être.

‘Did Mr Ryan tell you I was coming to do the valuation?’

She stared at him.

‘Valuation?’ The word stuck in her throat, as if it were a piece of bread too big to swallow. She could feel herself getting angry, the muscles in her neck tightening.

‘Mr Ryan rang our office on Wednesday. He was very specific. He asked us to value this property. Are you Mrs Ryan?’ Streaky Blonde was getting peeved, as if it was her fault Sean wasn’t there.

Why would Sean need the house valued?

She felt light-headed. This had to be a practical joke.

‘You’re mistaken. We’re not selling up. I’ll get Sean to call you, sort all this out when he gets back.’

She smiled thinly, closing the door on his reddening face.

She watched his shadow through the stained glass, her pulse drumming. Would he go away? A second later he was gone.