Ian Hamilton - The wild beast of Wuhan

She liked the way he had sidestepped her question and passed the meeting over to her. “As you both know by now, I was hired by a client in China to investigate a potential scam involving some Fauvist paintings,” Ava began. “In the course of my research I came across possible irregularities involving some other paintings not directly connected to my client. I have since resolved the Fauvist issue to my client’s satisfaction, and the other paintings now hold zero interest for them or me.”

“For the record, what does that mean exactly?”

“As far as we’re concerned, they don’t exist. I understand that you can’t take the exact same position, at least with one of them, since you sold it at auction. So I’m curious — for the record — as to how you want to proceed.”

Rice looked at Locke as if to say, See? Nothing to worry about.

“The painting you refer to, the one that was sold through Harrington’s for a client — we have reviewed the provenance and our original evaluation, and on balance we think it would be irresponsible to cast any shadow of doubt upon it,” Rice said.

“So we seem to be on exactly the same page,” Ava said.

The door behind Ava opened. She turned and saw a young woman with a slip of paper in her hand. Rice looked annoyed. “What is it, Melissa?” he said.

The woman seemed distressed. “Excuse me, Mr. Rice, but something has come up and Mr. Tomlinson thought you should be informed.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“He thought not.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Excuse me,” the woman said to Ava as she reached past her to hand the note to Rice.

He read it and then looked up. Ava saw shock in his eyes. “Does he have any more details?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

Rice stared at Ava and she felt a shiver. Does this have something to do with me? The Wongs? she wondered. No one knew she was at Harrington’s.

“There has been an incident at the Hughes Art Gallery in Kensington,” Rice said.

“An incident?”

“Something serious enough to involve the police. They have the gallery cordoned off.”

Ava froze.

“How does Tomlinson know this?” Locke asked.

“He lives in the neighbourhood. He went past the gallery on his way to work and saw that the police were there. He called from his mobile,” Melissa said.

“That’s all he knows?” Locke pressed.

“Melissa, is Tomlinson still there?” Rice asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have his mobile number handy?”

“I wrote it on the bottom of the paper,” she said, pointing to the slip in Rice’s hand.

“I’ll call him from outside. I’ll be right back,” Rice said as he moved quickly towards the door.

When he was gone, Locke said quietly, “What can this mean?”

Ava didn’t know if he was talking to her or himself, and in either case she wasn’t going to respond. She had too many questions in her own head.

“I want to go to the gallery,” she said to Locke. “Can you drive me?”

“You don’t want to wait for Sam? It could be something minor.”

Ava got to her feet. “If you won’t drive me then I’ll just catch a taxi downstairs.”

“I think we should wait for Sam,” Locke said.

She turned and left the boardroom. As she was walking to the elevator she saw Sam Rice standing at a desk, a phone to his ear. The look on his face told her more than she wanted to know. “Ava, wait!” he yelled.

She didn’t stop. The elevator doors opened as soon as she got there and she stepped in. As the doors closed she saw Sam Rice running towards her. He moved quickly for a big man, but not quickly enough.

Ava was starting to give the taxi driver the gallery address when she caught herself. The street would probably be closed to traffic. She directed him instead to the Fletcher Hotel.

Sitting in the back of the taxi she tried to calm herself down. I don’t know, she told herself, what happened on Church Street. But the dull throb in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t go away.

Her cellphone rang. Harrington’s. “Ava, we’re on our way. Sam and I are getting into his car as I speak,” Frederick Locke said.

“See you there,” Ava said, turning off the phone and throwing it into the bottom of her purse.

As the cab pulled into the Fletcher Hotel, she looked up Church Street and saw police barriers and what looked like the blinking lights of police cars and ambulances. She went into the hotel and almost threw her bag at the concierge. “I’m Ms. Lee. Tag my bag and store it for me. I’ll be back.”

She walked slowly towards the gallery, trying to let the scene develop gradually in her mind rather than erupt before her. She was accustomed to the yellow tapes used to seal off crime scenes, the wooden barriers to keep onlookers — two and three deep around the outer perimeter — back. She tried to find a gap in the crowd, and at the north end she saw an opening and wormed her way to the front.

Three ambulances were parked outside the gallery. Waiting, Ava thought. Uniformed police stood in a small circle next to their cars; others in plain clothes huddled by the gallery’s door. Beyond the ambulances Ava saw two television trucks, and to her right, cameramen stood with reporters holding microphones.

“Do you know what’s happened?” Ava asked the woman next to her.

“Bit of a shoot-up, I gather. Robbery attempt maybe.”

One of the television crews moved towards Ava as the cameraman tried to find a good angle for his shot.

“Excuse me,” Ava said to the reporter. “Do you know what happened here? I’m acquainted with the people who work at the gallery.”

“A shooting. Actually, shootings.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

Ava paled, the throb in her stomach now beginning to pound. “You wouldn’t have any names, would you?”

“Nothing official,” the reporter said. “You say you know the people at the gallery?”

“Yes, two of them. Edwin Hughes and his assistant, Lisa.”

The reporter checked her clipboard. “We came up with those names ourselves, but they haven’t been confirmed.” She moved off, following the cameraman, who had found a position that gave him a clear shot of the doorway.

It’s strangely quiet, Ava thought. The uniformed police were standing like sentries, staring back at the onlookers, while the plainclothes officers whispered back and forth and occasionally walked in and out of the building. When they moved, Ava saw a gurney, flanked by two ambulance attendants and a policeman, rolling out of the gallery. There was a white body bag on it. The crowd gasped, and Ava heard several women moan. The man next to her said, “God love us.”

They pushed the gurney to the last ambulance in the row, and another gurney began its progress from the gallery, with an identical white zippered body bag. Ava stared at the bags, almost willing herself to see through them. The bodies are small, she thought. Female probably.

A third gurney came through the door. A pair of brown leather wingtips lay beside the body bag.

Ava gagged. The man next to her said, “Go easy, there.”

She breathed deeply through her nose. Then she started to move away, back towards the bakery door where only a few days before she had lain in wait for Edwin Hughes.

It took ten minutes to clear space for the ambulances. As they drove away, the crowd began to disperse. Ava walked towards the crime scene, her eye on the television reporter, who was in deep discussion with one of the plainclothes police officers. She watched them talk, the reporter making notes and then calling over the cameraman to film her report, the hughes gallery sign prominent in the background as she spoke into the camera.

The reporter did three takes before she was satisfied. The cameraman went off to get more exterior shots and the reporter walked to her car, which had been parked behind the ambulances. Ava caught up to her as she skirted the barrier.