Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“Yes and no. I’m… Look, this is more than I should say, but Qazai is doing a deal. He’s hit a bump, and thinks someone somewhere is saying things about him that aren’t true. I want to make sure that those things aren’t connected to what happened to your client.”

Brooks thought for a moment, grunted again. Webster could hear him tapping keys in the background.

“I’m not going to tell you anything. Obviously. But I will say—and I don’t think this qualifies as privileged or surprising information—that the investigation in Iran, such as it is, is not being conducted to the standard expected by Her Majesty’s justice system.”

“Was he really robbed?”

Brooks seemed unable to answer without a substantial pause. Webster waited. “Mr. Webster,” he said at last, “it is possible, one might suppose, on the balance of probabilities, that every now and then in Iran a normal antiques smuggling ring, during the normal course of its business, is called upon to murder an English art dealer. My own personal belief is that all this was far from normal. Thank you for your interest. Goodbye.”

And before Webster could squeeze in another question, he too had gone.

THE BAKERLOO LINE WASdeadly slow and by the time he reached the school, five minutes late, Elsa and Miss Turnbull had already begun their meeting. Elsa gave him a severe look as he took a seat next to her on one of the tiny children’s chairs.

It wasn’t at all unusual, Miss Turnbull told them when they had explained the problem, for children of this age—especially girls—to have quite intense relationships with their friends. She had noticed that Phoebe and Nancy seemed to be spending a lot of time in each other’s company, but hadn’t realized that Nancy was feeling put-upon, still less upset, and if she was worrying about it at home and dreading school as a result then something would have to be done. What had worked in similar situations was to talk to all the boys and girls about the importance of having lots of different friends and playing together as a class, and to make sure that at playtime Phoebe wasn’t allowed to keep Nancy to herself. Elsa, Webster could tell, wasn’t wholly satisfied.

“Happy?” he said as they walked across the empty playground.

“We’ll see.”

“She seems to have the measure of it.”

“I was hoping she might have a word with Phoebe’s parents.”

“If they’re anything like their daughter they probably won’t listen.”

Elsa shrugged.

The school was half a mile from their house, and for a while they walked in silence, Elsa half a pace in front of Webster, her head down and full of thoughts.

“Why were you late?” she said at last.

“I’m sorry. The Tube was buggered. We were stopped at Paddington for five minutes.”

“Then you should have left five minutes earlier.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should have left enough time. I know you. You take it to the last minute and then you rush out and expect the world to fall into place for you.”

There was a park opposite their house: a square of grass, a sandpit, a climbing frame and a seesaw, and this afternoon it was full of small children bouncing around each other like atoms in a jar. Webster saw Nancy first, hanging off the climbing frame by her legs, while Daniel carefully shoveled cupfuls of sand onto a growing pile on the grass.

As they reached the gate he touched Elsa’s arm and she turned to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really.”

“It’s OK.”

“Do you fancy a couple of nights in Italy? The week after next. After Cornwall. I’ve been invited by my dodgy billionaire.”

“To his house?”

“To his big house. On Lake Como. It has its own Wikipedia page.”

She smiled. “Who would look after the kids?”

“The nanny? Your mom?”

“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. We’ve never been away in the week. I think I should stay here, for Nancy.”

“I was hoping you could tell me what in heaven’s name drives these people. I’m out of my depth.”

“You’ll be fine. They don’t want a therapist.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Elsa collected the children from the friend who had picked them up after school, and together they walked back home. As they turned in to the short path leading to their house Webster reached up to hoist Daniel down from his shoulders and started feeling in his pockets for his key.

“Have you got yours?” he asked Elsa.

“You’re hopeless. Yes.”

As she reached for the lock, something caught his eye.

“When does the recycling go?”

“Wednesdays. Tomorrow.”

“Did we put any out?”

“There was loads.”

Webster looked at the empty box and wondered who had done the work, and on whose behalf.

TWO DAYS AFTER HIScalls to Mehr’s widow and David Brooks, Webster received a package. It had come by mail—stamped, not franked—in an A4 manila envelope addressed with a printed label that bore no clue to its sender. Inside was a report, of sorts, printed on a single sheet of plain paper in plain, black type.

There was no title, and no introduction, but the moment Webster saw it he knew what it was. It was a private report into the death of Cyrus Mehr, and a very direct and unexpected document it was. Whoever had written it appeared to have seen the police file, and as he read Webster found himself wondering which of his competitors, if they were responsible, had such excellent sources in Iran.

Mehr, it said, had been invited by the Cultural Heritage Association of Iran to spend three weeks helping to catalog the treasures of the Golestan Palace in Tehran, a place so vast and run so inefficiently (some said corruptly) that the true extent of its largely chaotic collection was unknown. It was not unusual for foreigners to be asked to collaborate in this way, and Mehr, an expert above all else in carpets from the Safavid dynasty, whose kings had built the palace, was an entirely plausible candidate.

He had left London on the 15th of February, a Thursday, arrived in Tehran the next day and spent his first week working, staying at a hotel in the north of the city and calling his family at least once a day (the report didn’t make clear whether the Iranians or the Mehrs had provided this piece of information). On the following Saturday he had flown to Isfahan, telling his colleagues that he was going to meet a dealer he knew who had called to offer him a particularly rare, fine prayer rug from the sixteenth century. At around noon he had checked into his hotel and then taken a taxi immediately to Joubareh in the north of the city, a journey of fifteen minutes.

He and the dealer had arranged to meet in an Internet cafe. It wasn’t clear whether the dealer had ever turned up, but at a little after five o’clock, at some point between getting out of his taxi and reaching the door of the cafe, four men in balaclavas had grabbed Mehr and forced him, struggling, into a white van that had driven up at that moment, clearly after waiting a little distance away. The street was not busy, but there were a few passersby who would have seen the van leaving at great speed in the direction of the airport. Neither it nor the five men—assuming there was a driver as well—had been seen since.

This sparse little document, all of four paragraphs, contained two details that caused Webster to imagine Mehr’s last hours more vividly than he would have wished. The first was that his body had not in fact been found in his hotel room. Shortly after daybreak the following day two women had discovered it by the side of the Zarrin Kamar canal, which ran through the middle of Isfahan. The canal wasn’t lit, so it was entirely likely that the body had been there all night and that no one had passed. Mehr was dressed in the suit he had been wearing the day before, and everything on him had been taken, except for his passport (which, contrary to the version released to the press, had been found in his jacket pocket). When the police searched his room they discovered—or said they had—the receipts and other documents that were later reported extensively in the Iranian press.