Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

Naiman Sardy Art & Asset Advisors. My favorite page on the website is titled “Art as Collateral.” I wonder what Monet, de Kooning, Pollock, Bacon, and Cézanne, being the most liquid of all the assets, would have thought about being collateral.

According to the website:

In the wake of the international financial crisis, investors have begun to see the benefits of allowing nonmonetary assets such as art, yachts, jewelry, and other collectibles into their overall investment portfolios. These tangible assets, however, need expert care and delicate management, not just in the areas of storage, display, preservation, and insurance, but primarily as tradable assets of substantial value. They require the same level of oversight needed by solely financial investment portfolios. Here at Naiman Sardy we will ensure you achieve and maintain a balanced portfolio, by advising and making you, the investor, aware of current market values and advising on when to buy, to sell, or to hold while assisting at every stage with procurements and sales.

Well, there you go. A protective shell of art. Art being used like cigarettes in prison.

I suddenly realize the double meaning of “oversight.” “They require the same level of oversight needed by solely financial investment portfolios.” One of life’s ironies, I suppose.

I fear the clients of Naiman Sardy Art & Asset Advisors will be first against the wall when the revolution comes, collateral or no.

Anyway, Mark has asked Victoria to contact her brother Charles for “a client” of his. They’re LinkedIn friends, Mark and Victoria, and after a brief catch-up over coffee Mark brought it up. Would her brother be interested in meeting a potential new client who is looking to dissolve some assets over the next few months? The idea seemed to go down well. Mark said she sat up a little taller in the café and very much enjoyed playing the role of middleman. Her brother’s business had been hit quite hard by the current climate, apparently, and Charles could really use the commission right now. Victoria handed over one of Charles’s business cards and told Mark to pass it on to his “client.” She even thanked Mark for thinking of Charles for it.

Mark made the call, set up the meeting. I was to go, not as the client but as the client’s PA, Sara. So far so standard; I knew from Caro’s stories that most of her gallery sales came over the phone or through personal assistants buying at openings. Why go to buy your own collateral if you can send someone else?

I’m meeting Charles this morning. I leave Mark in the Patisserie Valerie at Green Park and make my way, alone, down onto Pall Mall.

The showroom in Pall Mall is discreet. As you enter, it looks more like a high-end private auction house than anything else. Self-contained display plinths pepper the room, housing treasures that I’m guessing probably aren’t for sale. Just totems placed to reassure clients that this is the right place for them, class-related dog whistles, trophies, emblems. But, to be fair, I’d imagine everything in there can be bought for the right price.

In one case, an Incan death mask glimmers warm in the glow of spotlights behind a good inch of thick glass.

In another case a Japanese suit of armor.

In another a necklace with one glistening briolette diamond hanging as thick and as fat as a sherbet lemon from a string of lesser diamonds twinkling in the showroom lights.

Charles greets me. He’s a healthy, ruddy, well-haired red-trouser-wearer, with the hint of a South of France tan.

He appears to be the only one around. Perhaps they only open the shop for meetings. I can’t believe there’s much foot traffic, even in Pall Mall.

We sit nestled at the back of the room at an oversized mahogany partners desk. If it’s not a Chippendale, it’s definitely in the manner of Thomas Chippendale. I guess you’re meant to notice these things. I guess that’s the point of them; that’s probably why they’re chosen.

We sit and make light small talk deep inside the thickly carpeted showroom, Charles makes me a pod coffee, and I figure the business conversation ball is in my court. I’m sure Charles could keep the small talk going and divert me all day if I don’t cut to the chase. He’s definitely not the sort to bring up business first—it wouldn’t be the done thing in his trade, I’d imagine, cutting to the chase.

Even East End market-stall traders love the patter, don’t they? Of course, Charles is no market-stall trader, let’s be clear. He’s Oxbridge through and through: precise, sharp, but riddled with the self-imposed shame of underperforming his own potential. It seems that the one drawback of having every opportunity in life is that you can never fulfill that level of expectation. You’ll always fall short of your own potential. Any achievement will be the minimum expected of you, considering the circumstances, and any failure will be purely due to character weakness.

To be clear, I personally think Charles is doing really well. He’s got a lovely place here. It seems like a lovely job. I’d be a proud mother. That’s another thing about private school boys. They tug at the heartstrings, don’t they? They bypass the sexual and hotline the maternal. They never grow up.

I pop the diamond pouch out of my coat pocket and onto the desktop. The stones are now safely stored away in the soft cream leather wallet that Mark and I purchased for the purpose. The plastic baggie was not appropriate, and although the pouch set us back £150 it gives a wholly different tone to the current endeavor.

Charles clicks to attention. It’s the reason he’s here, after all, and it has been a bad year.

I explain that the family I work for is looking to liquidate some assets over the next months. The stones will be an initial sale to test the waters, to see how receptive the market is at the moment.

Of course, in reality there are no other assets. I wish there were. I wish we’d found more bags. But I figure the prospect of more sales to come for Charles will (a) get us the best price for the stones today and (b) lessen the suspicious nature of a one-off sale.

Charles’s interest is piqued. I knew the leather pouch was worth it.

He fetches a jewelry tray. I pass him the pouch. I want him to pour it out himself. To have the feeling I had the first time I saw hundreds of diamond pills pour out into the refracting light.

He shakes the pouch gently and they tumble out onto the green felt tray.

He feels it.

The hairs on the back of my arms rise. I feel it.

Opportunity. Possibility. He moistens his lips before he looks up.

“Very nice, lovely.” A hint of joy bubbles just under the surface of his deadpan expression. He’s no poker player, that’s for sure.

A rate of ten percent commission is agreed upon. He’ll get started as soon as I leave and should have some offers by the afternoon. Things move very fast in the diamond market. He can have a sale arranged by the end of the day if that’s something the family I work for would be interested in.

I leave with a handwritten receipt in lieu of the stones and head back to the café to meet Mark. And then I feel it: eyes on my back. I stop on the corner of Pall Mall and St. James’s Street, and with nerves fizzing pretend to look for my phone in my bag. The two men behind me pass by. They’re not police, and they aren’t following me, they’re just two well-dressed men on their way to a long lunch. I check over my shoulder, back all the way down the Mall to Trafalgar Square, my eyes searching for DCI Foster’s stocky frame among the few pedestrians. Of the twenty or so passersby, no one fits the bill. DCI Foster’s not here. He’s not watching me.

Stop it, Erin. Don’t be paranoid.