Reynolds’ next appointment was actually with a man named Chamberlain, a solicitor who lived in the privileged eighteenth-century residential complex called Argrove. He met Reynolds by the front door. It was three o’clock on the afternoon of Monday 8 December and the sky was already darkening over Mayfair.
Chamberlain had led Reynolds down a long corridor with very solid-looking doors along one side. They appeared to be aiming towards a Christmas tree decorated with small blue lights.
‘You must never say The Argrove,’ Chamberlain had warned Reynolds, and Reynolds had promised not to. ‘Four Prime Ministers have lived here,’ said Chamberlain and he had proceeded to name them. ‘Also many famous writers …’
… and Detective Superintendent George Quinn, in whose elegant, small bedroom they now stood.
The room was almost higher than it was wide, like a booth, an effect increased by the vertical stripes of the wallpaper, which was red and gold, like Christmas wrapping. The bed was a three-quarter bed, expensive-looking, with a head that curved away from the pillows – scrolled might be the word, Reynolds thought. The fireplace was a working fireplace, with wood and coal waiting to burn. A very easy room to go to sleep in, thought Reynolds, especially if you’d been at the whisky that stood on a silver tray on the pedestal table next to the slumped but stylish green couch. On this tray there were also two unopened packets of old-fashioned fags: Capstan (‘Full Strength’, they were marked, just to reassure the purchaser) and a silver tankard engraved ‘Old Myrmidons Society’.
Reynolds held his detective’s notebook. With pen poised, he asked, ‘Do you know what the Old Myrmidons are, Mr Chamberlain?’
‘It was his college dining society. He was at Merton, I was at Christ Church. They’re colleges at Oxford University,’ Chamberlain added for good measure.
There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece that looked the genuine article – made in the actual days of carriages – with some invitations propped behind it. People called things like Mr and Mrs Henry Sykes would be ‘at home’ on a certain day. There was a letter informing Quinn that he was about to be invited to drinks on Thursday 11 December at the London Library in St James’s Square. Keep the date free, sort of thing. It was from ‘The Directors of the Society of Plyushkin’s Garden’. Not Pushkin but Plyushkin. There was no sign of the actual invitation.
Chamberlain was telling Reynolds about how he’d met Quinn at some sherry party in Oxford back in 1973. They’d both been reading law, and everyone assumed Quinn had a great future as a barrister. Chamberlain himself had become a solicitor, but Quinn had amazed everyone by going into the police – everyone, that is, who had not heard of a certain inspirational uncle of Quinn’s who’d been a great hero of the colonial police in India. Later, Chamberlain had inherited leaseholds on two flats in Argrove, and he’d sublet this one to Quinn.
‘Any idea about the Society of Plyushkin’s Garden?’ Reynolds asked Chamberlain, who frowned.
‘Sounds like some secret society out of John Buchan,’ he said, ‘an old-fashioned adventure story, you know.’
Reynolds considered telling Chamberlain that he had not only seen the film of The Thirty-Nine Steps, he had also read the book. He looked again at the letter. Surely, Plyushkin’s Gardeners couldn’t be very secret if they were proposing a drinks party? There was also a small silver sports car on the mantelpiece, and a fancy glass ashtray.
Chamberlain said, ‘You’re a northerner, aren’t you? Like Quinn?’ by which he meant ‘not at all like Quinn’. Quinn had grown up on a country estate near York; Reynolds had grown up on a housing estate in York.
‘I can’t say our paths ever crossed up there.’
‘Well,’ said Chamberlain, ‘he’s a good deal older than you. His mother was the daughter of a baronet, you know.’
Reynolds did know that, although he wasn’t sure what being a baronet involved, let alone being the daughter of one.
‘But the title goes down the male line,’ Chamberlain added sadly. He contemplated Reynolds. ‘Of course, he was a colleague of yours.’
‘Yes, but we never worked together directly. I knew him more by … reputation.’
Everyone in the Met knew Quinn by reputation.
They entered the bathroom, which was all white tiles, old-fashioned and very clean, like a small mortuary. Reynolds opened the bathroom cabinet … and this was why the bathroom looked empty. Everything was inside the cabinet. It was no doubt the sight of medicines and pills – together with a lot of upmarket soaps and hair products – that prompted Chamberlain to say, ‘One dares hardly ask, but what are his chances?’
When Reynolds had first called Chamberlain, introducing himself as being from the West End Murder Team, Chamberlain had said, ‘But Quinn’s not actually dead, is he?’ as if this was something Reynolds had overlooked. Chamberlain had then asked, ‘How is he?’ and Reynolds had said, ‘He’s in a coma.’ Chamberlain, to do him credit, had sounded appalled at that, and Reynolds had regretted not having couched it in gentler terms, but then a coma was a coma: it was difficult to put a positive gloss on it. However, Reynolds now did try to be a bit gentler:
‘Difficult to say. According to the consultant …’
‘But is it an induced coma?’ Chamberlain cut in.
The coma had been induced by the bullet that had lodged in Quinn’s brain. He was now under armed guard at St Michael’s Hospital in Fulham. His life had been saved by the swift arrival of the air ambulance. Helicopters had changed the face of murder investigation in the past ten years. Helicopters and CCTV … But there’d been no CCTV in St James’s Park. The bullet had been fired from a pistol of fairly small calibre: 6.35. No cartridges had been found, but the angle of entry into Quinn’s head indicated the piece had been fired from a clump of bushes behind the bench on which Quinn had been reading his paper. The guy from ballistics, who had presumably evaded all gender-equality awareness training, said, ‘A woman could have handled that gun.’ He’d also said that some weapons training was probably required to hit such a small target as the human head from that distance; that or very good luck.
The shootist must then have mingled in with the panicked people – mainly tourists – who’d been charging about in the half-light as Quinn lay bleeding near the ornamental pond. The clump of bushes had been behind and a little to one side, so the bullet had entered the back of Quinn’s head obliquely, hence coma rather than death. The bullet remained inside Quinn’s head. It was unsafe, as yet, to remove it. The prospects of a full recovery were slight.
Seeing that he would get no joy from a medical bulletin, Chamberlain asked, ‘Any leads so far?’
‘Lots,’ said Reynolds, which was another way of saying ‘None’.
Quinn was a highly successful murder detective. There were any number of bad men who wanted him dead. That was assuming the shooting was not related to the new Operational Command Unit Quinn had created.
‘I suppose you can’t go into detail,’ said Chamberlain.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Reynolds. He was looking at something in a tube that was not toothpaste. ‘Geo. F. Trumper,’ Reynolds read, ‘Luxury Shaving Cream … Sandalwood’; and there was a heavy, old-fashioned safety razor, i.e. not that safe, and razorblades jumbled in a little dish. Reynolds reached into the cabinet, picked up the shaving cream and unscrewed the top. So that was what sandalwood smelt like: lemon. The whole flat, Reynolds now realised, was permeated with that smell combined with stale cigarette smoke. The combination was not unpleasant.
They walked through to the living room. A fireplace with coal and wood recently burnt, and – resting on top of the firewood basket – back numbers of the Financial Times plus magazines: Reynolds saw Bonham’s Magazine, Mayfair Resident, Classic Car, Tatler, among others – the kind of magazines you’d get in the foyer of an upmarket corporation. He picked up the bundle and riffled through a magazine called Allure. The cover featured a Fabergé egg on a white background. It promoted watches, handbags, cars, food. Everything seemed to be taking place against the deep blue of the Mediterranean or the lighter blue of the Caribbean.
The paintings on the wall of Quinn’s place showed country scenes of about the same vintage as Argrove. Two men in long coats and tricorn hats appeared to be negotiating over a horse in a field. It seemed likely they were good paintings, but whereas Reynolds rather prided himself on being well read, he knew he was out of his depth when it came to pictorial art.
When Quinn had got tired of solving murders, he’d moved into the Arts and Antiques Squad for a while. With his track record he’d had carte blanche to do what he liked. He’d managed to spend a lot of time in Florence, and it was there that he’d bought a panama hat on expenses. That was a famous incident because the hat had cost about three hundred pounds.
Bookshelves were set into alcoves either side of the fireplace. A lot of novels, nothing too out of the way: the works of Greene, Burgess, both Amises, Hollinghurst. Mainly British writers, but also Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Nabokov and Gogol. Among the non-fiction, Reynolds noted The Gentleman’s Suit by Hardy Amies, The Oligarchs by David Hoffman, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism by Philip Augar, The Oxford Dictionary of Finance and Banking.
There was one room left … and it was all clothes: suits mainly, on basic metal racks, which somehow suggested that the suits were more important than the decor of the flat.
‘He was – is – very particular about clothes,’ said Chamberlain, ‘and he’s not shy about criticising the dress of others. He had a field day with me, as you can imagine.’ This was Chamberlain fishing for compliments, since he appeared perfectly well dressed to Reynolds. ‘He once told me off for wearing a jumper over my shoulders. I said, “Well, it might turn cold, you never know,” and he said, “Make a decision now about whether it’s going to turn cold or not.” He thought it inelegant to make a contingency arrangement, you see. By the same token he always told me not to keep my glasses on a cord round my neck.’
Sure enough, Chamberlain did not keep his glasses on a cord around his neck. They were on his nose. Reynolds thought of the suit he himself was currently wearing. He’d bought it in a sale at Marks & Spencer. It was ‘wool-rich’ according to the label, but he doubted that would cut much ice with Quinn. He had spoken to Quinn twice, and the first time had been clothes-related. Quinn had come up to him in an incident room, and told him his coat, which was over the back of his chair, was touching the floor, and the floor was dusty. Reynolds had thanked him, and Quinn had walked off. His red socks had been particularly noticeable. Reynolds had been on the North London Murder Team at that point, and one of his colleagues had said, ‘That guy cracks me up,’ but nobody had actually laughed because Quinn was the doyen of the murder teams. That was why he had the pick of the special ops command units when he decided on a change of scene.
The second time Reynolds had spoken to him was a couple of months later. Quinn had come up to Reynolds and congratulated him on nicking ‘the last-orders killer’, Donnie Gray. Reynolds had been pleased with the thought processes that had led him to Donnie Gray, and what had been so thrilling about the exchange was that Quinn himself was known for his feats of pure deduction. He would post top-of-the-head comments on the HOLMES files of murder cases he had nothing to do with – and that would be the breakthrough, as team members would have to admit.
Quinn had to be good. Not only was he not a Freemason, he had always – even when starting out in the dark days of the late seventies – been more or less openly gay, or bisexual. And he was always a loner, whereas the Met motto at any hint of a joint investigation was ‘Let’s form a squad’: that way alliances would be built and backs covered. Quinn was his own squad. Yet he’d always been a ‘flier’, on the fast track. Reynolds believed that Quinn had been ‘acting down’ as a Detective Super in order to keep free of admin. On paper he was a Detective Chief Super.
Reynolds knew that forensics had been in and taken the laptop, and that Reynolds’ own immediate boss, Detective Chief Inspector Richard Lilley, head of West End Murder, had been with them. Reynolds mentioned this to Chamberlain, who said, ‘Oh yes, and Victoria Clifford came this morning. His secretary.’
‘Right,’ said Reynolds, eyeing Chamberlain.
Quinn was not quite a one-man squad. He had a secretary. Her name was Victoria Clifford. Nobody quite knew how he’d managed it. Even assuming that Quinn was formally a Detective Super … that ought not to have entitled him to a personal assistant. Personal assistants came in at Assistant Commissioner level, but Quinn had had Clifford from his DI days in murder. He must have been on some special committee or review of the murder teams; or been asked to write some long report; he must have done something that required secretarial support.
Victoria Clifford was a clever misfit like her boss. Reynolds had the feeling she’d been a secretary in Special Branch before coming to Quinn. She watched Quinn’s back, kept him clear of misconduct hearings, because he was known to cut corners evidentially, and he would take risks that would get him stood down from an investigation if anyone other than Clifford knew. Quinn seldom used the Met information bureau, or the administrative staff of whatever command unit he was attached to. Also, he had no line manager. He answered directly to his OCU commander, who in recent years was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Croft, who was number two in special ops.
Reynolds had been trying to get hold of Victoria Clifford all day. He asked Chamberlain, ‘What did she want, do you know?’
‘She wanted a notebook of Quinn’s, said it might be important for the investigation.’
‘Hold on,’ said Reynolds, ‘do you mean another computer?’
‘No, no, when I say a notebook, I mean it in the traditional sense of a book for taking notes in. A rather handsome one too. Shouldn’t I have given it her? She’s with the police, isn’t she?’
‘She works for the police.’
‘Quite so.’
‘But she’s a civilian.’
Therefore not covered by the warrant that had enabled DCI Lilley and forensics, and Reynolds himself, to be crawling all over the flat of a half-dead man.
‘What colour was this notebook, Mr Cavendish?’
‘A rather attractive red.’
Regarding Chamberlain, the big question in Reynolds’ mind was this: How disingenuous is he? If the book was red then it was not Quinn’s official detective’s notebook, because these were black, and – Reynolds realised for the first time, looking down at his own – not at all attractive. Anyhow, DCI Lilley would have taken Quinn’s official book. So Victoria Clifford had got hold of something else.
Half an hour later, they were back at the front door of Argrove – in the lodge, as it was called. A Harrods van stood in the courtyard beyond. As he shook Chamberlain’s hand, Reynolds asked, ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what he was investigating?’
‘But surely you know?’ Chamberlain replied. ‘He must have been briefing his superiors.’
‘He didn’t have that many superiors. And he wasn’t briefing anyone, believe me.’
‘He was creating this new department, wasn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t say it was a department. I mean, he was the only one in it – him and Victoria Clifford.’ It was the smallest OCU that Reynolds had ever heard of: two people, and one of them wasn’t even a copper.
‘But more officers were going to be brought in?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What was it if it wasn’t a department?’
‘A unit. An operational command unit.’
‘And it was to keep tabs on the so-called “super-rich”, I believe?’
‘I wasn’t going to mention this because … well, you know how Quinn could get? He could become … rather grandiose, speaking for rhetorical effect … after a few drinks.’
‘What did he tell you, Mr Chamberlain?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what he told me.’
‘Please do,’ said Reynolds, waiting to make a note.
‘ … for what it’s worth,’ said Chamberlain.
Reynolds eyed Chamberlain. He wondered whether he’d ever heard of section 5 (2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967: wasting police time, punishable by six months in prison to the best of his recollection.
Chamberlain said, ‘He told me he was onto just about the biggest money crime you could imagine. That’s got you thinking, I can see. Oh, and murders as well, he said. That’s murders, plural.’
‘But no details?’ said Reynolds, because what Chamberlain had said seemed at once too much and too little to note down.
‘None at all, I’m afraid.’