‘He started calm,’ said Althea. ‘At least, calm for David, which was never very calm. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean he was neurotic, but he always had plenty of spare energy. A sort of boundless enthusiasm. It was one of the things I fell in love with.’
Her face had grown more animated as she spoke and I saw the moment when the reality of David Moore’s death hit. The mouth pinched in and the eyes squinted and moistened. It looked genuine, but I’ve been wrong before.
We gave her a moment and then Guleed asked a few routine questions to calm her down: When did he arrive? When did he leave? Do you know whether he drove or came by foot?
Once we had those, she asked Althea if she knew why David had chosen to visit her that evening.
‘He wanted his silver back,’ she said, and her lips twisted. ‘Not that he said that straight away. No, he was all, “I’ve been thinking of you and I was in the neighbourhood, why don’t we have a drink and we can catch up.” And I fell for it because I’m stupid that way.’
They’d had a glass of wine – he’d brought a bottle with him – and he had sat on the sofa and leant forwards and asked Althea where his silver was.
‘Just like that, he looked me in the eye and said, “What have you done with my silver?”’
‘And what did you say?’ asked Guleed.
‘I told him I’d sold it,’ said Althea. ‘Said I’d taken it down the Silver Vaults and cashed it in years ago.’
‘Is that true?’ asked Guleed. ‘Because according to the shop, you were in last week.’
‘I wanted him to think he was ancient history,’ said Althea.
‘How did you know about the Silver Vaults?’ I asked.
‘I’d been there loads of times,’ she said.
Back in the good old days of the 2000s, when she’d being working as an intern for a PR firm.
‘A friend of Dad’s got me the gig,’ she said.
She’d been sent there with one of the partners to vacuum up a tonne of antique silver as gifts for valued clients. It had been fun randomly selecting things that took her fancy.
‘I remember one time we gave everybody silver animals – foxes, owls, bears, tigers. It was like being a kid again.’
‘How did he take the news?’ asked Guleed. ‘Was he angry?’
‘No,’ said Althea. ‘Not really. He sort of … I don’t know, crumpled … Like his face crumpled and he started to cry.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Guleed.
‘I moved away,’ said Althea and shrugged. ‘I thought he was angling for a pity fuck and I didn’t want anything to do with that.’
Guleed asked what happened next and Althea said that David had asked whether she’d sold the ring as well.
‘And I told him I had,’ she said.
And David Moore had looked at her for a long minute before standing up and leaving the flat.
‘He was walking strangely,’ said Althea. ‘As if he was drunk. But we hadn’t even finished the wine. I made sure to bolt the door after he’d gone.’
Guleed glanced at me and narrowed her eyes, which meant I was playing, if not bad cop exactly, then definitely insensitive male cop with a side order of plodding.
‘But you didn’t sell the ring, did you?’ I said, and stepped forward so I could loom a bit.
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.
‘We have the sales records from the shop,’ I said.
‘It’s mine,’ she snapped. ‘He gave it to me.’
Me and Guleed exchanged looks.
‘We’re not disputing that,’ said Guleed.
‘He gave it to me on our first anniversary,’ said Althea.
According to our checks, the marriage had lasted less than two months more.
‘May we have a look at it?’ asked Guleed.
‘Why?’ asked Althea.
‘We think it may be the target of a robbery attempt,’ I said. ‘We need to determine whether it is your ring that was targeted, or whether a different ring was involved.’
She bought it, but it took a bit more coaxing to bring out the ring, which she kept on a silver chain around her neck. She even dropped it into my palm after I promised not to throw it down the nearest volcano.
I felt it even before it touched my hand – old and complex and faint, like an orchestra playing in the distance. There was the scent of lemons and dust and a sad lament sung in a language I thought I should recognise but didn’t.
It was heavy and ornate and obviously sized for a larger finger than Althea’s.
‘It opens up,’ said Althea, who had relaxed once she realised I wasn’t about to bolt for the door with it. I removed the chain and under her direction opened the ring until it formed a tiny armillary sphere with symbols incised on every surface. Some I recognised as alchemical symbols, others as Greek. Some I wasn’t sure about.
‘Is that Arabic?’ I asked Guleed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that’s Hebrew, but they don’t seem to make out any words.’
‘It’s not valuable,’ said Althea. ‘You can buy them on Amazon for thirty pounds.’
I doubted that. I wasn’t sure it was silver, either.
While Althea fretted, I used the back of my notebook to provide a neutral background while Guleed took pictures with her phone. Once we were done I handed it back and she quickly restrung it on the chain and hung it around her neck, making sure it was tucked out of sight under her T-shirt.
Guleed asked some winding-up questions and asked Althea if she could come in and make a formal identification of the body and record an official statement. She didn’t want to do either, but we said nobody else was available for the identification and that the statement was just routine. We arranged to have a car pick her up in the morning and then, before she changed her mind, we made our farewells and left.
‘Now I lack your extensive erudition,’ said Guleed once we were out of sight of the basement, ‘but that struck me as being just a little bit Lord of the Rings.’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘She didn’t call it her precious – it doesn’t count if you don’t call it your precious.’
‘But there was something weird about the ring,’ said Guleed. ‘I saw it in your face.’
‘It was definitely enchanted,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean that’s the cause of her behaviour.’
Although I bet it is, I thought. Just like the lightning glass.
‘Let’s hope she brings it to the identification tomorrow,’ I said, ‘so Nightingale can have a look.’
‘Oh, she’ll bring it all right,’ said Guleed. ‘I’ll bet she wears it in the shower.’
Since it was past six by the time we’d written up our notes, I had Guleed drop me off at Richmond Bus Station and caught the 65 back to Kingston, where I changed to a 57. Starting at the bus station meant I got to sit down on the long crawl down the Richmond Road and read up my OSPRE sergeant’s material, which I kept on my Kindle for just these occasions.
When I got back to Beverley Avenue there was an unfamiliar Range Rover sitting in the driveway. I gave it the automatic police once-over as I passed – tyres, index, lights, back and front seats. Unusually for a Chelsea tractor, it was splattered with mud up to its wheel arches and there were dings and scrapes along the underside of the doors. It actually looked like it might spend some time off road – perhaps it came from upstream, where they laugh at roads and pour scorn on the very notion of indoor plumbing. But it seemed a bit posh for Ash, Oxley rode a Triumph sidecar combination, and on the rare occasions that Father Thames drove himself, it was in a Morris Minor Traveller estate.
So I wondered who it could be.
It turned out to be a white woman in late middle age, dressed in a tan tweed skirt and matching jacket. She had a cap of iron-grey hair, small hazel eyes and a severely thin mouth offset by a mischievous smile.