But that was hardly enough.
Chapter 10
At 8 p.m. Lincoln Rhyme wheeled closer to one of the high-def screens in his parlor. “Run them.”
Mel Cooper typed and a video appeared.
The footage was from a camera focused on an underground loading dock behind the building where Patel’s office was located. The ramp from the dock exited onto 46th Street.
At 12:37 that afternoon, according to the time stamp, that door pushed open and a man with thick dark hair, head down and wearing a dark jacket, was seen walking quickly down the stairs and up the ramp onto the street. His face was not clearly visible but appeared to be Indian — which was logical if he was, in fact, an associate of Patel. He was slim, and short in stature, to judge by a Dumpster he passed. His age was impossible to determine for certain but the impression was that he was young, possibly twenties.
“He’s hurt,” Sachs said.
He was clutching his midsection. The freeze frame showed a hint of something light-colored between his fingers, maybe the paper bag that had been shot. Cooper hit Play and the young man moved on, out of the scene.
The tech said, “And here’s the second.”
This tape was of 47th Street, a camera in the window of a jewelry store next to Patel’s building. At 12:51, a man in a short black or navy-blue jacket and dark baggy slacks and stocking cap passed the store. It was impossible to see his face; he was looking away. His left hand held a briefcase; his right was in his pocket.
“Holding a weapon?”
“Could be,” Sachs answered Rhyme.
“And one more,” Cooper said. “Two doors west on Forty-Seven. One minute later.”
The same man had been caught on another jewelry store’s camera. His head down and turned away again, he was on his mobile phone.
Sellitto muttered, “Son of a bitch knew he was on Candid Camera. Looking away.”
Sachs said, “Run it again. Zoom on the phone.”
Cooper did this, to no avail. They could make out no details. “Check for pings from the cell towers?”
“The Theater District and Times Square on a matinee day?” Sellitto shot him a wry look. “Drum up fifty officers to check out records and dedicate a week to it, hey, I’m on board with that.”
“Just a thought.”
“We know that the wit’s young, male, black hair. Dark-complexioned, probably Indian. Jacket, black or navy. Slacks dark.”
She continued, “And he’s mobile. Whatever damage the rock fragments did, it didn’t seem that serious.”
“Our mysterious VL?” Sellitto asked.
“Could be,” she replied.
Could be. Maybe. Not necessarily.
The doorbell rang and Rhyme looked at the intercom.
He and Sachs glanced each other’s way. She said, “Insurance man?”
She’d called the New York representative of the insurance company covering the gems. The cool-hearted Llewellyn Croft had already sent the company a notice of loss and the claims investigator had offered to come over tonight, even though the hour was late.
A five-million-dollar potential loss is a good motivator, Rhyme supposed.
“Let him in,” he instructed Thom.
A moment later the aide directed the man into the parlor. He nodded greetings and blinked in double take as he examined the forensic equipment. “My,” he said under his breath.
The name was Edward Ackroyd. He was senior claims examiner with Milbank Assurance, on Broad Street, which was in lower Manhattan.
The man exuded medium. Average height, average weight, average amount of neatly trimmed, toffee-colored hair. Even his eyes were hazel, a shade that managed to be both unusual and undistinguished. Appropriately, he was somewhere in the middle of middle age.
“What an abject tragedy this is,” the man said in an accent that might trip from the tongue of a BBC announcer, Rhyme imagined. “Jatin Patel... murdered. And that couple too. Their whole future ahead of them. Destroyed.”
At least Ackroyd’s first reaction was loss of life, rather than of the gems.
Thom took Ackroyd’s beige overcoat. The man wore a gray suit, with a vest, rare in the United States nowadays. His shirt was starched, and his tie appeared to be as well, though that had to be Rhyme’s imagination. Given the nice garb, and the hour, maybe he’d been interrupted at a fancy dinner or a night at the theater. He wore a wedding ring.
Introductions were made. He gave only a minor reaction to Rhyme’s condition — he was more surprised by the full-sized gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer in the corner — and when Rhyme offered his working hand, the right, Ackroyd gripped it, though carefully.
“Have a seat?” Sachs offered.
“No, thank you, Detective. I can’t stay long. Just wanted to introduce myself.” He looked around. “I was expecting... I suppose, a police station.”
Sellitto said, “We run some investigations out of here. Lincoln was head of Crime Scene, now he’s a consultant.”
“Rather like our own Sherlock Holmes.”
Rhyme gave a weary half smile. He’d heard the simile, oh, about five hundred times.
“I was Metropolitan Police — Scotland Yard — before going private.” Eyes on the equipment once again. “Quite the setup. And in a private residence.” He strode to the gas chromatograph and looked at it with admiration.
Rhyme said, “Took a few years to put together. We can do the basics here. Anything more sophisticated, we send the job out.”
“Basics can be all you need sometimes,” Ackroyd said. “Too many facts, too many clues. Woods-for-the-trees sort of thing, isn’t it?”
Rhyme nodded. He felt a hint of camaraderie with the insurance man. Former cop, who’d become somewhat like him, a private investigator.
No, a consulting detective.
As Sherlock Holmes described himself.
Sellitto asked, “Did you know him? Patel? Or anyone who worked for him?”
“No, but, of course, I knew of him. Everyone involved in the diamond industry in any way did. Jatin Patel was a diamantaire — you know the term?”
“No.”
“It means anyone in the stratosphere of the diamond production or cutting world. In his case, it means a master diamond cutter. Most diamond processing now occurs in India, some in Antwerp, some in Israel. New York used to be one of the centers. It’s much smaller now but the remaining diamantaires here are the best of the best. And Patel was at the top of his game.”
Sachs asked, “What made him so good?”
“To explain that I should tell you something about the business.”
“Why not?” Sellitto said.
“To turn a rough diamond into a finished piece, there are five stages. Plotting — examining the rough stone to see how to maximize size, quality and profit. The second skill is cleaving — cracking a diamond along its grain with a sharp blow. Cutters will sometimes study a diamond for months before striking the stone. One mishap — and you could lose a million dollars in a tenth of a second.”
“But,” Sellitto interrupted, “I thought diamonds were unbreakable.”
Ackroyd shook his head. “Actually that’s a misunderstanding, Detective. Diamonds are the hardest natural substance on earth, yes, but ‘hard’ means resistant to scratching. In reality they’re extremely brittle. You can shatter a diamond with a hammer blow that would have no effect on a piece of quartz. So, as I was saying: First stage, plotting. Second, cleaving. The third task is sawing — that’s using a laser or a diamond-encrusted blade to cut the stone against the grain into the desired shape. Fourth is bruting — spinning the stone on a lathe against another diamond, or sometimes using a laser, to round it. That’s to make the most popular cut: round brilliant diamonds. The last technique is grinding the geometric facets into the stone. That’s called faceting or brillianteering.”