‘I was going to say no. Leaving in the middle of a term, you understand — causes all kinds of disruptions. But in the end, the museum board were so keen to get me that they cut a separate deal with the university. Hired a lecturer to replace me until … no, no, don’t get up.’ Kennedy had stood, indicating a willingness to go and get them both coffees and thereby stop the logorrhoeic flow. But Gassan would have none of it. He scooted off to the counter and when he returned, the tray he held had two slices of carrot cake on it, as well as coffees. Obviously he was seeing this as something of a celebration, and she was going to have to let him talk himself out before she got to be told why she was here.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re in charge of … what was it again?’
‘The stored collection.’
‘And what is that, Emil?’
‘Everything,’ Gassan said happily. ‘Well, almost everything. Everything that’s not on the shelves. As you can imagine, the museum collection is absolutely vast. The part of it that’s available for the public to see represents approximately one per cent of the total.’
Kennedy boggled politely. ‘One per cent!’
‘Count it,’ he suggested playfully, holding up a bony finger. ‘One. The rest of the collection spreads across more than twenty thousand square metres of storerooms, and it costs the Museum twelve million pounds a year to maintain and manage it.’
Kennedy took a sip of her coffee, but ignored the treacherous blandishments of the cake. Back when she was on the force, the stresses and physical rigours of the job had kept her slim no matter what she ate or drank. In the last few years, she’d had to learn abstinence. ‘You must be very proud,’ she said to Gassan. ‘That they went to such lengths to get you.’
The professor went through a miniature pantomime of faux-modest shrugs and eye-rolls. ‘It feels like a culmination, in a lot of ways,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve always felt that lecturing was a dilution of my contribution to the field. Now … I’ll be allowed, even encouraged, to publish, but I’ll have no public duties at all.’
Kennedy considered that, and was reminded of what she’d said to Izzy about the circles of helclass="underline" the idea of spending her life in a subterranean vault, with no reason for stepping outside it, made Izzy’s endless smut treadmill seem like the earthly paradise.
‘So,’ Kennedy said, cutting to the chase at last. ‘Where do I fit in?’
Gassan had just taken a mouthful of cake, producing the short silence into which she had projected her question. Now he struggled to get it down so he could answer. ‘There was a break-in,’ he said at last, fastidiously wiping his lower lip with the corner of his serviette. ‘A month ago. The night of Monday the twenty-fourth of July.’
‘In the stacks?’ Kennedy asked. ‘The storerooms, rather than the museum proper?’
He nodded emphatically. ‘In the stored collection, yes — which is now my responsibility. Whoever it was, they were very skilled. They were able to get in and out again without triggering a single alarm.’
‘Then how did you know they’d been there? Wait, let me guess. From the gaps on the shelves.’
‘Not at all,’ Gassan assured her. ‘In fact, as far as we can tell, nothing is missing. No, we found out about this several hours after the fact — and in a rather alarming way. The intruder left behind a knife. One of the security guards found it, the next morning, just lying on the floor. And it appeared to have been used. At least, there was blood on the blade. After that, they did a more thorough search for evidence and it transpired that a CCTV camera had caught the intruder climbing up through one of the panels of a false ceiling as he left.’
‘Wait,’ Kennedy said. ‘So let me get this straight. You’ve got a break-in with nothing actually stolen and a bloody knife with nobody actually hurt?’
‘Well, we assume that somebody must have been hurt. But it’s true that there was no dead body at the scene — God forbid — and we have no way of knowing who was injured, or how. It’s deeply troubling. And we’ve had a terrible time trying to keep the story out of the news. Something like this would generate the most sensationalistic coverage.’
‘Yeah, I’d imagine,’ Kennedy agreed. ‘But you say you’ve got some closed-circuit footage of your burglar?’
‘Yes, but he’s masked, and it’s hard to tell anything about him beyond the fact that he’s male — and empty-handed. If you look at the image closely, he seems to be carrying a small satchel, but it couldn’t have held more than a few items. And a quick stocktaking exercise showed nothing out of place. Although there are three and a quarter million artefacts in the collection, so it’s entirely possible that we’ve missed something.’
Kennedy thought about this for a moment or two. A skilled burglar getting past a serious array of locks and alarms, to break into a collection presumably full of items both highly valuable and highly portable. But he didn’t bother to bring a decent-sized shopping bag with him, and he didn’t swipe anything prominent enough to be noticed. That meant iron self-control or a very specific mission statement. And then there was the knife. Was it a message of some kind? A threat? A bad practical joke? Whatever internal organ governs the detective instinct was making its presence felt. She had only come here as a favour to the professor, and for the money. Already, she had to admit, she was genuinely interested.
‘What’s my brief?’ she asked Gassan.
The professor held up one hand, with the little finger folded down — then used the forefinger of the other hand to count off. ‘It’s three-fold,’ he said. ‘It will be three-fold, if you accept. First, we want to know how the break-in was accomplished, so we can close the security loophole.’
Kennedy nodded. She’d assumed as much.
‘Second, we want to know what, if anything, was actually taken. And if the answer is nothing, we want to know what the intruder was doing during his — or her — time on our premises. If something was vandalised or interfered with, that could be every bit as serious as a theft. Oh, and we’d like to know who was injured, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘And third?’
‘We want you to find our intruder. And if appropriate, to secure an arrest.’
‘I’m not a police officer any more, Emil.’
‘I know that. Also, of course, I know why. We’d only ask you to put the full facts — the file, the evidence, everything you’ve found — into our hands. And then leave the rest to us. If we think it necessary, and desirable, we’ll put the matter in the hands of the police.’
‘Can I ask a stupid question?’
‘Always.’
‘Why aren’t the police on the case now?’
Gassan toyed with what was left of his cake. ‘This was a situation I inherited, obviously,’ he said carefully. ‘There was a police investigation, but it wasn’t considered to be very productive. Trespassing isn’t a crime unless actual damage is involved — and that was the only crime we could prove. The inquiry petered out, and the museum allowed it to do so. They’d already decided that it would be better to put the matter on a more discreet basis. Marilyn Milton was insistent that the museum’s trustees wanted me to deal with this matter personally — and that they wanted it done without any further recourse to official bodies or agencies.’
Kennedy had to smile. ‘So you thought of me?’
He returned the smile. ‘The most unofficial person I know.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need to bring up the subject of money, because—’
‘Of course,’ Gassan exclaimed. ‘I apologise for not mentioning it sooner.’ He reached into his pocket, took out a piece of paper and handed it across the table to her. It was a cheque, already made out in her name, from the bank account of the Validus Trust. The figure, which was printed rather than handwritten, was twenty thousand pounds. Kennedy stared at the four identical zeros. The fact that they had another number in front of them immediately distinguished this job from her previous one.