‘So who is it?’ Diamond said.
‘Weren’t you listening? I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Carry on like this, my friend, and you won’t be at liberty, full stop.’
The man was shaken, but he wasn’t about to cough. ‘I don’t see why you need to know it.’
‘That’s pretty obvious, I would have thought,’ Diamond said, his patience exhausted. ‘There were two bidders left in this auction and one was murdered. The survivor has some explaining to do.’
‘But the people who killed him weren’t bidding.’
‘We don’t know who they were acting for.’
‘Can’t you take my word as a gentleman that it’s impossible for my client to have been involved?’
Diamond shook his head.
‘This is beyond a joke,’ Sturgess said. ‘May I make a phone call?’
‘To tip off your client?’
This was received with an icy stare. ‘To my office, to explain the impossible position I find myself in.’
‘Go ahead. I’ll be listening.’ He could see this nonsense going on indefinitely, and he reckoned Sturgess was a minor player.
Whoever was on the other end of the call took some convincing, but Sturgess was a man in a fix, explaining that he was facing arrest, with all the damage that would do to the good name of the firm. Finally, he switched off, pulled at his tie as if it was strangling him, and said, ‘This must be in the strictest confidence.’
Diamond waited.
Sturgess glanced to right and left before saying in little more than a whisper, ‘I was bidding on behalf of…’ He mouthed the words.
‘Come again.’
As if he was in breach of the Official Secrets Act, he put his mouth within six inches of Diamond’s ear and said, ‘The British Museum.’
A moment was needed to absorb this. ‘Yes?’ Diamond said.
‘Yes.’
‘I hadn’t thought of them.’
‘Now do you see my difficulty?’
‘I suppose they would have an interest.’
‘Please keep your voice down. If it got out, all manner of complications would arise.’
‘But the sale didn’t take place.’
‘We still represent them. And the tablet may come up for sale again.’
‘Not for some time, it won’t.’
‘We wouldn’t want to alert the other great museums of the world. And we wouldn’t want to be pushed to some exorbitant price by someone acting for the seller. Or the auction house.’
‘Does that happen?’
‘It’s not unknown in the provinces. They call it bouncing a bid against the wall. They artificially inflate the bidding.’
‘On the assumption that someone will go higher?’
‘Or has unlimited resources.’
‘How much would the British Museum have gone to?’
The eyes opened wide in shock. ‘I’m absolutely not authorised to tell you.’
This time Diamond didn’t press. He’d asked out of curiosity, no more. ‘But you would have won eventually?’
‘I assume so.’
Diamond was deflated. He’d begun to believe all the secrecy was about shielding some sinister Mr. Big, an oil-rich Russian with mafia connections, or an African dictator with blood money to bury in objects of art. ‘So what can you tell me about Professor Gildersleeve? Would he have been bidding on his own account?’
‘I can’t say for certain, but from his whole demeanour I gathered this was a personal matter, as if he was on some sort of mission to own the tablet. It became so obvious that I almost felt guilty topping his bids. He couldn’t have known he was up against one of the great institutions of the world.’
‘And do you know of any other parties with an interest?’
‘Obviously America and Japan, who were bidding by phone, but they stopped at ten thousand.’
‘I mean was there any hint of other interest before the auction?’
‘I heard of none, but the sale was widely publicised in academic circles.’
‘Were you tipped off that Gildersleeve was a bidder?’
‘No.’
‘You seem to know all about him.’
‘Only by reputation. I did my homework before coming here. When they identified him as the man who was shot, I recognised the name. He’s the author of several books on Chaucer.’
‘Could he have been bidding for some rival museum?’
‘I doubt it. My firm belief is that his interest was personal, which is why he challenged the gunmen.’
‘Makes sense,’ Diamond said. ‘Did you get a good look at them?’
‘No more than anyone else.’
‘Did you notice the one who first produced the gun?’
‘I was far too caught up in the auction to notice anyone except Professor Gildersleeve. Your attention is all on the rival bidder and the auctioneer.’
Understandable. Diamond glanced across the room, his thoughts moving on. He’d got what he needed from Sturgess. ‘Unless there’s something else you can tell me, I have no further questions.’
Sturgess didn’t need any more encouragement to move off fast.
Diamond called Bath Central and asked if there was any progress tracking the getaway van. A world-weary voice told him nothing had been reported and without a registration number or even the make, he shouldn’t get his hopes up. They couldn’t do hard stops on all the silver vans across the city. Maybe if it had been stolen they would find it abandoned later. Professional robbers generally arrange for a car change along the escape route.
All down to CID, then, he told himself. What’s new?
In the far corner of the auction room, several of the team were at work interviewing witnesses. They had commandeered some elegant chairs and small tables that could have been Chippendale or Sheraton for all he knew. DI John Leaman and DC Paul Gilbert had joined Ingeborg and appeared to be getting through at a good rate.
He went over.
‘Any description worth having?’ he asked Ingeborg when she’d finished with her latest.
‘Zilch so far, guv,’ she told him. ‘Everyone remembers what the villains were wearing and not much else.’
‘The balaclavas.’
‘And the T-shirts and jeans.’
He stood with arms folded, listening to the latest witness. Ingeborg was good at this, cutting through any useless prattle to get to the real point of the interview and doing it with charm and precision. But she wasn’t getting much for her efforts.
It was Paul Gilbert who summoned Diamond by tilting the chair away from the table and saying, ‘Guv, I think you should hear this.’
His witness was a small, sharp-featured woman in her fifties with hair streaked red and green and makeup that was meant to tone but hadn’t.
‘This is Miss, em…’ Gilbert paused to look at his notes.
‘It doesn’t matter a hoot,’ the woman said. ‘Everyone calls me the glass lady.’
‘Alice Topham,’ Gilbert read out. ‘From Brighton.’
‘Long way to come,’ Diamond said.
‘I go to all the sales,’ Miss Topham said. ‘There’s always glass worth buying. Some of the best lots still hadn’t been reached when the interruption came. I suppose I’ll have to wait for another day. But I want it on record that I was the successful bidder for the Jubilee Commemoration dish. In all this chaos, things could easily go astray.’
‘Tell Mr. Diamond what you were saying about the man who stopped the auction,’ Gilbert said.
‘Him?’ she said with distaste. ‘It was my bad luck to be right behind him. He was annoying me because he wouldn’t keep still, blocking my view. Twitchy, checking his pockets. You don’t want movement in an auction. All I could see half the time was the back of his neck. This was before he pulled the mask over his head.’
Gilbert prompted her again. ‘But what did you tell me about it?’