Authors: Norman Moss
I worried a little about the money I was spending, and I telephoned Jeremy with a rough update. “Don’t worry about it. If these people are in Paris, go and see them in Paris,” he said.
The operator gave me the number of Azamouth Frères and I telephoned and made an appointment, saying I was interested in buying some diamonds. I had one more dinner in my bistro, drank a
pastis
in a bar to say goodbye to the Mediterranean, and flew up to Paris the next day.
*
The first appointment I could get was for the following morning, so I had the afternoon to myself. I booked in at a small hotel in the Marais district, which is central and reminds me a bit of SoHo, with its art galleries and chichi boutiques.
I saw posters advertising an exhibition of Salvador Dali paintings at the Pompidou Centre. I usually like art only when I can see it as a part of history, but Dali’s paintings have always appealed to me. I spent a couple of hours among Dali’s startling shapes and dreamy vistas bathed in soft colours, trying to forget the narcissistic self-publicist who had created them, and then another half hour in the plaza outside watching the street performers.
The paintings had an effect. They are supposed to have come out of Dali’s unconscious. They worked their way into mine. That night I had weird dreams with some scenes that could have been from Dali paintings. I saw an elephant with a diamond the size of a boulder on its back; then the diamond melted and drooped over the sides of the elephant, like one of Dali’s watches. At one point I was looking at a blue sky with a few clouds, with some kind of mountains faint in the distance, when a huge diamond suddenly came zooming out of the sky. It came straight at my face and I woke up in fright. What was in my mind when I awoke was the scene on the road to Norfolk, and the sight of that swarthy kidnapper pointing his pistol at me. I thought I had shaken off that memory.
Azamouth Frères’ office was on the Place Vendome, in a stone building of proud and expensive antiquity facing the Paris Ritz across the square. Jacques Azamouth was all affability and formality, comfortably plump, dressed in a pinstripe dark suit with a plain silk tie, with noticeable gold cufflinks. He beckoned me to a chair in front of his large desk, and said, “Now, what can we do for you, Mr Root?”
I told him I had a client who was interesting in buying a diamond from Mr Stavros Stakis that Azamouth Frѐres had sold to the Greek.
“Your client’s name is?”
“He prefers to remain anonymous at the moment.”
He took this in and said, “I think I know the diamond to which you’re referring, the blue diamond. Since you know we sold it to him, you probably learned that from him. Did Mr Stakis give any indication that he is interested in selling it?”
“My client learned that you sold it to Mr Stakis but he’s never met him and neither have I. He also learned that you bought it from Madame Bulganov. But he didn’t hear that from Mr Stakis. He’s not personally acquainted with him.”
“Then what makes you think Mr Stakis would be willing to sell it?”
“We are assuming that you will approach him. My client is willing to pay considerably more than Mr Stakis paid for it.”
“Do you know how much he paid for it?”
“No. But whatever it is, my client will pay more. He is a wealthy man.”
Azamouth paused to consider his reply. He was not the kind of man given to spontaneity. “May I ask why your client is so interested in this particular diamond?”
“I haven’t asked him myself.”
“Is it because of its unusual provenance?”
“I don’t know about that. But of course my client would need to know the provenance of this diamond.”
“I see.” He paused again, and then said, “Its provenance was something of a mystery in the diamond trade when it first appeared on the market. It was put on the market as coming from Uzbekistan. No one has ever found out any more. I assume you know that.”
“No, I didn’t,” I lied. I had been lying all along and he did not believe me. This was an uncomfortable situation.
“I imagine your client does,” he said. “I would find it hard to believe that he doesn’t. Let me think about your request.” He turned and looked out of the window, evidently pondering. I followed his gaze and looked at the tall column at the centre of the great rectangular
place
. I knew its history. This was the column erected by Napoleon to commemorate one of his victories, and torn down by the revolutionaries in the Paris Commune in 1871. It was re-erected after the Commune was crushed. I reflected that with the military figure on top of the column looking down proudly on the scene, and the Ritz Hotel on one side and Cartier, Chanel, Piaget, and Azamouth Frères on the other, there was not much doubt who won in the long run.
Azamouth swung around in his swivel chair to face me, and the affability was gone. “Mr Root, are you, or your client, really interested in buying the diamond, or are you just interested in finding out its provenance?”
He was no fool and it was a mistake on my part to think I could put something like this over on him. But I ploughed on. “Surely the two go together. My client is interested as a potential purchaser. No one is going to spend a large amount of money on a diamond without knowing where it comes from.”
“I’m not prepared to approach Mr Stakis with a view to buying his diamond on behalf of an anonymous purchaser when he’s given no indication that he is prepared to sell it.”
He leaned back, indicating that the subject was finished with, and then said, “You may know that one or two other people are interested in finding where this diamond came from. One of my clients, as a matter of fact.” This probably meant Nikolai, Madame Bulganov’s oligarch.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“And I should tell you something. Azamouth Frères has a reputation as a respectable, trustworthy business. We are totally above board. Some people among my clients, the ones who want to know what this diamond comes from, the ones with whom you may be in competition, are not the same. Their ways are not our ways. Unless you are paid very well indeed, it might be wise to consider whether it’s really worth pursuing your enquiries.”
It was a warning delivered in a silk-lined box, but it was a warning. He probably thought I was fighting out of my class and should not be playing with the big boys. Perhaps he was right.
I did not reply to this, but thanked him for his time, and said I would tell my client that he would not approach Stakis about the diamond.
The next step was to seek out Duncan Bridey since he was the last owner of the diamond before Nadia. I go to films occasionally but don’t follow the film world, so although I had heard the name I couldn’t remember anything about him. I googled him on my tablet.
He was an actor from Scotland who had briefly made it big in Hollywood. He had starred in two films in succession. He was big and handsome and rugged looking and was said to be the new Sean Connery. Then he suddenly disappeared from the scene. I looked further and newspapers reported that he had returned to the village in Scotland where he was born, had married a local girl, and become a recluse.
I took the Eurostar to London and went home to Egham. I organized a cleaning lady for my flat on regular visits whether I was here or not, and checked in with Jeremy. I briefed him on what I had found out in Villars, skipping over just how I found it out, and also about Nadia in Nice who wanted a bodyguard. “So I might have found a new client for you there,” I told him.
“Well done,” he said. “I think we’ll probably pass it on to an agency in Paris rather than trying to send someone from here. Unless you’re interested in taking on the job.”
“I assume you’re kidding,” I said. “But just in case you’re not, I don’t fancy being a professional bodyguard, and I don’t fancy being at the beck and call of that greedy Russian bitch.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“The last owner before Madame Bulganov was Duncan Bridey, the film star.” He nodded showing that he recognized the name. “Well, apparently he left the Hollywood high life and is holed up in a village called Adimurcham. It’s in the Scottish Highlands, about thirty miles west of God knows where.”
“Send me a postcard.”
I packed some hiking boots, a paperback book said to explain contemporary China, and the usual things, caught a plane to Edinburgh, rented a small car, and headed into the Highlands.
It was mountain scenery once again, but it was different. The peaks were not as high and it was a rare one that had snow on the top. The clouds were low and they seemed like mist, translucent, nestling up against the mountainsides like cotton wool. The slopes were gentler than in the Alps, and the banks of heather gave them a purplish colour. There was also a light rain falling, the raindrops drifting down. I remembered what someone had told me about Scotland: “If you can see the mountains across Loch Lomond, it means it’s going to rain. If you can’t see them, it means it is raining.”
I enjoyed the driving. If you live around London, you have to go a long way to find an uncluttered landscape and empty roads, and I had them here.
I arrived at Adimurcham in time for a late lunch and checked in at the hotel, the Highlander. It was listed as a hotel but it was really the local pub with three rooms upstairs, the bar serving also as the reception desk. I was the only person staying there. A man was sitting at the bar and two other men were sitting at one of the wooden tables with pints of beer, in what I supposed passed there for conversation. They were as niggardly with words as Scots are supposed to be with money.
The landlord was chatty, however. “On holiday?” he asked me.
“Mostly,” I said. “I want to do some walking in the hills. I’m cooped up in an office in my job.”
He nodded sympathetically. “You’re from America?” I nodded but explained that I lived near London now. “We had an American couple here in the summer,” he said. “They were from Florida. Very nice people. Stayed for a few days, took a different walk every day. If you’re interested, we have a list of walks here.”
I took a leaflet from a pile on the desk with maps showing the walks out of the village. They were in three categories: gentle; intermediate; challenging. He told me his name was Angus McFarlane and he had been to London once and would like to visit America some time.
“Actually,” I said to him, “there is someone in the village I’d like to see while I’m here. A man named Duncan Bridey.” The man sitting at the bar was within hearing range and he looked up.
McFarlane seemed to stiffen. “Are you a friend of his then?”
“No. But I’d like to meet him.”
“He doesn’t see many new people. He keeps to himself.”
“Where does he live?”
“The big house at the end of the street, on the left. You can’t miss it.” He sounded cautious.
I had a beer and a sandwich for lunch and headed out to look around the village. There wasn’t much to see. Most of the houses were built of the local grey stone. There was only one main street, with a fish and chip shop, a pizza place and a few stores, and there was another pub two streets away. Green hills reared up at the end of it.
He was quite right about Bridey’s house; I couldn’t miss it. It was far and away the biggest house around. It stood off the end of the main street, where the village was petering out into green fields, a three-floor gabled Victorian mansion, built with the same dour slate-coloured stones as most of the houses in Adimurcham, and surrounded by a fence with an iron gate that was padlocked. It had the unwelcoming look of a fortress. If it had a moat the drawbridge would have been up.
I went back to the Highlander and wrote a letter to Bridey saying I would like to see him about improving his security arrangements, and enclosed my business card from Fitzwilliam Harvey
Security. I took it back to the house and rang the bell at the gate. After a while an elderly man came out. He took the letter and said he would give it to Mr Bridey.
Back at the Highlander, I had a whisky at the bar. I said to McFarlane, “I dropped a note in at Bridey’s house. Something I want to talk to him about.” I threw out the remark in a casual way, but just loud enough so that a handful of others around the bar could hear it. There was just a chance that someone might pick up on it, come out with a friendly suggestion, perhaps. But nobody did. In fact I think I detected an air of disapproval.
Despite this I decided to have my dinner at the Highlander. Neither pizza nor fish and chips, the only dining alternatives, seemed attractive. I was eating an apple pie dessert and reading in the
Ross-shire
Herald
about the rising cost of fertiliser when I saw a man come into the bar and speak to McFarlane. McFarlane nodded towards me and the man came over to my table. He was a thick set man wearing a heavy sweater and raincoat. From his bearing he could be an army sergeant, someone with limited but unassailable authority.
He came over and said, “Do you mind if I have a word with you?” I indicated the chair opposite me.
He sat down and said, “My name’s George Molloy.”
“David Root.”
“How are you finding Adimurcham?”
“Quite a pleasant place,” I said warily.
“I’ll come to the point, Mr Root. I understand you’ve been trying to get in touch with Duncan Bridey.”
“Who told you that?” I asked. I wondered whether he was going to offer me a way in.
“I picked it up locally. May I ask why you want to talk to him?”
“It’s a personal matter. Or rather, a business matter, but it’s private.”
“Would it be connected with a diamond that he had?”
Boy, somebody’s following pretty damned close on my heels, I thought. “Picked it up locally” my ass.
I said, “I can recommend the fish here. The fresh salmon is delicious.”
“Mr Root, my employers are also interested in the diamond.”
“On the other hand, to be honest, the white wine isn’t up to much.”
“They’re very interested. We know Duncan Bridey used to own it.”
“He doesn’t have it now, so if you break into his house you won’t find it.”
“They don’t necessarily want it. They want to know where it comes from. As I think you do.”
“Well why don’t you just drop by and ask him?”
Molloy was not going to be put off. “Do you think it would be an idea if we joined forces? My employers are very generous. They pay me well, and they would pay you well.”
“Thank you, I’m quite satisfied with my present employment,” I said.
“I suggest you think again. We don’t really have to compete.” I met this sentence by looking him straight in the eye. “My employers are determined people. It would be much better if we worked together.”
The threat again. It was a far cry from the silk-tied Monsieur Azamouth and the Place Vendome but Molloy was delivering the same message. I assumed his employers were the people Azamouth was talking about, probably working for Bulganov. Unless there were others in the field as well.
I told him, “I’m satisfied with my present employer, as I said. As for competition – well, I’m not competing, I’m just doing what I’m paid to do. Now, I’ve finished my supper, so if you’ll excuse me…” and I got up from the table. He said no more but turned and walked out. A moment later I saw a car drive away, a grey Honda, I noticed. I had played it cool but the encounter left me nervous, I admit.
The next day was Sunday. McFarlane’s wife served me breakfast. I asked for bacon and eggs and she said anxiously, “You’ll have porridge to start with? I made it myself.” To refuse would have been like kicking her in the shins. I read somewhere that physicists working with atomic particles acknowledge a fourth state of matter, after solid, liquid, and gas, which they call plasma. I think Mrs McFarlane’s porridge was in this state, or perhaps it was another, a fifth. It was not liquid but it was not solid enough to chew, and it seemed to solidify into something like metal when it reached the stomach. I pushed it down and it filled me up and I found it hard to get through the bacon and eggs after it. I told her it was delicious.
“Aye, it’s real Scottish porridge,” she said. “You’ll not get that down in London.”
One of the online articles about Bridey said he had become religious and gone back to the faith of his fathers, so he would probably be going to church. I checked out the times in the hotel and went to the morning service. It was a Church of Scotland chapel, free of any of the churchy adornments of other faiths closer to Romanism. The windows were plain and the pews inside were plain wood. Most of the people I had seen drinking in the Highlander were there. I spotted Bridey immediately. He was tall with a square, handsome face and striking blue eyes, and, like some of the others, in his Sunday best, which in this part of the world meant a kilt with a sporran. He walked in with his wife at his side, a pleasant-looking, unnoticeable young woman, nodded to a few people, and took his seat near the front.
I knew some of the hymns and sang along with the others, then listened to the sermon, which was not about hell fire and damnation, which I had expected in the Church of Scotland, but about repentance, delivered with a gentle burr. As we were leaving, I caught up with Bridey just outside the church door. “I wonder if I could have a word with you,” I said.
He turned away. I started after him but found my way blocked by a burly figure in a kilt who looked at me with cold eyes. I started to step around him and others stood in my way. The brawn of Adimurcham was massed against me. No one said anything, but the villagers were protecting one of their own. If he did not want to talk to strangers, they would make sure that he didn’t have to.
In case I had not understood, McFarlane explained it to me an hour later in the Highlander. “I understand you approached Mr Bridey in the church,” he said. He had not been at church. News of my transgression had travelled fast.
I acknowledged it. McFarlane was a naturally polite man, I could see, and he did not want to be offensive. As if explaining something to a foreigner he said, “Mr Bridey wants his privacy and we here respect that. He’s come back home.”
I assured him that I did not want to invade Bridey’s privacy, which of course was exactly what I did want to do.
“We’ve had some newspaper people around here a couple of times, and they were bothering him,” McFarlane added.
I did not like being in a hostile atmosphere, and I could see that I was not going to get any help from Bridey. I thought that maybe I would have to give up and try to find some other way to connect with the trail of the diamond.
But first I would take a day off, a holiday in the Highlands away from my problems. I looked up the maps of walks around Adimurcham. I called McFarlane over and asked his advice. I explained that I was quite fit and I wanted a walk that required some exertion, but I didn’t feel like mountaineering. “None of them are really mountain climbing, they’re walks. The challenging one might be steep. But you look like you can handle one of those without any trouble.” So together we chose one that started at the foot of a mountain about six miles from the village that should take about four hours.
I changed into a sweater and hiking boots, bought a bottle of water and a walking stick at a local store, drove out to the mountain and started my climb. There was a path but it was steep, tough on the calf muscles, and I was glad I did my regular exercises. The physical effort drove worries out of my mind, and at every turn there was another view, the silence broken only by bird song and the occasional sound of a car engine from below. When I paused after an hour and sat down to drink some water I was sweating, despite the mountain chill.
I like looking at things from above, and enjoy the different perspective it gives: the road with the occasional car like a toy, the lakes, the contours laid out as on a map. The Highlands stretched away, mountain after mountain, hill after hill, with the occasional lake and scattering of houses. I saw an eagle winging its elegant way, riding the thermals, and I relished seeing it from above. Next to the path, so near I could almost touch them, were the tops of trees growing on a slope below.
With my new perspective, it seemed to me that I had come to a dead end in Adimurcham. It was a bit stupid to hang around just to be in the vicinity of someone who had once owned the diamond, as if it had left a trail in the air that I could somehow pick up by sniffing. He would not even be approached. It would be reasonable now to go back and tell Jeremy that we either had to work out another way to find the source of the diamond or else just give up. It was failure, but I gradually felt the burden of duty lifting from my shoulders.
I got up and walked some more, turned a corner, and sat down on a rock to look at a different view. The mountainside here was not a sheer drop but fell away in a slope, with trees growing on the outcrops. The village was to my right. I followed the road out of it with my eyes, and saw my car parked next to a clump of trees, and then – oh damn! Right next to it was a grey Honda. Molloy drove a grey Honda. My brief holiday was over.
He had said his employers were determined people, and if it was Nikolai Bulganov, then Madame B. had given me an idea of what to expect. Molloy looked like a bruiser. He might be planning to give me a beating that would prevent my doing any further travelling, or perhaps even push me off the mountainside, leaving me to be discovered by hikers at some future date, the victim of a tragic accident and a warning to future climbers to take care.
Well, this was as good a place to wait for him as any. The ledge was quite wide, about twelve feet. He would not see me as he came around the corner, but I would hear him. He must be close. He would have started soon after me if he hoped to catch up. I gripped my walking stick, a usefully stout piece of wood, and listened, and sure enough I heard footsteps.