Page 18 of A Death in Cornwall

Gabriel picked up the copy of Charlotte Blake’s Picasso: The War Years and opened it to the acknowledgments. They were as spare and dry as a typical provenance. No expressions of heartfelt gratitude, no enormous debts due. One name managed to achieve an elevated prominence by dint of the fact that it was the last one mentioned. It was Naomi Wallach, the world’s foremost expert on the wartime French art market.

8

Victoria Embankment

It occurred to Samantha Cooke, while huddled on a frigid bench on Victoria Embankment, her hands numb with cold, that perhaps she had chosen the wrong line of work. She had been summoned to this spot by an anonymous text message. Polite in tone and precise in syntax, it promised documents of a politically explosive nature. The sender wanted Samantha to reveal the contents of these documents in her newspaper, which was the Tory-leaning Telegraph. Because she was the paper’s chief political correspondent, and one of the most respected members of the Westminster press corps, she was accustomed to stories arriving over her transom—especially stories that could prove damaging to the opposition or, better yet, to a rival within one’s own party. Most of the stuff was trivial and petty, but this approach felt different. It was something significant. Samantha was certain of it.

She had felt the same way about her most recent love interest, a divorced father of two called Adam who worked for the Department of Health. But Adam quickly came to resent the fact that she spent eighteen hours a day on the phone or in front of a computer. So had all of Adam’s predecessors, including Samantha’s ex-husband, who was long remarried and leading a blissful upper-middle-class existence in leafy Richmond. Samantha shared a flat in Primrose Hill with her cat and lived in fear that, given the precarious state of the journalism business, she might soon find herself out of a job. Her friends from university had all gone to work in the financial sector and made gobs of money. But Samantha had been determined to do something out of the ordinary. Now, as she watched the slow rotation of the London Eye, she could at least take comfort in the knowledge that she had achieved her goal.

The bench was located next to the Battle of Britain memorial. It had been chosen by the author of the text message, whom Samantha surmised was a well-educated man of late middle age, a description that applied to a significant portion of the British political establishment. He had instructed her to arrive at six o’clock. But Big Ben was now tolling the bottom of the hour, and there was still no sign of him—or the promised documents.

Annoyed, Samantha drew her mobile phone and typed, I’m waiting.

The anonymous leaker replied instantly. Patience.

Not my strong suit, answered Samantha. Now or never.

Just then she heard the clatter of high heels over paving stones and, glancing to her right, saw a woman walking toward her from the direction of Westminster. She was not yet thirty, blond, professionally dressed, quite pretty. Her head was turned toward the Thames, as though she were admiring the view, and in her left hand was an A4 envelope. A moment later the same envelope was lying on the unoccupied half of the bench. The young woman, having dropped it there, continued northward along the embankment and disappeared from Samantha’s view.

Her phone pinged at once. Aren’t you going to open it?

Samantha looked left and right along the embankment but could see no one who appeared to be watching her. The next message she received confirmed that, indeed, someone was.

Well, Ms. Cooke?

The envelope was lying face down on the bench. Samantha turned it over and saw the pale blue logo of the Conservative Party. The flap was unsealed, and inside was a sheaf of internal documents dealing with the Party’s fundraising efforts—one large political contribution in particular. The documents appeared to be authentic. They were also political dynamite.

Samantha took up her phone and typed, Are these genuine?

You know they are, came the reply.

Where do you work?

A moment passed before he answered. CCHQ.

CCHQ was the Conservative Campaign Headquarters. It was located in Matthew Parker Street, not far from the Palace of Westminster.

Samantha typed her next message and tapped the send icon. I need to see you at once.

Not possible, Ms. Cooke.

At least tell me who you are. I promise not to reveal your identity.

You may refer to me as Nemo.

Nemo, thought Samantha. No one.

She returned the documents to the envelope and rang Clive Randolph, the Telegraph’s political editor. “Someone just gave me the means to bring down Prime Minister Hillary Edwards. Are you interested?”

9

Musée du Louvre

Gabriel spent the night at the Godolphin Hotel in Marazion and was back in central London by one the following afternoon. He dropped his car at Hertz and his gun at Isherwood Fine Arts and boarded a Eurostar train bound for Paris. Three hours later he was extracting himself from the back of a taxi outside the Louvre. Naomi Wallach, as promised, was waiting next to the pyramid. They had spoken only briefly while Gabriel was hurtling across the fields of northern France. Now, in the fading light of the Louvre’s Cour Napoléon, she regarded him carefully, as though trying to decide whether he was a clever forgery or the real thing.

“You’re not at all what I expected,” she said at last.

“I hope you’re not disappointed.”

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