The Buddha of Brewer Street (20 page)

It was his sense of guilt that drove him to do it.

Like most politicians, he hated his postbag. And like most men with overdrafts he opened it with as much delay as possible. Not all envelopes contained invitations to free dinners. Many envelopes contained misery, some of the most unexpected kind.

One in particular caught his attention. It was addressed to Sam, which was unusual. She didn’t normally receive letters at Gerrard Street. Why hadn’t it been sent to her at school?

The envelope in question was one of carefully constructed anonymity. Small and obviously inexpensive, brown, with nothing but a hand-written address with an incomplete postcode and a business postmark. No logo or embellishment, no clue as to its origin. A mystery. Goodfellowe didn’t like mysteries, but that was no excuse for what he did.

He was worried sick about Sam, even more so since his miserable failure the previous weekend to offer her fatherly advice and comfort. His imagination had spent too much time wandering over all the possibilities of how she was, and what she was. And what she’d been up to. There were so many question marks over his daughter’s life, and here was another. He needed to know what was in this envelope, his need driven by his own sense of guilt.

He could scarcely believe what he was doing. In the kitchen. Over the stove. Steaming it open with the kettle, just as he’d seen it done in those black-and-white films of his childhood with Maigret and Fabian of the Yard and clanging police bells on old Wolseley cars. As he watched, the flap of the envelope curled in distaste. And out dropped a cheque. Signed by Sam. And stamped ‘Refer To Drawer’.

The cheque was made out to the Unplanned Pregnancy Advice Clinic.

Of course the Clinic and its staff were scrupulous in maintaining the confidentiality of its patients – or, rather, clients. But its finance department was less sensitive, there had been a glitch in the system. Bounced cheques were returned.

His hand trembled, and not simply from the fact that he was scalding his fingers. More confusion and fear. Fear for Sam. Fear for himself. He’d already lost a son and a wife. How much more could he take?

He knew he was not well equipped to deal with this dilemma. His sense of judgement was distorted, his emotions still too bruised from his own life to be able to cope adequately with hers. Which was why he had relied so heavily on Elizabeth’s advice. Advice which so far he had embellished to catastrophic effect. Sam hadn’t spoken to him in more than a week. The rollercoaster of their relationship had come off the rails once more. And Elizabeth, just when he needed her, was away tasting wines in France. With fellow restaurateurs. With other men. Drinking. Laughing. Letting them fall in love with her. Suddenly he was having trouble breathing.

He knew he must not make the wrong decision, yet he had no clear idea what ‘the wrong decision’ was. Did that imply there was ‘a right decision’ in such circumstances? If there was, it’d slipped past him damned quick. But he knew that what above all else would be wrong would be for Sam to face that most transforming decision of her life alone, by herself. It must ultimately be her decision, but she would need support to make the right choice, and still more support if the choice she made was wrong. She needed her father, even though at the moment she didn’t want him. He closed his eyes and wept inside.

How long had it been? She must’ve been pregnant at least nine or ten weeks. He wept a little more. If she remained silent he’d have to confront her, and soon. He would risk losing her, but she risked losing herself if it was left any longer. Time to come off the fence. He would give her three weeks. Three weeks from today. No more. Three weeks. That’s all the time they might have left.

* * *

The leafy avenue of Prinsengracht was within walking distance of Amsterdam’s red-light district but belonged to an altogether different world. Stately, secure, a little sedate even. Lined by banks, bakeries and bourgeois florists, with not a knocking shop in sight. Which made it an excellent cover for the many skulduggeries practised by little Mo’s cousin.

He’d come a long way since he’d arrived in this city and earned his first few guilders by running errands for the punters in one of the smoke-filled hash cafés. Now, several years and an amnesty for illegal immigrants later, he occupied a large studio and a workshop overlooking the Prinsengracht from which he ran a lucrative business in Oriental antiques.

The Mo cousins had been born in northern Jiangxi province. In Jingdezhen, to be precise. Which produced ceramics. Not just ordinary ceramics but some of the finest pieces ever known to mankind. Legend insisted there hadn’t been a moment in two thousand years when the fires of the kiln had ceased to burn, a sight that had inspired the poet Longfellow to verse:
‘Three thousand furnaces that glow/Incessantly and fill the air/With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre/And painted by the lurid glare/Of jets and flashes of red fire.’
The Mo family had inherited many of the ancient potters’ skills and – far more significantly – they had also inherited some of the original potters’ moulds. Thanks to such legacies this city of fire still produced artefacts of timeless beauty in the original style. Which was part of the problem, of course, for although these artefacts might support all the aesthetic qualities of the original pieces, they didn’t support the same hugely inflated prices.

This was where Mo’s cousin came in. His skill was in taking brand new pieces still warm from the kilns and reducing them to antiquity. The moulds were the same, as were the clay and the production methods, but the pieces didn’t have the special patinas and markings that came from centuries of being exposed to the elements or, in some cases, being buried underground. So Mo’s cousin would scrape the rims, corrupt the glaze, embellish and undermine with time. Dull clay was transformed to the finest blue and white or underglaze red, Ming mark, Yuan mark, all the items most sought after in the galleries of Europe.

He also brought in other ceramics, from factories in Macao and Taiwan, and bronzes from Thailand, all pieces of great skill and beauty, waiting simply for the patina of age to increase their value a hundred-fold. Unglazed funerary pieces were covered with layers of authentic Shandong mud from near the great burial site at Long Xing. He had the mud shipped in by the crate. Stucco pieces were nibbled at by weak solutions of liquid manure, jade aged with acid. The bronzes were a special expertise; he left them soaking in the outflow of the urinals from a local bar, after which they would reappear with the most beautiful lime encrustations that could defy the forensic abilities of all but the most diligent of dealers. Within weeks they looked as if they had been under environmental assault for a thousand years.

There were strict rules, of course, for the export of antiques from China, but in the chaos that had become the People’s Republic so much material was slipping through into the hands of unscrupulous foreign dealers that nobody bothered questioning how he kept discovering still more sources of Tang, Ming, Sung or Han. That’s what collectors wanted. And that is what the dealers got.

It was a good business – but regrettably not good enough for Mo’s cousin. The only form of security a refugee like him recognized was cash, lots of it and placed in some location the authorities couldn’t even guess at. Why bother having to rely on the state to guarantee his happiness in old age when, without the state, he could guarantee it himself?

So, ever the entrepreneur, Mo’s cousin had begun to branch out. Alongside his artefacts he had taken to packing not only forged certificates of thermo-luminescent date testing that bore the stamp of the Oxford Research Laboratory for Archaeology, but also bags of pure heroin, carefully concealed in the interior cavities of appropriate items. And through Mo’s network of Embassy contacts, many of these were smuggled out under cover of the diplomatic bag.

Business was booming, not least because of Mo and the London situation. By moving the genuine antiques around the Embassy, no one became too familiar with any one piece. The only real check was the official inventory – ‘Banshan Jar. One. 2000—3000 BC. Condition – first.’ Which, somewhere around the Embassy, is what they would find. Complete with authentic encrustations. Or so they thought. Meanwhile Mo’s cousin would have passed the authentic pieces through a dealer for a truly authentic price. Everyone was happy.

Mo’s cousin ripped off the top of the wooden packing case he had just received from London, revealing the most wondrous jade carvings, which until three days ago had adorned the main staircase in Portland Place. Another three crates were already on their way. More were promised. This was Mo’s best supply yet and his cousin celebrated. Over the next few weeks there would be little rest for his team of restorers, acid dippers, pissoir plumbers, fudgers and forgers.

From the other side of the canal, and through the branches of a rowan tree that only slightly obscured his view, a young man watched the many comings and goings of Mo’s cousin. He sat in the window of a brown-house bar, enjoying the sharp taste of a cube of mature edam and wondering whether he could make his non-alcoholic beer stretch the rest of his watch. As stake-outs went, this wasn’t so bad. The weather was warm, the women conspicuously underdressed. And there were results. The pace of activity at the workshop had picked up, there was new business afoot. Mucky new business, if it involved little Mo’s cousin. Which was why, even in liberal Amsterdam, the Drugs Task Force of the city’s Serious Crime Squad had begun to take a keen interest in his activities.

They had begun to track every consignment in, and every one out. It had proved a curious mix. Antique porcelain and pottery. Museum pieces some. And pornography. A little marijuana, only enough for personal consumption. Traces of heroin. And lots of mud. A crate of it had arrived just last week and they’d all been convinced they’d find a dozen kilos of powder hidden in the middle, or maybe some uncut diamonds. But that’s all it was, mud. And a hell of a mess it had made in the customs shed as they poured out, sieved and threw back every single cupful. Maybe the bastard liked bathing in it.

He was a resourceful fellow, this cousin of Mo, with fingers in all sorts of pies. Too many pies, the policeman concluded. The Chinaman was going to get his fingers burned.

He had suggested a light lunch, but when she opened the door of his Ministerial office in the House of Commons she could see he had more than food on his mind. Why else was he stark naked? Before Mickey had time even to giggle, Baader had scattered half her clothing and was leading her to the leather Chesterfield. There was no hint of romance, this was straightforward pillage and plunder and, right at this moment, Mickey loved it. It was crazy, he hadn’t even locked the door and could only rely on any visitor knocking first, but it seemed to be the element of risk that drove him and made him such an energetic lover. She marvelled at the way he was able to adjust his body so that he fitted not only her but also the awkward sofa, and wondered whether they’d ever get to doing it in bed. He’d probably find it boring. Unless, of course, the bed was being wheeled in broad daylight down Whitehall.

Afterwards she lay gazing distractedly at the ceiling. Was it the highest ceiling she’d ever studied, she wondered? She’d seen a few, particularly since she had broken off her engagement the previous year. Occasionally she wondered whether there might have been too many ceilings in her life, but she didn’t care to analyse things too much, let alone keep count. She’d enjoyed the variety, that she knew. Yet she’d give them all up, for just one. Preferably in a house rather than an apartment. With roses round the door.

The wall, too, told a story. Covered in cartoons and photographs. Of Baader. Standing beside the Prime Minister. Beside the President. Beside other leaders. Suddenly it all became clear. His frustration. A life spent at the shoulder of greatness, never at the centre of the stage. A man with such strength of mind, always required to follow the opinions of others. He effected a lack of concern, of course, an almost casual approach to power, but looking at these walls she understood how it must gnaw at his entrails and leave him smothered by failure. Now she knew the secret behind his bravado, his recklessness and risk taking, all this marvellously impossible sex. Although he might not admit it, Paddy Baader hated himself. Deep down, within his guts, he regarded himself as a failure, perhaps had always thought he was a failure. In politics. At university. In his marriage. In his relationship with all women. So he wanted to destroy himself. And he’d failed even in that. So far.

She found she couldn’t move. All that heat and sweat had stuck her back firmly to the leather. When finally and with some effort she sat up, the movement was accompanied with a ripping sound that left her skin raw and angry. Baader laughed, then began kissing it, soothing the pain. He had nibbled halfway down her backbone when suddenly he stopped.

‘Mickey, how much do you know about what Tom’s up to with his Tibetans?’

‘We don’t have many secrets. We share pretty much everything.’

‘Hey, should I be getting jealous?’

‘Not that, you fool!’ she laughed. ‘Anyway, the poor mutt’s in love. Terribly distracted.’

‘You bet he is. Got himself into some very deep water. Two Tibetans dead. A third … you know about the third?’

‘Kunga Tashi? Yes.’

‘Getting involved with an illegal immigrant might be very serious for him. Particularly if the immigrant ends up like the others, dead. I’m worried for Tom. He’s out of his depth.’

‘Can’t you do anything to help?’

‘Not officially. Not unless the monk comes forward and asks for protection or asylum. It’s crazy for him to be wandering the streets of London if he’s in danger. I suppose he is in London?’

‘Guess so. They met at some Tibetan restaurant. All very cloak and dagger.’

‘At least he’s not likely to starve.’

She braced her shoulders impatiently and slowly his lips began their work once more. ‘I’d like to help.’ Nibble. ‘If I can.’ Nibble, nibble. ‘Give him some advice. You know, something friendly …’ – he guided her hand – ‘but firm.’ She giggled. ‘But you know what Tom’s like. Bloody stubborn. Independent.’