as good as a rest.’
‘Okay, then. I’m going to take an hour or so to go through these files and make notes. After that, I’ll ask you to bring people in, one at a time, and act as chaperone while I interview them. In the meantime, did you get breakfast yet?’
Rush shrugged. ‘Cup of tea. Round of toast.’
‘Most important meal of the day, Rush. Is there anywhere around here that does coffee and bagels?’
Rush nodded. ‘Sam Widge’s, on Gerrard Road.’
‘Lox and cream cheese and double espresso for me. Dealer’s choice for you.’
She gave him a twenty pound note, and he was off.
The personnel files were as bare and banal as she expected them to be, and Kennedy was able to get through them easily inside the hour she’d allowed. The coffee helped. The flaccid bridge roll – ‘no bagels left, sorry’ – not so much.
All of Ryegate House’s staff, both full-time and part-time, had impeccable employment records. None of them had any spent convictions or debt problems, or at least, any that had showed up at the fairly superficial level of investigation that the museum deployed. Most had been here since before the flood, and almost everyone above the entry level had been promoted internally.
On the face of it, a closet with no skeletons.
So Kennedy narrowed her search, looking for repeating patterns. It was standard police procedure with any possibility of conspiracy – or where you wanted to eliminate that possibility – to look for the common ground in which it could have grown: if two or more of the Ryegate House staffers had attended the same school or college, had worked together in another context, or were members of the same club or society, it would have been worth following up. But they didn’t, hadn’t, weren’t. The only thing they had in common was Ryegate House itself.
Kennedy took a different tack, looking for hobbies or work experience that might translate into burglary skills. Not much there: two of the security team were ex-army, but their background – Royal Corps of Transport and Household Guard – didn’t suggest that either had seen much in the way of special ops training.
Finally, without much more sense of direction than she’d had when she started out, she pushed the stack of files across the table at Rush. ‘Shuffle and deal,’ she said. ‘Put them into some sort of order that makes sense to you and then feed them through to me one at a time.’
He seemed nervous with that much responsibility. ‘Is alphabetical okay?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Kennedy, on an impulse. ‘Surprise me.’
The next few hours were gruelling. With no steer from her, Rush sent in the top brass first. The topmost brass – excluding Emil Gassan – was a Valerie Parminter, who bore the title of Assistant Director. She was in her fifties and austerely attractive, with a well-maintained figure and pink-tinted hair that made a virtue of its unnaturalness. To judge from her face, she saw this interview as a huge affront to her dignity.
Parminter’s responses to Kennedy’s questions began as sparse sentences, but quickly degenerated into monosyllables. Her face said: I have to endure this, but I don’t have to hide my contempt for it.
Kennedy went for the jugular without a qualm.
‘So,’ she said, ‘this happened on your watch, so to speak. In the period between the departure of the old director and the arrival of Professor Gassan.’
Parminter stared at her, a cold, indignant stare. ‘I don’t think the timing is relevant to anything,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ Kennedy said.
Those who live by the monosyllable shall die by the monosyllable. Parminter waited for more, and when it wasn’t forthcoming she voided her hurt feelings into the accusing silence. ‘For the record,’ she said acidly, ‘I suggested a full security review nine months ago. Dr Leopold said he’d take that under advisement. Which of course meant he’d sweep it under the carpet and forget it.’
‘You
‘Okay, then. I’m going to take an hour or so to go through these files and make notes. After that, I’ll ask you to bring people in, one at a time, and act as chaperone while I interview them. In the meantime, did you get breakfast yet?’
Rush shrugged. ‘Cup of tea. Round of toast.’
‘Most important meal of the day, Rush. Is there anywhere around here that does coffee and bagels?’
Rush nodded. ‘Sam Widge’s, on Gerrard Road.’
‘Lox and cream cheese and double espresso for me. Dealer’s choice for you.’
She gave him a twenty pound note, and he was off.
The personnel files were as bare and banal as she expected them to be, and Kennedy was able to get through them easily inside the hour she’d allowed. The coffee helped. The flaccid bridge roll – ‘no bagels left, sorry’ – not so much.
All of Ryegate House’s staff, both full-time and part-time, had impeccable employment records. None of them had any spent convictions or debt problems, or at least, any that had showed up at the fairly superficial level of investigation that the museum deployed. Most had been here since before the flood, and almost everyone above the entry level had been promoted internally.
On the face of it, a closet with no skeletons.
So Kennedy narrowed her search, looking for repeating patterns. It was standard police procedure with any possibility of conspiracy – or where you wanted to eliminate that possibility – to look for the common ground in which it could have grown: if two or more of the Ryegate House staffers had attended the same school or college, had worked together in another context, or were members of the same club or society, it would have been worth following up. But they didn’t, hadn’t, weren’t. The only thing they had in common was Ryegate House itself.
Kennedy took a different tack, looking for hobbies or work experience that might translate into burglary skills. Not much there: two of the security team were ex-army, but their background – Royal Corps of Transport and Household Guard – didn’t suggest that either had seen much in the way of special ops training.
Finally, without much more sense of direction than she’d had when she started out, she pushed the stack of files across the table at Rush. ‘Shuffle and deal,’ she said. ‘Put them into some sort of order that makes sense to you and then feed them through to me one at a time.’
He seemed nervous with that much responsibility. ‘Is alphabetical okay?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Kennedy, on an impulse. ‘Surprise me.’
The next few hours were gruelling. With no steer from her, Rush sent in the top brass first. The topmost brass – excluding Emil Gassan – was a Valerie Parminter, who bore the title of Assistant Director. She was in her fifties and austerely attractive, with a well-maintained figure and pink-tinted hair that made a virtue of its unnaturalness. To judge from her face, she saw this interview as a huge affront to her dignity.
Parminter’s responses to Kennedy’s questions began as sparse sentences, but quickly degenerated into monosyllables. Her face said: I have to endure this, but I don’t have to hide my contempt for it.
Kennedy went for the jugular without a qualm.
‘So,’ she said, ‘this happened on your watch, so to speak. In the period between the departure of the old director and the arrival of Professor Gassan.’
Parminter stared at her, a cold, indignant stare. ‘I don’t think the timing is relevant to anything,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ Kennedy said.
Those who live by the monosyllable shall die by the monosyllable. Parminter waited for more, and when it wasn’t forthcoming she voided her hurt feelings into the accusing silence. ‘For the record,’ she said acidly, ‘I suggested a full security review nine months ago. Dr Leopold said he’d take that under advisement. Which of course meant he’d sweep it under the carpet and forget it.’
‘You
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