The Borgia Ring (19 page)

‘Well, it might not remain anonymous for long,’ the Superintendent replied optimistically. ‘What about the wife? We all know the stats for homicides committed by so-called loved ones.’

‘Absolutely no evidence. It looks like their marriage wasn’t great, but that’s hardly a motive. Pam is also … how shall I put it …?’

‘Mad?’ Turner interjected.

They all laughed except Pendragon and Hughes.

‘This is the crucifix thing?’ the Superintendent said. ‘I was debriefed earlier.’

‘She’s a religious obsessive,’ Pendragon said. ‘But again, that’s no …’

‘Sounds distinctly dodgy, though, don’t you think?’

‘I questioned her at the house. I don’t think she killed her husband, but she is involved … tangentially.’

‘What do you mean, guv?’ Inspector Grant asked, staring at Pendragon, his arms folded across his chest.

‘She knew about the skeleton. According to Pam, Tony Ketteridge did visit the construction site, but around nine-thirty or ten. At least four hours before Karim’s murder. He apparently hid the skeleton under the site hut and put it in his car boot, only to dump it in the skip later. Pam Ketteridge was horrified by the thought that her husband’s death could be linked with Karim’s and Middleton’s. She kept saying he had sinned. It was almost as though she believed Tony’s murder was God’s revenge.’

‘As I said … mad,’ Turner remarked.

‘I think she should be brought in for questioning,’ Hughes declared.

Pendragon shrugged. ‘I think it’s a waste of time, but okay.’

‘So what’s new on the skeleton?’ the Superintendent asked, wishing to move things on.

‘It’s with Dr Newman’s people at the Lambeth lab. But they’ve been preoccupied with the recently dead.’

‘But there’s obviously a link?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘And the ring? No sign of it?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

The room had fallen silent.

‘Okay,’ Pendragon said after a few awkward moments. ‘Rob, I’d like you and Sergeant Mackleby to interview Mrs Ketteridge. Go to her house, we don’t need to drag her in here.’ He flicked a glance at Hughes then turned to Vickers and Thatcher, as Grant and Roz Mackleby headed for the
door. ‘You two, start a new detailed search of the area around the skip. If the ring is there, I want it found. Ken, you get over to Bridgeport Construction. There has to be a link to them. All the victims had some affiliation with the company – two of them were employees. Jez, you work on the slippers. We’ll meet back here at six. And I want some answers, yes?’ He turned to the whiteboard to study the photos as the rest of the team trooped out.

‘Jack, I’m …’ Hughes was two feet behind him.

‘I don’t like being treated like that in front of my team.’

‘I regretted it the moment the words came out.’

He stared at her stonily. ‘Apology accepted.’ He went back to his office without a backward glance.

Pendragon was sitting at his desk, staring into space, when Turner tapped on the door and came in. ‘Bad moment?’ he said.

‘No. What’s up?’

‘I’ve been thinking, guv. You said Jones found four chemicals in the poison that killed Tim Middleton, and that the poison that killed Ketteridge was the same or very similar.’

‘Yes.’

‘And two of the chemicals, arsenic and … what was it? … Camrinol?’

‘Cantharidin.’

‘Yeah … why do they have to make these names so bloody difficult? The arsenic and the cantharidin are both fairly easy to get your mitts on. But the other two: abric acid and … what was the other one?’

‘Oleander.’

‘Right, those two. If they’re so hard to come by, Google should be able to help us find where you get hold of ’em. Can’t be too many sources.’

‘I see your point, Turner. But they’re so obscure, I don’t see how we can easily trace where they came from. It’s not like the golden slippers. Someone could have brought those two chemicals into the country ten years ago and we’d never be any the wiser.’

‘Okay, maybe you’re right. But what about the other two then?’

‘Go on.’

‘You reckoned cantharidin was in some sex drug.’

‘Spanish Fly.’

‘Well, what about searching on the web for suppliers?’

‘I think you’ll find hundreds. And even if you narrowed it down, they would probably be one-man operations working from a garage in Stoke or somewhere. But …’ Pendragon stopped for a second ‘… actually, you may be on to something,’ he admitted.

‘What, guv?’

‘The other component of the poison …’

‘Arsenic?’

‘Yes.’

‘What of it?’

‘I’m sure I’ve read about it recently somewhere. It’s not just an old-fashioned poison.’

Turner came around Pendragon’s desk and started tapping at the keyboard of his computer. ‘One good way to find out.’

Pendragon sighed. ‘Naturally. There’s me thinking I’d have to pop to the library. I’ll never get used to this,’ he added, nodding towards the monitor.

‘Of course you will, Granddad,’ Turner laughed. In a few seconds, Google had informed him that there were over one hundred million links to the word ‘arsenic’. He then typed in ‘arsenic + uses’. This narrowed it down to just under forty
million. He scrolled down and the fifth website listed was entitled ‘Arsenic, use in Glass-making’.

‘That’s it!’ Pendragon declared. ‘Of course. Let’s see if there are any glass-makers in this area.’

Turner keyed in the appropriate words and a long list of references to glass-makers in East London appeared on the screen. Almost all of them were historical or links to irrelevant websites, but the tenth on the list was for the website of Murano Glass UK, a specialist glass-maker in Commercial Road.

‘Well done, Sergeant,’ Pendragon said, pulling his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Get back to the search for the golden slippers. I’ll see you later.’

Jack was descending the steps from the station to the car park when his mobile rang.

‘DCI Pendragon?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Professor Stokes here. Remember, I came to see you the other day?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied.

‘I was wondering, Inspector. You couldn’t drop by, could you? I’ve managed to get some good images of the ring we discussed. I have … well, I’ve started to put together a hypothesis about it. You might be interested.’

‘How soon can you see me, Professor?’

‘Well … um … I’m free now. I have a lecture at two-thirty, but …’

‘Perfect. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

The archaeology department of Queen Mary College occupied a row of prefabs on the edge of the campus, so tucked away it would have been understandable if only the handful of students reading archaeology knew of its existence. Pendragon consulted the campus map at the main entrance to the college but failed to find his destination. He only managed to weave his way through the warren of buildings and pathways after seeking help from Main Reception. Even then, he managed to get lost twice and arrived fifteen minutes late.

‘DCI Pendragon,’ Professor Stokes said, hand extended as a young woman in a white lab coat showed Jack into the archaeologist’s cramped little office. It was a dark, stuffy room, the only natural light coming from a small, single window half-obscured by piles of books. Stokes’s desk took up the whole of one wall, and laden bookshelves covered two other walls. On the carpeted floor stood shaky towers of books and papers. ‘I’m afraid there’s not much room. Come with me. The lab is far more accommodating.’

They walked along a corridor lined with pictures of fossils and archaeological digs and turned left into a brightly lit, whitewashed room, the very antithesis of the professor’s little box of an office.

‘I know we’re largely ignored here and have to put up with pre-war temporary buildings which the rest of Queen Mary hardly know exist,’ Stokes admitted. ‘But in here we have some state-of-the-art equipment you wouldn’t find anywhere else outside MIT or Oxbridge.’ He led the way across the room to a counter containing a bewildering array of electronic devices and monitors. It reminded Pendragon of something he had seen on
Star Trek
when he was flicking through channels a few years back.

‘As you’ll appreciate, Chief Inspector, ours is a job of two halves. Part of the time we have our heads down holes in the ground; the rest of the time we’re using this sort of equipment. Of course, our detractors on the grants committee claim we have our heads somewhere entirely different most of the time, but what do they know?’ He smiled at Pendragon. ‘So, when we’re not being Indiana Jones, we sit in here studying what we’ve dug up from those holes in the ground.’ He pointed towards the box of tricks on the counter. ‘This is a multi-faceted system incorporating several independent analytical processors all hooked up to
a rather sophisticated computer system. We use it to study artefacts such as coins or pieces of pottery. We can determine the chemical composition of the artefact with a spectroscopic analyser, and study the ultra-fine structure of an object with the scanning electron microscope … here.’ He pointed to a large box with two rubber-clad cylinders emerging from the top. It was similar to the equipment Pendragon had seen earlier that day at the forensics lab.

‘Obviously, this stuff isn’t much use with just a photograph to work with. But this …’ and the professor patted another black box hooked up to a flat-screen monitor ‘… has come in very useful.’

‘What is it?’ Pendragon asked.

‘It’s a picture-enhancement system that can re-pixellate damaged or fuzzy images. But, most importantly, it can convert two-dimensional images into three-D.’

‘Professor,’ Pendragon said. ‘I’m no technophile – in fact, I could never get my DVD player to work – but, correct me if I’m wrong, doesn’t that sort of software come with most modern laptops?’

‘No, Chief Inspector, you’re not entirely wrong. But it’s a question of degree. You can buy a picture-enhancement package on the high street very cheaply, but this machine is a thousand times more sophisticated than the most expensive domestic system. Look, I’ll show you what I mean.’

He sat down at the counter and tapped on a keyboard. ‘This,’ he said, leaning back in the chair, ‘is the print you gave me of the ring on the skeleton’s finger. Pictures taken from mobile phones aren’t great at the best of times, but this is actually a particularly poor example. You can see the gold band and the large green stone on top, and that’s about it.

‘Now, I’ll trim the image and apply a set of filters.’ His fingers ran over the keys and the image changed. ‘This is
better,’ he said. And it was. The ring filled the screen now and some of the fuzziness had gone, but it was still out of focus, over-exposed, and striped with shadow across half the top surface. ‘A domestic software package would not be able to do much better, but I can pass this image under a scanning electron microscope. This takes the pixels one by one and passes them through a programme we developed ourselves called Illuminate – it rebuilds the image having disposed of “noise” and “interference”. When we do
that
, we get
this
.’

On screen the image was transformed through a slow vertical wash starting at the top and moving down. When it was complete, the ring could be seen with amazing clarity, every chip, groove and irregularity, in superb colour and with remarkable sharpness.

‘Good Lord!’ Pendragon exclaimed, and peered more closely at the monitor. ‘That really is something.’

‘Not finished yet,’ Stokes said coolly. Without even looking at the image, he tapped in new instructions. The picture on the flat screen disappeared. A horizontal line appeared at the top of the screen and moved down as it had before. Behind the moving line, a new image began to take shape, gradually filling the screen.

‘Much better, wouldn’t you agree?’ Stokes said proudly, and looked up at Pendragon. On the screen was a 3-D image of the ring that looked so real it was easy to imagine you could reach into the monitor and pluck it out.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Pendragon confessed. ‘The wonders of modern technology never cease to amaze me.’

‘Don’t worry, Chief Inspector. I still find stuff like this exciting and I work with it every day.’

‘So, what do you make of the ring?’

‘Let’s go over here,’ Stokes replied, and stood up. On a table across the room lay a large glossy print of the image
from the enhancer. Written on it were a set of numbers and letters. A series of lines had been drawn in black marker across the image.

‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ Stokes said. Pulling up a chair, he motioned to Pendragon to take a seat also. ‘The ring is of gold and emerald. The stone is very high quality. You can tell that from the fact that it’s almost translucent. It’s a very plain design. The only ornamentation is on the band nearest the stone. See there … the gold mouldings? Ridges that slope up to the stone?

‘Of course, it would be so much easier if we had the ring itself to examine because there might well be markings on the inside of the band as well. But, in the event, we have to manage with what we have, and the two most important aspects are the cut of the stone and the design of the setting. The cut of the stone tells us a great deal about the ring’s age.’

‘It does?’

‘The way precious stones are shaped has developed through the ages. The oldest known cuts were simple two-or three-facet cuts, the “point cut” and the “table cut”. Around the late-fourteenth century, the “single cut” was introduced. This produced a flat top with eight facets around the edge of the stone. That’s the way this ring has been shaped. From the mid-sixteenth century, master jewellers found new techniques which allowed them to cut gemstones with up to forty-eight facets. Quite remarkable considering the equipment at their disposal.’

‘So this ring must have been made between the late-fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries?’

‘Yes. But with the caveat, of course, that it could have been later because a jeweller may have wanted to produce a retro-style of ring. But that’s where the design of the ring comes in.’

‘How so?’

‘This is a classic example of a bishop ring.’

‘Which is?’

‘As the name would suggest. Originally it was a ring given to bishops when they were appointed. They’re still made today, but their significance has been greatly devalued. You can buy them on-line for fifty pounds, fake gemstones and all. But, in centuries past, the bishop ring was a precious and rare thing. This is the real deal. Now, look closely. Do you see a faint mark on the band close to the stone?’

Pendragon peered at the print. ‘A very faint mark.’

‘Here, try with this.’ Stokes handed Pendragon a magnifying glass. ‘Even with the enhancement software at our disposal, this is still hard to see.’

Pendragon moved the magnifying glass until it was focused on the point Stokes was indicating. He lowered the glass. ‘A bull?’

‘Indeed.’

‘So what does that mean?’

‘The bull is the symbol used by the Borgias. It appears in their family crest.’

‘So, you’re suggesting this was once owned by Pope Alexander VI, the Borgia Pope?’ Pendragon said.

‘Well, that’s unclear, and it might not fit with the dates. This ring is definitely Italian. You can tell by those gold mouldings I pointed out. As for the date, it’s most likely to be late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century. Alexander VI was the most well-known Borgia Pope, father to Cesare and Lucrezia – the whole lot of them infamous. But Alexander’s uncle, Alfonso, became Pope a generation before him, in 1455. And he was made bishop in 1429.’

‘So you think this was the ring presented to Alfonso when he was made bishop?’

‘It’s a strong possibility. It would then have been handed down through the Borgia family so probably did end up in the hands of Pope Alexander or his children, Cesare and Lucrezia.’

‘Well, this is all fascinating, Professor. But I don’t think it helps much with my investigation.’

Professor Stokes nodded. ‘No, I quite understand. As I said just now, if only I had something more tangible to work with.’ He leaned back and rubbed his chin. ‘I saw the news about the skeleton on TV last night. I imagine your forensics people at the lab in Lambeth are analysing it?’

‘That’s correct,’ said Pendragon. ‘Why?’

‘I was just thinking … I have the greatest respect for that lab, it’s probably the best in the world, but you’ve seen for yourself what we can do here. Is there any chance you could persuade them to loan me the ring finger? Or even just the proximal phalanx, the bone the ring rested on?’

Pendragon raised an eyebrow.

‘No, I know. I’m being silly,’ Stokes said quickly.

‘Well, you know what, Professor? I’m a great believer in the old adage that two heads are better than one. I’ll see what I can do.’