Those Who Feel Nothing (28 page)

‘Chola?' Gilchrist said, picking out just one of the words she hadn't understood.

‘Another name for the Tamil empire. It was one of the longest ruling dynasties in southern India. Third century
BC
to thirteenth century
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.'

He indicated a long sofa covered in brightly coloured throws and cushions.

‘But you're not here for an art history lesson. Please be seated.'

Gilchrist and Watts sat side by side.

‘Actually we are sort of here for an art history lesson,' Gilchrist said.

‘In what sense?' Windsor said. His face was sculpted to the bone.

‘Some Cambodian treasures have been discovered beneath the Royal Pavilion and we're trying to ascertain who the owner is,' Watts said. ‘We thought you might know.'

‘We're also investigating a murder,' Gilchrist said. ‘A young Cambodian boy.'

‘And you think I can help with both these things? That puzzles me.'

‘I think I saw you on a beautiful yacht a few days ago,' Watts said. ‘A steam yacht.'

Windsor looked at Watts but didn't respond.

‘I had no idea this palace was hidden in the middle of the Lanes,' Gilchrist said.

Windsor turned his hard face to her. ‘Scarcely anyone does. I prefer it that way.'

‘Of course. Was it a warehouse or something originally?'

He was taking a disconcerting length of time to respond to questions or comments. She couldn't decide whether it was age, disdain or calculation.

‘Or something,' he eventually said. ‘Mostly it is created from the old brewery and its yards that were surrounded by tenements. I bought parcels of it one by one and created this out of what I had purchased.'

‘Planning permission must have been a bitch,' Gilchrist said.

Windsor looked at her but said nothing. Then: ‘I like the fact it is hidden. A secret behind a blank façade.' He turned his cold gaze upon her. ‘I suppose we're oddly similar in that respect, Detective Inspector.'

‘What respect would that be, Mr Windsor?'

‘You look for secrets behind blank façades – by which I mean the faces of criminals – whilst I attempt to keep my secrets hidden by such a façade.'

‘What secrets are you keeping, Mr Windsor?'

He took his time again. Finally: ‘Nothing murderous, I assure you.'

A beautiful Cambodian boy in a maroon tunic and trousers padded quietly across the floor carrying a tray with an iron teapot and three bowls. Averting his eyes he placed it on the table between them, poured tea into the bowls and padded away.

‘Leaping Tiger white tea,' Windsor said, leaning forward to pick up a bowl. He inhaled the scent and took a sip. Gilchrist and Watts followed suit. The bowls were hot.

Gilchrist put her bowl down. ‘Your secrets, Mr Windsor?'

‘I meant only the secret of the very existence of my house. Do you know Edinburgh, Detective Inspector – or you, Commissioner?'

‘A little,' Watts said, as Gilchrist shook her head.

‘I've always liked the fact that in the Middle Ages the aristocrat might live cheek by jowl with the poor. The tenements in the Old Town are side by side with mansions. Sometimes they enfold them. There is one particular house, now a museum, in Lady Stair's Close, by the Royal Mile. Early seventeenth century. Splendid looking. Across a shallow yard, tenements tower around it. Extraordinary.'

‘You regard yourself as an aristocrat?' Watts said, a bland expression on his face.

Windsor turned his pitiless look on him. ‘I was making an analogy about buildings, not people. But if you equate wealth with rank … well, I am certainly wealthy.' He put his palms together in front of his chest. ‘Do you have any specific questions to put to me?'

Gilchrist was admiring the pond. The base was black slate. It made the goldfish in the water seem luminescent in the shaft of sunlight.

‘You mentioned part of your house was the old brewery,' Watts said. ‘Presumably that means there are tunnels beneath us.'

‘Probably. I wouldn't know.'

‘You haven't investigated?' Gilchrist said.

‘I think tunnels would qualify as Below Stairs. I do not concern myself with there.'

‘Would you mind if we had people explore your tunnels?'

‘If they exist,' Windsor said. ‘And if you have all the appropriate documentation – warrants and such?'

‘We can get all that if necessary,' Gilchrist said. ‘But your permission is enough.'

Watts gestured round the room. ‘We'd also like your permission to examine your collection.'

Gilchrist looked at him sharply. She didn't want him screwing things up by overstepping the mark.

‘Why is that?' Windsor said, his voice like slate.

‘Experts tell us that many South-East Asian antiquities are looted and illegally imported,' Watts said.

Windsor gave him a cold look. ‘You are suggesting that is the case with my collection?'

‘We'd like to be sure.'

Windsor sat back. ‘I was born here in Brighton, you know. Before the Second War. It was a rough place in the thirties.'

‘I've heard,' Watts said, his mind flashing briefly to his father's time as a police constable then.

Windsor may or may not have acknowledged the remark with a slight flicker of the eye. It was hard to tell.

He continued. ‘I first went to Asia in 1951, as a shipping clerk. I was based in Bangkok but moved all around the South China Seas as I rose quickly in the company.' He cleared his throat. ‘I fell in love with Khmer art visiting a new friend's house in the late fifties. My host was showing off a piece he had just purchased. I loved the purity and simplicity of it. I went to the shop where my host had made the purchase. There was another piece, equally beautiful. I paid far more than I could afford for it. I borrowed the money from the bank, in fact.

‘I moved from shipping to shipping insurance and soon added building insurance. I had realized that leeching on the back of industries that actually did things was the way to make risk-free money. I quickly prospered. And with my prospering my collection grew.'

‘Do you have a favourite piece?' Watts asked.

‘My best piece I keep in my bedroom,' Windsor said – but there was no softening of his voice or tone. ‘It is a ninth-century bronze from north-west Cambodia. I bought it from a dealer in Hong Kong. It was delivered wrapped in jute and when I had the jute carbon-dated it was eighth century. That too is now an object for me.'

‘Do all your pieces have provenance, Mr Windsor?' Gilchrist said.

Windsor pushed himself off the sofa and looked up at the balcony.

‘I used to drive out from Bangkok or Phnom Penh of a weekend and take rutted dirt roads into the jungles of Cambodia to explore vine-entangled, shattered temples and palaces of a forgotten, one-thousand-year-old empire. The free-standing statues were long gone, stolen by the French and local dealers. But at Phnom Rung or Muang Tam I would walk around these open-air museums and soak up eleventh- and twelfth-century Khmer.'

‘You didn't help yourself to things?' Gilchrist persisted.

He looked down at her. ‘I had photos or engravings of sculptures and I would visit the local governor and ask him if he had seen anything similar. Often, such objects were lying discarded in fields. I would buy them and take them to Bangkok. I was in touch with the wealthy American collectors. John D. Rockefeller bought one such piece from me and donated it to the Asia Society in San Francisco.'

‘So you were both dealer and collector,' Watts said.

‘Correct, sir.' Windsor looked from one to the other of them. ‘Forgive me if this sounds rude, but I somehow doubt either of you have known the passion of collecting.'

‘True,' Gilchrist said. Watts assented with an incline of his head.

‘I bought from dealers in France, London and Hong Kong.' Windsor was walking toward a sandstone statue on a plinth. ‘I would buy what I could afford but the best then was nowhere near as good as things you could buy later.'

He stood before a statue and talked to it rather than them.

‘In the sixties and early seventies farmers started digging up pieces buried for centuries – like this Vishnu. Bakheng, ninth century. Suddenly in the thieves' markets of Bangkok Khmer stone and bronze antiquities and ornaments began to appear. We didn't worry about provenance, either out in the jungles or in the dealers' shops. We were rescuers, not plunderers.'

He looked up again at the balcony behind Gilchrist and Watts and seemed to see something there. Gilchrist resisted the urge to turn around. Watts was staring into the pond.

‘With the Khmer Rouge the supply stopped,' he continued. ‘Now, the authorities discourage the farmers from digging. I would be surprised if any more really good pieces are unearthed. That's partly why the buyers of Khmer art have dwindled. Where today are the Annenbergs or the Rockefellers?'

Watts coughed. ‘I read that an anonymous buyer spent over seven million dollars on four pieces in a Montague Pyke sale a few months ago,' he said. ‘You don't know about that?'

Again Windsor looked at him with a basilisk stare but said nothing. Gilchrist stood and walked over to a statue draped with gold jewellery.

‘And the jewellery?'

‘That is the goddess Uma. Eleventh century. There are only five sculptures like that in the world. In the temple she would have been dressed in gold jewellery – most of the jewellery manufactured before she was. An elaborate crown, necklace, pendant and belt.'

‘Is jewellery the kind of thing you could also dig up?'

‘Rarely, but yes, there have been discoveries of jewellery stashes. They would be buried in earthenware pots in difficult times. A lot of broken empty pots have been found where the jewellery has already been stolen.'

The music had stopped. Windsor made a gesture and a few moments later it started again.

‘I donated some royal regalia to Cambodia's National Museum last year. I'm trying to persuade other collectors to do the same so the art is preserved in its country of origin. I also gave money to install a modern security system – now the gold is in a special room with locks, alarm systems, track lighting and camera.'

Windsor was looking back up at the balcony.

‘I raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to light the museum – and to fix the ceiling. You know, since the Khmer Rouge allowed the museum to fall into disrepair it has been an uphill struggle. The ceiling was infested with bats for decades. The basements where most of the collection was stored – badly – flooded every monsoon season. I've been awarded the country's highest honour for all that I've done. Do you really think I would at the same time be looting the country I love?' He shook his head vigorously. ‘I hope to retire to Cambodia to live what few years I have left there.'

‘How many pieces do you have?' Gilchrist said, as she walked over to him. She glanced up. Whoever he had looked up at on the balcony was no longer there.

‘Here? Probably one hundred in bronze, gold and stone. I only buy what I feel I can live with and what improves my collection.'

‘And the things in your shop?' Watts said.

‘One or two have been in my collection. But you know these days I do swaps. A friend of mine has a companion piece to that Vishnu. I've coveted it for ten years. I think I've finally persuaded him to part with it in return for several south Indian pieces I've tired of.'

‘You're a patient man,' Gilchrist said.

He nodded and walked over to a sculpture that was a kind of tableau: someone cross-legged with someone else bowing to him. ‘This is Shiva being worshipped by his son, Skanda. It was probably made for the new capital at Lingapura – Koh Ker, it is called today – around
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940. It is a single piece of sandstone. I've wanted it since 1967. When I saw it then Shiva's head was separate, and his arms and Skanda's feet were broken. An American dealer bought it. He sold it on to a California museum who put it seamlessly back together. They sold it to buy some French Impressionist paintings – as if there weren't enough of those on display in the world's art galleries. I traced the private collector who had bought it and cultivated him.'

Windsor had a small coughing fit then he continued: ‘He is fond of baccarat. I persuaded him that we should wager on the piece.'

‘You won it in a game of cards?' Gilchrist said. ‘I thought that only happened in fiction.'

‘I think it does. No, not that. But he agreed that if I beat him over an evening's baccarat he would sell it or swap it. It was a long, long night but by dawn's early light I had the Shiva and he had four particularly nice pieces of mine from Sri Lanka. I had picked them up for a song but he didn't know that – and they are indeed worth much, much more than I paid.'

He beckoned to Gilchrist. ‘Come closer then you can see the sheer bliss on Skanda's adoring face.'

Gilchrist did as she was asked, then nodded. ‘Lovely,' she said. She really was out of her depth.

‘Do you mind my asking how many staff you have here?' Watts said, moving over to join them.

‘Oh, I'd need to check that with my major-domo. He handles all that kind of thing.'

‘Did a young man called Youk Chang work for you?' Watts continued as he drew close.

Windsor frowned. ‘The name does not sound familiar but again you should perhaps talk to my major-domo.'

‘Would that be Mr Klingman? Is he here now?'

‘Alas not. He is down at my boat overseeing its provisioning.'

‘You're going somewhere?'

‘Evidently. But then I am always going somewhere. My rootlessness is, alas, my curse. Perhaps my collecting is an attempt to anchor myself in one place.'

He looked up at the balconies.

‘You know, I love all good art. And I deal in atrocious art. I'm so grateful for BritArt as it makes money to allow me to buy good art. Pickled this, unmade that, childish scrawls, adolescent ramblings, the whiff of formaldehyde. All rubbish, but it allows me to collect Fabergé. He was in Siam in 1904 and made pieces for the royal family there and in Cambodia.'