Five minutes later, and slightly to Strike’s surprise, because he’d anticipated a rebuff, he was led by the security man into a stark white office with another abstract painting hanging behind the uncluttered desk. Its occupant was a tall black woman in her thirties, who was dressed in a violet trouser suit and wore her hair in long spiral curls. The name plate on her desk declared her name to be Diana Boadu and her accent suggested a private education, though she displayed none of the superciliousness Strike might have expected from her stylish appearance and the beautifully appointed Edwardian building in which she worked. On the contrary, like the security man, Diana seemed intrigued if not mildly excited to be speaking to Cormoran Strike.
‘Why on earth are
‘He delivered the Murdoch silver,’ said Strike.
‘
‘But I’ve just found out he’s dead.’
‘Yes, I heard he’d died,’ said Diana, who didn’t seem unduly saddened by the fact. ‘But that was after we fired him – months later,’ she added, as though afraid that Strike might get the impression the sacking had somehow killed McGee.
‘Any idea what he died of?’
‘Carter might know, our Head of Deliveries, but I think he’s out on a job.’
‘Would you be comfortable giving me Carter’s contact details?’
Strike’s coffee arrived while Diana was dictating Carter’s number. When Strike had thanked the redhead, he said,
‘Could I ask what McGee did, to get himself sacked?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Diana. ‘I assume – I mean, given your reputation’ (Strike thought fleetingly of the recent press article about his behaviour towards women; apparently not everyone had read it) ‘you’re discreet?’
‘Very,’ he assured her, drawing out his notebook.
‘Well, we suspected him of theft.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The first incident concerned a pair of nineteenth-century Staffordshire pottery spaniels, which disappeared between the warehouse and the purchaser. The buyer was a fairly absent-minded collector and it took him a week to register that the spaniels hadn’t been in the delivery, because he’d bid on so many lots.
‘It was a tricky situation. They could’ve been stolen at the warehouse and never loaded into McGee’s van, and – well, candidly, there’s always a chance a buyer themselves is working a scam. We investigated, but we couldn’t prove anything, so we gave McGee the benefit of the doubt and reimbursed the buyer out of our insurance.’
‘McGee was alone on the delivery, was he?’
‘Yes,’ said Diana. ‘We usually send people out in pairs, but it was a particularly busy time, so he did this delivery alone. We think he spotted an opportunity.’
‘How much were these pottery dog things worth?’
‘Two to three thousand pounds,’ said Diana. ‘Then – oh, that’s Carter!’ she said in surprise.
Strike looked around to see a fit-looking white man in his early fifties looking through the glass panel of Diana’s door, fist raised to knock.
‘Come in, Charlie,’ she called.
‘Just wanted to tell you, the Burne-Jones delivery’s been postponed again,’ said Carter, opening the door and poking his head inside.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Diana crossly. ‘We aren’t a storage unit. He bought it, he needs to take receipt of it!’
‘He was calling from Istanbul.’
‘OK, fine,’ sighed Diana. ‘This is Cormoran Strike, Charlie. He’s a—’
‘Private detective, yeah,’ said Carter, sidling a little further into the room. ‘Bradley told me.’
Strike surmised that Bradley was the security man.
‘He’s here to talk about Larry McGee,’ said Diana. ‘D’you want to pull up a chair?’
Carter did so with such alacrity that Strike suspected the message about the delayed delivery had been a pretext to find out what was going on in Diana’s office. Carter looked ex-military or police; his thick grey hair was cut very short, his gaze was penetrating and his royal blue overalls were neatly pressed.
‘I’ve just been explaining about those disappearing dogs,’ Diana said. Turning back to the detective, she said, ‘Anyway, last January, the same thing happened on another delivery McGee made. This time, it was a kifwebe.’
‘A what?’ said Strike. If nothing else, the silver vault case was undoubtedly improving his vocabulary; first nefs, now this.
‘It’s a mask, produced by the Songye and Luba people. This was nineteen-twenties and especially fine, worth around five thousand. Again, it vanished between warehouse and purchaser and, again, the client had bought several items in the same auction, so didn’t immediately notice that one of the masks was missing. Two incidents of easily portable objects disappearing from multiple lots delivered to the same buyer, McGee the delivery driver on both—’
‘—is a hell of a coincidence,’ said Strike.
‘Well, quite.’
‘You’d let him go out alone again, had you?’