The Hawk Is Dead

79

Tuesday 28 November 2023

‘It’s not going to happen, boss.’ Glenn turned into Westbourne Villas in Hove and pulled into a parking bay. ‘Cheer up!’

Grace glanced at his watch. It was 2.15 p.m. ‘History repeats itself. Isn’t that right? The lesson of history is that man does not learn the lesson of history,’ he replied gloomily. He’d been brooding on his conversation with Greg Mosse for the past hour, while Branson drove them down from London. It was clouding his thoughts, preventing him from focusing fully on the case.

Branson shook his head. ‘The man is not up to the job. ACC Downing is smart and so is the Chief.’ He slowed and turned into a parking space, halted the car and switched off the engine. Then he put out an arm and gave Grace a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘They’ll see through him. It won’t happen.’

‘I wish I had your optimism.’

‘Have as much of it as you like — help yourself, dig deep.’

Grace smiled. Then he frowned again as they climbed out of the car into a strong wind, and looked at the faded cream paintwork of the Regency corner building.

There were several steps up to a door that was long overdue a lick of dark blue paint. To its right was an entry-phone panel with a row of names. Branson pressed the one for ‘S. Kendall’ and a few moments later they heard her voice, no friendlier than it had been in the prison interview room yesterday.

‘Yes?’

They entered a messy communal hallway, illuminated by a meagre, bare lightbulb. The floor was covered in leaflets from local takeaways and food delivery companies, and two padlocked bicycles were propped against a flaking wall.

Moments later a door to their right opened, and Shannon Kendall summoned them in, barely uttering a word of greeting. She looked little different to yesterday, pale, wearing a faded jogging top, tracksuit bottoms and worn trainers. The flat was small and sparsely furnished, a large window with black vertical blinds looking out across the busy Kingsway towards the sea. The white paint on the walls looked reasonably fresh, and the flat felt inviting, compared to the dowdy common parts of the building, Grace thought.

She led the two detectives up a short staircase to a mezzanine, where there was a whole bank of monitors in front of a semicircular desk. A rucksack was slung over the back of her chair, and a large plastic bottle of water was on the worktop beside her keypad. All the time she eyed them as if suspicious of their motives.

‘How’s it going, Shannon?’ Grace said, trying to break the ice. ‘Good to be home?’

‘Do you know anything about miniatures, Detective Superintendent?’ she asked, glancing equally at Glenn Branson.

‘Miniatures?’ Grace replied.

‘Hans Holbein the Younger?’

He stared at her blankly.

‘Wasn’t he a painter?’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Didn’t realize you were so cultured,’ Roy ribbed.

‘His name came up in a pub quiz a few weeks ago,’ Branson retorted with a grin.

‘OK, you guys know about the dark web,’ Shannon said, ‘so I won’t bother giving you the kindergarten guide. You know it’s also formed of layers that keep peeling away as you delve deeper into it. The first few layers take you into marketplaces. There are plenty of legitimate products on sale, but it’s more about illegal ones — mostly drugs, counterfeit goods, weapons and stolen data. Then there’s a whole layer for untraceable communications for the likes of whistle-blowers, political activists, and people living in countries where there is strong censorship or no freedom of speech.’ She swigged from her water bottle before continuing.

‘Then a whole section of forums and chat rooms — ranging from everything from basic hobbies to the really nefarious places you do not want to visit, like photos and videos of cannibalism, fatal accident victims and crime scenes. Another focuses on the dark side of sex in all its variants, one of which is sadomasochism, which gets increasingly dark and nasty. Then the full English of kiddy porn — I don’t even want to think about that.’

For the first time since he had met her, Grace saw a flash of emotion in Shannon Kendall’s face — it was revulsion.

‘Then we have tools and services for hacking — such as malware and stolen IDs and other credentials. Buried even deeper beneath all this we find international arms dealing — at a nuclear level. Stuff like enriched uranium for sale. And down in the weeds, very cleverly concealed in the midst of all that shit, is what might interest you two detectives.’

‘Which is, Shannon?’ Grace asked.

‘High-end stolen works of art. And I’m talking very high-end. Collectors happy to pay millions for works they know to be stolen and they know they can never display publicly or sell — at least not for a few generations.’

‘We’ve come across people like that,’ Glenn Branson said.

Shannon nodded. ‘Oh yes. The thrill of ownership of some work of art of international interest — of knowing they are the only people in the world who can see it — to some people that’s better than the best sex.’ She smiled.

‘OK,’ Grace said.

‘That’s why I asked you about Hans Holbein. Well, to be correct, Hans Holbein the Younger.’ She looked pointedly at Branson. ‘Did “miniatures” ever come up in a pub quiz?’

He shook his head.

Becoming increasingly animated, Shannon said, ‘The camera wasn’t invented until the mid-1820s — and the internet a little bit later... Before then, if you wanted to know what someone you had never met looked like — and you had the money to pay for it — you would hire a miniaturist. They would paint a watercolour portrait of them and send it to you—’

‘Is this art lesson necessary, Shannon?’ Grace asked.

‘Very,’ she replied. ‘With respect, please hear me out. In 1539, Henry VIII was anxious to strengthen England’s position in Europe. An alliance with the Protestant German states, through a marriage with either Anne of Cleves or her sister, both related to the Duke of Cleves, would have been a smart move to counteract the power of the Catholic Hapsburgs, who were dominating much of central Europe at the time.’ She took a swig from her water bottle, but did not offer either of them a drink. ‘His third wife, Jane Seymour, had conveniently died and he was free to marry again. The Duchy of Cleves were totally on board, and commissioned Hans Holbein the Younger to paint miniatures of both Anne of Cleves and her sister. It also appears — although there is no hard evidence to prove it — that they encouraged Holbein to be somewhat flattering and he duly obliged — probably out of fear of being beheaded. The portrait Henry VIII subsequently received might, in today’s idiom, be deemed to have been photoshopped. When The King actually saw her in the flesh for the first time, he felt deceived and was furious. He went ahead with the marriage, purely for political reasons, but history tells us the marriage was never consummated.’

‘She was beheaded?’ Branson asked.

Shannon shook her head. ‘Henry wasn’t a fool, he needed the alliance. They divorced and had an amicable — almost brother-and-sister — relationship for the rest of her life. She actually outlived all his other wives, quite some feat.’ She took another swig of her water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘One of the miniatures I’ve just described is in the Royal Collection; it’s the only one of Anne of Cleves in existence and it’s of incalculable value. The RCIN is 422297. It is also currently the subject of an international auction on the dark web. Bids have been invited from a known group of collectors around the world. So far there are four bidders. One in Georgia, one in Taiwan, one in the USA and one in Argentina. Because of its historical significance and provenance, it is likely to sell for well over £2 million, which is the current bid.’

Grace and Branson looked at her in astonishment. ‘You know all this for certain, Shannon?’ Grace asked.

‘Do you think I’m making it up?’ she demanded.

Grace shook his head. ‘No. Are you able to establish who is actually selling it?’

‘I’m working on that now,’ she said. ‘Whoever it is knows how to cover their tracks extremely well.’

‘Shannon,’ Branson asked, ‘how computer savvy would someone need to be to access and navigate the dark web well enough to do what you’ve just told us?’

She looked pointedly at them. ‘What do you guys think? To go as deep as whoever this is, you’d need to be able to write code, Roy.’

Grace frowned. ‘Computer code?’

‘Yes, you’d have to code — write — a program that would squirrel its way deep into the dark web. A coding language like Python, which is currently a popular one as it’s relatively user-friendly.’

‘Could anyone learn to do this?’

‘You’d need an in-depth level of experience, and you’d also, if you are savvy enough, use AI to help you. But,’ Shannon added, ‘once it has been set up, anyone computer-literate could learn to navigate it pretty quickly.’

‘So I could, or Glenn?’

‘Pretty well anyone, Roy.’

‘So what kind of people — by that I mean their background — would have the skills to do this?’ Grace asked Shannon.

‘A fairly wide number. There are plenty of trained computer programmers around the world who’d be able to. Some of them from military intelligence, too.’

‘How exactly does this auction take place, Shannon?’ Branson asked.

‘The way it’s been set up is using a forum called Dread — it’s probably the only forum on the dark web that is trusted, in that you can rely on stuff that’s on it. The Buckingham Palace thieves have posted a cryptic message on a Dread bulletin board, and clearly they’ve done this before, multiple times. Those who’ve been buyers before will recognize the message, and indicate if they want to register for the auction.’

‘What was the cryptic message?’ Branson asked.

‘Baking banana, white chocolate and raspberry cake.’

‘What?’ Grace frowned.

Shannon smiled. ‘It’s totally innocuous and meaningless to anyone except those who actually know. It’s a signal to potential bidders. On the assumption this isn’t their first rodeo, they would already have user names and passwords issued, and the details of a Bitcoin account set up by the vendors, into which they would make part payment in the event of a winning bid, with the balance on delivery. Those interested would communicate with the vendors via an app called Telegram — which is end-to-end encrypted. As each bid comes in, it is invisible to all the others.

‘It was developed by two Russians,’ she added. ‘Designed to be completely secure.’

‘But not so secure that you couldn’t penetrate it?’ Grace quizzed.

She answered blithely, ‘Nothing is too secure, if I’m given enough time.’

‘I take it you think other items stolen from the Royal Collection have been sold this way?’ Grace asked.

‘Either by auction or straight sale, yes. For sure. Whoever is behind this doesn’t think they’re leaving any footprints, but they are. They are smart — very smart indeed. But I’m more up to date and, more importantly, I’m smarter!’

‘And modest with it,’ Branson said with a grin.

She gave him a strange look. ‘I’m with Muhammad Ali when he said, It’s hard to be modest when you’re as great as I am.’

Branson was — for one of the few occasions in his life — left nonplussed and unsure how to respond. Grace came to his rescue.

‘OK, Shannon, so you are brilliant. That’s why you’re here and not still in prison. Are you able to identify the four bidders in the auction?’

‘Actually, there are now five bidders,’ she retorted.

‘Five? Where is the fifth one located?’

‘You’re looking at her.’