Killing the Emperors by Ruth Dudley Edwards Read Free Book Online Page B

‘Where the hell am I? Someone put on the light.’
    Someone obliged almost immediately, and neon lighting flooded the room. A few seconds later it went off again, then on again, giving the baroness no time to see anything except that she was in small, plain room. After a couple of minutes of flickering, she shouted irritably, ‘Stop doing that, for Christ’s sake.’
    ‘Feerst say please,’ ordered a disembodied, guttural voice.
    The baroness started. ‘Who and where the hell are you?’ The lights continued to flicker. ‘I said stop doing that,’ she yelled.
    ‘I say you feerst say please, Laidee Troutbeck.’
    ‘So you did. Please stop doing that whoever you are.’ The lights stopped flickering.
    ‘You thanking me.’
    ‘That’s pushing it,’ she snarled.
    ‘You thanking me or light go on off again. In o-maj.’
    ‘In what?’
    ‘O-maj. Martin Creed.’
    ‘Martin Bloody Creed? Turner Prize.’ The baroness groaned. ‘I remember. He won with The Lights Going On and Off , didn’t he? Now would you kindly explain what has brought about this elaborate practical joke?’
    ‘I explain later. Maybe.’ As the lights began to flicker again, the baroness muttered ‘Thank you,’ with a bad grace, and they stayed on.
    ‘Now why am I here and who are you?’
    ‘You prisoner. No escape or you want crazy Albanian kill you. They look to you, they listen you all time, all day, all night. Have knives. Machine guns.’
    The baroness looked around her, observed that there was a CCTV camera and that the only window appeared to be covered with corrugated iron, tested one door that led to a windowless bathroom and another which was firmly locked. She guessed she was in a portacabin.
    ‘I see. And who is my genial host?’
    ‘You know who I am, Laidee Troutbeck.’
    ‘It’s Oleg, isn’t it?’
    ‘I Sarkovsky.’
    ‘Oleg, I know we parted brass rags…’
    ‘What means this?’
    ‘I know we had a row, but is that a sufficient reason to kidnap and imprison me? And, indeed, to address me so formally.’
    ‘Situation formal. You discover later. Now, you wait.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘It is secret.’ He sniggered. ‘You say much. Now I say. I deep also. And busy man. I go. Goodbye.’
    ***
    The baroness’ rant to her friends about the iniquities of Sir Henry Fortune and Jason Pringle had included the information that Fortune was regarded by the deferential art world as a person of such eminence that even Sir Nicholas Serota himself could not have looked down on him. True, he had never been in charge of a major art collection, but he made sure everyone knew that his record in running fashionable museums abroad was second to none. He had managed to get himself appointed to curate several major exhibitions in British museums and also served as an international artistic adviser to a variety of galleries and arts councils with the occasional visiting professorship thrown in. An invaluable committee man who could be relied upon to know who would be the winners in any internecine fighting in the art world, his complete lack of artistic integrity served him well. The baroness had actually remarked that whatever you thought of bloody Sclerota, he seemed genuinely to believe his own noxious propaganda, while Fortune would have his own granny cleft in twain and exhibited in formaldehyde if that won him another cushy job.
    Sir Henry was very thick with Pringle, with whom he’d been an item since they were students at the Courtauld Institute. It was reputed that it was Pringle who first gave him the nickname ‘Bubbles,’ which he hated but which stuck, even now that his red curls had long departed. Although it was common gossip that Pringle’s insatiable appetite for redheads and Fortune’s less frequent mooning after darkish teenage hunks occasionally caused massive rows in which there was much accusation and counter-accusation about gingers and rent-boys, their partnership seemed rock solid. As unkind people said, they