Michael shrugged. ‘As your lawyer and adviser, I have to ask the question.’
Miles knew he had to be convincing. ‘Look, I’m as surprised and horrified by this as you are,’ he said. ‘My family has owned that island for thirty years and I can assure you I know nothing about any body. Anyway, we have no idea how old these remains are, do we? It could be the bones of bloody Blackbeard for all we know.’
Michael nodded, his eyes still searching Miles’ face. Did he see something there? wondered Miles.
‘Have they interviewed Nelson?’ he asked, if only to deflect Michael’s scrutiny. As soon as the deal with Fairmont had been announced, he had made sure Michael dealt with Nelson’s severance from his job. He didn’t want to run the risk of the long-term caretaker being viewed as a sitting tenant. A temporary handyman had been installed in Nelson’s place.
‘No.’
‘Well make sure Nelson is out of the way; pack him off to Timbuktu if you have to. And make sure this new handyman keeps quiet too. I want us to deal with this directly.’
Michael’s expression was still serious. ‘You do know they are going to want to talk to you?’
‘I can understand that,’ said Miles. ‘But we really have to nip this in the bud before there’s talk. You need to get out to Nassau – today. In the meantime, we need to contain the story.’
‘Miles, I think you should come with me,’ said Michael.
‘What? For some old pirate bones?’ he snapped. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. ’
Michael shook his head. ‘Even so, you need to go. The police are going to get suspicious if you don’t cooperate fully and it’s going to look strange if this does leak and you’re sitting in an office in New York. If the press twist this the wrong way, it could be a major scandal. Now’s not the time, Miles.’
Sighing, Miles nodded. Michael was right. There was no point hiding from this; they needed to get it sorted as soon as possible. Everything could be solved or hushed up when you had power and money.
‘Very well. Arrange for the jet to take us to Nassau.’
Grace was in the kitchen of their Spitalfields house, reading a trashy novel at the huge farmhouse table, when Julian poked his head into the room.
‘Can you fix us a snack?’ he said. ‘We’re getting a bit peckish. Some sandwiches with that nice cheese maybe.’
He had been locked in a meeting with his business manager Lars Johnstone for a couple of hours now. Grace fought her irritation. He was spending more and more time with Lars and his trendy east London artist crowd and only seemed to notice her when he needed something. Yesterday he’d walked in and said, ‘You do know we’re out of bog roll,’ like she was a maid who wasn’t doing her job. Perhaps she wasn’t. Julian didn’t seem to be satisfied with anything about her at the moment.
‘Sure,’ she said, shutting her book. ‘What are you doing down there anyway?’
‘Just talking tactics.’
?
??Oh yes? For what?’
He sighed. ‘We’re thinking about having a big one-off auction of my latest work. Lars thinks Zenras at Moonlight might go for twenty million.’
Grace frowned. ‘I thought you were planning to show that collection at the Singleton Gallery?’
‘Nah. Thought we’d cut Neil out of this one.’
Neil Singleton was Julian’s long-term dealer, the man who had plucked him straight out of Goldsmiths and navigated his career into the stratosphere. Admittedly, the forty per cent commission he took from all his sales was more than adequate compensation, but Grace was a little unsettled by Julian’s casual dismissal of someone who had been so pivotal in his development.
‘Isn’t Neil going to be a bit pissed off about being bypassed?’
‘I make the rules now, Grace,’ Julian said. ‘If we make what Lars thinks we can make at auction, I’m thinking of buying something really special. An island. A massive yacht.’
She laughed nervously. ‘Julian, we don’t need a yacht.’
His eyes narrowed and his voice took on a petulant edge. ‘Strictly speaking we don’t need anything, do we?’ he said. ‘This book. That pan. That clock on the wall. None of it’s really necessary, is it? But you want it all, don’t you?’
She could tell he was spoiling for a fight again. It was happening more and more these days. Julian would sneer and snipe at her until it blew up into a row, then he would have the excuse to storm off and spend the night ‘at Lars”.
‘OK, OK,’ she said, standing up and walking over to the big steel fridge. ‘I’ll just make those sandwiches, shall I?’