“You’re right,” Delaney said. “An eight and a half million-pound whale.”
Tag laughed. “I’d be lucky if I sold it for eight pounds fifty. Did you know the most expensive sculpture in the world was sold for over 140 million dollars? Alberto Giacometti’s L’ Homme au doigt.”
“Pointing Man.”
“It’s a thin bronze sculpture. There’s six of them. I’ve seen the one in the Tate Gallery. I don’t think it’s worth that amount of money though.” He sank his teeth into the sandwich. It was delicious.
“How can any work of art be worth that much?”
Tag shrugged. “Someone just decided it was and that was that. If you’re mega-rich, what else do you have to spend your money on other than helping a shitload of people whose lives would be changed for the better by a few thousand quid? I feel the same about the National Lottery. It would be better to give a hundred people a million each than give one person a hundred million. Even better to give two hundred people half a million. But people wouldn’t buy tickets. They want the big money. I think it’s fairer to share it out. Does more good.”
Delaney smiled. “You’re a philanthropist now, are you?”
“Don’t they collect stamps?”
“Ha ha.”
“The sculptor is dead, so he won’t be making any more. That has something to do with it. Like the price of diamonds, I suppose. The rarer something is, the more expensive it is, the more it’s valued and admired. So… who knows where these diamonds are?”
“You, me and the whale.”
“I mean who knows you still have them?”
“The two who helped with the robbery might suspect I still have them. One of them in particular, if he was responsible for the tracker on my bag, and the men who paid a visit to my house. A few people in the organisation I work for know, and Rafiq too.”
“And they belong to Rafiq?”
“To Ahsan who told Rafiq to sell them if he disappeared. If he’s telling the truth.”
“Do you think he is?”
Delaney nodded. “He told me he’d give them up to get Ahsan back.”
Tag sighed. “He loves him.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you tell me to sell your diamonds if you disappeared?” Tag fluttered his eyelashes.
Delaney huffed. “I don’t have any.”
“Your guns then?”
“Oh yeah, that’s such a good idea.”
“You love them though. You took a lot of care cleaning them.”
“Love?” Delaney raised his eyebrows. “I look after them because I can’t afford for them to let me down. I take care of them, they take care of me.”
Tag swallowed hard. It shouldn’t come as a shock that Delaney was self-centred. With a job like his, he couldn’t afford not to be. “Do you work for MI5?”
“Do you expect me to answer that?”
“It’s not like I’ll tell anyone.”
Delaney chuckled.
“I wouldn’t! Are you like a hitman for them?”
