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‘Ask your question,’ he stated.
‘Why would Sheikh Abrani say that his painting was fake when it wasn’t?’
INTERVIEWER ONE: What kind of question is that?
MS KEATING: One he wasn’t expecting.
INTERVIEWER TWO: Why didn’t you just ask him where the painting was?
MS KEATING: He would have found a way round it.
INTERVIEWER TWO: But he promised to tell you the truth.
MS KEATING: [sighs] He would have said, In a crate, or Somewhere safe, or I don’t know—which could easily have been the real answer if he’d asked someone to take it off his hands for a while and not tell him where it was being kept.
INTERVIEWER TWO: Huh.
INTERVIEWER ONE: So why did you ask about the Sheikh?
It was honestly the very last thing that Sebastian had expected to come out of her mouth. He’d been curious to see what direction she would take and had certainly given her enough credit to know that she wouldn’t be crass enough to come straight out and ask if he’d done it.
But that she’d veered so completely from what he’d expected, planned and prepared for her to ask... That was clever.
‘I’m not sure how I would know the answer to that question,’ he hedged.
‘Take a run at it,’ she said coolly, just as the wind picked up in the leaves on the plants placed at either corner of the roof terrace.
He looked across the skyline, unseeing of the shapes that interrupted the night sky, the way that lit windows merged with stars, the moon shining down on them all, and instead picked his words carefully.
‘The Sheikh won’t admit to the theft because it’s in his interests also for there to be no fuss about this.’
‘Why?’
‘If there is a theft investigation then the police would be involved and they would discover that the Sheikh is hardly a pillar of the community.’
‘But the theft has cost him one hundred million pounds,’ Sia said, apparently appalled by the loss of an inconceivable sum of money.
‘So, imagine the amount he’s protecting from a criminal investigation. These days they’re a little more hot on state representatives taking bribes and making backroom deals than they once were.’
‘What do you mean?’
He sighed, not having imagined the turn the conversation would take that evening. ‘What do you know of the Sheikh?’ he asked.
‘I met him only that once, when I was in Sharjarhere to evaluate the Durrántez.’
‘What did you think of him?’
Sia searched her mind, unable to shake the feeling that this was some kind of test.
‘I was only introduced to him and then he...’ she shrugged ‘...left. I can’t say that he filled me with warmth and joy, but he didn’t have to.’ Only that wasn’t quite the truth. Now that she forced herself to look back and consider what he had been like, she remembered that she hadn’t liked the way that he had treated his staff, nor the feeling that had permeated the walls of the palace. A feeling that was very much like fear, or the expectation of it at least.
‘Let me tell you a little something about the Sheikh. Like many rulers, he is well educated, obscenely rich, incredibly well connected, which of course has absolutely nothing to do with the first two. On the surface he appears to be open-minded, fairly interested in ecological developments, was one of the first to sign the Paris Climate Agreement, and has an incredible breeding programme for his thoroughbred racehorses which also seeks to support endangered animals.’
‘What’s not to like?’ she asked, even though she knew that something was coming. Something she almost didn’t want to know.
‘What’s not to like is that beneath the surface he is a despot who brings his full force down upon someone’s head if he deems that person to have offended or simply not done as was asked. His vengeance is cruel, bordering on psychotic, and there are areas beneath his palace where family members are kept and abused for his pleasure. Their crime? Wanting to leave the country. Four of his daughters were married in political alliances before they were sixteen, and the youngest only managed to escape this fate by the fact he literally gambled away her hand in marriage. And that, Sia, was considered a good thing by his daughter. It was her only lifeline to freedom.’
‘But that’s...inconceivable.’
