Free Killing the Emperors by Ruth Dudley Edwards Page A

board, as well as their equivalents in Sarkovsky’s various houses.’
    ‘Was he paying her as well?’
    ‘No. Just picking up all the tabs. But she had hopes of extracting a tidy donation from him for St. Martha’s.’
    ‘So for heaven’s sake, what was the problem? It sounds like a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Why would he want to kidnap her?’
    ‘They were falling out rather often, particularly about conceptual art, which other billionaires were buying in truckloads and which she consistently ridiculed. She got the impression that he was furious that Abramovich’s girlfriend had set up a centre for contemporary art in Moscow and that he was harbouring similar ambitions to do the same in St. Petersburg, where he was born. So to make sure he stayed on the artistic straight and narrow she missed no opportunity to beat him up any time he said a kind word about what she thought was crap. You know how tactless she can be.’
    ‘I certainly do,’ said Milton.
    ‘And although she was firmly of the view that she was successfully pretending she enjoyed his company, she despised him and it showed. If you think—as she does—that apart from low cunning he has no intellect, it’s hard to disguise. I heard her on the phone once berating him for tastelessness and generally taking the piss out of him about everything from his baldness to his struggles with English, for which he seemed to have no aptitude whatsoever. I don’t think he’s a man who would take that well.’
    ‘If people got violent with Jack every time she was tactless,’ observed Milton, ‘she’d have been dead and buried a long time ago.’
    ‘Most people aren’t Oleg Sarkovsky. Tell him, Ellis.’
    ‘Jack asked me to find out how dodgy he was, but then refused to take what I found out seriously enough.’
    ‘He’s a real villain, you mean?’
    ‘As I said to Jack, Russian oligarchs made billions through ruthlessly taking advantage of the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Depending on their point of view, you could call them entrepreneurs or you could call them bandits. Sarkovsky was never going to be Robin Hood. The trouble is he turned out to be more like the Sheriff of Nottingham.’
    ‘Didn’t he usually lose out to Robin?’ asked Amiss.
    ‘I mean in the sense of robbing the poor for the good of the rich. And showing no mercy. Sarkovsky was notoriously corrupt as well as rough with his business competitors. Some of them ended up dead.’
    ‘What did Jack say to this?’
    ‘That Russia in the early nineties resembled the Wild West, and one can’t judge it by the standards of Little-Moreton-on-the-Marsh. So I added that the word was he’s a bit of a psycho. And won’t brook criticism. A journalist who was on his trail ended up dead.’
    ‘Did she listen to that?’
    ‘Up to a point. She listened, but then she asked how that murder could be pinned on Sarkovsky considering Putin has journalists rubbed out as often as he shoots bears. To which I said that it couldn’t, but there were very good grounds for suspicion. Also, his most recent ex-wife is on the record accusing him of beating her up.’
    ‘Jack’s reaction to that?’
    ‘She asked if the ex-wife’s accusations had netted her an extra few tens of millions in the divorce settlement. And wanted more evidence about the deaths he’s alleged to have ordered. She was procrastinating, if you ask me.’
    Amiss shrugged. ‘There was a golden pot at the end of the rainbow for St. Martha’s, and that’s always Jack’s top priority.’
    ‘Doesn’t she mind where it comes from?’ asked Milton.
    ‘No. She long ago said fund-raising was prostitution and you didn’t demand that your clients had good conduct medals. Just as long as they didn’t give one the metaphorical clap.’
    ‘So she ignored your advice?’
    ‘Not completely,’ said Amiss. ‘I rang her just before she went with him to Marrakesh and she admitted being slightly perturbed. Myles