Page 93 of King’s Ransom

I nodded at Georgy. ‘Hey, have you got a car?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘It’d be really helpful if you could drive me around on my investigations. Would you be able to do that?’

Georgy looked from me to Yasmina. ‘But, of course. Anything to help my cousin.’

He gathered up his things, kissed Yasmina on the cheek and joined me at the door.

We knocked and two guards came: one to let us out, the other to take Yasmina back to her cell.

‘Please, Sam Speedman,’ Yasmina said. ‘Help me. All I want is to get back to my children. I did not do this.’

‘I’m on it, ma’am,’ I said and left with Georgy.

Georgy’s car turned out to be a clunky old red Toyota Yaris. It was parked in the jail’s visitor lot.

We got in.

‘Where to, Dr Sam?’ Georgy asked.

‘Just a moment.’

I pulled out my notepad and pen (from the very convenient pockets on my new Patagonia jacket).

I needed to formulate a plan because there were many questions to answer.

What had the events of December 21st actually been about?

To take millions of dollars from Aristo King?

To humiliate him?

And why employ the Grandmaster to do it with elaborate deathtraps and riddles? Why not just extort Aristo King the old-fashioned way?

And there was another question for me now: if it hadn’t been Yasmina Ivanova who’d paid for it all, then who would want to set her up for it?

Where to start?

In my notepad, I sketched a quick diagram of Yasmina’s connections:

I stared at the web of connections.

None of them struck me as criminal geniuses, except for maybe the guy who’d spoken to me in the sauna. He’d been a cool customer.

A word about criminal masterminds.

In the first ten seconds of the first lecture I attended on my first day studying criminology at Rice University, my lecturer Professor Lincoln Abbott said, ‘First and foremost, let me be crystal clear about this: there are no criminal masterminds in the real world. If any of you came here looking for that, then you’re gonna be sorely disappointed. There are no evil geniuses: no Moriartys, no Jokers. Most crimes are usually the result of one of three things: opportunity, passion or plain old stupidity.’

My subsequent experiences as a private detective had proven Professor Abbott to be correct.

There were no criminal masterminds out there.

Idiots stole parked cars when they saw that the engine was running (opportunity); organised crime gangs like the Russians at Coney Island were usually thugs who saw an occasion to profit via intimidation (again: opportunity).

Men beat their wives or killed them (passion).

After drinking too much, men and women got into fights/crashed their cars/stole stuff (stupidity).