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The English Assassin :: Silva Daniel
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“Who’s Werner Müller?”
“He’s an art dealer and my father’s chief adviser. He oversaw the design and construction of this place.”
“Is he Swiss?”
She nodded. “He has two galleries. One in Lucerne and the other in Paris near the rue de Rivoli. He spends most of his time there. Seen enough?”
“For now.”
“There’s something else I want to show you.”
Back up the elevator, another walk through the darkened villa to a windowless chamber of winking electronics and video monitors. Gabriel could see the villa from every angle: the street, the entrance, the gardens front and back.
“In addition to the security cameras, every inch of the property is covered by motion detectors,” Anna said. “The windows and doors all have trip wires and alarms. My father didn’t employ a full-time security guard, but the house was impenetrable and he could summon the police in a matter of seconds in the event of an intruder.”
“So what happened on the night of the murder?”
“The system failed inexplicably.”
“How convenient.”
She sat down in front of a computer terminal. “There’s a separate system for the room downstairs. It’s activated when the outer door opens. The time of entry is automatically logged, and inside the room two digital cameras begin recording still images every three seconds.”
She typed in a few characters on the keyboard, moved the mouse, clicked. “This is when we entered the room, twelve forty-nine a.m., and here we are inside.”
Gabriel leaned over her shoulder and peered into the computer monitor. A grainy color image of their visit appeared on the screen and then dissolved, only to be replaced by another. Anna worked the mouse again. A directory appeared.
“This is the master list of visits to that room for the past three months. As you can see, my father spent a great deal of time with the collection. He came down at least once a day, sometimes twice.” She touched the screen with her forefinger. “Here’s his last visit, shortly after midnight, the morning he was murdered. The security system shows no other entries after that.”
“Did the police give you an estimate of when they thought he was killed?”
“They said around three A.M.”
“So it stands to reason that the same people who killed your father also took the paintings and that it probably happened around three o’clock in the morning, six hours before I arrived at the villa.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Gabriel pointed to the last entry on the screen.
“Who’s Werner Müller?”
“He’s an art dealer and my father’s chief adviser. He oversaw the design and construction of this place.”
“Is he Swiss?”
She nodded. “He has two galleries. One in Lucerne and the other in Paris near the rue de Rivoli. He spends most of his time there. Seen enough?”
“For now.”
“There’s something else I want to show you.”
Back up the elevator, another walk through the darkened villa to a windowless chamber of winking electronics and video monitors. Gabriel could see the villa from every angle: the street, the entrance, the gardens front and back.
“In addition to the security cameras, every inch of the property is covered by motion detectors,” Anna said. “The windows and doors all have trip wires and alarms. My father didn’t employ a full-time security guard, but the house was impenetrable and he could summon the police in a matter of seconds in the event of an intruder.”
“So what happened on the night of the murder?”
“The system failed inexplicably.”
“How convenient.”
She sat down in front of a computer terminal. “There’s a separate system for the room downstairs. It’s activated when the outer door opens. The time of entry is automatically logged, and inside the room two digital cameras begin recording still images every three seconds.”
She typed in a few characters on the keyboard, moved the mouse, clicked. “This is when we entered the room, twelve forty-nine a.m., and here we are inside.”
Gabriel leaned over her shoulder and peered into the computer monitor. A grainy color image of their visit appeared on the screen and then dissolved, only to be replaced by another. Anna worked the mouse again. A directory appeared.
“This is the master list of visits to that room for the past three months. As you can see, my father spent a great deal of time with the collection. He came down at least once a day, sometimes twice.” She touched the screen with her forefinger. “Here’s his last visit, shortly after midnight, the morning he was murdered. The security system shows no other entries after that.”
“Did the police give you an estimate of when they thought he was killed?”
“They said around three A.M.”
“So it stands to reason that the same people who killed your father also took the paintings and that it probably happened around three o’clock in the morning, six hours before I arrived at the villa.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Gabriel pointed to the last entry on the screen.