The Tooth Tattoo(109)

‘Making chess sets?’

‘Ivory chess sets.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’

‘Mammoth ivory isn’t. They’re digging it out of the permafrost in Northern Russia when the snow melts. It’s a huge resource. They believe millions – literally millions – of woolly mammoth skeleton remains are waiting to be uncovered. It’s cheap and legal and every bit as good as elephant ivory.’

‘Is Ivan selling it as elephant ivory?’

Harry shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t take the risk. He’s straight with his customers. He still has a sizeable mark-up on the chess-sets, hawking them everywhere the quartet goes on tour.’

‘And did you ask for a stake in it?’

‘Ask Ivan? No chance. You couldn’t blackmail him. What he’s doing is legal. Well, he’s paying no tax, but I wouldn’t shop him to the revenue. No, I thought a lot about it, how I might turn a few honest pennies. There are all sorts of ivory products in short supply because of the ban on killing elephants. The trading still goes on, obviously, and thousands of elephants are shot each year. The main market is the Far East. Decorative combs, chopsticks, fans, all that stuff. And netsuke. You know what they are?’

Mel nodded.

‘I decided to branch out on my own as a mammoth-ivory netsuke dealer. The idea wasn’t totally new. Netsuke were already being created and supplied. I just had to find my own carver and eventually I did. We gave a concert in Vladivostok and had two days to ourselves. I don’t know how good your geography is. Vladivostok is the last station on the Orient Express run, only a boat trip from Japan. It has a thriving Japanese quarter. I found a whole street of shops selling ornaments, mostly antique. There were a few new netsuke for sale there, quite highly priced. By this time I’d read up about ivory and how you identify it, which is quite a study in itself. Basically, in a cross-section you look at the graining, called Schreger lines, and how narrow they are. I wasn’t an expert by any means, but I managed to convince the shopkeeper I was. With the help of a magnifying glass and some bluffing I let him think I was some kind of inspector from the Environmental Enforcement Agency. He was bricking it. He assured me his netsuke were legitimate mammoth ivory and produced the paperwork with the name and address of his carver. Just what I needed.’

‘Was the carver local?’

‘Three or four blocks away. I looked up my guy the same afternoon and did a deal. He was Japanese born, a sensational carver, and of course apart from the quality of the workmanship the beauty for me was that the product was small, light in weight and just about unbreakable – ideal for travel. Much more cost-effective than Ivan’s chess sets, which take up a lot of space in his luggage.’

‘Did you tell Ivan what you were up to?’

‘No. He’s a prickly character, as you must know by now.’

‘Then why are you telling me?’

‘I’ll come to that. My netsuke business really took off in Europe. I’d seek out the upmarket shops and sell at profit of more than a hundred percent. Even better, it was becoming a hobby, weaning me off the poker. I got a real kick out of having a product everyone admired and coveted. I was paying off my casino debts. I thought nothing could go wrong – which, as anyone knows, is exactly when you’re due for a kick where it hurts most.’

‘What happened?’ Mel asked.

‘I was green as owl-shit. Should have realised if there was money to be made this way, then someone else would already be doing it.’

‘Who was it?’

‘A Japanese syndicate. I didn’t know they were already trading in ivory objects in just about every capital city in Europe and Asia. But their trade was the illegal kind, ivory from slaughtered elephants. Ten tonnes a year. That represents around a thousand elephant deaths.’

‘That’s horrible,’ Mel said.

‘There’s still a huge demand for the stuff. People don’t seem to make the connection with a noble, giant creature that has a time-honoured right to exist. But you don’t need a lecture from me. You obviously feel the same disgust I do. Okay, I was profiteering, too, but from fossilised material. As it turned out, this was my undoing. Some alert member of the syndicate got to know about me and decided to act. But they believed I was in direct competition, trading in elephant ivory. They decided to take a close look at my carver’s work, so they set a honey-trap.’

‘A woman?’

‘In 2008, the Staccati gave a concert in Vienna, at the Konzerthaus. We were at the top of our form that night, playing the Debussy in G minor – all those restless harmonies – followed by Mendelssohn’s charming A minor with its quotations from Beethoven. I was elated when we finished, fair game, I suppose, for the young Japanese woman from the audience who came up afterwards and spoke to us, thanking us in turn for enchanting her with our playing. You’ll know yourself that some fans just gush and you wish they’d go away. It became obvious that this woman was a scholar of music. She talked about the closing bars echoing the ending of the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Opus 130 and how our interpretation of those final four quavers had brought the homage to a perfect conclusion. Do you know the piece?’