The Bosch Deception Page 14

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you should,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘So what was it? Were the paintings faked?’

  He winced.

  ‘Of course … It had to be something like that. But there’s more, isn’t there? I know. I can see it in your face. What else?’

  Again he hesitated.

  ‘Oh, come on, Nicholas, you have to tell me. I know too much to be innocent, and too little to be of any bloody good.’

  ‘I’ve told you, it’s dangerous.’

  ‘And I’ve told you, it’s too late to think about that. I’ve crossed over to your side now. All you have to do is to trust me.’ She took his hand, gripping it tightly. ‘Poor lost boy, hey? Henry was always so organised, I was always so confident, you – you were always such an outlaw.’

  He laughed, embarrassed.

  ‘All the girls fancied you, even when you came back from London that time with filthy hair and stinking. Yeah, you did stink. Uncle David was horrified – took to his rooms and turned the volume up on that old record player.’

  ‘And refused to talk to me for a week.’ Nicholas remarked. ‘Does the record player still work?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Honor said. Then, changing the subject, ‘How many women have you slept with?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  ‘I have a theory, you see. You were so randy when you were young, I reckoned that either you’d had too much sex or it had put you off completely. That’s why you could take a vow of chastity.’

  He glanced at her left hand. ‘You aren’t married.’

  ‘I was,’ Honor said, shrugging. ‘Didn’t last. And now I’m single at thirty-six, with no kids. Never wanted them, never will … Don’t run off again, please. You’re the only family I’ve got. There are only two of us left, Nicholas. We need each other. I have to get back to work now.’ Standing up she walked to the door and turned. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. Someone left a note for you on my car.’

  She rummaged in her bag and passed him the piece of folded paper.

  And then she watched as he read it and the colour left his face.

  Forty

  It was early, hardly light, when Nicholas awoke. For once he hadn’t dreamed, and now he was desperate to urinate. Moving into the bathroom he relieved himself, his hand resting on the wall over the cistern as a sudden wave of nausea came over him. Surprised, he waited for the feeling to pass, then walked out into the corridor. Even with the door of Father Michael’s room closed he could hear the snoring. He paused for a moment, listening to the old priest giving an abrupt snort and then rolling over in bed. The springs creaked and protested, but a moment later the snoring began again.

  Back in his room, Nicholas got into bed then paused, listening. He could hear footsteps on the gravel outside. Who would be walking around the church at four thirty in the morning? Flicking off his bedside light, he moved to the window and looked out. The gravel path was empty, the street lamp illuminating parked cars but nothing else. Certainly no figure moving around.

  Surprised, he returned to bed. Lying down, he felt something – a sharp object digging into his back. He snapped on the light and stared at the wooden crucifix lying in the centre of his bed. It hadn’t been there before he went to the toilet. Someone had come into his room and placed it there … Gingerly, Nicholas picked up the crucifix, then dropped it, standing up and backing away from the bed.

  It was not an ordinary crucifix. It was one he knew. But he hadn’t seen it for a long time.

  It was the one Nicholas had been given by his sister years earlier, when he had first become a priest. Grabbing the phone, he punched out Honor’s number.

  There was no answer.

  Forty-One

  Troubled by the events of the previous night, Nicholas eventually managed to contact Honor at eight o’ clock. His sister was puzzled by what he told her.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘The crucifix I gave you—’

  ‘Was in my bed last night. And I didn’t put it there,’ he snapped. ‘Someone was in the vestry and they put it there.’ His voice shook. ‘I heard footsteps, and in the time it took me to have a pee someone got in and planted that crucifix in my bed.’

  ‘Where was Father Michael?’

  ‘Asleep. I could hear him snoring,’ Nicholas retorted heatedly. ‘Anyway, do you really think an old priest would play a trick like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Honor replied, pouring herself a coffee and sitting down in her kitchen. ‘Who else could it have been? I mean, you’d have heard someone break in, wouldn’t you? You’re a light sleeper, Nicholas – that would have woken you.’

  ‘Unless they were already in the house.’

  She shivered. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘They were bound to come after me sooner or later,’ Nicholas replied. ‘They tried to frame me for Father Luke’s murder, but that didn’t stick, so now they have to find another way to stop me. They can’t kill me, that would be too obvious—’

  ‘Nicholas,’ Honor said softly, ‘you can’t really believe that the Catholic Church would murder you? That’s crazy.’

  ‘So now I’m going crazy?’

  ‘I didn’t say you were going crazy, I said the theory was crazy.’ Her voice was patient. ‘You’re under a lot of stress. You said yourself you weren’t sleeping. You could be imagining things—’

  ‘A crucifix in my bed!’ he snapped. ‘Father Michael said someone had been watching the church and he’s had phone calls in the middle of the night. When he answers, there’s no one there. I know I’m being followed, but now they’re upping the ante.’ He thought for a moment, ‘Maybe it was Father Dominic from St Barnabas’s. Father Luke’s running mate. He’s scared enough—’

  ‘You’re scaring me,’ Honor interrupted. ‘You have to calm down, get things into perspective.’

  Nicholas wasn’t listening.

  ‘It would have to be clever, nothing shocking,’ he went on. ‘They can’t kill me outright – it would be all over the papers and people would ask questions. Whistle-blower priest murdered would provoke some interest. Only a few people know about the Bosch deception, but someone would speak out if I were killed. The Church wants me to shut up, so they’re trying to frighten me.’

  ‘Give them the bloody papers!’ Honor snapped. ‘Who cares what happened to Hieronymus Bosch? No one. You’re tilting at windmills again, and you’re the one who’ll get hurt—’

  ‘But that’s the point. It might not be just me … I want you to go and stay with our uncle for a while—’

  ‘I’m not going to live with David Laverne again!’ she retorted. ‘And what makes you think that I’d be any safer in the country than in London? God, Nicholas, think about it. If someone wanted to harm me, they would have done so already. Besides, I don’t know what the deception is, do I? You never told me – not the whole story anyway.’

  ‘You mustn’t know it. Your safety is in not knowing it.’

  ‘Nicholas, please, calm down. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. This is madness—’

  ‘I don’t care if you think I’m a lunatic,’ Nicholas replied, his tone sharp. ‘Can’t you see what they’re doing? They want you to think I’m crazy, so that they can discredit what I say. Believe me, I know what these people are capable of, and if they can’t get to me they’ll go for the people I love.’ He cringed at the thought. ‘If you won’t go to the country, come here. Stay at St Stephen’s with us.’

  ‘I can’t just take time off work—’

  ‘Say you’re ill,’ Nicholas suggested. ‘This won’t go on for long, Honor. The chain’s being sold at auction in a few days’ time—’

  ‘So why don’t you put the papers up for auction as well?’

  He was taken aback. ‘What? I don’t want to raise money with them, I want to expose the Church for their part in the deception.’

  ‘Which you would if you sold them,’ Honor retorted. ‘And if “they” thought t
he papers were going to be public knowledge there would be no point in coming after you.’

  ‘I know what the secret is,’ he said wearily. ‘Whether I have the papers in my possession or not, I know the secret.’

  ‘So why haven’t you gone to the press with it? You did last time.’

  Nicholas smiled bitterly. ‘That’s the point – last time I was discredited. Who would believe me this time? They won’t. Unless someone respectable speaks out for me – like Father Michael. He offered, I didn’t ask him to. He wants to do it, to make amends for the past.’

  ‘And you’re going to let him?’ she asked incredulously. ‘You can be a right bastard, Nicholas.’

  ‘He wants to do it!’

  ‘And your arriving on his doorstep with a conspiracy theory didn’t force his hand?’ She slammed down her coffee cup. ‘You don’t really care about the deception; you just want to get your own back on the Church and you’re prepared to use an old man to do it.’

  ‘He offered.’

  ‘You knew he would! When you turned up out of the blue and told him about it, you knew he would have to help you. Catholic guilt and all that shit. I imagine poor Father Michael thinks he’ll get a front-row seat in Paradise for doing this.’ She shook her head. ‘You can fool other people, Nicholas, but not me. I know you.’

  ‘He wants to do it.’

  ‘Even if he gets killed? You might escape, Nicholas, with your religious celebrity, but what about some old man who’s on his last legs?’

  Her anger shook him. Why had Eloise Devereux brought him and his sister together again? Honor would have been safer kept out of it.

  ‘I didn’t want any of this—’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Honor countered. ‘Seems to me that it’s offering you a very convenient way to have another go at the Church.’

  ‘You think I was wrong to expose them?’

  ‘Not the first time, Nicholas,’ she replied. ‘I admired you for that. You stood up and told the world what had been done to those boys and it cost you. I know how much. I know what it did to you, physically and mentally. But this time – this time it just looks like you’re a conspiracy nut out for revenge.’

  ‘There are papers which prove the deception!’

  ‘And it was you that found the papers, wasn’t it? I mean, Sabine took the chain off the picture, but it was you who found the papers hidden inside.’

  ‘Yes, it was me. So what?’

  She hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘You took them out of their hiding place …’ she said quietly. ‘Or did you put them in?’

  Forty-Two

  Honor’s suspicion had shaken Nicholas. That his own sister could doubt him left him speechless as he put down the phone and cut the connection. He was still smarting when he saw Eloise later.

  ‘Why did you tell my sister what was going on?’ he asked, not even waiting for her to take a seat.

  Composed, she slid into the pew beside him. ‘I had to tell her that you were in trouble—’

  ‘And put her in danger?’

  ‘She’s your sister, she’s already in danger,’ Eloise replied, changing tack. ‘I have some news that might interest you. About Carel Honthorst—’

  ‘So why bother with the note?’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘What note?’

  ‘The one you left on Honor’s car earlier. The one she gave me an hour ago.’

  ‘I left no note.’

  Suspicious, Nicholas looked at her. ‘All right … so what have you found out about Honthorst?’

  ‘That he was a priest in Amsterdam. One of four sons, mother dead, father also dead. Apparently he was something of a tyrant when he was alive.’ She paused, thinking. ‘If you were told about Honthorst in a note, that means that someone else knows, apart from us. Perhaps someone wanted to warn you.’

  He passed her the note. On it was written:

  The Dutchman is an ex-priest.

  He is working for the Church too.

  Be wary of him.

  ‘Very melodramatic,’ Eloise said, passing it back. ‘Strange choice of words too. “Be wary” is not a normal expression – not nowadays anyway. Sounds like someone for whom English isn’t their first language. Or maybe he’s just an old-fashioned, educated man.’

  At once Nicholas thought of Sidney Elliott, the ageing academic. Had Elliott tipped him off? Nicholas doubted it – doubted he would have come all the way from Cambridge to leave a note on a car windscreen.

  ‘Of course,’ he said tentatively, ‘it could be a woman.’

  Eloise turned to Nicholas, eyes steady. ‘No, a woman wouldn’t leave a note on a car. It’s too exposed, too easy to be spotted that way. And besides, it’s not how a woman writes … Do you know who sent it?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, pushing the thought of Elliott to the back of his mind. ‘I just know that it’s meant to scare me. It means that the Church has sent Honthorst after me. It means that he’s not just working for Gerrit der Keyser, he’s working for both parties – der Keyser for the chain and the Church for the papers, the secret.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me today?’

  Nicholas didn’t need to ask what she meant. ‘No. I’ll never tell you what the deception was.’

  ‘Never is a fool’s word,’ she replied. ‘Keep your secret if you must – all that matters to me is finding out who killed my husband. That note,’ she gestured to the paper in Nicholas’s hand, ‘means someone else knows what’s going on. I had hoped to keep this matter contained.’

  ‘No chance. Philip Preston has the chain now. He’s auctioning it. If nothing happens in the next few days, that is.’

  ‘I heard about the sale.’

  ‘Have you got the money to buy it?’

  The corners of her mouth lifted, but it was hardly a smile. ‘I could buy it, yes. But what good would that do? If someone wanted it badly enough they could outbid me, or steal it from me afterwards.’ She glanced at him. ‘It’s not the chain I want.’

  ‘Has anyone threatened you?’

  Again the near smile.

  ‘No, Nicholas. No one has threatened me, but I am being watched.’ She shrugged as though the matter were of no importance. ‘I have good protection – my chauffeur takes me everywhere and he’s outside the church now. At the hotel, he sleeps in an adjoining room. As I said before, money is very useful. But you …’ She paused, staring at Nicholas. ‘Who protects you?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’m not. Everything I prized has been taken away from me. If I was killed, what would it matter? I only want to find out who killed my husband. Other than that, there is nothing else.’

  ‘You’re still a young woman – you’ll think differently in time.’

  ‘All the old platitudes! The ex-priest in you is showing, Nicholas. I thought you’d left all that behind. Claude used to tease you about it, didn’t he? He was very fond of you, you know. He liked your company and thought you’d been treated badly, hounded out of London. He liked you, even loved you … I don’t want comforting. Nothing can ever comfort me for losing Claude and—’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were,’ Nicholas pressed her. ‘There was something else. Tell me.’

  Getting to her feet, Eloise paused by the pew and genuflected, dipping her head towards the altar. Then, without saying another word, she walked out.

  Forty-Three

  Philip Preston was having his own problems and the housekeeper had called him home urgently. Gayle was drinking, babbling incoherently about being out shopping and seeing someone. When she caught sight of Philip, she leapt to her feet and clung to him.

  ‘I went to the gym, darling,’ she said, gesturing to her glass. ‘I’ve only had one drink, honestly. I think it’s those new tablets Dr Marshall gave me. They mess up my head.’ She slumped on to the
sofa and Philip sat beside her. She looked unexpectedly pretty – made up, her hair blow-dried, her excess weight concealed under a dark dress – and for a moment she moved him.

  But only for a moment.

  ‘The housekeeper said you were shouting and crying—’

  ‘I was confused,’ she whined. ‘I tell you, it’s the tablets. Or the gym. It could be the gym – all that noise and banging up and down with the machines. Too loud.’ She shook her head, her thick blonde hair flopping over her face. ‘I’m going to change,’ she said suddenly, grasping her husband’s hand. ‘I promise. We’ll be happy again and you won’t want anyone else. I’m on a diet—’

  ‘What were you so upset about?’

  ‘It was silly. I was confused. Like the other time, when I thought I was hearing voices and I wasn’t, it was just a radio left on. At least I think it was. Anyway, it stopped after the doctor gave me that medicine.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘It’s hormones – must be.’

  He was gritting his teeth. ‘Hormones?’

  ‘But it just seemed so real. Like the past, old times. And that made me think of you and how much I loved you and didn’t want to lose you. I never loved him like I loved you—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Henry!’ Philip said, exasperated. ‘Henry’s dead.’

  ‘I know! I know!’ Gayle mumbled. ‘That’s what confused me when I saw him. This morning, walking down Regent Street with my father.’

  It was all getting too much, Philip thought, trying to soothe his wife. ‘Both of them are dead, darling. Your father and Henry Laverne are dead, and have been for a while.’

  She nodded. ‘And Hoagy?’

  ‘And the cat,’ Philip said patiently. ‘The cat’s dead too.’

  Forty-Four

  Church of St Barnabas, Fulham, London

  The passing of time had not diminished his sleekness, rather exaggerated it. Like an oil slick Father Dominic glided into the confessional booth and took his seat, laying his rosary across his lap. Hair that had once been black had faded to a reddish-brown, like an old cat that has sat too long in the sun. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he had missed lunch, as the door of the confessional opened and someone slid into the adjoining booth.