The Hogarth Conspiracy Page 18

  He touched the back of his head and grimaced.

  “What is it?” Tully asked.

  “I told you; I was knocked out.”

  “You should get a doctor to look at that.” Tully was wondering if the blow to Victor’s head had confused him. “You could have a concussion, you know. I remember an actor I worked with once was struck by a piece of scenery which hadn’t been erected properly. He was in a dreadful state, couldn’t remember his own name. Concussion can scramble your thoughts terribly.”

  “Don’t humor me, Tully. There was a Chinese man at the airport, behaving oddly. Said he was going to Paris, then got on my plane to London. And someone did force bleach down Annette Dvorski’s throat, and I did run for my bloody life. So please,” Victor said wearily, “do me a favor and believe me. Because frankly, I need someone to believe me.”

  Thirty-Three

  IN AN EXPANSIVE WHITE-FRONTED HOUSE SET BEHIND CLIPPED YEW hedges in an exclusive enclave in Connecticut, Louis Freeland sat alone in his room. For a while he had been staring out the window and wondering when it would rain. The sky had been temperamental with clouds since ten that morning, but not a drop had fallen. He would, Louis promised himself, walk in the rain. When it finally came. He would not wear a hat but walk to the very bottom of the lawn and stand by the lake, feeling the cold water falling on his hair.

  He liked the lake, had sometimes imagined that his mother might come there. That if he concentrated, he might catch a glimpse of a whitewater creature hiding in the long green reeds. It was an image that had shimmered throughout his childhood dreams: the accidental drowning of his mother. So long had he lived with the image that it had assumed a psychotic intensity. He could picture her clothes, always green in color, her drowning dress filled with water, her hair sleek to her head like a statue’s. And the reeds, waving under the weight of the lake, taking her down.

  None of Louis’s doctors realized that he understood how his mother had died because he had the gift of listening, not of talking. He was often dumbly uncommunicative, but it wasn’t through stupidity, just unwillingness to speak. For Louis, there was too much talk. People did it all the time, throwing out words like dry seeds on rocky ground, dead before they struck earth, making no impact. Sometimes he had wanted to put the words back into the speaker’s mouth and get him or her to swallow them. To take them away again.

  But he had been a child and knew that he had little power in a world of professional medical people or among the glistening cleverness of his father’s acquaintances. Thinking of his father, Louis felt a thrill of expectancy that had never left him since he had been six years old. The joy of it! The joy of knowing that he—a solitary child, left alone, without a mother—possessed the whole of his father’s attention. Louis felt a hum of satisfaction. Who had need of a mother with Bernie Freeland as a father?

  Still looking up at the sky, Louis heard footsteps along the passage and turned to his computer. He would appear to be busy and with luck would be left alone. With studied concentration he stared at the wide screen, his searching brown eyes focused on the game he was playing. His narrow hands, small as a boy’s, worked the computer keyboard like a concert pianist; only the sound of his soft intermittent cough broke the silence.

  For all his insight, Louis had never realized that his life was a virtual secret. The staff and his doctors knew who his father was, but Bernie had been ashamed of his son, always ill at ease in his company. He had wanted the perfect heir to his hard-won fortune, but Louis had fallen short of his father’s emotional and professional mark. Conceived as a result of a brief marriage, the boy had been born with learning difficulties. His mother had died in a freak drowning accident when he was six, and he had been raised by a nurse and Mrs. Sheldon, the housekeeper.

  Louis was given the best treatment, the best therapy, and his difficulties gradually lessened as he grew into his teens until he was noticeably different only in his social diffidence. Emotionally awkward, he lacked his father’s easy, boisterous charm but was devoted to him, a devotion that Bernie found it increasingly difficult to deal with.

  At first Louis had lived with Bernie in Australia, his father’s peripatetic lifestyle suiting them both. Louis spent his time either with his adored father or longing to see him. For a child with a limited emotional range, he existed in a state of continuous expectation that was heightened when he was moved to his father’s home in Connecticut. Although Bernie insisted that he had found better tutors for his son, which had necessitated the move, his prime motive had actually been selfish.

  With one failed marriage behind him and no other children, Bernie Freeland had found Louis’s devotion unpalatable as he grew from a child into a young man. What had been affectionate, at times touching, in a child was embarrassing in an adult. He didn’t understand that his son’s whole existence was centered on him. Seldom demonstrative with anyone else, Louis would run to Bernie and sit adoringly at his feet, listening to every word. He was a constant appreciative audience of one.

  But he wasn’t what Bernie wanted. A woman’s admiration was fine, flattering, but Louis’s uninhibited attachment made him cringe. And worse, it gave him guilt. So Bernie put distance between them. Spending more time on his own in Australia, he emotionally segregated his own son. Every privilege was provided for Louis. He had the best surroundings, conditions, and schooling. He had friends who were paid to play with him, friends chosen by his private doctors. But Louis’s devotion to his largely absent father did not weaken.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, the awkward boy turned into an attractive young man. Sometimes Bernie would look at Louis and wonder why his personality did not live up to his appearance. If only he had been born with normal social skills, he could have brought him into the business, showed him off, set him on the natural route of inheritance. But although good-looking and to all intents and purposes outwardly normal, Louis Freeland was never going to be the gilded child. Still, all he wanted was his father’s love and approval, and, thankfully, Bernie was a good liar.

  The footsteps Louis heard had paused at his door. A doctor looked in and turned to the woman beside him.

  “Does he know yet?”

  Mrs. Sheldon shook her head. “No; you said you were going to tell him.”

  “I don’t think I would be the right person.” He paused, uncomfortable. “I don’t know how he’d take it from me.”

  Uneasy, Mrs. Sheldon stared at Louis. He was too far away to hear her conversation with the doctor but close enough to sense something was wrong. He turned and caught the woman’s eye. She smiled warmly at him and then turned back to the doctor.

  “Louis is far more capable than you give him credit for. He can look after himself—with a bit of help.”

  The doctor seemed unconvinced. “According to the lawyer, Mr. Freeland’s left instructions for his son’s future in his will. I don’t know the details, but no doubt Louis will be a very rich man.”

  “If his father left him the money,” Mrs. Sheldon countered brusquely. “Frankly, I hope he didn’t. Louis doesn’t understand money; it doesn’t mean much to him.”

  “It’ll mean a lot to the person looking after him. His assistants and his doctors should be well provided for … to care for Louis, I mean.”

  Ignoring him, Mrs. Sheldon kept watching Louis. She had cared for him since he was six years old and had watched the minor and major triumphs of his child’s life, but she had often been the only audience. She could never accuse Bernie Freeland of neglect or unkindness. Just a lack of empathy. She had lost count of how many times she had tried to tell Bernie about his son’s progress, but instead of being encouraged, the father had seemed to want Louis to remain a child. A boy. A boy could stay in the background. A boy’s faults would not make for social awkwardness. No questions about any career he might follow. No sexual urges to control or fulfill. Louis, even at twenty-two, was expected to remain the eternal uncomprehending infant.

  It did Mrs. Sheldon no good to try to
tell her employer that Louis was taking computer classes and going to the city on his own. Or even, later, that he had started a friendship with a girl at the college. Her excitement had been met with deaf ears, and as time had gone on, she had become aware that Bernie Freeland was one day going to be forced to face up to his son’s true condition. And worse, he was going to have to see that Louis could lead a normal life. Limited, small, contained, yes. But normal.

  But normal was never going to be enough.

  “You have to tell him,” the doctor repeated. “Or course, Louis worshipped his father; he could withdraw into himself entirely when he hears that Mr. Freeland’s dead.”

  She nodded slowly. “I’ll tell him. He’ll be all right.”

  “Well, if you need me, call. I can always give him a sedative.”

  “He was talking about his father only this morning,” Mrs. Sheldon said. “He knows Mr. Freeland was due for a visit. You think he has no conception of time, don’t you, but you’re wrong. Louis senses time. Louis senses a lot of things.” She looked at the doctor, her expression challenging. “We get along very well together. I can manage him.”

  “You might find yourself expected to manage Louis for the rest of his life.”

  “No; he’s not a child,” she replied with certainty. “And his father’s death might be the only way anyone will allow him to grow up.”

  She walked into the room, hearing the doctor’s footsteps fade into the distance. In a few moments he would drive away. Later he would ring her and ask how the patient was, adding today’s fee to the hundreds of bills he had submitted over the years for treatment that had been unnecessary, excessive, an intensity of care to assuage Bernie Freeland’s guilt.

  “Are you winning?” Mrs. Sheldon asked, walking over to Louis and putting her hand on his shoulder. She felt him relax; he was always grateful for physical contact.

  “I like this game.”

  “That’s good, Louis.” Her voice was gentle. “I have to talk to you.”

  He swiveled around in his chair, looking up at her, taking in the familiar features and noticing the serious expression.

  “I know you love your father very much,” Mrs. Sheldon began, straining at the words, “but there’s been a terrible accident, my dear.” She paused, trying to read any expression in the young man’s face. He seldom showed any emotion except with his father, and Mrs. Sheldon had grown used to Louis’s facial blankness. But for once she found his neutrality unnerving and pushed on. “I’m sorry, Louis. Your father’s been killed—in a car accident—in New York. I’m so sorry.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’m so very sorry.”

  His large brown eyes remained fixed on her as he tried to assimilate her words. For a moment he picked up on her anxiety, but it was fleeting. Far away, from over the horizon, there came the faintest echo of a thunderclap.

  Then silence. Immobile, Louis sat in his seat, Mrs. Sheldon’s hand still on his shoulder. A few moments passed in silence.

  Then, as the first drowning drops of rain began at last to fall on the ledge outside, Louis Freeland sighed.

  Thirty-Four

  RETYING HIS TIE, LIM CHANG STARED AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE bathroom mirror of his hotel room. His fury was almost uncontrollable. Banging his fists on the side of the sink, he felt a jolt of pain that was momentarily soothing. But only momentarily. In his rage, he wrenched at the tie around his neck and flung it onto the floor. Dark and curled, it lay like a night snake against the bath mat. Lim Chang ground it underfoot, his anger a muted growl at the back of his throat.

  Back in the bedroom, he poured himself a Scotch from the minibar, downing it in one swallow. His usual habit was never to drink before noon, but he was desperate to find some way to prevent any further loss of control. He slumped into the chair by the window, marginally more relaxed thanks to the whiskey. In all his time as an international dealer Lim Chang had never lost control. His expression, whether he was attending a private view or outbidding a competitor, did not alter. He liked to imagine that he was upholding some long-held Chinese tradition of inscrutability, something fast disappearing as Western culture took hold.

  It was obvious that in the new China the old principles of control and order were crumbling. Children and young adults resented the discipline of their parents and grandparents, and under the influence of the USA and Europe, a slow homogenization of Chinese culture was taking place. It was inevitable, Chang knew, if the country was to be a world leader. China could not remain forever culturally alien if it wished to be accepted in the West, but he missed the obedience he had been able to command. He loathed the questioning of his power and felt that he was watching not so much the advance of a nation as its mutation.

  His rage still burning, Lim Chang felt his control finally regaining the upper hand. He would solve the problem; he always did. His superiors expected it of him and he would not disappoint them, but he was very relieved that he hadn’t told anyone about the Hogarth. No point bragging about a coup before it was executed. His prudence and inherent modesty, which amused some, would now prove his greatest protection. He would obtain the painting, and he would take it back to China, but no one needed to know how he had managed it. And if for some inconceivable reason he failed, it was better that his country remain in ignorance. Better the discreet hero than the flashy failure.

  That they had had the nerve to talk to him like that! Lim Chang was outraged. To try to deal with him, a spokesperson for Chinese culture. To try to bring him down to their level. He winced at the memory of his visit the previous night. He had received a message that there was news on the painting and that he should return to Chinatown. Back through the evening streets he had walked, past tourists and night workers and security cameras, their metal noses poking out from under the red awnings of Chinese restaurants, until he reached the dingy basement again.

  This time a third man—angular, well dressed, and no more than thirty—had joined the original two. He had bowed in mock salutation as Lim Chang entered the crowded room, the smell of cooking oil strong in the air, an unfinished card game still set out on the table by the window. From behind the thin curtain that separated the room from the back of a club, he heard loud Western music playing, its sound vibrating under his feet.

  “May I ask who I’m dealing with?” Lim Chang had said, looking from the sweating man to the younger stranger.

  “I don’t think we need names,” the newcomer replied.

  “But you have mine,” Lim Chang said not unreasonably. He waited a moment, then continued, realizing that the man was not going to identify himself. “Do you have the Hogarth painting?”

  Sitting down and jiggling his leg, the young man rubbed his eyes, the lids pink. “It’ll cost you—”

  Chang was outraged. “I work for the Chinese government!” he blustered. “I have to organize money with them.”

  “I don’t care who you fucking work for.” The man sounded amused, but he rapidly shifted to a threatening tone. “It was very difficult getting hold of the painting. You have to pay for it.”

  “I don’t have the means at this moment.”

  “Then you don’t have the painting,” he replied, unfazed. “I want half a million pounds.”

  “Half a million!”

  “It’s cheap.” The young man rubbed his eyes again, then took a small plastic bottle from his pocket. Carefully he put a couple of drops in each eye, blinking repeatedly until his vision cleared. To Lim Chang he seemed hyped with frantic nervous energy.

  “So,” he had said, still blinking, “do you want it or not?”

  Desperately, Chang played for time. “You really expect me to buy it without seeing it?”

  The young man had hesitated, then reached over to his bag and pulled out a cylinder. Lim Chang’s pulse quickened as he watched the canvas being drawn from its hiding place. Knocking the card game off the table, the man had laid out the painting, the neon light from the street overhead illuminating a masterpiece that had been painted ove
r two hundred and fifty years earlier. Staring open-mouthed, Lim Chang examined the work, looked at the pert face of Polly Gunnell smiling up at him, recognized her handsome young lover in the background: Frederick, Prince of Wales.

  So it was real. What had been a select and garbled rumor in the art world for so many years had existed. Not a rumor but—as Lim Chang realized while fighting unaccustomed light-headedness—tangible damning proof that the royal bastard had existed, heir to the English throne. Then another thought struck him almost instantly: what a dangerous piece this was, what a priceless acquisition. What a political lever. What a coup to take home to Communist China …

  Surprised, Chang had suddenly felt faint, a sensation he had never experienced before. He gripped the table for support.

  “Watch out!” the young man had said angrily. “I didn’t say you could touch it.”

  Recovering himself, Lim Chang had bent farther toward the canvas. The neon light flickered alternately red and green over the oil painting, and the overhead basement light bled out the colors under its dim wattage. But the genius had been there. The confidence and bravura of the work were obvious. At the left corner there had been a small tear, but there was no other fault apart from the darkening of the varnish.

  Slowly Lim Chang had picked it up.

  “Hey!”

  “I have to examine the back,” Chang had said firmly, turning the work carefully and noting a watermark in the grain of the canvas, along with expected and natural signs of wear.

  “So?” the young man had said impatiently. “It’s genuine.”

  “I believe it is,” Lim Chang agreed, doubting that the seller would know whether it was authentic. “However, this painting is not for myself; it’s for the Chinese people.”

  “Then ask them for the money.”

  “The government will buy the painting, but it will take a little time for them to organize the funds. And besides, these are rather unusual circumstances.”