The Rembrandt Secret Read online

  ‘Good,’ the nurse replied cheerfully. ‘But get some rest first, all right? Your husband’s going nowhere.’

  In silence Teddy and Georgia walked down the back stairs to the corridor which led to the hospital car park. He walked quickly; Georgia was withdrawn, uncertain of where she was being taken.

  ‘Why can’t I stay at home?’

  ‘I’ve told you, it’s not safe,’ Teddy replied, moving over to his van and unlocking it. ‘You can trust me, Georgia, honestly you can. I promised Marshall I’d look after you.’

  Nodding, she slid into the passenger seat, suddenly cold. She wanted, above anything, to go back home. To make something to eat and then sit and watch the DVD she had promised herself. She wanted to see Harry and listen to him tell her about the gym, bragging about the weights he had lifted, and most of all she wanted to curl up against her husband in bed and feel warm and safe. Instead, she was sitting in some uncomfortable van, on a cold plastic seat, having just left Harry in Intensive Care.

  After stopping briefly to allow Georgia to pack a bag, Teddy turned out of London and headed for Sussex. In silence, Georgia sat beside him, staring at her reflection in the window. As the miles passed, she thought she might doze, and then realised she would probably never doze again. Until it was over.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You know Samuel Hemmings?’

  ‘The art historian?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Owen’s mentor?’

  ‘Yeah, him. We’re going to his house. I can keep an eye on both of you there,’ Teddy replied, driving carefully as they moved onto the unlit roads. The van jerked over the uneven surface, then the road smoothed out again and they entered a village.

  ‘What about Marshall?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So who’s looking out for him?’

  ‘No one – at the moment.’ Teddy was obviously irritated. ‘Your ex-husband plays his cards very close to his chest. Like his father for that.’

  ‘You were close to Owen, weren’t you?’

  Nodding, Teddy kept his eyes on the road as it began to rain. ‘He was a good employer and then he became a friend. And before you say it, I already feel guilty for what happened to him.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No,’ Teddy said curtly, pulling into a drive and turning the car into a garage beside a large property. Shutting off the engine, he looked at Georgia. ‘There’s a man called Greg Horner here. He’s living over the garage part time, but he’s going to move into the house. God knows, there’s enough room. He’s a surly bugger, but he can handle himself, and he’s big enough to make anyone think twice.’

  ‘You think someone will come here?’ she asked, startled.

  ‘No,’ he lied, ‘but if anyone did, I’ve got it covered. You’re not going to be on your own, and neither is Samuel.’

  Her eyes fixed on him, unwavering. ‘You think they’ll come for me—’

  ‘I just—’

  ‘Think they’ll come for me,’ she interjected. ‘Well, you better be bloody good at your job, Teddy Jack, because I’m not about to die. And neither is Harry, or our baby. So you look after me, you hear? You bloody well look after me, because I didn’t ask to get involved in any of this.’ Angry, she slammed her hands down on the dashboard, her voice wavering. ‘It’s not my bloody war!’ Then, more calmly, she said, ‘I want my family back, and I want my life back. So you make sure I get them back, you hear me?’

  Teddy nodded, smiling faintly. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘And you can find Marshall too,’ she added. ‘Find him

  – before they do.’

  House of Corrections,

  Gouda, 1654

  Winter arrived early, or maybe it just seemed that way … News came, the guard called me out of my cell, and together we walked down the corridor towards the asylum. The House of Corrections. The Asylum. So close they could be the same. You hear the noises at night of women barking like dogs. Some crying, some imitating the lascivious lip-smackings of sex, some clucking like mad ducks at little duckling children … Mad, sad. Different. And the same. Like me …

  God made us that way, in His image.

  The guard walked me to the Governor’s room, which was soft like the inside of a robin’s egg, all yolky yellow fabric, the desk black as a coalface. And a mirror which distorted you, making your body huge at the belly, your head and legs small as an ant’s. Or maybe that was how I looked after years here … He stared at me and said I had a visitor and I thought it might be Rembrandt, but when they took me into the little greeting room there he was.

  They say larks sing when they see Heaven. I do not doubt it.

  Carel. Carel, my son … He stood there, his hat in his hands, not dusty now. Older, almost handsome, smiling as though he found it difficult. But he was so kind, and asked me to sit down. Asked me, taking a seat for himself afterwards. As though I was come for a portrait … I couldn’t think of what to say, sat on my hands like a fool, and his head went to one side because I believe he was sorry for me.

  He said he knew I was his mother.

  My lips were so dry they cracked when I tried to make an answer. They cracked and a little blood salted my tongue … He said van Rijn had let the truth slip, when he was drunk. Sloppy with wine and talking about the past, and how sometimes he couldn’t sleep for the bad he had done … I said nothing, waiting, not wanting to add anything until I knew what my son did. But when Carel spoke again he spoke of Rembrandt as his teacher, his mentor – not his father.

  So the breech truth was only half delivered, half born, wedged into my pelvis, dragging at my innards until I felt the pushing of the years stop somewhere, half arrived. He said he was sorry that he had not been kinder to me and I told him he had never been anything other than kind. Not like the stoat-faced Gerrit Dou, or the lumbering Jan Victors. And then his head bowed like a child come late for confession, certain to be judged. He whispered about the paintings, and I told him I knew. There was a slow nodding, as though it was right I should know. I told him I remembered Rembrandt calling him his monkey, and he smiled. Rembrandt’s monkey. Yes, Carel said, he had been pleased to be called that. Once.

  Ssssh … A door bangs outside. I will write when it is quiet again. Now the silence comes like a dead skin over me … When Carel saw me that day he told me he would do everything to get me released. He cared, I saw it in his eyes, and dying would have been sweet that moment …

  I took his hand. Yes, I took his hand.

  Rembrandt was merciless, Carel said, speaking of what had been done to me. Then he told me of how he had been made to continue working. Painting portraits for Rembrandt, who would sign them, then give them on for selling to his agent, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. A man with a cold, soft voice and a hat brushed blue-black as a magpie’s wing … We are creating a king’s fortune, Rembrandt had said to Carel, keep quiet. Keep quiet. Remember, I made you, I can unmake you also … keep quiet.

  All the keepings quiet. All the silences muffling the facts like the drapes round the old bed … Then Carel said he had met Rembrandt’s mistress, Hendrickje Stoffels, and my heart twitched at the name.

  Go away, go away, I told my son. Leave Delft, Holland. Go abroad, go to another country …

  I would have pushed him, if I could have. Would have taken him into the courtyard and prayed for his back to arch and wings the width of a cathedral to lift him up and take him from Amsterdam.

  Take your wife, your children, I urged him. Take them and go whilst you can. Whilst there is time … You owe me nothing.

  I took his hands and kissed them. He let me. I kissed him for calling me his mother and for recognising me as such.

  Get away, I told him, get away …

  The clock of the Gouda House of Corrections was striking seven, booming the dead, brass notes into the flatlands. When he left he turned at the gate and raised his hand to me. For a second his fingers were silhouetted against the setting
sun and they looked like the spokes of a Catherine Wheel.

  38

  Having shaken off Dimitri Kapinski, Marshall ducked into the doorway of an abandoned shop. On the windows were advertisements for the Moscow State Circus and the Rijksmuseum, and underneath, in smaller letters some joker had written ‘dyslexia lures, KO?’ Glancing round again, Marshall took out his mobile, thought for a moment, then dialled a London number. It was a number he had known for many years; a private number few people had, outside the business. A number Owen Zeigler had used many times.

  ‘Hello?’ a querulous voice answered.

  ‘Tobar Manners?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Marshall Zeigler.’ He was certain he could sense an intake of breath at the other end. ‘You cheated my father, you bastard, and I’m going to make sure I ruin you.’

  ‘Now, look here—’

  Marshall could feel the pulse thumping in his neck. He was flinging caution to the wind, trying to provoke a challenge. ‘The portraits you’re selling are fakes.’

  ‘What!!?’ Manners exclaimed, then tried to bluster his way out. ‘Look, Marshall, perhaps I did a bad thing with regard to your father. It wasn’t meant—’

  ‘You fucking liar!’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Tobar pushed his free hand through his dandelion hair. ‘I cheated him. OK, so you want to get your own back, fine, I understand. I can pay you.’

  ‘No, you can’t. I don’t want money.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I want to see you disgraced and penniless, that’s what I want. And I have the means at my disposal to do it.’

  ‘You have the Rembrandt letters?’ Tobar asked, his voice barely a whisper. ‘They’re real?’

  ‘Indeed they are.’

  ‘Look, Marshall—’

  ‘No, Tobar, you look. I’ve got the letters and I’ve got proof that the Rembrandts going up for sale in New York are fakes.’

  ‘Are you going to expose them?’ Tobar asked, his voice thin. ‘I mean, if you were, why haven’t you already done it?’ His confidence percolated. ‘You don’t have them, or you would have acted already. You’re bluffing, Marshall. You should be careful who you piss around with, this isn’t amateur night.’

  ‘After four murders, no, it’s not amateur at all,’ Marshall answered, pushing him. ‘Who are you working with?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Tobar snapped. ‘You think I killed those people? Your father? The rest? Are you insane?!’ he slumped into his seat, loosening his collar. ‘I had nothing to do with those murders.’

  Marshall was inclined to believe him. He had never really thought that Tobar Manners was involved in the killings, he was just hoping that his father’s old acquaintance would act as the town crier. By telling Manners he had the letters, Marshall knew it would be all over London within hours. And by telling him that he had proof the portraits were fakes he was effectively setting himself up as bait. The real killer would then be sure to come after him.

  Him, and no one else.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Marshall laughed. ‘Of course you’d be the first person I’d confide in. I bet you’d sell me out to the highest bidder without pausing for breath.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your father, Marshall.’

  ‘You don’t know what sorry means,’ Marshall replied. ‘But you will, Tobar. When your portraits get laughed out of court. When you’ll be lucky to get a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for them – instead of forty million.’

  ‘Marshall, calm down, we can come to an arrangement.’

  ‘Really? You know who’s behind all this?’

  ‘No,’ Tobar said honestly. ‘But between us, you and me, we could make a deal … You don’t have to make the letters public, Marshall. You could just let the sale go through, and we could split the proceeds afterwards. Think what you could do with all that money.’

  ‘What would you do with your half, Tobar?’

  Manners ran his tongue over his dry lips before answering, quietly, ‘I could save my business …’

  ‘Hell of a business if you need twenty million to save it,’ Marshall replied. ‘My father could have saved his gallery with just half a million. My father could have saved his business with the proper proceeds from selling his own Rembrandt. But you cheated him, and now I’m going to cheat you.’

  ‘Marshall, think about it! Think about what it would mean. You’d bring down the art market—’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘Hardly anyone would survive. You want that? And what about the letters themselves, Marshall? Proof that Rembrandt had a bastard who faked for him? If that poisonous little secret comes out it will undermine one of the greatest painters who ever lived.’

  ‘Why should I care? Let the world see Rembrandt for what he was,’ Marshall said shortly. ‘You don’t give a damn about his character, you just care about the money his works make. Even in the middle of a global recession, he’s foolproof. People can always rely on Rembrandt to shore up the market. He’s gold, platinum, bank-safe. The pound and the dollar might crumble, but not Rembrandt. As long as there are Rembrandts to sell, there are fortunes in the offing.’

  Rattled, Tobar began to panic. ‘How d’you know the letters aren’t fakes?’

  ‘They’ve been authenticated by Stefan van der Helde. Remember him? He was the first murder victim. The letters are real because people have killed for them. People don’t kill for fakes, Tobar. They don’t risk everything for a hoax. The Rembrandt letters exist, and they can ruin you, and your fucking business.’

  ‘So why tell me?’ Manners said. ‘Why are telling me this, Zeigler? You want revenge for your father, fine, I get it. But why else are you telling me? Are you checking me out, is that it? Seeing if I am involved, seeing how far I’d go to shut you up and get hold of the letters?’ He paused, staring ahead, aware that he was looking into his own destiny and was terrified by it. ‘You want to make a deal.’

  ‘No, I just want one thing from you, Tobar. The thing you’re best at – I want you to talk. To gossip, to make sure that everyone knows I have the letters.’

  ‘Surely you don’t also expect me to tell everyone the paintings due for sale are fakes?’

  Marshall shrugged. ‘You’d stab anyone in the back, Tobar, but you won’t cut your own throat.’

  ‘You can’t expose the fakes!’

  ‘Yes, I can. And I can – and I will – ruin you.’

  ‘But what if someone stops you, Marshall?’ Tobar said viciously. ‘What if someone fills up your belly with stones? Guts you? Blinds you? You want to be a fucking martyr, go ahead. But I’d think about it very carefully … You might hate me, perhaps I deserve it, but I can help you. I can protect you, keep you safe. I can also make you a very rich man if you keep quiet about the sale. Look, you can keep the fucking letters, if you want. You could sell them later. Make a fortune when times are on the up again. Or you could use them as a bargaining tool to get the art market over a barrel—’

  ‘Like you are now?’

  Biting his lip, Tobar struggled to keep his composure. ‘I know this business.’

  ‘I don’t. But I know what’s right.’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t think you’re honouring your father doing this! Or do you? … God, I think you do.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Owen Zeigler wasn’t quite the hero you think he was. He was very cunning, in his own way.’

  ‘He lived for the art world—’

  ‘Because he learned how to work the strings. His sleight of hand was always impressive. Even more so because no one suspected the depth of his ingenuity.’

  ‘Don’t talk about my father like that!’

  ‘You didn’t really know him! You should have invested more time with your father when he was alive. Dead men – even the undeserving – become ready heroes.’ His voice hardened. ‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. You think you have the upper hand? There are no upper hands. There’s just a continuous ga
me of pass the parcel. We do a favour, we return a favour. We drop a word in the right ear, and forget a fact. We put alarms on our windows and gallery doors to keep out the bad men, but in reality it’s to keep them in. Almost every gallery in these streets has a history of fake promises and lying. We all fill our bellies – not with the few big, genuine sales – but with the drizzling, petty diet of trumped up artists and overestimated Scottish cattle. For every Modigliani there are hundreds of sodden Lake District scenes, in Victorian frames, buffed up and regurgitated for the gullible. Vermeer? Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. But any amount of bilious indifferent Dutch interiors and fucking portraits of monks.’

  He started laughing to himself, almost amused. ‘People hate art dealers because we’re pompous and patronising. They see the recession hit us and think we got what we deserved. Why? Because we’re elitist, and frequently banal. And rich – and envied for it. But, by Christ, we earn our crust. I’ve sold dross as twenty-four carat gold, and pap as platinum. It takes a special skill to be an art dealer; mendacity is a prerequisite. Fakes? We’re all fucking fakes.’ He paused, his tone cooling. ‘You need to think about this conversation, Marshall. Think very carefully. You’ve got this number, call me later when you’ve considered what I’ve said. Think about what you could do with a great deal of money. Then we’ll talk … But if you tell me we can’t do business—’

  ‘We can’t do business.’

  ‘Then start running, Marshall Zeigler. And don’t stop.’

  39

  Due to the unprecedented media interest, the venue for the auction of the Rembrandt portraits was rumoured to be about to move, until confirmation that the auction would be held at the Museum of Mankind, New York. Handled by a leading auction house, the insurance and security was due to run into the hundreds of thousands; the front glass wall of the foyer was re-enforced with another wall of toughened glass. The paintings were being kept at an undisclosed location until the day of the auction, when they would arrive under police escort. The sale was publicly touted as being not only a way to raise money, but to revive interest in the plummeting art market.