The Rembrandt Secret

by Alex Connor

  And then Marshall thought of the ghost, the dead soldier, who had skirted his childhood dreams, but a muffled sound under his feet snapped him out of his reverie. At first he thought he was still daydreaming, that he was about to see the dead soldier finally materialise. But the noise seemed real to him and, curious, he retraced his steps to the basement door. He paused, listening. Nothing. And yet he knew he hadn’t imagined the sound. Silently, he turned the handle and opened the door. The basement steps were in darkness and hardly any light was coming through from the back window at the far end. The dampness seemed to have intensified, and underneath it the smell of blood. Marshall moved down the first steps cautiously, and again heard a sound, a slight thud.

  He wondered whether the boiler been left on accidentally. Perhaps it was the pilot light making a thunking sound as it lit. But no – it couldn’t be the boiler, the building was too cold. Warily, he continued down the steps; another couple of feet and he would be able to reach out for the light switch. The musty air gathered in his nostrils as he descended, the partition wall coming into view at the far end – a huge black shape crouching in the eerie cellar.

  There it was again.

  The dull thump.

  Marshall jumped and flicked on the light.

  He hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been the huge packing case in the middle of the basement floor. Mystified, he moved towards it, then realised that it was where the sound had come from. Someone was inside the box.

  ‘Hang on!’ he said urgently, ‘I’ll get you out.’

  Taking a hammer off the worktable, Marshall tried to use the claw-footed end to jemmy up the lid, but the steel straps were holding it tight and gave no leeway. Desperately, he tried to break the straps, then ran to the wall and took down a pair of wire cutters. His hands clenched around the cutters, he put all his effort into breaking the top strap until, finally, the steel gave way.

  ‘I’ve nearly got you. Can you hear me?’ he called.

  There was no sound.

  He was too slow! Jesus, he was too slow! He scrabbled at the strap at the head of the box, tugging at it, pulling at it until it cut into his hands. Then finally he snapped it, jammed the claw of the hammer under the lid, and used all his strength to prise it up. With a crack, the wood split, the lid lifted a couple of inches, and Marshall peered as best he could into the dark box.

  ‘Christ!’

  Teddy Jack was grey, motionless, spittle around his mouth, his lips drawn back over his teeth. But as Marshall levered the lid open further the big man’s eyes fluttered and, with a rasping intake of breath, he drew in a gasp of clean air.

  15

  ‘It makes you think …’ Rufus Ariel said smoothly. ‘Who would have killed Owen Zeigler?’

  Leon Williams fiddled with his cuff links, fingering the smooth gold orbs with his bony fingers, his eyes wary behind tinted glasses. He had been shaken by the murder, coming so close to home. His wasted figure, dressed in a pristine navy serge suit, twitched with restless energy, his bony hands clasping and unclasping, finally finding some rest tucked deep in his trousers pockets. Always a nervous eater, Leon had barely managed to keep anything down in the last week and his gut was now rumbling with acid.

  Rufus stared at the area of blue serge which was emitting noises. ‘Why don’t you eat something?’

  ‘I can’t keep it down,’ Leon replied, looking at his colleague with admiration.

  He was impressed by Rufus Ariel’s calmness. Everyone was talking about the murder, wondering if it had been personal. Or if it had been a botched robbery – and they might be next. No one left their galleries unattended for long, and every night a ribbon of alarm lights blinked nervously over Albemarle Street.

  ‘My secretary left yesterday,’ Leon went on. ‘After all, we’re only two doors away from the Zeigler Gallery. She said her husband was worried and didn’t want her working in W1 any more … Are you listening, Rufus?’

  Nodding, Rufus glanced up.

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill a secretary, even a bad one?’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that gallery secretaries are the stupidest women in England, just filling in time before they marry some wanker from the Home Counties.’

  Rufus had a long-term, personal dislike of the upper class girls who worked in the galleries. But although he had never stopped flirting with them, he’d never managed to seduce one. Perhaps they were not that stupid, after all.

  ‘You know what I mean!’ Leon replied tightly. ‘Why would anyone want to kill Owen Zeigler? I heard he was gutted. Blood everywhere … I mean, it was odd how quickly he was buried, wasn’t it? All such a rush.’

  ‘His son had to organise it when he was in London. He doesn’t live here, remember.’

  ‘But I saw him yesterday—’

  Suddenly alert, Rufus looked at Leon, his puffy face no longer bland, his fat hands clenched across his stomach.

  ‘Marshall Zeigler? I heard he’d gone back to Amsterdam.’

  ‘If he did, he didn’t stay there. I tell you I saw him yesterday.’ Leon’s voice rose, as it always did when he thought he was being challenged. ‘I know what he looks like! I tell you, I saw him. He was going into his father’s gallery. It was pretty late.’

  ‘What was he doing at the gallery? I thought it was cordoned off, the police said no one could go in.’

  ‘Well, it was his home once, wasn’t it?’ Leon countered, feeling cornered. ‘I suppose he thought no one would mind. Can’t say I’d fancy it, going back to where you found your dead father. D’you think the police will catch him?’

  ‘Who? Marshall Zeigler?’

  ‘The man who killed his father!’ Leon replied petulantly, taking a seat on one of the gilt chairs positioned perfectly under a still life. His thoughts were speeding up, his words blundering on. ‘Or should I say men? They think it was more than one, don’t they? Could be two, even three. Could be a gang of them,’ Leon went on, his agitation increasing, stomach acid burning his gut. ‘You hear about it all the time, these gangs roaming around with knives, guns even … I should get my alarm checked again, maybe change the locks. Why did they do it? Why would they do that to anyone? Why? I mean, it could have been any of us.’ He stood up, pacing restlessly. ‘Do you ever think about Stefan van der Helde?’

  Shaken, Rufus gave Leon a cold look. ‘Van der Helde? What made you mention him?’

  Something in his tone made Leon flinch, and his voice faltered as he spoke. ‘It was something one of the dealers was saying at the club. Van der Helde worked in New Bond Street a long while back, before he moved to Amsterdam, and when we were talking about Zeigler’s death, someone remembered how Van der Helde was tortured and murdered. It was only last year. Surely you remember about the stones?’ He paused, unnerved by Rufus’s unreadable expression. ‘They made him swallow stones before they killed him. And they disembowelled Owen Zeigler … Why would they torture two dealers if there wasn’t a connection?’

  ‘People get murdered all the time.’

  ‘But both men were art dealers, and both were tortured …’ Leon was beginning to wonder if he was saying too much – and to the wrong person. Rufus’s expression was chilling. ‘Oh Christ, I don’t want to think about it.’

  Just then a young woman came into the gallery and sat down at the front desk. After a few moments, she began typing on the computer, stopping to pick up the phone when it rang next to her.

  Getting to his feet, Rufus pulled his waistcoat down over his extended belly and moved back to his office, beckoning for Leon to follow.

  Rufus closed the door behind him. ‘No point talking in front of the staff,’ he said, easing himself into his chair. ‘I don’t want to lose my secretary too.’

  Leon flinched. ‘Has she asked you about the murder?’

  ‘No, but then she knows Vicky Leighton who worked for Owen Zeigler, so no doubt she’s heard all the gory details.’

  Relieved that the conversation was benign again, Leon relaxed.
<
br />   ‘What about Victoria Leighton? She’ll be looking for a job now, won’t she? Maybe she’d work for me—’

  ‘Sort it out for yourself,’ Rufus replied, cutting him off and returning to their previous conversation. ‘About Stefan van der Helde—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’

  ‘I do.’

  Cowed, Leon glanced down as Rufus continued. ‘Did his killers steal anything from Van der Helde’s gallery?’

  ‘No. And the police never found out who did it. It could have been the same people who killed Owen.’

  ‘Now, why would you say that, Leon?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘That it could be the same killers.’

  He was sweating now. ‘Well, it could be.’

  ‘Why? What did Van der Helde and Zeigler have in common?’

  Shifting in his seat, Leon stammered. ‘They … they knew each other.’

  ‘How well?’

  ‘I don’t know how well!’

  ‘Van der Helde was gay, Zeigler was straight,’ Rufus replied thoughtfully. ‘Zeigler dealt in Dutch art, Van der Helde dealt in Russian art—’

  ‘Yes, but before that Van der Helde also dealt in Dutch paintings.’

  Rufus’s eyebrows lifted, his mouth tight. ‘He did? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘My father told me. It was years ago. Van der Helde went into Russian art in the 1970s – before you opened your gallery …’

  Piqued, Rufus Ariel let the barb pass. Few things rattled him, but he despised any reference to some of the more privileged backgrounds of some of the dealers. Their happy inheritances irked him; he had spent twenty years grafting before he even obtained a toehold on the London art scene. Lazier, more stupid men had come by their galleries by luck and birth, and Ariel had had to cajole and smarm his way into their ranks. And even when he had finally been accepted, any reference to his not having been born into the business pinched at his ego.

  Knowing that he temporarily had the upper hand, Leon blundered on. ‘Van der Helde dealt in Dutch interiors. He knew loads of dealers at that time. My father told me once that he discovered a Vermeer, but I think that was a rumour. People are always lying about their successes. Only the other day Tobar Manners was going on about—’

  Rufus cut him off.

  ‘So Van der Helde was an expert on Dutch art and he knew Owen Zeigler.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Rufus sneered. ‘That’s all they had in common?’

  Leon looked pained. ‘They were both murdered—’

  ‘I meant, was that all they had in common when they were alive?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Leon replied, his voice rising again. ‘Why are you interrogating me, Rufus? I was just thinking aloud, thinking it was odd that two dealers were brutally murdered. I’m not implying anything else, I don’t know anything else! I don’t want to know anything else. It might not be wise.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘For us! For all of us!’

  ‘Jesus,’ Rufus said cruelly, ‘you are a coward.’

  ‘I am, yes. I don’t pretend otherwise. I’m not a brave man, never have been, but I liked my life until recently. I had it good, we all had it good round here, but everything’s changed. People you thought would be there for life are leaving, businesses closing, marriages are breaking up. You walk around this place at night and it’s like a ghost town. I thought depressions happened up North, in those bloody mill towns, not down here, not in the art market. It’s not supposed to happen here.’

  Delighted to have rattled Leon so thoroughly, Rufus assumed a sympathetic expression. He might not have been one of the chosen few on his arrival in Albemarle Street, but the naive dealers weren’t going to be able to handle the hard times as well as he was. Now was the time when it paid to be streetwise.

  ‘It’s bad enough wondering if you can keep your business going,’ went on Leon, ‘but now to have to worry about being killed; worry about every person you let into your gallery; wonder about who’s walking in and what they might do …’ He shuddered. ‘You know what I think?’

  Rufus shook his head.

  ‘That the bloody country’s ruined, and no gives a shit! I ask you, what the fuck is going on?’

  Rufus’s expression was inscrutable. If he knew something, he certainly wasn’t going to pass the knowledge on.

  16

  After the first shot of whisky, Teddy Jack felt his body begin to relax. His muscles started to loosen and the panic in his chest had subsided when Marshall offered him another drink. Which he accepted. The glass felt cool between his sweating hands, but Teddy’s head still hummed with the silence of the enclosed box and his nose was still filled with the scent of wood shavings – and of his own sweat and urine. With Marshall’s help, he had got out of the crate, then turned and smashed his foot down through the lid, his heart pumping, his eyes watering. Watering, yes. Not crying, no. Not crying to have been rescued from suffocation.

  Shrugging off any further help, Teddy had gone with Marshall to the flat above, a place he had often visited in the evenings when he and Owen would talk – sometimes about business, sometimes work, sometimes even women … But not now. Now Teddy sat and nursed his second drink, staring at the man who was sitting opposite him. Marshall Zeigler, Owen’s son. Marshall, who had got him out of the crate.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ Marshall asked.

  He looked down at his trousers, mortified. ‘Jesus, I wet myself …’

  Marshall said nothing.

  ‘I didn’t have much longer to go, you know,’ Teddy went on, coughing, his bass voice hoarse. ‘How d’you know I was there?’

  ‘I didn’t. It was just luck that I came back to the gallery.’ He stared at the big man. ‘You know my father always spoke well of you.’

  Teddy’s head bowed, the whisky taking effect. In his head he could hear silence under Marshall’s words and even in the light he could still imagine the stifling darkness. Jesus, he thought, Jesus …

  ‘Who did it?’ Marshall asked finally.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘All right, why would someone do that to you?’

  ‘Why would someone murder your father?’

  Marshall paused, wondering how much he dared say. Teddy Jack had been his father’s confidant, after all … Surely he could trust this man? This man who would have been killed without his intervention. Surely he had no reason to suspect Teddy Jack?

  But he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘I don’t know why my father was killed. Do you?’

  Teddy’s hazel eyes blinked under their pale lashes, but when he looked back to Marshall his gaze was steady.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe my father had something they wanted?’ Marshall asked, feeling his way, trying to test out what Teddy Jack knew.

  ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘But you don’t know what?’

  ‘Should I?’

  Patiently, Marshall took in a breath. ‘We’re on the same side, you know.’

  Expressionless, Teddy studied the man in front of him. Marshall Zeigler was nothing like his father in appearance, but in manner there was a similarity. A linking of blood.

  ‘Which side is that?’

  ‘The right side. Think about it. If you were in any way responsible for my father’s death, you wouldn’t have been left to die in that box. And if I was any way responsible, I wouldn’t have got you out.’ Marshall paused, impressively composed. ‘Now – what do you know?’

  Shaking his head, Teddy Jack glanced away, trying to order his thoughts. Wouldn’t Owen Zeigler have wanted him to keep his son safe by keeping him in ignorance? He thought so, but then again, they had had no time to discuss tactics. No time to plan … Taking in a breath, Teddy finished off his drink.

  ‘I don’t know anything about your father’s death.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. My father confided in you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Sometimes.’
<
br />   ‘So you must know why he was killed—’

  ‘It was a robbery.’

  ‘Did they get what they wanted?’

  ‘I don’t know what they wanted.’

  ‘The Rembrandt letters.’

  Shocked, Teddy looked directly at him. ‘You know about them!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After your father was killed, I looked for them but I didn’t find them,’ Teddy admitted. ‘I was looking when I was jumped. I never got the chance to have a proper search. The letters are either still hidden somewhere here, or they’ve been stolen.’

  It was Marshall’s turn to pause.

  ‘Did you read them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you know what was in them?’

  ‘Your father told me,’ Teddy replied, adding hastily, ‘Look, Marshall, I’ve told no one. Not in all the time I’ve known about them. I’ve never let one word slip. Never have, never will, even now.’ He paused, thinking of the suffocating darkness of the box, his mouth drying. ‘Don’t ask me anything else about the Rembrandt letters. The less you know, the better. Stay out of it. You were never involved in your father’s world, so don’t start now. I don’t understand what it’s all about, but I’ll find out.’ He smiled curtly. ‘Thanks for doing what you did, for saving my life, but you should get away now, Marshall. Go back to Holland, forget what you’ve found out and put all this behind you. It’s what your father would have wanted.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he sent me the Rembrandt letters,’ Marshall said, his tone resigned. ‘I have them. There’s no way I can get out of this now.’

  17