The Bosch Deception

by Alex Connor

  Needled, Sabine stood her ground. ‘So you say.’

  ‘I can show you the photographs if you wish.’

  ‘Which could have been digitally altered,’ she retorted, unnerved but damned if she was going to show it. ‘I think you’re bluffing—’

  ‘We have you on tape.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have you on tape, Madame. On video tape. And we can show that to the police.’ Honthorst replied. ‘We can prove that you removed one chain and replaced it with another. Your own.’

  ‘Which is probably worth hundreds more than that filthy chain I took,’ Sabine retorted loftily, knowing she had been caught out.

  Irritated, she pushed her coffee aside. If she had left it on the painting and waited until the Bosch had been delivered she would have been home free. Yes, Gerrit der Keyser would have been told about the evidence from the previous owner, but by then the painting and the chain would have been in her possession legally. But instead she had given in to a moment of greed.

  Keeping her hands steady, Sabine Monette sipped her coffee. She had spotted the chain at once, almost in the instant she had first viewed the painting. Gerrit der Keyser had been ill recently, was not on top form and was eager to make a sale. Unusually careless, he hadn’t noticed the chain by which the small painting had been hung, and had left Madame Monette for a few minutes to study the picture alone. While he was gone, she had examined the chain and rubbed a little of the dirt off the middle link, finding the faint initial H, and a possible B.

  Her heart rate had accelerated, but Sabine Monette had regained her composure quickly. Years of being cosseted had not made her soft. Her early life had been traumatic and her natural guile came back fourfold. Unfastening the chain from the back of the painting and slipping it into her pocket, she replaced it with the long antique gold chain necklace around her neck and called for Gerrit der Keyser.

  And it was all on tape.

  ‘Even at your age, the police don’t look kindly on theft.’

  Sabine’s eyes narrowed as she faced at the Dutchman. ‘I don’t have it any longer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The chain. C-H-A-I-N.’ She spelt it out for him. ‘It’s not in my possession any longer.’

  And he shook his head.

  ‘Oh dear, Madame,’ Honthorst said quietly. ‘You shouldn’t have told me that.’

  Six

  Morgue, Hospital of St Francis, London

  Illness terrified her, and the thought of death had worked on her senses ever since she was a child. The horrific death of her parents had affected the young Honor deeply, but the early demise of her brother Henry – in a fire – had shattered her. It had made the presence of death a real thing, not something she could ignore. Not for her the luxury of ignorance. She had seen the coffins and buried the ones she loved. Her family had been depleted ruthlessly and the brother she had loved most was estranged from her.

  To others her actions would have seemed irrational, but Honor believed there was a distinct possibility that the man murdered outside the church might be Nicholas. And she had to know. Had to prepare herself for burying another member of the ill-fated Laverne family.

  Walking up the hospital corridor, Honor caught sight of the pathologist in his white scrubs and green apron, his surgical mask pushed up on to his forehead. He nodded to her as she approached.

  ‘You came to identify the body?’

  Honor nodded. ‘I spoke to the police—’

  He grunted. ‘Right, yes. Right. I got a call. They said you thought it might be your missing brother … You sure you want to view it?’

  ‘I don’t want to. I just have to … see if it’s him …’ She was unusually nervous.

  ‘Have you ever identified a body before?’

  ‘God, no!’ Honor replied, then dropped her voice. ‘It’s probably not him. My brother, I mean.’ Pushing her hands into her pockets she fought to keep herself calm. ‘I’m not sure. I just want to know …’

  ‘The body’s badly burnt,’ the pathologist went on, scratching the side of his nose with a biro. ‘Not easy to identify.’

  ‘His face …?’

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘Not much left there, I’m afraid.’ He glanced at the file in his hand. ‘Did your brother have any identifying marks?’

  ‘No … no, nothing.’ She swallowed.

  ‘There was no jewellery found on the body.’

  ‘He didn’t wear jewellery.’ She looked at the pathologist. ‘What about his teeth? You can identify people from dental records, can’t you?’

  ‘The victim doesn’t have any teeth.’

  There was a moment of shock, followed by relief.

  ‘Then it can’t be my brother! He had great teeth. People always noticed them.’ Her hopes rose, the unease lifting. ‘It can’t be him. My brother had all his teeth.’

  ‘So did the victim,’ the pathologist continued, ‘until someone knocked them out and set fire to him.’

  Seven

  Old Bond Street, London

  Hiram Kaminski was setting his watch. Of course if he had any sense he would have bought a new timepiece, something expensive which was stylish and accurate, but he knew he could never part with the watch he had. It was the only thing he had left of his late father. Whom he had hated. Just as he hated the watch.

  All through Hiram’s childhood the watch had made its ghastly appearance. If he were late home, his father would tap the glass face to indicate his displeasure. If asked the time, his father would look hard at the watch and then make his son guess. Once in a while Hiram would be allowed the privilege of winding the watch, until one day he over-wound it and his father, furious, had to pay to have it repaired. It came back a few days later, its white face peaky, its thin black hands moving a little stiffly, like someone recuperating from two broken arms.

  Hiram’s father said that it never kept good time after his son had over-wound it. It was, he said, ‘just another example of how clumsy the boy is.’

  So when his father died, Hiram was surprised to find the watch willed to him. For a while he had held it reverently in his hands, and then he had thrown it through the window of their first-floor apartment in Warsaw. The caretaker had found it and returned it to Hiram later, saying that it just went to prove ‘how expensive things were made to last.’

  Thirty years on and the bloody watch was still going.

  Walking to the door of his office, Hiram glanced out into the gallery beyond. Only two places on earth looked good with flock wallpaper – Indian restaurants and West End art galleries. He let his glance travel along the walls and then settle on a small picture of a peasant, created by A Follower of Bruegel. A follower! Hiram thought. The art world had more followers than Scientology. What he needed was an original Bruegel, or a Bosch. He smiled to himself as a stout woman came down the stairs from the offices above.

  ‘Hiram, a word,’ she said, following him back into his office and taking a seat. Her legs were too plump to cross, her feet swollen in patent pumps, and her hands gripped a ledger. His wife, Judith. Still going after thirty years. Just like the bloody watch.

  ‘We have a problem, my dear.’ After a decade in London, she hadn’t lost her accent. Their daughter spoke like a Sloane, but Judith’s accent was Yiddish. ‘Takings are down. We need a big sale, my love – an influx of money.’

  ‘There’s a recession on,’ Hiram said, pecking his wife on the cheek. Maybe she wasn’t so slim any more, but she was still clever with money. No one could touch her. ‘People aren’t buying the same at the moment.’

  ‘People aren’t buying from us, my dear.’ She managed to make ‘my dear’ sound like a criticism. ‘We need something splashy. Something BIG.’ Her plump hands made a circle in the air.

  ‘You want me to buy a round picture?’

  She sighed. ‘I want you to buy something people can’t resist. There must be something out there—’

  ‘There’s a lot out there, but it’s too expens
ive.’

  Judith dismissed the remark. ‘You have to speculate to accumulate. One fine painting is worth six mediocre ones.’ She nodded her head vigorously. ‘I heard something the other day. In the hairdresser’s. I was sitting next to Miriam der Keyser and she was telling me about Gerrit being so ill, and—’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She told me about something I think her husband might have preferred her to keep to herself.’ Judith looked round as though expecting Gerrit der Keyser to come in at any moment. ‘He’s had a heart attack, as you know. And I think it made her worry – and when Miriam worries she has a little drink at lunchtime, and then maybe another.’

  Hiram tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. ‘What did she tell you that she shouldn’t have?’

  ‘Miriam said one of their clients had stolen something from the gallery.’

  ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘How should I know! She shouldn’t have told me so much, but she was upset, letting down her guard – you know what happens at the hairdresser’s.’

  He didn’t, but let it go. ‘So what was stolen?’

  Judith leaned forward in her seat, her jacket buttons gaping at the front. ‘Something about Hieronymus Bosch.’

  ‘A painting?’

  ‘Did I say a painting?’ Judith asked, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Did I mention a painting? This is the trouble with you men – you exaggerate. It wasn’t a painting, it was something else.’

  Silence fell and Hiram was the first to speak. ‘Is it a secret?’

  Judith gave her husband a long, slow look. ‘All I know is that one of the customers stole something valuable to do with Hieronymus Bosch. Miriam didn’t say “painting”, so I thought maybe some personal artefact that once belonged to the painter …’ She let the intimation work on her husband before continuing. ‘Something worth a lot of money.’

  ‘Anything that could be proved to have belonged to Hieronymus Bosch would be worth a fortune,’ Hiram mused. ‘So little’s known about the man, there’d be a scramble to get hold of anything of his. I know three collectors who’d pay big money, including Conrad Voygel.’ He thought for a moment, agitation rising. ‘I’m the specialist in painting from the late Middle Ages. I should have heard about this. How did it end up in the der Keyser gallery? Gerrit’s more interested in the sixteenth century—’

  ‘Gerrit’s interested in making money. However it comes.’ Judith tapped the account ledger. ‘We need to get hold of this mystery object.’

  ‘But we don’t know what it is.’

  ‘It’s something connected to Bosch,’ she said crisply. ‘What else matters?’

  ‘But you said it was stolen—’

  Judith pulled a face. ‘Maybe, maybe not. You know how this business works, Hiram. People put out rumours all the time to drum up interest. Maybe Gerrit’s heart attack got him thinking. Maybe he’s working up to a killing so he can retire and he wants to get everyone curious. This story about a theft could be a lie – maybe this phantom object’s still hidden away in the der Keyer gallery. Or maybe he wants us to think it’s valuable enough to steal.’

  He glanced at his wife. ‘Have the police been brought in?’

  ‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘From what I could gather it was all hush-hush.’

  ‘Maybe there’s no mystery object.’

  ‘Oh, there’s something,’ Judith said emphatically. ‘The way Miriam was talking she was nervy, like it was something big. Even bigger than a painting by Bosch. She knew at once that she shouldn’t have said anything and changed the subject.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘She had her highlights done.’

  Hiram stared at his wife, taking in a breath. ‘I mean what else did Miriam say?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Judith replied. ‘That’s the point. She shut up like a clam. Which made me think that you should have a chat with Gerrit de Keyser.’

  ‘I don’t like him, the foul-mouthed barrow boy.’

  ‘Foul-mouthed or not, talk to him. You’ve known each other for years. Take him out for lunch, suss him out.’

  ‘Gerrit won’t confide in me. You’d be better off taking Miriam out for lunch.’

  ‘I won’t get anything else out of Miriam der Keyser. No one will,’ Judith said firmly. ‘She looked like someone who’d just won the lottery – but forgotten where she put the ticket.’

  Eight

  Paris, France

  Unnerved, Sabine found herself studying every item of furniture in the room, each familiar piece collected during her marriage and afterwards, in her cosy widowhood. Cosy to outsiders, almost bland, but that wasn’t the whole truth. Sabine let her hand rest on the lid of the grand piano. No one played it, no one ever had – it simply sat like a washed-up French-polished crab on the sand of the Aubusson carpet.

  Impatient, Sabine turned away. She wasn’t soothed by the sight of her belongings, rather she found them confrontational, mute rebukes to a life half lived. But that wasn’t true. She had done more than any of her jaded neighbours. She had secrets; secrets that were long kept, treasured, but were now surfacing, called up unexpectedly from the wreck of history.

  And all because of a thug of a man with bad skin … Sabine felt her age for the first time in her life. This was serious, something Decleor couldn’t massage away. Something no plastic surgeon could eradicate or reverse. She was in trouble.

  Her courage faltered, then her genes kicked in. Those genes from her earlier, tougher life. She was ready to fight, but just she had to write a testament in case the fight turned out to be a dead end, the demise of Sabine Monette. She glanced at the escritoire; she would write down everything that had happened. Not about the Bosch chain, but about her life and her own – most personal – secret. Something no one knew about. Not even Nicholas Laverne.

  She had come close to telling him once, all those years before when she had called in at St Stephen’s church. Instead she had confessed to a crisis of faith, and as their friendship developed there was never the right time to tell Nicholas the truth. But she would now … Because the Dutchman had frightened her and her future seemed suddenly bleak.

  Putting in a call, Sabine was relieved when the phone was picked up. ‘Nicholas, where are you?’

  ‘London. I told you I was coming here.’

  ‘Someone threatened me today—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some big Dutch bastard, who looked like he was wearing make-up, unless I’m losing my mind,’ she snapped, sliding the lock on the door of her city centre apartment and then drawing the curtains. ‘He didn’t tell me his name—’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘The chain. He’d been hired by Gerrit der Keyser, the little runt. They knew I’d taken the chain off the Bosch when I was in the gallery. They have me on tape.’ She smiled suddenly, bleakly amused. ‘Glad I was dressed up.’

  On the other end of the line, Nicholas listened. Her bravado impressed him, but he was worried. He had been fond of Sabine Monette for years, his attentions filling the void left by her husband’s death. Yet their meeting had been a chance one. Sabine had been seeing friends in London and had visited St Stephen’s to make her confession. And it had been Nicholas Laverne, aka Father Daniel, to whom she had confessed.

  Sabine had been a devout Catholic, but also a confused one. Ever since childhood she her put her desires into prayers, convinced of the presence of God by the continual granting of her supplications: deliverance from poverty, a wealthy husband, fine homes. Yet in her later years she had hit a crisis of faith. She turned from God not because He had been indulgent with her, but because He had been too lenient. The money had bought her what she wanted, but after that, what good was it? The wealthy husband had screwed other women, and then died. The fine homes required constant attention and staff, a never-ending bouncing from Paris to Lyon and back again.

  The advantages for which the young and desperate Sabine had ached had turned out to be an anticlimax in her later years. To her su
rprise she realised that her faith was wavering and that she had nothing left to say to God. In fact, it was her lapse of faith that had propelled her to the church of St Stephen late one evening in winter, eleven years earlier.

  Unlike the opulent, incense-bound atmosphere of Notre Dame in Paris, Sabine walked into a silent, narrow chapel, where the only lights had been dimmed, burning over the altar and beside the confessional booth. Her footsteps had announced her arrival, Nicholas hearing her entrance and moving into the church from the vestry beyond.

  They never spoke of what Sabine had confessed that night or what Nicholas had heard. It had been a confession, after all, and his silence had been guaranteed. But from then on they became allies. In the week that followed, Nicholas had heard Sabine’s confession several more times, until she stopped confessing. But she didn’t stop visiting St Stephen’s on her return trips to London and she didn’t stop talking to Nicholas or listening to him express his own growing discontent with the Church.

  His confusion ran parallel to her own and compounded her uncertainty. But she liked the priest’s intelligence and wondered about his upbringing – a past he would avoid assiduously. Then one day his smoulder of discontent went up like a keg of gunpowder. Father Daniel was no more and Nicholas Laverne took his place.

  ‘Gerrit der Keyser’s got me on tape!’ she repeated.

  ‘Maybe he was bluffing—’

  ‘I don’t think so. He described exactly what I did.’ She stared at the phone in her hand. ‘You don’t think this is being taped, do you?’

  ‘Why would they tape your phone?’

  ‘Because his assistant seemed very angry when I told him I didn’t have the chain.’ She paused, adding, ‘I didn’t tell him you had it, but when I said it wasn’t in my possession any longer, he said, “You shouldn’t have told me that.” He was scary, I can tell you.’ Her voice wavered for an instant. ‘You do still have the chain, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve spoken to someone who knows about Hieronymus Bosch. He’s an expert on Catholicism in the Middle Ages and art history. He was my mentor once – Father Michael at St Stephen’s.’ Nicholas paused, thinking back to the previous night. ‘I didn’t expect him to be glad to see me, but I certainly didn’t think he’d be afraid of me.’