‘Sorry to hear that, Bill. Was there anything else?’
‘Yes there was. The doc’s told me that I’ve got about a couple of months at the most and I may have to go into a hospice. The pain’s getting to be too much, even with the morphine pump. I’m going to need someone to take care of my financial affairs till I pop off, and then act as executor of my will when I do. Would it be an awful bind for you to do that for me? You work in the City, so I suppose you know all about these things.’
James hadn’t spoken to his mother’s elder brother since her funeral five years ago. Like all families, with the passage of time, funerals had taken over from weddings and christenings as the event that drew them together under the same roof. He remembered a brisk and hearty little fellow with a ramrod-straight back and a military moustache who was forever taking charge and jollying people along – his late mother had claimed her brother wore her out with his non-stop chatter.
And so now it was Bill’s turn to drop off the end of the conveyor belt. James knew nothing about power of attorney, nor about wills and probate but as his uncle’s sole surviving relative who wasn’t already senile, there wasn’t much else he could do but accept. His mother’s family tree had never been of much interest to him, but he knew Bill was her only sibling and that his marriage to Auntie Pat, who’d pre-deceased him, had been childless.
He got off the bed and gingerly made his way through to the bathroom, taking the phone with him, listening all the while to the travelogue of Bill’s cancer as he recounted in matter-of-fact tones its scenic voyage from bowel to liver to bones. James stopped: in the sink was a half-eaten, congealed offering from a Chinese take-away, still in its tinfoil container. Unable to face such horrors in his current state, he retracted his steps and sat back down on the end of the bed, listening to the old man pragmatically outlining the likely stages of his coming demise. Duty called. ‘Sure, Bill,’ he said. ‘Be glad to help, just tell me what I have to do.’
As Bill Todd dictated, James wrote down the details. The address in south Devon sounded vaguely familiar from his school days when his mother used to stand over him to ensure he wrote his thank-you letters. ‘No, that’ll be fine, Bill. No worries on the work front and I’ll stay as long as you like.’
He hung up and set about assessing the damage to himself, his wallet and the flat. You’re getting too bloody old for this, he told himself on catching a glimpse of the unshaven wreck whose bloodshot eyes stared back at him from the mirror. Even his hair ached and he knew from experience that it was one of those hangovers which would last until the next day. So, moving as carefully and slowly as he could, he began the rehabilitation process by taking a hot shower. Then, only after a fry-up would he even consider getting the flat tidied up to a level that wouldn’t provoke yet another terse note from his cleaning lady when she came in on Tuesday. With any luck, he’d be in Devon by then and if it wasn’t tidy enough she could moan all she wanted.
The more he thought about it, the more the idea of getting away for a few days seemed better than hanging around London and starting the dispiriting process of networking his contacts to try and find another job.
As a proprietary trader he wasn’t under any gardening leave restrictions and thus free, theoretically, to start with a new employer as soon as he found a job, but the knowledge of the ritual he faced made him shudder: he’d been on the receiving end himself. Maybe it was because he reserved his aggression for trading rather than using it on his colleagues, that he’d earned a reputation for being more approachable than most desk-heads. Perhaps that was why he got more than his fair share of old acquaintances ringing him up like a long-lost brother; just to keep in touch, of course, wanted to find out what you’re up to, must be ages – he knew the words by heart. Then the familiar script would begin: enough small talk not to seem rude shortly followed by the pounce – having a spot of difficulty, out of a job at the moment, wondered if you’d got anything going, call any time you said. The wording varied slightly but the message remained the same.
But whether as high-earning trader or loss-making liability, there was always something – a whiff of failure perhaps? Something malodorous, whatever it was – that clung to the supplicant in this whole undignified process. The unthinkable had happened and now it was his turn. His redundancy cheque had been generous, but almost half of it had disappeared in tax and he knew that the longer you were out of the game, the harder it was to get back in.
The telephone rang again. He recognised his ex-wife’s mobile number, waited until the call went to voice mail and, pulling on an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt, wandered through into the kitchen.
Uncle Bill phoned back on Monday giving details of a meeting on Wednesday with his solicitor in Kingsbridge and so, early on Tuesday, James closed the garage door behind him and pointed the Audi into the West London traffic. On such a fine spring morning the novelty of not having to go to work dispelled all the brooding he’d done over the weekend: job-hunting and fending off his ex’s increasingly frequent demands for cash could wait till he got back.
He took his time over the journey; turning off the main roads onto the Devon lanes had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the single-track roads and the speed of the Devon motorists, which was in inverse proportion to their age, meant that it took him over four hours to find the place.
On the outskirts of Dartmouth he turned right towards the village of Streete. Driving slowly down its narrow high street he stopped at the crest of a rise a few hundred yards short of the house to admire the view. This is amazing, he thought.
The setting was perfect, even better than Bill had described it. “The Lodge” was perched high on a cliff-top, looking out over the bay to Start Point lighthouse and across the long shingle bar which separates the freshwater lagoon of Slapton Ley from the sea. Designed by Voysey just before the First World War in the Arts and Crafts style, the two-storey house was rendered with white roughcast and clad in Virginia creeper. To James it seemed as though it had grown there by some mysterious organic process rather than being the product of the hands of man.
The gates from the lane were already open and he turned in to a short drive which led to the side of the house where he found his uncle pottering about in the greenhouse. The old man looked up at the sound of the car’s tyres on the gravel and James was appalled at the transformation the cancer had wrought: bent over and shuffling, he looked all of his eighty-eight years, maybe more. His trousers hung off him and over his narrow, stooped shoulders was draped an over-sized cardigan which no doubt had once fitted snugly, giving him the air of a poverty-stricken waif wearing an older child’s cast-offs. Bill Todd had never been tall – five foot eight to James’s six foot two – but had now shrunk to almost child-like proportions and most of his once thick head of hair had gone. He put down his trowel and greeted James warmly – the vice-like handshake was still there, noted James with a slight wince: that at least hadn’t changed.
‘Come on in,’ said Todd, guiding James towards the open kitchen door with a bony hand. ‘Very good of you to come all this way and I’ll bet you’re dying for a cuppa.’
James would have preferred something stronger but accepted the offer of tea. He could see straight away that the old man needed company. Todd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around – no, leave your bag in the car, I’ll get Mrs H to bring it up later.’
With hesitant steps he led the way into the cool interior of the house. ‘Before you settle in there are a few things I need to show you. We’ll work our way up from bottom to top because I’d like you to see my workshop first: I think you’ll find it very interesting.’ James couldn’t think of anything duller. Whatever makes you happy, Bill, he thought.
Todd led the way down the brick steps into his Aladdin’s cave. The walls were lined with metal shelving and from one marked “Blackburn Prototypes” he took down an alloy tube which he handed to James and beckoned to him to sit down. Pulling up a wood
en stool he sat opposite, gazing intently at his nephew, eyes burning with excitement. ‘Go on, unscrew the cap, it won’t bite you.’
James hesitated once more then removed the top of the tube. He peered inside. ‘It’s a rolled-up piece of paper,’ he said.
‘If you’re going to take on my affairs, you need to know what you’re letting yourself in for. Pull it out and I’ll show you. Careful now.’
James removed the roll of paper and together they spread it out on the workbench, weighting it down at either end.
‘I’m not very good with modern art. What’s it supposed to be?’ James asked.
‘It’s called “Oriental Women at Rest”.’
James put his head on one side, screwed up his grey eyes and looked at the blue and yellow sweeping images on the paper. ‘Well, I suppose if I’m charitable I can just about see that. But so what?’
‘It’s by Matisse, that’s what.’
‘Christ,’ said James, jumping to his feet and running a hand through his thinning fair hair. ‘Even I’ve heard of him. It must be worth thousands.’
‘Millions actually,’ said his uncle. He moved stiffly across the workshop and winced as he reached up to take another tube from the same shelf. ‘Here, I’ll show you one of the others, but be very careful, it’s oil on canvas and it’s been rolled up in there for years. The last thing we want to do is crack it.’ He pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. Unscrewing the cap, he removed the canvas from the felt-lined container and with a delicate touch, partially unrolled it.
James let out an appreciative whistle. ‘Christ, that looks old,’ he said.
‘Mid-seventeenth century, to be precise. It’s Vermeer’s “The Alchemist”. There are about twenty other tubes, nearly all with more than one painting in them.’
James shook his head in disbelief. ‘Bill, I’m not happy about this. I know I said I’d help but what the hell are you doing with a Vermeer? I presume it’s stolen?’
Bill Todd smiled grimly at his nephew and gripped his arm. ‘Yes, they were all stolen, but a long time ago and not by me.’
James tried to back away but Todd kept hold of him. ‘But where did they come from? I don’t want anything to do with this, Bill.’
‘All in good time and then you’ll understand everything. Just come over here.’
Todd led his nephew to the opposite corner of the sprawling workshop that formed the lower ground floor of the house. Nearer the row of windows set high in the wall, there was more light and James looked in amazement at the collection of machinery his uncle had amassed.
‘These are some of the lathes and milling machines we used when I first started the business after the war,’ said Todd. I got a contract with Blackburn to supply undercarriage mountings and control surface actuators and most of the parts were cut on these from solid billets. I’ve still got some of them in fact. Here, pass me one would you,’ he said, indicating a stack of small, dark slabs about six inches long and with rounded corners. James picked one up, turning the heavy block over in his hands.
‘That’s a billet of high-tensile steel. I’m sure they use all sorts of exotic alloys for undercarriage mountings these days, but that’s what we used for the smaller parts. For the bigger sections we had to use hoists to move the billets because they were so heavy. Now come with me.’ Todd led him through a doorway and flicked on the light. James saw that all four walls of the room were covered by stout metal shelving, housing row upon row of billets of different size.
‘Go to that shelf there,’ said Todd. ‘No, not that one, the one marked “Duralloy”. Now reach to the back of the stack and you’ll feel there are some smaller ones. Take one out and pass it to me.’
It was only about six inches long and covered in the same hard, tarry protective coating as the others. ‘God, that’s heavy,’ said James. ‘What is it, lead or something?’
‘Patience. Patience. You’re worse than your mother.’ Todd led the way back into the workshop and clamped the block into a vice. ‘Only got a few of these left so I need to be careful not to spoil it…’ He stopped, rooted to the spot and held his hand to his side, grimacing in pain.
‘You OK?’ asked James.
‘I will be in a second. I told you, didn’t I? The quack says I’ve got secondaries in my liver now and at times it gets too bloody painful without a shot of morphine.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m all right now. Just pass me that hacksaw would you?’ With a few deft strokes, he cut a slot through the protective coating and removed half of it in a single piece.
‘Oh my Christ,’ said James in amazement. ‘But that’s… that looks like gold.’
‘It is,’ said his uncle, in a way that suggested nothing could be more normal. He removed the bar from the vice and handed it over. ‘One kilogram of pure gold. Now take a closer look.’
James almost dropped the bar in horror. Stamped into its surface was the Nazi eagle clutching a swastika. He sat down in a canvas chair next to the workbench, still gripping the object. ‘Bill, you’ve got to tell me how you got all this stuff and then we’ve got to call the police.’
‘What you do after I’m dead, and this place belongs to you, is your business. All I’d ask is that you keep it quiet until then. I’ve probably got no more than a few weeks to live and this stuff has been down here for nearly sixty years, so I don’t think it’ll hurt to wait, do you?’
James frowned. ‘I think you’d better tell me how it got here first.’
‘All right, but if you could slide the section of coating back on the bar and put it back where you found it then we can go back upstairs.’ James did as he was asked and Todd led him out of the workshop, turned off the lights and, holding the metal handrail for support, made his way unsteadily up the brick-built steps to the main house.
From the living room, James stopped to admire the view again. It still didn’t seem possible that a house could have such a perfect setting. His uncle stood beside him. For a moment, neither spoke. Then Todd broke the silence. ‘You really want to know?’
James nodded.
He eased himself painfully into an armchair and James sat opposite. ‘It all started in early 1945. I’d just finished flying training and was surplus to requirements – Bomber Command loss rates had dropped to almost zero and as a semi-trained sprog pilot I was bugger all use to anyone, so they had to find a home for me. You thought about joining up at one stage, didn’t you?’
James nodded. ‘I wanted to be a pilot but they said my eyesight wasn’t good enough so I never took it any further.’
‘I think you’d have been good at it. Still, I got shunted around all over the place and in the end they posted me to military intelligence of all things – don’t laugh – which is why I ended up in Germany as an ALO – that’s an Air Liaison Officer – with the US army. They gave me an RAF sergeant and six American soldiers and I was supposed to be on call to dash off with my team to grab anything that might be useful to the technical boffins back at home: new German aircraft, radar systems, weapons and so on. Then I had to decide whether my team could get it out in our trucks or whether we needed to call in the experts. It was a race against time, you see, because the area around Leipzig was going to be part of the Soviet occupied zone after the war, not that we knew at the time of course.’
‘Sounds fun: very cloak and dagger.’
‘I suppose in hindsight you’re right. I was young and stupid and thought I was indestructible – nearly got my little team killed on several occasions, entirely due to my own stupidity I might add. I’ll tell you all about it some time. Anyway, I’m rambling. One day we got called out to a crash site near a place called Bad Lauterberg. At first sight it didn’t seem very interesting. It was an Me-110 – a twin-engined night fighter. The Yanks had looted what was left of the aircraft but luckily for us, or more to the point, me, I should say, they’d missed a couple of very interesting things – the underwing fuel tanks.’
‘Doesn’t sound terribly interesting to me.’
‘Don’t tell me, twenty aluminium tubes and a good helping of gold bars.’
‘Bright boy. We’d all spread out looking for bits of wreckage and I was alone when I found them, so I covered everything up as quickly as I could. Now, my sergeant was what they used to call a spiv. Most of the stuff he shipped back was useless to the war effort but very saleable on the black market – mainly things he looted from houses and shops. I suppose I should’ve clamped down on him but I was twenty and he was almost twice my age so I looked the other way. When his stuff got back to Farnborough it was looked after by a chum of his who put it to one side, pending the end of the war.’
‘I think I know where this is going,’ James said.
‘Quite. In return for my not reporting him, the sergeant helped me out – he thought I was bonkers bringing back a couple of battered old aluminium fuel tanks filled with what I told him was ballast. Anyway, in May ’45, when the fighting stopped I was posted home. With the help of the other spiv back at Farnborough, I managed to requisition a three-tonner and hid my little finds, still safe in their baggage pods, in my parents’ coal shed until I could start doing something with them. ’ Todd chuckled to himself. ‘My poor old sergeant – if only he’d known.’
‘I’m sorry, Bill, but I’m not happy about taking over a whole heap of stolen property whether it’s as attorney, executor of your will or especially as its beneficiary. Don’t think I’m ungrateful or unwilling to muck in, but I’m still not sure I can help you while you’ve still got all this tucked away down there.’
‘Just hear me out, eh?’ said the old man. ‘After the war I read engineering at Imperial. Then I set up my own company – there were just the two of us at first and then it grew and grew: we did all right but we needed cash to expand. The bank turned us down for a loan so I took one of the bars and spent every penny I had plus a bit more I’d borrowed from my parents – I think I may’ve even raided your mother’s piggy bank – and got the thing to Switzerland. I had a few scares but in the end, I found someone who’d give me a decent price for it. I know it probably doesn’t make things any better in your eyes, but the man in Lausanne who handled it for me said the markings showed that the bar was from the German Treasury and probably not from looted gold – and we all now know what that would’ve meant.’
The Manhattan Deception Page 4
