The Manhattan Deception

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  Trying not to disturb the crime scene too much, he cleared a space for himself in the spare bedroom, where at least the mattress was intact, sat down on the bed and phoned Cathy. Her mobile went straight to voicemail so he left a message: ‘Hi, it’s me. Never guess what; it’s Groundhog Day. Now my flat’s been trashed too. No forced entry, nothing taken and the Met police want to ask me about hanging on to stuff Uncle Bill brought home from Germany. Isn’t that a spooky coincidence? Hope your new orange jump suit fits. Call me when you can or when you make parole. Bye.’

  The following morning the parallels continued. Two officers from the Met showed up at ten and, contrary to James’s expectations, showed remarkably little interest in the break-in the moment he told them there was nothing missing. However, when it came to grilling him about looted items that he’d failed to report, they were far more assiduous and their tone carried more menace than that of their counterparts in Devon.

  If the message hadn’t been clear after the break-in at The Lodge, it certainly was now. The two questions that he couldn’t answer were; who? and why?’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Mrs Higgs brings more mail. Köcher has managed to find Meissner who worked for him in Bern – another dead man gets up and walks. How many more? Confirms story that the aircraft never arrived at Fürstenfeldbruck. A. livid – convinced that K. and M. stole the consignment and have double-crossed him. M. has promised to try and send money from old friends so I don’t think A. is right. If it really has all gone then we will have to start from scratch. Too depressing to consider so retreated to garden away from A. and his moods.

  *

  James spent the next couple of days getting the flat straight and fielding requests from Mrs H for permission to spend money to do the same at The Lodge.

  His interview with Hérisson Capital went well – during a two hour grilling by the hedge fund’s French owner and its American CEO, he wasn’t aware of a single slip-up, and over the liquid lunch which followed they’d even asked him when he could start. By the time that Cathy arrived in London, he felt as though things were slowly returning to normal.

  James had spent hours agonising over whether or not to risk asking her and was relieved and surprised when she accepted his offer to stay with him rather than at a hotel. Having made it clear that her room had a lock on the door and that he was “safe in taxis”, an Anglicism she grasped straight away, there was no hesitation on her part. No stranger to London, for Cathy the trip was more a case of renewing old friendships and he left her to her own devices while he busied himself sorting out the remaining damage to the flat. The homicide unit in DC had seemingly turned their attentions to other matters, and although she wasn’t yet in the clear, they raised no objections to her travelling abroad.

  By the evening of her first day in the UK, the jet lag caught up with her and Cathy began to wilt. James prepared supper, leaving her to sort through her e-mails on his PC. ‘Right,’ he said, stripping off his apron and hanging it on the back of the kitchen door. ‘Forty-five minutes in the oven and it’ll be ready.’

  ‘Certainly smells good,’ she replied.

  ‘Don’t let that fool you – probably be tough as old boots. And when you’ve finished your e-mails, I’ve got something to show you; four very interesting mug-shots.’

  Cathy’s face lit up. ‘You mean the letters? Let me see, I can’t wait.’ He spread the copies out on the desk in front of her and she picked each one up in turn, examining it minutely but without saying a word. The last one she looked at was that of Emma Pauli, née Richter. ‘Have you got a magnifying glass?’ she asked.

  James rummaged around in the desk drawer until he found what he was looking for. ‘What’ve you seen?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. I need to take a closer look.’ She studied the image intently and then nodded. ‘I thought as much. That’s a wig.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course I am. Here, look. First of all it just doesn’t look right and second, if you focus on her right ear, just above it there are a few strands of much lighter-coloured hair which I’d guess was her natural colour.’

  ‘Perhaps she was going grey.’

  ‘Then there’d be more signs at the temples. Nope, that’s a wig. What’s she trying to hide?’

  James shrugged. ‘If these people were crooks, Nazis or both and they were using borrowed identities, maybe they wanted to make themselves look like the real owners of the names, that’s all.’

  ‘And as for this one,’ she said, picking up Anton Pauli’s letter. ‘That’s a face that sank a thousand ships.’

  James peered over her shoulder at the picture of Senator Eric Pauli’s father. ‘No oil painting, is he?’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing that I reckon Pauli got wrong and that’s about his parents being Jewish.’ She picked up the magnifying glass to study the photocopy more closely. The distorted face that looked back at her through the lens was that of a man who appeared far older than his date of birth suggested. His bald crown was surrounded by a fringe of unkempt dark hair, long at the sides and shot through with grey. The eyes were hard to make out, distorted by the thick lenses of his dark-rimmed glasses and the outline of the face, as well as the man’s mouth, were hidden by an unkempt beard. ‘And I tell you something else,’ said Cathy. ‘This guy’s been knocked about.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said James, craning to look through the magnifying glass.

  ‘See here, around his eyes, these dark rings. That’s bruising. And his nose – it’s all lumpy, like it’s been broken.’

  ‘Hmm, I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Pity about the beard because you can’t make much else out, but the poor old sod looks like he’s got a mouth full of marbles. You’re right though, he’s definitely been roughed up.’

  ‘So presuming he was Jewish, that kind of blows our theory about these guys having connections to the upper rungs of the Nazi party.’

  ‘Maybe Pauli’s mother was telling the truth about being in the camps after all.’

  Cathy put down the magnifying glass and held the document out in front of her. ‘Come on, Anton baby, talk to us,’ she said to it. ‘Tell us what you were doing with all those paintings and where you found them. Please. I’ll be your best buddy.’

  ‘And how you survived,’ added James.

  ‘Yeah, that’s a good point,’ said Cathy. ‘If they’d been sent to Auschwitz when the Breslau Jews were rounded up, at his age he’d probably have been gassed straight away. And even if they were used as slave labour, the chances of their both surviving have to be about nil.’

  ‘There is another possibility,’ said James. ‘There were Jews that the Nazis kept alive because they had special skills – being able to forge documents is one I read about.’

  Cathy snapped her fingers and jumped up from the chair. ‘What about being able to forge paintings?’

  James looked at her open-mouthed. For a moment, neither of them spoke until at last he broke the silence. ‘Christ. I’d better call the National Gallery tomorrow and warn them.’

  ‘It still doesn’t explain what they were doing with Standfluss and Reiss, nor the signatures on the letters, but it sure would explain how they survived.’

  ‘Anything new on those two jokers?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cathy. ‘I’ve been through the Farm Hall transcripts again and not only is there no trace of either Standfluss or Reiss ever having been there, I found a couple of instances where they’re both mentioned by Heisenberg himself.’

  ‘Anything of interest?’

  ‘No, just talk about physics and the things they’d been working on. For me it just confirms what we thought – that they both had their pasts whitewashed so they could work in the US. And by the time the transcripts were declassified it wasn’t worth continuing with the cover-up.’

  James poured her another drink. ‘So what next?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m due at the Imperial War Museum at ten to see one of their
archivists, and I’ll probably be there all day depending on what I find.’

  James changed the subject. ‘You finished chasing Eric Pauli round DC?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘For a while, yes. I’ve got a bit of break before the presidential campaign kicks off. You saw that Murphy conceded?’

  ‘He’s angling for VP, isn’t he?’

  ‘Angling, yes. Pauli won’t have him as running mate; he thinks the man’s an idiot. He’ll make ambassador to Zimbabwe if he’s lucky.’

  James stretched out on the sofa. ‘Reckon he’s got a chance against Lopez?’

  ‘All depends how Pauli plays his cards. Her approval rating has fallen off a cliff and on everything from healthcare reform to economic policy he can beat up on her performance, but she’s an incredibly slippery target.’

  ‘Thought that was a pre-requisite,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah it is, but it’s the way she plays her two big cards: race and sex. Sure, she’s third generation Hispanic – she’s as Mexican as I am Swedish – and she’s a woman. And before you say it, big deal, so was Maggie Thatcher. Where she’s clever is that it’s always someone else who takes offence on her behalf when the insults start flying. Makes it hard for anyone to lay a glove on her.’

  ‘Still, you don’t have to think about any of that for a few days,’ said James, checking his watch. ‘I’ll go and get the veg on and then we can eat.’

  The following morning, James received an anguished phone call from Cathy. ‘They’ve said what?’ he asked in amazement.

  ‘That I can’t see their documents archive.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say precisely, but the director of archives herself was there to meet me and she said it was because of “certain allegations” that had been made. She bent over backwards not to accuse me of anything and was oh-so-bloody British about it, but sorry, no, you can’t come in.’

  ‘But that’s bullshit,’ said James.

  Less than an hour later, he opened the door to a disconsolate Cathy. She tried to laugh it off but he could see the disappointment written all over her. ‘So now what do I do?’ she said. ‘A week’s worth of research up in smoke. I might as well go back to DC. Whoever’s trying to keep me off the trail is doing a damn good job.’

  ‘They’re well informed too,’ James said. ‘I can’t imagine they’ve been round every museum in the country just on the off-chance you might drop in.’

  Cathy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, they’re wasting their time if they think they can put me off that easily. Next time I need to research something, I’ll make the arrangements myself and at the last minute.’

  ‘What about Wroclaw?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. The staff at the museum know I’m coming but I haven’t given them a date yet. I’ll call the office and get them to postpone indefinitely. I’ve got to assume that whoever’s doing this has already screwed things up for me in Poland too.’

  ‘While you were out I drew a blank too,’ said James. ‘I don’t know whether you remember him from DC, but I spoke to that little fat guy from the National Gallery and he’s insistent: there’s still no way any of those paintings are fakes. Sorry. It was a great theory though, but we’re back to square one.’ She leaned forward to put her coffee cup down on the table and as she did so, the sunlight streaming through the window lit up her hair and intensified the deep blue in her eyes. James knew that he wanted to spend much more time with her. ‘When did you last have a holiday?’ he asked.

  ‘Christ knows,’ she replied. ‘Couple of years ago maybe. I can’t remember. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Why don’t we go down to Devon for a week? You’ll love the house and the view is to die for.’

  Cathy looked at him and smiled. ‘It’s a nice idea,’ she said. ‘But I’m here to work, not goof off to the back of beyond.’

  ‘So what’ll you do if you stay here? You’re persona non grata at the IWM and I dare say the British Library too if these people have done their homework.’

  ‘I can still get stuff done on line.’

  ‘You can do that from Devon. Modern technology took its time to get there, but I do have ADSL. What do you say?’

  ‘OK, you win.’

  James pretended to be offended. ‘Do try to keep your enthusiasm in check – I don’t want you getting carried away,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, that sounded so ungrateful.’ She reached over and put her hand on his knee by way of apology and at that moment, he would have given anything to hold her. ‘I’m sure it’ll be great,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘And you’re right. I do need a holiday, even if it’s a working one.’

  After a quick call to Mrs H to let her know they were on their way, James and Cathy set off through the early June sunshine. All talk was now of Devon and what they would see and do; her earlier disappointment at the museum was almost forgotten. For James, having company in the car shortened the journey and by the time they turned off the main road to head towards Dartmouth for the last leg, he could tell that she’d fallen in love with the countryside. ‘That sign, where it says “A” in front of the number, I thought “A” meant main road,’ said Cathy.

  ‘It does.’

  ‘But there’s only room for one car. What if something comes the other way?’

  James looked at her and smiled. ‘One of us backs up or pulls in. Time runs at a different pace down here. This isn’t the Beltway, you know.’

  After Dartmouth, the road turned to follow the dips and rises of the coastline and, being early in the season, there was little traffic. As an added bonus, the weather had held. The countryside looked freshly minted under a cloudless sky and the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. ‘I’m just so glad we came,’ she said as they passed the little beach at Blackpool Sands. ‘I don’t think I ever want to leave this place.’

  He laughed. ‘Just wait till you see the house and the view; then we’ll never get you back to London.’

  As they turned in through the gates and into the short gravel drive, Cathy let out a gasp. ‘Is this it? Is all of this yours?’

  ‘Yup. I love it to bits but it’s a money-pit. Looks can be very deceptive.’

  Mrs Hammond was waiting for them and showed Cathy to her room, the same guest room that had taken James under its spell when he came to stay with Bill Todd the previous year.

  Despite his fears, the insurance company hadn’t tried to cheat him any more than normal and, thanks to large injections of his own cash and hours of hard work by the Hammonds, to anyone who didn’t know the house, there was no trace of the damage done during the break-in.

  The bedroom door stood ajar and, at his knock, Cathy turned round. He found her exactly where he’d expected: at the open window, gazing out at the garden and the view of the Devon coastline. He joined her, resting his elbows on the window ledge. ‘I thought you’d like it,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘I’m not moving from here. You can have my meals sent up.’

  James laughed. ‘There’s a lot you’ll miss if you do. You haven’t seen the garden yet, nor the beach – even in a week we’re not going to be able to see everything but we’ll have a good go.’

  As he’d predicted, the short holiday passed all too quickly. A ridge of high pressure blocked the usual early June monsoon and the afternoon temperatures reached the high twenties. The lanes, restaurants and villages were quiet and he was able to show her his adopted home county free of the crowds that blight it in July and August. There were no more unwelcome intrusions from the police and the drama of the letters with its four grainy, tantalisingly mute actors occupied less and less of their conversation as the days went by.

  It was the evening of their fourth day and Cathy and James sat next to each other in silence drinking in the view that she’d loved from the moment she’d arrived at The Lodge. The Hammonds had finished work and returned to their cottage, leaving them in the windless twilight, sipping an exc
ellent Chablis from his late uncle’s cellar. ‘This is perfection,’ said Cathy. ‘I warned you I wouldn’t want to leave.’

  ‘You’d start to feel differently about the place if you came here in winter after a week’s forty-knot fog and rain, or in high summer when you can’t move for tourists. But you’re right, it doesn’t really get much better than this.’ He paused. ‘It’s nice to have someone to share it with too.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said and, turning to James, pulled him towards her and kissed him full on the mouth.

  ‘Wow,’ he said when she finally released him. ‘That was a lovely surprise.’

  She linked her hands behind his neck. ‘I was beginning to think you didn’t like me. One of us had to make the first move.’

  ‘I’ve been dying to do that for ages, since way before you got here in fact, but I just didn’t want to come on too strong, that’s all.’

  ‘James, will you kindly shut the fuck up and come here.’ She pulled him against her once more and as she did so, felt his hand slide inside her blouse. ‘I think we’d better take the bottle and go inside, don’t you?’ she said softly. ‘It’s not really warm enough to be naked outdoors.’

  The following morning they slept late and even the bright sunshine streaming through the gap at the top of the curtains didn’t wake them. From far distant, somewhere downstairs, James drowsily made out the sound of Mrs H pottering about. Cathy was still asleep, her blonde hair tousled and strewn across the pillow next to him. She stirred as he got out of bed and put on his dressing gown. ‘What time is it?’ she asked.