Long Time Coming (34 page)

I stood up, retreated to the sofa and sat on its arm, staring at the painting, struggling to divine Quilligan’s intention when he’d painted it. The title was a tease. ‘
Three swans seen flying together portend a death
,’ Eldritch had said, citing a proverb I’d never previously heard. But only one swan was shown in flight. Back in 1956, when Quilligan had produced this, Eldritch had been in prison, all possibility of flight denied him. And whose death was portended? The artist’s own? It had certainly followed soon enough. Or his brother’s, which had followed Eldritch’s eventual release?

Had the tray inside the matchbox always been missing? That was the more pressing issue. If not, who’d taken it out? Ardal? Or the mysterious Mr Verhoest? I cast around the room, wondering if I’d spot it lying somewhere. There was a box of matches in the grate next to the gas fire, but it was a Belgian brand, smaller than Swan Vestas. I headed for the kitchen.

*

A walking-stick crashed down on to the handrail of the banisters as I rushed out of the lounge, blocking my path. To my shock and bewilderment, I was face to face with a thin, stooping old man. He had white hair, watery blue eyes magnified by the cloudy lenses of a pair of black-framed glasses and a dusting of stubble on his tightly clenched jaw. He was dressed in a grubby raincoat, his shirt collar open beneath, revealing a scrawny, tracheotomy-scarred neck.

‘
Waar ga u naartoe?
’ he croaked.

Even if I’d understood his question, I couldn’t have answered it in that moment. He was Verhoest. He had to be. This was his home. And I was an intruder. How he’d been able to enter without my hearing him I couldn’t imagine. And how I was going to stop him phoning the police I couldn’t imagine either.

Then, bizarrely, he began to laugh – a dry, rasping laugh. He swung the stick slowly through the air and prodded the rubber ferrule against my chest. ‘You’re Swan’s nephew, aren’t you? That’s who you are. I know the look. The Eldritch Swan look. Quilligan told me you might come here. But breaking one of my windows to get in? He didn’t tell me to expect that.’

‘I’m sorry. I …’

‘Tell me your name.’

‘Stephen Swan.’

‘I’m Pieter Verhoest.’ He lowered the stick to the floor and leant heavily on it. ‘Has Eldritch ever mentioned me to you?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘You’d remember if he had.’

‘You … know him?’

‘
Knew
him. A long time ago.’

‘I … I’m sorry I … broke in. I …’

‘Couldn’t wait.’

‘No. That’s right. I couldn’t.’

‘You got Quilligan’s message, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve seen the painting.’

‘Yes.’

‘What does it mean, young Swan? What does the picture mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But Quilligan’s dead because of it. You must know.’

‘How much did Quilligan tell you?’

‘How much did he tell
you
?’ Verhoest smiled crookedly. He propped his stick against the wall, took off his raincoat and slung it over the banisters, then grabbed his stick again and limped slowly past me into the lounge. He slumped down in the armchair facing the painting and gazed across at it. ‘Isaac Meridor didn’t hang fake Picassos on the walls of Zonnestralen. They were the real thing. The exhibition that’s on in London comes to Brussels later this year. I might go and see it for old times’ sake. When Ardal Quilligan told me how his brother helped defraud Meridor’s widow and daughter, I was pleased, though not as pleased as when I heard the old man had drowned. I’d have held his head under the waves to finish him if I’d had the chance.’ He looked up at me. ‘I owe Meridor’s brood nothing. You understand?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Sit down.’ He pointed to the sofa. ‘I have a story for you. About your uncle.’

I sat down on the sofa opposite him. I wanted to ask about the matchbox in the painting behind me, but I sensed it would be futile. There was an answer and he would give it to me. On his own terms. In his own time.

‘Who do you blame when you realize you’ve wasted your life? Yourself ? It’s the last answer you’re left with when the … comfort … the alternatives give you runs out. Eldritch and I are a lot alike. He’s spent thirty-six years in prison. I’ve spent thirty-six years … growing old and poor and lonely. Maybe, if I’d never gone to the Congo, it would have been different. I was young and arrogant and … greedy. Of course I was. The colonial regime rewarded arrogance and greed. It was what it was for. Rubber. Copper. Gold. Diamonds. We took everything. Women when you wanted them,
how
you wanted them. Boys too. There were no limits, only rules.

‘I saw my chance to get out and get rich when I found out about Meridor’s diamond-smuggling racket. I traced it to its root: your
grandfather, George Swan, over the border in Tanganyika. I put together all the evidence. Then I had a wealthy man at my mercy. I came back here on leave in the spring of 1940 and gave Meridor a simple choice: buy me off or go to gaol for defrauding the government.

‘It was stupid of me to think it would be so easy. Meridor was ruthless. That’s how he’d made his money. There was a third choice and he took it. He ordered Eldritch to hire some men to kill me. They picked me up the night before I was supposed to sail to New York on the
Uitlander
. But they didn’t kill me. They kept me locked up in a shed at a farm outside the city for two days, then dropped me over the Dutch border and told me to stay away from Antwerp. They said they didn’t like the idea of killing a fellow Belgian when the country was in danger. I reckoned I was the only Belgian who had his life saved by the threat of a German invasion. They invaded for real pretty soon anyway. I spent the war in Eindhoven, working in a light-bulb factory.

‘When I came back here in 1945, the Government took me on again in my old job. So, I went back to the Congo. I didn’t last long. I’d had malaria before, but this time it was much worse. I nearly died. I need dialysis now, twice a week. They sent me home in 1948 and gave me a job in the Antwerp tax office. I hated it. And I hated being short of money. So, I went to see Mevrouw Meridor. With Meridor dead, my information on the diamond smuggling was much less damaging, but I hoped his widow would pay me something to save his reputation. I gave her time to think it over. She sent Ardal Quilligan to see me. I had no idea then about his brother’s part in the Picasso swindle. I thought he was just … Mevrouw Meridor’s man of business. We agreed a payment. It was more than I expected to get. It should have been enough to keep me going. But it wasn’t.

‘A man I’d worked with in the Congo persuaded me to invest in a cigarette factory he’d opened in Stanleyville. It was supposed to make us both rich. But he was killed and the factory was destroyed in the fighting after independence. I lost every centime. I’ve been lucky, but never with money. That’s why I live in this …
varkenshok
. I contacted Quilligan. He told me there’d be no more money from Mevrouw Meridor. I was on my own.

‘Then he came to see me last Sunday. He asked me to keep that painting safe until he came back for it. If he didn’t, I was to keep it until you or Eldritch came. He paid me some money. Not much. I’m not sure he had much. He told me what his brother had done. He was in danger, he said. He wasn’t frightened, though. He seemed … very calm, almost … contented. His only worry was the painting and how to hide it. He knew I’d agree. And he knew he could trust me. Eldritch had told him something about me, you see, something secret, just before he went to prison. Quilligan passed it on to me. But I already knew. One day, not long after the war, I recognized one of the men Meridor hired to kill me in a bar near the docks. I had nothing against him. I was grateful they hadn’t killed me. We had a drink together. Quite a few drinks. Then he told me. They were paid not to kill me. By Eldritch. On top of the money from Meridor. Your uncle has a conscience. Maybe you didn’t know. You know now. He saved my life twice, once accidentally, once deliberately. By stopping me sailing on the
Uitlander
. And by stopping that man and his friends from killing me. Pretty funny, isn’t it?’ He laughed his rattling laugh. ‘I spent a long time thinking how good it would feel to stick a knife in Eldritch’s guts. Then I found out I … owed him everything.’ He laughed some more, then raised his stick, which he’d leant against the arm of the chair, and pointed it at the painting. ‘Have you seen there’s something missing, young Swan?’

‘The inside of the matchbox.’

‘
Ja
. That’s right. The inside of the matchbox. Swan Vestas. Irish humour, I suppose. When I read in the paper yesterday that Quilligan had been murdered in Ostend some time Sunday night, I took a long, careful look at the painting. I saw the matchbox was real, with its ends painted over. I thought that was strange. So, I slit the paint with a knife and took out what was inside the box.’

‘Not matches, I imagine.’

‘Oh no. Not matches.’

‘What, then?’

‘Photographic negatives. Six of them. Cut from a strip.’ He swung his stick to point at the bureau in the corner of the room. ‘I had them developed. The prints are in there.’

I jumped up and strode over to the bureau. The flap was up and the key wasn’t in the lock.

‘You’ll need this,’ he said. I turned and he tossed the key over to me.

I unlocked the flap and lowered it. A yellow paper wallet with the word
Kodak
printed on it caught my eye at once. I flicked it open and slid out the photographs it contained.

There were six black-and-white photographs of a man I assumed was Desmond Quilligan, fair-haired, square-jawed and stocky, aged about forty, dressed in a paint-spattered boiler suit, looking more like a house painter than an artist, cigarette wedged jauntily in the corner of his mouth. He was sitting on a chair next to two easels, on one of which stood a Picasso I recognized from the exhibition at the Royal Academy – a Cubist portrait of a horse and rider – and on the other a half-finished copy of it. Quilligan had arranged the chair and easels on the patio outside the French windows of the drawing-room at Cherrygarth. And to clinch the when as well as the where, he was holding a folded newspaper at arm’s length in front of him, with the title and date clearly visible. It was the
Daily Mail
of Wednesday, 23 October 1940.

‘Is that what the Meridors need to win their case?’ asked Verhoest.

I’d have needed to be a lawyer to answer his question with any confidence, but photographs of Desmond Quilligan apparently in the act of copying one of the Brownlow Picassos at Geoffrey Cardale’s house in the autumn of 1940 would surely drive a coach and horses through the estate’s defence. ‘I think so, yes,’ I murmured. Then I noticed something else. In two of the photographs, a figure could be seen inside the drawing-room looking out through the French windows: a boy of three or four, dressed in dungarees and a check shirt. Simon Cardale had obviously
forgotten glimpsing this meticulous recording of a forgery, though no doubt if he saw the pictures, which I was obliged to ensure he never did, he’d have his memory jogged of that strange afternoon in his childhood when two men he was later to be told were his father and uncle had busied themselves with one of those many adult activities he was too young to comprehend. ‘I think this would clinch it.’

‘Except that you’d need the negatives to prove the photographs weren’t faked.’

Verhoest was right, of course. The negatives were crucial. And they weren’t in the wallet. I turned round and looked at him. ‘Where are they?’

‘In a safe place. I went to my bank this morning and deposited a small package. You can’t be too careful, can you?’

‘No. Very wise. So, could we … retrieve it?’

‘
Ja
. Of course.
I
could. But we need to agree something first.’

‘What?’

Verhoest sighed. ‘How much they’re worth.’

‘I thought, since you owe Eldritch your life …’

‘Ah, I do, young Swan.
Ja
. That is why I’m not selling the negatives to the Brownlow estate. But I need money, just like Eldritch. The need … sharpens … as you grow older. He will understand.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘A million francs.’ He smiled. ‘That’s actually only about fifteen thousand pounds.’

‘All right.’ I’d get the money from somewhere. I had to.

‘No argument?’

‘Like you say. We have to have the negatives.’

‘
Ja
. OK.’ Verhoest grasped his stick and struggled to his feet. ‘We agree?’ He offered his hand.

‘We agree.’ I walked over and we sealed the agreement with a handshake.

He let me take the photographs with me. He could obtain extra prints any time he liked. That was why the negatives were really all
that mattered. If I could deliver them to Tate, Rachel and I would be in the clear. Otherwise …

I boarded a tram heading for Groenplaats and tried to decide what exactly was the best move to make. I needed a million francs to pay Verhoest and secure storage for the negatives before I contacted Tate. Without my passport, I wasn’t going to be able to persuade a bank to do anything for me. Clearly, I had to rely on Oudermans, even though he’d left me in no doubt of his disapproval of striking terms with the people responsible for Ardal Quilligan’s death. He wouldn’t stand in my way, though. I was confident of that.

The tram left Hoboken and trundled north. I took the photographs out of the wallet and leafed through them again. It was strange to see, in black and white, the physical reality of what I’d only till now been told about Desmond Quilligan, twenty years dead, but alive and happy and vigorous in these pictures I felt certain his brother had taken, posing proudly with the fruits of his very particular artistic gift one autumn afternoon – somehow I’d convinced myself it was the afternoon – thirty-six years in the past.

I knew I’d regret handing the negatives over to Tate for him to destroy them, but I had no alternative. Rachel was going to be charged with murdering Ardal unless I met Tate’s demands. I might well be charged as her accomplice into the bargain. She wouldn’t want me to surrender the proof she’d spent so long searching for. But what else could I do? The choice was between defeat and imprisonment, which, as Eldritch might have told me, was an easy choice to make.