The Rembrandt Secret (3 page)

Shaken, Marshall stared at his father. ‘Have you talked to him? Confronted him—’

‘He said it wasn’t his fault!’ Owen replied, his voice raised, anger making bright spots of colour on his cheeks.

‘He said he had sold it on to someone as a Ferdinand Bol, and they had cheated
him
!’

‘You don’t believe him, do you?’

‘Of
course
I don’t believe him!’ Owen hurled back, getting to his feet and walking over to the window.

To his amazement, Marshall could see that his father
was shaking, his elegant body trembling, his hands clenching and unclenching obsessively.

‘It made a fortune at the auction,’ Owen went on. ‘Broke all records for an early Rembrandt.
My painting made a fortune.
A fortune I could have saved the business with. A fortune that was
mine
! Jesus Christ,’ he said desperately, ‘I’m finished.’

Sensing his father’s despair, Marshall tried to calm him. ‘Look, you can sell your stock – everything you’ve got. There are thousands of pounds hanging on these walls, you can raise money that way.’

‘Not enough.’

‘It must be!’ his son replied, feeling a sinking dread. ‘Call your collectors, auction what you’ve got. Ring your contacts. There must be some way to get money—’

‘It won’t be
enough
!’ Owen snapped, control gone. ‘I have debts you don’t know about. Debts to many people, some of whom are pressuring me now. I can’t afford the upkeep on this gallery. I kept thinking that things would improve, and then times got tough for everyone. People still bought, but much less over these last months. I can’t shift the stock, Marshall, I can’t raise money. There was only the Rembrandt left. It was always in the background, like a safety net. I knew that would raise enough to pay off the debts and get me straight again. But Manners …’

He stopped talking, his anger drying up, and an eerie calm came over him before he spoke again. ‘He won’t admit it, but he
did
cheat me. He lied to me, knowing I was in trouble, he lied to me … How many times did that
man come to my home? How many times over the years did I help him out? Lend him money to tide him over when he was struggling?’

Owen was no longer talking to his son, just staring at the desk in front of him. ‘I’d only been here for a few weeks when Tobar Manners introduced himself. Your mother never really took to him, but I always thought that that was because he could be spiteful about people, and she never liked gossips. And when your mother died, Tobar was very kind …’

He was a leech, Marshall wanted to say. My mother saw it, and so did I, even as a child. And he wasn’t smart, nothing like as talented as you. So how did he manage to dupe you? You could run rings around him once. You laughed at him with Samuel Hemmings. Not unkindly, more indulgent. But you let him in, too often and too close. God, why were you so stupid with the most treacherous of men?

‘I’ve got a bit of money put away. You can have that.’

‘No, I can’t take anything from you,’ Owen replied, then smiled sweetly, as though the offer momentarily obliterated the seriousness of his situation.

‘What will you do?’

‘Manage, somehow.’ He was trying to fight panic, to press a lid on the scalding tide of his own despair. ‘I’ll talk to the accountant and the bank again.’

‘Will they help?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe …’ he replied, back in control again. The father, not the panicking man. ‘Don’t worry
about me. I was just so shocked by what’s happened. I shouldn’t really have troubled you, got you worried. I’ll find a way round this.’

Unconvinced, Marshall looked around the gallery. ‘You need a change. You should get out of here for a while, Dad. It’ll help you think. I could come and stay with you at Thurstons for a bit. I don’t need to get back to Amsterdam straight away.’

‘It might …’

‘It would do you good.’ Marshall pressed him. ‘We can talk if you want, or you can just relax.’

Owen nodded but averted his gaze. He was embarrassed to be seen as a failure by his son. Embarrassed and ashamed that he had panicked, crying like a child. After all, what could Marshall do? He hadn’t the money to rescue him, and couldn’t have guessed at the full plunging extent of the debts … He had never been a gambler, Owen thought, he should have known. Should never had fallen into the trap of over-buying, then relying on a friend to get him out of trouble – even a friend he had helped, a person who owed him a debt of honour. The shock of his imminent ruin fizzed inside Owen’s head, along with the queasy realisation of his own stupidity. He knew that the painting was genuine. He had looked at it for years, treasured it, admired it, petted it like a favourite child. It had never been a follower’s work. It had been painted by the Master’s hand. And he had sold it short. Confused and panicked, he had listened to a cheat and been treated as a fool.

‘You need to get away from here,’ Marshall said, breaking into his father’s reverie.

‘It’s jinxed.’

‘What?’

‘The gallery,’ Owen said softly. ‘When I bought it, I knew about the rumours. Nothing succeeded here for long. People came and went. Perhaps there
is
a ghost …’

‘Bull shit.’

To Marshall’s surprise, his father laughed. ‘I wish I was like you, Marshall. I really do.’

‘I always wished I was more like you,’ his son said honestly, touching his father on the shoulder. ‘We could go to Thurstons tonight—’

‘I can’t,’ Owen cut in hurriedly. ‘I can’t just run away.’

‘But if you got away you’d clear your head.’

Owen sighed. ‘There are things to do. I have to see to a few things here before I can leave.’

‘All right,’ Marshall agreed finally. ‘Then let me stay here and help.’

‘No,’ Owen replied, straining to smile. ‘I should never have got you involved. It’s not your worry, I just panicked that’s all. You’re right, Marshall, there
is
a lot of stock; perhaps I can raise enough to pay back some people.’

‘What about asking the bank for a temporary loan? Just to tide you over?’

Mirthlessly, Owen laughed. ‘They didn’t seem to think I was a good bet.’

‘Then let me go and talk to
my
bank.’

‘No,’ Owen said, almost harshly. ‘Leave it be, Marshall.
Just talking to you has helped. I’ll go through the stock tomorrow and draw up some figures. There are some people I can talk to …’ He trailed off, looking around him. ‘The Rembrandt would have sorted all this out, paid back all my debts. It sold for a
fortune
, did I tell you that?’

Surprised, Marshall nodded. ‘Yes, Dad, you told me.’

‘Manners cheated me.’

‘So why don’t we confront him together?’

His face set, Owen shrugged his shoulders. An odd gesture, resigned and feckless at the same time. ‘What’s done is done. I know this business, I made enough money out of it myself—’

‘Not by cheating people.’

‘No,’ Owen agreed. ‘And not by cheating friends.’ He paused, then straightened up, smoothed his hair, his urbane charm restored. ‘It might not be hopeless.’

‘Are you sure that there’s nothing I can do?’

‘Nothing,’ Owen said calmly. ‘You go to Thurstons and I’ll come at the weekend.’

Marshall nodded. ‘I’ve some business to see to first, but I’ll come back and we’ll go together. OK?’

‘OK, OK.’

Relieved, Marshall touched his father’s arm. ‘When you get away from here you’ll feel different, I promise. It will all be different by the weekend.’

Teddy Jack was drinking tea made with two teabags, and four spoonfuls of sugar. Made by the fleshy woman at the Tea House on the corner, opposite St Barnabas’s Church. She made it better than anyone else, and winked when she passed it to him. Gratefully Teddy patted her bottom, the soft flesh under her polyester skirt yielding to his hand. Taking another gulp, he wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand, then watched the workers coming and going from the main entrance of Smithfield Market.

Teddy could remember the place twenty years earlier, when he had just come out of Strangeways, having served two years for assault. His mother had said at the time,
if you want to amount to nothing, carry on the way you’re going.
There and then he’d decided that he wanted to amount to something – something more than cheap food, a worn bed in a council flat on the ninth floor, with a view of the gasworks. Divorcing a wife who had borne another man’s child while he was in prison, Teddy had left the North for London.

He came down, regaled with all the usual tales of the capital’s streets either being crammed with gold or sleaze, depending on who he spoke to. But he had found neither. Perhaps his impressive physical size had warned many off; or perhaps it was his manner, which had been affable and threatening at the same time. Either way, Teddy Jack had started his new life washing up in a big London hotel. By the end of the month he had taken a smelly flat in Beak Street, Soho, sandwiched between the rooms of two working girls and above an all-night chemist with a relentless stream of addicts – the most desperate getting their stuff and immediately shooting up in the doorway of Teddy’s flat. When he’d caught them, they hadn’t done it again.

Teddy had then cleaned out the flat and got rid of the smell, fitted a new window where a mouldy board had been, and soon the working girls took to Teddy. After another month he had been ‘married’ to five different girls, his husband status warning off pimps and keeping the punters in line. In return Teddy had been rewarded with blow jobs or quickies, and for a time he had even fancied himself in love with a diminutive Asian girl – until she had stayed with him one night and emptied his wallet. After that, none of the working girls had ever slept over at Teddy’s again. They had visited, talked to him in the Formica bleakness of the galley kitchen, or asked to use his bath, but they had only been friends, not lovers. Teddy was always a quick learner.

So quick that he had soon graduated from washer-upper
to doorman at a respected Park Lane hotel, his saffron coloured beard neatly groomed, his hair trimmed and contained under the green uniform cap. Dressed in the dark military style coat and trousers, Teddy had been a striking Norseman at the doors. A Viking in the middle of London, his bass voice adding to his overall aura of power. Soon he became a well known and trusted figure. Married guests arriving with their lovers had never had to worry about Teddy letting anything slip to their spouses. There was no embarrassing mix up in names, just the usual contained good humour which had seen Teddy’s tips increase as fast as his colleagues’ jealousy. Realising that a Northern outsider had become the unexpected favourite, the rumour mill swung into action, gossip reaching the management’s ears that Teddy Jack had been bringing prostitutes for the guests. Hardly a revelation – it was something which went on in most hotels – but when the management heard of the bloated commission Teddy was supposedly getting, he was fired.

He never been given the reason, just turfed out, saying they were cutting back on staff.

Last in, first out, sorry, mate.

So Teddy Jack had given back the uniform and moved on, without a reference, and found work as a porter for one of the smaller art galleries in Dover Street. His physical strength had made easy work of the packing and unpacking of the paintings and sculptures, but he had always been under supervision. Teddy had never let on
about his criminal record, but he had been sufficiently sketchy about his past to be viewed with caution. When he had once volunteered to deliver a customer’s painting to Hampstead, the embarrassing pause which followed said, without words, that his employer had no intention of letting a Turner sketch leave the gallery – unaccompanied – with Teddy Jack.

In response to the obvious insult, Teddy had resigned. But he held onto the brown porter’s coat which he reckoned as payment for the slight. Enraged, he had left Dover Street and walked quickly towards Piccadilly, accidentally brushing into a man and knocking him into the road on Albemarle Street.

Grabbing hold of the stranger he had unbalanced, Teddy had apologised.

‘You all right, mate?’

The urbane man had shrugged. ‘No harm done. But you’re a big man, you take up a lot of pavement.’ Owen Zeigler had smiled, then gestured to the porter’s coat Teddy was wearing. ‘Are you working around here?’

‘I was.’

‘What happened?’

‘My employer didn’t trust me.’

Interested, Owen studied the big man. He needed more help in the gallery and had been about to advertise the job when this man had literally crossed his path.

‘Did your employer have reason not to trust you?’

And then Teddy Jack had done something he never usually did. He found himself confiding, opening up. Whether
it had been because he was pissed off, or just didn’t care, he dropped the caution of a lifetime and answered fully.

‘You be the judge of whether or not he could trust me. I’m twenty-nine. Never amounted to much, did two years in the Strangeways for assault. The man was my own age and he’d insulted my wife, so I did time for it, and when I got out my wife had had another man’s kid. I’d fought for her honour a lot harder than she ever had.’ Teddy took in a deliberate, measured breath. ‘I’ve been down in London nearly six months. Worked as a washer-up and a hotel doorman, and I just resigned from a bastard’s gallery round the corner. I live in Beak Street, rough as a bear’s arse, rent due every Friday. I don’t do drugs, don’t thieve, and I only drink at the weekends.’