The Rembrandt Secret (2 page)

‘Did you sell the Rembrandt?’

‘I took it to Tobar Manners …’

‘And?’

‘He said it wasn’t genuine. That it was by Ferdinand Bol, as we had originally thought—’

‘But it
was
genuine!’

‘It’s all in the attribution, Marshall,’ his father said shortly. ‘There’s no cut and dried proof—’

‘Samuel Hemmings backed your opinion,’ Marshall interrupted. ‘Surely his name carries enough weight?’

‘Samuel is a controversial historian, you know that. What he says is accepted by some people and vigorously denied by others.’

‘Usually when there’s money involved.’

At once, Owen flared up, his unruffled urbanity overshadowed by hostility.

‘I know what you think of the business, Marshall! There’s nothing you can say about it I haven’t heard before. You made your choice to have nothing to do with the gallery or the art world. Fine, that was your choice, but it’s my life, and despise it all you will, it’s my passion.’

The argument was worn thin between them. Owen might be committed to art dealing, but Marshall wasn’t blinded to the realities of the trade. And trade it was. A hard, tight little trade where a pocket of honest men traded with a legion of those without scruples. Dealers who had inherited galleries, working cheek by jowl with titans who had bought their way in. Deals brokered between old-school traders and the hustlers who drafted in dummy bidders to up the price on a gallery’s painting at auction. Not that all of the auction houses were blameless; the process of
burning
was well known. If a painting didn’t reach its reserve, it was supposedly sold, but instead it was
burned
, put away for years until the market had either forgotten about it, or presumed it had been put back on sale again by a private buyer. That way no famous name was seen to lose its kudos and market value. Because market value was imperative. For every Cézanne that scorched through its reserve and set a new benchmark, a dozen other Cézannes in museums and private collections rose in value. Over the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties the art market had inflated the value of Van Gogh to such an extent that one purchaser had to put his painting in store for twelve years for insurance reasons. Art was being priced out of the galleries and off the walls into the steel tombs of bank vaults.

Sighing, Marshall realised that this was no time to resurrect the old argument and moderated his tone. ‘So Manners said it wasn’t a Rembrandt?’

Owen nodded. ‘He said it was by one of Rembrandt’s pupils. Besides, there was no signature on the painting—’

‘There’s no signature on many of Rembrandt’s paintings!’ Marshall snapped. ‘That never stopped them being attributed to him. And God knows there are enough paintings
with
his signature that people doubt are genuine.’

‘Tobar was sure mine wasn’t genuine. When I asked him to buy it, he was told that it was by Ferdinand Bol. He had it looked at twice, thoroughly investigated.’

‘By whom?’

‘By specialists!’ Owen barked, hurrying on. ‘Tobar was so sorry. He said that he would give me as much as he could, but nothing like I would have got for a genuine Rembrandt … Jesus, I
trusted him
. I’ve known Tobar for years, I had no reason
not
to trust him.’

Unbidden, images curled in front of Marshall. Images of Christmases, of private views, of visits to the gallery – and in every image was Tobar Manners. Always there. Sometimes alone, sometimes in a group. Manners and Samuel Hemmings, and other friends of his father’s, talking, laughing, swapping stories about dealers or customers. Gossip flirting from one glass to another; snippets of information traded over caviar and canapés; cankers of venom floating into greedy ears.

‘What did he do?’ Marshall asked finally.

‘He bought the painting off me.’

‘And?’

‘I just heard,’ Owen said blindly, ‘I just heard about it. The sale in New York. Someone showed me the catalogue, and there is – was – my painting. The same one Tobar had bought from me as a Ferdinand Bol. Only it wasn’t. It was in the catalogue as a Rembrandt.
It had been sold as a Rembrandt.
’ His words were staccato, gunning his story out. ‘Tobar Manners gave me a fraction of its value! He cheated me!’

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.’

3

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.’

‘Still got the temper?’

‘Not so you’d fucking notice,’ Teddy had replied, his unflinching eyes fixed on the elegant man in front of him.

As they stood on the London street, under a disinterested spring sun, they had made a mismatched couple. The red-bearded Viking facing the polished art dealer. And yet they had immediately liked each other, some mutual understanding passing between them.

‘I need a porter at my gallery, the Zeigler Gallery,’ Owen had said. ‘But not just a porter, someone who can be flexible—’

‘Like rubber.’

‘I have two other excellent porters, but I’d want you to do more of the heavy work. Have you got a driver’s licence?’

Teddy nodded. ‘Car and LGV.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any references?’

‘Only from Strangeways,’ Teddy had replied, finally smiling. ‘Look, I want to make a life down here. I’ve put the past to rest. The old Teddy Jack doesn’t exist anymore. I didn’t want to keep company with him no longer.’

‘I’ll put you on a month’s trial. If you’re reliable and a good worker, the job will be permanent. But it might change, over time,’ Owen had said, frowning. ‘You know, circumstances, events. Things change. Needs change.’

Without hesitating, Teddy had put out his hand. ‘I’m Edward Jack. Teddy Jack.’

Owen had taken the proffered hand and shaken it, smiling with genuine charm. ‘And my name’s Zeigler, Owen Zeigler.’

At once Teddy’s eyes had flickered.

‘What is it?’

‘I know about you,’ Teddy had replied, distantly amused.

‘Heard quite a lot about you and your gallery, in fact—’

‘—because the bastard I’ve just walked out on is Tobar Manners.’

The month’s trial had been up before anyone had realised, and it was never referred to because within four weeks Teddy had created a niche for himself and wasn’t going anywhere. Having learnt from past experience, he had made sure that this time he wouldn’t become the favourite and alienate his co-workers. So he had treated the older porters, ex-Guardsmen Lester Fox and Gordon Hendrix, with respect and kept out of their way. In fact, Teddy had kept out of
everyone’s
way and concentrated on the Zeigler Gallery instead. He had repainted walls, mended the staircase and taken on some of the basic plumbing.

‘What now?’ Owen had asked one night, coming into the basement to watch Teddy mending a broken packing crate.

‘Needs fixing.’

And fixed it had been. Whatever it was, if it needed fixing, Teddy had fixed it.

That spring had passed fast, left without anyone noticing, until the smoky hot summer flush of 1994 had swung her broad hips round the London streets … Teddy thought back, remembering how the smog had cluttered the interlinking alleyways and shops off Bond Street, snaking around the dowager terrace of the Museum of Mankind and dozing at the entrance of Burlington Arcade. As the hot red London buses had veined their circulation through the city, Albemarle Street had marinated itself in a series of triumphant art sales. And as a Matisse trumped up the already inflated prices, the stalwarts of Dutch art had made their re-entry.

In that eerie quicksand of a summer Owen Zeigler had taken Teddy Jack to one side and, as though it was a matter of little importance, asked him to watch someone. Just watch them, take notes and report back, nothing much. Then later Owen asked him to follow them, then bug their phone … It was the first of many times Owen asked Teddy Jack to break the law.

Uncharacteristically unnerved by the memories, Teddy Jack looked round and sipped at his tea. He thought briefly of leaving London and then changed his mind, thinking instead of what he knew. Of what Owen Zeigler had told him. Of the confidences he had carried for years.

…
I’m looking for someone I can rely on, even lean on perhaps.

They had liked each other, both knowing more about the men they really were, behind the images the world believed. Flattered and needed, Teddy had been the ideal support, the perfect ally, the furtive spy.

And perhaps the only man alive who knew
all
about Owen Zeigler.