The Rembrandt Secret (37 page)

Ssssh … A door bangs outside. I will write when it is quiet again. Now the silence comes like a dead skin over me … When Carel saw me that day he told me he would do everything to get me released. He cared, I saw it in his eyes, and dying would have been sweet that moment …

I took his hand. Yes, I took his hand.

Rembrandt was merciless, Carel said, speaking of what had been done to me. Then he told me of how he had been made to continue working. Painting portraits for Rembrandt, who would sign them, then give them on for selling to his agent, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. A man with a cold, soft voice and a hat brushed blue-black as a magpie’s wing … We are creating a king’s fortune, Rembrandt had said to Carel, keep quiet. Keep quiet. Remember, I made you, I can unmake you also … keep quiet.

All the keepings quiet. All the silences muffling the facts like the drapes round the old bed … Then Carel said he had met Rembrandt’s mistress, Hendrickje Stoffels, and my heart twitched at the name.

Go away, go away, I told my son. Leave Delft, Holland. Go abroad, go to another country …

I would have pushed him, if I could have. Would have taken him into the courtyard and prayed for his back to arch and wings the width of a cathedral to lift him up and take him from Amsterdam.

Take your wife, your children, I urged him. Take them and go whilst you can. Whilst there is time … You owe me nothing.

I took his hands and kissed them. He let me. I kissed him for calling me his mother and for recognising me as such.

Get away, I told him, get away …

The clock of the Gouda House of Corrections was striking seven, booming the dead, brass notes into the flatlands. When he left he turned at the gate and raised his hand to me. For a second his fingers were silhouetted against the setting sun and they looked like the spokes of a Catherine Wheel.

Having shaken off Dimitri Kapinski, Marshall ducked into the doorway of an abandoned shop. On the windows were advertisements for the Moscow State Circus and the Rijksmuseum, and underneath, in smaller letters some joker had written ‘dyslexia lures, KO?’ Glancing round again, Marshall took out his mobile, thought for a moment, then dialled a London number. It was a number he had known for many years; a private number few people had, outside the business. A number Owen Zeigler had used many times.

‘Hello?’ a querulous voice answered.

‘Tobar Manners?’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Marshall Zeigler.’ He was certain he could sense an intake of breath at the other end. ‘You cheated my father, you bastard, and I’m going to make sure I ruin you.’

‘Now, look here—’

Marshall could feel the pulse thumping in his neck. He was flinging caution to the wind, trying to provoke a challenge. ‘The portraits you’re selling are fakes.’

‘What!!?’ Manners exclaimed, then tried to bluster his way out. ‘Look, Marshall, perhaps I did a bad thing with regard to your father. It wasn’t meant—’

‘You fucking liar!’

‘All right, all right.’ Tobar pushed his free hand through his dandelion hair. ‘I cheated him. OK, so you want to get your own back, fine, I understand. I can pay you.’

‘No, you can’t. I don’t want money.’

‘So what
do
you want?’

‘I want to see you disgraced and penniless, that’s what I want. And I have the means at my disposal to do it.’

‘You have the Rembrandt letters?’ Tobar asked, his voice barely a whisper. ‘
They’re real?
’

‘Indeed they are.’

‘Look, Marshall—’

‘No, Tobar,
you
look. I’ve got the letters and I’ve got proof that the Rembrandts going up for sale in New York are fakes.’

‘Are you going to expose them?’ Tobar asked, his voice thin. ‘I mean, if you were, why haven’t you already done it?’ His confidence percolated. ‘You
don’t
have them, or you would have acted already. You’re bluffing, Marshall. You should be careful who you piss around with, this isn’t amateur night.’

‘After four murders, no, it’s not amateur at all,’ Marshall answered, pushing him. ‘Who are you working with?’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Tobar snapped. ‘You think
I
killed those people? Your father? The rest? Are you insane?!’ he slumped into his seat, loosening his collar. ‘I had nothing to do with those murders.’

Marshall was inclined to believe him. He had never really thought that Tobar Manners was involved in the killings, he was just hoping that his father’s old acquaintance would act as the town crier. By telling Manners he had the letters, Marshall knew it would be all over London within hours. And by telling him that he had proof the portraits were fakes he was effectively setting himself up as bait. The real killer would then be sure to come after him.

Him
, and no one else.

‘Where are you?’

Marshall laughed. ‘Of course you’d be the first person I’d confide in. I bet you’d sell me out to the highest bidder without pausing for breath.’

‘I’m sorry about your father, Marshall.’

‘You don’t know what sorry means,’ Marshall replied. ‘But you will, Tobar. When your portraits get laughed out of court. When you’ll be lucky to get a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for them – instead of forty million.’

‘Marshall, calm down, we can come to an arrangement.’

‘Really? You know who’s behind all this?’

‘No,’ Tobar said honestly. ‘But between us, you and me, we could make a deal … You don’t have to make the letters public, Marshall. You could just let the sale go through, and we could split the proceeds afterwards. Think what you could do with all that money.’

‘What would you do with your half, Tobar?’

Manners ran his tongue over his dry lips before answering, quietly, ‘I could save my business …’

‘Hell of a business if you need twenty million to save it,’ Marshall replied. ‘My father could have saved his gallery with just half a million. My father could have saved his business with the proper proceeds from selling his own Rembrandt. But you cheated him, and now I’m going to cheat you.’

‘Marshall, think about it! Think about what it would mean. You’d bring down the art market—’

‘So I gather.’

‘Hardly anyone would survive. You want that? And what about the letters themselves, Marshall? Proof that Rembrandt had a bastard who faked for him? If that poisonous little secret comes out it will undermine one of the greatest painters who ever lived.’

‘Why should I care? Let the world see Rembrandt for what he was,’ Marshall said shortly. ‘You don’t give a damn about his character, you just care about the money his works make. Even in the middle of a global recession, he’s foolproof. People can always rely on Rembrandt to shore up the market. He’s gold, platinum, bank-safe. The pound and the dollar might crumble, but not Rembrandt. As long as there are Rembrandts to sell, there are fortunes in the offing.’

Rattled, Tobar began to panic. ‘How d’you know the letters aren’t fakes?’

‘They’ve been authenticated by Stefan van der Helde. Remember him? He was the first murder victim. The letters are real because people have killed for them. People don’t kill for fakes, Tobar. They don’t risk everything for
a hoax. The Rembrandt letters exist, and they can ruin you, and your fucking business.’

‘So why tell me?’ Manners said. ‘Why are telling me this, Zeigler? You want revenge for your father, fine, I get it. But why else are you telling me? Are you checking me out, is that it? Seeing if I
am
involved, seeing how far I’d go to shut you up and get hold of the letters?’ He paused, staring ahead, aware that he was looking into his own destiny and was terrified by it. ‘You want to make a deal.’

‘No, I just want one thing from you, Tobar. The thing you’re best at – I want you to talk. To gossip, to make sure that everyone knows I have the letters.’

‘Surely you don’t also expect me to tell everyone the paintings due for sale are fakes?’

Marshall shrugged. ‘You’d stab anyone in the back, Tobar, but you won’t cut your own throat.’

‘
You can’t expose the fakes!
’

‘Yes, I can. And I can – and I
will –
ruin you.’

‘But what if someone stops you, Marshall?’ Tobar said viciously. ‘What if someone fills up your belly with stones? Guts you? Blinds you? You want to be a fucking martyr, go ahead. But I’d think about it very carefully … You might hate me, perhaps I deserve it, but I can help you. I can protect you, keep you safe. I can also make you a very rich man if you keep quiet about the sale. Look, you can keep the fucking letters, if you want. You could sell them later. Make a fortune when times are on the up again. Or you could use them as a bargaining tool to get the art market over a barrel—’

‘Like you are now?’

Biting his lip, Tobar struggled to keep his composure. ‘I know this business.’

‘I don’t. But I know what’s right.’

‘Jesus, you don’t think you’re honouring your father doing this! Or do you? … God, I think you do.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Owen Zeigler wasn’t quite the hero you think he was. He was very cunning, in his own way.’

‘He lived for the art world—’

‘Because he learned how to work the strings. His sleight of hand was always impressive. Even more so because no one suspected the depth of his ingenuity.’

‘Don’t talk about my father like that!’

‘You didn’t really know him! You should have invested more time with your father when he was alive. Dead men – even the undeserving – become ready heroes.’ His voice hardened. ‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. You think you have the upper hand? There are no upper hands. There’s just a continuous game of pass the parcel. We do a favour, we return a favour. We drop a word in the right ear, and forget a fact. We put alarms on our windows and gallery doors to keep out the bad men, but in reality it’s to keep them in. Almost every gallery in these streets has a history of fake promises and lying. We all fill our bellies – not with the few big, genuine sales – but with the drizzling, petty diet of trumped up artists and overestimated Scottish cattle. For every Modigliani there are hundreds of sodden Lake District scenes, in Victorian frames, buffed up and regurgitated
for the gullible. Vermeer? Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. But any amount of bilious indifferent Dutch interiors and fucking portraits of monks.’

He started laughing to himself, almost amused. ‘People hate art dealers because we’re pompous and patronising. They see the recession hit us and think we got what we deserved. Why? Because we’re elitist, and frequently banal. And rich – and envied for it. But, by Christ, we earn our crust. I’ve sold dross as twenty-four carat gold, and pap as platinum. It takes a special skill to be an art dealer; mendacity is a prerequisite. Fakes? We’re
all
fucking fakes.’ He paused, his tone cooling. ‘You need to think about this conversation, Marshall. Think very carefully. You’ve got this number, call me later when you’ve considered what I’ve said. Think about what you could do with a great deal of money. Then we’ll talk … But if you tell me we can’t do business—’

‘We can’t do business.’

‘Then start running, Marshall Zeigler. And don’t stop.’

Due to the unprecedented media interest, the venue for the auction of the Rembrandt portraits was rumoured to be about to move, until confirmation that the auction would be held at the Museum of Mankind, New York. Handled by a leading auction house, the insurance and security was due to run into the hundreds of thousands; the front glass wall of the foyer was re-enforced with another wall of toughened glass. The paintings were being kept at an undisclosed location until the day of the auction, when they would arrive under police escort. The sale was publicly touted as being not only a way to raise money, but to revive interest in the plummeting art market.

Journalists from around the globe came to interview the director of the Museum of Mankind, and Tobar Manners, the broker for the sale. The owner of the Rembrandts was to remain anonymous, although, as Manners pointed out repeatedly, the history of the works was never in question. On camera he seemed a brusque, clever man, with a facility for words and an unexpected
charm, as dazzling as a firefly. No one watching or listening to him would suspect the panic inside, the ever present fear that at any moment the paintings would be called out as fakes. And with proof.

It had taken Tobar only half an hour to decide what to do after he had finished talking to Marshall. He had waited in the dubious hope that Marshall might call him back, but as the thirty minutes ended, Tobar picked up the phone and began calling his associates. He said nothing about the Rembrandts coming up for sale in New York, and certainly made no mention that they were fakes. But he made very certain that everyone he spoke to knew that the Rembrandt letters existed. That the theory Owen Zeigler had had for so long was actually proven. Rembrandt had a bastard son who had forged for him. Rembrandt’s son, by Geertje Dircx. The monkey was finally out of its cage.

The news was met with incredulity in some quarters, but as the rumour had been going apace lately, there was almost a sense of relief that the letters had actually surfaced. Then, after the initial relief, the facts slammed home. Without exception, everyone realised the importance and the danger of the letters. Leon Williams visited Rufus Ariel; Tobar Manners joined them a little later, all three men oddly reserved. The murder of Stefan van der Helde was understood when it was known that he had authenticated the letters. The murder of Charlotte Gorday came into focus too, because of her being Owen Zeigler’s mistress. And when someone mentioned the murder of
Nicolai Kapinski in New York, no one was in any doubt that the killings were all connected. They spoke of Owen Zeigler, and of his theory. They spoke of a colleague and sometime friend who had found a smoking gun and had passed it on.

The barrel was now pointed at all of them – and in the hands of his son.

Flinging open the door of Rufus Ariel’s gallery, Lillian Kauffman walked into the office beyond. Her expression was combative.