by Annie Dalton
I am a useless detective, Anna thought miserably. She absolutely hated having to keep asking these questions that nobody wanted to answer and not knowing how much of what they told her was the truth. She forced herself to plough on.
‘You have to know though, that your grandfather wasn’t the only person to make these allegations and similar accusations have been made against Herr Kirchmann’s fa—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Alice interrupted impatiently. ‘I know all about that. You’re talking about David Fischer.’
‘Yes, I talked to him just recently,’ Anna said, bracing herself for another angry response.
‘David Fischer is a classic attention-seeker,’ Alice said. ‘We get them coming through our door all the time. It’s like something’s wrong with their wiring. They’re sad and lonely and so desperate to give their lives meaning that they concoct some grandiose little fairy-tale.’
‘But he’s got evidence to support his claims,’ Anna pointed out.
Alice frowned. ‘Well, you know, even if that’s true—’
‘It is,’ Anna insisted. ‘I’ve seen it.’ And so did Lili Rossetti, she thought. ‘Then obviously I have to believe that you’ve seen something,’ Alice said coolly. ‘Nevertheless, I’d take Herr Kirchmann’s father’s word over David Fischer’s any time.’
Anna heard a faint movement and saw Alexei Lenkov in the doorway. She wondered how long he’d been listening.
He said quietly, ‘every family has their secrets, Anna, but that doesn’t mean every man and his dog has the right to go rummaging through them, whatever the tabloids would have us believe.’ His tone was gentle, but she knew she’d been reproved.
‘A word of advice,’ he added in the same gentle tone. ‘Don’t buy into Fischer’s florid fairy-tale as Alice so rightly calls it. Your father was a wonderful and upright man. He always, in all situations, tried his best and that’s all you need to know.’
Alexei and Alice were both giving her sympathetic smiles, but Anna had a definite sense of them closing ranks.
Feeling bruised and humiliated, she hurried down the street, heading for the Tube and home and Bonnie. Alexei’s words stuck with her: he always, in all situations, tried his best and that’s all you need to know. But what if her dad’s best hadn’t been enough?
The obstacle is the path. But she still felt that the more she tried to find out about Julian Hopkins, the further away and more unknowable he became, like an endlessly receding figure in a dream. The trouble is, I hardly knew him, she thought. Hempels had taken so much of her father’s time and energy when she was growing up and he’d been murdered before she could reach adulthood, when they might have attempted a different kind of relationship. All Anna had of him were impressions, like a dandelion’s floating seeds, nothing solid she could hold on to, nothing that added up to a real person.
I need to talk to someone who knew him, she thought suddenly. Someone who knew Julian Hopkins before he was a husband, before he was a father.
Anna only knew one person who fitted that description and she hadn’t spoken to him for more than half her lifetime. She took out her phone.
‘It’s Anna,’ she said, when her brother picked up.
‘I was just going to call you,’ he said. ‘Lack of sleep is obviously affecting my brain cells, it’s only just occurred to me it might be useful to check out the guest list, you know, for the VE night ball? See who bought tickets? It keeps niggling at me; why was Lili Rossetti even there?’
‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Why was she?’
‘Anyway, enough of that, what’s up? Why are you calling?’
Anna felt a sudden terrifying surge of adrenalin as she said, ‘Is your dad still teaching at UCL?’
NINE
Half-way through their lunch, Anna was still sneaking glances at her biological father, for the sheer pleasure of discovering him all over again, still sitting opposite her at their table for two in this busy Turkish café in Bloomsbury.
When Chris Freemantle had walked up to her table, she’d caught her breath. How could she not have suspected? How could everybody not have suspected? Her father’s navy blue eyes were exactly like her own. Everyone had always said how much Anna looked like her mother. Tim had said it the first time he visited her flat. Perhaps everyone had hoped that if they repeated something over and over, with sufficient conviction, it would become true.
Once or twice she surprised a wondering glance from Chris, as if, like Anna, he needed to make frequent reality checks. A sixteen-year old secret had finally been outed. On the phone, Tim could hardly contain his pleasure at setting up this meeting for his father and long-lost half-sister.
It was an undeniably awkward situation, until it dawned on Anna that Chris was leaving her to dictate the pace. He wasn’t trying to rush her into an intimacy he hadn’t earned, playing her long-lost daddy. He seemed astonished and grateful to be here with her at all and, for the first time, with no need to pretend.
They’d been given a window table and the sun glinted on their cutlery and two glasses of pale, yellow wine that they’d hardly touched. Their waiter had brought a procession of blue-painted, pottery dishes filled with middle-eastern snacks: stuffed aubergines, tiny, spicy, lamb meatballs on skewers and a delicate salad of baby broad beans with stuffed vine leaves.
For the first few minutes, they’d tentatively filled in some of the gaps. Anna explained about coming back to Oxford to help nurse her dying grandmother and that she was now the owner of her grandparents’ house. Proudly, Chris had told her that he and Jane were now grandparents, then interrupted himself to say apologetically, ‘But you’re back in touch with Tim. You know all this already!’
‘Yes. You’re a grandparent and it seems that I’m an aunt.’ Anna sounded waspish, but she couldn’t help it. She saw Chris register her oblique reference to her newly discovered half-brother. He speared a small meatball with his fork, went to eat it, then laid the fork and meatball aside.
‘Tim said you wanted to ask me about your dad and Hempels?’
‘Yes. I’ve—’ She swallowed and started over again. ‘Something’s come up that’s made me realize how pathetically little I knew about him and about his work, and now—’
‘He’s not around for you to ask,’ he said gently.
She nodded, relieved. Now no-one had to tiptoe around that grim, smoking crater in her life, where her family had once been.
‘Tim also mentioned that you were asking about the Scott-Nevilles.’ Chris wiped his hands on his napkin. ‘I’m guessing that they’re somehow connected to whatever this is that’s made you want to talk to me after all these years?’
‘I just couldn’t.’ For those first years after her family’s murders, Anna would have found it too excruciating to even be in the same room with any of the Freemantles. She took a breath. ‘It would have been too painful, like being bereaved all over again.’ She searched for any trace of bitterness in his face, but if there was any Chris kept it well-hidden. ‘I wanted to talk to you, because you knew my dad the best of anybody. I think you knew him from his university days, didn’t you?’
Chris sat back in his chair.
‘Anna, I’ll gladly tell you everything I know, but you’re going to need a bit of background first. I’m afraid this is a terrible cliché, but your dad, and your mum and I met the first week we were up at Cambridge and instantly bonded like the Three Musketeers.’
‘You were friends with my mum back then?’ Anna couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. She’d known that both men had been close friends since Cambridge and that her mother had read English and French at Girton College, but she’d never pictured her as their “third musketeer”.
Chris shot her a humorous look that held more than a tinge of regret.
‘Did you ever see a film by Francois Truffaut, called Jules et Jim?’
Anna frowned. ‘The one where two best friends fall in love with the same girl and they all ride around on bikes together. The bikes
might have been in a different film …’ She added uncertainly.
He smilingly shook his head. ‘The bikes were in the same film.’
It was slowly coming back to her. ‘There was a song, catchy, bitter-sweet.’
‘Jeanne Moreau sang it. So, there you have it.’ Chris gave a slightly embarrassed shrug. ‘Julian et Julia. Et Chris. Not such a catchy title obviously.’
Anna stared at him. ‘You both loved my mum? I mean, from the start, you and my dad both loved her.’
‘I believe it’s what’s known in teen fiction as a “love triangle”.’ He pulled a rueful face.
Anna took a much-needed gulp of wine. She imagined telling Tansy, ‘OK, so your dad might have been a notorious gangland boss, but my parents were in a “love triangle”.’
‘I’ve since come to realize that we were also in love with being young,’ Chris continued, ‘in love with being up at Cambridge and with having all our lives still in front of us. My loving your mum, loving Julia, was a part of that. And, in a completely different way, I loved your dad. Loved, admired and desperately envied him.’
‘You envied my dad?’ she asked, astonished.
He smiled. ‘I’d never met anyone like him. Oh, Julia and I talked the talk, Save the Whale, CND marches all that, but Julian …’ Chris shook his head. ‘Julian just wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing. Unlike the rest of us, he preferred to do it behind the scenes. He never wanted recognition. If he’d been in America in the Sixties, he’d have joined the Freedom Riders. Once, he got his arm broken by some British Fascists at a demo in Grosvenor Square.’
‘My dad?’ she said again, as if there might be some confusion about whose father they were discussing.
‘Yes, your dad,’ he said amused.
‘But how come you all still stayed friends all those years, if you both, you know, had such a big thing for my mum?’ Not to mention she had me … your secret love child.
‘Well, for one thing, we were not three, angst-ridden characters in a French film,’ Chris said. ‘Sometimes your mum would be going out with me and other times she’d be going out with Julian, then there’d be times when she was going out with someone totally different. One term, she was studying in Paris and came back after Christmas with a rather stunning new haircut! But it became apparent, over time, that she and your dad were going to go the distance. Then, of course, I met Jane …’
Anna hated to admit it, but she was shocked. Possibly Chris read her expression because he said, ‘I’d hate you to think it was anything sordid, because I promise you it wasn’t. Ever.’
‘Except that you and Julia apparently carried on, you know, carrying on,’ she said, ‘after you were both married.’
Chris nodded, not attempting to deny it.
‘I know, and I’m not proud of how we behaved and nor was Julia.’
Their waiter came by, observed their intense expressions and diplomatically departed.
‘The first years of marriage can be tricky for anyone, but your parents had the additional pressure of Hempels. Julian had never intended to go into the auction house. He’d had ideas of going overseas and working for an aid agency, but when it seemed that Hempels might be lost, due to your grandfather’s uncertain health – and I suspect there were other factors, which your dad felt unable to share – he, well, I think he felt morally obligated to step into his father’s shoes.’
He must have felt utterly trapped, Anna thought.
‘Not surprisingly, this decision took its toll,’ Chris said. ‘Julian became very distant from your mother and was almost like a different person. Naturally, she assumed he regretted marrying her and turned to me for comfort.’
‘Hold on,’ Anna said angrily. ‘I’m sorry, but I think that was a really crappy thing to do! Ok, these things happen. I know that. But you were both married to other people and this obviously went on for years!’
‘I’m not justifying what we did. It was inexcusable. I’d say it was the single worst thing I’ve ever done, except that I could never completely regret it because—’ Chris tried to smile but seemed suddenly close to tears. ‘Because of you.’
‘Did my dad know?’ Anna had agonised over this question ever since she’d found out.
‘Oh yes. As soon as Julia found out she was having you, she offered to leave, but Julian begged her to give him one more chance. He felt he’d driven her into my arms, you see. He asked her to let him take you on as his daughter.’
Anna felt a guilty pang that was no less painful for being so familiar. Right from the start her existence had caused so much pain and confusion.
‘What about Jane? Was she in on this arrangement?’ She heard that same waspish note to her voice, as if part of her was stuck in a state of permanent teenage resentment.
He gave her a tired smile. ‘Yes. We had a terrible few months, but she forgave me. She forgave us both.’
‘But you never told the boys?’
‘God, no! I have no idea how Tim found out. Jane swears she didn’t tell him. Although during the investigation into—’ his voice faltered ‘—into your family’s murders, we obviously had to tell the police.’
Anna thought about all those shared family holidays, Christmases and Halloweens. She remembered growing up feeling that she’d had not one but two families and she’d been right. Inevitably, there had to have been times when the cracks must have shown. Like that holiday in Pembrokeshire, when Tim and Anna surprised Chris and a tearful Julia in the kitchen of their rented farmhouse but, in the main, they had all managed to make it work.
She thought of her father effectively immolating himself to make a success of Hempels, never once alluding to the sacrifice he’d made. She thought of him begging her mother not to leave him, to let him bring up her child as his own and she wanted to weep for this lonely, fiercely principled man.
The waiter reappeared to remove the dirty dishes and offer them dessert menus.
‘Just coffee thanks,’ Chris said, after a questioning glance at Anna.
When they were alone again, Anna said, ‘Did my father ever confide in you about problems at work?’
‘He never quite spelled it out, but it was obvious he had issues with how his father was running the business,’ Chris said.
‘You don’t know what these issues were?’
He shook his head. ‘But I had the impression that Charles had, how shall I put it, rather more flexible morals than your dad.’
Their coffee came with four, exquisite, hand-made chocolates.
‘Julian was profoundly loyal to his father,’ Chris said. ‘He half-worshipped, half-hated him, in that screwed-up way that people so often love the parents who have hurt them most, but he couldn’t bear the thought that he might ever become like him.’
Anna had no real memories of her grandfather, Charles Hopkins, except that she’d hated his voice. If anything, it was more of an absence of memory. A black hole. A chill.
Chris took a breath. ‘One night, Julian turned up at our house absolutely distraught. He’d come straight from some grand dinner at the Scott-Nevilles.’
Every nerve in Anna’s body was suddenly on high alert. ‘Did he tell you what had happened?’
‘I’m hazy on the details,’ he said apologetically. ‘But I remember that some visiting Russian dignitary was present. As the night went on, and they’d all sunk a fair amount of Ralph’s thirty-year-old Macallan whiskey, the Russian started making disparaging comments about blacks and Jews. Your father protested, as he would do.’
Anna could easily imagine what had followed. She’d only had a passing acquaintance with Ralph Scott-Neville, but she’d regularly witnessed Dominic turn on anyone who thwarted, bored or merely irritated him. There had also been times – times she’d rather not remember – when she had been that boring, irritating person.
‘I bet the Scott-Nevilles and their cronies totally ridiculed him,’ she said, swallowing.
Chris nodded. ‘In that killingly polite wa
y of old Etonians.’
Anna’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, saw that her caller was Isadora, and decided that she wouldn’t mind waiting.
‘Poor Dad, he must have felt like he was being savaged by frightfully civilised and well-dressed lions.’ She mimicked an upper-class drawl.
‘It wasn’t just the Scott-Nevilles,’ Chris said soberly. ‘Julian’s father joined in the savaging.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you imagine?’
The spiteful old bastard. Anna felt sickened. Her dad had been worth ten of him.
‘Julian told me he honestly didn’t know if he had the strength to go on.’ For a moment, Chris held her eyes and Anna understood his implication; that night, Julian had come close to suicide. Whatever had been said or done at the Scott-Nevilles, which had so horrified her father, had to have been more than some vile, racist joke, if he’d felt – even for a few haunted hours – that killing himself was the only way out.
She took a breath and asked, ‘did my dad ever mention anything about a stolen painting?’
Chris poured an extra splash of hot milk into his coffee. ‘I’m not sure. Can you give me a bit more context?’
She filled him in about everything that had happened, from finding Lili Rossetti’s body to David Fischer’s wild-seeming accusations against Hempels, which Anna was now beginning to suspect might be true.
‘I’ve been back to Hempels twice now,’ she said, ‘and I have this sense of being charmingly fobbed off and I don’t think it’s just my paranoia talking.’ She gave an awkward laugh, wondering if Chris knew how close his daughter had come to the edge. Then she saw that he was waiting calmly for her to continue, so she related Thomas Kirchmann’s story about his father; the righteous gentile of Innsbruck, who had hidden precious works of art from the infamous Kunstschutz and been executed by the SS for his pains.