The Bosch Deception

by Alex Connor

  ‘Afraid of you – or what you told him?’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ Nicholas replied. ‘I was about to tell him the whole story and he didn’t want to know. I tried to fill him in, but then something happened and I missed my chance. To be honest, he threw me out.’

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. ‘So he doesn’t know the chain’s secret?’

  ‘No. Only you and I know that.’

  ‘And Gerrit der Keyser and the Dutch moose.’

  ‘But do they?’ he challenged her. ‘They know you stole a chain off a painting which was connected to Hieronymus Bosch, but they don’t know what was inside it … Maybe only we know that.’

  ‘This isn’t good,’ Sabine said, shivering. ‘If they’re angry about losing the chain, what would they do if they knew about the rest?’

  Nine

  Sabine’s words echoed in Nicholas’s head. ‘What would they do if they knew about the rest?’

  His mind slid back to the previous week, when she had returned to the hotel in London, brandishing the small Bosch painting. At once it had struck him that her actions were unusual: Sabine relied on other people and usually anything she bought would have been delivered. What he also hadn’t been prepared for was her then ignoring the painting and taking something out of her handbag.

  ‘There,’ she had said, placing the chain on a side table. ‘What d’you make of that?’ She had beckoned for him to approach. ‘I stole it. I can’t believe it – I’ve never taken anything in my life before. I just saw and took it. I couldn’t help myself …’ She had watched as Nicholas stared at the object. ‘Don’t worry, no one will ever know. They were using it to hang the painting, can you believe it? If der Keyser had been his usual self, he would never have missed something like this.’ Her voice had been almost childlike. It had been a prank. A moment’s silliness. ‘I saw some initials on it too. An H and a B. I think it belonged to the artist … Well, don’t just stare at me! Didn’t I do well?’

  *

  ‘Are you still there?’

  Nicholas’s attention turned back to Sabine. Her voice was intense over the phone line, his own pretending a calmness he didn’t feel. ‘Are you on your own in the apartment?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go to a hotel.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Register at the George the Fifth. They know you there. You have to be somewhere safe.’

  She was spooked, and could hear the anxiety in his voice. ‘Why?’

  ‘You just answered your own question, Sabine. “If they’re angry about losing the chain, what would they do if they knew about the rest?” Gerrit der Keyser sent someone to talk to you, to scare you. He probably thought you’d give the chain back. That’s why he was thrown when you said you didn’t have it.’

  She faltered, her legs trembling as she leaned against the sofa. ‘The writings … Where are they?’

  ‘Safe.’ Nicholas assured her. ‘But I’m not telling you where. I need to get them authenticated—’

  ‘Without anyone hearing about it?’ Sabine asked. ‘You must be joking! The art world runs on gossip – you can’t keep something like that quiet. And I’ve always been wary of Gerrit der Keyser; he’s charming to his customers but a peasant underneath.’ Her voice wavered. ‘He hired a thug to threaten me—’

  ‘Because he wants the chain. And he won’t be the only one.’

  ‘But I don’t have the chain. You do.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Nicholas agreed, ‘but not for long.’

  Nicholas stands looking at the church. Dating back to the twelfth century, blackened with the passing of traffic and a build-up of petrol fumes, its outside walls are ebonised, its ancient window glass thickened and cream as sea ivory. Rain has nuzzled the corner-stones and weathered the overmantel of the door, the spire a weakling iron trying to head-butt Heaven.

  I am back, he is thinking, pushing open the door and walking towards the nave. He can hear the rain outside and see the sloping red tiles before the altar, his gaze moving upwards towards the towering crucified Christ. Devotion has come back like warmth to frozen limbs and his knees bend in a welcome genuflection. Only the echo of a dripping outside tap disturbs the silence. A tap beside the outhouse where the garden tools are kept. An outhouse large enough to store old furniture and mowers, a cupboard at the far end secured with a padlock.

  No, thinks Nicholas, I am not back. This is over … But he rises from his genuflection like a dancer and leaves the church. The yew trees plot his course towards the outhouse, three on his right, three on his left. He knows – he has counted them many times. At Christmas, lights are hung on them for the congregation’s children, a wooden Nativity scene played out beneath a squatting oak nearby.

  He is walking, then begins – as always – to run towards the outhouse. Inside it is silent, but under the silence is a sound – something barely human. A drowning noise of the lungs. In the virtual darkness he grapples his way between the gloomy ranks of discarded kitchen cupboards and garden mowers, making for the source of the noise. Then he stops at the locked cupboard door.

  The breath leaves his lungs.

  He calls out, as always.

  Then inhales, waiting.

  He doesn’t wait long. Instead, hammering frantically on the wood, he tugs at the padlock. And from inside comes the sound he will never remember and never forget – the sound of someone dying.

  I am back, he is thinking. I can change it this time … But the padlock stays shut and his hands can’t break it, and the sound of the boy’s voice – the voice that says nothing and everything – echoes to the scrabbling of his fingernails on the door. Nicholas kicks against the wood, because it is wrong. Something is very wrong here and he knows it. He kicks and kicks again, and suddenly the wood splinters and the door falls open in front of him.

  The boy is dead. Nicholas can’t have heard a voice or sounds of scrabbling – he is dead and has been for some while. The body is suspended by the rope, the arms limp, palms lying against his sides, the skin split like ripe figs; his head hanging backwards.

  Nicholas moves towards him, lifts him – as he always does in the dream – then feels the hot rush of maggots fall out of the boy’s open mouth.

  Ten

  Chelsea, London

  Philip Preston was attempting to fix the cord on the sash window of his office. He had tried to jiggle the frame loose, but it was stuck at an angle. He hit it twice with his right fist and jumped back as it crashed downwards. Relieved that it wasn’t broken, he locked it and returned to his desk. There he stared at the entry in his diary and sighed. He was hopelessly bored.

  He knew he shouldn’t be. With a mistress and a wife he should be knackered, not bored. And yet he was. His gaze moved towards the sign hanging outside the window. PHILIP PRESTON – AUCTIONEER. Before the malaise of his middle years he had taken pride in that sign, that emblem of his achievement. And it was not an undistinguished one. Despite being an enthusiastic womaniser Philip was a fine art historian and auctioneer; his auction house impressed with the quality of its sales. He understood art and pricing; he was adept at judging silver and a known authority on antique gold jewellery.

  He was also ambitious. Greedy, if truth be told. His greed amused rather than shamed him. He had been an avaricious child, unwilling to share toys, demanding of his mother’s attention. And she, divorced and devoted, lavished affection on her only child. As a boy Philip was taught that women existed for his benefit. To amuse, to cajole, to comfort. His mother denied him nothing, thereby setting in motion his pattern for life. To Philip Preston, women were a consolation and a beloved hobby.

  The only female who escaped this judgement was his wife, Gayle. Driven to marry her because of attraction and her beauty – a beauty other men wanted to corral for themselves – Philip discovered that her face was merely an exotic doorway to an unstable mind. Her rages were amusing because afterwards they made love, but as she turned forty Gayle’s
emotional health, and her looks, began to falter. She had miscarried several times, Philip consoling and yet distant. Gayle’s desire for a child seemed excessive to him, and her libido faltered as her neurosis grew. At the suggestion of seeing a specialist she had been enthusiastic, until she realised that her husband meant a psychiatrist.

  Believing that Philip thought she was unbalanced, Gayle retaliated. She was not insane, she told him, merely emotional. But later she confessed to the psychiatrist that she had had a nervous breakdown in the past. A complete shattering of her system due to a broken romance and an overdependence on cannabis.

  ‘I was ill,’ she had told him, hands slapping together as though she were applauding her own diagnosis. ‘But I’m not ill now. And I’m getting stronger by the day.’

  But she gave up driving and a couple of times had lost confidence when she was out at lunch with friends, making excuses to leave early and going home. Because it was quiet there and she could go upstairs and lie on the bed, hearing nothing and not having to say anything – just stop. Gradually the periods of immobility increased, and at times the once stunning Gayle would ‘stop’ for days.

  *

  ‘Mr Preston?’

  Philip looked up, startled out of his thoughts, at his secretary standing in the doorway of his office. She was wearing a tight skirt revealing the shape of her thighs.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You have a visitor, Nicholas Laverne.’

  Surprised, he got to his feet and nodded, then remained standing. With a practised smile on his face he watched Nicholas enter. Nicholas Laverne, whose brother, Henry, had once been Gayle’s lover, a fact that always surprised him. After all, Nicholas had been the lusty sibling, Henry less successful with women.

  Philip snapped back into the present.

  ‘Nicholas!’ he said, shaking his visitor’s hand and leading him to a seat. ‘How good to see you after so long.’ He was careful with his wording. How did you greet a man who had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church? His smile widened like a gate opening. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Thriving,’ Nicholas replied dryly.

  But he didn’t return the smile, because he didn’t like Philip Preston. Never had. The auctioneer had aged, but he still had an impressive head of thick hair – once sandy, now white – and a pair of pale eyes which twinkled like tea lights. Very inviting. Very false.

  ‘It’s been …’ Philip paused, ‘how long?’

  ‘A decade.’

  Philip nodded. ‘A decade.’ He repeated the words as though it was the most amazing statement he had ever heard. ‘How time passes. You look well – you’ve lost weight. I heard you were working for Sabine Monette.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘She’s one of my customers,’ he said, pleasant from practice, even though he found Nicholas Laverne an unsettling presence. ‘I was thinking of your brother the other day,’ he added. ‘Poor Henry.’

  They fell silent, Nicholas thrown by the mention of his sibling, the talented elder brother who had gone to Italy as a vaunted architect, squeezing his way in among the columns and the classical façades. Henry, too vain to wear his glasses. Henry, visiting spas to keep his health intact. Henry, sporty, talented and opportunistic.

  The late Henry Laverne.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit a nerve,’ Philip went on. ‘How’s your uncle? I haven’t heard from him in a while.’

  ‘So David hasn’t been buying lately?’ Nicholas replied, his tone crisp. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear he’s still alive.’

  Bastard, thought Philip, smiling at his visitor. Nicholas Laverne had always been blunt, outspoken to the point of rudeness. Philip imagined that he had prided himself on his truthfulness. But where had it got him? Looking like a deadbeat in second-hand clothes.

  ‘And how’s your sister, Honor? Such an attractive girl—’

  Nicholas cut him off. ‘I need help …’

  Philip groaned inwardly. How he hated conversations that began ‘I need help’.

  ‘… and I have something I think might interest you.’ Nicholas reached into his pocket and brought out a thick envelope. ‘But first I need to know that we’re speaking in complete confidence—’

  ‘Of course, of course—’

  ‘No, Philip, not “of course”,’ Nicholas countered. ‘This is important. You have to keep everything I say private, between us. Otherwise we can’t do business.’

  Philip was catching a whiff of money, inviting as frying bacon on a Sunday morning.

  ‘You have my promise. Whatever you tell me won’t leave this room.’ He laid his manicured hands flat on the desk. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I have this to sell,’ Nicholas replied, shaking the chain from the envelope. ‘It’s from the late Middle Ages.’

  Scooping it up in his hand, Philip studied the chain with an eyeglass, noticing the initials H and possibly a B. He could tell at once that the piece was old and valuable, but when he glanced up at Nicholas he paused. Philip Preston had dealt with the art world for many years and had a heightened intuition when it came to his clients. He could sense greed because he recognised it. He could sense desperation. He could also sense trouble.

  And he was holding it.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Actually it does,’ Philip replied, weighing the chain in his hands. Loving it. ‘Why me?’

  ‘We’ve known each other for a long time. Your father used to do business with my late parents and my uncle,’ Nicholas replied. ‘When you took over we carried on working with you. Henry put a lot of business your way.’

  ‘You, however, did not. Not when you were a priest anyway. You have to take vows of chastity and poverty, don’t you? Wouldn’t do for me.’ He grimaced. ‘But then again, now you’ve … changed direction … perhaps your fortunes have improved?’

  Excommunication described as a change of direction. Nicholas almost laughed. ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Not another chain?’

  ‘Something the chain held.’

  Nicholas leaned back in his seat, staring at the auctioneer. It was true, they had known each other for many years, but that wasn’t the real reason he had come to Philip Preston. Of all the dealers, collectors and auctioneers in London, Preston was the most slippery. Henry had taught his brother that, telling Nicholas stories of goods shipped out from London illegally, or imported under false names and papers. Of auction lots which had wildly exceeded their estimates because members of Philip Preston’s staff had upped the phone bidding. He had heard about a Gainsborough which had not reached its target and had been burned – which meant, in art world parlance, set aside for a number of years until it could re-emerge on the market as a new lot. No auction house could afford to have a major artist fail to reach an estimate.

  And that wasn’t all; Philip Preston had perfected the art of the sleeper. Works supposedly by a master that came into his sales as In the Manner of Hogarth, or Turner or Bruegel. It meant that the work wasn’t definitely by the master, but in his style. Then Philip went into overdrive. Deftly planting the rancid little seed, rumours would start circling that perhaps the painting was genuine after all. Then gossip would follow. If Philip had judged it correctly, greedy, stupid or novice dealers would want the painting, hoping to pull a fast one on their competitors. And if a few dealers could be enticed into action, a bidding war would start.

  The rumour of the sleeper would incite that most creative of illnesses, auction blindness. The sketchy provenance was uncharacteristically dismissed as the duped blundered towards their acquisition of the sleeper. Philip Preston had made a lot of money that way, and the fact that the art world relied on risk ensured further profit. It wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t fair. But it was bloody good business.

  Which was how Nicholas knew that Philip Preston wouldn’t be unwilling to break the rules.

  ‘Inside the connectors between the links in the chain were tiny pieces
of paper,’ Nicholas began. ‘When the pieces were put together they told a story which was incredible and damning.’

  Philip’s merry eyes became stony. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The chain belonged to Hieronymus Bosch. There are papers proving this—’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No,’ Nicholas said calmly. ‘The chain was used to hang the painting. That’s why no one spotted it for so long. People were interested in the picture, not the means by which it was hung.’

  Philip was trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘This writing. You’ve seen it?’

  ‘I found it.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It told the truth about Hieronymus Bosch.’

  ‘His work?’

  ‘His life,’ Nicholas replied, irritated as the door opened and someone walked in unannounced.

  Immediately Philip waved the man away, but not before Nicholas noticed how tall he was. How heavily built, with skin so smooth it looked as though he were wearing makeup.

  ’s-Hertogenbosch, Brabant 1468

  His father was waiting for Hieronymus at the bottom of the carved staircase, with its gargoyle heads and polished ebonised rail. He stood in his long tunic, stout in green hose, his face broad and square as a playing card. Antonius van Aken, artistic advisor to the Brotherhood of Mary, standing with his other sons behind him and the wheezing hook of his own father sitting watching them all.

  Antonius looked up at his youngest son and said: ‘We’ve waited for you all day.’

  But as he went to take the first step, Hieronymus tensed. At eighteen years of age, he was already known as the most talented in the family. Thin, hardly more than five foot six tall, paint-spattered. Threatened on a staircase with gargoyles and chimera heads. His hand reached for the rail, feeling the slick smoothness under his fingers.