The Corpse with the Garnet Face

by Cathy Ace

  “And you all knew about both deaths? And covered them up?” asked Bud in a frighteningly low voice.

  Akker shook his head. “Willem did, because he joined us early on and, although nothing was ever said, I was sure Jonas would have told his best friend what had happened in the army. Not Bernard, though. I don’t think anyone ever told him. Greta was the one who found Charlie’s body, and she heard us talking about the way we’d disposed of the other one, so we had to tell her all about it. I remember that even though she was very upset that Charlie was dead—despite the falling out they’d had—she made us tell her everything. I never, ever told another soul. Until now.” The old man in front of us looked pathetic, but I didn’t feel pity for him; I felt pity for the dead boy he’d helped throw in a dyke decades earlier, and the dead man he’d pushed into a canal years after that.

  “Thank you,” said Bud, and he rose.

  I followed suit; I gathered we were leaving.

  “I hope you enjoy your pictures,” said my husband, and we left.

  Outside again, I grabbed Bud’s arm.

  “I’m so sorry,” was all I could manage. “Your poor mother. What a mess—Jonas mixed up in two deaths. That poor, dead boy. We’ve got to do something, Bud.”

  “I know,” he replied, his eyes steely in the sunlight. “I’m going to make a call before we get back in the car, Cait.”

  “Your friend ‘John’ again?”

  Bud looked grim. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this. It’s not something I want to have to hide from my mother for the rest of her life. If Jonas spoke out against what happened, but did nothing, he was complicit.” He sighed. “There was me thinking this was all about drugs. This is even worse.”

  “But we have to know all the facts.”

  “We do. Whatever it’s possible to find out.”

  “And your contact can help?”

  “I believe so. I can at least ask. I saved his life a couple of times, so he owes me. And, no, I can’t tell you about it.”

  I stood at my husband’s side while he phoned a man I suspected I’d never meet, and waited while he asked for information that would forever change his life. Our lives. I watched as he listened for a few moments, his face almost a mask. I knew he was being given information, and he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  Finally hanging up he said, “It’s not good, Cait.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The medical records show that even if he hadn’t fallen, Jonas wouldn’t have lived for much longer. He’d been diagnosed with cancer, and had rejected treatment. Back in February of this year he’d been told he had maybe a year to live. That ties in with him approaching Menno with all these elaborate plans.”

  I could tell the news had come as a shock to Bud. “I’m sorry, my darling. I know this sounds odd, because he’s dead anyway, but what you’re feeling—the sorrow that he had foreknowledge of his own mortality—that’s normal. It’s a tough thought to process, but the fall might have saved him from a much more painful end.”

  Bud sighed and continued. “Jonas’s body wasn’t checked for toxins, just the usual pharmaceuticals. It showed he had high levels of over-the-counter painkillers in him, but nothing else. His neck was broken, as was one of his legs. There was bruising on his back, and his head had a deep gash on it. As Menno originally told us, it was ruled an accidental death. The medic who did the autopsy has now admitted my uncle’s injuries could be interpreted differently. As we know, Jonas was cremated. No samples were retained. No chance to reexamine. We’ll never be sure.”

  “Things might be clearer if we find a motive for someone wanting him dead. Or, if we can be sure there was none, that might allow us to accept his death as accidental,” I said quietly.

  “Do you think the deaths of Charlie de Groot and the nameless young soldier reached out and touched him now, after all these years? I wonder if the unknown man in all those photos Jonas had, and those portraits he painted, is the young guy who died.”

  “It can’t be. There are photographs of ‘our’ unknown man at different ages. The soldier who died wouldn’t have aged.”

  Bud’s micro-expressions told me his mind was racing, trying to make sense of everything we’d learned—or thought we had.

  “Tell you what, Bud, let’s have a quiet drive back to the hotel, then a proper conversation. The car’s nowhere to discuss this. I’ll organize my thoughts, and we can figure out what to do next.”

  Bud agreed. “I’ll call Farhad. I want to get back. Now.” He sighed, and pulled out his phone again, shaking his head. “Poor Mom.”

  A Summer Evening: Hotel Room Interior

  THE TRAFFIC WAS MUCH WORSE than Farhad had expected, or we had hoped. It took us almost three hours to get back to the hotel, and Bud and I were both feeling tense and frustrated by the time we tipped the courteous young Englishman and rushed toward our room.

  “Let’s have room service. I don’t care what it is so long as it’s got some sort of flavor and there’s a beer or two,” I announced as we entered our room.

  A few minutes later I was at the little desk in the corner making notes. This time they were more cogent and useful. Before too long, Bud and I were sharing slices of pizza; pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni had been my favorite snack when Bud and I worked long into the night on cases back in BC years earlier. The flavor-memory seemed fitting, because I was pretty sure it would help me get a good grip on this case, for that was what it was.

  “Shall I start?” I managed between bites. Bud smiled his agreement. “Okay. First of all, I know we’ve established that everyone has lied to us, and they’ve also tried to muddy the waters. What I’ve got here is the best timeline I can come up with. Look.” I shoved my papers in front of Bud so he could eat and read at the same time.

  1929—Jonas Samuelsson is born in Malmö (in 1933 Ebba Samuelsson is born).

  1946—Jonas Samuelsson leaves Malmö.

  1947—Jonas de Smet appears in Amsterdam, works at Stedelijk Museum, meets Willem Weenix, sleeps on his floor for two years—query.

  1950—Jonas de Smet, Pieter van Boxtel, Dirk van der Hoeven, Johannes Akker, and Charlie de Groot meet during their national service; a young man (unknown to them) dies after a bout of drinking they shared, and they cover up his death; Willem Weenix there too—query.

  1951/2—The ex-army buddies form an informal art-lovers’ regular gathering for which Willem Weenix begins to steal art supplies to order.

  1955—Greta van Burken joins the Group so it becomes Seven; Jonas works as a night watchman at Stedelijk Museum again.

  1956—Jonas buys his house.

  1957—Charlie de Groot dies; this time all six other members of the Group cover up the man’s death.

  1962—Willem Weenix establishes his art supply store, with money borrowed from Jonas.

  1963—Bernard de Klerk meets Jonas and joins the Group.

  1964—Hannah Delaney meets Jonas and the Group, marries Bernard de Klerk.

  1964/1965—Hannah and Bernard separate, Hannah moves into Jonas’s house, Bernard leaves Amsterdam to do his national service.

  1967/1968—Bernard returns to Amsterdam and rejoins the Group.

  1970—Jonas loans money to Hannah to buy a brown café.

  1974/1975?—Jonas travels to the UK to visit Van Gogh’s London house, and Swansea.

  1980 onwards—Jonas lives in Amsterdam, continuing as a security guard; Hannah living in his house, he continues to travel to Van Gogh’s haunts; as the years pass, the Group gradually drifts apart until only Jonas and Bernard remain close.

  1986—Hannah loses her leg in police accident.

  1991—Hannah sells her brown café.

  2000 onwards—Jonas stops working at galleries and begins to lead city-wide walking tours.

  2010—Dir
k van der Hoeven dies of heart attack.

  Early 2013—Jonas is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and puts elaborate plans in place with Menno van der Hoeven for what should happen after his death.

  As I saw Bud’s eyes get to the end of the list, I said, “I’ve noted everything we’ve been told, but there’s at least one major issue here. Willem told us he knew Jonas almost as soon as he arrived in Amsterdam in 1948, so before they would have done their military service. Bernard seemed to believe they’d met there. What do you think? Who should we believe?”

  Bud wiped his mouth with a napkin. “My experience suggests that Bernard doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. I’d say we should believe Willem on that one; he and Jonas knew each other before their military service.”

  “I agree, because the other problem with Bernard’s theory is that Willem is a good deal older than all the rest of the Group. Wouldn’t he have done his service sometime before Jonas did his?”

  Bud gave the matter some thought. “Jonas was born in ’29, and we’re assuming he did his service when he was twenty-one. Willem is six years his senior, so would have been due to do his service during the war. Maybe that messed things up? I don’t know. I reckon Bernard has it all wrong and Willem didn’t serve at the same time as the others.”

  I agreed. “They were turbulent times, and records must have been compromised during the Nazi occupation. That could explain the difference in the ages of the men when they served, and of course we shouldn’t assume they were all called up at the same time. If they were each in for a couple of years they might have only all overlapped for a few months.”

  “I’ve asked John to look into the records, and to try to find out the identities of any young men who were reported as AWOL or deserters in 1950. I was warned not to hold out too much hope for a quick response. The records for that time have not been digitized. They’re all on microfiche.”

  Despite the seriousness of the topic I couldn’t help but smile. “I feel so old. I remember when microfiche was the future.”

  Bud forced a wry smile. “It’s like a different world, isn’t it?”

  We hugged, and cleared away the detritus from our hurried meal.

  “The timeline highlights how little we still know about Jonas,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What we now know is that he knew he was dying, and made plans to call you here to meet all the members of the Group of Seven. Perhaps he always intended them to have their own portraits, or maybe that was just a clever device to make you undertake the visits…I don’t know. But it’s worked. He sent a detective on an assignment, and we have unearthed a secret. Two accidental deaths were known about by a group of people who didn’t report those deaths to the authorities, against your uncle’s wishes.”

  “You think this is all about Jonas ‘outing’ the people in the Group who disagreed with him?”

  “I understand the psychology of peer pressure. So do you. You’ve looked at how gangs operate—existing members make belonging look appealing; then, as soon as a person shows an interest, they suck them in and control them by making them undertake some sort of initiation that means the rest of the group immediately has something to hold over them to prevent them from leaving. That’s almost what we’re seeing here; the death of a man they urged to drink to excess meant most members of what became the Group had something to hold over the others. They bonded because they had to in order to keep themselves safe. Even your uncle, who might have spoken out against their actions initially, but followed through with them all nevertheless.”

  I paced around the bed and pressed on. “If Willem wasn’t in service with the rest of them, it’s possible Jonas shared the information with his best friend upon his return to Amsterdam, and then Willem became an ‘insider’ too. When Charlie died, they all, including the new member Greta, resorted to the defense they’d adopted before—clean up the body and disconnect it from the Group. Don’t forget—until about the mid-seventies most of the Group had little to lose, but then they began to build careers, families. As each of them had more at risk, so they drifted apart. They didn’t need to cling to each other anymore—they’d lived with their secret for so long they all trusted each other to keep it, each of them having as much as the others on the line.”

  “Except Jonas,” said Bud, almost sadly. “He never really had as much to lose as the others, did he? No family. No business. No career. Do you think they feared him most because of that?”

  “I think they might have done, which probably contributed to the fact that they all seemed to drift farthest from Jonas, but kept in touch with each other, while Jonas maintained closest contact with Bernard—the one man who knew nothing about the deaths.”

  “So Bernard says,” interrupted Bud. “Are we taking him at his word?”

  “Always the cop.” I smiled. “I think we do. I read him pretty closely, Bud, and I think he told us what he believed to be the truth about the situation. Which is not to say everything he said is the truth, nor that he told us, or even knows, the full truth. He could have been fed a complete pack of lies by various people over the years. We know they all kept things from him—who’s to say they didn’t fabricate as well?”

  Bud looked annoyed. “Jonas laid a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow. Do you think that’s what the letter hidden in the box meant? That I’d have to make tough decisions about how to act once I found out? His letter said he’d lost sight of what was right and wrong. Covering up two deaths certainly comes under the latter, I’d say.”

  “Remember what the letter said?” I asked.

  Bud smiled. “Not word for word, but I am certain you can recite it. After all, you saw it for all of two minutes. Go on, what did it say?”

  I raised a disdainful eyebrow and replied, “It said, ‘You who are reading this, I have chosen you because you are of strong moral fiber and an upright person.’ You’re not named at all. ‘You have a task ahead of you that will require you to exercise your judgment, and your sense of right and wrong. I no longer possess this ability. I lost myself many years ago in this respect. I have made decisions that were maybe foolish, but I believe I made them for the right reason.’”

  Bud had listened intently. “That could relate to the deaths, certainly.”

  “You’re right, but the next part changed the subject completely. It said, ‘Art is the embodiment of culture, history, mankind’s societal and moral memories. To destroy it is a sin—if sin exists. I no longer even know that. There is beauty in all art. We must look hard to see it, but it is there. Who are we to judge what is good and what is bad? We can respond to art with our hearts or our heads. I choose to respond with my heart. I have chosen, and I have acted.’ For some reason Jonas chose to bring the topic of art into the letter. I suspect he was thinking about what would happen to his works after his death. I reckon this is him begging whoever is reading the letter not to simply destroy his work.”

  Bud looked thoughtful. “The amount of stuff he had up in that attic? It must have taken him decades to produce it all. Those paintings have been his companions for almost as long as the people they portray, I’d say. It’s understandable that he wouldn’t want to think of them being dumped somewhere.”

  “I think he emphasized that when he wrote, ‘This has been my life’s work.’ However, I think he was referring to the cover-ups when he wrote, ‘I will be judged by those left behind when I am gone. But you? I charge you with making decisions that mean you will be judged now, while you live. I am sorry I was too weak to do that myself. The journey will be long and will forever change your life. Take care about the paths you choose.’ He obviously believed that whoever he’d chosen for this task would do the right thing. It’s interesting that he wrote that particular letter before, it seems, he’d chosen you to be that person.”

  “Do you think the two deaths could be tied up with the fact that Jonas had unaccou
ntable access to large sums of money—possibly all the time, but certainly at critical points in his life? He bought a house, had enough cash on hand to allow Willem to buy a shop and Hannah to buy a café. He traveled extensively. None of this could be expected of a man who probably worked for minimum wage—once that concept was invented—and always for little money. We know he didn’t live a lavish life otherwise, but even the lifestyle he had would have demanded more funds than he could have earned.”

  “Blackmail? Your cop-brain always leaps to crime, eh?”

  “Years of practice. And don’t ‘eh’ me.” Bud grinned.

  “Blackmail’s certainly a possibility. Each of the others in the Group had a good source of income—maybe not initially, but certainly as the years passed. And, as we’ve agreed, he had less to lose than the others. I need to do a bit of digging about on the Internet, but I think I might have an inkling of an alternative idea. If I’m right, it could explain not only how he could afford to travel, but why he did it, too.”

  “Other than because he felt compelled to make pilgrimages to the places Van Gogh had been?”

  “Other than that.”

  “And you’ve gone off my idea of drug trafficking?” asked Bud, getting up off his edge of the bed and arching his back.

  I’d sat back down, but now I matched his actions. It felt good to stretch. “I am prepared to consider the Group in the way you did—as people with a combined skill set that could prove useful in the smuggling and distribution of illicit substances, but, I have to be honest, I can’t say I’d profile any of them as being in the drug business. You?”