‘How convenient.’
‘It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Werner will have his hands full for the next couple of days translating the letters and negotiating a price for them. We can steal a march on him.’
‘If Lars or any of the others know what their great-uncle’s secret was. And if they’re willing to share it.’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic. My bet is Lars is itching to share it.’ Marty grinned. ‘We just have to ask nicely.’
They finished their beers and went out on to the walkway serving the steps down to the platforms. A clamour of PA announcements rose with the rumble of arriving and departing trains towards the station roof. Their train was up on the platform indicator, but had not yet pulled in. Marty lit a cigarette and leant on the railings, gazing down at the comings and goings.
‘I love stations,’ he remarked. ‘Big ones, I mean, like this. Everyone going somewhere. Converging and diverging. North, south, east, west. Endless… possibilities.’
‘How long will it take us to get to Århus?’ Eusden asked.
‘About six hours.’
‘Six hours? Couldn’t we have flown?’
‘You’re forgetting the real advantage of train travel, Richard: anonymity. As long as we don’t stray outside the EU, nobody will ask to see our passports. Set foot in an airport and it’s a different story. I’m not just thinking of my own problems, either. We’re operating incognito now. So, the train makes sense. And stay off your mobile. Any calls you want to make, use a payphone. Better still, don’t make any.’
‘What about Gemma? Shouldn’t we…’
‘Keep her informed? Why would you want to do that?’
‘She might be worried about us.’
‘She should’ve come along, then, shouldn’t she? Between you and me, I’m glad she didn’t. I’m glad she sent you in her place.’ Marty turned to look at Eusden. ‘The question is: are you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Only think?’
‘You are telling me everything, aren’t you, Marty?’
‘Everything I know.’
‘Did Otto Straub have any… pet theory… about what Clem and Nydahl were up to?’
‘According to Werner, he thought Clem must’ve been sent over to Copenhagen at some point in the nineteen twenties as part of a Buck Pal initiative to assist Nydahl in dealing with the fallout from Anna Anderson’s claim to be Anastasia. The Queen Mother, Alexandra, was Dagmar’s sister, remember. It’d be understandable if she wanted to help out.’
‘Why Clem?’
‘Well, Alexandra was in the royal party at Cowes regatta in August 1909. She was the queen then. Maybe she was impressed by how Clem thwarted the assassination attempt and kept his mouth shut about it.’
‘But what was there for Clem – or Nydahl – to do? You said Dagmar wrote off Anna Anderson as an impostor without even meeting her.’
‘Did I?’ Marty looked troubled. ‘That’s not strictly accurate. Blame the tumour. Surprisingly enough, this is one of my good days.’
‘Would you care to be “strictly accurate” before we start rattling cages in Århus?’
‘Cupboards, more like. With skeletons inside. All right. But it’ll have to wait.’ Marty nodded down at a train approaching the platform below them. ‘That’s ours, I think.’
Marty began his explanation as soon as they were settled aboard the train. He looked tired, Eusden noticed in the watery sunlight that angled through the window as they left the station. He was struggling to concentrate. It was easy to forget how ill he really was.
‘OK, where was I? Dagmar. The Dowager Empress. No dope, apparently. She realized that, if she admitted her son and grandson were dead, she’d have to choose an official pretender to the Tsardom from a squabbling bunch of cousins, inevitably causing a split in Romanov ranks. She solved the problem by steadfastly maintaining that the Tsar, Tsarina and all their children were still alive, somewhere in Russia, a convenient fiction that preserved family unity in her lifetime but ruled out the very possibility of acknowledging Anna Anderson as Anastasia. She didn’t exactly ignore her, however. She sent her daughter Olga, who was living with her in Copenhagen, to visit Anna in hospital in Berlin, in the autumn of 1925. Olga seemed to agree the girl was Anastasia, only to change her mind when she got back to Copenhagen. Her trip had coincided with the death in England of Queen Alexandra, which sent Dagmar into a depression from which she never really recovered. It’s hard to say what she might have done if she’d remained fit and well. But she never actually denounced Anastasia as an impostor. The so-called Copenhagen Statement, in which twelve members of the family, including Olga, formally rebutted Anna’s claim to be Anastasia, was only put out after Dagmar’s death. Straight after, as a matter of fact.’
‘Surely Olga wouldn’t have signed such a statement unless she believed it? We’re talking about her own flesh and blood.’
‘We’re also talking about Russian royalty of the nineteenth century. Virtually a separate species of humanity. There was a huge stumbling-block to accepting Anna’s claim, one of Anna’s own making. I don’t mean her obstinate and prickly personality, though that didn’t help, even if it did chime with people’s memories of Anastasia. No, no. The real problem was her story of how she’d escaped the massacre.’
‘They died in a hail of bullets in a cellar, didn’t they? How did she get out of that?’
‘She said she stood behind her sister Tatiana and was knocked out when Tatiana fell on top of her. She woke up in a farm cart being driven by the Tschaikovsky family, mother, daughter and son. The son, Alexander Tschaikovsky, had been a guard at Ekaterinburg and had rescued her from the pile of bodies when he realized she was still alive. They smuggled her out of Russia and took her to Romania. They settled in Bucharest, where she married Alexander shortly before giving birth to a son, in December 1918. The son wasn’t Alexander’s, though. She’d been raped by another guard while in captivity. She let Alexander’s sister adopt the boy. Then, when her husband was killed in a street brawl, she decided to seek help from her family and set off for Berlin, where her aunt Princess Irene lived, accompanied by Alexander’s brother, Serge. After they reached Berlin, Serge inexplicably vanished. She convinced herself he’d been murdered and that she’d be rejected by her family, so she tried to end it all by jumping into a canal. She was rescued, hospitalized, then sent to an asylum suffering from amnesia and referred to as Fräulein Unbekannt – Miss Unknown. Gradually, she revealed who she really was and a fellow patient went public with the story when she was discharged early in 1922. Cue general hysteria and enduring controversy. But it’s worth remembering that the truth, if it was the truth, was completely unacceptable – viscerally intolerable – to any right-thinking Romanov. A daughter of the Tsar couldn’t bear a child to an illiterate peasant turned prison guard. It just couldn’t happen.’
‘But if she was raped?’
‘It didn’t matter. A daughter of the Tsar who told that story was by definition no daughter of the Tsar. She should have died rather than endure such shame. Therefore Anastasia must have died.’
‘But you don’t think she did, do you?’
‘I don’t know what to think. The counter-claim was that she was an uppity Polish factory worker who tried to drown herself when she realized her dream of becoming an actress, which had brought her to Berlin, wasn’t going to be fulfilled. Then, ironically, it was fulfilled, thanks to the role she artfully assumed while in the asylum. That’s what the DNA says. Mrs Manahan’s DNA and that of a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska are a perfect match. Maybe too perfect, since there’s some evidence the great-nephew’s grandmother was only a half-sister of Franziska, which would make such a close match impossible.’
‘Proving the hospital sample was a fake.’
‘It doesn’t prove anything, Richard. Nothing does. I’ve turned myself into a Mastermind specialist on Anastasia these past few weeks and the only thing I know for certain about the case is that there is
no certainty and probably never will be.’ Marty yawned and flexed his arms behind his head, as if bored with the subject. Then he chuckled at some humorous thought that had occurred to him. ‘But I did only say “probably”. You never know your luck, do you?’
ÅRHUS
TWELVE
Eusden dozed for much of the journey, the late and anxious hours he had kept the previous night catching up with him as soon as the rhythm of the train asserted itself. Marty also slept – the deep sleep of a sick man.
The afternoon had given way to evening as they headed north through flat, snow-patched fields and wraith-pale stands of silver birch. Studying his friend, unconscious in the seat opposite, during one wakeful interlude, Eusden had noticed how much older and weaker and iller Marty seemed when his eyes were not open and twinkling, his voice not rising and falling. The search he had embarked upon was also a flight from his own mortality. In that sense, it could not succeed. At its end lay only a choice of ways to fail. It was a dismal truth to grasp as darkness fell across the Jutland sky.
Another station in another city. It was early evening in Århus, cold, dank and dark. Asked for a hotel recommendation, their taxi driver talked up the Royal on the grounds that it had a casino where he had once finished an evening in profit. They did not argue.
The Royal turned out to have advantages other than in-house roulette: comfortable rooms and a central location adjacent to the cathedral, in the old heart of the city. En route to their rooms aboard the geriatric lift, they agreed to go in search of supper once they had unpacked.
Eusden had observed Marty’s ban on mobile usage, despite regarding it as an excessive precaution. But he did not intend to leave Gemma to imagine the worst. He called her on the phone in his room, was guiltily relieved when neither she nor Monica answered and left a message assuring her all was well and he was spending a few days with Marty before returning home. As far as it went, the message was accurate enough.
Marty had already changed some of his euros into Danish kroner and taken soundings on the local restaurant scene by the time Eusden met up with him in reception. He led the way down to the pedestrianized riverside, where there was a cluster of bars and brasseries, and selected the Argentinsk Bøfhus on the basis of its promise of the fattest steaks this side of Buenos Aires.
‘Good to see you sans the suit, Coningsby,’ he remarked as he sank his fork into a three-inch-thick slab of sirloin. ‘Though, strictly speaking, you’d need an altogether grungier look than you’ve settled on to blend in where we’re going.’
Eusden smiled at him tolerantly. ‘I’ll visit a charity shop in the morning if you’re that bothered.’
‘Too late. I’m talking about tonight. The part of it left after we’ve devoured these mastodons.’
‘You haven’t got some crazy idea of hitting the night spots, have you, Marty? You can count me out if you have. And I’d advise you to count yourself out too.’
‘I’m talking business, not pleasure, Richard. Take a look at this.’
Marty plucked a newspaper cutting from his pocket and unfolded it on the table. Above a splurge of Danish print was a grainy photograph of a young couple emerging from a bar. The young man was tall, thin and narrow-faced, piratically bearded and bandannaed but otherwise kitted out in fashionably ill-fitting military surplus. The young woman, whose posture suggested she might easily fall down if he took his arm from round her waist, was slight and pale, hair spikily blonde, eyes wide and unfocused, clothes black, shining like leather in the flashlight of the camera. Her companion was gesturing angrily at the photographer, but she did not seem to be aware of what was happening – or indeed of much at all.
‘I spotted it while I was in Copenhagen in a tabloid someone left in a coffee shop. The girl’s the daughter of an actor who’s big on Danish TV. He’s in a long-running police series. Their very own Inspector Mørse. Her boyfriend’s the interesting one. That’s Michael Aksden. And the place they’re leaving is here in Århus. So, I thought we might… check it out.’
‘D’you know where it is?’
‘The receptionist at the Royal recognized it right away. And gave me directions.’
‘And you’re planning to… drop in?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for a start because Michael and the girl probably won’t be there.’
‘Come on, Richard. Get real. Students are creatures of habit. Don’t you remember? When we were at Cambridge, what were the chances, on any given night, that you and/or I could be found propping up the bar in the Champion of the Thames?’
Eusden considered the point, then conceded it. ‘Better than fifty-fifty, I guess.’
‘Exactly. So, shall we try our luck?’
They walked back the way they had come, past the cathedral and a statue of King Christian X on horseback. The cathedral square was empty and silent. There was hardly any traffic on the streets, let alone pedestrians. The night was windless and catacomb-cold.
‘Nice time of year you picked for this jaunt,’ Eusden good-naturedly complained.
‘I’d have waited till summer,’ Marty replied, ‘but there’s a doubt about my availability.’
‘Sorry.’ However often Eusden reminded himself that Marty was dying, the reality never quite stuck. ‘I just-’
‘Don’t worry about it. Gemma always used to say I was too short-term in my thinking. Well, it’s come into its own now.’
Their destination lay a couple of blocks north of the cathedral: a cramped, crowded, smoky street-corner bar that might have looked drab in daylight but had enough candles and mirrors to confer a certain grotto-like glamour by night. Students comprised most of the clientèle, hunched and bunched over hookahs, laptops and games of backgammon. Marty ordered Belgian beer and he and Eusden squeezed themselves into a corner.
There was no immediate sign of Michael Aksden or his girlfriend, but the limited visibility and identikit appearance of most of the patrons meant it took them quite a while to be sure they were not there. Marty insisted patience was required. The night was young in the context of student drinking establishments. They needed to stick with it. He added the smoke of several Camels to the prevailing fug and began a nostalgic description of how much better he would feel if he could resort to something more exotic than alcohol and tobacco.
‘What’s stopping you?’ asked Eusden. ‘I’m sure somebody here’d be willing to help you out.’
‘Doctor’s orders, Richard. The old white stuff might start me fitting, apparently. When you haven’t got a lot of time, it’s amazing how much care you’re prepared to take of it.’
‘Are you sure we’re not wasting a load of it sitting here?’
‘Absolutely. Some of these girls are definitely worth studying at length, wouldn’t you say? And you’ve got to-’ Marty broke off and pointed to the door. ‘Look what’s just walked in.’
The newcomer was Michael Aksden, helpfully sporting the same outfit he had been photographed in. He was alone and looked none too happy about it, twitching and frowning as he surveyed the crowd. Then he caught sight of someone he knew and raised a hand coolly in greeting. He made no immediate move to join them, however, heading straight for the bar instead.
Marty was by his elbow before he had ordered a drink, with Eusden two steps behind. ‘This one’s on me, Michael,’ Marty said, grinning broadly. ‘What’ll you have?’
Michael glared at him with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. ‘Who are you, man?’ He sounded far more American than Danish with his practised drawl.
‘The name’s Hewitson. Marty Hewitson.’
‘Have we met before?’
‘No. But I thought you might know the name. My grandfather was Clem Hewitson. Heard of him?’
‘Never.’
‘Your father probably has. Or your uncle. Good old Lars.’
‘Are you friends of Lars?’
‘Not exactly,’ Eusden replied, drawing a sharp glance from Marty.
‘I don’t want to talk
to you, whoever you are.’ Michael shouted a request to the barman, then went on: ‘Get it? Leave me alone.’
‘No need to be like that, Michael,’ said Marty. ‘We’re just trying to be friendly.’
‘I don’t want to be friendly.’ The barman handed him a bottle of Tuborg Grøn. ‘Piss off, will you?’
‘Any idea why Lars pulled that stunt in Roskilde back in the autumn?’
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’
‘Only, we might know, y’see.’
Michael took a swig from his bottle and stared flintily at Marty. ‘You’re full of shit, man.’
‘Sure of that, are you?’
The shadows around them suddenly deepened. Eusden became aware of a young man, tall and broad and blond enough to have stepped out of a Viking myth, standing at Michael’s shoulder. The straining fit of his denim jacket, over a white T-shirt, implied a formidable quantity of muscle beneath. He and Michael exchanged a few words in Danish between menacing glares at Marty.
‘Who’s this, Michael?’ Marty asked. ‘Your backgammon partner?’
‘He’s a friend,’ Michael replied, speaking slowly for the sake of emphasis. ‘He wants to know if I’ve got a problem. I said no. ’Cos you and your friend are leaving. Right?’
‘Wrong, actually. I was thinking of having another beer. Richard?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Eusden, nodding meaningfully towards the door, currently hidden from view by the muscleman’s massive shoulderline. ‘I think we ought to be going.’
‘Really?’
‘Definitely.’
‘OK.’ Marty grinned at Michael. ‘We’ll obviously have to do this another time.’
‘Fuck off, man.’
‘What exactly did that accomplish?’ asked Eusden as they headed back to the Royal.
Marty chuckled. ‘It’s got the introductions out of the way.’
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