He showered, put on some clean clothes and headed out to a nearby 7-eleven for antiseptic and plasters. He suspected he should be checked by a doctor for the effects of concussion, but he also suspected drawing attention to himself in such a way would be unwise to put it mildly. Wijayapala had probably given a description of him to the police by now and they were bound to tie him to the carnage out at Nordhavn because Kjeldsen was among the dead. The only sensible thing he could do was lie low until he left Copenhagen. And he should leave soon. The longer he remained, the greater his chance of being dragged into a murder inquiry.
But he could not simply scuttle back to London and abandon Marty to an unknown fate. He had to find out what had become of his friend, even though that friend had been responsible for transforming his comfortable and predictable life into a raw struggle for survival. ‘Fuck you, Marty,’ he muttered several times under his breath as he plodded back to the Phoenix through the gnawing chill of a bleak Copenhagen morning. It was a sentiment he had often expressed before, of course. And one he had never quite succeeded in drawing the obvious lesson from.
He had banked on a quick ascent to his room, with a breakfast delivery to follow, strong black coffee being the self-prescribed medicine he proposed to dose himself with. But he was intercepted halfway across the marbled lobby by an unexpected visitor: Regina Celeste.
‘There you are, Richard. I guessed it might be worth waiting to see if you’d be back soon. Well, where are you gonna go on a morning like this, after all?’ She seemed even louder in manner and dress by day than night. Or perhaps, Eusden thought, he was simply more vulnerable. ‘Say, what happened to you? Get in with the wrong crowd last night? That’s quite a shiner.’
‘I slipped in the bath.’
‘Really?’ She looked understandably sceptical.
‘What brings you here, Regina? I’m afraid I’ve still no news of Marty.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘No. Like I told Werner, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.’
‘But that’s just the point, Richard. Werner has heard from Marty.’
‘What?’
‘I think you’ll agree with me: we need to talk.’
They found a café over the road on Bredgade that had just opened for business and was only otherwise being patronized by a group of Japanese tourists intent on photographing their breakfasts. Eusden contented himself with coffee. While Regina fussed over the infusion of her herbal tea bag, he wondered just how monstrously Marty had misled him with his carefully presented plan to evade Straub. For misled him he surely had. It was only a question of scale. Regina’s announcement had struck a chord in him that was wearily familiar. It seemed Marty had taken him for a ride yet again.
‘Where’s Werner now?’ he asked.
‘That’s just it, Richard. I don’t know. He was gone when I surfaced this morning. He left this note for me at reception.’ She took a sheet of Hôtel d’Angleterre notepaper out of her portmanteau-sized handbag and passed it to Eusden.
Dear Regina,
I am sorry to leave without warning. Marty has contacted me. I am going to meet him. I hope to get answers to all our questions. Wait for me here. I will call you later today. We will settle our business in Hanover as soon as possible after I return.
Best wishes,
Werner.
‘Best wishes, my sweet behind,’ Regina continued as she retrieved the note. ‘He must have known last night he was gonna take off like this. The only reason he didn’t tell me then was that he knew I’d insist on going with him. Or at the very least on being told where he was going. I don’t like being strung along, Richard, especially not by a lounge lizard like Werner. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes. I certainly do.’
‘Everything was sugar and sunshine when we went to Klampenborg yesterday morning. Hvidøre’s been turned into a conference centre, but he’d fixed it for us to have a proper guided tour of the place. You could imagine the rooms as they’d have been in Dagmar’s day, stuffed with clumpy furniture and kitschy statues and dusty aspidistras. It gave me a real feel for the old lady, let me tell you. Especially the turret room she’s supposed to have spent so much time in, looking out to sea. Anyhow, Werner couldn’t have been a much more attentive host short of offering me his hand in marriage, resounding “no” though he’d have got if he had. We had a nice lunch at a restaurant just up the coast road from Hvidøre, then we went on to Rungsted to visit the Karen Blixen Museum. Well, it was too good a chance to miss. I just loved that movie, didn’t you?’
There came into Eusden’s mind a memory that was both alluring and painful of going to a cinema in Guildford with Gemma some time in the mid-1980s to see Out of Africa, the film Regina had proclaimed her love for. He had been a contented husband then, Gemma a secretly discontented wife. Time, he often thought, was more of a tormentor than a healer.
‘Werner got a call on his cell while we were looking over the exhibits. He came over kinda coy and went outside to take it. Told me when he came back the call had been from his mother, which I didn’t buy for a second. But what’s a girl to do? He was different after that. Edgy. Distracted. All the way through to dinner back at the d’Angleterre. Excused himself straight after. Said he needed an early night, which seemed way out of character. I didn’t know what to make of it.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I do now, of course. The scheming weasel.’
‘What time did he take the call?’
‘Not sure. Around… three, I guess.’
Three o’clock was tantalizingly close to the time when Marty was supposed to have arrived in Copenhagen. Though what the timing signified – if anything – Eusden did not know.
‘Any inspired thoughts?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, Regina. I’ve no idea what Marty’s up to. Or Werner.’
‘Cooking up a private deal between themselves, that’s what.’
‘I… suppose so.’ Regina was right, of course. Nothing else made sense.
‘The question is: are you and I going to let them get away with it?’
‘What else can we do?’
‘Pool our resources for starters.’ That did not sound like a good idea to Eusden, though he did not propose to say so. He certainly had no intention of volunteering any details of his recent activities. ‘Do you really have no idea what Clem Hewitson’s archive contains?’
‘None at all.’
‘That’s kinda… disappointing.’
‘What’s your “business in Hanover”?’ Eusden asked, keen to switch topics.
‘Well, I guess I may as well tell you. Werner’s forfeited all confidentiality rights with this little escapade as far as I’m concerned. He’s been negotiating with a collector of Nazi curios in Hanover called Hans Grenscher for the purchase of a cache of Gestapo documents supposedly including something crucial about Anastasia. She lived in Hanover throughout the Second World War, at the Gestapo’s insistence. They didn’t want her wandering around the country for some reason. She was taken to Berlin on one occasion, though, to meet the Führer. What Hitler had in mind for her is unclear. Maybe he saw her as a potential bargaining chip in his dealings with Stalin. Anyhow, I don’t rightly know what Grenscher has on her, but Werner claims it can be matched with something Marty’s grandfather preserved to prove Anastasia truly was Anastasia. Evidently, Grenscher isn’t willing to split his hoard. We have to buy the whole lot for the sake of the one Anastasia-related item. In fact, I’ve already had to put up a hefty deposit just to get first refusal on it.’
Eusden could not help wondering if Regina’s deposit was the source of the money with which Straub had tried to buy off Marty. It seemed typical of the man to use someone else’s cash rather than his own – assuming he had any. It also seemed typical of him to strike side deals whenever he needed to: with Regina, with Marty and, in all likelihood, with Grenscher too. ‘How can Werner be sure this matching whatever-it-is is amongst the stuff Marty inherited from his grandfather?’
‘B
eats me, Richard. But he’s been adamant on the point the whole way along. That’s why I flew over here. Because he was so confident we could nail that DNA lie about the lady I met in Charlottesville being nothing but a Polish peasant once and for mercy’s sake all. Now I’m wondering if Werner didn’t overstate how much money we had to put up front to fix himself up with negotiating capital. You see where my thoughts are leading? Maybe he plans to put this proof together for his own profit. Write a book, sell the film rights and freeze me out. I might be nothing more than the cash cow he plans to milk in the meantime. Well, this is one cow that can do more than swish her tail, let me tell you.’
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘A trip to Hanover. A one-on-one with Hans Grenscher. I can do my own negotiating if I have to.’
‘I’m sure you can.’
‘But I need to know what’s happening this end while I’m away. That’s where you come in.’
‘It is?’
‘Werner’s bound to turn to you when he gets back here and finds I’ve flown the coop. Well, I want you to point him in the wrong direction. Say I’ve vamoosed to St Petersburg to catch up with Dagmar – pay my respects at the last resting place she now shares with the Tsar, the Tsarina and some of their children. I reckon he’ll swallow that considering how tearful I came over during our visit to Hvidøre. Well, I’m an emotional person, Richard. I’m sure you appreciate that. But the emotion I’m in closest touch with right now is suspicion. So, I also want you to figure out if you can exactly what he and Marty are up to – and to let me know. What do you say?’
Now was definitely not the time to mention that the clinching document Clem’s archive supposedly held – along with the archive as a whole – was conclusively out of reach of all of them and that no amount of intrigue and double-dealing could retrieve it. Eusden doubted if he would still be in Copenhagen when Straub returned. But he could not explain why to Regina Celeste. He regretted having to deceive her on the point, but there were other things he regretted far more. He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll certainly do my best, Regina.’
Eusden finally made it to his room at the Phoenix half an hour later. He patched himself up and ordered breakfast, then lay down on the bed to await its arrival. He was too tired to ponder the full depth and meaning of Marty’s latest abuse of their friendship. All he knew was that it marked a new low – and an end of his involvement in Marty’s tangled affairs. It was time to cut himself loose.
He checked his mobile to confirm there was no apologetic or exculpatory message on it from Marty. Since, as far as he was aware, Marty did not even have the number, it was even more unlikely than would otherwise have been the case. But Eusden felt obliged to give him the benefit of the negligible doubt.
Sure enough, there was no message from Marty. But Gemma had phoned again. To Phone me asap had been added Very urgent. Eusden relented and rang her, despite his reluctance to face questions about what he and Marty had been doing for the past few days. He was at least relieved when Gemma, not Monica, answered.
‘It’s me.’
‘Christ, Richard, why haven’t you called before now? I’ve been going out of my mind.’ She certainly sounded distraught, though Eusden could not begin to imagine why.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘What do you mean, “what’s the matter”? You’re in Copenhagen, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Even as he replied, Eusden wondered how she knew that.
‘So, why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to hear it from a Danish policewoman?’
‘Hear what?’
‘About Marty, of course.’
‘What about Marty?’
‘Are you playing games with me, Richard?’
‘No. Marty isn’t with me. I’m not sure where he is at the moment, to be honest.’
‘Of course he isn’t with you. He’s…’ She broke off.
There was a heavy silence. Dread formed a cloud in Eusden’s mind. ‘
Gemma?’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘Know what, for God’s sake?’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘Know what?’
‘I’m sorry, Richard.’
‘Sorry? What the hell-’
‘Marty’s dead.’
TWENTY-NINE
‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’ Looking back, Eusden was surprised Marty had not said this at some point during their few days together in Hamburg and Århus. Perhaps he had not needed to. Perhaps he had thought it self-evidently true. And so it was, though there had been several occasions when Eusden would vehemently have denied it. But all the grudges and resentments and irritations, even the numerous breaches of faith, fell away in the face of death. And it was the face of death that Eusden looked into when he gazed down at Marty on the mortuary slab at Roskilde Amtssygehuset later that morning: a cold, pale, vacant face – no longer really Marty’s at all.
A hovering administrator was anxious to establish whether Eusden would be arranging Marty’s removal – to a local undertaker or back home to Amsterdam or England. Eusden prevaricated. He could not afford to commit himself to remaining in Copenhagen for the week or more he suspected such arrangements would take. He was going to have to offload the responsibility on to Gemma. And he was goingto have to find a way to explain that to her.
But he could not summon the effort to concentrate on such stark practicalities as he left the hospital and wandered towards the centre of Roskilde, past the railway station where he had arrived from Copenhagen a couple of hours earlier. The death of his childhood friend was like the amputation of a limb he had not realized until then he possessed. He kept remembering Marty’s most characteristic expression, by which all his mischief and humour and daring – his ineluctable spirit – were magically conveyed. Eusden could see it now, clear and golden in his mind’s eye. Richard would jump off the bus from Newport at the Fountain Arcade in Cowes on a Saturday morning and Marty would be waiting for him, chewing gum and smiling and assuring him, just by the look on his face, that life for the next few hours was going to be fun. Some trace of that had still been there when Eusden pulled the tape off Marty’s mouth at Frau Straub’s flat in Hamburg. ‘Good to see you, Coningsby.’ And the feeling, despite everything – the forfeited surety, the rivalry for Gemma, the disputes and deceptions – had been mutual. It always had been. But it never would be again.
There was an old cemetery next to the station that had been turned into a park. Eusden had the benches to himself, thanks to the dank chill of the day. He sat and gazed towards the red-brick gables and copper-tiled spires of Roskilde Cathedral, its shape blurred by the tears that were in his eyes. According to the information Gemma had been supplied with, Marty had collapsed in the cathedral at about 3.30 the previous afternoon and been pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital. Cause of death was a massive stroke. He had not been carrying a passport and had been identified from a prescription in his pocket issued by the pharmacy at Århus Kommunehospital. He had recorded Gemma as his next of kin on admission there. The oncologist had evidently strongly advised him not to discharge himself specifically because of the likelihood of a second stroke, but Marty had insisted. And Eusden knew just how insistent he could be.
The 11.54 train Marty had said he was catching from Århus would have got him to Roskilde just before three o’clock, the time of his supposed telephone call to Straub. Half an hour later, he walked into the cathedral – but did not walk out. The unanswerable question was why he had got off at Roskilde at all. He must have changed his mind about travelling through to Copenhagen for some reason. Regina Celeste would say it was to fix a rendezvous for his covert meeting with Straub. But that rendezvous was clearly not Roskilde. Straub’s note had implied somewhere farther flung. Eusden preferred to believe Marty had sent Straub off on a wild-goose chase so he would not be in Copenhagen when Marty arrived there after a strategic stop-over in Roskilde – only for sudden death to prevent him carrying th
rough his plan. If Eusden was right, Marty had died while trying to protect both of them.
Eusden had been to Roskilde once before with Gemma and Holly, to visit the Viking Ship Museum. The cathedral had played only a bit-part in the day’s entertainment, though Holly had enjoyed hunting for the tomb of Harold Bluetooth. Dagmar’s tomb must have been somewhere in the crypt then, but Eusden had not gone looking for it. It was no longer there, of course, so exactly what had drawn Marty to the cathedral was hard to say. He was an avowed atheist and no fan of ecclesiastical architecture. A mausoleum catering for umpteen centuries of Danish royalty would ordinarily have elicited little more from him than a shrug of indifference.
But gone there he had. And Eusden followed. He stepped into the entrance porch and was greeted by a volunteer guide. When he explained he was a friend of the man who had died there the day before, he was directed to the woman behind the sales desk. She, he was told in hushed tones, ‘knew all about it’.
This, it transpired, was because it was in the porch, rather than the main body of the cathedral, that Marty had collapsed. The sales lady, a kindly middle-aged woman with a ready smile, identified by her badge as Jette, had seen it happen.
‘He had just come in and bought a ticket and a guidebook. He asked me about Princess Dagmar, mother of the last Tsar of Russia. She was Danish, you know, and was buried here. Until last September, that is, when she was moved to St Petersburg. He wanted to know where her coffin had been. I showed him on the map inside the guidebook. We have postcards of it.’ She plucked a card from the rack and showed it to Eusden. Dagmar’s large, handsomely carved wooden coffin was pictured in its appointed corner of the crypt, flanked by icons and glowing candles. ‘He bought one of these also.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘A little… shaky. I noticed he was… sweating, although it was really quite cold. And he kept rubbing his head, as if it ached. But he had a lovely smile. You knew him a long time?’
‘From childhood.’
‘Oh dear. You must be very upset.’
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