THIRTY-FIVE

Cheng-Shengs Chinees Restaurant was at the less prosperous end of Hoboken’s main shopping street. It was several hours away from being open and there was no sign in the stark interior of Cheng-Sheng or any of his family and/or staff. Not that it was them van Briel and I were waiting for on the other side of the road in his far from inconspicuous Porsche. Joey had said ‘over Cheng-Sheng’. And there was indeed a flat above the restaurant, with a separate entrance. But there’d been no answer to our several stabs at the bell.

‘They could be gone for the whole day,’ groaned van Briel, lighting his umpteenth cigarette. ‘Some people round here work.’

‘What do you suggest? Go away and try again this evening? I can’t do that.’

‘Maybe you’ll have to.’

‘Not before I’ve spoken to the people in the restaurant. They’ll know the name of the occupant, if nothing else.’

‘We can’t wait all morning.’

‘Why not?’

Van Briel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It sounded like sandpaper, thanks to his abrupt and unshaven departure from home. I was no better groomed myself. ‘Look, Stephen, I have to contact the office. There’s a phone box back along the street. I’ll call them from there. I won’t be long.’

Van Briel got out of the car and trudged away. I took out the postcard and studied it again, even though I already had the important part off by heart. There was no doubt we were in the right place, improbable as it seemed that Ardal Quilligan had known anyone living here.

Whoever they were, though, and however they were acquainted with him, they might be gone all week, let alone all day. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do about it.

Marie-Louise had promised not to mention the postcard to Rachel’s mother when she arrived. The last thing we needed was Esther Banner following us to Hoboken. But we couldn’t expect Marie-Louise to cover our backs indefinitely. Sooner rather than later, something had to give.

To judge by van Briel’s expression when he returned to the car, it already had. ‘Meneer Oudermans wants me to go in right away. Mrs Banner has arrived and expects me to arrange for her to visit Rachel. And, big surprise, she’s asking if I know where Joey is. Also where you are. Plus, if we needed a plus, which we don’t, a lawyer representing the Linleys has made contact.’

‘You’d better go in, then. But I’m staying here.’

‘Come on, Stephen. It’ll look bad for both of us if I say I’ve lost you. Worse if I say what you’re actually doing.’

‘Go for the lesser evil, then. Claim I’ve given you the slip. Buy me some time.’

‘How much time?’

‘I don’t know. A few hours, at least. I promise I’ll phone in by this afternoon.’

Van Briel sighed. ‘All right, all right. But a few hours only. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘What will you do if no one comes to the flat and Cheng-Sheng’s can’t help you?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

I already had thought of something, which it was best for van Briel to have no inkling of. After he left, I stationed myself in a café with a sight-line on the restaurant. Two coffees later, nothing had changed. It was time to go for broke.

Steely rain had begun to fall, which I reckoned was good for my purposes. It ensured no one was loitering in the service yard behind Cheng-Sheng when I arrived there a few minutes later. The restaurant’s kitchen had been extended to the rear, with the flat above looking out over its asphalted roof. I wheeled one of three large lidded bins against the wall, clambered on to it and hauled myself up by the extractor flue, then crouched low as I crossed to the windows of the flat. A couple of whacks with the heel of my shoe punched a big enough hole in the glass of one for me to reach in and turn the handle.

As I climbed into the room, I was aware that I had no way of being sure my break-in had gone unobserved. Someone might already be phoning the police. Why this didn’t worry me as much as it should have I can’t explain, except that I wanted answers of some kind and I was determined to get them, whatever risks I ran in the process.

I was in a small and sparsely furnished bedroom. I stepped out on to the landing, from which stairs led down to the street door. There was a bathroom to my left, a tiny kitchen to my right and, beyond that, a lounge. The flat was clean but frowsty, stale cigarette smoke souring the air. There was little in the way of decoration. A couple of buff-enveloped letters were lying unopened on the work top in the kitchen. They were addressed to a P. Verhoest.

I walked into the lounge. The impression I already had of a solitary, unsociable male occupant was reinforced. The walls were bare, the three-piece suite cheap and shabby, the television at least a decade old.

Then, glancing behind me, I noticed a large rectangular object, all of seven feet high, covered with a sheet and propped up against the wall. It looked like it might be a painting. If so, it was the only one in the flat. And yet it was shrouded. I stood in front of it and lifted the sheet off.

It was Three Swans. I knew that at once from Brenda Duthie’s description of Desmond Quilligan’s last work of art. I knew it also from the fact that the man in the picture was clearly Eldritch, much younger than he now was and looking, as Marie-Louise had prepared me to expect, quite a lot like me, though with shorter hair and the addition of a pencil moustache. He was dressed in his trademark brown and gold pinstripe suit and fedora and was shown leaning against a stile set in a dry-stone wall, amidst high-summer countryside. He was in the act of lighting a cigarette, one hand holding the flaming match, the other the box he’d taken it from. Beyond the wall could be seen a stretch of calm blue water: part of a lake, above which a swan was shown, rising in flight, its take-off trail still visible on the lake’s surface.

Brenda Duthie had seen only one swan. But there really were three: the bird, the man, and the emblem on the familiar green, red and yellow box of Swan Vesta matches Eldritch was holding between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. I peered closer. Eldritch’s portrait was life-size, which had enabled Quilligan to incorporate a real box of Swan Vestas in the picture: a tiny piece of collage work which wouldn’t be apparent when viewed from any distance. But there was something odd about it, something very odd indeed, which detracted from the naturalistic effect. The match-box was hollow. The cardboard tray containing the matches themselves was missing.

I stood up, retreated to the sofa and sat on its arm, staring at the painting, struggling to divine Quilligan’s intention when he’d painted it. The title was a tease. ‘Three swans seen flying together portend a death,’ Eldritch had said, citing a proverb I’d never previously heard. But only one swan was shown in flight. Back in 1956, when Quilligan had produced this, Eldritch had been in prison, all possibility of flight denied him. And whose death was portended? The artist’s own? It had certainly followed soon enough. Or his brother’s, which had followed Eldritch’s eventual release?

Had the tray inside the matchbox always been missing? That was the more pressing issue. If not, who’d taken it out? Ardal? Or the mysterious Mr Verhoest? I cast around the room, wondering if I’d spot it lying somewhere. There was a box of matches in the grate next to the gas fire, but it was a Belgian brand, smaller than Swan Vestas. I headed for the kitchen.

*

A walking-stick crashed down on to the handrail of the banisters as I rushed out of the lounge, blocking my path. To my shock and bewilderment, I was face to face with a thin, stooping old man. He had white hair, watery blue eyes magnified by the cloudy lenses of a pair of black-framed glasses and a dusting of stubble on his tightly clenched jaw. He was dressed in a grubby raincoat, his shirt collar open beneath, revealing a scrawny, tracheotomy-scarred neck.

‘Waar ga u naartoe?’ he croaked.

Even if I’d understood his question, I couldn’t have answered it in that moment. He was Verhoest. He had to be. This was his home. And I was an intruder. How he’d been able to enter without my hearing him I couldn’t imagine. And how I was going to stop him phoning the police I couldn’t imagine either.

Then, bizarrely, he began to laugh – a dry, rasping laugh. He swung the stick slowly through the air and prodded the rubber ferrule against my chest. ‘You’re Swan’s nephew, aren’t you? That’s who you are. I know the look. The Eldritch Swan look. Quilligan told me you might come here. But breaking one of my windows to get in? He didn’t tell me to expect that.’

‘I’m sorry. I …’

‘Tell me your name.’

‘Stephen Swan.’

‘I’m Pieter Verhoest.’ He lowered the stick to the floor and leant heavily on it. ‘Has Eldritch ever mentioned me to you?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘You’d remember if he had.’

‘You … know him?’

‘Knew him. A long time ago.’

‘I … I’m sorry I … broke in. I …’

‘Couldn’t wait.’

‘No. That’s right. I couldn’t.’

‘You got Quilligan’s message, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve seen the painting.’

‘Yes.’

‘What does it mean, young Swan? What does the picture mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But Quilligan’s dead because of it. You must know.’

‘How much did Quilligan tell you?’

‘How much did he tell you?’ Verhoest smiled crookedly. He propped his stick against the wall, took off his raincoat and slung it over the banisters, then grabbed his stick again and limped slowly past me into the lounge. He slumped down in the armchair facing the painting and gazed across at it. ‘Isaac Meridor didn’t hang fake Picassos on the walls of Zonnestralen. They were the real thing. The exhibition that’s on in London comes to Brussels later this year. I might go and see it for old times’ sake. When Ardal Quilligan told me how his brother helped defraud Meridor’s widow and daughter, I was pleased, though not as pleased as when I heard the old man had drowned. I’d have held his head under the waves to finish him if I’d had the chance.’ He looked up at me. ‘I owe Meridor’s brood nothing. You understand?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Sit down.’ He pointed to the sofa. ‘I have a story for you. About your uncle.’

I sat down on the sofa opposite him. I wanted to ask about the matchbox in the painting behind me, but I sensed it would be futile. There was an answer and he would give it to me. On his own terms. In his own time.

‘Who do you blame when you realize you’ve wasted your life? Yourself ? It’s the last answer you’re left with when the … comfort … the alternatives give you runs out. Eldritch and I are a lot alike. He’s spent thirty-six years in prison. I’ve spent thirty-six years … growing old and poor and lonely. Maybe, if I’d never gone to the Congo, it would have been different. I was young and arrogant and … greedy. Of course I was. The colonial regime rewarded arrogance and greed. It was what it was for. Rubber. Copper. Gold. Diamonds. We took everything. Women when you wanted them, how you wanted them. Boys too. There were no limits, only rules.

‘I saw my chance to get out and get rich when I found out about Meridor’s diamond-smuggling racket. I traced it to its root: your grandfather, George Swan, over the border in Tanganyika. I put together all the evidence. Then I had a wealthy man at my mercy. I came back here on leave in the spring of 1940 and gave Meridor a simple choice: buy me off or go to gaol for defrauding the government.

‘It was stupid of me to think it would be so easy. Meridor was ruthless. That’s how he’d made his money. There was a third choice and he took it. He ordered Eldritch to hire some men to kill me. They picked me up the night before I was supposed to sail to New York on the Uitlander. But they didn’t kill me. They kept me locked up in a shed at a farm outside the city for two days, then dropped me over the Dutch border and told me to stay away from Antwerp. They said they didn’t like the idea of killing a fellow Belgian when the country was in danger. I reckoned I was the only Belgian who had his life saved by the threat of a German invasion. They invaded for real pretty soon anyway. I spent the war in Eindhoven, working in a light-bulb factory.

‘When I came back here in 1945, the Government took me on again in my old job. So, I went back to the Congo. I didn’t last long. I’d had malaria before, but this time it was much worse. I nearly died. I need dialysis now, twice a week. They sent me home in 1948 and gave me a job in the Antwerp tax office. I hated it. And I hated being short of money. So, I went to see Mevrouw Meridor. With Meridor dead, my information on the diamond smuggling was much less damaging, but I hoped his widow would pay me something to save his reputation. I gave her time to think it over. She sent Ardal Quilligan to see me. I had no idea then about his brother’s part in the Picasso swindle. I thought he was just … Mevrouw Meridor’s man of business. We agreed a payment. It was more than I expected to get. It should have been enough to keep me going. But it wasn’t.

‘A man I’d worked with in the Congo persuaded me to invest in a cigarette factory he’d opened in Stanleyville. It was supposed to make us both rich. But he was killed and the factory was destroyed in the fighting after independence. I lost every centime. I’ve been lucky, but never with money. That’s why I live in this … varkenshok. I contacted Quilligan. He told me there’d be no more money from Mevrouw Meridor. I was on my own.

‘Then he came to see me last Sunday. He asked me to keep that painting safe until he came back for it. If he didn’t, I was to keep it until you or Eldritch came. He paid me some money. Not much. I’m not sure he had much. He told me what his brother had done. He was in danger, he said. He wasn’t frightened, though. He seemed … very calm, almost … contented. His only worry was the painting and how to hide it. He knew I’d agree. And he knew he could trust me. Eldritch had told him something about me, you see, something secret, just before he went to prison. Quilligan passed it on to me. But I already knew. One day, not long after the war, I recognized one of the men Meridor hired to kill me in a bar near the docks. I had nothing against him. I was grateful they hadn’t killed me. We had a drink together. Quite a few drinks. Then he told me. They were paid not to kill me. By Eldritch. On top of the money from Meridor. Your uncle has a conscience. Maybe you didn’t know. You know now. He saved my life twice, once accidentally, once deliberately. By stopping me sailing on the Uitlander. And by stopping that man and his friends from killing me. Pretty funny, isn’t it?’ He laughed his rattling laugh. ‘I spent a long time thinking how good it would feel to stick a knife in Eldritch’s guts. Then I found out I … owed him everything.’ He laughed some more, then raised his stick, which he’d leant against the arm of the chair, and pointed it at the painting. ‘Have you seen there’s something missing, young Swan?’

‘The inside of the matchbox.’

‘Ja. That’s right. The inside of the matchbox. Swan Vestas. Irish humour, I suppose. When I read in the paper yesterday that Quilligan had been murdered in Ostend some time Sunday night, I took a long, careful look at the painting. I saw the matchbox was real, with its ends painted over. I thought that was strange. So, I slit the paint with a knife and took out what was inside the box.’

‘Not matches, I imagine.’

‘Oh no. Not matches.’

‘What, then?’

‘Photographic negatives. Six of them. Cut from a strip.’ He swung his stick to point at the bureau in the corner of the room. ‘I had them developed. The prints are in there.’

I jumped up and strode over to the bureau. The flap was up and the key wasn’t in the lock.

‘You’ll need this,’ he said. I turned and he tossed the key over to me.

I unlocked the flap and lowered it. A yellow paper wallet with the word Kodak printed on it caught my eye at once. I flicked it open and slid out the photographs it contained.