The Rembrandt Affair Read online

  Glastonbury was not entirely without its charms. One was the Hundred Monkeys café, purveyor of vegan and environmentally friendly cuisine since 2005, and Liddell’s favorite haunt. Liddell sat at his usual table, a copy of the Evening Standard spread protectively before him. At an adjacent table, a woman of late middle age was reading a book entitled Adult Children: The Secret Dysfunction. In the far back corner, a bald prophet in flowing white pajamas was lecturing six rapt pupils about something to do with Zen spiritualism. And at the table nearest the door, hands bunched contemplatively beneath an unshaved chin, was a man in his thirties. His eyes were flickering over the bulletin board. It was filled with the usual rubbish—an invitation to join the Glastonbury Positive Living Group, a free seminar on owl pellet dissection, an advertisement for Tibetan pulsing healing sessions—but the man appeared to be scrutinizing it with an unusual devotion. A cup of coffee stood before him, untouched, next to an open notebook, also untouched. A poet searching for the inspiration, thought Liddell. A polemicist waiting for the rage.

  Liddell examined him with a practiced eye. He was dressed in tattered denim and flannel, the Glastonbury uniform. His hair was dark and pulled back into a stubby ponytail, his eyes were nearly black and slightly glazed. On the right wrist was a watch with a thick leather band. On the left were several cheap silver bracelets. Liddell searched the hands and forearms for evidence of tattoos but found none. Odd, he thought, for in Glastonbury even grandmothers proudly sported their ink. Pristine skin, like sun in winter, was rarely seen.

  The waitress appeared and flirtatiously placed a check in the center of Liddell’s newspaper. She was a tall creature, quite pretty, with pale hair parted in the center and a tag on her snug-fitting sweater that read GRACE. Whether it was her name or the state of her soul, Liddell did not know. Since Hester’s departure, he had lost the capacity to converse with strange women. Besides, there was someone else in his life now. She was a quiet girl, forgiving of his failings, grateful for his affections. And most of all, she needed him as much he needed her. She was the perfect lover. The perfect mistress. And she was Christopher Liddell’s secret.

  He paid the bill in cash—he was at war with Hester over credit cards, along with nearly everything else—and made for the door. The poet-polemicist was scribbling furiously on his pad. Liddell slipped past and stepped into the street. A prickly mist was falling, and from somewhere in the distance he could hear the beating of drums. Then he remembered it was a Thursday, which meant it was shamanic drum therapy night at the Assembly Rooms.

  He crossed to the opposite pavement and made his way along the edge of St. John’s Church, past the parish preschool. Tomorrow afternoon at one o’clock, Liddell would be standing there among the mothers and the nannies to greet Emily as she emerged. By judicial fiat he had been rendered little more than a babysitter. Two hours a day was his allotted time, scarcely enough for more than a spin on the merry-go-round and a bun in the sweets shop. Hester’s revenge.

  He turned into Church Lane. It was a narrow alleyway bordered on both sides by high stone walls the color of flint. As usual, the only lamp was out, and the street was black as pitch. Liddell had been meaning to buy a small torch, like the ones his grandparents had carried during the war. He thought he heard footfalls behind him and peered over his shoulder into the gloom. It was nothing, he decided, just his mind playing tricks. Silly you, Christopher, he could hear Hester saying. Silly, silly you.

  At the end of the lane was a residential district of terraced cottages and semidetached houses. Henley Close lay at the northern-most edge, overlooking a sporting field. Its four cottages were a bit larger than most in the neighborhood and were fronted by walled gardens. In Hester’s absence, the garden at No. 8 had taken on a melancholy air of neglect that was beginning to earn Liddell nasty looks from the couple next door. He inserted his key and turned the latch. Stepping into the entrance hall, he was greeted by the chirping of the security alarm. He entered the disarm code into the keypad—an eight-digit numeric version of Emily’s birth date—and climbed the stairs to the top floor. The girl waited there, cloaked in darkness. Liddell switched on a lamp.

  She was seated in a wooden chair, a wrap of jeweled silk draped over her shoulders. Pearl earrings dangled at the sides of her neck; a gold chain lay against the pale skin of her breasts. Liddell reached out and gently stroked her cheek. The years had lined her face with cracks and creases and yellowed her alabaster skin. It was no matter; Liddell possessed the power to heal her. In a glass beaker, he prepared a colorless potion—two parts acetone, one part methyl proxitol, and ten parts mineral spirits—and moistened the tip of a cotton-wool swab. As he twirled it over the curve of her breast, he looked directly into her eyes. The girl stared back at him, her gaze seductive, her lips set in a playful half smile.

  Liddell dropped the swab to the floor and fashioned a new one. It was then he heard a noise downstairs that sounded like the snap of a lock. He sat motionless for a moment, then tilted his face toward the ceiling and called, “Hester? Is that you?” Receiving no reply, he dipped the fresh swab in the clear potion and once again twirled it carefully over the skin of the girl’s breast. A few seconds later came another sound, closer than the last, and distinct enough for Liddell to realize he was no longer alone.

  Rotating his body quickly atop the stool, he glimpsed a shadowed figure on the landing. The figure took two steps forward and calmly entered Liddell’s studio. Flannel and denim, dark hair pulled into a stubby ponytail, dark eyes—the man from the Hundred Monkeys. It was clear he was neither a poet nor a polemicist. He had a gun in his hand, and it was pointed directly at Liddell’s heart. Liddell reached for the flask of solvent. He was reliable. And for that he would soon be dead.

  2

  ST. JAMES’S, LONDON

  The first indication of trouble occurred the following afternoon when Emily Liddell, age four years seven months, emerged from St. John’s parish preschool to find no one waiting to take her home. The body was discovered a short time later, and by early that evening Liddell’s death was officially declared a homicide. BBC Somerset’s initial bulletin included the victim’s name but made no mention of his occupation or any possible motive for the killing. Radio 4 chose to ignore the story, as did the so-called quality national papers. Only the Daily Mail carried an account of the murder, a small item buried among a litany of other sordid news from around the country.

  As a result, Christopher Liddell’s death might have gone unnoticed by London’s art world since few of its lofty citizens ever soiled their fingers with the Mail. But that was not true of tubby Oliver Dimbleby, a lecherous dealer from Bury Street who had never been shy about wearing his working-class roots on his well-tailored sleeve. Dimbleby read of the Glastonbury murder over his midmorning coffee and by that evening was blaring the news to anyone who would listen at the bar of Green’s Restaurant, a local watering hole in Duke Street where dealers gathered to celebrate their triumphs or lick their wounds.

  One of the people Dimbleby cornered was none other than Julian Isherwood, owner and sole proprietor of the sometimes solvent but never boring Isherwood Fine Arts, 7-8 Mason’s Yard, St. James’s, London. He was “Julie” to his friends, “Juicy Julie” to his partners in the occasional crime of drink. He was a man of contradictions. Shrewd but reckless. Brilliant but naïve. Secretive as a spy but trusting to a fault. Mostly, though, he was entertaining. Indeed, among the denizens of the London art world, Isherwood Fine Arts had always been regarded as rather good theater. It had enjoyed stunning highs and bottomless lows, and there was always a hint of conspiracy lurking somewhere beneath the shimmering surface. The roots of Isherwood’s constant turmoil lay in his simple and oft-stated operating creed: “Paintings first, business second,” or PFBS for short. Isherwood’s misplaced faith in PFBS had occasionally led him to the edge of ruin. In fact, his financial straits had become so harrowing a few years back that Dimbleby himself had made a boorish attempt to buy Isherwood out. It was on
e of many incidents the men preferred to pretend had never happened.

  But even Dimbleby was surprised by the shocked expression that came over Isherwood’s face the instant he learned about the death in Glastonbury. Isherwood quickly managed to compose himself. Then, after muttering something preposterous about having to visit a sick aunt, he threw back his gin and tonic and made for the door at flank speed.

  Isherwood immediately returned to his gallery and placed a frantic call to a trusted contact on the Art and Antiques Squad at Scotland Yard. Ninety minutes later, the contact called back. The news was even worse than Isherwood expected. The Art Squad pledged to do its utmost, but as Isherwood stared into the yawning chasm of his ledger books, he concluded he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. Yes, there had been crises before, he thought gravely, but this was the real thing. He could lose it all, everything he had worked for, and innocent bystanders would pay a high price for his folly. It was no way to end a career—not after everything he had accomplished. And certainly not after everything his poor old father had done to ensure Julian’s very survival.

  It was this wholly unexpected memory of his father that caused Isherwood to once again reach for his phone. He started to dial a number but stopped. Better not to give him advance warning, he thought. Better to show up on his doorstep, cap in hand.

  He replaced the receiver and checked his calendar for the following day. Just three unpromising appointments, nothing that couldn’t be moved to another time. Isherwood drew a heavy line through each entry and at the top of the page scribbled a single biblical name. He stared at it for a moment, then, realizing his mistake, obliterated it with a few firm strokes of his pen. Pull yourself together, he thought. What were you thinking, Julie? What on earth were you thinking?

  3

  THE LIZARD PENINSULA, CORNWALL

  The stranger settled not in his old haunt along the Helford Passage but in a small cottage atop the cliffs on the western edge of the Lizard Peninsula. He had seen it for the first time from the deck of his ketch, a mile out to sea. It stood at the farthest end of Gunwalloe Cove, surrounded by purple thrift and red fescue. Behind it rose a sloping field crisscrossed by hedgerows; to the right stretched a crescent beach where an old shipwreck lay sleeping just beneath the treacherous surf. Far too dangerous for bathing, the cove attracted few visitors other than the occasional hiker or the local fishermen who came when the sea bass were running. The stranger remembered this. He also recalled that the beach and the cottage bore an uncanny resemblance to a pair of paintings executed by Monet in the French coastal town of Pourville, one of which had been stolen from a museum in Poland and was missing to this day.

  The inhabitants of Gunwalloe were aware of none of this, of course. They knew only that the stranger had taken the cottage under highly unusual circumstances—a twelve-month lease, paid in full, no muss, no fuss, all details handled by a lawyer in Hamburg no one had ever heard of. Even more perplexing was the parade of strange cars that appeared in the village soon after the transaction. The flashy black sedans with diplomatic plates. The cruisers from the local constabulary. The anonymous Vauxhalls from London filled with gray men in matching gray suits. Duncan Reynolds, thirty years retired from the railroad and regarded as the most worldly of Gunwalloe’s citizenry, had observed the men giving the property a hasty final inspection the evening of the stranger’s arrival. “These lads weren’t your basic ready-to-wear security men,” he reported. “They were the real thing. Professionals, if you happen to get my meaning.”

  The stranger was clearly a man on a mission, though for the life of them no one in Gunwalloe had a clue what it was. Their impressions were formed during his brief daily forays into the village for supplies. A few of the older ones thought they recognized a bit of the soldier in him while the younger women admitted to finding him attractive—so attractive, in fact, that some of their menfolk began to dislike him intensely. The daft ones boasted about having a go at him, but the wiser ones preached caution. Despite the stranger’s somewhat small stature, it was obvious he knew how to handle himself if things got rough. Pick a fight with him, they warned, and chances were good that bones would get broken. And not his.

  His exotic-looking companion, however, was another story. She was warmth to his frost, sunlight to his gray clouds. Her exceptional beauty added a touch of class to the village streets, along with a hint of foreign intrigue. When the woman’s mood was upbeat, her eyes actually seemed to emit a light of their own. But at times there was also a discernible sadness. Dottie Cox from the village store speculated that the woman had lost someone close to her recently. “She tries to hide it,” said Dottie, “but the poor lamb’s obviously still in mourning.”

  That the couple was not British was beyond dispute. Their credit cards were issued in the name Rossi, and they were often overheard murmuring to one another in Italian. When Vera Hobbs at the bakery finally worked up the nerve to ask where they were from, the woman replied evasively, “London, mostly.” The man, however, had maintained a granite silence. “He’s either desperately shy or he’s hiding something,” Vera concluded. “I’d wager my money on number two.”

  If there was one opinion of the stranger shared by everyone in the village, it was that he was extremely protective of his wife. Perhaps, they ventured, a bit too protective. For the first few weeks after their arrival, he never seemed to stray more than a few inches from her side. But by early October, there were small signs that the woman was growing weary of his constant presence. And by the middle of the month, she was regularly making trips to the village unescorted. As for the stranger, it seemed to one observer that he had been sentenced by some internal tribunal to forever walk the cliffs of the Lizard alone.

  At first, his excursions were short. But gradually he began taking long forced marches that kept him away for several hours at a time. Cloaked in his dark green Barbour coat with a flat cap pulled low over his brow, he would troop south along the cliffs to Kynance Cove and Lizard Point, or north past the Loe to Porthleven. There were times when he would appear lost in thought and times when he adopted the wariness of a scout on a reconnaissance mission. Vera Hobbs reckoned he was trying to remember something, a theory Dottie Cox found laughable. “It’s obvious as the nose on your face, Vera, you old fool. The poor dear isn’t trying to remember anything. He’s doing his very best to forget.”

  Two matters served to raise the level of intrigue in Gunwalloe still higher. The first concerned the men who always seemed to be fishing in the cove whenever the stranger was away on one of his walks. Everyone in Gunwalloe agreed they were the worst fishermen anyone had ever seen—in fact, most assumed they were not fishermen at all. And then there was the couple’s only visitor, a broad-shouldered Cornish boy with movie-idol good looks. After much speculation, it was Malcolm Braithwaite, a retired lobsterman who smelled perpetually of the sea, who correctly identified the lad as the Peel boy. “The one who rescued little Adam Hathaway at Sennen Cove but refused to say a word about it,” Malcolm reminded them. “The odd one from Port Navas. Mother used to beat the daylights out of him. Or was it the boyfriend?”

  The appearance of Timothy Peel ignited a round of intense speculation about the stranger’s true identity, most of which was conducted under the influence at the Lamb and Flag pub. Malcolm Braithwaite decreed he was an informant hiding out in Cornwall under police protection, while Duncan Reynolds somehow got it into his head that the stranger was a Russian defector. “Like that bloke Bulganov,” he insisted. “The poor sod they found dead in the Docklands a few months ago. Our new friend better watch his step or he might meet the same fate.”

  But it was Teddy Sinclair, owner of a rather good pizzeria in Helston, who came up with the most controversial theory. While trolling the Internet one day for God knows what, he stumbled upon an old article in the Times about Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the former American ambassador, who had been kidnapped by terrorists while jogging in Hyde Park. With great fanfare,
Sinclair produced the article, along with an out-of-focus snapshot of the two men who had carried out her dramatic Christmas-morning rescue at Westminster Abbey. At the time, Scotland Yard had claimed that the heroes were officers of the SO19 special operations division. The Times, however, reported that they were actually agents of Israeli intelligence—and that the older of the two, the one with dark hair and gray temples, was none other than the notorious Israeli spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. “Look at him carefully. It’s him, I tell you. The man now living in Gunwalloe Cove is none other than Gabriel Allon.”

  This prompted the most uproarious outburst of laughter at the Lamb and Flag since a drunken Malcolm Braithwaite had dropped to one knee and declared his undying love for Vera Hobbs. When order was finally restored, a humiliated Teddy Sinclair wadded the article into a ball and tossed it into the fire. And though he would never know it, his theory about the man from the far end of the cove was altogether and entirely correct.

  IF THE STRANGER was aware of the scrutiny, he gave no sign of it. He watched over the beautiful woman and hiked the wind-swept cliffs, sometimes looking as if he were trying to remember, sometimes as though he were trying to forget. On the second Tuesday of November, while nearing the southern end of Kynance Cove, he spotted a tall, gray-haired man standing precariously on the terrace of the Polpeor Café at Lizard Point. Even from a long way off, he could tell the man was watching him. Gabriel stopped and reached into his coat pocket, wrapping his hand around the comforting shape of a Beretta 9mm pistol. Just then, the man began to flail his arms as though he were drowning. Gabriel released his grip on the gun and walked on, the sea wind roaring in his ears, his heart pounding like a kettledrum.