Текст книги "The Bosch Deception"

Автор книги: Alex Connor

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Forty

It was early, hardly light, when Nicholas awoke. For once he hadn’t dreamed, and now he was desperate to urinate. Moving into the bathroom he relieved himself, his hand resting on the wall over the cistern as a sudden wave of nausea came over him. Surprised, he waited for the feeling to pass, then walked out into the corridor. Even with the door of Father Michael’s room closed he could hear the snoring. He paused for a moment, listening to the old priest giving an abrupt snort and then rolling over in bed. The springs creaked and protested, but a moment later the snoring began again.

Back in his room, Nicholas got into bed then paused, listening. He could hear footsteps on the gravel outside. Who would be walking around the church at four thirty in the morning? Flicking off his bedside light, he moved to the window and looked out. The gravel path was empty, the street lamp illuminating parked cars but nothing else. Certainly no figure moving around.

Surprised, he returned to bed. Lying down, he felt something – a sharp object digging into his back. He snapped on the light and stared at the wooden crucifix lying in the centre of his bed. It hadn’t been there before he went to the toilet. Someone had come into his room and placed it there … Gingerly, Nicholas picked up the crucifix, then dropped it, standing up and backing away from the bed.

It was not an ordinary crucifix. It was one he knew. But he hadn’t seen it for a long time.

It was the one Nicholas had been given by his sister years earlier, when he had first become a priest. Grabbing the phone, he punched out Honor’s number.

There was no answer.

Forty-One

Troubled by the events of the previous night, Nicholas eventually managed to contact Honor at eight o’ clock. His sister was puzzled by what he told her.

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘The crucifix I gave you—’

‘Was in my bed last night. And I didn’t put it there,’ he snapped. ‘Someone was in the vestry and they put it there.’ His voice shook. ‘I heard footsteps, and in the time it took me to have a pee someone got in and planted that crucifix in my bed.’

‘Where was Father Michael?’

‘Asleep. I could hear him snoring,’ Nicholas retorted heatedly. ‘Anyway, do you really think an old priest would play a trick like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Honor replied, pouring herself a coffee and sitting down in her kitchen. ‘Who else could it have been? I mean, you’d have heard someone break in, wouldn’t you? You’re a light sleeper, Nicholas – that would have woken you.’

‘Unless they were already in the house.’

She shivered. ‘Are you serious?’

‘They were bound to come after me sooner or later,’ Nicholas replied. ‘They tried to frame me for Father Luke’s murder, but that didn’t stick, so now they have to find another way to stop me. They can’t kill me, that would be too obvious—’

‘Nicholas,’ Honor said softly, ‘you can’t really believe that the Catholic Church would murder you? That’s crazy.’

‘So now I’m going crazy?’

‘I didn’t say you were going crazy, I said the theory was crazy.’ Her voice was patient. ‘You’re under a lot of stress. You said yourself you weren’t sleeping. You could be imagining things—’

‘A crucifix in my bed!’ he snapped. ‘Father Michael said someone had been watching the church and he’s had phone calls in the middle of the night. When he answers, there’s no one there. I know I’m being followed, but now they’re upping the ante.’ He thought for a moment, ‘Maybe it was Father Dominic from St Barnabas’s. Father Luke’s running mate. He’s scared enough—’

‘You’re scaring me,’ Honor interrupted. ‘You have to calm down, get things into perspective.’

Nicholas wasn’t listening.

‘It would have to be clever, nothing shocking,’ he went on. ‘They can’t kill me outright – it would be all over the papers and people would ask questions. Whistle-blower priest murdered would provoke some interest. Only a few people know about the Bosch deception, but someone would speak out if I were killed. The Church wants me to shut up, so they’re trying to frighten me.’

‘Give them the bloody papers!’ Honor snapped. ‘Who cares what happened to Hieronymus Bosch? No one. You’re tilting at windmills again, and you’re the one who’ll get hurt—’

‘But that’s the point. It might not be just me … I want you to go and stay with our uncle for a while—’

‘I’m not going to live with David Laverne again!’ she retorted. ‘And what makes you think that I’d be any safer in the country than in London? God, Nicholas, think about it. If someone wanted to harm me, they would have done so already. Besides, I don’t know what the deception is, do I? You never told me – not the whole story anyway.’

‘You mustn’t know it. Your safety is in not knowing it.’

‘Nicholas, please, calm down. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. This is madness—’

‘I don’t care if you think I’m a lunatic,’ Nicholas replied, his tone sharp. ‘Can’t you see what they’re doing? They want you to think I’m crazy, so that they can discredit what I say. Believe me, I know what these people are capable of, and if they can’t get to me they’ll go for the people I love.’ He cringed at the thought. ‘If you won’t go to the country, come here. Stay at St Stephen’s with us.’

‘I can’t just take time off work—’

‘Say you’re ill,’ Nicholas suggested. ‘This won’t go on for long, Honor. The chain’s being sold at auction in a few days’ time—’

‘So why don’t you put the papers up for auction as well?’

He was taken aback. ‘What? I don’t want to raise money with them, I want to expose the Church for their part in the deception.’

‘Which you would if you sold them,’ Honor retorted. ‘And if “they” thought the papers were going to be public knowledge there would be no point in coming after you.’

‘I know what the secret is,’ he said wearily. ‘Whether I have the papers in my possession or not, I know the secret.’

‘So why haven’t you gone to the press with it? You did last time.’

Nicholas smiled bitterly. ‘That’s the point – last time I was discredited. Who would believe me this time? They won’t. Unless someone respectable speaks out for me – like Father Michael. He offered, I didn’t ask him to. He wants to do it, to make amends for the past.’

‘And you’re going to let him?’ she asked incredulously. ‘You can be a right bastard, Nicholas.’

‘He wants to do it!’

‘And your arriving on his doorstep with a conspiracy theory didn’t force his hand?’ She slammed down her coffee cup. ‘You don’t really care about the deception; you just want to get your own back on the Church and you’re prepared to use an old man to do it.’

‘He offered.’

‘You knew he would! When you turned up out of the blue and told him about it, you knew he would have to help you. Catholic guilt and all that shit. I imagine poor Father Michael thinks he’ll get a front-row seat in Paradise for doing this.’ She shook her head. ‘You can fool other people, Nicholas, but not me. I know you.’

‘He wants to do it.’

‘Even if he gets killed? You might escape, Nicholas, with your religious celebrity, but what about some old man who’s on his last legs?’

Her anger shook him. Why had Eloise Devereux brought him and his sister together again? Honor would have been safer kept out of it.

‘I didn’t want any of this—’

‘Didn’t you?’ Honor countered. ‘Seems to me that it’s offering you a very convenient way to have another go at the Church.’

‘You think I was wrong to expose them?’

‘Not the first time, Nicholas,’ she replied. ‘I admired you for that. You stood up and told the world what had been done to those boys and it cost you. I know how much. I know what it did to you, physically and mentally. But this time – this time it just looks like you’re a conspiracy nut out for revenge.’

‘There are papers which prove the deception!’

‘And it was you that found the papers, wasn’t it? I mean, Sabine took the chain off the picture, but it was you who found the papers hidden inside.’

‘Yes, it was me. So what?’

She hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘You took them out of their hiding place …’ she said quietly. ‘Or did you put them in?’

Forty-Two

Honor’s suspicion had shaken Nicholas. That his own sister could doubt him left him speechless as he put down the phone and cut the connection. He was still smarting when he saw Eloise later.

‘Why did you tell my sister what was going on?’ he asked, not even waiting for her to take a seat.

Composed, she slid into the pew beside him. ‘I had to tell her that you were in trouble—’

‘And put her in danger?’

‘She’s your sister, she’s already in danger,’ Eloise replied, changing tack. ‘I have some news that might interest you. About Carel Honthorst—’

‘So why bother with the note?’

She looked at him blankly. ‘What note?’

‘The one you left on Honor’s car earlier. The one she gave me an hour ago.’

‘I left no note.’

Suspicious, Nicholas looked at her. ‘All right … so what have you found out about Honthorst?’

‘That he was a priest in Amsterdam. One of four sons, mother dead, father also dead. Apparently he was something of a tyrant when he was alive.’ She paused, thinking. ‘If you were told about Honthorst in a note, that means that someone else knows, apart from us. Perhaps someone wanted to warn you.’

He passed her the note. On it was written:

The Dutchman is an ex-priest.

He is working for the Church too.

Be wary of him.

‘Very melodramatic,’ Eloise said, passing it back. ‘Strange choice of words too. “Be wary” is not a normal expression – not nowadays anyway. Sounds like someone for whom English isn’t their first language. Or maybe he’s just an old-fashioned, educated man.’

At once Nicholas thought of Sidney Elliott, the ageing academic. Had Elliott tipped him off? Nicholas doubted it – doubted he would have come all the way from Cambridge to leave a note on a car windscreen.

‘Of course,’ he said tentatively, ‘it could be a woman.’

Eloise turned to Nicholas, eyes steady. ‘No, a woman wouldn’t leave a note on a car. It’s too exposed, too easy to be spotted that way. And besides, it’s not how a woman writes … Do you know who sent it?’

‘No,’ he replied, pushing the thought of Elliott to the back of his mind. ‘I just know that it’s meant to scare me. It means that the Church has sent Honthorst after me. It means that he’s not just working for Gerrit der Keyser, he’s working for both parties – der Keyser for the chain and the Church for the papers, the secret.’

‘Are you going to tell me today?’

Nicholas didn’t need to ask what she meant. ‘No. I’ll never tell you what the deception was.’

‘Never is a fool’s word,’ she replied. ‘Keep your secret if you must – all that matters to me is finding out who killed my husband. That note,’ she gestured to the paper in Nicholas’s hand, ‘means someone else knows what’s going on. I had hoped to keep this matter contained.’

‘No chance. Philip Preston has the chain now. He’s auctioning it. If nothing happens in the next few days, that is.’

‘I heard about the sale.’

‘Have you got the money to buy it?’

The corners of her mouth lifted, but it was hardly a smile. ‘I could buy it, yes. But what good would that do? If someone wanted it badly enough they could outbid me, or steal it from me afterwards.’ She glanced at him. ‘It’s not the chain I want.’

‘Has anyone threatened you?’

Again the near smile.

‘No, Nicholas. No one has threatened me, but I am being watched.’ She shrugged as though the matter were of no importance. ‘I have good protection – my chauffeur takes me everywhere and he’s outside the church now. At the hotel, he sleeps in an adjoining room. As I said before, money is very useful. But you …’ She paused, staring at Nicholas. ‘Who protects you?’

‘No one.’

‘Aren’t you afraid?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid,’ he admitted.

‘I’m not. Everything I prized has been taken away from me. If I was killed, what would it matter? I only want to find out who killed my husband. Other than that, there is nothing else.’

‘You’re still a young woman – you’ll think differently in time.’

‘All the old platitudes! The ex-priest in you is showing, Nicholas. I thought you’d left all that behind. Claude used to tease you about it, didn’t he? He was very fond of you, you know. He liked your company and thought you’d been treated badly, hounded out of London. He liked you, even loved you … I don’t want comforting. Nothing can ever comfort me for losing Claude and—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘What were you going to say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You were,’ Nicholas pressed her. ‘There was something else. Tell me.’

Getting to her feet, Eloise paused by the pew and genuflected, dipping her head towards the altar. Then, without saying another word, she walked out.

Forty-Three

Philip Preston was having his own problems and the housekeeper had called him home urgently. Gayle was drinking, babbling incoherently about being out shopping and seeing someone. When she caught sight of Philip, she leapt to her feet and clung to him.

‘I went to the gym, darling,’ she said, gesturing to her glass. ‘I’ve only had one drink, honestly. I think it’s those new tablets Dr Marshall gave me. They mess up my head.’ She slumped on to the sofa and Philip sat beside her. She looked unexpectedly pretty – made up, her hair blow-dried, her excess weight concealed under a dark dress – and for a moment she moved him.

But only for a moment.

‘The housekeeper said you were shouting and crying—’

‘I was confused,’ she whined. ‘I tell you, it’s the tablets. Or the gym. It could be the gym – all that noise and banging up and down with the machines. Too loud.’ She shook her head, her thick blonde hair flopping over her face. ‘I’m going to change,’ she said suddenly, grasping her husband’s hand. ‘I promise. We’ll be happy again and you won’t want anyone else. I’m on a diet—’

‘What were you so upset about?’

‘It was silly. I was confused. Like the other time, when I thought I was hearing voices and I wasn’t, it was just a radio left on. At least I think it was. Anyway, it stopped after the doctor gave me that medicine.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘It’s hormones – must be.’

He was gritting his teeth. ‘Hormones?’

‘But it just seemed so real. Like the past, old times. And that made me think of you and how much I loved you and didn’t want to lose you. I never loved him like I loved you—’

‘Who?’

‘Henry.’

‘Henry!’ Philip said, exasperated. ‘Henry’s dead.’

‘I know! I know!’ Gayle mumbled. ‘That’s what confused me when I saw him. This morning, walking down Regent Street with my father.’

It was all getting too much, Philip thought, trying to soothe his wife. ‘Both of them are dead, darling. Your father and Henry Laverne are dead, and have been for a while.’

She nodded. ‘And Hoagy?’

‘And the cat,’ Philip said patiently. ‘The cat’s dead too.’

Forty-Four

Church of St Barnabas, Fulham, London

The passing of time had not diminished his sleekness, rather exaggerated it. Like an oil slick Father Dominic glided into the confessional booth and took his seat, laying his rosary across his lap. Hair that had once been black had faded to a reddish-brown, like an old cat that has sat too long in the sun. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he had missed lunch, as the door of the confessional opened and someone slid into the adjoining booth.

Father Dominic’s stomach growled a welcome, his hand resting against his cassock. ‘Bless you, my child. Have you come for me to hear your confession?’

The person nodded, hardly visible through the metal grille, the voice a low whisper.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘When was your last confession?’

‘Many years ago.’

Father Dominic shifted his position; the bench was hard on a bony posterior. ‘But you are here today and want to repent of your sins?’

Again the low whisper, impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. ‘Yes.’

‘What sins have you committed, my child?’

There was a momentary pause before the person continued. ‘I am guilty of anger and pride. I have been very lonely for a long time, Father. Too much alone …’

‘Go on.’

‘… I have slept with women, even paid for a prostitute. It was wrong, Father, but I was lonely, a long way from home, and I needed comfort.’

The same old story, the priest thought. ‘Are you married?’

‘No. And I have dark thoughts, terrible thoughts, Father.’

‘Like what?’

‘Hatred.’

‘You must rid yourself of these thoughts. They are an insult to God—’

‘But I can’t rid myself of them,’ the voice replied, ‘and I have such bad dreams. Every night the dreams come. Always the same.’

Father Dominic shifted his position, and his stomach growled again. Embarrassed, he touched his belly, pressing his finger into it in the hope of stopping the noise. He would hurry this along, he thought, then eat.

‘God forgives everything. I will give you a penance—’

‘There’s more, Father.’

There would be, the priest thought, irritated. ‘Go on, my child.’

‘This is my confession and as such you cannot break my confidence. What I tell you, you can tell no one else.’

Father Dominic nodded. ‘I cannot break the oath of the confessional, no.’

‘It would be our secret.’

‘Yes. Apart from us, only God would know.’

There was a long pause. For a moment Father Dominic thought the person had left, slipped silently out of the booth, but then the voice continued.

‘I let someone down. I should have helped them and I didn’t. I did in the end, but by then it was too late.’ The whispering paused, took in a slow breath. ‘I live with that – knowing I could have saved a life and didn’t.’

Wrong-footed, the priest found himself taken aback. This was not what he had expected. ‘Did you take a life?’

‘No. I watched someone else take a life.’

‘Have you told the police about this?’

‘Yes, Father, I told the police. But it was a long time ago and everyone’s forgotten it now. I was punished, but that wasn’t right – the real culprits got away with it …’ Again a long pause, a blurred image behind the grille, Father Dominic straining to see who was talking. And failing.

‘Did you give false witness?’

‘No!’ the whisperer said sharply. ‘I told the truth.’

‘Then God will punish the evildoers.’

‘But will He, Father?’

Sudden anger in the priest’s voice. ‘You doubt God?’

‘Why should I believe in Him when He allows such injustice?’

‘It is not our place to question God!’

The whispered voice continued. ‘Did Father Luke believe that too?’

A sick feeling crept over the priest, a curdling memory stirring at the back of his mind. He felt suddenly claustrophobic in the booth and attempted to loosen his white dog collar, his hand shaking. The confines of the confessional were closing in on him, the musty smell of wood and furniture polish sticking in his throat.

‘Father Luke is dead.’

‘I know. He was murdered outside the Brompton Oratory only the other day,’ the voice replied softly. ‘How does it feel to have lost your ally, Father? To know that God does catch up with evildoers in the end. And that next time it will be your turn—’

‘Who are you?’

‘You know me, Father Dominic,’ the voice said, suddenly no longer a whisper but a voice the priest knew only too well.

‘Laverne!’

‘Yes. And before you decide to leave the confessional in a hurry, think again,’ Nicholas said coldly, ‘and listen to what I have to say. I know what you did. What I exposed ten years ago was the truth—’

‘You went to the press! You attacked a priest, you abused the Eucharist. You tried to discredit the Catholic Church, of which you were a serving member.’

‘You and your kind discredited the Church long before I blew the whistle. I thought I could stop what you were doing, but I left it too late. Patrick Gerin died.’

‘He committed suicide!’

‘He was murdered!’ Nicholas retorted. ‘You know it and I know it. If you didn’t put the rope around his neck, you drove him to it. And no one wanted to know. Instead I was made out to be lunatic, a fantasist. Well, the Church might have gagged me once, but not this time. You’re trying to keep me quiet again. Trying to stop me going public with what I know. You lied, priest. You lied to the police—’

‘What!’

‘You told them that I’d phoned Father Luke, implied that I wanted to settle an old score with him. You set me up—’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Forgive me for not believing you.’

‘A man did call him – I overheard the conversation,’ Father Dominic blundered on, his hands pressed against the grille which separated them. ‘He said it was you. Father Luke said it was you. He believed it was Nicholas Laverne.’

‘It wasn’t. Besides, he would have recognised my voice.’

‘From so long ago? No, Father Luke was getting deaf, he had trouble with voices.’ The priest was pleading, clinging to the grille. ‘Believe me, he thought it was you. He was afraid, he was older, he had—’

‘A bad conscience.’

‘We didn’t do anything!’ Father Dominic replied. ‘It was just discipline. We weren’t bad priests, not like those you hear about sexually abusing boys—’

‘Someone else said that. As though it lessened what you two did.’ Nicholas was thinking rapidly. He could see that the priest was afraid and was telling the truth. Someone had rung St Barnabas’s church, posing as him. And Father Luke would have believed them, thinking Nicholas was coming back to take his revenge. But it hadn’t been him.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ persisted Father Dominic. ‘I was only trying to help the police when I told them about the phone call. It was the natural assumption to make. You’d been our enemy once, you could be our enemy again.’

‘But why now? After so long?’ Nicholas asked, trying to find out what the priest knew and if he would give himself away about the Bosch secret.

‘I don’t know why you came back!’

‘I didn’t come back.’

‘Someone came back. Someone posing as you.’ Father Dominic was panicking, shaking. ‘No one expected to hear from you again. We thought it was all in the past. It was old history from ten years ago. We thought it was forgotten …’

Nicholas slumped back on the bench. He had been sure that he had been framed by the Church, the death of Father Luke the means to silence him. After all, another scandal would be devastating to a religious order that had been tainted by recent claims of abuse. An order that had seen some of its highest members go unpunished.

But if the Church hadn’t set him up, who had?

Nicholas looked back at the grille, the priest’s hands still pressed against it. ‘Don’t lie to me—’

‘I’m not lying!’ the priest cried. ‘I swear I’m not lying. Someone killed Father Luke, and if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

Nicholas pressed his own palms against the grille, feeling the priest’s flesh hot against his skin. ‘Swear it! On your soul, swear that you are telling the truth. If you lie to me now I’ll find out, and I’ll send you to Hell personally.’