After only a few hours’ sleep, Annie woke full of energy and purpose. Throwing off her sheets, she went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. The person who stared back at her had the same baggy, slightly watery eyes and pallid skin, but this morning Annie looked at her own reflection with tolerance and even slight compassion. The imperfections had been earned well. She could not believe that her fantasy life, her dream of becoming a chef, was edging forward and the gap between make-believe and reality was closing.
Taking a flannel, she soaked it in hot water and pressed it to her face.
“How did it go?” Evie broke into Annie’s reverie.
“Amazing—it was amazing.”
“Tell me everything,” Evie said.
“I’ve got to take all the kit back now or I’ll get charged,” said Annie, patting her face dry.
“I’ll come too.” Evie turned towards the bedroom to get her clothes. “Keep you company.”
“Mum, I want to be alone. Besides, look at yourself.”
Evie stopped and look in the mirror. Her bleach-blonde hair stuck up in the air. Round her eyes were smudges of make-up.
“You can be very cruel,” Evie said, padding back to Annie’s room and closing the door behind her.
Annie felt a twinge of guilt. The truth was that she didn’t want Evie in the car, asking questions and turning the subject back to herself, where, like a needle on a scratched record, it would stay, repeating “Me, me, me.”
Grabbing her bag, Annie let herself out of the flat and, taking the stairs two at a time, rushed down, out of the front door, to the rented van. To her relief it was scratch-less, even though her phone sat on the front seat, forgotten the night before. Between 3 a.m. when she returned home and now, nearly 9 a.m., there had been eight missed calls. Four were from Delores, one from Agatha, one from Jesse and two were from an unknown number. She played the first.
“Hi, Annie, it’s me, Jesse—last night was amazing—simply amazing. Let’s get together. Fancy a drink tonight?”
The sound of Jesse’s voice sent shivers of anxiety down Annie’s spine. Over the last few weeks, Annie had felt liberated from love or at least the feelings that she associated so firmly with the past. There was another exciting sensation: being free and independent; not compromising or having to consider another person’s feelings. By desiring her, Jesse was imposing on her, and in rejecting him, Annie felt guilty. Being single meant being beholden to no one. Annie liked Jesse but not enough to take the risk of opening up her heart or contaminating her newfound spirit.
The next message was from Delores: “Darling. What a lovely dinner. Thank you. An absolute triumph. Clever girl. Now this is strange, but do you still have that painting you showed me all those weeks ago? Give me a call, darling.”
Annie skipped on to the next messages.
“Miss Annie McDee. My name is Trichcombe Abufel. You might not remember but we met briefly in the British Museum drawings room. I urgently need to talk to you concerning that sketch.”
“Miss McDee. This is Trichcombe Abufel again. It is urgent that you call me.”
“Darling, Delores here. Call me. It’s eight in the morning.”
“Miss McDee, please telephone Trichcombe Abufel as soon as possible.”
“Hi Annie, it’s Agatha from the National Gallery Conservation department. I am terribly sorry to call you so early but something rather strange is happening. Could you give me a call as soon as you can?”
Annie hadn’t thought much about her painting for the last few days. Wanting to hang on to the triumph of last night for a little longer, she ignored the rest of the messages and put the van into first gear.
She drove through Shepherd’s Bush, passing a number of small family-run restaurants, a butcher and a chocolate shop. She had made her living from food before; she could again. Annie knew she could cook and that she had an original vision. She imagined herself surrounded by chefs, all dressed in white with her company’s logo, “Foodalicious,” printed on their caps and aprons, in a large open-plan kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows looking over a kitchen garden with a glass wall separating the cooking from the planning areas. In another room, she saw a small design team poring over drawings and mood boards while at the back of the offices were storerooms where she would keep all the glasses, china and essential props needed to create her themed dinners.
Driving past the Russian Embassy to Kensington Gardens, Annie thought of different events she could offer—dinners inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey; the Arabian Nights; Art Deco; Modernism; Victoriana. Annie felt a shiver of excitement as she imagined how these might look and what menus she could create. She wanted this new life desperately: all that remained was how to achieve it. She would need a place to cook in, plus equipment, some PR and marketing, some temporary help, and some cash up front to buy ingredients. The traffic slowed to a standstill. Hot petrol fumes left a halo of smog around the cars. Annie put up her window to keep out the noxious air. Perhaps, until it gets going, she thought, I can keep my job working for the Winklemans. Though the job was boring, it was easy and left time to consider other things.
Her phone rang again and she turned it off and the radio up. A cherished song by Bob Dylan came on. Annie, who had been in the choir at each of her schools, started to sing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but her voice came out as a croak. She had another go but again, she could not hold the tune. She cleared her throat hard but her voice still meandered over the chords. With a start, she realised that it had been months since she had last sung—even in the bath. In her former life, she had belted out songs everywhere, to everything and anyone—birds, the television, the river and her friends. Her vocal cords had ossified through lack of use. A teacher used to say “singing comes from the heart.” I lost my heart and my voice, Annie thought, and now I am going to get them both back.
Trichcombe was not a religious man but as the aeroplane taxied down Berlin’s Tegel runway, he prayed that God keep him alive long enough to write up his recent discoveries. In his excitement to get back to London, to his desk, his notes and his typewriter, he had forgotten to book “speedy boarding.” Now he found himself in the middle seat at the back of the plane. On his left there was a young woman chewing gum in a particularly revolting manner, occasionally blowing bright-pink bubbles, which burst on her painted lips with a smack. On the other side, a much pierced, fierce-looking young skinhead wriggled and stretched in his seat with a manic intensity. Trichcombe desperately wanted to avoid touching bubble-gum woman but was actually scared of angering Mr. Baader-Meinhof. Hunching his shoulders together, Trichcombe pressed his inner arms and his knees together and took small shallow breaths.
The flight to London Gatwick took just under two hours. Trichcombe refused anything to eat or drink but he touched his jacket pocket repeatedly to check that his small digital camera was still in place. On its hard drive was a photograph of a family standing in front of a fireplace. Above the fireplace was a small painting by Watteau and standing with the family was a small blond, blue-eyed boy.
In his other pocket was a piece of paper. One phone call and a fantastical excuse had been all Trichcombe needed to persuade the librarian at the British Museum to give up the name and telephone number of the young woman with the sketch. Trichcombe explained that he had picked up a valuable book belonging to her by mistake and he had only just realised. Weeks had passed and she would be so worried. Oh, he felt awful. The guilt. The remorse. Could the divine and helpful person possibly help him? Of course it was against all regulations. Mea culpa. In any circumstances. Thank you so much. I am so very grateful. He had called the woman, a Miss Annie McDee, twice from Berlin. He would call her again on touchdown.
As the plane passed over Paris, Trichcombe wondered which publication he would use as his portal to bring about the absolute shame and exposure of Memling Winkleman and his family. The Burlington magazine or Apollo, perhaps? He remembered that these publications of high art were probably part-owned by the Winklemans, whose tendrils of influence reached up and through tiny unexpected crevices. Perhaps, Trichcombe thought, it should be a daily newspaper, but they would want to edit his copy and insist on all sorts of fact-checks. As the plane passed over the English Channel, bubble-gum woman fell asleep and slumped in his direction. For the first time in his life Trichcombe felt a woman’s head on his shoulder, her breath in his ear, simultaneously sweet and sour. What an utterly repulsive experience, he thought, prodding his elbow into her ribs. She woke up and snorted deeply. Perhaps, Trichcombe thought, I can make money too. He quickly pushed that idea out of his mind. All that mattered was revenge: the more humiliating, widespread and utterly conclusive the better.
Delores’s office resembled a morgue preceding the funeral of a much-loved diva. Every surface was covered with extravagant arrangements of flowers.
“Twenty more minutes in here and we’ll die of oxygen deprivation,” Barty said testily. “Everyone knows that plants suck everything good out of the atmosphere.”
“You’ve got it the wrong way round,” Delores said, sniffing a large hydrangea. “During the day they create oxygen and at night they make carbon dioxide.”
“How do you know that?”
Delores didn’t answer. “How much do you think this lot cost?”
“More than the dinner, probably.”
“Do you think I could send them back to the florists and get a refund?”
“You’re bound to get found out.”
“Who spent the most?”
“Who cares, darling? Let’s get back to planning our museum.”
Barty was sketching a picture of the grand salon in watercolours. The walls were lined in silk damask and the floors were made from inlaid wood.
“I will tell the decorator to gild everything. Ceilings, pelmets, cornices, door frames, the whole lot.”
“I don’t want your décor overwhelming my paintings.”
“You haven’t got any pictures yet. At the moment we’ll be hanging you from the ceiling.”
“It’s not that easy to find great masterpieces. Nearly everything has been gobbled up by museums.”
“Can’t we waggle Vlad’s chequebook at the odd curator? We know that most museums have thousands of works languishing in storage—surely they would not miss a few canvases?”
“It doesn’t really work like that—not in this country, anyway.”
“So let’s go shopping in Europe—the poor dears are so broke they’d sell their grannies.”
“I wonder if that’s why Rebecca is so keen to get hold of the Watteau.”
“What Watteau?” Barty asked.
“Some family heirloom has gone missing; she wants it back at any price.”
“Any price? We like the sound of that.”
Delores nodded. When Rebecca had called at 7 a.m., Delores assumed that the dealer was calling to apologise for failing to show up. She had not expected a rambling monologue about a missing painting. Rebecca explained that the Watteau had been stolen from Memling but they couldn’t go to the police or publicise the theft in case the thieves got spooked and destroyed the work. The picture, Rebecca said, was Memling’s last link with his family and of a sentimental value hard to quantify.
Rebecca described the work in great detail. It was about eighteen by twenty-four inches, an oil painting showing a girl dancing with her lover lying at her feet watched by a clown. The painting’s title was The Improbability of Love and it was an early work, perhaps Watteau’s first great painting, and certainly the one that had launched both his career and the Rococo movement.
As Rebecca described the picture, Delores felt her breath shorten and the back of her neck and armpits prickle with sweat. Could this be the same work that she had dismissed as a fake?
“Are you listening?” Rebecca asked crossly.
“Yes, yes, I am thinking,” Delores said, sitting down heavily on a chair.
“Have you heard anything about it? Has anyone mentioned it to you?” Rebecca said, trying to keep her tone casual.
“No! I have not!” Delores said a little too quickly. No one must know or suspect that she, one of the greatest living experts in French eighteenth-century art, had ever seen it. “Of course, if I do, I will tell you immediately.”
Delores repeated what Rebecca had said about the missing painting, omitting any reference to Annie’s visit.
“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” Barty asked as he listened to his friend.
“I am so thinking that,” Delores said, clapping her hands together.
“We have found the centrepiece for our museum; let’s call it the ‘Museum of Love.’ ”
“How disgustingly sentimental.”
“What if the Winklemans don’t want to sell?”
“Everything has a price.”
“If this one is the exception?”
“They are dealers—their raison d’être is dealing.”
“Can you strike a deal?” Barty jumped up and clapped his hands together.
“I have to find it first,” Delores said.
Barty sat down heavily. “If they can’t find it how will you? They employ stringers and fixers the world over.”
“I have a lead,” Delores said mysteriously. She was not going to admit that she had held the painting in her hands.
Sitting on the edge of her hotel bed, Rebecca pressed her hands into the mattress and her feet hard into the floor to try and calm her shaking limbs. Too late, too late, too late, the voices in her head taunted. Too late, too late, too late. Why hadn’t she taken the photograph three weeks ago when she first met Danica? It would have been so simple. Today she hadn’t hesitated; the moment the old lady’s back was turned, Rebecca had slipped the razor from her pocket and, nipping off the edges of the photo, had detached it from the album and placed it in her pocket. Closing the album, she had put it back on the shelf and, a few minutes later, invented an urgent reason to leave the apartment. Outside, she had taken the picture, torn it into tiny pieces and, standing next to the busy main road, released each fragment into the wind and slipstream of passing cars and buses.
But she was too late: the old lady hadn’t been able to recall or pronounce her visitor’s name but she described him perfectly: tall, pale-skinned, exquisitely dressed in a three-piece tweed suit with an extravagant knotted silk cravat held in place by a gold tie pin shaped like a bugle. He had a dome of grey shoulder-length hair, beautifully brushed; his nails were buffed to a shiny finish; his glasses lived in a crocodile-skin case tucked in an inside pocket.
“How odd that I have not had any visitors for years since your brother, and in the space of a few hours I receive you for the second time and that man,” Danica told Rebecca, “and that you all are so interested in my funny old photographs. They were just snaps.” She noticed that Rebecca was looking terribly pale. Could she make her a cup of sweet tea? It had been so kind to bring the flowers and chocolates.
Rebecca thought it was stupid of her father to try and destroy Trichcombe’s career and stymie the connoisseur’s attempts to gain acceptance in the academic world. Rebecca remembered the old adage, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer still.” Her father should have retained Trichcombe on a stipend and drip-fed him the occasional commission. She never knew the full details of the crime he had supposedly committed; now she didn’t need to ask. Trichcombe must have stumbled on an aspect of Memling’s past.
Getting up off the bed, Rebecca went to the window and looked down on to the street below. Her hotel was at the intersection of the former East and West Berlin overlooking the Holocaust Memorial: a grid of monumental grey uneven tombstones, arranged in labyrinthine narrowing pathways set on a slope. Only a few weeks ago she had been a proud Jew, from a family of survivors, one of those who had made it through. What was she now? Looking down at the monument below, she imagined getting lost in the long alleyways of the memorial and the headstones closing in and crushing her to death.
She drew the curtain and threw herself face down on the bed, waiting for the panic attack to take hold. But as she lay there with her face pressed against the velvet eiderdown, something unusual happened. Instead of her heart beating faster, it seemed to steady and instead of a whirl of confusion, her thoughts seemed to abate and she was left with one single idea. Why was she giving up so easily? Where was her grit, her determination? Why roll over and let fate and others pick over her life like an old carcass?
Rebecca got up, walked over to the window, threw open the curtain and looked down at the people criss-crossing the square beneath her. She imagined her father nearly seventy years earlier. He could have held up his hands and surrendered to the Allies. As a young SS officer who had purloined and confiscated works of art belonging to Jews, he was certainly guilty, on many counts. Instead he had made the decision to embrace life, to create a future, albeit dishonestly, rather than face a trial and disgrace. Would she, at the age of twenty, have had the courage and mendacity? What could she do now to salvage her family from disgrace?
Rebecca stood quietly for a few moments thinking about Memling. Whatever her father had done, she loved him and could not imagine or countenance his certain public disgrace. The thought of his face splashed across the papers, his age-mottled hands bound into cuffs, his silver head bent in a courtroom dock, was far worse than the prospect of keeping his dreadful secret. He was a monster, but he was her monster, an inextricable part of her past, present and future. She could expose him, but that would never erase him or his deeds; he was part of her DNA, her conscience, and whether she liked it or not, she had enjoyed the fruits of his deception.
Rebecca’s thoughts turned to Marty and she knew with certainty that, confronted by this discovery, he had decided suicide was easier than facing the wreckage. For the first time, she was angry with her brother: why hadn’t he destroyed the notebook? Did he mean her to find it, to face all this alone?
She stopped shaking and suddenly felt strong and full of purpose. All that stood between her and disaster was an art historian and a small painting. Remove them both and the status quo remained intact. What did she mean by “remove”? How far would she go to protect her family? Would she kill? To Rebecca’s surprise, the thought didn’t repulse her. She wouldn’t have to get her own hands dirty—there were other people for that kind of thing. Rebecca looked at her clock—it was now 10:15 a.m. and if she hurried, she could make the midday flight back to London. Placing the last few things in her overnight bag, she left her room and ran down the stairs to the lobby. There was a taxi waiting at the entrance and, pushing past two waiting guests with an apologetic grimace, Rebecca took it.
“Tegel Airport, bitte,” she told the driver.
In the coming months Rebecca would remember the moment when she crossed some invisible line and took the decision to help Memling eradicate his past along with his years of subterfuge and dishonest dealings. She felt no guilt or remorse, simply a wave of clarity and determination.
She placed a call to her father. Dispensing with the usual pleasantries, Rebecca told Memling to meet her at 4 p.m. by the fountains in Hyde Park. Leaning back in the seat of the taxi, Rebecca smiled at her father’s surprise; he was unused to his daughter issuing instructions. From now on, Rebecca realised, she was in control.