England has never looked more lovely, Jesse thought sadly, as he stared out of the train window at the velvety fields dotted with lambs and at the hedgerows turned white and pink by flowering hawthorns. The deciduous trees had unfurled leaves of vivid greens and their trunks cast lithe black shapes against the soft blue sky. Apart from the occasional gash of electric-yellow oilseed rape, the train passed by fields made up of hundreds of hues of green. On similar train rides, Jesse would have wondered how to capture this majestic, rolling landscape, but since Annie’s arrest he’d found it hard to paint. Looking out of the train, he wondered what Annie could see from her window, if she had one. He was worried whether she could stand incarceration for much longer. On each visit, she seemed to shrink deeper into herself. Her bright eyes had become dull and cloudy and the regulation prison clothes hung from her increasingly emaciated body.
That morning, following Larissa’s suggestion, Jesse had caught the train to Wrexham, where he changed on to a smaller commuter service. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and every seat was filled with children returning from school. Jesse found a corner seat at the far end of the train and felt like he was caught in a human fireworks display as children shot, jumped and screamed around him. He was the only adult present, yet somehow invisible to his fellow passengers. There were eleven stops between Wrexham and Buckley and for three of these Jesse considered getting off and waiting an hour for the next train. When they crossed the River Cegidog, a group of junior savages gave up one game, leaping the aisles, to start another, throwing smaller children over seats. Sometimes they were caught, other times they fell with a painful thunk on to the floor. At first Jesse worried about broken bones and bloody noses. Later he worried when the children would turn on him. Perhaps he would be trailed by his toenails out of the window or used as a human trampoline. Suddenly at Penyffordd there was a mass exodus and Jesse was left alone with a small girl and her brother who had sought refuge in an overhead luggage rack and now carefully climbed down and sat opposite Jesse.
“Is it like this every day?” Jesse asked.
The little girl shrugged. Her brother looked out of the window.
Jesse tried to imagine a young Trichcombe Abufel in similar circumstances. How had the ascetic asexual survived this kind of childhood? Had he found refuge in inanimate works of art? Had these served as tableaux of stillness and calm?
At Buckley, Jesse took a local bus to Mold, hoping to see some glorious countryside en route, but the bus had hardly left the suburbs of Buckley before the straggling outbuildings of Mold appeared. Jesse looked at the address again, 21 Ffordd Pentre. He hoped it would be easier to find than pronounce.
After much deliberation with Larissa, they had both decided it would be better to visit rather than telephone or write to Trichcombe’s nephew Maurice, particularly as the sale was being held the following evening. Once the brouhaha of the sale had passed, and the press and public had lost interest in the picture, Jesse worried that the police would lose interest in reviewing Annie’s case. He did not want her to spend even one extra minute in prison.
“What if they are on holiday?” he asked Larissa, pacing up and down her small apartment.
“They will come back,” Larissa answered sensibly.
“What if they threw away his stuff?”
“If so, all hope is lost,” Larissa answered. “Jesse, you have to be careful—you have no idea how powerful the Winklemans are.”
“So you keep telling me,” Jesse said irritably. He had wanted to drive to Mold that night. Only the absence of a car and driving licence stopped him. If he’d had the money, he would have hailed a black cab to take him the whole way there.
“Look at the picture’s catalogue,” Larissa said, holding up the mighty tome dedicated solely to the picture. Across the front in gold was its title, The Improbability of Love, and between the thick hardback covers were eleven essays extolling the picture’s importance and cultural significance. There were pieces by Septimus Ward-Thomas on the value of this picture in the litany of art; by Simon Schama on its art-historical pre-eminence; as well as commentaries by Jasper Johns, Peter Doig, Dexter Dalwood, Catherine Goodman, Gerhard Richter and Tarka Kings, and poems by Carol Ann Duffy and Alice Oswald that had been inspired by it.
“No one, apart from us, wants this sale to fail,” Larissa said.
“Annie is innocent!” Jesse said emphatically. He had stopped pacing and was now standing in front of Larissa, his eyes blazing.
“I am not saying she is guilty, but the evidence is stacked up against her,” said Larissa. “There is no footage of her in the shop on the day of the alleged purchase, but a policewoman recalls her giving a statement the day after the place was burned out and taking particular interest in the death of the shopkeeper. There is even CCTV footage of her taking the painting out of Winklemans’ as well as evidence pointing to her amassing information about the picture’s history, including visits to the National Gallery and the British Museum. The Winklemans even have records of books taken out of libraries on the subject of Watteau and details of her trying to authenticate the painting in every establishment apart from the obvious one—her employer’s. Why didn’t she show her picture to Rebecca?”
“She did not want to be seen wasting office time,” Jesse countered. “Besides, you know how frightening and unapproachable both Rebecca and Memling are.”
“You have to admit, Jesse, it doesn’t look good. No jury is going to have much trouble convicting her,” said Larissa.
“She’s been framed.”
“You are a man in love,” Larissa said gently. “You have to play this very carefully and coolly if you want to help Annie.”
Jesse walked through the centre of Mold. Thirsty and hungry, he looked through the window of the Dolphin Inn wondering if he had time for a late lunch and a pint of Dutch courage. His thoughts immediately turned to Annie and he felt a stab of shame—her future rested in his hands and he was thinking about food. He found Ffordd Pentre easily—it was a housing estate built in the 1980s near the main Chester Road. Each house was a slight variation on a red-brick box: some had bay windows, some had white boarding, all had oversized garages and cobbled forecourts. Number 21 was surrounded by a small wall and a privet hedge. Unlike its neighbours, it had a neatly clipped mini lawn and hanging baskets. A tortoiseshell-coloured cat sat preening in the window and there was a small car parked out front.
Jesse had dressed carefully. He wore a pale blue shirt, a tie and his best corduroy suit, hoping to look respectable but not official. Smoothing down his hair with his right hand, he walked up to the door and knocked firmly.
Inside Delia Abufel had just made herself a cup of tea, got three custard creams out of the biscuit tin, made a note to buy more at Tesco’s the following day, and settled down to watch a daily show, Pointless. It started at 5 p.m., and at 4:50 exactly, with everything “just so,” Delia turned the television on to see Alexander Armstrong’s beaming face announcing the first guest. Today, Delia thought, I am going to win. The day before she had been beaten again, another defeat in a long row of disappointments. The doorbell rang. One short but insistent bleat. Delia looked at the cat but he was unperturbed and kept on licking his paw. She turned up the television. It was probably kids from up the road—best ignored.
Outside Jesse moved his weight from foot to foot. He knew someone was inside. He could see ghostly reflections from the television screen flicker behind the net curtains. How long should he leave it before ringing again? He didn’t want to annoy the Abufels.
Inside Delia considered the different contestants and which pair would be her main rival. Most were normal middle-aged, Middle England types, but there was one duo that Delia hated on sight, Milly and Daisy from Blackpool. For a start they were pretty—far too pretty to have brains as well as good figures and nice clothes. Delia could have been Daisy or Milly. Delia should have been that kind of girl. But something went wrong. She had not had a lucky hand. She should have married Tod Florence and gone to New Zealand or accepted Ronnie Carbutt, who was now manager of all of Tesco’s Wales, but Delia had decided on the nice local boy instead. Maurice was, frankly, a waste of space—a plumber with no hope of promotion. A man to set your watch by, not a man to live your life with.
With each child she had gained a stone; now all four had left home, leaving their mum with a hole in her life and a stomach that hung over her trousers. Glancing at the shelf beside the television, Delia looked at the two neat rows of books: the upper shelves were devoted to cooking, books by Nigella, Delia and co.; the lower were her collection of failed diets, every fad from the South Beach to Atkins, three yards of dashed dreams.
The doorbell again. This time longer and more insistent.
“Which film has Sigourney Weaver starred in?” Alexander Armstrong asked. “If you can guess the least likely and score the least points, you have a chance of going through to the head to head.”
Delia frantically tried to think of one Sigourney Weaver film. Was it Alien? The Ice Storm? Ghostbusters?
The doorbell rang again. Delia thought about getting a jug of boiling hot water and throwing it in the face of the offending child.
She had a thought. Maybe it was the military police come to tell her that her eldest boy, Mark, had been hurt in Afghanistan. They came to the door. They didn’t telephone. Where was Maurice when she needed him? Delia felt the urge to cry. Heaving herself up out of the chair she almost ran to the front door and pulled it open.
“Tell me the worst,” she said, fighting back the tears.
The man before her did not look like a soldier or a policeman or anyone official. He was dressed in a suit that had seen better days. His tie was straight, but his thick dark brown hair shot out in irregular tufts. Looking down, Delia noticed that his shoes were covered in paint.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” she asked.
Jesse looked back at the small, round woman standing in her housecoat and pink fluffy slippers. If he had to match the narrow-limbed Trichcombe Abufel, with his perfectly tied cravats and polished shoes, with the most unlikely person in the world, he would never have dared imagine Delia. Trichcombe had rarely shown any emotion, but the woman before him had opened the door stricken with sorrow and was now sodden with rage.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked again.
“I am a friend of Trichcombe Abufel,” Jesse began.
“Are you his bone smuggler?” Delia asked hesitantly.
“Sorry?”
“His cock jockey?”
“I am just a friend,” Jesse said firmly.
“What do you think Sigourney Weaver’s least-known film is?” Delia asked, looking back towards the television.
“Gorillas in the Mist?” Jesse guessed.
“Good fucking idea,” Delia said, before closing the door in his face and rushing back to the screen.
Jesse was left standing on the doorstep looking at a shut door. Back inside, Milly and Daisy won that round with an obscure film named Galaxy Quest.
“Here are the names of eight footballers—match their British club to the national squad they represent.” Alexander Armstrong beamed out of the television screen.
Delia slumped back in her chair—she knew nothing about football. It turned out that Milly and Daisy did—they romped into the lead with a very low score indeed.
The doorbell rang again.
Delia heaved herself out of the chair and went to answer it. “Now what?”
“I am sorry to bother you. It’s really urgent.”
“I can’t ask you in—you’ll have to wait till Maurice gets home.”
“When will that be?” Jesse asked as politely.
“Six p.m. exactly. Never a minute earlier or a minute later. Now who does Robin van Persie play for and where’s the fucker from?”
“Manchester United and he’s Dutch.”
Again the door shut in his face.
Jesse sat on the wall outside the house. A brisk wind whipped up Fford Pentre. Jesse noticed other people returning from the school run or work, parking their brightly coloured boxy cars in front of their red-brick porches and hurrying inside. Even though it was July, an early dusk seemed to settle on the town. He watched as the lights popped on and spilled on to cobbles. Each house, so nondescript and unprepossessing in daytime, became genial after dark, windows glowing like gentle eyes on a bland face. At exactly 6 p.m. Maurice Abufel’s car, a Honda Civic, pulled up outside his house.
“Hi, you must be Maurice Abufel,” Jesse said, stepping away from the wall.
If Maurice was surprised to see a stranger lurking in his forecourt he didn’t show it. Maurice looked a little like his uncle—tall and thin with exaggerated features and a rather lugubrious expression. Unlike the exquisitely turned out Trichcombe, this Abufel wore a blue boiler suit and rubber-soled shoes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am a friend of your Uncle Trichcombe. I was a friend. I am sorry for your loss,” he added quickly.
“What are you doing here?” Maurice asked, taking a front-door key out of his pocket. “Why didn’t you ring the bell? Come on in.”
Maurice opened the front door and motioned for Jesse to follow. Inside Maurice took off his hat and put it on the table, put the key on a hook that said “Key” and his car key on another hook that said “M’s Car.” He opened a cupboard in the hall and hung his coat carefully on a blue plastic hanger.
“We have a visitor. Turn the TV off,” Maurice said.
“Who?”
“A friend of Uncle T’s—he was waiting outside.” Maurice and Jesse still stood side by side in the small hall. Through the open door they could see Delia heave herself out of the chair and come towards them.
“I made him wait outside,” Delia said, not looking at Jesse.
“Why? It’s chilly out there.”
“He might have been a rapist,” Delia said.
Maurice looked his wife up and down. “In your dreams, woman, in your dreams.”
“Shut your face, Maurice, and have some tea,” Delia said.
“What is it?”
“Fish fingers and beans.”
“Oh yes, it’s Wednesday.”
“There isn’t enough for three,” Delia said, looking at Jesse.
“You cook enough for ten—eat enough for nine—tonight you can cut back. Won’t kill you.” Maurice turned to Jesse. “Come on in and tell us why you’re here.” Maurice led the way into the kitchen.
Jesse hadn’t eaten since that morning, but while he had their attention he talked, telling them about Annie, how she’d bought the picture in a junk shop and how he had encouraged her to get it authenticated. Next he explained how Trichcombe had stumbled on some dark secret hidden in the Winklemans’ past and had been literally expelled and discredited from the London art scene back in the 1970s. There was something about this picture, Jesse told them, that verified Trichcombe’s hunch. He had waited for over forty years to unmask the Winklemans and when he met Annie and saw the picture, he finally had proof. The art historian had written up his thesis and planned to publish it in a magazine called Apollo. On the day before Trichcombe was due to pitch the story to the editor, he suddenly died.
“The coroner said it was a heart attack,” Maurice interjected.
“What kind of person deletes all their records on their phone, their computer and all their filing cabinets and then has a heart attack?” Jesse asked.
“Maybe the strain was too much?”
“The caretaker of the building saw him leave that morning. He was carrying a package and told him he was going to the post office. I asked if he looked pale or ill. He said that he was in top spirits—even said ‘Good morning,’ which was surprising for an old curmudgeon. With all due respect,” Jesse added quickly.
“He was a grumpy old sod,” Delia agreed.
“Two nights earlier he had dinner with a mutual friend and told her that he’d unearthed a crime that would blow everyone’s minds. Said it proved he was right and had been much maligned,” said Jesse, leaning towards them. “I don’t believe that Trichcombe’s death was an accident.”
Maurice and Delia looked at each other.
“I was putting out the washing today thinking that nothing ever happened in Mold,” Delia said.
“Nothing does happen in Mold. This took place in London,” Maurice said.
“My friend said that Trichcombe might have sent you something—a copy of his report.” Jesse held his breath. It was Annie’s last hope.
Maurice shook his head. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
Delia was quiet and she suddenly said, “The package—I thought it was from ASOS—I walked the whole way into town, had to wait in line for forty-five minutes and it was just one of his manuscripts. He’d rung to warn me a few days earlier.”
“What did you do with it?” Jesse leaned over the table.
“I’m just trying to think.” Delia leaned back in her chair.
“Don’t take your time, will you? There’s just the murder of my uncle at stake,” Maurice said.
“After the post office, I went to the butcher and got two lamb cutlets. I ran into Lily and she said come to Ivy’s for a coffee. So we went to Ivy’s—she had done a nice cake. A sponge with jam and cream and real strawberries from Spain.”
Jesse did his best not to cry out in frustration.
“Then I came home.”
“That was all that happened that day?” Maurice asked incredulously. “I had probably driven from Chester to Birmingham, fixed four boilers, cleaned out a couple of drains and filled in the same number of call-out sheets; you sat around like Marie Antoinette eating cake?”
Delia pursed her lips but didn’t reply.
“Did you bring the package home?” Jesse asked.
“I’m just trying to think which bag I went out with.”
“Could you have left it at Ivy’s?” Jesse asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“Did I take the big shopper or the string bag?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Maurice asked.
“One’s got a pouch.”
“Perhaps you could check the pouch?” Jesse asked, already on his feet.
Delia walked over to the cupboard and opened it. The shopper sat at the back behind the ironing board. Delia patted the big front pocket.
“It’s not in there.” Looking up at the clock she gasped. “It’s the Mac Show in ten minutes—they’ve got Rob Brydon on tonight. Shall we go and watch it?”
“Please, Mrs. Abufel, I know that it’s a lot to ask but we need to find that package,” said Jesse, trying to keep his wavering voice even.
“Don’t you worry—as soon as the programme’s finished, I’ll keep looking.”
This time Maurice got to his feet. Maurice, in his worn tartan slippers, with his comb-over, his patched brown cardigan over his Corgi regulation workwear and his 1960s prescription glasses, turned from a plumber into a roaring colossus.
“Get out of that chair and into the attic,” he shouted at his wife. “For once in your life put the TV in second place and someone else in first. We are talking about my uncle Trich. He was family. Family comes first. If it didn’t, I would have walked out of that door many years ago. Now you go and get every single scrap of paper that my uncle sent you and bring it down here as fast as your tiny legs can carry you.”
Delia looked at her husband in astonishment. She opened and closed her mouth and left the room. Jesse and Maurice sat in silence listening to her heavy tread on the stair and then on the landing and a thump as the attic ladder was lowered. There was a creak as Delia climbed up into the loft.
“Should I go and help her perhaps?” Jesse asked.
“Stay there,” Maurice replied, staring ahead.
A few minutes later, Delia returned with three carrier bags. Inside there were unopened brown Jiffy bags with Maurice’s name written on the front. On the back, also handwritten, was Trichcombe’s name and address. Jesse sorted through them quickly. None had been sent recently.
“Are these all his books?” Maurice asked, turning the envelopes over.
“He wrote at least twelve,” Jesse answered. He examined each postmark with great care. “It’s not here.”
“Go and call Ivy. See if you left it at hers,” Maurice instructed his wife.
“She’ll be watching The One Show,” Delia grumbled, going out into the hall to use the telephone.
Ivy, they found out, didn’t have the manuscript, nor did Lily.
Jesse felt his and Annie’s future slip away. He knew that it was hopeless and she would be found guilty and spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime that she had not committed. Her life would be sacrificed to keep a secret safe. Jesse also knew that he would never love again. No doubt there would be other women, memories would be created, pictures painted, but it would be a shadow of the life that he wanted to spend with Annie. Until the moment they met, Jesse realised his existence had been wrapped in a kind of ambivalence and his idea of success was personal freedom—freedom from commitment, worries, poverty, wealth, anxiety and possessions. He had constructed a rather bland, emotionally sealed existence.
He loved painting and his family but little else. Once or twice a woman had been worth crossing town for, but when they drifted off complaining of his lack of engagement or commitment, Jesse had shrugged apologetically.
That all changed when he met Annie. His life, once an orderly, monotonous and pleasant series of tuneful single notes exploded into a cacophony of riotous, unpredictable chords. Sunshine flooded into dark, unknown corners of his being. He had become utterly daft, light-headed and open-hearted. He smiled at strangers, sang in lifts, danced down corridors. He heard melodies as if for the first time; saw colours afresh. Every tiny task became effortless—he ran down streets and bounced up stairs. Some inexplicable film had been lifted from his eyes, allowing Jesse to see the world from a familiar but altogether surprising viewpoint. Everything became heightened, acute and affecting. His painting was utterly transformed: muted tones and careful composition gave way to extravagant bursts of colour and wild flights of fantasy as his brushes flew with brio and élan across canvases. Occasionally the breath escaped from his lungs with such force that he had to hold on to something solid to stop the ground from giving way. He knew with absolute, undeniable certainty that he and Annie were meant to be together.
Along with his new discovery came its opposite, fear of loss. From the moment he saw Annie, he knew real terror for the first time. His insouciant, nonchalant attitude to life evaporated and every move, each tiny event was underscored by a sense of panic and trepidation. Now, sitting in the kitchen of 21 Fford Pentre, Jesse realised he had lost, that Annie and he were never going to be together and that the person he loved most in the world faced a desolate future. Placing his head in his hands, he started to cry.
“There’s a stranger crying in my kitchen,” Delia said.
Taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, Maurice passed it to Jesse. Turning to Delia he said, “Get the shopper out and the string bag. Go through the recycling pile. It’s got to be here.”
Delia looked at the clock. She was in a slight muddle about what was on next. What day was it?
Maurice got up and went to the cupboard. He threw out the broom and pans to get to the shopper and other carriers.
“You’re making a mess,” Delia said plaintively.
“Get the recycling box now,” Maurice snapped.
Delia got up and went out the back door to the old coal shed where she kept bundles of papers and plastic. Since the council made its cuts, they only came every fortnight and there was a fair pile.
Maurice turned the shopper upside down. A lone carrot fell out. He turned the bags inside out. Nothing.
In the shed, Delia turned on the light and started to sift through the layers of paper. She was angry now and humiliated. How dare Maurice talk to her like that in front of a stranger? How dare this strange wailing man interrupt her TV schedules? She kicked the pile of papers and they spilled over the floor. Of course there was nothing there. What did Maurice think? That she wouldn’t remember putting his dead uncle’s stuff in the pile? Delia stopped suddenly. There was a telltale grey padded corner. She pulled it towards her and that now familiar spidery writing appeared. Delia felt a flush of panic. To find it suddenly constituted a further loss of face and made her look even more stupid. It was probably best to hide it and once Maurice had gone to work in the morning she could rip it up or take it down to Tesco’s for recycling. The most important thing was to get rid of the weeping man in her kitchen and get back to her TV. Delia could only cope when her world was ordered, otherwise she felt the shakes and panic set in. She had the certain feeling that whatever lay inside that envelope would change her life, and not necessarily for the better.
“What are you doing in there?” Maurice appeared behind her, casting a terrifying shadow over the shed.
“You frightened me,” Delia said, stepping backwards and trying to cover up the envelope by moving some papers around with her foot.
Maurice, from the corner of his eye, saw her nervous side-glance.
“What are you hiding?” he asked.
“Nothing—what would I hide out here?” she replied. “Let’s go in and comfort that young man. Poor thing. You could drive him to the station.” Delia knew that no one must find this envelope.
Maurice pushed her aside and, sinking to his knees, started to go through the pile.
“It’s dirty down there, get up,” Delia urged.
It took Maurice less than twenty seconds to find Trichcombe’s envelope. Grabbing it triumphantly in one hand, he got to his feet and walked out of the coal shed without looking at his wife.
He went back into the kitchen and dropped the envelope in front of Jesse.
“Found it. Who’s going to open it? You or me?”
Jesse lifted his head from the table and looked from Maurice to the envelope and wiped his face.
“This is wonderful. This is so wonderful. You do it.” He got up and hugged Maurice. He went to hug Delia.
“Don’t you dare come near me,” Delia hissed, drawing herself up to all of her five feet two inches.
Very carefully Maurice prised open the edge of the envelope and, slipping his hand inside, removed a memory stick, some photographs, a neatly typed manuscript of about forty pages and a letter.
Dear Maurice,
I hope that you never have occasion to need to read this letter or act on its contents. If that day has come I am probably dead. As you are my closest living relative and an apparently reliable and upstanding member of your community, I have always prevailed on your good nature to keep copies of my work. I suspect that you have neither had the time or inclination to digest my books. I never met one person growing up in Mold who shared my passion for art. I am not at all sure where it came from. Your grandparents’ house did not have even one reproduction, let alone an original work. My passion was ignited when the headmistress, Miss Quilter, forgot to book a school trip to the Bournville factory and we had instead to waste time in the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. You may not remember, but I took you there as a small child. I felt everyone deserved a life-changing experience even if they didn’t take it up. For me, art was my lifeline; studying it, looking at it, loving it was the only way I could feel a little less lonely and odd. Some love women or men, gambling or the bottle; I love paintings and have devoted my entire life to their study and to trying to explain their beauty and mystique to others.
Maurice readjusted his glasses and, peering at the letter, continued.
One man helped me establish a career and the same man destroyed it. His name is Memling Winkleman.
Maurice stopped and looked at Jesse. “Is this him?”
Jesse nodded. His tears had dried and his heart thumped in his chest. “Read on,” he urged.
I hope by the time you read this letter that his name is internationally recognised and that he has been exposed for what he is—a duplicitous, dishonest criminal, a Nazi, who let nothing stand in his way to create the world’s most successful art business.
“A Nazi. Fancy that,” Delia said.
Maurice gave his wife a silencing look and went on reading.
As you may or may not know, I was his authenticator, an expert who pronounces if something is right or wrong. I have a prodigious (if I might claim some credit) knowledge of paintings and a photographic memory. Once I have seen a picture, studied it for some time, I never forget a single detail. Show me a corner of a Rembrandt and I will tell you everything about that work. This made me an expert spotter—Memling and I would roam the salerooms; I would identify and certify a master painting, Memling would buy it. Oddly enough, I was never much interested in money. I wanted the association with great things and the chance to publish my thoughts and insight. Memling and I had a great partnership. He got rich, I got approbation.
“What does approbation mean?” Delia asked.
Maurice and Jesse ignored her.
There was one thing I could never understand. One thing he could never explain. Even when the market constricted, when there were fewer good things around, Memling could unearth great paintings, magic them from nowhere. He would get on a plane and return with one or two canvases. I would ask how and where? He never replied. Once he turned up with a really great Titian, a portrait of a young woman, small but perfect. Something about this painting piqued my curiosity. I knew the composition from an etching I had seen in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. I soon established that this painting had belonged to a Jewish family before the war but had disappeared. I started to run checks on other paintings that had been through the gallery—surreptitiously, of course—and found out that during the ten years I had worked for Winkleman, about thirty paintings we had handled had been owned by Jews exterminated during the Holocaust. I think that I knew then what this knowledge might cost me.
One day I walked into Memling’s office, forgetting to knock, and there on his desk was a painting by the French master Watteau, called The Improbability of Love—I knew it from etchings, of course—it is a truly wonderful work of art. It’s said that its beauty has the power to inspire love in mere mortals. It certainly inspired some madness in me. Without thinking, I picked it up from the desk and devoured it with my eyes. I should have pretended not to see it. Memling snatched the painting away and shouted at me to leave his office, to leave the building. I was so shocked that I did what was asked. Returning the next morning I found my possessions and books loaded in a box placed outside on the pavement. I was barred from entering the building. The rumours started immediately. The art world is a tiny place run by a powerful elite. I would walk into private views or galleries to be met with blank stares or outwardly hostile glances. My manuscripts were rejected. I couldn’t get published, let alone employed. I tried to blow the whistle on Memling, to tell others of my discoveries, but no one would listen. They knew where the power lay. We are all complicit in a dance with power.
I made ends meet. Just. I had my flat and a small stipend from the Wallace. I have continued to write books—most remain unpublished. You have a copy of all of them. I accepted that this was the way of the world. That the Memlings of this world would prosper and the little men from Mold would moulder away.
One day hope returned. I saw a drawing of the painting—the Watteau, The Improbability of Love—and a young woman told me that she had it. Maybe it was years of latent unexpressed rage or some remnant of Welsh fighting spirit, but I knew that I had the chance to expose the monster. This tiny, beautiful work of art gave me the strength and purpose to do what I should have done many years earlier.
This long essay, which I hope has been published and disseminated in all the world’s press, will tell you how I did this and what my evidence is based upon. Though lives have been lost, justice will now be meted out.
If for any reason my life is cut short (and it would not be overdramatic to assume that it might be), I ask you, dear nephew, to make sure that this information sees the light of day. I would urge you to do this anonymously and with great care, but I know that you are the kind of man who wants to see a wrong put right.
Your respectful uncle,
Trichcombe
Delia put her hand on her heart. “I knew we should have left it in the shed, Maurice. This is trouble.”
“Put the kettle on,” Maurice replied.
For the next two hours, until 10 p.m., he and Jesse read and reread Trichcombe’s essay and pored over his detailed footnotes. The art historian had abandoned convention and written his story in the first person, detailing his relationship with Memling and their dealings together. He spoke of suspicions cast aside and of the Titian portrait followed by the other “miraculous” apparitions. Trichcombe spoke openly about subjugating his suspicions in order to further his own career until the day that he saw the Watteau. Each painting that he mentioned came with a detailed provenance showing that they had once belonged to Jews who lost their lives during the war. The most devastating evidence came with the photographs of young “Memling” with the Winkleman family standing before The Improbability of Love in their Berlin apartment. Trichcombe had gone straight from Danica Goldberg’s apartment at Schwedenstrasse 14 to the public records office. He had a copy of Memling Winkleman’s birth certificate and also of that of a lad called Heinrich Fuchs. Trichcombe had not stopped there. The next photographs he unearthed were from the Hitler Youth, showing a young conscript called Heinrich Fuchs, a younger version of the man everyone now called Memling Winkleman. Trichcombe traced the man’s career to the Nazi art squad, where Fuchs worked directly under an officer called Karl Haberstock. Perhaps the most astonishing photograph found showed a junior officer standing behind Hitler holding up a painting. Though the photo was smudged and slightly out of focus, the young man with the cap pulled over his face, his back ramrod straight, was, unmistakably, Heinrich Fuchs.
“What the hell do we do now?” Maurice asked, pushing his chair back.
“You pretend you never saw any of this,” Delia said. For the last two hours she had been hovering nervously, moving from the television set and back to the kitchen.
“The genie is out of the bottle now. We have to do right by Uncle T,” Maurice said firmly. “I can’t see the local boyos in blue taking this seriously.”
Jesse was taking photographs of each picture and every page of manuscript on his phone and saving that to a remote server.
“Maybe I could email these to someone?” he said.
“We are driving the evidence to London,” Maurice said firmly.
“You’ve never been to London. You won’t find it,” Delia interjected.
“Some things are too big to miss,” he said, looking her up and down.
“You can’t leave me here,” Delia said.
“I should have left you here a long time ago.” Maurice walked out of the room and up the stairs. Jesse and Delia stood in silence at the kitchen table. His face was split by a broad grin. Hers looked like a lump of wax after a night spent on a radiator, with hanging cheeks and drooping eyes.
A few minutes later Maurice appeared with a small suitcase in one hand and his overcoat in the other.
“Come on, Jesse. Let’s go.”