But he could not simply scuttle back to London and abandon Marty to an unknown fate. He had to find out what had become of his friend, even though that friend had been responsible for transforming his comfortable and predictable life into a raw struggle for survival. ‘Fuck you, Marty,’ he muttered several times under his breath as he plodded back to the Phoenix through the gnawing chill of a bleak Copenhagen morning. It was a sentiment he had often expressed before, of course. And one he had never quite succeeded in drawing the obvious lesson from.
He had banked on a quick ascent to his room, with a breakfast delivery to follow, strong black coffee being the self-prescribed medicine he proposed to dose himself with. But he was intercepted halfway across the marbled lobby by an unexpected visitor: Regina Celeste.
‘There you are, Richard. I guessed it might be worth waiting to see if you’d be back soon. Well, where are you gonna go on a morning like this, after all?’ She seemed even louder in manner and dress by day than night. Or perhaps, Eusden thought, he was simply more vulnerable. ‘Say, what happened to you? Get in with the wrong crowd last night? That’s quite a shiner.’
‘I slipped in the bath.’
‘Really?’ She looked understandably sceptical.
‘What brings you here, Regina? I’m afraid I’ve still no news of Marty.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘No. Like I told Werner, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.’
‘But that’s just the point, Richard. Werner has heard from Marty.’
‘What?’
‘I think you’ll agree with me: we need to talk.’
They found a café over the road on Bredgade that had just opened for business and was only otherwise being patronized by a group of Japanese tourists intent on photographing their breakfasts. Eusden contented himself with coffee. While Regina fussed over the infusion of her herbal tea bag, he wondered just how monstrously Marty had misled him with his carefully presented plan to evade Straub. For misled him he surely had. It was only a question of scale. Regina’s announcement had struck a chord in him that was wearily familiar. It seemed Marty had taken him for a ride yet again.
‘Where’s Werner now?’ he asked.
‘That’s just it, Richard. I don’t know. He was gone when I surfaced this morning. He left this note for me at reception.’ She took a sheet of Hôtel d’Angleterre notepaper out of her portmanteau-sized handbag and passed it to Eusden.
Dear Regina,
I am sorry to leave without warning. Marty has contacted me. I am going to meet him. I hope to get answers to all our questions. Wait for me here. I will call you later today. We will settle our business in Hanover as soon as possible after I return.
Best wishes,
Werner.
‘Best wishes, my sweet behind,’ Regina continued as she retrieved the note. ‘He must have known last night he was gonna take off like this. The only reason he didn’t tell me then was that he knew I’d insist on going with him. Or at the very least on being told where he was going. I don’t like being strung along, Richard, especially not by a lounge lizard like Werner. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes. I certainly do.’
‘Everything was sugar and sunshine when we went to Klampenborg yesterday morning. Hvidøre’s been turned into a conference centre, but he’d fixed it for us to have a proper guided tour of the place. You could imagine the rooms as they’d have been in Dagmar’s day, stuffed with clumpy furniture and kitschy statues and dusty aspidistras. It gave me a real feel for the old lady, let me tell you. Especially the turret room she’s supposed to have spent so much time in, looking out to sea. Anyhow, Werner couldn’t have been a much more attentive host short of offering me his hand in marriage, resounding “no” though he’d have got if he had. We had a nice lunch at a restaurant just up the coast road from Hvidøre, then we went on to Rungsted to visit the Karen Blixen Museum. Well, it was too good a chance to miss. I just loved that movie, didn’t you?’
There came into Eusden’s mind a memory that was both alluring and painful of going to a cinema in Guildford with Gemma some time in the mid-1980s to see Out of Africa, the film Regina had proclaimed her love for. He had been a contented husband then, Gemma a secretly discontented wife. Time, he often thought, was more of a tormentor than a healer.
‘Werner got a call on his cell while we were looking over the exhibits. He came over kinda coy and went outside to take it. Told me when he came back the call had been from his mother, which I didn’t buy for a second. But what’s a girl to do? He was different after that. Edgy. Distracted. All the way through to dinner back at the d’Angleterre. Excused himself straight after. Said he needed an early night, which seemed way out of character. I didn’t know what to make of it.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I do now, of course. The scheming weasel.’
‘What time did he take the call?’
‘Not sure. Around… three, I guess.’
Three o’clock was tantalizingly close to the time when Marty was supposed to have arrived in Copenhagen. Though what the timing signified – if anything – Eusden did not know.
‘Any inspired thoughts?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, Regina. I’ve no idea what Marty’s up to. Or Werner.’
‘Cooking up a private deal between themselves, that’s what.’
‘I… suppose so.’ Regina was right, of course. Nothing else made sense.
‘The question is: are you and I going to let them get away with it?’
‘What else can we do?’
‘Pool our resources for starters.’ That did not sound like a good idea to Eusden, though he did not propose to say so. He certainly had no intention of volunteering any details of his recent activities. ‘Do you really have no idea what Clem Hewitson’s archive contains?’
‘None at all.’
‘That’s kinda… disappointing.’
‘What’s your “business in Hanover”?’ Eusden asked, keen to switch topics.
‘Well, I guess I may as well tell you. Werner’s forfeited all confidentiality rights with this little escapade as far as I’m concerned. He’s been negotiating with a collector of Nazi curios in Hanover called Hans Grenscher for the purchase of a cache of Gestapo documents supposedly including something crucial about Anastasia. She lived in Hanover throughout the Second World War, at the Gestapo’s insistence. They didn’t want her wandering around the country for some reason. She was taken to Berlin on one occasion, though, to meet the Führer. What Hitler had in mind for her is unclear. Maybe he saw her as a potential bargaining chip in his dealings with Stalin. Anyhow, I don’t rightly know what Grenscher has on her, but Werner claims it can be matched with something Marty’s grandfather preserved to prove Anastasia truly was Anastasia. Evidently, Grenscher isn’t willing to split his hoard. We have to buy the whole lot for the sake of the one Anastasia-related item. In fact, I’ve already had to put up a hefty deposit just to get first refusal on it.’
Eusden could not help wondering if Regina’s deposit was the source of the money with which Straub had tried to buy off Marty. It seemed typical of the man to use someone else’s cash rather than his own – assuming he had any. It also seemed typical of him to strike side deals whenever he needed to: with Regina, with Marty and, in all likelihood, with Grenscher too. ‘How can Werner be sure this matching whatever-it-is is amongst the stuff Marty inherited from his grandfather?’
‘Beats me, Richard. But he’s been adamant on the point the whole way along. That’s why I flew over here. Because he was so confident we could nail that DNA lie about the lady I met in Charlottesville being nothing but a Polish peasant once and for mercy’s sake all. Now I’m wondering if Werner didn’t overstate how much money we had to put up front to fix himself up with negotiating capital. You see where my thoughts are leading? Maybe he plans to put this proof together for his own profit. Write a book, sell the film rights and freeze me out. I might be nothing more than the cash cow he plans to milk in the meantime. Well, this is one cow that can do more than swish her tail, let me tell you.’