Sunday dawned cloudless and icily cold. Squinting through the thick double glazing of his hotel room as he nursed a cup of black coffee and a headache that thumped away behind the gash over his eye, Eusden rehearsed all the ways in which he could have avoided the situation he now found himself in. The surest one was never to have left London, of course. But it hardly helped to know it.
Pernille Madsen was due to arrive an hour or so before the Helsinki ferry sailed at 4.45. That left Eusden with half a day to kill. He could have seen the sights if he had been in any mood for sightseeing. Stockholm looked beautiful in the white and gold of a winter Sunday. The harbour was frozen and people were out strolling on the ice. Eusden heard their laughter when he left the Sheraton and crossed the bridge into Gamla Stan. He saw the gilded light falling on the ochre-plastered house fronts of the old town. But sights and sounds barely registered in his mind. He had dreamt of Marty in the night, Marty alive and well and youthful, rejecting the report of his death as a mischievous rumour. But the day contradicted the night. The rumour was true. And the truth of it sat like lead in Eusden’s heart.
After more than an hour of aimless walking, he was cold and tired enough to be glad the bars were open. He went into one that was more Irish than Swedish and sat sipping a Danish beer while an ice hockey match proceeded largely unwatched on a widescreen television. He steeled himself to check his phone for messages, expecting Gemma would have slept on her indignation, woken to find it undiminished and sought to remind him of his responsibilities. Surprisingly in the circumstances, she had not called. But Bernie Shadbolt had, leaving his mobile number and a peremptory demand that Eusden ring it, which he had no intention of doing.
The other message was less easy to shrug off. He had forgotten giving Regina Celeste his number and now regretted it. At the time it had seemed unimportant. But every judgement had become provisional: they could all be overtaken by events.
‘Hi, Richard. This is Regina. As you’ll deduce, I’ve gotten myself a cellphone that actually functions on this continent, so can you call me? I need an update on the Werner situation. Also you might like to know what I’ve accomplished so far on my Hanoverian expedition. If I don’t hear back soon, I’ll try your hotel. So long.’
He slowed down the beer intake and tried to do some cool rational thinking. Maybe it was actually a blessing he had given Regina his number. If she rang the Phoenix and learnt he had checked out, she might hurry back to Copenhagen and start looking for him. Worse still, she might go back into partnership with Straub. The less either of them knew of what he was really up to the better. It was safer by far to keep Regina in ignorance. Less than half an hour had passed since her call, so it was a safe bet she had not yet called the Phoenix. He decided to make sure she did not need to.
‘Hi, Richard. Thanks for calling back.’
‘No problem.’
‘What’s happening your end?’
‘Nothing. There’s been so sign of Werner.’
‘Nor Marty, I take it?’
‘No.’ Eusden steeled himself to speak the words in a casual tone. ‘No sign of Marty either.’
‘So, you’re basically twiddling your thumbs, right?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Well, fortunately, one of us has been busy. Werner and Marty have got a nasty surprise coming their way. Thanks to little old me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve gone ahead and bought Hans Grenscher’s collection of Gestapo documents. As soon as the money hits his bank account tomorrow morning, they’ll be in my hands. Which means I’ll have in my possession the only item I’m actually interested in: a record of Anastasia’s fingerprints, taken by the Hanover police in 1938 on orders from Berlin. That’s the magical matching item Werner made such a big thing of. And no wonder, if it really can be matched.’
‘I don’t understand. Matched?’
‘With Anastasia’s pre-1918 fingerprints. Don’t you get it, Richard? That’s what Marty’s grandfather must have got hold of. How, I can’t imagine. But somehow. Her fingerprints must have been taken during the imperial visit to Cowes in 1909. And Clem Hewitson must have hung on to them.’
Was it possible? Clem claimed to have met Anastasia aboard the imperial yacht. He had gone aboard to be thanked by the Tsar and Tsarina for preventing the assassinations of Anastasia’s elder sisters, Olga and Tatiana. Where and how could fingerprinting figure in such an encounter? The science had surely been in its infancy in the Edwardian period. It was probably completely unknown in Russia in 1909 – a point Regina had clearly been pondering.
‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Isle of Wight bobby taking a Russian princess’s dabs. I can’t begin to imagine how that could’ve come about. But let’s say it did. Let’s say PC Hewitson was bragging about how scientifically advanced British police methods were, spotted Anastasia with ink on her fingers – she was always said to be a messy girl – and laid on an impromptu demonstration of how to take her prints. And let’s also say he kept them as a memento of his brush with Russian royalty. If they match the 1938 prints… we’ve struck the mother lode.’
If they matched. Unfortunately for Regina, Eusden knew she was never going to have the chance to find out whether they did or not. And a murkier issue still was troubling him. Where did Tolmar Aksden come into this? What connected him to Anastasia? How could Hakon Nydahl’s letters to Clem all those years ago be so damaging to him?
‘So,’ Regina breezed on, ‘Werner can cut any kind of deal with Marty he likes. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to deal with me. We’ll both have what the other needs to make out the case for Anastasia’s recognition. Fingerprints trump DNA any day of the week. But only the matching pair of sets will do the job. We’re going to have to come to some kind of an agreement. Unless, of course, you can prevail on your childhood friend to freeze out Werner altogether. It’s nothing less than the man deserves, after all. What do you say, Richard? Willing to give it a try?’
Eusden could not remember, after Regina had rung off, exactly how he had answered her question. Some prevarication had sufficed, thanks to her blithe assumption that he was now her eager assistant. She would be heading back to Copenhagen, where she believed him to be waiting, as soon as her transaction with Grenscher was complete. Alas for her, another transaction hundreds of miles away was going to render her possession of Anna Anderson’s fingerprints irrelevant. No match was ever going to be made.
Futile though curiosity was bound to be, Eusden could not entirely suppress it. He returned to the Sheraton to wait for Pernille Madsen and retrieved his bag, which he had left with the concierge after checking out. He went into the bar and ordered a coffee, opened the bag and took out Burgaard’s family tree of the Nydahls and Aksdens. He had remembered Anna Anderson’s claim to have given birth to a son in December 1918 and wanted to remind himself that Peder Aksden could not have been that son. It was true. According to Burgaard, who could certainly be trusted to have checked his facts, Peder Aksden was born in 1909. There was no fudging a nine-year age gap. He was not Anastasia’s son. And hence Tolmar was not her grandson. There was no connection between them. And yet there was. There had to be. But what it could possibly be he-
‘Richard Eusden?’
The softly inflected voice belonged to a woman standing beside his chair. He had not heard her approach. She was dressed in a black coat and boots, with a peacock-patterned scarf round her neck. There was nothing of the blonde Scandinavian about her. Her hair and eyes were dark brown, her face pale, her features delicate, her pink-lipsticked mouth opened in a hesitant smile even as her brow furrowed into the slightest of frowns.