Originally Kim had come to work for Philip in the auction house, but soon her talent in bed superseded her talent in the business and within six months she had been ensconced in a flat in Bloomsbury, living above a PR agent and next to a solicitors’ office. This meant that it was quiet at night when Philip usually visited. But lately his visits had been less frequent and Kim was worried that his interest had waned.
But it hadn’t, and now he was stroking her hair and explaining. ‘Gayle’s getting worse, she’s unbalanced. Says it’s because of the menopause.’ He wrinkled his nose at the word, at the dropped flag of desire. ‘She hears voices and see things, you know. Like her dead father and people from the past, old friends we used to have. ‘I see dead people,’ he mimicked, taking the line from the film The Sixth Sense.
Kim laughed, teeth blazing white against her pearly complexion. ‘I feel sorry for her.’
‘You should feel sorry for me,’ Philip replied, leaning down to kiss her and then realising that his back wouldn’t bend that far. Deftly, Kim rose up to kiss him, her hand around his neck. You had to make allowances, she told her friends. When men get older they aren’t so supple.
‘I feel sorry for you every day, darling,’ she murmured. ‘I want you to be happy – that’s why you have to leave her. I don’t want to be cruel, but your wife’s a very sick woman and you have a life of your own. There’s nothing more you can do to help her, you’ve taken her to see so many doctors already. You’re such a good man – she doesn’t realise how lucky she is.’ Gently Kim stroked the back of his neck, her copper-coloured eyes fixed on his. Exotic, almost as striking as Gayle had once been. ‘I know you have to do it in your own time, but sweetheart, it’s so hard on you and Gayle’s not going to get any better, is she?’
He could feel an erection coming on and wanted to stop talking about his wife, wanted to stop Kim pressurising him and wanted, above all, to get into the bedroom, which was costing him nine hundred pounds a month.
‘Darling—’
‘I love you so much,’ Kim interrupted. ‘We can sort this out and be together—’
He kissed her eagerly, his hand moving under her skirt as Kim tilted her head back so that he could nuzzle her throat. He liked that, she told friends. It turned him on. Over his shoulder Kim glanced at her watch as she began to move against his crotch, increasing the rhythm and moaning. In twenty minutes she had an appointment across town and she couldn’t be late.
That was the good thing about sex with older men. It never took long.
Twenty-Four
Church of St Stephen, Fulham, London
They were having choir practice, twelve children of assorted sizes entering by the side door and then filing neatly into the wooden pews beside the altar. At the back of the church sat Father Michael, watching in silence, glad of the company although the children were scared of his dour, cadaverous figure. Pulling a black cardigan over his vestments, the old priest noticed the flutter of the incense in the burner and the soft footfall of someone approaching.
He flinched, but it was only the music teacher passing, walking up to the children and placing his score on the lectern. He tapped the wood twice, then once more, and the children fell silent as the organist made his first faltering steps into the chords of Bach. The old priest didn’t move or turn. In the church, with people around him, he was safe. No violent Dutchman to question him; no furtive footfalls in locked quarters. In amongst the simmer of incense and the dry scent of old hymn sheets he was protected. He was secure. He was safe.
From everything but his memory.
Twenty-Five
On the other side of Chelsea, Nicholas waited in a shadowed doorway. He had been there for over an hour, watching the back entrance to Philip Preston’s auction house. He could see the half-hearted moonlight strike the side of the fire escape steps and dribble listlessly over the office windows. He could hear various cars drive past or park, and the sound of an argument coming from a nearby street. But nothing made him move. Even the cold, pressing against him, unwelcome as a leper, didn’t force him to desert his post.
And while Nicholas waited he thought of his sister, Honor. Maybe, finally, he would contact her. She had come to the forefront of his mind because Eloise had mentioned her, and suddenly Nicholas had felt an urgency to see his sibling again. But he had checked the impulse. He had had his chance and left it too late. Why get in touch when he was in trouble? When any involvement with him might be catastrophic?
Nicholas knew he had been a poor brother, difficult to know, harder to love. He had deliberately cut his sister out. They were only a few years apart and should have been close. They could have made a family – but he had smashed any chance of that, alienating himself from everyone until he had decided to change his life while he still could.
For a time he was God’s child, all passion turned into a religious passion. He found celibacy easy after having been promiscuous, and poverty appealing when it came with a home and three meals a day. He even conquered obedience, becoming an honest priest and a stable man. But the glimmer of anarchy within him didn’t stay dormant forever. And when his disgrace came it was absolute – but contained. He kept his family out of it and instead went away. Went to ground. Which was why he knew the right thing to do for his sister was to stay away from her, even more so now.
Hidden in the doorway, his face chilled, he felt a wind start up. Across the road he could see the metal fire escape and the monotonous green blinking of the alarm. If anyone broke in the beady emerald light would snap into life, turn red as the flash of a fox’s eye, its electric scream activated, and alerting the police.
Nicholas stared at the light and thought of Father Michael. Nervy, mumbling under his breath, the priest was plainly cowed by something and resentful of Nicholas’s presence. He was angry at having to be grateful to a man he had failed. So many failures, Nicholas thought, so many secrets, so much guilt … His attention was suddenly caught by a movement to his left as someone entered the alleyway and walked towards the fire escape. Pressing further back into the shadows, Nicholas watched a hulking figure climb up the metal steps and peer into the office window. Honthorst, Carel Honthorst. He moved quietly for such a big man, and worked quickly. To Nicholas’s surprise, the alarm was disabled in seconds, with only a short screech. Had he managed to prevent the warning going through to the police? Moments later, Honthorst was inside.
The light flicked on. Nicholas could see the Dutchman walk past the window, then heard the sound of shuffling. Barely half a minute had passed before he left, moving down the fire escape and walking past Nicholas’s hiding place.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, his shadow vast behind him. Pausing only feet from Nicholas, the Dutchman raised his head and closed his eyes, sniffing the air like a dog.
Then he turned and headed straight for where Nicholas was hiding.
’s-Hertogenbosch, Brabant, 1470
Stepping over a pile of pig manure in the town centre, Hieronymus held on to the panel under his arm and coughed. The winter was promising to be foul, the last week full of black moonless nights. He would have liked to be alone but he was always accompanied by a member of the family, this time, the bent rod of his grandfather.
As he moved towards the cloth market, Hieronymus nodded to an affiliate of the Brotherhood of Our Lady. The man, a merchant, was a high-ranking member of The Swan Bethren, that intimate circle of the elite within the Brotherhood. Stout, his belly hanging over his belt, his leggings splattered with mud, the merchant stepped through the muck. His fur-trimmed cloak swung awkwardly from one shoulder, an elaborate velvet cap topping his unprepossessing face.