‘I don’t know. I don’t know what – or who – will make it through the next two days.’

‘The art world can be a dangerous place.’

‘So can the Church,’ Nicholas remarked. The drowsy sensation was threatening to overwhelm him and it took all of his concentration to continue the conversation. ‘At least in the art world you can see your enemies coming. With the Church, you never know who will bless you and who will damn you.’

He paused and Hiram looked at him intently. ‘You’re ill.’

‘No, just tired.’

‘Are you sure?’

Nicholas tried to nod his head, but the action was too much for him.

‘You look drugged.’

Nicholas shook his head, his voice slurred. ‘I don’t take drugs. I had food poisoning.’

But as he said it, Hiram Kaminski’s face was coming in and out of focus.

‘Watch out for yourself, Mr Laverne,’ he said kindly. ‘No one is ever what they seem.’

Here I am, amongst the yew trees leading to the outhouse that is changing as I look at it … Nicholas frowns, turns in his sleep, sweat oily as his skin. Walk in, he tells himself. Walk in. Look and see. Look and see, and remember.

I can still count the bottles, beer bottles in rows along the chipped window ledge behind the broken lawnmowers that don’t work and the old discarded bird’s nest. This is the same as always. The bottles are where the boys left them, and where Father Dominic, sly as a stoat, found them. Taking the first bottle, greasing its neck and forcing it down Patrick Gerin’s throat until he choked. He heaved, bringing up bile over the priest’s shoes …

I didn’t see it, Nicholas thought. I was only told. I explained how it was, as always, as ever. I wasn’t there, just told what had happened by a boy with bruises around his mouth. He was waiting in the space between the yew trees while David Sullivan hung back under the dull arc of the oak. He says – I want to go home. Do something. Help me … Nicholas stirs in his sleep, sweating, turning … I’ll talk to them, I promise. I’ll talk to them …

I did talk, Nicholas thinks, eyes moving under closed lids. But I was too late. As ever, as always, too late … He sees the perished roof of the outhouse, the door swinging open to reveal the dark gut of the cupboard inside. And on the floor lies urine and faeces, dropped from a boy hanging.

Nicholas is walking forward. He can hear the sound of broken glass under his feet and sees Patrick Gerin look at him, pleading for help … He sees him, as ever, as always, only this time Nicholas turns away and locks the door behind him.

As he moves back through the yew trees they fold over his head and he begins to run. Away from the bird’s nest that holds nothing and the roof that is long gone. As ever, as always, towards the grey hump of the church. Away from the bottles, the cupboard and the broken glass …

And away from the boy hanging.

Sixty-Seven

Eloise Devereux sat in her hotel room and stared at the papers in front of her. Her conversation with Honor had stirred her curiosity and her growing suspicions about Nicholas Laverne. In truth she had told Honor everything she knew, but as she had recounted Nicholas’s history, Eloise had developed a sudden and queasy unease. Events that had not worried her before seemed strange, his reluctance to involve her less like caution and more like evasion. Her hands reached out for the report which had been brought to her that morning: the chequered past of Nicholas Laverne assembled by a private investigator, the facts and counter facts alarming.

Who had this man actually been? Eloise thought. This treasured friend of her dead husband. Claude had never told her anything about the alleged assaults, the faking or the thefts. Had he not known – or had he not believed it? Eloise leaned back on the sofa, curling her legs under her, staring at the incriminating evidence. If she were honest she had always found Nicholas evasive, but had put that down to his being the third wheel, caught between his old friend and his wife. But now she wasn’t so sure.

A memory of Sabine came in that instant. Her mother. Not that people knew that … Sabine was young when she became pregnant and her parents hadn’t wanted the scandal to become public, so she had given birth to Eloise in Switzerland and the baby had been adopted. It had been discreetly arranged, childless friends of Sabine’s parents taking over the baby and raising her. The families never referred to it, and Sabine had married Monsieur Monette soon after.

It would have remained a secret forever, had Sabine stayed silent. But when Eloise was sixteen, she contacted her daughter and told her the truth. Relieved that she was not related to her dull adoptive parents, Eloise had soon become close to her mother. She was thrilled by their similarities and by the interests they shared. From the first, Eloise had understood why she had been adopted: the pressures of a bourgeois French family would have been impossible for a young girl to withstand. She had no grudge against her mother; Sabine’s presence in her life had been merely postponed.

Few people knew the truth. Except Claude, in whom Eloise naturally confided … Her glance went back to the papers on the coffee table in front of her. Nicholas Laverne, suspected of involvement in fakery and theft. Surely it was no coincidence that Sabine had been robbed while he was working for her? But did it go further than that?

She remembered Claude’s father, Raoul Devereux, talking about Nicholas in guarded tones. And now she knew why – Nicholas Laverne had stolen a painting from him and only the intervention of Henry had prevented his being charged. She could imagine that Claude would have supported Nicholas too, defending him, pleading with his father not to destroy his relationship with one son because of the actions of the other. Raoul had been Henry Laverne’s mentor for years, had admired him and encouraged his progress. Yet all the while the shadow of Nicholas hovered in the background.

Were they always wondering when he would cause a scandal? Always wondering when the reputations of Raoul and Henry would be undermined by Nicholas’s erratic behaviour? Their relief when he entered the Church must have been immense. When Nicholas Laverne was transformed into Father Daniel, ensconced far away in London: a priest bound by the strict rules of the Catholic Church.

But it hadn’t lasted.

Eloise stared at the notes, her mouth tight, doubts troubling her. Claude was dead, presumably killed because of his involvement with the Bosch deception. A conspiracy that Nicholas had uncovered. History repeating itself … Hurriedly she snatched up the papers and sifted through them, then found what she was looking for. Nicholas and his alleged faking. Faking art works and jewellery … Eloise took in a breath.

What if the whole conspiracy was a lie? A fabrication created for revenge? Nicholas had never professed much interest in the art world, but his parents and his uncle had been minor collectors. He would have known the power of that environment: the money, the risks, the ruthlessness of dealers after the ultimate prize. Perhaps Nicholas Laverne had picked his own pack of wolves, and thrown them a sheep’s carcass in the shape of the Bosch chain.

Eloise could feel her heartbeat speed up. Was she right? Certainly Nicholas must have been desperate for revenge, his accusations of clerical abuse ostracising him. Not so much a hero as a leper. Eloise didn’t doubt that the allegations were true. Nicholas was always looking for some apple cart to overturn, but this time he had excelled himself.

If he had made up the deception he knew exactly what he was doing. Brutalised boys would never grip the world’s attention, unlike the Bosch chain and the rumoured conspiracy.