‘What they were doing was wrong!’

‘But it’s a haven, religion. You could have stayed safe, a beloved priest, living a quiet life. If you had, no one would ever have heard about Nicholas Laverne. But instead you had to create chaos. And where did it get you? Excommunicated.’ Conrad shrugged. ‘What amazes me is that you didn’t learn your lesson—’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘For a while you seemed to. You were quiet for ten years and then – boom! – back you came with the Bosch deception. I tried to stop you, but you just kept going.’

Nicholas stared at the figure in the chair. Conrad Voygel knew a lot about him, but that would be easy to find out. There was something else, something about him which disturbed Nicholas and stirred an old memory. He was back in his teens and early twenties, the disgrace of the family, the kid that no one could control. Mixing with crooks and petty thieves.

‘Do I know you?’

‘I think you would remember my face if you did.’ Conrad replied as a telephone began to ring beside him. Smiling, he picked it up. ‘Hello, darling … No, I won’t be much longer. Just a little while …’ He was listening intently. ‘… what am I doing? Nothing much – I’m just talking to my brother, that’s all.’

Eighty-Three

The carpet seemed to be shifting under Nicholas’s feet, the walls sloping away from him as he watched Conrad Voygel lean forward into the lamplight. But it still took him several moments to recognise the old face under the reconstructive surgery. There was a flicker of some vague recall, then he stared into the eyes and the years fell away. Nicholas was suddenly back in the past. He and his siblings were living with the irascible David Laverne, and Henry was just leaving university, flushed with his success at acquiring a position at a prestigious architectural firm in Paris, secured on the glowing recommendation of Raoul Devereux.

It had been a much vaulted and much envied position. Any flicker of scandal or ineptitude would have meant disgrace or even dismissal. Henry Laverne would have to be, and behave like, a gentleman … Nicholas looked at his brother, an old memory returning.

‘You killed our parents—’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You missed the last train! If they hadn’t had to pick you up they would never have had the crash. It was your fault. It was all your fault and I’ll never let you forget it.’

‘Their deaths weren’t down to me! I was fourteen years old,’ Nicholas said, facing his brother and remembering his accusations. ‘I was fourteen and you made me feel like a criminal!’ His rage almost choked him. ‘You held that over my head for years. You played me, relied on my guilt. And you could, because you were perfect. But you weren’t, were you?’ Nicholas leaned towards his brother over the desk. ‘You fooled everyone but me.’

‘I got away with it though, didn’t I?’

‘Only because you had a ready-made scapegoat,’ Nicholas said bitterly. ‘How many times did I cover for you? Took the blame for that assault on the woman in Milan. I remember that group you fell in with – the ones who were faking and dealing in stolen art. You stole that landscape painting from Raoul Devereux – and you made me the culprit. And why did I let you? Because you were the father figure. I admired you, I wanted to be like you, I couldn’t say no to anything you asked. I remember you, you bastard!’ he snapped. ‘Crying like a kid and begging me: “Tell them it was you. They’ll throw me out of the company if you don’t. Please, Nicholas, please …”

‘And so I said it was me. Always me. Every rotten thing you did, I took the blame. And everyone believed it. How could you be responsible for theft? How could you take drugs, be violent? No, not Henry. But Nicholas – well, I was the wild card, wasn’t I?’

‘You were a difficult boy—’

‘Because you screwed me up! You made me believe that everything was my fault! In the end I believed it myself. I was nothing, the boy no one liked or cared about. I had nothing, so why not sacrifice myself to the burning light that was Henry Laverne? And you relied on that, didn’t you?’ He paused and looked around him, incredulous. ‘We thought you died in that fire. We buried you—’

‘You buried a gardener.’

Nicholas sat down and stared at his brother’s altered face. ‘I see you now. I see every rotten part of you. Why did you let us think you’d died?’

‘I didn’t want to be Henry Laverne any more. It was limiting. I wanted more, and suddenly there was a way I could get it.’ He grimaced. ‘You think you had it hard. Try being perfect – it gets wearing after a while. I wanted a new life—’

‘As Conrad Voygel?’

‘Oh, he came a little later. For a while I just drifted, got into a bit of trouble, but that didn’t matter any more because I wasn’t anyone. Not Henry Laverne, no one. Slowly I began to build up a property business abroad, then I went into computers. I heard about you exposing the Catholic Church because of what happened to that boy.’

‘Patrick Gerin.’

‘Did he remind you of yourself, Nicholas?’ he asked. ‘You wanted to save another lost boy. Then the scandal was over. Suddenly you were banished and disappeared – and my star was on the rise. I chose a new name, and when I got cancer I saw it as a plus. My face changed, my voice too. Henry Laverne might not have been buried, but he was well and truly dead. And my reputation grew. No one knew where I came from, or anything about my past. I’m a respectable, revered, philanthropic tycoon. I am on a par with politicians, royalty, celebrities. People admire me.’

‘You’re a crook—’

‘No, Henry Laverne was the crook.’ He paused, smiling that tight smile. ‘But you had to ruin it, didn’t you? You had to come back, because you had another cause to fight for – that bloody chain. Who cared what happened to Hieronymus Bosch? Well, you did, because here was another lost boy. Of course you couldn’t give up on it – it would have been like giving up on yourself.’ He laced his fingers together. ‘I had to stop you.’

‘You were going to kill me?’

He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘Kill you? No.’

‘You hired Sidney Elliott—’

‘Only at the beginning, to find the chain. Elliott approached me after he’d worked for you. He told me about the Bosch conspiracy and the chain. But he was unstable, crazy, – anyone could see that. So I fired him. What he did has nothing to do with me.’ Conrad paused. ‘I killed no one and I had no one killed. I’m a respectable businessman with a fortune; my reputation is everything.’

‘Which you’d do anything to protect,’ Nicholas said coldly. ‘And I was the only person who could ruin you. The only one who could expose you for who – and what – you really are.’

‘Exactly,’ Conrad agreed. ‘With this latest passion of yours you were all set to be a celebrity again. People would want to know you, know all about you – and, by extension, your family. I couldn’t risk it. I know how it works, Nicholas: secrets always get sucked out. Like Bosch. I had to stop you, and the only way I could effectively do that was to discredit you. Make the world think of you as a barmy ex-priest with another conspiracy theory. People knew you were confused. You had bad dreams, you saw things—’

‘You hired Father Michael?’

He nodded. ‘And Carel Honthorst. Who does have a mighty faith. Honthorst would have ripped you limb from limb just for betraying his Church. But I wouldn’t let him go that far. I didn’t want to kill you—’

‘Just drive me mad.’

‘It was the lesser of two evils. People don’t listen to lunatics or fantasists. You would have been a laughing stock, almost as good as dead.’

‘You had me poisoned, drugged. I kept wondering about the dreams, why they were changing. I thought I’d done something unforgivable. Something I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remember.’ Nicholas looked at his brother. ‘But that was just guilt, wasn’t it? That guilt you instilled in me when I was a kid took over. I felt responsible, like I always had done.’