‘There,’ she had said, placing the chain on a side table. ‘What d’you make of that?’ She had beckoned for him to approach. ‘I stole it. I can’t believe it – I’ve never taken anything in my life before. I just saw and took it. I couldn’t help myself …’ She had watched as Nicholas stared at the object. ‘Don’t worry, no one will ever know. They were using it to hang the painting, can you believe it? If der Keyser had been his usual self, he would never have missed something like this.’ Her voice had been almost childlike. It had been a prank. A moment’s silliness. ‘I saw some initials on it too. An H and a B. I think it belonged to the artist … Well, don’t just stare at me! Didn’t I do well?’

*

‘Are you still there?’

Nicholas’s attention turned back to Sabine. Her voice was intense over the phone line, his own pretending a calmness he didn’t feel. ‘Are you on your own in the apartment?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Go to a hotel.’

‘What!’

‘Register at the George the Fifth. They know you there. You have to be somewhere safe.’

She was spooked, and could hear the anxiety in his voice. ‘Why?’

‘You just answered your own question, Sabine. “If they’re angry about losing the chain, what would they do if they knew about the rest?” Gerrit der Keyser sent someone to talk to you, to scare you. He probably thought you’d give the chain back. That’s why he was thrown when you said you didn’t have it.’

She faltered, her legs trembling as she leaned against the sofa. ‘The writings … Where are they?’

‘Safe.’ Nicholas assured her. ‘But I’m not telling you where. I need to get them authenticated—’

‘Without anyone hearing about it?’ Sabine asked. ‘You must be joking! The art world runs on gossip – you can’t keep something like that quiet. And I’ve always been wary of Gerrit der Keyser; he’s charming to his customers but a peasant underneath.’ Her voice wavered. ‘He hired a thug to threaten me—’

‘Because he wants the chain. And he won’t be the only one.’

‘But I don’t have the chain. You do.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Nicholas agreed, ‘but not for long.’

Nicholas stands looking at the church. Dating back to the twelfth century, blackened with the passing of traffic and a build-up of petrol fumes, its outside walls are ebonised, its ancient window glass thickened and cream as sea ivory. Rain has nuzzled the corner-stones and weathered the overmantel of the door, the spire a weakling iron trying to head-butt Heaven.

I am back, he is thinking, pushing open the door and walking towards the nave. He can hear the rain outside and see the sloping red tiles before the altar, his gaze moving upwards towards the towering crucified Christ. Devotion has come back like warmth to frozen limbs and his knees bend in a welcome genuflection. Only the echo of a dripping outside tap disturbs the silence. A tap beside the outhouse where the garden tools are kept. An outhouse large enough to store old furniture and mowers, a cupboard at the far end secured with a padlock.

No, thinks Nicholas, I am not back. This is over … But he rises from his genuflection like a dancer and leaves the church. The yew trees plot his course towards the outhouse, three on his right, three on his left. He knows – he has counted them many times. At Christmas, lights are hung on them for the congregation’s children, a wooden Nativity scene played out beneath a squatting oak nearby.

He is walking, then begins – as always – to run towards the outhouse. Inside it is silent, but under the silence is a sound – something barely human. A drowning noise of the lungs. In the virtual darkness he grapples his way between the gloomy ranks of discarded kitchen cupboards and garden mowers, making for the source of the noise. Then he stops at the locked cupboard door.

The breath leaves his lungs.

He calls out, as always.

Then inhales, waiting.

He doesn’t wait long. Instead, hammering frantically on the wood, he tugs at the padlock. And from inside comes the sound he will never remember and never forget – the sound of someone dying.

I am back, he is thinking. I can change it this time … But the padlock stays shut and his hands can’t break it, and the sound of the boy’s voice – the voice that says nothing and everything – echoes to the scrabbling of his fingernails on the door. Nicholas kicks against the wood, because it is wrong. Something is very wrong here and he knows it. He kicks and kicks again, and suddenly the wood splinters and the door falls open in front of him.

The boy is dead. Nicholas can’t have heard a voice or sounds of scrabbling – he is dead and has been for some while. The body is suspended by the rope, the arms limp, palms lying against his sides, the skin split like ripe figs; his head hanging backwards.

Nicholas moves towards him, lifts him – as he always does in the dream – then feels the hot rush of maggots fall out of the boy’s open mouth.

Ten

Chelsea, London

Philip Preston was attempting to fix the cord on the sash window of his office. He had tried to jiggle the frame loose, but it was stuck at an angle. He hit it twice with his right fist and jumped back as it crashed downwards. Relieved that it wasn’t broken, he locked it and returned to his desk. There he stared at the entry in his diary and sighed. He was hopelessly bored.

He knew he shouldn’t be. With a mistress and a wife he should be knackered, not bored. And yet he was. His gaze moved towards the sign hanging outside the window. PHILIP PRESTON – AUCTIONEER. Before the malaise of his middle years he had taken pride in that sign, that emblem of his achievement. And it was not an undistinguished one. Despite being an enthusiastic womaniser Philip was a fine art historian and auctioneer; his auction house impressed with the quality of its sales. He understood art and pricing; he was adept at judging silver and a known authority on antique gold jewellery.

He was also ambitious. Greedy, if truth be told. His greed amused rather than shamed him. He had been an avaricious child, unwilling to share toys, demanding of his mother’s attention. And she, divorced and devoted, lavished affection on her only child. As a boy Philip was taught that women existed for his benefit. To amuse, to cajole, to comfort. His mother denied him nothing, thereby setting in motion his pattern for life. To Philip Preston, women were a consolation and a beloved hobby.

The only female who escaped this judgement was his wife, Gayle. Driven to marry her because of attraction and her beauty – a beauty other men wanted to corral for themselves – Philip discovered that her face was merely an exotic doorway to an unstable mind. Her rages were amusing because afterwards they made love, but as she turned forty Gayle’s emotional health, and her looks, began to falter. She had miscarried several times, Philip consoling and yet distant. Gayle’s desire for a child seemed excessive to him, and her libido faltered as her neurosis grew. At the suggestion of seeing a specialist she had been enthusiastic, until she realised that her husband meant a psychiatrist.

Believing that Philip thought she was unbalanced, Gayle retaliated. She was not insane, she told him, merely emotional. But later she confessed to the psychiatrist that she had had a nervous breakdown in the past. A complete shattering of her system due to a broken romance and an overdependence on cannabis.

‘I was ill,’ she had told him, hands slapping together as though she were applauding her own diagnosis. ‘But I’m not ill now. And I’m getting stronger by the day.’

But she gave up driving and a couple of times had lost confidence when she was out at lunch with friends, making excuses to leave early and going home. Because it was quiet there and she could go upstairs and lie on the bed, hearing nothing and not having to say anything – just stop. Gradually the periods of immobility increased, and at times the once stunning Gayle would ‘stop’ for days.