Long Time Coming (33 page)

‘Eldritch mentioned Linley was nursemaiding a government minister from London when they met in Dublin.’

Moira nodded. ‘That would have been Malcolm MacDonald, sent over by Churchill to have a go at persuading Dev to take Éire into the war. He’s supposed to have offered Irish unity in return, though how Northern Ireland was to be forced down that road never became clear, because, after a lot of humming and hawing, Dev rejected the offer. Maybe he regretted turning it down when the current Troubles broke out. More likely not, though. He wasn’t a man prone to regrets.’

‘Could that be the “something big”?’

‘I don’t see how. It’s not a secret. And what Eldritch was caught up in definitely is – to this day. It seems to me you badly need to find him.’

‘I know.’

‘Any clues?’

‘None, at the moment. I’m hoping he’ll come to me.’

‘Well, if he does, tell him I can get his story into the public domain – anonymously and lucratively. That must be what he wants: the truth, on the record. It’s certainly what I want. And I think he owes my father that much.’

I doubted if Eldritch felt he owed the late Lorcan Henchy anything. Thirty-six years in prison didn’t leave much room for moral niceties. I assured Moira I’d put her offer to him if I got the chance, but I had no real intention of doing so. If Eldritch had the proof Ardal Quilligan had been carrying, I needed to persuade him to let me hand it over to Tate and bury his doubtless highly marketable story in the process. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done.
If
I got the chance.

*

I took another futile prowl round the diamond district before returning to van Briel’s house. He wasn’t there. I cut myself a sandwich and sat in the kitchen, glumly munching through it. I was weary with the effort of trying to devise a way out of the difficulties that confronted Rachel and me. And knowing the agonies of uncertainty she must be going through didn’t make my thinking any clearer.

Van Briel seemed similarly at a loss when he got in. He’d taken Lasiyah out for dinner and a film and I sensed, in his tone and manner, a growing exasperation with my invasion of his life, maybe stoked by complaints from Lasiyah.

‘I’ve pulled clients out of all sorts of trouble, Stephen, but trouble isn’t a big enough word to describe your situation. You need to find that uncle of yours. You need to find him fast.’

‘Any suggestions how I go about that?’

He seized his hair in both hands and tugged at it, then dolefully shook his head. ‘Not one. Except …’

‘What?’

‘Get some sleep. Problems always look smaller in the morning.’

This one didn’t. Anything but. And van Briel gave a poor impression of believing it did himself. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen,’ he said as we consumed a liquid breakfast. ‘Today could be tough.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mrs Banner flies in around now. I’ll have to tell her how things are for Rachel. She’ll probably want you to explain how you got her daughter in this mess. I would if I was her. Then there’s Lady Linley. She won’t be exactly happy either.’

‘I’m not bothered about making Isolde Linley happy, Bart. I have as many questions for her as she has for me.’

‘You see? This is what worries me. You’ve got to be … careful. She might bring a lawyer with her. You know, one almost as smart as me. Actually, the less you say, the better it’ll be for you.’ He sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, this is how we’ll play it, right? I’ll go to the office. You wait here. I’ll call you when I know how we’re going to set up these meetings.’

‘I don’t like the sound of just sitting by the phone, waiting to be summoned.’

‘Maybe not. But you have to—’ Van Briel broke off, frowning at the bing-bong of the doorbell downstairs. ‘It’s too early for the postman. Hold on.’ He went into the lounge and looked out of the window. ‘
Goddank
. It’s not the police. I thought maybe … Leysen had come for you.’

‘Who is it, then?’ I asked, following him to the window.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.’

But I had.

Marie-Louise was anxious and confused. She kept apologizing for calling at such an hour. It took a cup of van Briel’s potent coffee, laced with brandy, to untangle her meaning. Joey, it appeared, had vamoosed.

‘Madame Banner will be here soon. What do I say to her? I got up early because I heard him moving around. But he was already in the hall, with that army kitbag of his packed, ready to leave, when I went down. “I’ve hung around Antwerp long enough,” he said. “Time I was rolling.” What does that mean –
rolling
? “What about your mother?” I said. “Tell her I’ll be back someday.”
Some day? Mon Dieu!
She will say I should have stopped him. But I couldn’t do anything. He gave me a hug, told me to … look after myself, then … he walked out.’

‘Which way did he go?’ asked van Briel.

‘Towards Berchem station.’

‘I guess that figures. More connections than Centraal. His destination could be … anywhere in Europe.’ He shrugged. ‘Or beyond.’

‘How did he seem last night?’ I asked.

‘I did not see him. He came in very late. That is why I came, Stephen. I wanted to ask if you spoke to him yesterday. You said you were going to the Zoo … to try to find him.’

‘I found him all right. But he didn’t say anything of any consequence – certainly nothing about going away.’ But at that moment I remembered he might have done – just not to me. I went
to my coat and took out his postcard. This time, I would read it to the end.

Antwerp March 29 1976 Dear Sis You’ve asked me more than one time why I like to compose these messages to you in one sentence and I wonder if you’ve guessed it’s because I have a mortal fear of full stops on account of all the rude interruptions I witnessed in Nam that pretty soon revealed themselves as sudden terminations and also because I neurotically suppose that if I don’t pause for breath you won’t either and that way we’ll get to talk the only way I feel I can which is right out and right on for a dare even when there’s nothing much to tell you which is pretty much all the time in my cotton-wooled exile of a life here and which I’d have staked all the little I have on being as true of yesterday as all the days before days before yesterday but actually isn’t on account of a rare caller at our sunburst-paneled door who was a stranger to me but maybe isn’t to you and a stranger with a mission to boot that he was set on with a kind of guttering candle desperation and for the sake of that desperation if nothing else because it reminded me so of other desperations I’ve witnessed or experienced and wished oh wished hadn’t been futile but were I’ll tell you that he said he’d left something you’d want over Cheng-Sheng in that place we’ve been to the namesake of in NJ before I light out for a while guaranteeing my next card will at long long last come from some place else though always with my love Bro

‘What do you think all that’s supposed to mean, Stephen?’ asked van Briel, when the three of us had read it through.

‘Eldritch doesn’t have the proof. Ardal dropped it off somewhere along the way. He must have realized the danger he was in, so he put it in a safe place and asked Joey to tell Rachel where that was in the event of his death.’

‘Why don’t you go get it, then?’

I glared at him. ‘Because I can’t understand the message.’

‘That’s no problem.’ He winked. ‘I can.’

‘How?’

‘Local knowledge. “That place we’ve been to the namesake of in NJ” must be Hoboken, New Jersey, named after Hoboken, suburb of Antwerp.’ Suddenly enthused, he grabbed the Antwerp phone book from amongst a stack of papers and began a search through its pages that ended in a whoop of triumph. ‘Cheng-Sheng is a Chinese restaurant in Hoboken. Let’s go.’

Cheng-Shengs Chinees Restaurant
was at the less prosperous end of Hoboken’s main shopping street. It was several hours away from being open and there was no sign in the stark interior of Cheng-Sheng or any of his family and/or staff. Not that it was them van Briel and I were waiting for on the other side of the road in his far from inconspicuous Porsche. Joey had said ‘
over
Cheng-Sheng’. And there was indeed a flat above the restaurant, with a separate entrance. But there’d been no answer to our several stabs at the bell.

‘They could be gone for the whole day,’ groaned van Briel, lighting his umpteenth cigarette. ‘Some people round here work.’

‘What do you suggest? Go away and try again this evening? I can’t do that.’

‘Maybe you’ll have to.’

‘Not before I’ve spoken to the people in the restaurant. They’ll know the name of the occupant, if nothing else.’

‘We can’t wait all morning.’

‘Why not?’

Van Briel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It sounded like sandpaper, thanks to his abrupt and unshaven departure from home. I was no better groomed myself. ‘Look, Stephen, I have to contact the office. There’s a phone box back along the street. I’ll call them from there. I won’t be long.’

Van Briel got out of the car and trudged away. I took out the postcard and studied it again, even though I already had the
important part off by heart. There was no doubt we were in the right place, improbable as it seemed that Ardal Quilligan had known anyone living here.

Whoever they were, though, and however they were acquainted with him, they might be gone all week, let alone all day. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do about it.

Marie-Louise had promised not to mention the postcard to Rachel’s mother when she arrived. The last thing we needed was Esther Banner following us to Hoboken. But we couldn’t expect Marie-Louise to cover our backs indefinitely. Sooner rather than later, something had to give.

To judge by van Briel’s expression when he returned to the car, it already had. ‘Meneer Oudermans wants me to go in right away. Mrs Banner has arrived and expects me to arrange for her to visit Rachel. And, big surprise, she’s asking if I know where Joey is. Also where you are. Plus, if we needed a plus, which we don’t, a lawyer representing the Linleys has made contact.’

‘You’d better go in, then. But I’m staying here.’

‘Come on, Stephen. It’ll look bad for both of us if I say I’ve lost you. Worse if I say what you’re actually doing.’

‘Go for the lesser evil, then. Claim I’ve given you the slip. Buy me some time.’

‘How much time?’

‘I don’t know. A few hours, at least. I promise I’ll phone in by this afternoon.’

Van Briel sighed. ‘All right, all right. But a few hours only. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘What will you do if no one comes to the flat and Cheng-Sheng’s can’t help you?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

I already had thought of something, which it was best for van Briel to have no inkling of. After he left, I stationed myself in a café with a sight-line on the restaurant. Two coffees later, nothing had changed. It was time to go for broke.

Steely rain had begun to fall, which I reckoned was good for my
purposes. It ensured no one was loitering in the service yard behind Cheng-Sheng when I arrived there a few minutes later. The restaurant’s kitchen had been extended to the rear, with the flat above looking out over its asphalted roof. I wheeled one of three large lidded bins against the wall, clambered on to it and hauled myself up by the extractor flue, then crouched low as I crossed to the windows of the flat. A couple of whacks with the heel of my shoe punched a big enough hole in the glass of one for me to reach in and turn the handle.

As I climbed into the room, I was aware that I had no way of being sure my break-in had gone unobserved. Someone might already be phoning the police. Why this didn’t worry me as much as it should have I can’t explain, except that I wanted answers of some kind and I was determined to get them, whatever risks I ran in the process.

I was in a small and sparsely furnished bedroom. I stepped out on to the landing, from which stairs led down to the street door. There was a bathroom to my left, a tiny kitchen to my right and, beyond that, a lounge. The flat was clean but frowsty, stale cigarette smoke souring the air. There was little in the way of decoration. A couple of buff-enveloped letters were lying unopened on the work top in the kitchen. They were addressed to a P. Verhoest.

I walked into the lounge. The impression I already had of a solitary, unsociable male occupant was reinforced. The walls were bare, the three-piece suite cheap and shabby, the television at least a decade old.

Then, glancing behind me, I noticed a large rectangular object, all of seven feet high, covered with a sheet and propped up against the wall. It looked like it might be a painting. If so, it was the only one in the flat. And yet it was shrouded. I stood in front of it and lifted the sheet off.

It was
Three Swans
. I knew that at once from Brenda Duthie’s description of Desmond Quilligan’s last work of art. I knew it also from the fact that the man in the picture was clearly Eldritch, much younger than he now was and looking, as Marie-Louise had prepared me to expect, quite a lot like me, though with shorter hair
and the addition of a pencil moustache. He was dressed in his trademark brown and gold pinstripe suit and fedora and was shown leaning against a stile set in a dry-stone wall, amidst high-summer countryside. He was in the act of lighting a cigarette, one hand holding the flaming match, the other the box he’d taken it from. Beyond the wall could be seen a stretch of calm blue water: part of a lake, above which a swan was shown, rising in flight, its take-off trail still visible on the lake’s surface.

Brenda Duthie had seen only one swan. But there really were three: the bird, the man, and the emblem on the familiar green, red and yellow box of Swan Vesta matches Eldritch was holding between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. I peered closer. Eldritch’s portrait was life-size, which had enabled Quilligan to incorporate a real box of Swan Vestas in the picture: a tiny piece of collage work which wouldn’t be apparent when viewed from any distance. But there was something odd about it, something very odd indeed, which detracted from the naturalistic effect. The match-box was hollow. The cardboard tray containing the matches themselves was missing.