As for his wife, Sara wasn’t going to tell Sidney that the marriage was over and had been for many years. Her estranged husband was paying the mortgage and the medical bills. When their daughters were old enough, Sara would divorce him, But not a moment before. The day came, of course. She told him, of course. And Sidney Elliott stood looking at his wife, at this woman who had taken a machete to his career and a cleaver to his emotions, and he had wanted to kill her.

His stammering had increased from that day. His stoop intensified and he cut off all contact with Sara. Not so with his daughters, although over the following years they grew away from the round-shouldered, acerbic man who was always quizzing them about their mother.

Was she seeing anyone?

Did she go out?

Was she happy?

He made them nervous, edgy. He was demanding, imperious, then pleading. He was their father, but not a father of whom they could be proud. This man was just the pathetic remnant of their mother’s machinations.

Then finally, one day at the end of a long summer, Sidney called to see his ex-wife. She was sitting in the garden, sunbathing in a spotted bikini with the radio playing beside her. Her skin was smooth, without a wrinkle, a testament to idleness and egotism. And before he could stop himself, he kicked over the sun lounger she was lying on and sent her sprawling into a bed of roses and well-rotted manure. The next day Sara took out a court order forbidding Sidney from coming within a hundred yards of her.

She needn’t have bothered. He never went near her again, taking some small comfort from his last image of her: scratched by thorns, compost smearing the polka-dot bikini …

Sidney stared down the street as he finished off his cigarette. He wasn’t going to fail, not this time … Using his insider knowledge and contacts, he had finally discovered the identity of the other two specialists Nicholas Laverne had spoken to about the Bosch papers. The one in Holland had been unforthcoming, but the younger man in Boston, USA, had been duped by Elliott’s flattering attention. After all, his achievements looked good on paper.

It had taken a while, but Elliott had gradually eased the information out of him.

‘… Of course all of th-th-this is in confidence. Mr L-L-Laverne has asked me to act as his go-between. He’s busy at the m-m-moment.’

‘I’ll help in any way I can. We are often entrusted with valuable and private information. I’ve spoken to Mr Laverne a few times,’ the young man had replied. ‘What d’you want to know?’

‘The papers. Mr Laverne wants to ch-ch-check. H-h-how many were there in total?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘We thought so,’ Elliott said, swallowing hard. Twenty-eight and he’d only been allowed to see one! ‘Did you s-s-see them all? Obviously I have. B-b-but did you?’

‘Only ten of them,’ the American had replied, ‘but you could ask the expert in Holland how many he saw. Then again, if you’ve seen them yourself, you don’t need to—’

‘I just wanted to ch-ch-check with you that w-w-we had come to the same conclusion, that was all,’ Elliott had replied, taking a shot in the dark. ‘Have you s-s-seen the chain?’

‘The one coming up for sale in London?’ the young man had replied guilelessly. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

Yes, it was wonderful. It was all so fucking wonderful, Elliott thought bitterly, inhaling from his cigarette and feeling a growing frustration. He needed to make that sale. He needed Conrad Voygel. The tycoon wanted the Bosch chain, but did he know about the secret? And if he didn’t, how much more money could Elliott get for finding it – uncover the deception, then take it to Voygel like a sly Salome presenting the head of John the Baptist?

He glanced down the street, thinking of Thomas Littlejohn. A very pleasant man, a man he had met years earlier at a conference in Cambridge. A man who had hinted about some papers from the late Middle Ages that told of a deception that would cause chaos. He hadn’t told Elliott what the deception was, and at the time Elliott had dismissed it because people in the art world burbled about such things regularly. There was always something sensational about to be revealed, usually a ploy to up the price on a sale.

But after Nicholas Laverne had been to see him Elliott remembered what Thomas Littlejohn had said … And then he remembered something else about the dealer. He hadn’t attended the conference alone, but with another man. A small, rather prim little man called Hiram Kaminski.

Elliott knew of him, of course. He was an expert in the art of the late Middle Ages, renowned in his field. The perfect man to talk to about some early and valuable writings, the ideal person to offer advice. A respectable dealer, a considerable intellect – the one person Thomas Littlejohn would have taken into his confidence.

And now Elliott was standing on Old Bond Street, in the cold, staring at the door marked KAMINSKI GALLERY.

Forty-Eight

The noise shook Hiram awake and his hands gripped the arms of the leather chair as he sat up suddenly. Trying to gather his thoughts he realised he had dozed off in his office, and then noticed the sound coming from the back rooms. Wary, he got to his feet and moved towards his office door then paused, listening. Had he locked the back exit? Yes, he was sure he had. Slowly he pushed back the door then jumped, seeing a shadow move past the window.

He was tempted to call out, but stopped himself. It could be a trader or a cleaner, he thought. Someone from one of the shops or galleries working late. But he knew it wasn’t. This person was moving silently now, no longer clumsy. The shadow ducked and paused by the back door as Hiram watched, holding his breath.

Then he saw the handle turn. He was immobilised by shock, his body rigid, his eyes fixed on the juddering handle. It turned to the right and stopped. It turned again and stopped again, further movement impeded by the lock. Then someone started to apply pressure to the door. An instant later Hiram heard a shoulder slamming against the wood, and yet he still couldn’t move, standing transfixed in the doorway of his office.

The noise stopped as quickly as it had begun. For an instant Hiram thought it was over. He remained motionless, but feeling his legs tremble, his mouth dry as asphalt.

A moment passed.

Then another.

It was over.

It wasn’t.

The next sound exploded in Hiram’s ears. A heavy foot was slammed repeatedly against the base of the door, which shuddered and creaked under the onslaught.

This time whoever was outside was determined to get in.

Book Four

‘A world of dreams (and) nightmares in which

forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes.’

Art historian Walter Gibson

‘The Temptation of St Anthony’ [detail]

After Hieronymus Bosch

’s-Hertogenbosch, Brabant, 1473

Hieronymus never discovered how his family found him, but someone betrayed him.

For once the studio door had not been locked. (Was it his gentle brother, Goossen?) Hieronymus had taken his chance to escape and made for Amsterdam, an overcrowded and filthy city where a stranger would be less likely to attract interest. Even a sickly, pale young man wearing clothes unsuited for the cold. All around him streets had lurched into other streets, the webbing of canals banked with markets. Congested alleyways were piled with pig manure and rotting offcuts of fish and meat, dogs scavenging alongside beggars. Men who had lost legs fighting in the wars of Brabant played hurdygurdies on street corners while women carried children on their shoulders as they weaved a foul pathway through the mud. It was like ’s-Hertogenbosch but on a larger scale, seen through a fish-eye lens, grand and terrifying.