‘Then what?’

‘She had her highlights done.’

Hiram stared at his wife, taking in a breath. ‘I mean what else did Miriam say?’

‘Nothing!’ Judith replied. ‘That’s the point. She shut up like a clam. Which made me think that you should have a chat with Gerrit de Keyser.’

‘I don’t like him, the foul-mouthed barrow boy.’

‘Foul-mouthed or not, talk to him. You’ve known each other for years. Take him out for lunch, suss him out.’

‘Gerrit won’t confide in me. You’d be better off taking Miriam out for lunch.’

‘I won’t get anything else out of Miriam der Keyser. No one will,’ Judith said firmly. ‘She looked like someone who’d just won the lottery – but forgotten where she put the ticket.’

Eight

Paris, France

Unnerved, Sabine found herself studying every item of furniture in the room, each familiar piece collected during her marriage and afterwards, in her cosy widowhood. Cosy to outsiders, almost bland, but that wasn’t the whole truth. Sabine let her hand rest on the lid of the grand piano. No one played it, no one ever had – it simply sat like a washed-up French-polished crab on the sand of the Aubusson carpet.

Impatient, Sabine turned away. She wasn’t soothed by the sight of her belongings, rather she found them confrontational, mute rebukes to a life half lived. But that wasn’t true. She had done more than any of her jaded neighbours. She had secrets; secrets that were long kept, treasured, but were now surfacing, called up unexpectedly from the wreck of history.

And all because of a thug of a man with bad skin … Sabine felt her age for the first time in her life. This was serious, something Decleor couldn’t massage away. Something no plastic surgeon could eradicate or reverse. She was in trouble.

Her courage faltered, then her genes kicked in. Those genes from her earlier, tougher life. She was ready to fight, but just she had to write a testament in case the fight turned out to be a dead end, the demise of Sabine Monette. She glanced at the escritoire; she would write down everything that had happened. Not about the Bosch chain, but about her life and her own – most personal – secret. Something no one knew about. Not even Nicholas Laverne.

She had come close to telling him once, all those years before when she had called in at St Stephen’s church. Instead she had confessed to a crisis of faith, and as their friendship developed there was never the right time to tell Nicholas the truth. But she would now … Because the Dutchman had frightened her and her future seemed suddenly bleak.

Putting in a call, Sabine was relieved when the phone was picked up. ‘Nicholas, where are you?’

‘London. I told you I was coming here.’

‘Someone threatened me today—’

‘What?’

‘Some big Dutch bastard, who looked like he was wearing make-up, unless I’m losing my mind,’ she snapped, sliding the lock on the door of her city centre apartment and then drawing the curtains. ‘He didn’t tell me his name—’

‘What did he want?’

‘The chain. He’d been hired by Gerrit der Keyser, the little runt. They knew I’d taken the chain off the Bosch when I was in the gallery. They have me on tape.’ She smiled suddenly, bleakly amused. ‘Glad I was dressed up.’

On the other end of the line, Nicholas listened. Her bravado impressed him, but he was worried. He had been fond of Sabine Monette for years, his attentions filling the void left by her husband’s death. Yet their meeting had been a chance one. Sabine had been seeing friends in London and had visited St Stephen’s to make her confession. And it had been Nicholas Laverne, aka Father Daniel, to whom she had confessed.

Sabine had been a devout Catholic, but also a confused one. Ever since childhood she her put her desires into prayers, convinced of the presence of God by the continual granting of her supplications: deliverance from poverty, a wealthy husband, fine homes. Yet in her later years she had hit a crisis of faith. She turned from God not because He had been indulgent with her, but because He had been too lenient. The money had bought her what she wanted, but after that, what good was it? The wealthy husband had screwed other women, and then died. The fine homes required constant attention and staff, a never-ending bouncing from Paris to Lyon and back again.

The advantages for which the young and desperate Sabine had ached had turned out to be an anticlimax in her later years. To her surprise she realised that her faith was wavering and that she had nothing left to say to God. In fact, it was her lapse of faith that had propelled her to the church of St Stephen late one evening in winter, eleven years earlier.

Unlike the opulent, incense-bound atmosphere of Notre Dame in Paris, Sabine walked into a silent, narrow chapel, where the only lights had been dimmed, burning over the altar and beside the confessional booth. Her footsteps had announced her arrival, Nicholas hearing her entrance and moving into the church from the vestry beyond.

They never spoke of what Sabine had confessed that night or what Nicholas had heard. It had been a confession, after all, and his silence had been guaranteed. But from then on they became allies. In the week that followed, Nicholas had heard Sabine’s confession several more times, until she stopped confessing. But she didn’t stop visiting St Stephen’s on her return trips to London and she didn’t stop talking to Nicholas or listening to him express his own growing discontent with the Church.

His confusion ran parallel to her own and compounded her uncertainty. But she liked the priest’s intelligence and wondered about his upbringing – a past he would avoid assiduously. Then one day his smoulder of discontent went up like a keg of gunpowder. Father Daniel was no more and Nicholas Laverne took his place.

‘Gerrit der Keyser’s got me on tape!’ she repeated.

‘Maybe he was bluffing—’

‘I don’t think so. He described exactly what I did.’ She stared at the phone in her hand. ‘You don’t think this is being taped, do you?’

‘Why would they tape your phone?’

‘Because his assistant seemed very angry when I told him I didn’t have the chain.’ She paused, adding, ‘I didn’t tell him you had it, but when I said it wasn’t in my possession any longer, he said, “You shouldn’t have told me that.” He was scary, I can tell you.’ Her voice wavered for an instant. ‘You do still have the chain, don’t you?’

‘Yes, and I’ve spoken to someone who knows about Hieronymus Bosch. He’s an expert on Catholicism in the Middle Ages and art history. He was my mentor once – Father Michael at St Stephen’s.’ Nicholas paused, thinking back to the previous night. ‘I didn’t expect him to be glad to see me, but I certainly didn’t think he’d be afraid of me.’

‘Afraid of you – or what you told him?’

‘That’s just the point,’ Nicholas replied. ‘I was about to tell him the whole story and he didn’t want to know. I tried to fill him in, but then something happened and I missed my chance. To be honest, he threw me out.’

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. ‘So he doesn’t know the chain’s secret?’

‘No. Only you and I know that.’

‘And Gerrit der Keyser and the Dutch moose.’

‘But do they?’ he challenged her. ‘They know you stole a chain off a painting which was connected to Hieronymus Bosch, but they don’t know what was inside it … Maybe only we know that.’

‘This isn’t good,’ Sabine said, shivering. ‘If they’re angry about losing the chain, what would they do if they knew about the rest?’

Nine

Sabine’s words echoed in Nicholas’s head. ‘What would they do if they knew about the rest?’

His mind slid back to the previous week, when she had returned to the hotel in London, brandishing the small Bosch painting. At once it had struck him that her actions were unusual: Sabine relied on other people and usually anything she bought would have been delivered. What he also hadn’t been prepared for was her then ignoring the painting and taking something out of her handbag.