Long Time Coming (36 page)

In his surprise he looked at it a second longer than he should have. Something hard and heavy struck the side of his head. He went down, hitting the floor with a thump that winded him. He saw the shards of a smashed vase lying beside him on the carpet and found himself gazing at them in puzzlement, unable for the moment to understand what had happened. Then his assailant stamped on his wrist, snatched the revolver from his fingers and threw it across the room. Swan heard it slide over the bare boards into the hallway.

The false Swan swung back towards the window. ‘Bloody hell,’ he cursed, throwing himself to his knees and clapping the rifle to his shoulder. Swan heard a car door slam down in the street, then another. The vehicle’s engine was idling, the note setting off an audible vibration in one of the windowpanes.

He rolled on to his elbow and pushed himself up. The false Swan was about to fire. There could be no doubt of it. His head was cocked to the telescopic sight of the rifle, his left hand bracing the barrel, his right curled around the trigger-guard. Swan lashed out with his foot, catching the other man behind the knee. He grunted and toppled to one side, squeezing the trigger before he was ready. There was a loud bang, and a splintering of wood where the misdirected bullet hit the window frame. He recovered himself and turned as Swan tried to scramble to his feet.

Swan saw the rifle butt descending towards him as he rose. And then he saw no more.

He was roused by shouts from outside the flat and a hammering at the door. There were raised voices down in the street as well. He propped himself up on his elbows, his brain seeming to follow the movement several seconds late, accompanied by a pulse of pain. When he raised his hand to the source of the pain, somewhere above his right eyebrow, he winced and saw blood on his fingers. He turned on all fours and dragged himself to his feet by the arm of the chair.

‘
Open up! Garda Síochána!
’ The shouts from the landing were accompanied by the thuds of what sounded like body charges at the door. The false Swan was nowhere to be seen, but his rifle still lay on the chair. Swan stared woozily at it, aware that he needed to act fast to save himself, but unable to translate his thoughts into motion.

He heard pounding feet on the stairs and a medley of thickly accented exchanges. Then something different struck the door, something sharper and harder that hewed the wood as if it was a log: an axe.

He staggered into the hallway. The false Swan was gone. Swan was alone in the flat, though he would not remain so for long. A vertical split opened in one of the door panels as the axe hit it again. The noise was deafening and disabling. He glanced desperately around. The revolver was also gone. But there was a wooden chair standing outside the bathroom where there had not
been one before – and above it an open loft hatch. A prepared escape route? He could only hope so. Another blow of the axe brought its blade clean through the panel. Swan fled along the hall.

He heard a shout, ‘
Got it!
’, from behind him as he jumped on to the chair and thrust his arms through the hatch. He anchored himself by the elbows and levered himself up, feeling the chair topple beneath him as his trailing foot caught its back. He could see a square of light in the loft towards the rear of the roof. He lunged towards the nearest rafter.

But he never touched it. His ankles were grabbed and pulled with such force that he could not keep hold. He fell, hitting the toppled chair and several broad uniformed shoulders before he thumped to the floor.

A hand on the back of his head ground his face into the boards. Other hands grabbed his wrists and yanked his arms round behind him. ‘
Cuff him
,’ someone ordered. There was a clink of metal. He was pulled on to his side. There were thickly booted feet all around him. Then a face, red and angry, close to his own.

‘
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
’ the man rasped, spraying Swan with spittle.

‘No. I’m English. For God’s sake, I—’

‘English? Jesus fucking Christ.’ The face vanished. Then a boot struck Swan hard in the groin. He cried out. And another boot mashed into his lower back. ‘A fucking Englishman trying to kill our Chief.’

‘I haven’t tried to kill anyone,’ Swan gasped. ‘You’re letting the gunman get away.
Listen to me
.’

But no one was listening. They had their would-be assassin. And that was enough.

‘So,’ I said, as Eldritch fell silent and stared out at the grey waters of the Scheldt through a drift of cigarette smoke, ‘what you were locked up for was nothing less than trying to assassinate the Taoiseach.’

‘Yes,’ he replied reflectively. ‘Though hardly anyone knew that. It was hushed up. And as you’ve discovered, it’s still being hushed up. Small wonder, really. Anglo-Irish relations would take a real knock from the revelation that the British Government plotted to knock off the sainted Eamon de Valéra.’

‘You think Churchill approved of the plot?’

‘I don’t know. Someone high up, for certain, though whether
that
high up …’ He shrugged. ‘Linley might be able to tell you, if he had a mind to.’

‘You surely explained how he’d set you up?’

‘Not at my trial, no. I … exercised my right to remain silent.’

‘
Why?
’

‘It’s more complicated than you think. Linley was acting under orders, of course. He’d used me to gain access to the flat not to keep de Valéra under surveillance but to have him killed if he refused to take Éire into the war. As refuse he did. While you and Rachel were rubbing the Linleys up the wrong way in Hampshire last week, I went to the Public Record Office to check exactly when de Valéra turned down MacDonald’s offer. The answer’s in the Downing Street files: a testy note from the Taoiseach, dated the
fourth of July, 1940, stamped as received on the fifth, the day of Henchy’s murder and the day before my arrest. It opens with the words “We are unable to accept the plan outlined”. No room for doubt, then: an unambiguous rejection. Plan B was put into effect immediately: assassinate de Valéra – who obligingly entered his office every morning by the door opposite thirty-one Merrion Street – blame it on an unholy alliance of the Germans and the IRA, then sit back and wait for the new Taoiseach to be forced into the war by sheer strength of public feeling. And it would probably have worked.’

‘But for you.’

‘Yes. I saved de Valéra’s life. And got precisely no thanks for it. I doubt he knew who to believe was responsible, though I’m sure he must have suspected London because of the timing – straight after delivery of his note. Whether he ever read the statement I made to Special Branch I can’t say. In a sense, it’s irrelevant. To maintain neutrality, it couldn’t be admitted that either the British or the Germans had tried to assassinate him. No word of the incident could be allowed to get out. I was tried in camera, by a judge without a jury. Acquittal simply wasn’t an option. I was going down. Luckily for me, the execution of a British citizen was considered too … conspicuous. Luckily also, none of my fellow prisoners knew what I was supposed to have done. I was discreetly put away.’

‘But why didn’t you at least try to persuade the judge you weren’t the gunman?’

‘In the first place because he wouldn’t have believed me. And in the second—’

‘Excuse me, gentlemen.’ A tall, thin, stooping old man of obviously African origin was standing by our bench. He was well-spoken and immaculately dressed, in an elegant dark overcoat, pinstripe trousers, patent-leather shoes and a black homburg. He held an ebony cane in his gloved hand, the silver head of which matched the gleam of his tie-pin. He touched his other hand to the brim of his hat and smiled down at us with every sign of neutral benevolence. ‘May I join you?’

‘There are plenty of other benches,’ said Eldritch discouragingly.

‘But none quite so close, I think, to where the SS
Uitlander
was moored prior to its last, ill-fated voyage.’

‘What did you say?’ Eldritch stared up at him.

‘The
Uitlander
, Meneer Swan. We both remember it well.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Do you not know me?’

My eyes were fixed on Eldritch. His expression was a mixture of disbelief and amazement. Then he shook his head in wonderment. ‘It can’t be.’

‘Yet it is.’

‘J-J.’

The old man nodded and switched his gaze to me. ‘You are Meneer Swan’s nephew, I assume. Meneer Oudermans has told me about you – and your current predicament, of which I must confess to being the unwitting architect. I often stroll along this quay, although this morning’s visit was somewhat more purposeful than usual. It occurred to me that of all the places in this city where I might find your uncle loitering, this was one of the likeliest. I am the hitherto anonymous client you have been pressing Meneer Oudermans to identify: Jean-Jacques Nimbala, former valet to the late Meneer Isaac Meridor.’

‘But—’

‘You drowned with Meridor,’ said Eldritch, finishing my sentence for me.

‘As you see, I did not.’ Nimbala lowered himself stiffly on to the bench beside me. He held the cane upright in front of him, clasping the head with both hands. ‘The
Uitlander
sank at night. The chaos and fear were dreadful but for most of the passengers and crew mercifully brief. The ship went down very fast. Meneer Meridor was beside me one moment and gone the next. By pure chance I found myself in the water close to a drifting lifeboat. I managed to climb aboard. I did not expect to survive, even so, but late the following day I was picked up by a Brazilian freighter. Fishing a half-dead negro out of the Atlantic was not something the captain considered important enough to report to anyone. My race confers certain advantages, one of which is invisibility. It also
confers certain disadvantages. As soon as I had recovered my strength, I was put to work in the galley. The ship proceeded to Lisbon, then to Dakar and finally, after many weeks, to Rio de Janeiro. I spent the remainder of the war as a servant in the household of the vessel’s owner. I stayed on afterwards in a more senior capacity and remained there until his death three years ago. Then I decided to return home – to the Congo. But I did not care for what I found there. So, I came back to Antwerp. This is my home now.’

‘Why did you never contact the Meridors and tell them you were alive?’ asked Eldritch.

‘Mevrouw Meridor has always disliked me. I served her husband and her husband was dead. I was grateful to him for conferring on me the comforts of his position in life, but there were actions he took that I … disapproved of. So, I was content to let his family believe I had died with him. It freed me of an obligation I might otherwise have felt bound by. That is the somewhat shameful truth.’

‘You both worked for Meridor,’ I said, suddenly grasping the similarity. ‘But you both disapproved of him.’

‘To what do you refer, young man?’ Nimbala asked, frowning curiously at me.

‘Verhoest isn’t dead either.’

‘Really? That is … surprising.’

‘Eldritch paid the men hired to kill him
not
to kill him.’

‘Well, well.’ Nimbala looked past me at Eldritch. ‘What a singular man you are, Meneer Swan. Though not a fortunate one, alas.’

‘Not so far.’

‘You are nearly as old as I am. “Not so far” leaves little time for improvement.’

‘I was hoping to make enough money to see me out in style by finding proof that Geoffrey Cardale stole Meridor’s Picassos.’

‘Have you made any progress?’

‘Show him the photographs, Stephen.’

I took the wallet from my pocket and handed it to Nimbala. He examined each photograph in turn, smiling and nodding his head in satisfaction as he did so. ‘These are … remarkable.’

‘But useless,’ said Eldritch. ‘Except for keeping Stephen here and his girlfriend, Rachel Banner, out of a Belgian gaol.’

‘Meneer Oudermans mentioned the deal you’ve tentatively struck. Such a pity. I had hoped …’ Nimbala handed the wallet back to me. ‘Never mind. It cannot be. Meneer Meridor would always value his granddaughter’s welfare above his own good name. I could not have served him as long as I did without understanding that.’ He sighed. ‘Only a simpleton expects the affairs of men to be simple. You evidently dabbled in matters of greater moment in Ireland than mere fraud and forgery, Meneer Swan.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘And we are both old and realistic enough to know when we must … withdraw from the field.’

‘Why were you bothered about the case, anyway? I thought you were free of any obligation to the family.’

‘Not as completely as I’d supposed during my years in Brazil. Returning here brought me into close proximity with my memories of service to Meneer Meridor. Whatever else he may have been, a buyer of fake art he most certainly was not. I felt I had to do something to redeem his reputation. It seemed clear you had played a part in the swindle, yet it was equally clear you hadn’t profited by it. Forgive me, but I thought I could rely on your … venality. I needed someone to act on my behalf if I was to preserve my anonymity, someone who was as certain as I was that Meneer Meridor’s Picassos were genuine. In the circumstances, you were the perfect choice.’

‘How kind of you to say so.’

‘Where did you get the reward money?’ I asked.

‘From the chimney at Zonnestralen,’ Eldritch answered for him.

Nimbala smiled. ‘You are correct, Meneer Swan. I knew, as Mevrouw Meridor did not, where her husband had concealed a cache of diamonds prior to our departure for New York as a precaution against … mishaps on the voyage. I did not regard taking them as theft. I believe Meneer Meridor would have regarded my use of the money they fetched as a prudent investment. He would even have been pleased that I am able to dress more smartly these
days. He placed a high value on appearance.’

‘I’m sorry to have to be so blunt, Mr Nimbala,’ I said, acutely aware that my priority was meeting Tate’s demands, ‘but I need fifteen thousand pounds to secure the negatives of these photographs and since, as you admit, Rachel and I are in this jam partly because of you …’