The Doomsday Testament(7)

Good fortune came when investigating Option Two. He had followed a trail from a Madrid art house that led him by a circuitous route to Option Three and the jackpot. An auctioneer in Santiago knew a dealer in Buenos Aires who thought he had seen the self-same painting on the wall of the Argentine Embassy in Panama. A trip to the Canal Zone and a friendly cultural attaché who was terribly proud of the embassy’s prized artwork confirmed the identification. The look on his young host’s face when he suggested the Rembrandt might be stolen property almost broke Jamie’s heart. It was the first of many moments of unease created by his new career path. Tracing the painting’s course backwards led him to an American veteran who had indeed taken the Rembrandt home to show Ma, only in Omaha, not Pittsburg, then sold it on. The chain included a respected New York art dealer who had been creative with the Rembrandt’s provenance and whose reputation was now damaged beyond repair. Jamie had savoured his moment of triumph – but it was short-lived. Only too quickly he realized that it made him about as popular in the tight-knit art community as a dose of bubonic plague. Suddenly the small galleries, which had once greeted him with a sympathetic smile and had always been happy to throw him a few crumbs, didn’t want to know him. The big dealerships didn’t even return his phone calls. Still, he had the money to tide him over. At least he did until the New York dealer’s lawyers got involved. The suit never came to court, but keeping a lid on it had cost him most of what he’d been paid to find the painting. His only consolation was that the publicity the find generated and Emil Mandelbaum’s endorsement resulted in a slow stream of commissions from Jewish families who likewise wished to be reunited with their treasures. The work kept him afloat and occupied, but he had never been able to repeat that initial success and he was beginning to wonder if the luck that had brought him the Rembrandt was the beginner’s variety.

He pulled himself off the bed and tentatively opened the top drawer of the dressing table. No hidden surprises. Carefully folded handkerchiefs, socks laid out just so, uniformly white vests and pants that probably dated back decades. He’d wondered if the old man still kept his mother’s correspondence, perhaps a perfumed love letter from Jamie’s father whose name she had never revealed, but there was nothing.

He turned his attention to the wardrobe, breathing in a mouthful of mothballs and well-worn tweed as he opened it. At the same time he caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. The man staring out at him was tall, angular and still carried the vaguely foppish air cultivated at Cambridge. His grandfather’s death had marked him in some way, but he couldn’t really say how. Perhaps it was the slight bruising below the eyes that made him look older than his thirty years, or a set to the thin lips that hadn’t been there previously. Wholesome, verging on handsome, with a steady green-eyed gaze that was more shrewd than intelligent; dark, unruly hair that flopped over his eyes and a hard edge that, strangely, only women seemed to notice. Who are you? he asked the man in the mirror. Where did you come from?

He rummaged through the dark suits, threadbare white shirts and ancient clerical gear, checking pockets, then began on the wardrobe floor, where Matthew had stored his supply of gardening magazines. Nothing there for him to worry about. He turned away, his mind already on the next room. As he did, he caught the faint gleam of metal in a tiny crack at the junction of the floor and the walls. With growing puzzlement he crouched to identify it, but it was only when he removed the magazines and tested it that he realized the floor consisted of a removable plywood panel. His heart beat a little faster. As he raised the wood his eye found a sharp-edged metal box in the darkest corner of the recess.

The box was about the size of an old-fashioned biscuit tin and covered in chipped dark green paint, which gave it a distinctly military look. A patch of bare metal had revealed its hiding place below the wardrobe. When he lifted the box the contents rattled intriguingly. He placed it on the bed with the same feeling of anticipation as when he’d first laid eyes on the Rembrandt, like a clock wound too tight with the springs threatening to explode free. A rusting metal clasp held the box closed and with a deep breath he carefully unclipped it, levered the lid free and lifted it open.

His first impression was of a hotchpotch of army memorabilia; a few tarnished medals, dusty strips of ribbon, worn badges and scraps of time-stained paper. But as his eyes took in the individual elements he realized it was much more than that. The maroon booklet half hidden among the medal ribbons could only be a soldier’s pay book. What he had before him was a man’s whole identity. He felt a surge of exhilaration and had to suppress a shout of triumph. This was his father’s identity. With shaking hands he lifted the booklet and opened it, eyes greedily searching for the name. ‘Shit!’ The word echoed from the walls and he could feel his mother’s posthumous disapproval.