The Hogarth Conspiracy (51 page)

His private penance would be ongoing, but his public sentence was over.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth was thinking that James Holden must never—
never
—discover that Kit wasn't his son. And at the thought, she realized that she was back firmly in her sister's grip. At any time Charlene could reveal the truth, leaving Elizabeth to face years of treatment and care for her son. Treatment she could never afford, care that no whore well past her best could hope to secure. If her sister kept silent, Elizabeth could maintain her business, her life, and her son. Silence was her only weapon. Her last card.

She knew that her sister would relish the situation. Would love to see Elizabeth buckle down, remember her place, and wonder—endlessly wonder—if or when Mrs. Fleet would make that anonymous phone call to James Holden.

In her sister's hand was her future. And knowing that was a little death in itself.

Sixty-Seven

I
NGOLA WAS WAITING OUTSIDE
V
ICTOR'S APARTMENT WHEN HE
returned later that afternoon. She was smoking to calm her nerves, not because she was enjoying it. As she heard his footsteps approach, she turned and smiled, but Victor was unresponsive as he unlocked the front door and moved up the stairs to his apartment. In silence she threw the butt of her cigarette into the gutter and followed him in, standing uncomfortably by the window.

“Whatever we had in the past is over,” Victor began, his tone firm. Not unkind but unbending.

“I want—”

“No; you can't want anything from me,” Victor replied bluntly. “It's finished. You're Christian's wife.”

“It was a marriage of convenience!”

“God, I hope you never tell him that,” Victor replied coldly. “He worships you.”

Thwarted, she snapped back. “And I worship you.”

“No, you don't. You just
want
me. It's a challenge for you, Ingola. You want excitement. You think I don't know what you're really like?” He paused, watching her expression falter. “You think I don't know about your affair with Tully?”

Surprised, she blustered, “That meant nothing! It was a mistake!”

“You slept with my closest friend. I could have hated him for that, but I realized that you'd have chased him, run him to ground. And poor Tully, for all his elegant charm, is a novice around women. I imagine he was flattered. I know he was very lonely, so desperate to fill the void left by his wife that he pushed his morals to the back of his mind to feel wanted. I know how he felt, because I felt it too when we made love.”

“It was a mistake with Tully.”

“One you
repeated
.”

Flushing, she reached out to him, but he stepped back.

“It's over, Ingola. We did love each other, but not now. We can't. I always knew what you were like; it was part of your charm. It was even refreshing, knowing that you were so ruthless. No one was going to walk all over you, keep you down. I admired that in you, but not now. Now it just looks like selfishness.”

“It was one mistake, Victor. I haven't been with Tully for years.”

“But
we
slept together.”

“You fucking hypocrite!” she snarled, furious at being rejected. “What makes you think you can judge me? Look at yourself; you're nothing. A grubby ex-con scrabbling around to find work. Whatever you can, wherever you can, mixing with crooks and whores. The kind of people you used to detest.”

Stung, he retaliated.

“The only difference between the whores I've been mixing with and you is that they're professionals.”

She slapped him—hard. Victor's head jerked back.

“How
dare
you talk to me like that? I could have any man I wanted.”

“Not anymore,” he said coldly. “You can't even have me. And I'm no one—just an ex-con, as you just reminded me. You're on the wane, Ingola; your glory days are over. Now you're a suburban wife living in Worcestershire. Oh, your career's doing okay, but the rest has soured, hasn't it?” He was being unusually cruel, unable to stop himself. “I know what you're lacking. Excitement. Sexual thrills. You always had a high sex drive.”

“Listen to me!” she said desperately. “I can make this right for us. I could leave Christian. I could be with you again, like we used to be. Just us.”

Incredulous, he stared at her.

“It can never be like it was. I'm a convicted criminal.”

“I don't care!”

“Maybe not now, but you would soon enough. When the excitement's worn off, when you realize just how fucking tough it is without a reputation, you wouldn't like it at all,” he said, staring at her. “People look at you with contempt. They don't take your calls; they make little references to what you
used
to be and what you've lost. I know you, Ingola. You couldn't take it; you always crumble when things get tough. You backed out of marrying me easily enough.”

“
You
told me to marry Christian!”

“And you took the opportunity and ran with it. And now you're bored, and you want an adventure. Well, not with me, Ingola. Not with me.”

She moved closer to him, touching his cheek, surprised when he brushed her off.

“You want me, Victor. You know you do. You always did.”

“I want the woman you were, not the one you are now. Face it, Ingola; you picked the life you wanted. You're Christian's wife and a mother.”

“Jack's only a toddler; he'd adjust to a new life.”

“Are you serious? You'd just dump Christian and take his kid? How d'you think he'd feel about that?”

Her eyes narrowed. He saw the shift and paused for an instant. “You
couldn't
take a child from his father.”

“Really?”

“Ingola,” Victor said, suddenly unnerved. “Don't do this to my brother. It would be too cruel. Don't do it. Don't take his child away.”

“Oh, Victor,” Ingola said quietly. “You really
are
a fool, aren't you?” Realizing she had lost, she struck the final blow. “Christian isn't Jack's father. Tully is.”

Sixty-Eight

A
LL OVER THE CAPITAL THERE WERE BETS LAID AND FIGHTS FOR SEATS
and standing room to see the new king crowned. Over the previous two months the final arrangements had been organized, and now, as the coronation came closer, overseas visitors and dignitaries were beginning to arrive. There was not a hotel room left vacant, and the press of tourists pummeled the London population in the heat of an unexpectedly early and blistering spring. Across the world, in countries ruled by presidents and even those with their own royalty, the interest was phenomenal.

After the extended global depression and financial downturn from which the world had taken so long to recover, the coronation was exactly the type of ceremony that united everyone. With the knowledge that the event would be covered by television and followed on the Internet worldwide, the expectation of billions descended on the regal city of London. There were huge profits to be made from royal memorabilia, from the sales of prints and commemorative items. It was an event. It was a crowning. It was big business.

In the six years that had passed since the Hogarth affair, Victor had worked on a number of cases. None as murderous as that first brutal case but a number involving fraud and the smuggling of fakes. His intelligence, experience, and fearlessness helped him to a new role and reputation in the art world in London, Paris, New York, and eventually Australia and the Far East. Instead of being a highly respected dealer, Victor Ballam had become a feared investigator.

And with each assignment, he asked himself whether this would be the one that would give him the lead to solve his own case. As he interviewed the art dealers and the dissolute runners, forgers, and petty crooks who populated its underbelly, he wondered if this would be the day, the man, the question that would lead him finally to the answer he had been seeking for so long. Would it take him to the door of the person or persons responsible for his incarceration and the theft of his good name?

After the Hogarth had been taken by the triads, Victor had often wondered if the forgery would be exposed and threaten his safety. But there was no great revelation. The painting had gone to ground. It was currency, nothing more. At times Victor found himself uneasy, but no one came after him, and when a couple of years had passed, he allowed himself to relax. But not too much.

Meanwhile, he continued his alliance with Tully, occasionally looking at his nephew and trying to see some imprint of his flamboyant friend. A friend who remained in complete ignorance of the child he had sired. But eighteen months after the argument between Victor and Ingola, she went back to Norway. Alone. Walked away from her husband and her son without looking back. But she did one honorable thing: she kept the secret of Jack's parentage. Victor and Christian—made a bemused single father overnight—grew closer, and Victor was a willing and frequent visitor to Worcestershire.

In London, Tully continued with his voice-overs; he'd even landed a part on the London stage that, regretfully, he'd had to give up because of a sudden and acute illness. Called stage fright. He continued to be involved with Victor on his cases but did only the paperwork and the research. He was too old for heroics but not too old to talk to people and uncover information that would have taken another man months. As Tully had always said, he was a pastor to the dispossessed, and his debt to Victor kept him tied more securely than a leash.

As promised, Victor and Liza Frith had kept in touch, and she reminded him often that she would help him if he ever needed her. She stayed in France for a couple of years and then came back to England. Her days as a call girl in Paris had netted her a neat little fortune that she invested in a dress shop in Cornwall, and three years after quitting the business, she married the local vet. Victor never asked if he knew about Liza's previous life, and neither he nor Liza spoke about the woman they had once known. For both of them, Mrs. Fleet was the one memory too powerful and disturbing to talk about.

Working in London and moving in the art circles that were her forte, Victor heard that Park Street had been raided. But before the month was out, Charlene Fleet was back in business. He thought once that he saw her pass by in Hampstead, more of a shadow than a person, but he didn't turn to check. She had been on the other side of the road, the traffic between them. For Victor it was close enough.

It took little effort for him to recall her in the office at the top of the house all those years earlier. Standing with the dog at her feet, cold as ice, wearing a patina of disillusionment, controlled by greed. Never before or since had he come across anyone he feared as much as Charlene Fleet. He suspected her of unnatural crimes, willing depravity, and unbending revenge. Of all the clients Victor Ballam had ever worked for, Mrs. Fleet had been—and remained—the nearest to pure evil.

For months on end he would forget about her, but then she would slither into his dreams, reminding him:
I'll get my own back. It might take me a while, but I will. One day. One day when you're least expecting it. You might have the upper hand now, but not forever. So watch your back, Ballam. No one takes what's mine and gets away with it.

The threat had been potent and serious. Victor had never underestimated that. But time passed, and Mrs. Fleet stayed her hand.

What news Victor heard about Kit Wilkes was through his mother, Elizabeth, who had for some unknown reason stayed in touch. Older now and completely committed to her mute, unmoving, undying child, Elizabeth made a saint's life out of being Kit's companion with James Holden's remote but constant financial support. She spoke of Kit knowing she was there, in the room with him. She would tell anyone who would listen that her son might yet recover, that she was certain she had seen flickers of life: a twitch of a hand, a shudder in a foot. Nothing and no one would dissuade Elizabeth Wilkes from the belief that somehow he would come back to her.