years younger. ‘Shall we share a bottle of something good? The seafood here is fantastic but I hope you won’t be offended if we drink red wine. From memory, they have a very fine Figéac 93 but I think we’ll go for something a little better.’
He ordered for both of them, Iranian caviar with another glass of champagne, followed by grilled turbot and a bottle of Cheval Blanc 88. When they were alone again, he said, ‘That place you used to live – that farm in the south of France – remind me where it was.’
Her heart tripped. ‘Between Entrecasteaux and Salernes.’
‘Were you aware that it’s for sale?’
How many years was it since she’d been there? Four, perhaps? It felt longer. She’d rented it. The owner had been a German investment banker stationed in Tokyo. It was a beautiful place, a little run-down, terraces rising behind the house, olives, lemons, a vineyard falling away to the valley below, the house itself afloat on clouds of lavender bushes. She’d picked it as somewhere to hide from the world and had never wanted to leave.
‘The directors and I have discussed this and – with your permission, naturally – we have decided to acquire the property.’
Stephanie frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘For you. As a token of our gratitude.’
‘I told you in Zurich that I would deal with Heilmann for free.’
‘Exactly so. And we would like you to view this gesture in the same spirit. Consider it a gift. From one friend to another.’
She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘Thank you, Albert. That’s so sweet of you. But I’ll need to think about it.’
‘Is that you, Petra?’
Ten-to-eleven. When the call came, she was sitting on the living-room floor, sorting through Marianne’s domestic bills, listening to Bright Red by Laurie Anderson. The track ‘Tightrope’ was on repeat.
Roland doesn’t know me as Petra. That was her first thought, quickly followed by another: it’s not his voice.
‘Who is this?’
‘Jacob Furst.’
Out of the blue. Or, to be accurate, out of the past.
Furst took her silence incorrectly. ‘You don’t remember me?’
‘Of course I remember you.’
Furst was an old man – in his late eighties now, she guessed – with each year etched into the timbre of his voice. Not surprising, given the life he’d led. And now she recognized the strangely distinct sound of that voice too; high and quavering, almost feminine.
‘I apologize for calling you like this but I need to see you. It’s urgent.’
Another thought was forming; this was Marianne’s mobile phone. How had Furst obtained the number? Through Cyril Bradfield, perhaps, a mutual friend. Stephanie felt Petra taking over, concern making way for pragmatism. ‘Where are you?’
‘Paris.’
Where Furst lived, so far as she knew. ‘I’m going away tomorrow but I’ll be back …’
‘Where are you?’
She felt Petra’s reflex, her mobile had a German number. Did Furst imagine she was in Germany, or did he know that she was in Belgium?
‘I’m right … here.’
He seemed to understand. ‘Could you be in Paris tomorrow?’
‘I could be just about anywhere tomorrow.’
‘I would never have called you if I’d thought there was an alternative but …’
From what she remembered of Furst, that much was true. ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t say,’ he whispered. ‘Not over the phone.’
‘Can it wait?’
The pause undermined the lie that followed. ‘For two or three days, maybe.’
Stephanie pictured Furst; a small man with a crooked frame and surprisingly large hands. Miriam, his wife, was taller and broader.
‘Tell me this: is it the same as last time?’
His reply was barely audible: ‘Almost.’
Almost?
She said, ‘I can’t promise you anything.’
‘Will you try?’
No. Instinctively, that was what she felt. Petra hated situations like this. Unsolicited, unprepared. But there would be no easy escape here. There was a barrier in the way constructed of obligation and sentimentality.
‘One o’clock. If I’m not there by half-past, I’m not coming. Shall I come to your home?’
‘No.’
‘Where?’
‘The place we first met. Do you remember it?’
My carriage is almost empty on the Thalys train service from Brussels-Midi to Gare du Nord in Paris. Belgian countryside scrolls smoothly across my window at high speed, flat and brown beneath a grey sky, ploughed fields speckled with small woods and copses. The tops of the electricity pylons are lost in low, rolling cloud.
A woman in a dark red uniform pours me more coffee. In an hour I’ll be in Paris. In four, I’ll be hurtling through this same stretch of countryside in the opposite direction. In twelve, I’ll be at thirty-five thousand feet, heading for the Indian Ocean.
I’m not sure what I can achieve while I’m with Jacob Furst but I’ll manage something. Furst is a man with a fierce sense of honour; the kind of man to squirm under obligation. And he will feel obligated towards me, no matter how hard I try to persuade him not to be. The truth is, my debt of obligation is greater.
For almost sixty years Furst was one of the great document forgers. A gifted painter from childhood, he was faking masterpieces for wealthy clients by the time he was twenty. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he turned his talents to a more practical purpose, forging documents to help Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Later, he joined the Resistance, creating papers for SOE agents dropped into France between 1942 and 1943, before his eventual capture. He survived for two years at Auschwitz. After the war, he developed the trade in forged documents for profit, protected by the legitimate screen of the family garment business.
He retired from his art – art being exactly what he considers it – in 1995 when the arthritis in his fingers began to affect the quality of his work. Over
