The False Virgin

Epilogue

Boris Malenkov gazed from his top-floor window at the high summer clouds. He glanced again at his Rolex, then stared out of the window once more. Young Deverill was late by all of eleven minutes. When he arrived, Boris would give Mikhail… he would give him… He struggled to remember the right English expression. A piece of his head, was it? Or maybe it was a piece of mind? Anesha could have told him which one was right. He always relied on her to correct him when he made mistakes in his English. But Anesha was no longer here to put him right.

Boris Malenkov’s thoughts turned from his wife and back to his visitor. His irritation at Mikhail was tempered by a reminder of what the young man was bringing. If he really was carrying it – the text message had been no more than the single word ‘BUTTERFLY’ – then there would be no reproaches for his lateness, none at all.

There was a tap at the door. Boris trundled round expectantly but it was only Eric Butler.

‘Excuse me, Mr Malenkov, but is your guest staying for lunch?’

‘How did you know I had guest?’

‘Sonia mentioned someone was coming to see you and I thought that you might be requiring me to cook for two.’

‘No guest for lunch,’ said Boris, and then corrected himself. ‘I mean, no lunch for guest.’

‘Very well, Mr Malenkov.’

As Eric Butler made to close the door Boris raised his hand. ‘I do not want lunch myself. And please find something to do yourself downstairs. In fact, take afternoon off.’

‘Thank you, Mr Malenkov.’

After the door closed, Boris waited for the clank of the lift taking Butler to the ground floor. While he waited, he looked at the icons arrayed on the walls of this top-floor room, part of his private quarters. He looked at the icons without really seeing them. The autumnal glow of their background was as natural to him as the sun, while the elongated, clear-cut features of the saints were familiar, like the faces of his long-dead parents. The exterior wall with its windows giving a view across the treetops of Eaton Square was the only one not covered with icons.

He heard the soft thump of the lift as it reached the ground floor. Boris had not even been aware that Eric Butler was up here on this level, in his little kitchen at the back. Generally Boris liked his unobtrusiveness. He liked the people who worked for him to be quiet and discreet. Sonia should not have mentioned to Eric Butler that a visitor, a guest, was coming to call. He would have a word with her, he would give her a… suddenly he remembered the expression he’d been searching for. It was ‘a piece of his mind’.

If Boris Malenkov had eavesdropped on the scene now taking place on the ground floor, he would most likely have given both Sonia Davies and Eric Butler a piece of his mind. Eric strolled over behind the desk where Sonia sat working her way through a book of sudoku puzzles. He waited to catch her attention and when she did not look round, he reached down, pushed his hand inside her blouse and gave her right breast a friendly tweak.

‘Eric, no,’ said Sonia, dropping the book and wriggling away from him, but not doing so especially quickly. ‘What if he’s watching? You know he doesn’t like that kind of thing. Thinks I’m still a virgin, probably.’

She nodded towards the CCTV camera tucked below the elaborate cornice over the door and angled directly at her desk. Another camera covered the entrance porch and a third surveyed the small walled garden at the rear of the house. All of them fed into a composite picture on a monitor on Sonia’s desk as well as to another screen on Boris Malenkov’s floor.

‘It’s never switched on these days upstairs,’ said Eric, taking his hand out of her blouse but not moving from his position behind Sonia. ‘Or if it is on, Boris never looks at it. Why should he? When was the last time he had a visitor?’

‘He’s expecting one now,’ said Sonia. ‘The gentleman is a few minutes late. Mr Malenkov will not like that.’

‘That’s the mysterious gentleman visitor, the one you won’t tell me about.’

‘Because I don’t know much about him, except he’s young and good-looking. Get away, Eric. I don’t like you behind me.’

‘You don’t?’

Eric Butler moved around and stood in front of Sonia. He was a small man, with deep brown eyes. Sonia was a round blonde. She and Eric had started sleeping together about three months ago. Coincidentally or otherwise, that was about the time it became obvious that the Anesha Foundation was on the skids. The purpose of the Foundation, named for Boris Malenkov’s late wife Anesha (which means chaste in Russian), was to restore purity to the motherland. It was an almost missionary enterprise, one set up when Boris decided on London as his home after making his money – and making enemies – in the newly liberalised Russia. Now in his early seventies, Malenkov had once been no more than a Soviet Party bureaucrat working in the gas industry. Luck and a little arm-twisting enabled him to earn a fortune after the old system fell apart.

But Boris Malenkov was no oligarch in exile. Once in England, his latent spirituality emerged, spurred by the death of Anesha. He set up the organisation in her name, using the Eaton Square house as office and residence. Yet the fortune he brought from Russia eventually dwindled until only a small deposit remained. Where once a dozen or more dedicated young men and women – some English, but most of them expatriates – had prepared pamphlets and flyers, organised appeals and meetings, and liaised with similar organisations, all for the sake of holy Russia, now there was no one left at the house. No one apart from Eric Butler and Sonia Davies. Not that these two engaged in any missionary-style work, they simply held the fort. Eric Butler did a spot of cooking, as well some tidying up and sorting out of papers. Sonia Davies was the receptionist, although there was rarely anyone to be received these days. In between the ground floor and the top one where Boris himself worked and ate and slept, there were rooms full of slightly out-of-date office equipment, printers and filing cabinets, whole floors where the lift never stopped.

‘Where’re you off to then?’ said Sonia.

‘Going for a walk,’ said Eric. ‘He doesn’t want me up there, he doesn’t want me to do lunch for him and his mysterious visitor. Just as well, since there’s nothing in the kitchen. The cupboard is bare. I’d have to break into the petty cash if he wanted food.’

‘You’d be lucky,’ said Sonia.

‘Why doesn’t he sell some of those religious pictures?’ said Eric, reluctant to leave Sonia’s company. ‘He’d get more than petty cash.’

‘Mr Malenkov will not sacrifice the icons,’ said Sonia. ‘Not unless he’s up against it, and probably not even then.’

‘It’s real, is it, this religious thing?’

Eric Butler had been working for Malenkov only since the beginning of the year. Sonia had been with the Anesha Foundation almost since its inception. She knew that the Russian, of whom she was fond, had been motivated to found it partly by his distaste, even outrage, at the way in which his homeland was sinking into a mire of materialism and corruption. Also, there had been the unexpected death of his wife, who happened to be half-English. Malenkov had sunk all of his fortune into the Foundation. Now the money was running out. Of course, he could sell some of those strange golden pictures on the top floor but somehow Sonia didn’t think that he would. It wasn’t worth explaining why to Eric.

Instead she said to her lover: ‘Stop staring at my chest.’

‘Who’s to see?’ said Eric Butler.

‘I am. Besides, you never know if he’s… ‘She nodded again in the direction of the CCTV camera. ‘Later, you can look as long as you like.’

‘Good. Let’s have a takeaway. Pre-shag? Or post-shag?’

‘I don’t understand you when you use vulgar terms, Eric. Or foreign ones either. Pre-this, post-that.’

‘Indian, Chinese?’

‘Decisions, decisions.’

‘Your place or mine?’

‘There’s a new Thai restaurant round the corner.’

‘That must be round your corner, Sonia. So it’ll be your place, then.’

‘Get out now,’ said Sonia, her eyes flicking towards the monitor on her desktop. ‘I can see Mr Malenkov’s visitor has arrived. Oh, and we’ll be having that Thai takeaway pre-shag, if you don’t mind.’

Meanwhile, on the top floor, Boris Malenkov was again staring at the high white clouds in the summer sky. He looked down just in time to observe Michael Deverill emerging from a taxi and automatically casting an eye up at the very window where Boris stood. Was the young man carrying anything? From this angle, he was unable to see properly.

Deverill disappeared under the portico entrance. Moments later Sonia buzzed to indicate that the visitor was on his way up. Boris sat down at a writing table in the corner nearest the windows. His back was to the door. He picked up a pen and examined it. When the tap at the door came, he waited a moment before answering and also before turning round. Then he pretended to be surprised.

‘Ah, it is you, Mikhail. Kak vashi dela?’

His visitor paused for a moment as if trying to recall the right response to ‘How are you?’ Then he answered simply: ‘Yes, I’m fine, Mr Malenkov. You got my message?’

Boris said nothing. He rose from the chair. His heart beat a little faster as he noticed that Deverill was carrying something before he realised that it was only a plastic bag from a supermarket. Some surprise or query must have appeared on his usually impassive face for Deverill said: ‘Don’t worry, Mr Malenkov, I haven’t brought my shopping with me. Instead I have the item that I mentioned, the one we discussed. The one I texted you about.’

‘That is good.’

‘I often carry around valuable things like this. No one is likely to mug a person with a Sainsbury’s bag.’

Boris Malenkov thought there was something a bit cheap about such deviousness, something almost sacrilegious, if his visitor really had the genuine ‘item’.

‘My father sends his regards,’ said Michael Deverill.

‘You make good side, Mikhail, you and your father Patrick. No, that is not right, not good side. I mean you, you…’

‘Make a good team, Mr Malenkov?’

‘Yes, good team.’

For a moment, Michael Deverill looked uncomfortable at the idea of making a good team with his father. Malenkov seemed not to notice. He went on: ‘Come now, Mikhail. Show.’

They were standing on opposite sides of the Chippendale dining table in the middle of the room. Michael Deverill reached into the plastic bag and brought out something wrapped in what looked like a strip torn off a sheet, none too clean either. He laid it gently on the shiny surface of the table and peeled back the folds of cloth. Inside was an unmarked wooden box with a sliding lid, the kind of box – it occurred to Boris – in which you might keep chess pieces. Michael Deverill removed the lid and handed the box to Boris Malenkov.

Malenkov took the box and carried it to one of the windows. He tilted it so that he might see the object inside more clearly. Then he eased a hand under the object and lifted it right out. In his palm he was holding another hand, a hand that had been severed violently from its arm, to judge by the jagged, splintered stump. The hand rested comfortably in Malenkov’s own wide palm. If you’d been asked to estimate the height of the owner of the hand, you might have said that he – or she – would have been about three feet tall.

The hand was made of wood painted a realistic pinky-white, although the paint was thin and flaking in places. But the most striking thing about it was that in the cupped wooden palm there rested a butterfly, also carved out of wood but enamelled and perhaps studded once with jewels, for there were regular little pits on the butterfly’s wings. The carver had done a fine job, for the hand and the insect seemed to be composed of quite different materials, one thick and fleshy, the other thin and airy.

Boris Malenkov looked at Michael Deverill, still standing on the other side of the table. The young man was gazing at him, waiting for his reaction. His long fair hair flopped over his ears and the collar of his jacket. Boris thought he looked worried.

‘You have done well, Mikhail.’

Again, for a moment, Michael looked not reassured but more uncomfortable, but he quickly said: ‘Thank you, Mr Malenkov. There’s something else.’

Deverill drew another item from the bag and walked round to pass it to the Russian, who took it while continuing to clasp the butterfly. This second item was much smaller, no more than a fragment of wood. In it was embedded a piece of what looked like rock crystal, which, in turn, contained an unidentifiable scrap of greyish material. Boris Malenkov peered and puzzled over this. He turned to Deverill.

‘What you are seeing is a piece of human skin. It belongs to our saint, Beornwyn.’ He paused, gratified at the Russian’s response, a start of surprise amounting almost to fear. It was as if Malenkov were to suddenly glimpse a familiar face in the street, an old friend – or enemy – he had long thought dead. Boris moved away from the window and placed the items – the severed hand cradling the butterfly and the fragment of rock crystal – on the table. He stood back and gazed at them with his hands folded respectfully in front of him. Michael Deverill picked up the thread of what he had been saying. ‘We believe it belongs to St Beornwyn, my father and I. The quartz, the crystal, was most likely embedded in one of her feet, I mean the feet of the statue depicting her, and which served as her reliquary.’

‘Reliquary?’ repeated Malenkov after a time. He had difficulty saying the word.

‘A container for a saint’s relics, objects such as a bone or a phial of dried blood, a shred of clothing or piece of skin. It’s normal for reliquaries to take the form of a box or chest, but sometimes a statue may be used. The image of Beornwyn herself has been lost, apart from these two pieces.’

‘Where did you find them, Mikhail?’

‘Of course, you do understand it was not we who found them, Mr Malenkov. All I can say is that they were unearthed somewhere in Nottinghamshire, from a place where the cult of St Beornwyn was very strong in the days before the dissolution of the monasteries. That was during the reign of-’

Boris Malenkov waved an impatient hand. He did not want a history lesson. But there was something he needed to be sure of.

‘St Beornwyn, she does not come from Notting-ham-shire?’ Boris broke up the name of the county into its component parts. ‘She comes from north?’

‘From Northumbria, yes,’ said Deverill, who had done some research into Beornwyn so he could talk with authority on the subject. ‘She was the daughter of a local king.’

‘My wife, she came from that part of the country too. Not the daughter of king, no, but daughter of Russian, yes.’

Boris smiled to show that he was making a bit of a joke but there was pride in his voice too. Deverill knew that one of his reasons for collecting Beornwyn relics was because of the association with his wife, Anesha, whose Russian father had married a woman from Newcastle. Anesha Malenkov and St Beornwyn came from the same remote, northerly area of England, though many centuries apart, of course.

Michael Deverill continued: ‘The strongest evidence that these Nottinghamshire relics are connected to your saint, Mr Malenkov, is not so much that they were found together near this site which was once holy ground, but that the hand cradling the butterfly – rather a finely wrought carving, wouldn’t you agree? – confirms the link with Beornwyn. Consider how, after her martyrdom, her modesty was preserved by a cloud of those beautiful flying creatures. And of course the crystal containing her skin, her pale flayed skin…’

Michael Deverill put the slightest emphasis on ‘flayed’. Then he paused. He was a good salesman. He knew that the most rewarding results came when the clients did the work, persuading themselves of the value of what they were looking at rather than having to be persuaded of it by others. In any case, he did not want to go into too much detail on this fine early afternoon in the house in Eaton Square. Michael Deverill was in a hurry, a desperate hurry.

He needed to wrap up a deal quickly and return to the flat in Wimbledon that he shared with his father, Patrick. Together they had to catch the 18.50 flight from Gatwick to Malaga and thence to their bolt-hole outside Cordoba, a villa that had been bought long ago in anticipation for just such a day as arrived last week. On the previous Tuesday, to be precise. It was then that the Deverills, father and son, heard that one of the clients to whom they supplied objects of interest – pictures, manuscripts, small pieces of furniture, relics even – had grown suspicious of the provenance of a certain item. This caused the client to query a couple of other items he had purchased through the Deverills.

Unfortunately for Patrick and Michael, this client was like Boris Malenkov in only one respect. He was Russian. But, unlike Boris, Vladimir Zarubin was genuinely rich and genuinely ruthless. He travelled with a palisade of bodyguards and stick-thin blondes. He had a dirty reputation, even in Russia. Vlad the Impaler was one of his nicknames. The nickname was not altogether a joke. Michael had warned his father against dealing with Zarubin but Patrick asked what harm there could be in something as insignificant as a Sheraton commode, followed by a little-known Rossetti painting and then a second picture, this time by the pre-Soviet artist Larionov. To a billionaire like Vladimir Zarubin, the sums involved were piddling. Besides, he was so pig-ignorant he couldn’t have told the difference between a Constable and a Kandinsky, let alone between a carefully wrought fake and the real McCoy.

Unfortunately for the Deverills, father and son, Zarubin employed people who could tell the difference. And when they finally got round to checking up on the commode and the Rossetti and Larionov and some other items, they smelled a rat. Word got back to the Deverills that Vladimir was intending to pay them a visit himself as soon as he returned from a business trip to the Ukraine. He was returning to England that very night. By then, Michael and Patrick planned to be on Spanish soil and inside their Cordoba villa, where they could live happily on the back of several Swiss accounts.

Therefore Michael Deverill needed to conclude his business with Boris Malenkov as fast as possible. Needed this amiable old man to buy the bits and pieces relating to St Beornwyn, so that he, Michael, could scoot off and collect his father.

Boris was still looking at the butterfly-in-hand carving and the fragment of crystal. There were two key features in the legend of St Beornwyn. One was that she had been flayed, a detail that gave a frisson to even the most minute scrap of her skin. The other and more attractive feature was that her poor, despoiled body was discovered shrouded in butterflies. Did Boris Malenkov believe these items to be relics of the cult of Beornwyn? Michael himself did not know if they were genuine, whatever ‘genuine’ meant when it came to a saint’s relics.

The main thing was to get the business over with, fast. Patrick Deverill hadn’t told Michael to make a rapid transaction, to take what he could and then get out. He hadn’t needed to. Nor had he told his son where he obtained the hand and the crystal. Michael preferred not to know. In the past his father had proved himself an adept faker, though on canvas rather than with wood or stone. Patrick Deverill possessed real talent. That talent and the training at the Slade meant that he could have earned his living as a painter. But something in the Deverill blood pushed him down a more winding path.

Michael coughed slightly, a signal that Boris Malenkov should say something. Do something. Preferably buy the Beornwyn relics right now.

As if reading his thoughts, Boris indicated that Deverill should follow him into a smaller room that led off the dining room and that was next to the kitchen where Eric Butler produced the meals. With another gesture Boris directed Deverill to bring the wooden hand cradling the butterfly and the crystal containing the scrap of skin. The inner room, unlike the larger one overlooking Eaton Square, contained only a handful of small icons. It was a place where business was done or might once have been done, with a small table, a couple of upright chairs and a filing cabinet. On the table was a computer and near to it a monitor screen, which Boris used to keep an eye on the ground floor of the house. Both were switched off. There were sets of worry beads coiled on the table. Or perhaps, thought Deverill, they might be rosaries.

Once both men were inside, Boris shut the door and went towards a picture on the wall. This picture stood out, not because of its subject matter – like the icons, it was religious in nature – but because it was a small gilt-framed oil depicting the Madonna and Child. Malenkov carefully detached the picture from the wall and placed it on the surface of the table. He noticed his visitor’s appreciative stare.

‘The work of Lorenzo Gelli, the Florentine,’ said Boris Malenkov. ‘Is good, no?’

Better than good, thought Michael Deverill, and wondering who this Gelli was before realising that the Russian had mispronounced the name by using a hard ‘g’ rather than a soft one. Lorenzo Gelli, of course. The name of that minor Italian master of the Renaissance was familiar to him. So, too, was the picture itself now he looked at it. The face of the Madonna, especially. He must have seen it reproduced in some catalogue. He stooped to look more closely. Through an arch behind the round-faced Madonna and the plump Child on her lap was a delicate landscape composed of hills and rivers, hamlets and little scattered figures. The sky was a delicate azure deepening in colour towards the top of the arch. Altogether, it was a very attractive picture.

But the function of this Western Madonna was not so much decoration as concealment. Set into the wall behind where it hung was a safe. Without troubling to conceal his actions from Deverill, Boris Malenkov twisted the dial and opened the safe. He reached inside and took out several items. These, too, he placed on the table top.

They were: a fragment of manuscript encased in protective plastic together with three boxes, one about six inches long and the other two small and square, all covered with velvet. Malenkov opened the boxes, flicking at hasps and catches with his thick fingers. Michael Deverill had seen the contents before – indeed, he had been responsible for supplying one of them to the Russian. The smaller boxes held a single bone or piece of bone, from a finger or foot perhaps. The long one held what looked like most of a rib. The fragments nestled in velvet, their yellowish pallor contrasting with the purple material.

The common factor to these relics was their connection to the sainted Beornwyn. The piece of manuscript was part of a poem by the medieval writer, Geoffrey Chaucer, who composed a poem about St Beornwyn, to be recited at the court of John of Gaunt. Nothing of the poem survived except this fragment, whose very subject might have remained unknown had the writer not mentioned Beornwyn by name in the first dozen lines. The story went that the scrap of manuscript had been unearthed during excavations at Aldgate, one of the old entrances to London.

Michael Deverill deposited the reliquary objects, the butterfly in the hand and the skin in the crystal, beside the bones. Absently he picked up from the desk a string of worry beads or rosary and poured the chain from hand to hand. Boris walked over to the single window in the room. He stared out across more trees and rooftops. Deverill wondered what was going through his head. Surely Malenkov would agree to purchase these sacred treasures? He still had the means, hadn’t he? Although Deverill had heard stories that the Anesha Foundation was running low on resources. Certainly, the Eaton Square house felt very empty now compared to when he’d made earlier visits. Apart from large Sonia down in the reception area and a man who passed Deverill as he was on the way in, he’d seen no one. For sure Boris was not one of those ultra-rich oligarchs, he was not even a proper multimillionaire. He had no yacht or private Boeing, he owned no football club in London or estate at Cap Ferrat. What he possessed was a driving desire to take Russia back to her spiritual roots. Somehow, Michael assumed, the amassing of these relics and objects connected with a virgin saint was going to help in that task.

Michael Deverill liked Boris Malenkov, certainly by contrast to Vladimir Zarubin, for example. Malenkov was not intimidating. Indeed, there was something almost benevolent about the podgy man.

‘I can’t offer you any money,’ said Boris. ‘I have cash-flow crisis. Next month maybe…’

Next month was too late. The next day would be too late. Somehow Deverill wasn’t surprised by any of this. He said: ‘But you do want those things of Beornwyn, don’t you?’

If Boris noticed such an off-hand way of referring to the relics, he didn’t mention it. Instead he said: ‘I am ready to do exchange, though.’

‘Exchange, Mr Malenkov?’

‘The Madonna on desk, the one you are admiring. By Lorenzo Gelli.’

‘The Lorenzo Gelli,’ said Deverill, taking care to pronounce the name correctly (Jelly). ‘Well, it is a fine piece of work.’

‘A far exchange, as you say.’

‘Yes,’ said Deverill. He didn’t bother to correct Boris’s mistake over a ‘far’ exchange. He glanced at his watch. He had to finish the business with Boris and return to his father. They had to catch that Gatwick flight in the early evening. More worrying, much more worrying than any to-do over relics and pictures, was the return of Vladimir Zarubin from the Ukraine. Through Michael Deverill’s mind there flashed the image of burly brutes picking their way through the flat in Wimbledon, looking for evidence of fakery and fraud. No, not picking their way through, but smashing things up. Not just things either. Yes, yes, take the painting. Get out of here. Get out of town. Get out of the country.

So it was concluded. Michael Deverill left the Eaton Square house with the Lorenzo Gelli unceremoniously wrapped in the same cloth in which he had carried the Beornwyn relics, inside the same plastic bag.

When Michael returned to the flat in Wimbledon, his father was cramming things into a last-minute case.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Did our Boris go for them?’

‘Yes. But he had no money – no ready money, at any rate. I had to take this in lieu.’

‘Let’s see.’

When he saw the Gelli, Patrick Deverill let out a sound between a groan and a laugh.

‘One of mine,’ he said. ‘From the old days. This isn’t a genuine Gelli. No more than the woman in the picture was a real virgin.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m bloody sure, Michael. The model for the Madonna was your mother. Oh, but it’s nice to see her again.’

Michael wasn’t sure whether his father was referring to the Madonna or to his mother, who had been dead these many years. He said: ‘I thought her face looked familiar.’

‘And the baby is you. You were the model when I did it.’

‘Jesus,’ said Michael.

‘You could say,’ said his father. ‘Too late to return it to Boris now.’

‘Perhaps Vlad the Impaler will take it instead.’

‘That’s a joke, right? We are not staying to find out.’

Patrick Deverill dithered for an instant before stuffing the Lorenzo Gelli into the case. He did seem pleased to be reunited with the old fake. Minutes later, the taxi arrived to take father and son to Gatwick airport.

Meanwhile, back in Eaton Square, Boris Malenkov was casting his eyes over the collection of Beornwyn relics, picking up one, now another. He considered that he had got the better part of the bargain. That painting by Gelli he never really liked it. He had bought it in his early days in London through a dealer who later introduced him to the Deverills, father and son. But he had never believed in the Mother or Child in the picture, to him they looked false. There was something bourgeois about their features compared to his beloved icons, there was no real suffering or spirituality to them. So, obtaining the butterfly and the crystal was far exchange. Boris paused for a moment. A far exchange… was that the right expression? Anesha could have told him. And downstairs in reception Sonia Davies was preparing to leave the house in Eaton Square. It hadn’t been much of a day. Half the sudoku book finished. One visitor. That bloke, Michael Deverill was his name, he’d left in a hurry still carrying the Sainsbury’s bag he arrived with. Hardly paused to say goodbye to Sonia. Otherwise no callers. Not even Eric coming back. But he had sent her a text. Rather a naughty message, as it happened, combining food and sex. So now what she was looking forward to was a takeaway from that new Thai place round the corner, followed by a good session with Eric Butler. For a moment she wondered what the old man upstairs would make of that. A tiny part of her was concerned by Boris’s opinion. Then she shrugged. No virgin she.