The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

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.