‘I don’t want it,’ I whispered, trying to wipe my face.
Aidan crouched down beside the car. ‘Ruth, Hansard hasn’t been bad-mouthing you. Far from it. All he said was that you offended one of his regulars without meaning to, and lost him a client he was happy to see the back of. If someone as mild as Saul Hansard says something like that the way he said it to me . . . Look, we’ve all got nightmare customers. Hansard, me—any picture-framer’d tell you. There’s the ones who can’t choose and force you to make all the decisions for them, then kick off when it’s done and they decide they don’t like it. The ones I hate most are the neurotics who spot tiny specks of dust on the inside of the glass, and insist on having the whole thing opened up and the glass cleaned, and then you have to reframe it, but they don’t pay for the second framing.’
I felt myself slipping, my hand moist on the wheel, my head lolling. Aidan caught me. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘Do I need to take you to a hospital?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, rousing myself. ‘Just tired, hungry, thirsty. I’ll go home and—’
‘No, you won’t. You’re in no state to drive. You’re coming with me.’
He helped me out of the car, supporting me with both his arms. I felt my skin fizz, like a sort of electrical charge, when he touched me. He turned me round, pointed me in the right direction, and I stumbled back to the workshop, leaning on him. ‘Have you got any flat Coke?’ I muttered into my hair, which was falling in front of my face. I started to laugh hysterically. ‘My interview technique’s even worse than yours,’ I said. ‘This is me applying for a job.’
‘I’ve already told you, the job’s yours.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Yeah, you do,’ he said mildly. He paused when we reached the door of the workshop, looked at me. ‘You want it and you need it. And I’m not only talking about money.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I’m the best at what I do. This is where you want to be working. I’m stubborn, too. See these shoes?’ I looked at his feet. ‘I waited two years for them. Someone recommended me a guy in Hamblesford, makes his own shoes. A proper craftsman. I went to the shop and he told me he had a two-year waiting list. I put my name down and I waited. I could have gone to another shoe shop and bought some mass-produced crap, but I didn’t. I waited the two years, because I knew what I’d be getting was the best. Rain and snow and mud were pouring into my old boots, but I still waited.’
Aidan looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he went on, ‘Hansard told me you were first-rate. He’s crap at framing pictures, but I trust him where people are concerned.’
I made the crassest, most idiotic comment: ‘Pity your shoemaker didn’t have any elves to help him.’
Aidan completely ignored it. Maybe he never read
The Elves and the Shoemaker
when he was little. ‘What were you going to say before?’ he asked. ‘About art?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You started to say, “There’s nothing more . . .” ’
‘It’ll sound stupid.’
‘So?’ he said impatiently. ‘I want to know.’
‘I’m . . . kind of obsessed with art,’ I told him, blushing. ‘That’s why . . . that’s how I came to be working for Saul.’
Aidan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You a painter yourself?’
‘No. Not at all. I’d be hopeless.’
He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because it’s a framer I need.’ He led me through his messy workshop to an even messier room at the back. My eyes passed quickly over the unmade bed, the mounds of clothes, books, CDs, unwashed cups and plates. I forcibly silenced the voice in my head that was saying, ‘Okay for a bloke in his early twenties, not so okay for one in his forties.’ That was the sort of opinion my father might hold, and I didn’t want to share anything with him, not even an opinion about something trivial.
I smelled fruity soap, or shower gel. I scanned the room for a basin, but couldn’t see one. Where was Aidan’s bathroom? I wondered. On the other side of the workshop? I was about to ask when I noticed the walls, and as soon as I did, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to spot the only truly bizarre thing about this room. Three of the four walls were covered with what I imagined was Aidan’s handiwork: extravagant frames—one had a carved wooden crown attached to its top edge—as well as lots of ordinary ones, pale or dark wood, flat or slightly curved.
One thing was not ordinary: none of the frames had anything in them.
Aidan was squatting in front of his miniature fridge. ‘Cheese sandwich do you?’ he said. ‘Think it’ll have to. I’ve got a carton of orange juice.’ He sounded surprised.
When he stood up, he saw me staring. ‘I told you I was the best,’ he said. He crossed the room and started to point out individual frames. ‘This one’s a palladian,’ he said. ‘With the sticky-out corners. It’s based on the pattern of a Greek temple. This one’s called egg-and-dart, for obvious reasons. Can you see the pattern?’
‘Why’s there nothing in them?’ I blurted out. ‘Why have you framed . . .
nothing
?’
His expression hardened. ‘These are highly collectable,’ he said. ‘It’s not nothing, it’s black card. It’s a statement. The artist wants to make you think.’ His mouth twitched. Then he started to laugh. ‘I’m having you on,’ he said. ‘It’s just backing card.’
I don’t like being tricked. The joke over, he didn’t explain. I didn’t find out why he’d put frames on his walls with no pictures inside them. I didn’t particularly care. All I wanted was the orange juice and the cheese sandwich he’d offered me. I was so hungry that I was finding it hard to keep thoughts in my head. I was also worried my breath stank. Had I even brushed my teeth?
Standing in Aidan’s one-room home, the stark fact of how low I’d sunk in two months hit me like a boulder in the chest. What was wrong with me, that I’d let it happen? I could have reacted differently. Better.
‘What are you thinking?’ Aidan asked, cutting cheese with a paint-spotted Stanley knife.
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly.
‘Yeah, you were.’
He hadn’t answered my question about the frames, so I didn’t have to answer his. I knew he was as aware of this as I was.
He gave me my sandwich and a glass of orange juice. I sat cross-legged on the floor to eat it. It tasted divine. ‘Want another one?’ Aidan said, watching me devour the sandwich as if I’d never seen food before.
I nodded.
‘Want to tell me the story of why you left Hansard’s place?’
‘There’s nothing to tell. An artist brought in one of her paintings to be framed; I asked her if I could buy it; she said no, it wasn’t for sale.’ I recited woodenly. ‘I asked her if I could buy any of her other pictures, and she said none of her work was for sale.’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Aidan, his back to me as he foraged in the fridge again. ‘An artist who won’t sell any of her work? I’ve never heard of that before.’
I shivered.
Crazy. Like having empty frames all over your walls, with no pictures in them.
‘So? What happened?’ Aidan asked.
‘She accused me of harassing her.’ I took a sip of my orange juice, hoping he would leave the subject alone.
‘Sounds like a standard shit day at work,’ he said. ‘Why did you leave? Hansard weighed in on your side, didn’t he?’
He sounded as if he was guessing.
Saul hadn’t told him.
Aidan handed me another cheese sandwich. It had dents in the bread from his thumb and forefinger. He looked down at me, frowning. ‘You’ll have to toughen up,’ he said. ‘I’m not having you resigning on me after the first visit from some awkward bugger artist.’
I ate my food to avoid having to answer.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ said Aidan, watching me carefully. ‘Isn’t there?’
I nodded.
For a second he looked wary, perhaps even afraid. ‘You’re just like me,’ he said. ‘I knew it, soon as I saw you. That’s why I gave you a hard time.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask again.’ He stared at the empty frames on his walls, as if making some kind of silent pact with them.
I was smiling at him when he turned to face me, and he smiled back. Having established the ground rules, we could both relax. From that point on, we talked about art, framing—things we were happy to talk about. Aidan started—immediately, while I was still eating—to tell me everything he knew about his craft, everything he thought I should know. He told me that all the concepts and designs in picture-framing come from classical architecture. He dug out dusty hardback books from under piles of black T-shirts and faded jeans, and showed me photographs of tabernacle frames and
trompe l’oeils
and cassettas, explaining what each one was. He railed against people like Saul, who didn’t read up on the history of picture-framing, whose libraries on the subject were less extensive than his own, and against all the art books that contained photographs of unframed pictures, free-floating against a black background, as if the frame were not crucial to the work of art.
I remember being struck by his anger, his apparent determination to make my brain a replica of his, containing the same information. Apart from the bits that were missing, that is. He didn’t tell me, not then and not ever, why he had framed emptiness and hung it on his walls. And I didn’t give him the missing details from the story about why I’d left my job at Saul’s gallery. I’d made what had happened sound so straightforward, but it wasn’t at all—my reaction to the picture, my conviction that I had to have it, all the different ways I’d tried to persuade the artist to sell me some of her work, hounding her so that she had no choice but to lash out at me . . .
My fault. My fault, again.
And of course, the main thing I didn’t tell Aidan, because I didn’t know it at the time, I only found out months later: that the artist’s name was Mary Trelease.
4
3/3/08
‘Have you been bullying DS Kombothekra, Waterhouse?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Filling his petrol tank with porridge, putting laxatives in his coffee?’ Proust pressed his hands together church-and-steeple style, index fingers protruding.
‘No.’
‘Then why is he afraid to give you a simple instruction? You might as well spit it out, Sergeant, while you’ve got me here to protect you.’
Beside Simon, Sam Kombothekra shuffled from one foot to the other, looking as if he would prefer to be in an abattoir, a skip full of rubble—anywhere but the Snowman’s office. ‘I’m assigning you the statements in the Beddoes case,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ For a second, Simon forgot Proust was in the room with them. ‘You told me you’d given that to Sellers and Gibbs.’
‘Sergeant Kombothekra changed his mind,’ said Proust. ‘He decided it was a task best suited to a pedant with a keen eye for detail. That’s you, Waterhouse. As it happens, I agree with him.’
Simon knew what that meant. There was no way this was Kombothekra’s initiative. ‘I don’t mind doing my share if we’re all chipping in,’ he said, doing the calculation in his head as he spoke. Kombothekra would have to do his bit too if he was making Simon do it; he wouldn’t dare not to.
‘Good.’ Proust smiled. ‘Tell him what his share is, Sergeant.’
Kombothekra looked as if someone had inserted a hot poker into a tender part of his body as he said, ‘I’m giving you all the statements.’
‘All of them? But there are two hundred-odd.’
‘Two hundred and seventy-six,’ said Proust. ‘In this instance, no one will be chipping in apart from you, Waterhouse. This is something you can make your own. I know that’s important to you. You’ll have no one interfering, no one to cajole or negotiate with. From here on in, Nancy Beddoes is your exclusive territory. You can plant your flag unchallenged.’
‘Sir, tell me you’re joking. Two hundred and seventy-six people, all living in different parts of the country? It’d take me weeks!’
The Snowman nodded. ‘You know I’m not one to gloat, Waterhouse, or push home my advantage, should I be so lucky as to find myself in possession of one, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that if you were a sergeant, as you certainly should be by now and could be in a matter of months if you put in for your exams—’
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘Don’t interrupt me. If you were a DS, you’d be the team leader. You’d be the one assigning the actions.’
‘To a different team, maybe hundreds of miles away!’ Simon struggled to compose himself. Charlie was in Spilling, his parents were here, everything he knew was here. Proust couldn’t make him move, couldn’t force a promotion on him that he didn’t want.
‘You need to broaden your horizons, Waterhouse. Another good reason to give you Nancy Beddoes. As you say, taking all those statements will involve a fair amount of travel. Aren’t you even a bit curious about your native land? Have you ever left the Culver Valley for any significant period of time?’
Simon wanted to kill him, mainly for staging this production in front of Kombothekra, who knew Simon had been to university in Rawndesley but not that he’d lived with his parents for all of his three years as a student. Proust, unfortunately, knew everything—all the sad details of Simon’s life so far. Which of them was he about to mention now? The age at which Simon left home? The Sunday mornings he’d spent at church with his mother rather than upset her while his university mates had been in bed sleeping off hangovers?
‘I can’t believe you’re serious, sir,’ he said eventually.
Proust grinned. Unlike most of his good moods, this one didn’t have a provisional, threatened-with-imminent-extinction feel about it. It seemed to have taken root, possibly for the whole day. ‘Waterhouse, explain something to me. Why do you respond with such . . . bamboozlement, if that’s a word, when all I’m asking you to do is your job?’ Giving Simon no opportunity to respond, he went on, ‘I’m not ordering you to dress up in a gorilla costume and distribute free bananas on public transport. I’m asking you to take statements from the people to whom Nancy Beddoes fraudulently sold items of clothing on eBay, clothing she’d stolen from high-street shops. Is it my fault there are so many of them? Did I ask Mrs Beddoes to put in the hours of a hedge-fund manager in pursuit of her criminal activities? The woman’s an exceptionally motivated and diligent lawbreaker—you don’t see her complaining about having two hundred and seventy-six people to deal with. Think of it this way, Waterhouse—she did it for the money, and so will you be, because it’s your job.’ Proust beamed, pleased with the neatness of his conclusion. ‘I trust that, by the time you’ve finished, you’ll have had your fill of taking statements. You certainly won’t want to bother taking one from an irresponsible timewaster about a murder that never happened.’