Saul nodded.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Only the end of it. That was bad enough.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘Wait a minute. Sorry.’ Saul seemed agitated, pressing the thumb of his right hand into the palm of his left as if trying to drill a hole in it. ‘Can you at least tell me if Ruth and Aidan are all right? Both are . . . well, I couldn’t bear to think of either of them being in any trouble.’
‘I don’t know if they’re all right,’ Charlie said, feeling awful when she saw the effect it had on him. ‘You’re better off asking whoever you’ve been dealing with from London.’
‘London? I haven’t spoken to anyone from London.’ Saul was growing twitchier by the second. ‘The policemen who came here were local. I’ve seen them going into the Brown Cow. And coming out, sometimes, very much the worse for wear. I’ve seen
you
with them. I can’t remember their names. One of them was tall and . . . large-ish, with a northern accent.’
‘Was the other short and dark, with a face like a vindictive rat?’ Charlie asked.
Sellers and Gibbs.
Coral Milward’s little helpers. They must have been beside themselves with glee when they’d found their former skipper’s misfortunes plastered all over Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall. Charlie remembered how Milward had taunted her about those same misfortunes, and rage flared inside her. ‘Tell me about Ruth’s fight with Mary,’ she said.
Saul looked caught out. ‘I thought you said she’d told you.’
‘Mary brought in a picture to be framed, Ruth wanted to buy it, Mary didn’t want to sell?’
‘That was the essence of it, yes. Mary’s the only artist I’ve ever met who refuses to sell her work. She doesn’t even like people to see it. She once told me she’d prefer it if I could put the frames on without looking at the pictures. I told her it was impossible. Knowing what she was like, I’d never have dared to ask to buy anything, though she was extremely talented. I should have warned Ruth.’ He pressed his thumb harder into his palm. ‘Has Mary hurt Ruth again? I’ll never forgive myself if she has.’
‘ “Again”?’ said Charlie. ‘What happened between them exactly? How badly was Ruth hurt?’
‘No bones were broken, if that’s what you mean. The damage was mainly psychological. Mary pushed Ruth up against a wall, took a full cylinder of red paint and sprayed it all over her face. After which Ruth completely withdrew into her shell, wouldn’t come to work, wouldn’t speak to anyone.’
‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Charlie inclined her head, forcing him to meet her eye. ‘Listen, Ruth came to me for help last week. I think she might be in danger. Anything you tell me, anything at all, might make the difference between me finding her and not finding her.’
‘This won’t, I promise you.’
Charlie had assumed Saul would be a pushover, but he seemed to have taken a stand. Which made her all the more determined to break him down. ‘You can’t possibly know that,’ she said. ‘Please. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.’
Saul stared at the floor. ‘Ruth wet herself, all right? It was horrible. It must have been awful for her. In front of Mary and me, and the couple who’d walked into the gallery a few seconds before, hoping to see a few nice pictures on their way round town, not a sobbing woman with red paint all over her face, standing in a pool of her own pee!’ He sighed. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. How would you like it if someone repeated a story like that about you?’
‘People know worse things than that about me,’ Charlie told him abruptly. ‘Have you heard the name Martha Wyers before?’
Saul’s forehead creased. ‘Martha . . . Yes. She’s a writer, isn’t she? Aidan knew her. They were both part of an arts promotion some years back. I seem to remember they had their pictures in the papers. Glamorous, young, sexy artists—you get the idea.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘Yes, I think I did. Aidan had an exhibition at a gallery in London.’
‘TiqTaq.’
‘That’s right.’ Saul looked surprised that Charlie knew. ‘I think Martha Wyers came to the private view. I can’t remember her face, but the name rings a bell. Aidan might well have introduced us. Any rate, I seem to remember her being there.’ He picked up a marker pen from the table and spun it round as he thought back several years. ‘With her mum, possibly. Yes, that’s right, because the mum told me about Martha’s book.’
‘
Ice on the Sun.
’
‘I have no memory of the title, I’m afraid. But Mum was rather full of her daughter’s achievement, as I recall, and Martha found it embarrassing.’
‘Do you remember seeing Mary Trelease at Aidan’s private view?’
A tremor passed across Saul’s face. ‘Why would Mary have been there?’ he said. ‘Mary doesn’t know Aidan.’ When Charlie didn’t contradict him, he muttered, ‘Please, don’t tell me they know each other. I’d never have sent Ruth to Aidan if I’d known he had any connection with Mary.’
‘When did you first start framing for Mary?’ Charlie asked him briskly. People who were determined to blame themselves did so even when others advised them not to—that was Charlie’s conclusion, based on her own experience. Better to move on and distract him from his concerns rather than allow him to dwell on them. She was meeting Kerry Gatti in a pub in Rawndesley at half past nine; she couldn’t waste time.
‘A while ago,’ said Saul. ‘A good three or four years, I’d say. I’d offer to check, but I doubt I’d be able to find anything dating back that far.’ As if to prove his point, he lifted a piece of paper from the table, stared at the scarred wood beneath for a few seconds, then replaced the paper in an almost identical position.
‘When Mary first came to you and told you her name—Mary Trelease—did it sound familiar?’
‘No. Why? Should it have?’
Charlie saw no reason not to tell him, since he’d attended the private view and could easily have seen it for himself. ‘In Aidan’s exhibition at TiqTaq, there was a painting called
The Murder of Mary Trelease
.’
Saul looked appalled. ‘What? But . . .’
‘You didn’t see that title?’
‘The gallery was a scrum that night. I don’t think I looked at all the titles, but I’d have noticed, surely, if there’d been a picture of a murder? There wasn’t.’ His face had turned pale. ‘Has Mary been . . . killed?’ This time he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I saw her as recently as last year,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Aidan’s exhibition was in 1999 or 2000 or something like that. The timing . . .’
Charlie fought the temptation to tell him she was as baffled as he was, had been since last Friday when Ruth Bussey had dragged her into something that made no sense, chronologically or in any other way.
‘You bought a picture at Aidan’s private view,’ she said.
‘Yes. If you’re going to ask to look at it, you can’t. I had it for less than a week.’
‘How come?’
Saul flushed. ‘I suppose this is something else you’ll say I need to tell you if I want you to find Ruth.’
‘I’ll be discreet,’ Charlie promised.
‘I sold it. A few days after I picked it up from TiqTaq, I got a phone call from an art collector. I regard myself as a collector too, but I’d never call myself that the way this chap did. For me it’s purely a pleasure. He was evidently a big cheese in the art world, and he wanted to know if I’d be willing to sell him Aidan’s picture, the one I’d bought. He knew what I’d paid for it, and offered me four times that amount.’ A pained look spread across Saul’s face.
‘You accepted his offer,’ Charlie guessed.
‘I felt terrible about it, but yes, I took the money. This place wasn’t as established then as it is now. Even now, I constantly have cash flow problems. Strange thing was, I didn’t really like the painting. I never admitted it to Jan—Jan Garner, that is. She runs TiqTaq, she’s an old friend of mine.’
Charlie nodded.
‘She thought Aidan was the best thing since sliced bread, but I didn’t take to his work at all. I liked him enormously as a person—I’d offered him a job by that point—but there was something about his paintings that left me cold. They were too . . . abrasive, somehow. Looking at them closely made me want to squirm.’ Saul shrugged. ‘So, no doubt that contributed to my decision, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it—worse, if anything. A courier arrived the next day and took the picture away with him.’
‘What about the money?’ Charlie asked.
‘Oh, I had that almost immediately. Within a couple of hours of our first phone call it had appeared in my bank account. Eight thousand pounds.’
‘Not to be sniffed at,’ Charlie agreed. There was no picture she wouldn’t sell for that amount, apart from ones she knew she could get more for, obviously. The
Mona Lisa
, or Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
. Those were the only two famous paintings that sprang to mind.
‘I honestly thought Aidan would be better off with his work in a real collector’s collection, not up on my wall at home,’ said Saul. ‘I never told him, though—I kept meaning to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Which meant I could never invite him back for dinner, all the time he worked for me.’
‘I don’t suppose you remember the name of this collector, do you?’ Charlie asked, not holding out much hope.
‘I do, as a matter of fact. I’m from Dorset originally, and he had the same name as my village of origin, a place no one’s ever heard of unless they were born there. Or rather, he had half of its name. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Blandford Forum, have you?’
Charlie hadn’t. Still, she knew which half was the collector that had made Saul the offer he couldn’t refuse. A man with a wife called Sylvia, and a home on a street that didn’t exist.
‘His name was Blandford,’ said Saul. ‘I wouldn’t swear to his first name, but I have a feeling it might have been Maurice. Maurice Blandford.’
The Swan in Rawndesley was as hot and packed as the gallery had been. Charlie pushed her way to the bar and ordered a pint of lime cordial and soda, feeling the need to rehydrate. She could see Kerry Gatti sitting at a table with two women, reading a hardback book, but he hadn’t seen her yet. She was late, but he wasn’t looking out for her. Didn’t care if she turned up or not. She took her drink and elbowed her way over to him, spilling some of it on the way.
‘Kerry.’
‘Jesus,’ he said, looking up. ‘Did you ask the barmaid for a urine sample?’ One of the women at the table turned her chair away from him. The other gave Charlie a look that made it clear he was nothing to do with her.
His book was by Stephen Hawking,
A Brief History of Time
. A bookmark was sticking out of it suspiciously close to the front cover. Kerry had probably read all of five pages.
‘Is it having a girl’s name that makes you so unpleasant, or your failed career as a comedian?’
He laughed. One of the most irritating things about him was that he seemed to enjoy being insulted. ‘I’m not the only one with a failed career. Yours is about to go down the tubes, from what I hear. And your fiancé’s.’
‘How did you know I was engaged?’ Charlie asked lightly. You had to pretend not to care with Kerry. That was the trick. The more he saw he was getting to you, the more he stuck the knife in. On the plus side, you got to throw as many knives as you liked in return. He was the only person Charlie knew who required and deserved nothing in the way of tact and consideration.
‘I make a point of following your progress,’ he said. ‘
Re
gress. Don’t tell me you’re seriously going to get hitched to that humourless pillock Waterhouse?’
‘That’s the plan,’ Charlie told him.
‘A damn poor one, if it’s true. I for one don’t think you’ll do it. You want all the razzmatazz of an engagement, but you’ll save yourself at the last minute. I bet you’ve not set a date yet.’
Charlie took a deep breath. ‘Whether we have or not, it’s no skin off your diary. You’re not invited. Sorry.’ She flashed him a false smile.
‘Don’t be,’ said Kerry. ‘I couldn’t come anyway—I’d be too embarrassed for you.’
‘You’ve never spoken to Simon, have you? He wasn’t sure who you were.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m sure who he is. A brain in a vat. Walk-on-water legend as a detective, non-starter as a husband. Does he know about us?’
Charlie laughed. ‘Yeah. He knows about
us
, as in me and the several hundred men I fucked before I got engaged to him. One of whom happened to be you.’
‘Ouch,’ Kerry squealed. ‘Momma, you’re the dirtiest.’
‘If you’re asking does he know about you
specifically
. . . As I said, he’s not even sure who you are.’
‘He will be. I’ve done the two of you a favour, because I’m that kind of guy. When you find yourselves sacked and skint, ring Seb at First Call. I’ve told him Waterhouse is good. I lied and said you were too, for old times’ sake. He’ll find jobs for you both if you ask him nicely. Not that this’ll put you off, but you probably won’t have the pleasure of working with
moi
. I’m handing in my notice any day now, giving the comedy another go.’ Kerry shrugged. ‘I’m a funny guy. You’ve got to make the most of your talents in this world. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been neglecting yours since you got engaged. I’d heard calls to the Samaritans had been on the up recently—now I know why. You provided a valuable public service in your heyday.’
‘You know Aidan Seed,’ said Charlie. ‘You went to his private view at TiqTaq in 2000.’
‘Did I?’
‘You bought a painting. A few days after you collected it, you got a call from someone who wanted it enough to offer you more than you’d paid for it. A lot more.’
‘I never liked Seed and I liked his creepy pictures even less,’ said Kerry. ‘I wouldn’t have bought one if I hadn’t had too much to drink. He seemed to be going places, and I thought it’d be a good investment. As it turned out, I got to cash in sooner than I’d expected.’
‘You sold the picture you bought to a man called Maurice Blandford. Or perhaps that wasn’t his name. It might have been Abberton, or . . .’