Headcase

by Peter Helton

  How empty was empty? I felt a strange reluctance to switch on the lights or call out. I crept along to the living room and let the torch beam travel over the furniture: sofa, armchairs, coffee table and tiny secretaire. There was nothing untoward here, no sign of a struggle, no mess even. I checked the glass door to the conservatory. It was locked. The pane of glass Eely had cut during the break-in had been replaced with a rectangle of hardboard. Everything in the studio seemed as it had been. There was no painting on the easel. That left the upper floor to investigate. By the foot of the stairs was the small table with the telephone. My dictaphone was still sitting next to it. I rewound the tape, which took less than a second, then pressed Play. A short moment of hissing. Someone blowing on the microphone, then Alison’s voice. “Testing testing testing. Hi Chris, how ya doing? You’re missing a bloody good session.” Clinking of glasses. Then Annis’s voice. “You sure are. Hey Chris, remember what we said now, no comparing notes.” Laughter, then the recording clicked off. There was nothing else. I pocketed the machine and started upstairs. On my previous visit I had only made it as far as the bathroom. In contrast to the downstairs it was a complete mess. Crumpled towels everywhere, shampoo and conditioner bottles on the floor, a jar of talcum powder exploded over the toilet seat. The shower curtain hung half torn off its rail. I bent down and felt the towels. They were damp. Touching them made me shudder: bathroom scenes traditionally have a bad ending. I backed out of the tiny room into the corridor. There were two closed doors. I opened the one to the left. A cramped little bedroom. I felt for the light switch on the wall and clicked it on. A neatly made-up bed took up most of the space. On the rug by the bedside table I recognized Annis’s leather travel bag. It was open. Clothes, her sketchbook and camera. On the bedside table lay a fat paperback, The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. So Annis really did read in bed.

  I opened the remaining door and flicked on the light which illuminated my nightmare. Annis and Alison were lying on top of the bed, their naked flesh pale against the blue bed sheet. Both were cuffed by one hand high on the wrought-iron bedstead so that their bodies were twisted up awkwardly. Their eyes were closed. Neither of them moved. They looked asleep, only nobody could sleep in a position like that. There was a strange smell in the room, something I didn’t quite recognize. It reminded me vaguely of the dentist’s. Despair rose from the floorboards like a paralysing miasma, rooting me to the spot.

  When at last I regained the power to move I flung myself at Annis in a rage. Perhaps I was screaming, perhaps not. I clawed at her legs, her cold torso, her dry, open mouth. How dare you! How dare you be dead! Then the light seemed to change. In the tiny moment I had left I realized that I had lost. In that split second all my mistakes stacked up in my mind like lead ballast. Then there was a crack and everything stopped. Freezeframed. My vision broke into two, like a torn photograph. The bodies on the bed faded into black and white, then slipped away into darkness.

  The first thing I heard was a moan. It was my own. I was on the move. On the move inside a car crusher, perhaps.

  “God, how can a skinny piece of shit like you be so fucking heavy?” I had never heard Eely’s voice but recognized it instantly. It went with everything I knew about him, vicious, arrogant, wired. And of course quite mad. It took every drop of adrenalin in my body to force my eyes open. I was travelling on the ground, I was being dragged, feet first, on some kind of tarpaulin. Eely’s shape was outlined against the dark, wet sky, puffing with exertion, dragging me in spurts of two or three feet at a time. I tried to shout my fury at him but produced nothing but a gurgling roar.

  “Good to hear you’re still with us. I don’t want you to croak before I get to the edge. This has gotta look right, you know? And it will look right. That’s why I hit you with a rock, see? It won’t look out of place when they do your autopsy. If they ever find your body, that is. Jumped off the cliff in despair. All your injuries will look just right. You see? I’m a bit of an artist myself.” A short laugh. Then hard breathing as we moved again. He had reached the end of the yard where two worn steps led up to the hundred feet or so of scrubby grass between the conservatory and the edge of the cliff-drop. He stopped to catch his breath. There was a broken saddle stone to my left. I managed to fling my arm out to grab hold of it. It seemed to give out electric currents of pain and fear.

  “Oh yeah, I might have stepped on your hands back there. I’m really very thorough. Upsadaisy.” He yanked the tarp. I bumped up the stairs, then level again. When I tried to struggle up, tried to kick, none of my limbs would obey me. My legs trembled and shook in burning, involuntary spasms.

  “You remind me of a dissected frog. Still twitching. Don’t make me hit you again, now, it might spoil it. I do think of everything. I’m thinking much clearer than I ever have. It’s all perfect. The two girls were a great help, they were in the shower together when I walked in. Perfecto. The tall one kicked up a bit of a fuss but didn’t argue with my gun in the end. I gave them some knock-out drops when you turned up because I didn’t want to gag them, that leaves marks. In case they don’t get all burned up properly. So the way I see it pan out…hang on a sec, there’s a bump here, better go round it.” He pulled to the left and we changed direction. “Way I see it, some kinky, lesbo sex games went wrong here. The keys to the cuffs dropped on the floor, whoops. And with the chip pan going full-blast downstairs it’s only a matter of time before it all goes up. Whoosh. I switched it on again, see. I’ll be doing three painters in one day, that’s gotta be a record, don’t you think? Mind you, I’ve seen the shit you guys paint and I reckon I’m doing the world a fucking favour. That Alison girl’s not so bad, but you? What were you thinking, man? I’ve seen toddlers do better. I can’t believe people buy this shit. We used it as wrapping paper!” There came the crash of shattering glass. “Whoa, it started! Kitchen window blew out. I rigged that up well, put lots of cereal boxes round the stove. Well, it’s time to get a move on. I love a good fire but I reckon…soon you’ll be able to…see it from miles away, so I’m splitting, my man. And you’re going…sailing, so you’ll miss it too. Right…another couple of yards. I hope you’re ready for this, made your peace and all that.” He heaved with greater urgency now and reached the edge in two steady pulls. The sound of the sea below competed with the noises in my head and the sound of rushing air as the burning cottage greedily sucked in oxygen. There was a glow to the left of my field of vision. I couldn’t see the house from my position on the ground.

  “Up you come.” I could smell his boozy breath as he swapped sides and began to lift me by the shoulders for the last push. My head lolled back, it was too heavy to control. Two painfully piercing lights appeared behind me, upside down from my vantage point, then the surge of a revved engine. “Fuck. Fuck it!” Eely shouted right by my ear. He gave me another long push. I could feel my legs falling away over the edge. “Aah, fuck.” He dropped me. “Fuck off! Fuck off!” We were caught in blinding light now as Tim’s TT came crashing towards us. Eely was sharply silhouetted against the approaching headlights. He raised his pistol and stood his ground, legs spread wide. There was the crack of a shot, then the car pivoted on the slippery grass. A loud thud, as the side of the car connected with Eely’s body, then he sailed past me into space. The rear lights of the car stopped not two feet from my head. Since I couldn’t move, all I could see now was a muddy rear wheel. It was the nicest rear wheel I’d ever laid eyes on.

  It seemed an age before I saw or heard anything else. When I did it was the blinding light of a torch in front of my face and Tim’s voice.

  “So you’re alive. Thought I was too late. Thought he was disposing of a body. You look pretty shit, mate. Again. Well, if ever a hunch has paid off, this has to be it. Sorry I couldn’t be here earlier, I stopped in the village for directions. Where are the girls?” Tim shone the torch in his own face so I could admire my saviour. I managed to fling my left arm out again. “Inside? Shit shit shit.” He was gone in a flash. The next thing I heard
was the crashing of glass. A lot of crashing, a lot of glass. Tim was sensibly smashing his way into the cottage through the conservatory, away from the source of the fire, which had to be fierce by now. I willed him to get inside before the fire blocked his way, to get them out in time. Two unconscious women, cuffed to a metal bedstead in a burning house…The keys! The keys were somewhere on the floor, Eely had said. If I could move a little, could speak even…Things in my head were getting fuzzier. The noise of the fire was getting louder, a roaring sound, like a turbo-prop plane coming in to land, shifting pitch up and down, with the odd bang and crash thrown in. Very fuzzy now. Suddenly, after what seemed like no time at all, the light came dancing back.

  “They’re out.” Tim’s voice, sandpapered by the smoke. “I know you worry about little details like that so I thought you’d like to know. They’re puking a lot and won’t have to shave their legs for a month but they’re out. Ambulance is on the way. So are the cops, of course. Do you want anything?”

  All I could squeeze out was another groan. Did I want anything? Not really. The girls were alive, I was alive, well, kind of, and Eely had finally and literally gone over the edge. For the moment, I had everything I wanted. Well, if anyone were to offer, I could perhaps manage a tiny shot of morphine.

  Morphine, the alkaloid narcotic principle of opium, really is a wonderful product, and entirely natural, being extracted from the beautiful poppy. Together with codeine, its younger cousin, it used to bring regular relief from suffering to millions. Queen Victoria was very fond of it and never left home without a decent supply. Then a few smack heads ruined it for all of us, so now the chemist will fob you off with inferior products, just to keep the real thing out of their hands. My advice: always insist on the genuine article.

  This time I didn’t even have to ask. There was a price attached to that level of care, though: they kept me in. I got poked, prodded, scanned, was put on “nil by mouth” until the test results were in (in case they had to operate, which they didn’t), then I got realigned, reset and plastered (with plaster), since Eely had apparently worn heavy boots: four of my fingers were broken, index and middle finger on each hand. In the beginning I mercifully drifted in and out of sleep and diligently filled several kidney shaped dishes with vomit whilst awake, which apparently is the polite thing to do when you are severely concussed. Since I hadn’t taken my first Eely-induced concussion seriously they practically nailed me to the bed, kept all visitors away and deflected all my questions, except to say that everything was fine, my friends were fine, and everything else was going to happen not now but soon. Rest rest rest. At first I was past caring, which meant it took me three days to realize I was at the West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance, not the Royal United in Bath. My headaches were richly textured and multi-layered, like a de Kooning painting recreated in razor wire and shoved into my brain via the eye-sockets.

  My thumbs had escaped the enthusiastic attention of the plasterers, which meant that at least I could feed myself, after a fashion, if the stuff they gave me was indeed food. I didn’t get restless until the second week, when there was no more nausea, light flashes or dizzy spells and, unbelievably, the razor wire had rusted away inside my head. After that, every moment became torturous and so mind-numbingly boring that I started to look forward to feeding times like a demented puppy. This time, however, I sat the thing out. I knew I’d had a narrow escape. Perhaps one day even the nightmares would stop.

  I arrived back at Mill House on a bleak Monday evening nine days after the fire. It was the first week of July. Summer had been cancelled and the sky concreted over without my permission. I’d made my own slow way home, by cab and train and cab again, and was thoroughly drained. Yet even in the chilled rain that blustered through the valley, standing back here in my own pot-holed yard was blissful. The house, the lively voice of the mill stream, the sagging outbuildings, the overflowing water barrel, even the puddle I stepped into straight from the taxi, felt like paradise regained. Side by side in the yard, a dirty white Beetle, a muddy Land Rover and an immaculate black TT kept each other company.

  Annis, Tim and Alison had a welcoming fire going in the living room. They took turns hugging me gently, having been told I might remain fragile for some time. Earlier I had elicited grudging medical permission for a limited consumption of alcohol, so I gratefully accepted a bottle of cool Stella.

  We had all talked over the phone before but couldn’t help going over the whole thing again.

  “Advanced school of motoring, mate,” was how Tim shrugged off my admiration for the handbrake manoeuvre that sent Mr Eels flying over the cliff and saved my life. “Running him down worked at the warehouse, I didn’t see why it couldn’t again.”

  “He shot at you. Did he hit anything?”

  “Nope. Didn’t even hit the car. The police found the spent slug in the side of the old fridge by the cottage. Which was just as well, since it backs up my story that I lost control of the car when he aimed his gun at me.”

  “And Eely?”

  “They eventually found what was left of him. Naturally I didn’t tell them that I tried to hit him. It was an accident.” He looked around the room for consent. We did our nodding dog impressions. There would be an inquiry anyway but this way the question of manslaughter, justifiable or not, would hopefully never be raised.

  I turned to Alison. “The cottage?”

  “Three walls and a pile of very smelly rubble. All that oil paint and turps went up like petrol.” I had been amazed that Tim had found the keys to their cuffs in time, until I remembered that he could probably open handcuffs with no more than a hard stare. Alison didn’t seem unduly distressed by the affair. She’d lost some hair in the fire and had it cut very short, quite spiky on top. It suited her new energy. Having watched her inheritance burn down along with her studio and all her paintings seemed to have energized her, as if a heavy burden had disappeared from her life. “I might be homeless and without a painting to my name but I still have some money left. And eventually, I hope, the insurance will pay out.” All evidence of her involvement with the art theft had disappeared. Not to mention the delightful Mr Eels.

  “You’ll go on painting?”

  “Of course.”

  I had to ask. “Faking?”

  She tilted her head and jangled a long silver earring, one of Annis’s, with her fingers. “I must admit I enjoyed doing it. At first. It was an incredible challenge. But…no. No more forgeries. It’s time to get back to my own work.”

  “How did you get involved with those guys in the first place? How did they find you?”

  “Austin Antiques again, of course. I’d also inherited a watercolour, which I thought might be by Constable. Just a study of clouds, you know the kind of thing. Turned out I was right. Aldriges of Bath had it authenticated and put it into auction for me. Austin bought it, we got talking. I mentioned that I was a painter and over a glass of wine, perhaps too many glasses of wine, he asked if I would, you know, do similar stuff for him. He’d pay good money. It didn’t really seem so…criminal then, more of a game. So I agreed. Constable’s always been a favourite of mine. I’d made a close study of his methods when I was at college, so I found it fairly easy. Austin laid his hands on the right kind of paper and I did watercolours “in the manner of”. No signatures or anything. It would never have stood up to much scrutiny but Austin still found his buyers. Mostly Japanese and American tourists. He never sold them as Constables but let the punters think they’d discovered them amongst his junk. Together with the real study he’d bought I made enough money in two years to buy my brother’s half of the cottage. I stopped doing them after that, the medium started to bore me anyway. But then of course he asked me about doing these oil paintings. They weren’t really fakes, since I always used modern canvas. If you took them off the wall and looked at the back you’d see they were copies straight away, only no one was supposed to do that. Of course I knew he was using them in some bloody scam, the way those guys turned up wi
th the originals in the back of a van late at night…” Alison squirmed like a little girl in her armchair. “I know it sounds bloody naive now but I thought it would be…an adventure.”

  And so it had turned out. “They say you know you’re having an adventure when you begin to wish you were back home in bed,” I offered.

  “Yeah, but not chained up to it,” Annis asserted flatly.

  “Oh, I don’t know…” Tim started.

  Annis fiercely cut him off. “Shut up about it, Bigfoot.” The humiliation she had felt at being overpowered by Eely had turned into an icy anger that even the man’s death couldn’t temper. “You’ve no idea what he was like.”

  “True,” he admitted. “I never got to talk to Mr Eels before I killed him.” He raised his Stella bottle in a silent toast.

  “He told us the only reason he didn’t rape us was so he wouldn’t leave any trace.” Annis stared motionless into the fire. “But he did…”

  “Let’s just say he was a complete wanker,” Alison said pointedly.

  “Thank you, Al, exactly the word I was looking for. Eeeyuch! Enough of that.” Life flooded back into her eyes. “Chuck a blanket or something in front of the hearth, we’ll eat on the floor by the fire.”

  When plates and cutlery were in place she lifted the lid on the big fire-blackened casserole and the aroma of cinnamon-spiced lamb filled the room.

  “I had this tagine in Agadir once — ” was as far as I got.

  “Of course you did, you boring old fart. It was 1971 and a ticket to Morocco was two-and-six with Bakelite Airways.” She nodded a long-suffering see-what-I-mean to Alison. Annis had recovered her form.

  “So when Eely searched your studio he was looking for what?” I asked instead.