‘OK.’ Dresler was whispering. ‘Don’t follow him too closely. Leave a gap. Make sure he doesn’t see us.’
‘Jacob, he can’t hear us. You don’t need to whisper.’
‘OK. OK.’ Dresler didn’t laugh. He was obviously tense. Jess felt less so. After all, they weren’t committing any crime, following a van to see where the owner stored his paintings.
The van pulled out of the car park, stopping at the barrier to slot in a ticket, then moved off slowly into the traffic. Jess waited for a moment and pulled out behind it. It would be easy to follow, she thought; even if other cars cut in between, the van was high sided, and she’d be able to see it from a distance.
They drove through the city centre, heading north, over the flyover. Immediately after the junction with the M4, the van turned left, towards the valleys. They came to a roundabout, and this time the van turned right. Jess followed, keeping at a reasonable distance, occasionally letting another car come between them. As they drove along, Dresler kept up a steady stream of instructions. He was beginning to irritate her. She was a good driver, careful yet not overcautious, and she knew this patch well. She was also feeling quite calm and controlled, which was more than she could say for him.
The road wound up a hill, past a warren of industrial estates. It was the kind of bastard sprawl that is never honoured with the name of countryside: a half urban, half rural no-man’s-land of factories, warehouses, garages and small businesses. Further up the road, the estates gave way to a series of ramshackle smallholdings, and then there was a turning to the right, to an old mining village, now a pretty dormitory town. The van went past it, climbing on up the hill until they came to a wide gravel path that led off up into the woods, with a sign beside it advertising aggregates, whatever they might be. The van turned off onto it. Instead of following it, Jess drove on.
‘What did you do that for?’ Dresler burst out.
‘I’m hardly going to follow him up that hill, am I?’ Jess slowed down, looking for a place to park the car. ‘We’ll park the car down here and go up by foot, through the woods.’
‘Fine.’ He seemed to calm down. ‘Sorry.’
Jess didn’t reply. She found a lay-by and parked the car. Then she went round to the back, opened the boot, and put on her walking boots. Dresler hadn’t thought to bring any, but his shoes looked fairly sturdy.
‘OK.’ She fished out an old padded coat from the boot, and put it on. It wasn’t far up the hill, she knew, but they might be hanging around in the woods for a while. Dresler was wearing a dark blue wool coat. It looked a little too good for forest wear, but it would be serviceable enough if it started to rain.
They set off, up a marked footpath through the trees. It was strange, this place, Jess thought. She’d never been here before, but she’d heard of it: Bryn Cau, the Hollow Hill, so called because since the nineteenth century, as much as a million tons of iron had been hacked out of the bowels of the hill. There were holes all over it, so that if you left the path, you could fall into the tunnels below. The beech wood was one of the most ancient in the country, yet it was just a stone’s throw away from the industrial estates. The air was still, the trees arching above them like a great cathedral. There was a carpet of ramsons and wood anemones below their feet, the flowers bowing their heads in the shade, their petals closed, and opening them again where a shaft of sunlight penetrated the canopy above. The earth was soft and springy, the rich mulch of rotted leaves silencing their steps.
They walked on, savouring the deep quiet of the woods that was almost religious in its intensity, despite the fact that only a few yards below them, cars sped along the main road, while above, the odd car travelled up the gravel path. Yet the roar was somehow stifled by the damp sponge of the earth and the panoply of beech trees above their heads. The climb wasn’t steep, but it needed effort and concentration to keep going, so they didn’t talk. Besides, they were both now beginning to feel keyed up; Dresler’s nerves were catching, and by the time they reached the top, Jess’s heart was thumping in her chest.
At the top of the wood, they came out onto the gravel path. Opposite were the gates to the gravel pit, and a sign warning that the premises were controlled by security guards. Inside the gates was a warehouse building, the same kind of identikit structure they’d seen below, in the industrial estates. Like the van they’d been following, it was unmarked.
‘Is there anyone around, d’you think?’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’ Jess looked down the road. There was no sign of the van. ‘He must have come up, unloaded quickly, and gone.’ She paused. ‘Shall we take a look?’
Dresler nodded, and together they stepped out of the woods. They walked over to the open gates, which were surrounded by plastic bottles and Coke cans. In among them, Jess noticed, an orchid was growing. She wanted to go over and look at it, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
‘If anyone sees us, we’ll just say we were walking in the woods,’ Dresler said.
‘Good idea.’ Jess was doing her best to be polite, but she couldn’t help feeling irritated at Dresler’s obvious suggestion.
They walked through the gates towards the building. On the way, they peered down at the quarry. It looked as if some massive crater had dropped on it from on high. All around it were ledges, like windowsills, where the rock had been hewn away. On the flat surface of the bottom were triangular piles of gravel, together with tractors, machinery, and pipes running all around it. Yet there was no activity. The place was completely still, an echoing, empty canyon.
Jess heard a cry and looked up. Above their heads, a falcon wheeled in the sky. It flew off towards the far side of the crater. She was fascinated, wondering if the falcon was returning to its nest. The ledges on the sides of the quarry were said to be home to falcons, goshawks, tawny owls. She’d read about it in the Western Mail. These bird-friendly ledges had been an unexpected benefit of new technology, arising out of the way rock was now blasted out of the quarry.
‘Come on.’ Dresler was impatient. ‘We don’t want to be seen. Let’s get this over with.’
They walked over to the warehouse. They tried the front door, but it was locked. They went round to a side window and peered in.
Inside, the building was empty. It was one great room, like a vast garage. The lights were off, so it was hard to see, but they could just make out the crates stashed against the far wall. Further down in the room were some tins of paint. The floor and walls at that end were smeared with paint, mostly black, but with other, lighter colours glinting in the darkness – red and white, a glittering yellow, and a kind of silvery black. Jess squinted, trying to see more. She could see the outlines of a great heap of something. Cubes of rock. Coal, perhaps?
Something moved in the darkness. A flash of fur. Of teeth. A face sprang to the window, the face of a dog, angry and barking, the roof of its mouth ridged and red, its tongue salivating.
Jess and Dresler shrank back. The dog went on barking, working itself up into a paroxysm.
‘I hope that bloody thing’s locked in there.’ Dresler’s voice shook with fear as he spoke.
They were just about to turn tail and run when a man appeared from the back of the building.
‘Oi. What you doin’ down by yer?’ He was squat, thickset, middle-aged. A long, wispy beard curled down from his chin, and there was a large black plug in one of his earlobes. An ancient woolly hat was jammed on his head.
‘Nothing. Sorry . . . Sorry to trouble you.’ Dresler was flustered.
‘Just seeing if we could find someone who could tell us about those falcons,’ Jess said. Her tone was friendly but respectful. ‘We noticed them nesting over there.’
The man looked relieved. ‘Oh. The birds, is it? Well now, I’m not a bird man myself.’ He approached them. He smelled of damp, of earth, of musty, unwashed clothing. ‘But we’ve got a nesting pair over there. Peregrine falcons, they are.’
The dog saw the man speaking to them, stopped barking
, and left the window.
Jess got into conversation with the guard. They talked about the falcons for a while, and then, eyeing Dresler, he checked himself and remembered his role.
‘Anyway,’ the man checked himself. ‘This is private property, mind, so you’d better be on your way.’
‘Of course. Thanks for your help.’ Dresler began to walk quickly towards the gate. Jess followed him, in the hope that he’d slow down. He was altogether too jumpy.
The man went round the side of the building, away from them, and disappeared into a side door.
‘What did you make of that?’ Dresler asked, when they were out of earshot.
‘You mean, the warehouse?’
He nodded.
‘It’s obviously where Morris works, isn’t it? All those pots of paint. And the piles of coal.’ Jess paused. ‘Though no sign of any canvasses or brushes. That was odd, wasn’t it? I wonder where he actually does the paintings.’
‘He must live somewhere around here.’ Dresler sounded excited. ‘If only we could find out where.’
‘Unless that guy we just met is Morris?’
Dresler frowned. ‘I doubt it somehow. But it’s a possibility, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps if we come back sometime, we’ll see him.’
‘I’m not chancing it.’ Dresler’s tone was final. ‘I don’t want to annoy him. And that dog looked vicious. Come on, let’s get back to the car.’
‘No rush,’ said Jess. ‘We’re perfectly entitled to walk here, you know.’ She paused. ‘There are some rare orchids around here, I’ve heard. The red helleborine and the coral root. I just saw one, I think, at the entrance to the gate. I’d like to see if I can find another.’
Dresler laughed. Now he was out of danger, he seemed to relax. ‘We’re supposed to be on the trail of a reclusive genius, not looking for wild flowers.’
‘I don’t see why we can’t do both.’
‘Fine. But let’s not be hours, eh?’
‘It’ll take ten minutes.’
They crossed the gravel road, and headed up the hill on the other side. All around them, there were fields dotted with molehills, as if the moles had redoubled their tunnelling efforts to compete with their human counterparts. They stopped at another view of the quarry. From this angle, they could see great blue and yellow lakes surrounding it, the flooded remains of the iron and ochre mines that wound under the earth.
‘Wow. It looks like the Mines of Moria from up here,’ Jess murmured, gazing on the spectacle below. The abandoned quarries were sinister and silent, the vivid blues and yellows almost surreal, a testament to humanity’s ability to wreak havoc upon nature. Yet, apparently, nature had struck back: this place, like so much of the pillaged valleys of South Wales, was teeming with wildlife. Part of the reason being that few people ever saw fit to visit the area: its raddled post-industrial beauty simply didn’t appeal to most people’s idea of a rural idyll.
‘Yes, and I think we just met one of the Longbeards,’ Dresler said.
She laughed, and he leaned forward and kissed her. Their good humour with each other seemed to have returned.
She looked for the orchids, but found none. Instead she found other treasures – wood barley, sanicles, rare ferns. The wood anemones were closing their petals for the night. For a mad moment, elated by the majestic beauty of the landscape, she imagined what it must be like to be one of them, dimly aware of the heat and the cold, the light and the dark, for a few glorious days of life in the dappled shade of the beech trees before withering away. Then she put such fanciful thoughts out of her mind, took Dresler’s hand, and led him down the hillside, through the woods and back to the safety of the car.
22
Dresler left for London that evening. He’d wanted Jess to come with him, but she’d decided to spend the rest of the weekend at home. She’d been away too often of late, and she needed some ‘downtime’, as her colleagues called it, lounging around on the sofa, cooking the odd meal, and pottering about in the garden. Rose had a number of activities planned, and Nella would probably be spending most of her time with Gareth, but she hoped that at some point, they’d have the chance to regroup. She’d always found that the only way to catch up with what was going on in her children’s lives was to be around the house for a while, in the background, picking up discarded socks and tidying away bowls of cornflakes, until at some point, one of them started up a conversation with her.
She dropped Dresler off at the station and drove home, tired and a little dispirited. She wasn’t sure why she’d gone off on this wild goose chase with him. She’d been curious about Morris, of course, and the mystery of his true identity still intrigued her, but she was aware that the issue really didn’t concern her. After all, with the girls and her clients to attend to, she had more than enough on her plate already. Not only that, but Dresler had irritated her somewhat on the trip. She couldn’t help feeling that for all his evident love of Morris’s work, what he really wanted was . . . not money exactly . . . but power, power over Morris’s career, power in the art world. She would have done better, she thought, to stay at home, catch up on the housework, the laundry, and a million other tasks that needed doing.
When she got in, she had a surprise waiting for her. Nella and Rose had cooked supper – just a simple pasta with a ready-made sauce and a salad, but it was a sweet, thoughtful gesture. Mari was there too, having just dropped in to visit on the off chance that Jess was at home, and having stayed to chat with the girls. Jess suspected it was she who’d suggested that they cook for her, but even so, it was good to be looked after for once. In the past, Bob would have had dinner waiting for her when she got home late after a day out; she wondered, sometimes, if that was what she missed most about having him around.
As she, Mari and the girls sat down together to eat, Jess sensed that a calm had descended on the house, one that had been largely absent since Bob’s departure. Nella and Rose served the meal in a rhythm of domestic order that she’d established since they were little, copying the touches that made it hers: heated dinner plates, ice in the jug of water, paper napkins – in this case, kitchen roll – and, in the centre of the table, some small flowers or a simple bit of greenery picked from the garden – today, a few primroses in a tiny cut-glass vase her mother had given her years ago. The girls were growing up, she realized, learning her way of running a household.
Rose was affectionate and chatty, almost back to her old self. She seemed to have relaxed a little since the debacle with Tegan, secure in her father’s affections once more. Bob had made a special effort with her that day, taking her out to play tennis and afterwards to lunch. Nella, on the other hand, seemed slightly preoccupied; she was tugging at the hem of her T-shirt again, trying to cover her navel. She’d never been self-conscious about it before – indeed, there’d always been a rather large expanse of it, proudly displayed in low-cut jeans and skimpy tops. She’d have to have a talk with her, Jess thought. Surely if she was pregnant, she’d have come to her. Or perhaps there was some trouble with Gareth; this was the first time she’d seen her on her own, without him, for ages. Then again, maybe Nella was simply being Nella: head in the clouds, either plotting world domination or worrying away at some minor problem that had reached epic proportions in her mind.
The food was good, and their conversation full of warmth and humour. Mari had known the girls since they were babies, and they’d come to treat her as one of the family. They behaved naturally in her presence, so much so that when it was time for their favourite programme, Come Dine with Me, they asked if they could finish their meal in front of the television. Mari didn’t mind, so they picked up their plates and went off.
‘So what were you up to today?’ Mari asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Were you with Dresler?’
Jess nodded. ‘It was rather exciting, actually. We went off looking for this reclusive artist, Hefin Morris. You know, the one who did those black paintings we saw at the party.’
; ‘Oh God, those. So Dresler’s a fan, is he?’
Mari hadn’t listened to a word of Dresler’s speech at the private view, Jess realized.
‘Absolutely. Thinks he’s a genius.’ She paused. She was going to add that she, too, thought the paintings were impressive, but she decided not to. She didn’t want to get into one of those tedious ‘call that art, you must be joking, I could do that standing on my head with my eyes closed’ kind of conversations. Not that she dismissed such views – indeed, she herself had often had the sense, standing in front of some baffling installation, that much contemporary art was really a case of the emperor’s new clothes – it was just that the arguments against it tended to be so repetitive.
‘He must be off his rocker.’ Mari took another helping of tagliatelle, sprinkling a handful of pine nuts over it. ‘Why was he looking for this guy?’
‘Well, Blake Thomas was more or less acting as Morris’s agent. He sold that picture to the museum, and was hoping to sell a lot more, as a consultant to all these international hedge fund managers and so on. And then . . . well, you know.’
Mari nodded. Jess had told her about Blake’s suicide at the tower, but had warned her not to mention it to the girls. There was no reason to frighten them with the details of a horrific event that didn’t concern them. They were in the sitting room now, out of earshot, but there was no telling when one of them might wander in and overhear their conversation.
‘Anyway,’ Jess went on, ‘Morris needs a new agent. Dresler seems to fit the bill. So that’s why he wants to meet him. To offer his services.’
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