And she was absolutely right.
“Why don’t you come upstairs, Sam?” she said finally, adding, in a tone that said that this was a bad scenario, but the best solution possible:
“You’re here now.” Suddenly she looked utterly weary. “The least we can do is give you a coffee.”
I never got the coffee, which annoyed me considerably.
Everyone was gathered in Stanley’s office, the one where I had met him and Laurence yesterday. It was the largest, with enough room to collect all the gallery staff round the table. Most of the faces I recognised: Stanley, Suzanne, Laurence, Kevin, Don. There were three others to whom Carol, always punctilious, introduced me briefly, but I forgot the names as soon as she had pronounced them. Chairs were found for both me and Java, with Carol, naturally, at the head of the table.
My eyes met Laurence’s briefly as I pulled up my chair. He looked terrible. Any colour in his face had drained away, and the freckles stood out hectically against their dead-white background. His hands couldn’t keep still; placed on the table in front of him, as if to ground them, they kept fidgeting with each other as if he were picking at a scab. He seemed quite unconscious of what he was doing, oblivious to the irritated glances other people cast at him.
“We have to take stock of the situation,” Carol was saying. “Frankly, I can’t wait to start clearing up this”—she gestured to the door of the room, meaning to indicate the whole gallery beyond—“this crap on the walls. And floor.”
I thought of the crimson stains of paint splashed over the beautiful wooden parquet outside.
“But we can’t, not till the cops get here.”
“The cops?” Laurence said blankly. Clearly not everyone had known that they were on their way.
“I rang Barbara at once. I had to.” Carol spread her hands wide. “If it had just been paint on the walls we could have got away with it. But the paintings will need major cleaning work. There was no way I couldn’t tell her. And she wanted me to call the cops.”
“You can’t blame her, I suppose,” Suzanne said.
Carol gave a sharp little shrug.
“Cops mean publicity,” she said succinctly. “I can’t believe she hasn’t thought that one through. Though it’ll be much worse for us than her.”
Stanley cleared his throat, as if asking why.
“For anyone who doesn’t yet know,” Carol said, her voice cold, “the gallery was not broken into. That is, someone used keys to get in and knew how the security system worked. Can I just check now, formally, that everyone here has their keys and has not told anyone who doesn’t work here about the ins and outs of the alarm system?”
Everyone shook their heads. Suzanne said:
“But, technically, someone might have copied our keys and put them back. I mean, it’s really unlikely, but we can’t rule it out.”
“What about the security code for the alarm?” I asked.
“There isn’t one,” Carol said. “There’s another key you turn in a hidden panel. We’re not”—she looked uncomfortable at having to say this in front of me, but ploughed on—“we don’t really have to worry too much about security. We’re not dealing in old masters that have an established market value. A large part of the price of a piece here comes from the cachet of the fact that we—Bergmann LaTouche—are selling it. I mean, there’s no underground market in this kind of modern art. It has no street value. So we’re not at much risk of a break-in.”
“I agree,” I said, to reassure her. “A burglar’s much more likely to go for the computers here than for the art.”
Carol looked relieved. “I’m glad you understand.” She looked round the group of people. “By the way,” she said, “where’s Kate? I haven’t seen her this morning.”
“She rang and said she’d be a little late,” Suzanne said after a pause. “She was checking out that new frame guy.”
Carol checked her watch and frowned slightly.
“How long can that take? I’ll have a word with her when she comes in.”
Even in the midst of chaos, nothing escaped Carol. I was impressed.
A sharp burst of white noise issued from the intercom by the door.
“That’ll be the cops,” Carol said, getting up to buzz them in. “Hello?” she said, no more loudly than usual; but somehow it echoed all round the silent room. “Hello?” More white noise followed. “Barbara?” Carol said, her voice increasingly tense. “Is that you?”
There was a collective, stifled groan of disbelief.
“Hang on,” she said finally. “We’ll be down straight away.”
“Jesus,” she said, taking her finger off the talk button. “I tried to put her off coming in. … I didn’t want her to have to see the state we’re in.”
“I guess she wants to see the full nightmare,” Laurence said ghoulishly. “Bet she doesn’t close her eyes at the scary bits in horror films.”
Carol shot him a killing look.
“Stanley,” she pronounced, the tone of voice making it an order, “I think you should take Kevin and get down there right now to smooth things over.”
I didn’t like Stanley, but I felt a wave of sympathy for him all the same.
“But Carol—” Stanley looked horrified, his eyes wide as saucers. “Why me?” he pleaded desperately. “I mean, you’re the senior partner! It should be you!”
“Barbara,” Carol said firmly, “is a man’s woman, and you’re the charmer here, Stanley. Go down and work the old Pinketts fascination. And Kevin won’t hurt either. Off you go. She’s waiting.”
It was like a call to battle. Pushing back his chair, Stanley stood up with the air of an aristocrat facing the tumbrel. Wanting to look his best for the execution, he smoothed back his already slick yellow hair with the palms of his hands and adjusted his tie.
“Right,” he said, tweaking at the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. “Kevin?”
Kevin was on his feet, swallowing hard. He followed Stanley in silence from the room. No one said a word. We sat and listened to their footsteps crossing the parquet, descending the stairs, and, more faintly now but still discernible in the hush, treading over the concrete floor towards the door. The lock clicked and the heavy door slid back, creaking a little as it went. There was a murmur of voices, one more high-pitched than the others. The door closed again. Such a long and terrible silence then ensued that by the end of it I felt like a helpless spectator at a slasher film, waiting for the psychopath to jump out from behind a cupboard and start stabbing away. All it needed was some slow John Carpenter music building gradually to the inevitable nerve-gutting shock. When Barbara Bilder let out a scream, I think we were all grateful for the catharsis.
It didn’t last too long, just enough time for us to have recovered from the initial jump out of our seats. To do her justice it sounded as if she had shrieked in protest and disbelief rather than self-pity; there was an edge to her voice which made me even more grateful than I had been before that I wasn’t the one down there dealing with the situation.
Glances of sympathy for the absent sacrificial lambs were exchanged.
“Maybe Barbara’ll spatter some real blood on the walls,” Laurence muttered. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
Now the voices downstairs were going at full blast. Barbara Bilder didn’t seem to be pausing for breath; maybe she could do that flute-player’s trick of simultaneously inhaling through her nostrils while keeping a continuous flow of air issuing from her lips. The feet were coming up the stairs now, but she kept on talking. Her wind must be pretty good. There was another horrible pause as they entered the upstairs gallery, this time succeeded by a long-drawn-out wail of grief. But the whole routine was speeded up by now, and shortly afterwards all the chatter resumed, the volume increasing with alarming speed. They were coming right for us.
Laurence looked as if he wanted to hide under the table. Carol steadied herself and stood up, facing the door with her jaw set, like the captain refusing to move from t
he bridge while all the rats are looking around desperately for escape hatches. The only way out was the window, and it would have been more than a little undignified.
The voices were right outside the door now. A moment later and Stanley was holding it open.
“Barbara,” he said solicitously. “After you.”
I heard a series of glottal stops as everyone swallowed hard and composed themselves. Laurence’s hands were working at each other so hard that Suzanne, unable to bear it, reached over and slapped at them. He looked up at her, shocked, then down at his fingers, stilling them, obviously unaware of what he had been doing.
Barbara Bilder came through the door and paused just on the threshold. Behind her were Kevin and an older man who was presumably with Barbara. Every face swivelled towards her. We must have looked like a classroom of the Lower Fourth which has behaved so badly that the headmistress has been called in to reprove both them and the teacher.
“Three years’ work,” she said in a small, choked voice. “Three years’ work!”
Wordlessly, Kevin scuttled round her and retrieved a chair from the side of the room, holding it out to her as if it would console her. Slowly she sank into it.
“Three years’ work,” she repeated. “I just can’t believe it.” She looked round us. “When I catch the person who did this,” she said furiously, “I’m going to strangle them with my bare hands!”
And she sounded like she meant it.
Barbara Bilder was one of those rare people whose charisma is powerful enough to make you disregard the lack of distinction in their appearance. Technically she was a nonentity: small, dumpy, forgettably dressed in a big shapeless sweater and trailing skirt, her hair scraped back from her face into a tight little bun, she could have been an Eastern European housewife who spent most of her life complaining about the rising cost of potatoes. But there was something about her that drew your attention and kept it, even before she had fixed you near-hypnotically with her big, shiny brown eyes. Her voice, too, had a strange fascination. It was both high and smooth, almost like a chant, oddly enthralling.
“I’m just in shock,” she was saying now. Though her words were totally banal, we were all leaning forward to catch them just as if they had been vital for our salvation. “I don’t know what to say. I’m poleaxed. …”
Trailing off, she looked up at Stanley, who was hovering beside her. “You will find out who did this, won’t you, Stan? Promise me you will!”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Stanley promised.
“I know I can rely on you,” Barbara said gratefully, still gazing up at him. I saw exactly what Carol had meant about Barbara being a man’s woman; there was something eternally girlish about her calculated to appeal to the male protective instincts. She trod the line perfectly; she didn’t breathe her words, or bat her lashes, or behave too kittenishly. Very sensible. Such manoeuvres would be grotesque for anyone over sixteen and particularly for a woman who was as physically attractive as a babushka. And yet she projected her brand of appeal so powerfully that Stanley was busy patting her hand and saying “There, there” so reassuringly that he must have been restraining himself from adding that she wasn’t to worry her pretty little head about anything.
“Can we get you anything, Barbara?” Carol said sympathetically. “A glass of water, coffee …?”
I perked up when coffee was mentioned. If Barbara was getting some I was putting in my own order. But the wretched woman knocked it on the head.
“No, really, I’m fine,” she said. “But thank you, Carol. You’re so kind. I just need time to take this in.”
I subsided gloomily, beginning to nurse a grudge against her.
“Sure.” Carol pulled up her chair and sat down. “Barbara, if you’re OK to talk about this, we’re having a council of war right now, as you can see. We’re expecting the cops at any moment. Can I—”
“The cops?” Barbara stared at her. “Oh dear Lord, that was me, wasn’t it? I was so upset when you told me, I didn’t think! But”—she put one hand up to her mouth—“the publicity! Oh, why didn’t I just say to keep it quiet?”
The man who had come in with her was standing behind her chair, resting his hands on its back. He put them on her shoulders now, squeezing reassuringly.
“You know that’s what I suggested, darling,” he said. “Let Carol deal with it. She’s more than capable.”
She reached up and took one of his hands briefly, giving him a brave smile. They both wore wedding rings, I noticed. I could safely assume that this was Mr. Barbara Bilder.
“Oh, Jon,” she sighed. “Why didn’t I listen to you? Why am I such a silly thing?”
“There, there, honey. Try not to get too upset,” he said comfortingly. Though overlaid with a patina of American, I could tell that his accent was English, and I found myself looking at him curiously. It was ludicrous, this interest in other Brits abroad: so often they were people you wouldn’t give the time of day to at home. Some deeply rooted atavistic instinct, no doubt. But there was something very familiar about this one. It was niggling at me. He was tall and grey-haired with a long pleasant face, wearing a corduroy jacket and check shirt that looked as if he had had them for the past thirty years. I almost felt as if I recognised them. And when Barbara had called him “Jon” another piece of the puzzle had clicked into place. I knew him from somewhere, I was sure of it. Still, I was equally positive that I had never seen Barbara before. She was not the kind of person you forgot.
“Listen, Barbara.” Carol was biting the bullet. “The trouble is—our trouble, I mean, Bergmann LaTouche’s trouble—is that the gallery wasn’t broken into. Someone used the keys and knew how to deactivate the alarm.”
Jon, who had been bending over Barbara, now straightened up and stared at Carol almost accusatorially. She squared her shoulders and lifted her jaw, meeting him straight in the eyes.
“But that means—” he said. “One of you guys here—”
“I’m fully aware of that, Jon,” she said. “It’s about the worst situation imaginable.”
Most people were staring resolutely at the surface of the table. To look round at the rest of the group now would inevitably be interpreted as an attempt to decide which person present might be the graffiti artist. No one said anything for quite a while. Barbara Bilder had stiffened in her chair. Carol was biting her lip. Even she was looking down, unwilling to catch anyone’s eye.
And then Stanley decided to try to raise the tone of the conversation.
“Well, this is all very gloomy, isn’t it?” he said, over-brightly, as if he were about to be put on the rack and was attempting to confuse his torturers into offering him a cup of tea instead. “Let’s try for a happier note. Barbara, Jon, I think I should introduce you to the newest artist to show at Bergmann LaTouche! She just arrived in the city yesterday. I’m sure she’ll love to meet you.”
I wondered whether I was supposed to stand up and do a twirl. Stanley crossed the room to stand behind my chair, pressing my shoulders as Jon was doing to Barbara.
“This is Sam Jones,” he said, sounding as enthusiastic as if he had just blanked out the content and implications of the whole preceding conversation. “Sam, I want you to meet Barbara Bilder and Jon Tallboy. Barbara is one of our most respected artists.”
He beamed over at her.
Having reached the point where tragedy shaded into surrealism, the situation had, lemming-like, taken a leap right over the edge. Laurence was staring at Stanley as if he had lost control of himself and were running round the room screaming hysterically: “Help me! Help me! I can’t go on!” while tearing off his clothes. And, in a sense, he had. This retreat into some bizarre kind of polite ritual was an impassioned cry for help.
The trouble was that everything was about to complicate itself still further. It wasn’t simply that Barbara and I, like two marionettes under the control of an increasingly deranged puppeteer who had decided to segue into a drawing-room comedy halfway through a r
endering of Psycho, found ourselves impelled to stand up and go through the motions of shaking hands while murmuring greetings to each other; no, it was even weirder. Because as soon as Stanley had pronounced the surname of Barbara’s husband, I had known at once why his face seemed so familiar to me.
“You’re Kim’s father!” I said to Jon Tallboy as I shook his hand, with the relief of someone who has finally solved a particularly nagging riddle. “Do you remember me? Kim and I were at sixth-form college together, and then art school—no, hang on, you went off to New York when we went to art school, and then Kim went over to see you and never came back. Is she still here?”
My voice was triumphant. Poor Jon Tallboy, however, still reeling under all the appalling revelations of this visit to the gallery, looked as if this strange coincidence were the final straw.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice dazed, “I don’t quite—”
Beside me Stanley was practically gibbering. His nice social impulse had comprehensively derailed itself, taking him with it. I felt rather sorry for him; in a way it hadn’t been too much to ask that we all say hello and pleased to meet you, providing him with a brief shining moment of sanity in a world gone mad. Instead Jon Tallboy looked as if I had just sandbagged him in slow motion.
“I’m Sam Jones,” I said helpfully, spelling it out for him more slowly. It seemed better to get the recognition part over with straight away. “I was a friend of Kim’s. I used to hang out at your house all the time.”
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