by Shaun Hutson
More than once, when they stopped at traffic lights, she found herself, almost unconsciously, checking her appearance in her rear-view mirror.
Want to look your best for him?
Her hands felt sweaty on the wheel.
Like first-date nerves?
She glanced at the dashboard clock: 2.32 p.m.
Plenty of time.
She didn’t have to collect Becky from Caroline Hacket’s house until five if necessary.
Plenty of time.
For what?
She switched on the cassette, wondering how much longer the journey to Walker’s house would take. The music filled the car, but she hardly seemed to hear it. Her mind was elsewhere, her gaze firmly fixed on the Scorpio as it moved along.
Hailey began to see more houses appearing now and she realized they were drawing closer to the outskirts of the city.
Closer to his house.
The house where you want to go.
A part of her said that this was insane. The sensible, married mother, with a husband and a career, told her it was insane.
But the woman who had been cheated on – who felt attracted to this good-looking, kind and considerate man – told her otherwise.
Two voices. Conflicting.
She would look at his work, she would take some of it away with her. She would try to help him.
Simple.
You want him. You want him inside you. There’s moisture between your legs already.
She shifted slightly in her seat.
Do you wish Rob could see you now? Would you like him to know what you intend to do with this man?
The Scorpio turned left and she followed.
If he offered her coffee, she would accept. She would look carefully at his work, offer opinions if he sought them.
Hold him tightly to you. Let him feel how much you want him. Show him.
Her head was spinning.
If only you could see me now, Rob. I’m paying you back. As I make love to this man, I’m taking revenge.
She swallowed hard. Caroline would be proud of her, she mused.
She knows you want him. She said so. Said she could see it in your eyes. If she slid a finger between your legs, she would also feel how much you wanted him.
Hailey saw the Scorpio slowing down, turning into the driveway of a large, 1930s-style house.
She swung the Astra in behind, and switched off her engine as she saw Walker clamber out.
The house stood on a wide street, both flanked and faced by buildings of similar appearance. It sported a fairly big front garden; not particularly well kept, she noted. The paintwork of the house itself looked as if it could do with freshening up.
As she slid from behind her steering wheel, she saw Walker heading towards the front door.
Her legs felt a little shaky.
A sudden breeze ruffled her hair as she followed him towards the door, which was now open.
He gestured for her to enter.
Go on. It’s what you’ve been waiting for.
She stepped into the hall.
He closed the door behind them.
40
THE HALLWAY SMELLED of air-freshener and furniture polish, as if it had been freshly cleaned that morning.
Hailey stood motionless for a moment, glancing around.
There was a staircase directly ahead of her. To her left, slightly ajar, was the door to the sitting room. To her right, another room. The door was tightly closed.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ said Walker, smiling.
Hailey nodded. She followed him through into the kitchen.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said as they entered a room to the rear of the house. ‘It seems almost obligatory for blokes who live on their own to have untidy houses, doesn’t it?’
‘I’ve seen worse.’ She smiled at him.
Apart from a couple of unwashed bowls in the sink, the kitchen was actually very neat.
He took some mugs from one of the wall cupboards and flicked on the electric kettle.
‘My own place can get pretty chaotic,’ she assured him, watching as he spooned coffee into the mugs.
‘Well, that’s understandable with you having a little child,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she murmured.
Becky? Are you betraying her too?
Hailey crossed to the kitchen window and looked out onto the back garden. It stretched for a good seventy feet towards a high privet hedge that enclosed the lawn on three sides, effectively screening it from the neighbours on both sides.
The grass needed cutting.
‘Do you see much of your neighbours?’ she wanted to know.
He shook his head. ‘We nod at each other in the street.’ Walker smiled. ‘That’s about it.’
He filled the two mugs with hot water and set them on the kitchen table. They sat down opposite each other.
‘It’s a big house for one person,’ she commented.
‘I like my own company.’
‘That’s just as well.’
‘It wasn’t much different when my father lived here. I didn’t see that much of him.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘We didn’t have much to talk about.’
Hailey sensed that she should change the subject.
Walker was gazing past her, as if staring at something behind her that she couldn’t see.
‘What about your brother and sister?’ she asked. ‘They were here, weren’t they?’
He looked blank for a second.
‘Oh, right,’ he murmured. ‘It was still like being alone, though. We all kept ourselves to ourselves. They both moved out when they were eighteen: went to university. We don’t keep in touch. We’re not very close.’
‘Have you spoken to your mother since she left?’
He shook his head. ‘She could be dead for all I know,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not sure what I’d say to her after all these years. I suppose I might ask her why she left – if she knew how much pain she was causing.’
‘It must have been hard for you, Adam.’
He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be the only one it’s happened to, would I? I mean, marriages split up every day, don’t they?’
He looked straight into her eyes.
Hailey found it difficult to hold his gaze.
Yes. They break up every day. Over things like infidelity.
She sipped her coffee.
‘I used to wonder how my father felt when he discovered my mother had left him for another man,’ Walker said. ‘I’m not even sure it bothered him that much. With him being a vicar, he probably thought it was the Will of God or some shit like that.’ There was disdain in his voice. ‘How did you feel when Rob cheated on you?’
‘Angry, hurt and puzzled. I know it might sound big-headed, but I’d always thought I was quite good-looking – good figure and all that. I didn’t understand what she could give him that I couldn’t. Perhaps she was better in bed than I was.’
‘Aren’t mistresses supposed to do things in bed that wives won’t do?’ Walker smiled. ‘That’s the usual excuse, isn’t it?’
‘Rob never missed out on anything,’ she said defiantly.
That’s it. Tell him your sexual details too.
‘Even after I had Becky, we still had a good sex life,’ she continued. ‘He didn’t have to look anywhere else for blow-jobs or any of his little fantasies.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Adam.’
‘Are you still angry with him?’
She nodded. ‘I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me.’ She smiled wanly. ‘Caroline said that I should have an affair.’
She looked deeply into Walker’s eyes. The silence between them seemed to stretch into an eternity.
She reached out and touched the back of his hand gently.
Go on. Do it. Do it now.
‘And what do you think about that?’ he wanted to know.
She could feel her heart thudding more insistently against her ribs, her breathing becoming a little more ragged.
There was both heat and moisture between her legs as she squeezed her thighs together and shifted on the chair.
‘I think if you’re going to do that, you have to be careful who you do it with,’ she breathed. ‘It’s a dangerous game to play.’
And do you want to play it?
She was still tracing her index finger gently across the back of his hand, aware that the digit was shaking slightly.
He put his hand over hers and squeezed gently, closing his own fingers around hers.
Hailey could feel her nipples pressing insistently against her bra. Her whole body felt as if it was ablaze. Her cheeks were flushed.
Walker, too, fidgeted slightly on his chair, his gaze never leaving hers.
‘Is that what it would be?’ he said softly. ‘A game?’
He felt her foot rubbing slowly against his calf.
As Hailey crossed her legs she felt a steadily growing warmth envelope her. It was as if her blood had been replaced by liquid fire. She sat back slowly, allowing her hand to slip from his, aware of the almost palpable atmosphere in the room.
She ran a hand through her hair and swallowed hard.
‘Show me this artwork you were talking about,’ she said finally.
Walker smiled again.
41
THE ROOM ALSO lay towards the rear of the house. Perhaps twenty feet square, it was in complete darkness. Any light that might have encroached was kept out by a pair of thick velvet curtains.
As Walker flicked on the lights and the two fluorescent tubes in the ceiling sputtered into life, Hailey could smell paint. She could also see that the walls on two sides were covered by illustrations of various kinds, and in assorted styles and mediums.
Paintings, sketches, pencil drawings, even watercolours.
There were a number of empty canvases to her right and, at one end of the room, several others of varying sizes, covered by sheets. There was a desk with a single high-backed chair, the desk surface littered with all the paraphernalia of an artist. Tubes of oil paint, brushes, pencils.
She took a step inside the room and Walker closed the door behind her.
‘Well, this is it,’ he said. ‘It used to be a dining room but it’s my studio now.’ He smiled thinly. ‘That sounds so grand, doesn’t it?’
He walked to the other end of the room and pulled open the velvet curtains, allowing some natural light to flood in.
Hailey looked around, mesmerized by the array of pictures, amazed at their diversity and also at the skill that had gone into creating them.
‘Tell me about them,’ she said quietly, moving towards one painting on the wall. It showed a pair of red, cat-like eyes leering towards the viewer, framing a clenched fist that held a long knife.
‘That one was a book cover,’ Walker said. ‘I forget the name of the book. The one beside it was for a record company.’
It showed a slender, naked woman reclining in the arms of a powerfully muscled creature bearing the head of a goat and looking down at her. She was smiling towards the viewer, the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip.
‘I called that “Animal Passion”,’ said Walker, smiling.
Hailey then noticed that the goat-headed body sported a large erect penis.
‘Did they actually use it?’ she wanted to know, nodding towards the massive erection.
Walker shook his head.
Next was a pencil drawing, about ten by eight, of two beautiful women, both naked, facing each other. The one on the left had her hand on the other’s breast; the one on the right had pushed one index finger between the labia of the other.
‘What about this one?’ Hailey asked.
‘That was for me,’ Walker chuckled.
‘Did someone model for it?’
‘I should be so lucky.’
‘Was it done from memory?’
‘One of the girls was a friend.’
Hailey ran her own index finger over the sketch, then moved to the next one.
This was a painting of a small baby being held aloft by its ankle, dangling over the gaping, tooth-filled mouth of a tiger.
‘Feeding Time,’ said Walker, standing close beside her. ‘Another one for a record company.’
‘Which band used it?’
‘They didn’t tell me. Just said what the album was called, and left it up to me.’
There was another nude: another woman. One arm stretched above her head, nipples painted to appear erect. The eyes were closed as if she was in ecstasy, the legs open. Her other hand rested between them, fingers stirring the carefully painted pubic hair.
‘Another one from memory?’ Hailey asked, her voice catching as she stared at the picture.
It was so detailed, so accurate, it might have been a photo.
Walker nodded.
She was aware of how close he was standing. She could practically feel his breath on her neck, but she made no attempt to move.
You don’t want to move, do you?
Her eyes remained on the painted breasts. Hailey’s own nipples were stiffened points now.
You want his hands on you, don’t you?
There was another large painting towards the end of the room.
This was a crucifixion. Christ was naked, his face upturned to heaven, but the eyes were closed not in agony but in pleasure. He was smiling, despite the nails driven through his wrists and feet, the blood dripping from the wounds.
It took Hailey a second to realize that the Christ figure bore the face of Adam Walker.
Instead of angels, naked women and huge rabid dogs sat around the cross. In places, the dogs were mounting the women, the white foam of their madness dribbling from their open jaws like ejaculate. There were mounds of excrement, both human and canine, around the foot of the cross. One of the women, a statuesque blonde, gripped the penis of Christ and was licking the swollen glans with her tongue. But the tongue itself was that of a snake.
‘That was for my father,’ said Walker flatly. She caught a hint of hostility in his tone.
‘What did he say when he saw it?’ she wanted to know.
‘He’s never seen it. I’ll show him one day, before he dies.’
‘It’s very powerful,’ she told him.
‘They say the best art comes from rage, don’t they?’
He was staring at the painting. Hailey was staring at him.
The knot of muscles at the side of his jaw was pulsing angrily.
‘Perhaps I should thank him for giving me that,’ snapped Walker. ‘It was all he did give me, apart from the scars.’
She looked puzzled.
‘You can’t see them of course,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Mental scars are invisible, but they mark you more deeply than any fucking knife ever could.’
‘What happened?’
‘Does it really matter?’
‘If you don’t want to talk about it—’
He cut her short.
‘No, I’ll talk about it,’ he said. ‘What would you like to know? The beatings? Would you like to know the first time he put me in hospital? I think I was only nine. A hairline fracture of the left tibia. Strange how you remember things like that, isn’t it? He learnt some caution after that. He used a belt instead. Its marks usually faded after a couple of days. And all the time he was hitting me, he’d be telling me how useless I was – how I’d disappointed him. How I’d never amount to anything. If I did badly at school, he hit me. If I was late in, he hit me. He used to claim that if I was a failure before him, then I was a failure before God. That carried on until I was seventeen.’
His eyes were blazing furiously.
‘I’m sorry, Adam.’ Hailey wanted to touch him, to comfort him.
‘Most priests get their calling when they’re young,’ Walker said evenly. ‘In their teens or early twenties. Not him, no. He got his call when he was thirty-eight, when it was time to clear his conscience. When it was time for redemption. Why would God want a cunt like that?’
‘Did he beat y
our sister and your brother?’ Hailey asked quietly, almost reverentially.
‘I don’t know. We never spoke about it. He always warned us not to speak about it.’
‘I didn’t mean to pry. I really am sorry.’
He smiled. ‘Perhaps the old bastard helped me in some ways. Like I said, the best art comes from rage. He gave me that rage.’
Walker was looking around at some of the other paintings that adorned the room.
‘You learn to deal with it in time,’ he said quietly. ‘You learn to deal with anything eventually. If you get beaten enough times, it gets to the stage where it becomes routine. You think that’s the way it is – that everyone lives like that.’
‘And you still visit him now? Despite what he did?’
‘He’s still my father,’ replied Walker flatly.
Hailey reached out and touched his hand gently.
He smiled at her and gestured around him.
Yet more paintings. More products of a great talent, thought Hailey, astonished by the diversity and power in some of them.
‘I don’t know how Waterhole’s record company would react to some of these,’ she said, studying a painting of a small boy holding a gun, forcing the barrel into the mouth of a besuited bald man who was kneeling before the child as if in prayer.
‘They’ll probably reject them,’ Walker said, ‘just like everyone else has.’
Hailey turned to look at him.
He nodded. ‘No one has ever bought a single one of my paintings. No publisher, no record company, no one. I’m a fraud, Hailey.’
42
FOR LONG SECONDS she stood in silence, looking first at the picture-covered walls and then at Walker.
‘You told me earlier you’d done work for both record companies and publishers,’ she said.
‘I have. I’ve submitted work, but they’ve always rejected it,’ he admitted.
‘But, Adam, this stuff is brilliant. I know some of it’s a bit controversial, but it’s great.’
‘I wish everyone else agreed with you.’ He lowered his gaze. ‘I should have come clean. I shouldn’t have lied, but I didn’t want you to think I was a failure. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. You’re not a failure when you can produce work like this.’ She turned and made an expansive gesture with her hand, designed to encompass the contents of the room.