The Montague Portrait

by Matt Drabble

  She tried to speak, she tried to call out for her father to stop, she tried to walk but her feet had grown roots, she was helpless and useless in equal measure.

  The smoke was already thick and choking as greedy flames licked their way up the walls and across the floor in search of flammable delicacies.

  Cowering before the scene in the light of the dancing flames, Charlotte’s eyes momentarily locked with her dying mother’s, just as the light faded from them with a single tear. She was eight years old and she hugged her stuffed tiger fiercely, praying for strength and protection.

  Her father’s once kind face that had showered her with feather light kisses, was now strange and alien, his features dark and insane, his once gentle eyes now burning with a furious intensity.

  ‘Come child,’ he said in a hoarse, rasping voice that was no longer the tender timbre that had swept her to sleep with tales of castles and princesses. ‘It is time to sleep and end all this pain.’

  He reached for her and she took an involuntary step towards him; she was an obedient daughter after all.

  Before she reached him the ceiling of the large lounge gave way above them, and flaming falling oak beams created a burning barrier between them.

  Her father’s rage exploded. He tried to reach for her, caring little as his arms blistered and boiled in the roaring flames. The entire room was now ablaze as the fire consumed all in its path. Still screaming violent obscenities at her, the fire ate him whole.

  His face was now unrecognisable as the fire roasted him alive. Charlotte watched in horror as his clothes melded to his skin and his flesh bubbled and popped under the heat. And yet he still stood on his feet. Unbelievably he weaved drunkenly towards her, his arms outstretched, promising an eternal fiery embrace as the skin slid from his bones and plopped onto the floor.

  And suddenly the spell was broken.

  She clutched her tiger, knowing that the thing in front of her was no longer her father. The loving man who had protected her from every shadow monster that hid under her bed was gone. The teller of tall tales and giver of airplane rides was no more. Her father was dead and this thing had taken her mother too. Still clutching her tiger she ran from his raging screams as the fire took the man, the room, and then the house. With her dainty short legs pumping furiously and her vision blurred by salty sorrow, she ran out into the cold night air and into the darkness.

  By the time that the wailing sirens reached the house, there was little left to save. Charlotte’s happy home was now a blackened skeleton shell of fire and black smoke that drifted up and touched the sky. She hugged her tiger and wept: for her home, her mother, and her father. But in amongst the tears a steely anger was born – a hardened cocoon that sat and festered, a dark hatred for the cause and the blame for the taking of her family.

  When the rescue services finally arrived she fought like a tiger as the paramedics tried to take her away from the burning wreckage. She instinctively knew that she had to see everything burn, to make sure that nothing survived the inferno.

  Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TRAVIS - TODAY

  Travis Parker absently wiped a fresh tear away from his cheek; it had been almost two years, but the wound was still red raw and painful. He sat on the wet grass opposite the gravestone, ignoring the seeping damp as it crept into his weary bones. The day was appropriately overcast and miserable. It was not any sort of anniversary or special date – it was just a Tuesday.

  Travis was thirty-six, a little over six feet one with a sagging frame that was a testament to better days. His nose was a little crooked as it had been broken playing rugby and had never set completely straight. His shaggy brown hair with flecks of creeping silver was longer than he would normally have kept it, but he had little interest in his appearance these days. Where his features had once been pleasant and warm, they were now dull and a little lifeless, and his dark hazel eyes often hid his true feelings. As though his mind was drifting elsewhere, his default expression seemed to be one of perpetual distance, occupied with sad thoughts – an accurate assessment, as seldom were his days not full of Amy.

  She had been the best part of him: a wife, a partner, and a best friend. She had only ever made him better and now that she was gone, he realised what an empty husk he was without her. Her death was as common as it was unspectacular. The cancer had spread at a steady rate, going about its purpose with consummate ease and efficiency. She had slowly slipped away from his tight grasp, her fingers losing their tenuous grip as she faded before his eyes.

  A large part of him died that same day; he just hadn’t buried it yet. There was no explosion of screams to the heavens, no roar of thunder and flash of lightning over her grave, no pronouncements of a comic book hero’s original tale of revenge. It was all well and good to stand and swear vows over headstones, but you soon realised that at some point you actually had to walk home. You had to brush your teeth and crawl into bed. Clock hands kept on ticking and time moved forwards; days passed and merged into weeks. He had soon found that time waits for no man, or any man’s grief. He had simply drifted through life since Amy’s passing, a ghost haunting the halls of his former life. Their shared home still stood as a memorial, a shrine to her memory. He knew that it was unhealthy to simply stay in a permanent state of limbo, to keep her lingering scent fresh and surrounding him on all sides.

  But he had no choice.

  After a suitable mourning time had elapsed and well-wishers ran short of patience, his career had slowly dwindled away. He had worked as an insurance investigator for a large company. His job had always sounded glamorous and exciting to Amy, but the reality was far removed from her visions of chills and thrills. His days were mainly spent verifying claims, sifting through paperwork and looking for any anomalies. He was under no illusion that the large companies who employed his services, did so in order to avoid paying out if he happened to turn up any discrepancies. He had often found that some nefarious claimants would insure their valuables for large sums, fake a fire or a theft, and then attempt to cash in the policy. The trouble was that many rare and valuable items were of such personal value, that the claimants found themselves unable to part with the piece.

  He had been good at his job. He was intuitive and found most people easy to read, especially when they were hiding something. But after the funeral his heart was simply too broken to deal with the futility of chasing up a pearl necklace that was supposedly destroyed in a fire.

  The largest casualty of his grief was far more serious and upsetting. Amy had been an artist by nature, but unfortunately not by design. She had the eye for art, but lacked the ability to produce her own work. She’d had to settle for the next best thing, and had set up a gallery, one designed to showcase the very best in undiscovered talent. The gallery was infused with her heart and soul – it was her life away from him, and he fully believed that she loved it almost as much as she loved him. Since her death he had simply not had the strength to carry his own loss and the weight of the gallery as well. The business had been slipping for the last two years and now, much like him, it was a dead man walking. He had been harangued and harassed by the accountant on more occasions than he could count and with increasing desperation. He had ignored all the calls and letters – a mountain of unopened bills and demands were currently piled up in a kitchen drawer, out of sight and mind. But now, with his savings just about exhausted, he was finally unable to ignore the problem any further.

  He walked slowly back to his car, his feet leaving flattened imprints on the graveyard grass – the only proof that he even existed anymore. He eased his increasing bulk into the driver’s seat of the four-year-old Suzuki and plucked a water bottle from the glove compartment. The liquid was clear but the aroma was pure vodka. Already long past the time of making false promises to himself about his drinking, or even coming up with reasons why he would stop tomorrow, he took a long swig and waited for the alcohol to burn his throat and warm his stomach. The only tim
e he really slept these days was when his system was overloaded and his mind overpowered.

  Slowly and carefully he pulled away from the curb; he already had nine points on his driving licence and the next penalty would have it removed altogether. After having paid his graveside penance of apologies to Amy, he headed towards the gallery. He had put off going to her legacy for as long as he possibly could, burying his head beneath the sandy avalanche of bills and final demands.

  With dread thick in his mouth, he turned the last corner. The street had once been attractively lined with pretty outlets, decorative awnings glistening with promise, and with boutiques laden with unnecessary touches of excess it had been a neighbourhood existing for the wandering wealthy eyes. Travis’s heart sank as he viewed the 2013 state of play: It seemed that every other store was closed, with For Sale signs hanging limply over boarded windows. The whole area stank of betrayal and abandonment; the money had long since fled, deserting the pretty awnings to the ravages of time. It was only a little over two years since he had driven along this road, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

  As he pulled into a parking space outside the gallery, his heart felt broken all over again.

  ‘Oh, Amy,’ he murmured with tears in his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The gallery was named “Aphaea” after the Greek Goddess who had been a deity associated with fertility. Travis and Amy had not been blessed with children despite their shared desire. Amy had hoped that naming the gallery after a fertility goddess would be a nod towards good fortune, but fate apparently had other plans.

  The gallery had been closed for a little over a month now, the last employee laid off and the doors shut for evermore. The sign above the door was faded and peeling, and the large front windows were whitewashed against prying eyes. The bills were now red and angry and the bank was growing increasingly aggressive in their mortgage demands. Travis knew that the downturn in the area meant that even if by some miracle he managed to sell the place, he would still be stuck in the limbo of negative equity.

  With a trembling hand Travis placed a key in the front door lock and pushed open the stiff glass doors. Inside, the room reeked of a musty odour; dusty particles rose and fell in the glimmering light of the rarely seen sun flooding through the open door.

  They had placed all the money they had, and a lot more that they didn’t, to realise Amy’s dream. Travis’s earnings were steady and handsome; his fees always proportionate to the large savings he made for the insurance companies, but he had been more than happy to place their future in Amy’s hands, especially when he saw the light twirl in her eyes on the day they bought the gallery.

  He never felt more than an inch away from collapsing into a sobbing heap. Violently cutting the thoughts off at the knees, he took the vodka infused water bottle from his inside coat pocket and drowned his grief temporarily in the strong alcohol.

  A voice startled him from behind. ‘Mr Parker?’

  He turned to face the silhouette standing in the doorway framed by the sunlight. The figure that stepped into the gallery was tall and broad. Once inside he was able to see that the man was well over six feet tall, looked to be in his early sixties, but was strong and healthy. His thick, silvery, majestic sweep of hair was parted on the left and feathered with vanity, and he wore thick black rimmed glasses that looked stylish and expensive, with light grey eyes that sparkled behind them. His suit was a three piece dark blue and expertly tailored, and probably cost more than Travis’s car.

  ‘Mr Parker?’ The man said again.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Travis replied, put a little off guard by the radiating waves of confidence and power that exuded from his visitor.

  The man smiled enigmatically. ‘That remains to be seen, Mr Parker. That remains to be seen.’

  ----------

  Charlotte Goode sat within the hidden confines of the casually parked, unremarkable rental car facing the closed gallery. Her heart pounded angrily as the tall man exited his plush automobile and strode confidently in through the whitewashed doors.

  She had been following him for several weeks now, always creeping carefully around the edges of his perception. She already knew that he was a man to be both respected and feared.

  At thirty, Charlotte was a little over five feet eight with an athlete’s build and a dancer’s curves. She seemed unaware of the beauty of her thick and lushly red cascading curls and her emerald green eyes. Having little interest in shallow frivolities, her face was devoid of make-up, revealing cheeks brushed with childish freckles. Though independently but carefully wealthy, she carried a heavy ghostly burden on her shoulders, a burden she had carried around for the past twenty-two years.

  To this day she still wrestled with her understanding of what had happened, what had invaded her calm family home and torn them all asunder; why she had lost her beloved parents, warm and generous with their love and affection towards her and each other. Her childhood had been happy, full of bright laughter and sunny days, but one stormy summer a big black cloud had enveloped them all.

  She sat and waited. It had been twenty-two years, and she was well practised in the art.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BACK ON THE HORSE

  Travis stared at the man, his temper slowly rising and his headache throbbing, as much at his own feelings of fear inspired by his unexpected visitor.

  ‘You mind telling me what the hell you are doing standing in my store uninvited?’

  The man merely smiled. ‘I am here to offer you a proposal, Mr Parker’. With a trace of disdain, he looked around the empty dusty gallery. ‘You would appear to be in need of some assistance.’

  ‘And just what is it exactly that you want from me?’ Travis was too weary for games, and standing amongst his dead wife’s rubble he was also more than a little distracted.

  ‘I have need of your services, Mr Parker,’ the man said, his hands held neatly behind his back as he began to walk slowly around the deserted gallery.

  ‘And what services would they be Mr …?’

  ‘Vargas,’ he said without turning around as he continued to pace around the gallery, the slightly less faded patches on the walls the only evidence that frames had ever hung there. ‘Telfer Vargas and I wish to employ you in your former capacity. You were an insurance investigator of some repute, I understand, before your … er …’ He turned back to face Travis with an exaggerated expression of sadness. ‘Troubles,’ he finished.

  ‘Well, Mr Vargas, I’m afraid I don’t do that anymore.’

  Vargas slowly looked him up and down, as if taking in his dishevelled appearance and glassy eyes. He smiled pleasantly. ‘I see that you have been somewhat … otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Look, Vargas,’ Travis said, his anger bubbling to the boil, ‘I don’t know what the hell you want from me, but why don’t you just piss off.’

  If Vargas was upset by his outburst, he did not show it, but merely smiled more broadly than before as though he was enjoying the joust. ‘I understand that this gallery belonged to your late wife, Mr Parker.’

  Travis viewed the man objectively; despite being much younger than Vargas, he himself was soft and doughy, whereas Vargas looked hard and strong with a mean glint in his flint-like eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what you want with me, Vargas,’ he said in a low hard tone. ‘You look as though you’re in good shape and can look after yourself, but you mention my wife again and I’m going to come over there and find out.’

  ‘Bravo, Mr Parker!’ Vargas laughed riotously with a thunderous rumble, clapping his large paw-like hands. ‘Bravo indeed. I was beginning to think there was nothing left of you inside that husky shell.’ Still laughing, he walked over to a lonely office chair alongside an empty desk, took a pristine white handkerchief from his inside pocket and lightly dusted the chair. He sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and smoothed out the creases in his expensive trousers.

  In spite of himself Travis felt a small sliver of intrigue. ‘Look, you obviously hav
e a point to make and you don’t seem to be in any hurry,’ he said, rubbing his temples. His system was still trying to delay his latest hangover from taking a firm hold and all he wanted was another drink to put off the pain. ‘So why don’t you just make your point and then you can get the hell out of here and leave me alone.’

  Vargas grinned, his disposition unfazed. ‘Very well, Mr Parker, I represent a very large insurance company who shall remain nameless. Twenty-one years ago they paid out a considerably large sum on an insurance policy. A little over one million pounds, if you’re interested –’

  ‘For what?’ Travis asked, his thirst momentarily forgotten.

  ‘A painting, Mr Parker – a very rare, very valuable painting. It’s all in here,’ he said as he extracted with a magicians sweep of his manicured hand, a small manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket.

  Travis found himself walking over to Vargas who remained sitting; he couldn’t help but roll over in submission to the man before him as he took the envelope. Feeling a momentary churn of disgust as their fingers briefly touched, he fought the impulse to wipe his hand on his trousers. Quickly he opened the envelope and pulled out a typed paper and a small photograph.

  ‘In 1923 Benedict Worthington painted his masterpiece,’ Vargas said, continuing his narration as Travis stared at the photograph. ‘It was his first and only portrait before his rather grisly suicide just a few weeks later.’

  Travis gazed at the gracefully dressed couple, a man and presumably his wife standing in pose. The man, with slick black hair and a square jaw, stood ramrod straight, his right hand tucked nonchalantly into his pocket, his left arm wrapped around the woman. Although he towered over her, his figure was skinny and his features skeletal, with a stern expression that exuded a contemptuous arrogance; she was much shorter with long brown hair and a look of desperation. Despite her smile, Travis could almost feel her fear and see the tremble in her gentle frame.