by T F Muir
‘It’s Andy,’ Jack said.
‘Not Andrew?’
‘Andy will do just fine,’ Gilchrist said, then nodded to the beer. ‘Is that mine?’
‘It’s got your name written all over it,’ Jack said.
Pint safely in his hand, and that round-robin chinking of glasses done, he took a first sip that brought it almost to the halfway mark.
‘Thirsty?’ Jack said.
‘Could say.’ He noticed Jack’s pint was barely touched, and he had the unsettling feeling that he had interrupted some private moment between his son and Jen. He caught Jen giving Jack a wary look, as if warning him not to let their secrets slip. So he stepped in with, ‘Tell me, Jen, how do you know Jack?’
‘She’s exhibiting my work,’ Jack said.
‘In your South Street studio?’
Jen’s eyes flared. ‘How do you know I have a studio in South Street?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I do. Of course. Only had it about a month.’ She reached for her glass.
Jack did likewise.
Gilchrist let a few seconds pass, then said, ‘So how does that work?’
‘How does what work?’
‘Artists. Studios. Who pays what to whom?’
‘Fifty-fifty, man. Just the norm.’
‘No money upfront?’
‘Is that what you think I would do?’ Jen said.
Her look reminded him of an eagle’s – piercing, wide-eyed, direct – and he wondered why he’d taken an instant dislike to her. Because she was so much older than Jack? He couldn’t say, and thought it best just to pull back from any confrontation.
‘Not at all. I’m just interested in how the process works.’ He sipped his beer, caught Jack’s what-the-fuck look, then said, ‘Didn’t Jack tell you that I’m with Fife Constabulary? A policeman.’
‘He did mention that,’ she said.
‘Well, there you go. Bad habit of mine. Asking too many questions all the time.’
Jack laughed, chinked his glass against Jen’s, then gulped back some beer.
Gilchrist felt relieved that whatever mini-crisis he might have caused seemed to have evaporated. He took another mouthful of beer, and said, ‘Are you going to surprise me by telling me that Jack’s the next Picasso?’
‘Hey, man. Steady on. I’m good, but not that good.’
‘So how good is he?’ he asked Jen.
She pursed her lips, rocked her head from side to side. ‘As in life, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What appeals to one art-lover might not appeal to another. So any piece of art, be it a sculpture or a painting, has no intrinsic value attached to it.’
‘So you’re saying that Jack’s paintings are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them?’
‘Any artist’s paintings, for that matter.’
‘Other than Picasso or Van Gogh?’
‘Well, they’ve already made their name, and their works command exorbitant prices. But when Van Gogh was alive, he was penniless, and was able to carry on with his art and eke out a living only through his brother’s generosity.’
‘It seems unfair,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Yeah, man, when I go, all my stuff’ll be worth a mint, then you’ll be rich.’
He tilted his pint towards his son. ‘I’d rather hope I’d be dead and buried long before you.’
Jen offered a lopsided smile in condolence.
‘You never answered my question,’ Gilchrist said to her.
She held her glass to her mouth and said, ‘Jack’s work is exciting and colourful, solid and competent, and . . .’ She glanced at Jack as her eyes crinkled in imitation of a loving smile. ‘. . . without putting my head on the block, mostly worth somewhere in the low- to mid-five figures. But . . .’ she said, and cast her arm wide in an expansive gesture – without spilling a drop, he noted. ‘Who knows? In a few years, Jack’s work could command six figures, even more. Seven. You never know.’
Jack beamed. ‘Now you’re talking, Jen.’
She buried her face in her wine again.
Gilchrist thought solid and competent were adjectives that did not inspire much confidence, and had the distinct impression that he’d just listened to a sales spiel by someone who lacked the expertise of a salesperson. ‘But with a bit of luck,’ he said, ‘Jack could die young, and his work might then become priceless.’
Jack guffawed. ‘Didn’t I tell you the old man had a warped sense of humour?’
Jen nodded, and edged closer to Jack.
‘And what about Chloe’s paintings?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘Jen’s going to exhibit them alongside mine.’
It hardly seemed credible that three years had passed since the nightmare of Chloe’s death. Jack had inherited her paintings against the wishes of her parents, who had wanted to sell them, even destroy them. But Jack had vowed never to sell her paintings, only to exhibit them from time to time.
Gilchrist was no art aficionado, but to his eye Chloe had been talented, a gifted artist whose paintings could evoke emotion in a way that Jack’s never could – although he would never dare share these thoughts with his son. He took a sip of beer, and eyed Jen.
‘So how much do you think Chloe’s paintings could sell for?’
‘They’re not for sale,’ Jack said.
Gilchrist thought Jen looked less convinced. ‘In theory,’ he added.
‘About the same,’ she said.
‘The same as Van Gogh’s, or the same as Jack’s?’
Jack guffawed again, then downed his beer and thumped the empty glass on to the bar counter, catching the barman’s eye with a nod for another round. ‘You crack me up, Andy, so you do. I tell you what, man, I’m hungry.’ He grabbed a menu from the bar, then threw an arm around Jen’s shoulder. ‘Ready to eat, pets?’
She almost spilled her wine freeing herself from Jack’s grip, and made a show of dabbing her lips with a tissue she pulled from her sleeve. ‘Order for me, Jack,’ she said.
‘The usual?’
‘I’ll be back in a tick.’
Gilchrist watched Jack watch Jen squeeze through the throng, heading to the Ladies.
Then Jack turned to him with a smile, and said, ‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’ll skip lunch.’
‘No. About Jen.’
‘Oh.’ He sipped his beer. He didn’t want another. ‘I think she knows her stuff.’
‘And she’s good-looking, too.’
‘Well, I can’t dispute that, although she seems a bit older than you.’
‘We’re not a couple,’ Jack said. ‘Yet.’
Gilchrist raised an eyebrow.
‘But I tell you, man, with age comes maturity. And experience. As you say, she really knows her stuff.’ Jack nodded at the wisdom of his own words. ‘Lots of contacts, too. Big names from London. Even Paris. Hey man, New York, too.’
‘How about China?’
Jack frowned, then grinned. ‘You’re at it, man. But I tell you what, I’m just champing at the bit to get this exhibition going.’
The barman plonked two beers on the counter, and Gilchrist said, ‘I can’t stay, Jack. I’ve got to get back.’
‘I just got you a beer, Andy.’
‘I’m sure you won’t let it go to waste.’
‘Waste not, want not. That’s what Mum used to say.’
Gilchrist didn’t bother to finish the remains of his pint, just placed it on the bar and pushed it away. ‘Give my apologies to Jen, but I’ve got to go.’
‘Will do, man.’
‘Do you happen to have one of her business cards?’
‘Sure.’ Jack removed a shiny leather wallet from his back pocket. ‘Like it?’ he said. ‘Present from Jen.’
‘Very nice.’ He took a card from Jack.
Then Jack gave a chest-high high-five with a reverse handshake, managing to pull Gilchrist into him for a hug. ‘Love you, man.’
Despite his surprise, Gilchrist said, ‘Love you
, too, Jack.’
He eased his way through the evening crowd and exited on to Market Street. Through the window he caught Jen returning to Jack, her face breaking into a smile when Jack told her that his old man had to return to the Office.
In College Street, he had Jen’s business card in one hand, his mobile in the other. He dialled the Office and got through to Mhairi.
‘I’d like you to do a favour for me.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘It’s off the record,’ he said, ‘but I need you to get Jackie to check out a company for me.’ He read the name on the business card. ‘Jen Tinto. The Tinto Gallery.’ Then an address in London.
‘Anything we’re looking for, sir?’
‘Whatever you can find on the owner. If it’s a genuine business or not. How long it’s been around. How it earns its keep. That sort of thing.’
‘Will do, sir.’
He ended the call and quickened his pace. He never understood how that sixth sense of his worked, how his gut twinged when something didn’t seem right. Jack had never been materialistic, was more into his painting than anything else. Which was his weakness, if you thought about it, too willing to take people at face value, too eager to befriend anyone who appreciated his work. And always far too trusting when it came to money.
Gilchrist had no idea who Jen Tinto was, or what she was about.
But he would make a point of finding out.
CHAPTER 24
Jessie hadn’t set foot in Glasgow’s Mortuary for well over a year, not since she’d insisted on witnessing a post-mortem of a drug mule to confirm there were no last-second switches with the mule’s delivery. When the package, half a kilo of uncut heroin in small bundles of tightly wrapped plastic, all the better to swallow, had been removed from her stomach – one bag having leaked, and the cause of death – only then had she signed off on the body.
And here she was again.
This time to ID the bodies of her bitch for a mother, and lunatic for a brother.
She walked up to the first of the two gurneys, surprised by how small her mother’s body looked under the sheet, as if death had come in overnight and stolen not only her soul, but half her body mass, too.
Dr Fotheringham gripped the edge of the sheet.
Jessie took a deep breath and said, ‘Let’s get it over with.’
Fotheringham lifted the sheet, pulling it back with care, easing it down and over the dead woman’s face, to fold it neatly across the body’s shoulders.
‘Jesus,’ Jessie said, and clapped a hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, then forced herself to look, willing all that hatred and anger she’d built up over the years to transfer itself into the wreck of the woman who lay before her, dead and stiff and marble-white.
Jeannie Janes had lived hard and tough. She’d struggled against drink and drugs all of her life, the pain of that battle printed on her face in scars and wrinkles for the world to see. It seemed that her mother’s transition from the land of the living to that of the dead had been every bit as difficult. Her lips were bared in a rictus smile that revealed capped teeth rooted in black gums. A rugged graze on her cheek, deep enough to show bone, looked as if someone had scraped her face down a roughcast wall. Her left eye was swollen closed and purple, her right half-open to reveal the thousand-yard stare of the dead.
‘DS Janes?’
‘Roll it down.’
‘Are you able to confirm if this is—?’
‘All the way down. Please. I need to see.’
Fotheringham frowned, then pulled the sheet back to reveal a string of floral tattoos that ran from each shoulder down her arms. The irony was not missed on Jessie. Her mother never had a garden, never wanted one, and never brought flowers home, as if their fragrance would chase the preferred filth from her life. And here she was, arms tattooed like a human trellis. Fotheringham lowered the sheet past a pair of breasts as flat as potato scones. Jeannie Janes had never been overweight, and the sight of her ribbed torso helped Jessie understand that her mother must have been averse to eating. Her skin was blue-white, veined like marble, as if her body had never seen the sun.
Jessie lifted her gaze and looked at Dr Fotheringham. Why anyone would choose forensic pathology for a career defied logic. A slender woman, closer to the beginning of her working life than the end, Fotheringham returned her gaze with calm brown eyes that seemed at odds with the gruesome nature of her job. Dyed blonde hair cut short accentuated the roundness of a face that seemed destined to defy age and wrinkles.
The woman who lay between them could have been a different species.
Jessie nodded. ‘She’s my mother. Jeannie Janes.’
Fotheringham gave a sad smile, then pulled the sheet up and over the body.
Jessie walked to the second gurney and waited for Fotheringham to join her.
Fotheringham eased the sheet back without prompting, folding it down to a whippet-thin waist. Where her mother’s body had been pale to the point of alabaster-white, Terry’s was tanned as if he’d just returned from a month’s frying on the Costa del Sol. A full-body tattoo, more colourful than a Yakuza gangster’s, told stories of knives and mythical beasts, overladen with the names of women he’d bedded, or worse, murdered. Even in death, Terry looked fit and lean and street-fighter hard. The invincible image was spoiled by a twelve-inch slash – maybe longer – that ran diagonally across his belly-button, and had Jessie wondering how Terry had managed to prevent his guts from spilling on to the street.
But strangely, or so Jessie thought, she felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Not even a sliver of a hint of sadness over Terry’s wasted life. Not even the tiniest flicker of regret that she and Terry had failed to form any familial bond whatsoever. Growing up, they could have been two strangers living in the same household. As adults, they hadn’t spoken to each other for over fifteen years – if you discounted face-to-face swearing, that is. Instead, she looked down on her brother’s body with a dispassion that almost frightened her.
Shouldn’t she feel something? Shouldn’t she be wishing they’d at least made some kind of effort to get to know each other? This was her brother, for crying out loud, her own flesh and blood. Christ, the man before her had been Robert’s uncle – a scary thought that brought her back to her senses.
She nodded to Fotheringham. ‘That’s my brother, Terry Janes.’
She didn’t wait for Fotheringham to pull the sheet over the body. She didn’t wait to be accompanied from the mortuary, or to be invited to Fotheringham’s office for a parting cup of tea. Instead, she turned on her heels and headed for the door.
When she walked out on to Saltmarket, the wind had stilled, and the air felt nowhere near as cold as it had on the east coast. She took a long breath, tasting that west coast dampness that could seep into every part of your clothing and being, and chill you to the marrow if the wind picked up. She felt the oddest sense of being unclean, as if just being in close proximity to her family was contamination enough. Another couple of breaths, deep and quick, voided her lungs of any remnants of air from the mortuary.
She took out her phone.
Gilchrist answered on the third ring. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.
She stared off along the busy street, at cars and buses and people all going about their business, not knowing that her mother and brother were lying in the City Mortuary behind her, dead for the rest of eternity. She started walking.
‘All done and dusted,’ she said.
‘You’ll be glad that’s over.’
‘You have this habit of understating things.’
He pushed a dry chuckle down the line. ‘Heard anything more from Tommy?’
‘Nada. He’s gone into hiding, like he said he would.’
‘I’ve sent Baxter down to Glasgow to hand-deliver that note to Dainty. So nothing’s going to happen until tomorrow at the earliest.’
‘And then the shit hits the fan?’
‘Could do,’ he said. ‘But
my advice to you is to back off from it, and let it lie. You’ve done what you can, so it’ll be up to Dainty and others to move things forward if – and it’s a big if – they take on board what Tommy’s given them.’
‘I hear you,’ she said.
‘I’ll see you first thing tomorrow.’
Jessie slipped her mobile into her pocket, and strode into town. She felt tense, from anger or frustration she couldn’t say. It was to be expected, that information provided by a known criminal would be viewed with the deepest suspicion – a guilty man trying to save his own neck. But deep down, she knew Tommy had been speaking the truth. Not like that snake of a dead brother of hers. Nor that demented witch of a mother. Tommy might have been the hardest of her family, but he’d held on to that almost forgotten mantra – you don’t harm friends and family. Not that his and Jessie’s relationship had been anywhere close to sibling love, but he had never hurt her – well, not much.
Jessie found herself traipsing west along Argyle Street, as if her mind was leading her back to her former place of work, Strathclyde Police HQ. But halfway up Buchanan Street, common sense prevailed, telling her not to make a fool of herself, not to have it out with past work associates who were better off left alone, and forgotten. She hadn’t asked for a transfer to Fife Constabulary because she was in love with Strathclyde. No, she left Glasgow to get rid of the mistakes of her past, clean her life of her criminal family and, more importantly, make a new life for herself and her son, Robert.
But just being in the city centre again, with its constant background rush of business and pleasure, its damp streets teeming with the end of Monday work crowds, and lit up with lights set for Christmas, sent a thrill through her. Buskers strummed guitars, or sang tuneless songs. Street artists twisted balloons, or stood as still as statues.
A whole year had passed since she’d last set foot in the city centre by herself, and almost eighteen months since she and her friend Fiona Lawson had last spoken. They texted each other from time to time, but as she was now in Glasgow she should at least make contact.
‘Hello?’
Jessie thought Fi sounded wary, as if a call from an unknown number signalled only bad news. ‘Fi?’ she said. ‘It’s Jessie.’