In a True Light

by John Harvey

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by John Harvey

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Author

  John Harvey is the author of the richly praised sequence of ten Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times as one of the ‘100 Best Crime Novels of the Century’. His first novel featuring retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder, Flesh and Blood, was published to great acclaim in 2004 and won the CWA Silver Dagger Award. John Harvey is the winner of the 2007 Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.

  John Harvey is also a poet, dramatist and occasional broadcaster.

  Also by John Harvey

  Flesh and Blood

  Ash and Bone

  Gone to Ground

  The Resnick Novels

  Lonely Hearts

  Rough Treatment

  Cutting Edge

  Off Minor

  Wasted Years

  Cold Light

  Living Proof

  Easy Meat

  Still Water

  Last Rites

  Now’s the Time

  The Complete Resnick Short Stories

  Poetry

  Ghosts of a Chance

  Bluer Than This

  As Editor

  Blue Lightning

  Men from Boys

  Find out more about John Harvey by visiting his website at: www.mellotone.co.uk

  In a True Light

  John Harvey

  ‘I suppose I think more in terms of colour than of line’

  Jane Freilicher

  1

  They let Sloane out of prison three days short of his sixtieth birthday. Three years for deception, reduced on appeal to two; six months in Brixton, the remainder in Ford open prison. Naturally lean and wiry, Sloane walked out through the gates a fitter man than when he’d first walked in. Afternoons spent working in the gardens, cultivating everything from camellias to purple sprouting broccoli, cutting back random shrubbery, building dry-stone walls. Evenings he had read, sketched, exercised in his cell. Though greying at the temples, his hair was still strong and full, his eyes clear and disconcertingly blue. Strong cheekbones and lightly weathered skin. Inside, he had elected to keep himself to himself and few, fellow prisoners or guards, had tried to change his mind.

  Now he stood at the centre of Waterloo Bridge, the river running broad and free beneath him. To his left, St Paul’s and the City; to his right, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben. The sun pale in a blue-grey sky and the air bright with the bite and promise of spring.

  That morning he had walked along the Embankment from London Bridge, Blackfriars to Waterloo Station, words and music to an old song by the Kinks accompanying him. Walked slowly, taking it all in. Open prison or not, prison was what it had been; what liberties they had allowed him, small and illusory.

  Sloane breathed deeply, stretched both arms wide and, the beginnings of a smile bright in his eyes, set off for the north side of the Thames.

  Crossing the river: Sloane had friends way back in his early thirties who, when he’d told them he was selling up, moving south, had looked at him askance. South. South of the river. Camberwell. Peckham. Shooters Hill. You can’t be serious. But to Sloane, much of whose formative years had been spent criss-crossing the Atlantic, one home, one parent to another, Chicago to London to New York to London again, the journey across the Thames failed to assume any such significance. And yet, when he looked back, it was true that few of those so-called friends had found their way south to pay their respects to Sloane in Deptford, the only place he had been able to afford the accommodation he wanted: somewhere secure to live, light and large enough in which to paint. True, too, that when he himself made the journey in reverse, back to then familiar watering holes in Camden or Wood Green, all eyes would widen with amazement, as if some long-departed spirit had just walked through the door. Christ, Sloane, what you doin’ here? Thought you’d gone for good.

  And he had. Or so he thought. For a long time Deptford suited him perfectly. Anonymous. Poor. A shuttle of short streets and railway arches, scattered stalls selling everything from fruit and veg to knocked-off boots and jeans at stripped-down prices. When claustrophobia threatened he could stride up the hill to the broad heights of Blackheath and Greenwich Park, or cut north, following Deptford Creek to where the river curved round the Isle of Dogs.

  But things changed as things must: it was in the late eighties, when Sloane returned from yet another prolonged visit to the States, that he noticed it most. The scrubbed wooden shutters that had appeared in the windows of turn-of-the-century terraced houses and the occasional four-by-four parked bulkily at the kerb. Gentrification had arrived and tall skinny lattés would not be far behind. Worse still from Sloane’s point of view, the growing prominence of the art school at Goldsmiths’ College, west towards New Cross, was threatening to turn the whole area into a trendy enclave. Already there were two new art galleries on Deptford High Street, both exhibiting installations – perish they should show actual paintings – and more would follow. Soon, Sloane thought, take a walk to the butcher’s for some lamb chops and you won’t know if it’s the real thing or just another Damien Hirst rip-off.

  It was time to change direction. Go north. North London, that is. The part of his world where he had spent perhaps his most formative years – from primary school into his early teens.

  After months of searching, chasing down what seemed increasingly impossible to find, Sloane stumbled on the perfect location, half-hidden in the back streets of Kentish Town, and not so far from where he and his mother had lived all those years before. The same page of the A-Z.

  The building was set across the end of a short, curving cul-de-sac, flat-fronted, flat-roofed, almost as broad as it was tall. Previously some kind of workshop, Sloane had thought, a small business; the brick exterior, painted white, now veiled in inner-city grime and smut. Large, squarish windows on both floors, the lower ones protected by iron bars; the heavy door padlocked fast. Both window frames and door were painted a dull blue.

  To the right a cobbled alley led to the rear of an old factory, which was gradually being refitted to accommodate smaller enterprises; opposite, high fencing and overgrown shrubbery protected the grounds of a former school, the premises now rented out to minority ginger groups and teachers of self-actualisation and contemporary dance. Immediately behind and high above ground level the track of the old North London railway carried trains into West Kentish Town station every twenty minute
s in the hour.

  The upper floor of the building itself was no more than an open space with bare boards and roughcast walls; ample room for housing Sloane’s accumulated canvases and sundry paraphernalia, room to work, his studio. It would be easy enough to tear out the partitions on the lower level, smooth and sand the floor; he would trawl nearby Junction Road for a reconditioned cooker and fridge to stand with the existing sink, a few bits of basic furniture, second-hand. A plumber could replace the cracked lavatory bowl in the extension out back and, with a little ingenuity, install a shower in the existing space.

  Perfect.

  A month after he signed the lease, two officers from Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiques Unit intercepted him as he left the Pizza Express at the corner of Prince of Wales Road. ‘Fiorentina?’ one of them asked, a slight but perceptible Welsh lilt to his voice. ‘American Hot? Got to be favourite, that. Couple of bottles of Peroni. Garlic bread.’ After dispensing the usual warnings, they placed him under arrest.

  2

  Like so much else, it had happened by chance. Falling in with Robert Parsons, that is.

  Sick of getting by on the dole and what little he could earn from selling his own paintings, Sloane had talked himself into a job at one of the main London auction houses. Nothing too demanding: packing, lifting, loading. Regular money, regular hours. Once in a while he’d poke his nose into the bidding room while there was an auction going on. Two hundred and seventy, two hundred and eighty; yes, thank you, two ninety, two ninety-five, three hundred thousand. Going for the first time at three hundred thousand pounds. The last of his own work Sloane had sold, a large canvas measuring 150 by 260 centimetres, thick swathes of vermilion and magenta overlaid with coils of crystal blue, had been bought by a former rock star, who had paid fifteen hundred pounds for the privilege of having it on the wall in his Tex-Mex restaurant. That and all the enchiladas Sloane could eat. He tried not to feel bitter and mostly he succeeded.

  He was in the packing room one day, wrapping a small Matisse in folds of tissue, when one of the auction house staff came in with a visitor. Camilla, with a degree in Art History from Oxford and a diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing; Robert Parsons, owner of a small, conservative gallery off Cork Street, scrupulous in grey suit, pale pink shirt with white collar, public school tie. A voice you could cut glass on.

  ‘You will treat her carefully,’ Parsons said, smiling amiably in Sloane’s direction. ‘She’s just cost me a small fortune.’

  Sloane glanced down at the painting, a dancer resting among green flowers, and said nothing.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ Parsons asked.

  ‘I don’t have to.’ In fact, Sloane thought it lovely, delicious. The rich darkness of the green, the palpable strength of the dancer’s legs, even in repose. It was Parsons he didn’t like.

  Sensing this, Camilla took Parsons’s arm and led him off in her earnest, sexless manner, encouraging him to share whatever gossip had come his way.

  Sloane didn’t see Parsons again until one afternoon months later, when he was sitting in the furthermost corner of a pub in Notting Hill, enjoying a slow pint and fiddling with somebody’s discarded Times crossword. A small group of people spilled into the bar from the restaurant upstairs, loud on their own brilliance and too much wine. Handshakes and kisses, laughter and farewells: when the rest of them had left, there was Parsons, slipping his mobile from the pocket of his overcoat and checking it for messages. Half turning, he spotted Sloane in his corner and, after only the slightest hesitation, walked over. ‘Robert Parsons,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘The Matisse …’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘You didn’t like it.’

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘I see.’ Parsons eased out a chair and sat down. ‘Then it was what? The money? Not quite as obscene as if someone had turned up another dreary Van Gogh. In which case you could have objected on artistic grounds as well.’ He pointed at Sloane’s glass. ‘Can I get you another?’

  Sloane shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And Lord alone knows I shouldn’t, but …’ He scraped back his chair. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Sloane dickered with fifteen across while Parsons fetched a white wine and soda from the bar.

  ‘You know,’ Parsons said, sitting back down, ‘I sometimes wonder, people in jobs like yours, how much it matters, whether you’re wrapping up fine art or so many cans of beans.’

  Sloane took his time answering. Parsons’s cheeks were more flushed than usual, his eyes less bright, the pitch of his voice slightly off. ‘It matters,’ Sloane said.

  ‘What did you do before?’ Parsons asked. ‘I mean, crating up old masters, cocooning French Impressionists, I doubt you’ve been doing that for ever.’

  Sloane shrugged. ‘This and that.’

  ‘Rumour has it you’re a bit of an artist yourself.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Camilla, she seems convinced. Apparently she saw some sketches you’d left around. Impressive, she said.’

  Sloane sank some more of his beer. ‘She knows bugger all about me. Or what I do.’

  ‘Exactly. Which is why she casts around, second-guesses, speculates. She’s quite fascinated, I assure you.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘But it’s true. Our mysterious Mister Sloane. Like the hero from an Orton play.’ He leaned closer. ‘Paint under the fingernails, that’s what gives you away.’

  Despite himself Sloane glanced down at his hands.

  ‘You should ask her back to your studio some time, look over your portfolio. I’m sure she’d jump at the chance. That and more.’ Parsons sipped a little more wine. ‘Always supposing, of course, that’s the way you’re inclined.’

  The sly appraisal of Sloane’s gaze made his own inclinations all too clear.

  ‘Then, of course,’ Parsons continued, easing back, ‘if a professional opinion is what you’re after, you need search no further.’ He smiled. ‘No obligation either way.’

  Sloane held his gaze. ‘I think I’d be wasting your time.’

  Parsons took hold of the top sheet of newspaper and lifted it to one side, so that the pencilled figure Sloane had been sketching earlier was revealed in full. A woman, nude, drying herself from the bath, one hand holding the fall of thick, heavy hair. Cross-hatching at the base of the spine, the nape of the neck, curve of buttock and breast.

  ‘Doodling,’ said Sloane disparagingly.

  ‘Degas,’ Parsons said.

  ‘My own stuff’s nothing like that.’

  Parsons tapped the sketch with his finger. ‘Draftsmanship, control. Don’t tell me that all goes out of the window the instant you pick up a brush.’

  The quickest way, Sloane realised, to stop Parsons pestering him was to give in. Twenty minutes among years of stored canvases and, like other upscale entrepreneurs before him, Parsons would be excusing himself with a few choice platitudes before wiping the dust of Deptford from his feet.

  Which, to a large extent, was how it was. Parsons arrived with a chilled bottle of good Chablis to celebrate the occasion and, glass in hand, moved with relative speed past the large abstracts ranged around the walls, pausing here and there to comment politely on the colour, the energy of the paint.

  In a corner, shelved, Parsons spotted several large sketchbooks, rimed with dust. ‘May I?’ Before Sloane could answer, he lifted them on to a level surface and used a scrap of rag to wipe the worst of the dust away.

  The first book contained mostly pen-and-ink sketches, exercises, copies of Rembrandt some of them, faces richly detailed, heavily shaded. In the second book there was more colour, more paint, attempt after attempt to reproduce a detail from a Hopper painting, Chop Suey, the tan overcoat hanging behind the two women as they eat, Sloane wanting to capture not only the way the sun through the window created light and shade, but the exact impression of weight, the hollowness of the sleeve as it hangs.

  ‘I wond
er if they teach painting like this any more?’ Parsons said. ‘Copying the masters. Learning the technique.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘And if you can paint in this style so well, so meticulously, why these?’ He gestured at the canvases accumulating in the studio. ‘Why abstraction?’

  Sloane didn’t answer immediately. ‘Because it’s what moves me. It’s what I like.’ He shrugged. ‘And maybe, after all this time, I’m still trying to get it right.’

  Three months after Parsons’s visit to his studio, Sloane lost his job at the auction house. Nothing personal, but business was temporarily in the doldrums and it was a case of belt tightening all round; as the most recent member of his department taken on, Sloane was the one to collect his cards: last in, first out. An affair he had drifted into with one of the bright young women – not Camilla but another just like her – ran aground amidst hasty threats and sundered promises, recriminations and 3 a.m. phone calls full of uneasy silences. Sloane was too old for all that. He was then facing his fifty-second birthday.

  As if in bizarre celebration a storm, gleefully forecast by the Met Office, tore out several of the trees in Greenwich Park by the roots, plundered a dozen others of their upper branches and lifted slates from the roof of Sloane’s home as if they were playing cards. Buckets and plastic sheets kept rain at bay but for how long?

  To cap it all Sloane realised that in twelve months he had failed to sell one painting, not a single one. Several days later Parsons phoned him.

  They met at the gallery after closing. A striking self-portrait by Dame Laura Knight dominated the window; in the first room were several canvases by Gwen John, studies of cats and surly girls prevailed upon to pose: at the rear a small collection of British Impressionists. Rivers at dusk in fading light; idyllic landscapes lost in a haze of longing and red poppies.