A Bed of Scorpions

by Judith Flanders

  ‘But she could possibly have had time to follow me down to the archive.’

  He nodded. Helena brought us back to order. ‘If, as Jake tells me, Celia Stein was taking pictures which are time-stamped, they’ll be able to say when the dummy picture was hung, and therefore what time she left you.’ She made a note. Oh good, we were on her ‘to do’ list. ‘But I want to focus on why, for a moment. Why would she want to hurt you?’

  I noticed that Helena never said someone had tried to kill me. It was always ‘hurt’, or ‘attack’. A rare overt indication of the love I knew that she had for me.

  I thought for a moment. ‘Aidan asked Lucy to send me the JPEGS of the Stevensons with book jackets in them. Would Myra know that?’

  He shrugged. Myra knows everything that happens in the gallery, the gesture said.

  ‘So she knew that I was looking at eleven pictures, two of which were very possibly forgeries. I emailed my results to you, Helena, but not to Aidan. Would she have seen an email you sent him?’

  ‘I didn’t email, we spoke.’ Her voice was absent as she thought it through. ‘So as far as she knew yesterday, you very likely knew of something suspect, and since all eleven paintings had book jackets in them, she might assume it had to do with your area of expertise. But before?’

  Before what? I felt the way I always do with Helena, like a cocker spaniel scrambling along behind a greyhound which was outpacing me on idle.

  ‘Sam. Someone knocked you off your cycle on Saturday.’

  I put my hand up to my face, where the scabs were healing. So they had. I wasn’t sure I’d ever imagined a week where a hit-and-run became the kind of thing that slipped my mind.

  ‘What would you have done to worry her before Lucy sent you those pictures?’

  I thought back. ‘I emailed back and forth with her regarding the funeral, but only the time of the service, and sending flowers.’ I ticked over what had happened in the days between Frank’s death and the funeral. ‘I had a strange conversation with her at the funeral, but that was after …’ I touched my face again. ‘The only other time we spoke was when I paid a condolence call on Toby. We had a brief conversation.’ I tried to remember what we’d said. ‘I have no idea what we discussed – the gallery? Stevenson? Frank? It was meaningless chit-chat, the kind you have when you have nothing to say.’

  Helena made a note and nodded. She was ready to move down the agenda. ‘Let’s leave Myra for the moment. Where does Celia Stein come in? Does Celia Stein come in?’

  ‘I’m not sure. If it hadn’t been that she approached me the day after Frank died, I’d say now she didn’t. The only way I can make sense of it is that she found out what was going on and went to Frank. Frank would rather have died than—’ I bit my tongue. Frank had died rather than let the gallery be exposed as sellers of forgeries. I started again. ‘Or, wait. Maybe she offered him a deal: if he paid her off, then she would keep quiet.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘Jake said she started to have money three years ago, when she bought a big house.’

  ‘And why did she get in touch with you?’

  Aidan spoke now, the first time since I’d named Myra. I’d become so focused on Helena I jumped. ‘Because of me. And your policeman.’ Truly I was going to slosh him for that ‘my’ policeman routine when this was over.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I had lunch with you the day after Frank died. The detective in charge of the investigation is your boyfriend.’

  ‘How would she know either of those things?’

  He was bitter. ‘Because I told her.’

  ‘What, you rang her and said, “Hey, crazy coincidence, but let me tell you about this woman you’ve never met”? Why would you mention me, much less that I was having lunch with you, or shagging a policeman?’

  Give me patience, oh Lord, said his expression. ‘The Tate thing was Frank’s baby. When he died, I had to take over, and I was supposed to have lunch with Celia to get up to speed. I said I didn’t want to cancel you because of your policeman.’ Just wait until this was over.

  I don’t know if Helena saw me clench my teeth, but she jumped in. ‘You told her the day you found Frank dead?’ He nodded. ‘And that day, she rang Sam’s office.’ Another note.

  And then, to add to the sense that she had us all under her effortless control, her assistant knocked. A call from the CID: my presence was requested, as soon as possible. Aidan went back to the Tate, and Helena and I took the cab I had left waiting outside. It was going to cost a fortune, but Helena would return to her office after the interview, and I needed to be able to get about. As we wove through the traffic, I tried to remember if I’d ever read a crime novel where the main preoccupation of the person on the run is the cost of the cab fare. I made a mental note to mention it as a new plot twist.

  I knew, of course, that Jake worked at Scotland Yard, but I’d never been there. In fact, when we got into the cab and said ‘Scotland Yard’, I realised I had no idea where it was. Victoria, as it turned out. At least my archive adventure hadn’t taken Jake far out of his way yesterday. Even without sirens blaring, it took only three minutes from there to his office. Top Tip for Coppers’ Girls: If you’re going to get yourself attacked, do it near the bf’s office. Scotland Yard itself turned out to be an ugly 1960s office block down a tiny side street. I looked around as we got out of the cab. There was no reason, short of going to Scotland Yard, for anyone to ever walk down this street. Probably the point.

  Helena took charge, bundling me inside, and then through the airport-style security in the foyer – metal detector, bag search, X-ray. We were given tags and escorted upstairs, where we were handed over to a second escort, who walked us down to where Jake and the same two detectives from the previous night were waiting in a meeting room. They hadn’t been introduced last night, and they weren’t now either.

  I looked around, curious. Inside, the building looked like it had been decorated by the same people who did airport lounges – strident patterned carpet, sofas upholstered in clashing plaids, and walls finished in yellow wood with shiny varnish. The meeting room we were in had a sub-Scandinavian table and knock-offs of those Scan-style chairs with metal legs. The effect was spoilt by framed awards and citations peppered across the walls: Danish modern meets Quonset hut.

  I looked at Helena. I’d really be much happier if you carried the ball, I telegraphed. She pulled out her legal pad, folded her hands on the table, and began. The men listened to her in silence, but after only a couple of minutes one of the two picked up the files and began flicking back and forth, hunting down documentary evidence for her story. The other two sat listening, neither accepting nor rejecting her – my – thesis.

  When she finished, the three moved away from the table and consulted in low voices. Then they returned, and the bigger of the two spoke directly to me. ‘We’d like to go over the two possible assaults on you.’

  I didn’t sigh, but I thought about it. Helena’s head never moved, but she shook her head in response to my not-sigh all the same.

  We went over it again. And again. And again. They seemed puzzled by my part in the case, but since they never came right out and said so, I didn’t feel it was possible to agree that I was puzzled too. I’d started as Aidan’s friend, and then, somehow, stuff just kept happening to me. I decided that ‘stuff just kept happening’ would not be a useful contribution to their case notes, and kept it to myself.

  Finally they stopped. I made a plea for the return of my handbag, and one mumbled about paperwork, but I saw Jake’s almost invisible nod. I’d get it back. They spoke to Helena briefly about the practical details of the forgery side. For a case to be opened, someone would have to lay a formal charge. That would, however, follow automatically if one of the forgeries had been sold to any of the national collections. Finally, Jake took us downstairs, and we stood outside in the drive. Helena kissed me briskly and tap-tapped off to find a cab and get back to her office. And we stood in s
ilence for a moment.

  ‘We’ll bring Myra in for questioning. Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’ll soon be over.’

  Dear God, I hoped so.

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  There was no point in being at the office if I was just going to barricade myself in and tell Miranda to repel all boarders. ‘Home, I suppose.’ I saw his protest and headed it off. ‘I might sit with Mr Rudiger until you get back.’

  That won a grunt and a nod of approval. He looked at his watch. ‘Unless there’s a delay finding her, or her finding a solicitor, I should be home by eight.’

  I gave him what turned out to be a fairly watery smile. Next time I got involved with violence and sudden death, I was going to stock up on tissues first.

  I’d lied. I didn’t plan to sit with Mr Rudiger, although I had to ring his bell when I got to the house: I still didn’t have my keys. He let me in with no more surprise than Helena had earlier. Memo to self: do not play poker with those two.

  I told him I wasn’t well and had forgotten my keys, and he nodded, even as his face said, Fool yourself all you want, but don’t think you’re fooling me. I knew I wasn’t, but I was talked out.

  I trailed around the flat, checking that every door and window was closed and locked. I looked in the cupboards, and behind the sofa. I felt like I was in a bad slasher film, but not a bad enough film not to do it. Then I went to bed.

  I woke up feeling much better, if very stiff. The bruises from the books were getting worse, not better. I took them to the bath and soaked for a while. Then I pottered. I tidied a bit, watered the herbs pots in the garden before I jumped back inside and double-locked the door again. I put yesterday’s clothes into the take-to-the-recycling bag: they were torn as well as black with grime that would never come out. All this made me feel like I was in control, and I decided that a visit to Mr Rudiger would, after all, be a good idea. I started to hunt for my phone to text Jake to say where I was in case I was still there when he got home, before I realised that I’d have to do it Mr Rudiger-style. I stuck a scribbled post-it note – ‘I’m upstairs. Sam’ – on the door and went.

  Mr Rudiger and I had a routine. I always opened with a soft serve, asking if he’d like to come down for a drink/ coffee/chat; he returned with, Since you’re up here, why don’t you come in. I lobbed back by hesitating politely – If you’re sure I’m not interrupting. And so on. I like it. I like my professional life, where we drift, boundary-less between work and personal; I like the quasi-living together with Jake, a halfway house between the structured meetings dating requires and the unboundaried stream of living together. But I also like Mr Rudiger’s world, where borders are crossed only with a passport.

  Match played out to both our satisfaction, I went in, as we had both known I would from the moment I’d knocked. We sat on his terrace in the late-afternoon shade, drinking iced-coffee, which I’d made. He’d pulled a dubious, Central-European face at the notion of adding ice to coffee, but he’d politely joined me, although I think he was mentally holding his nose the whole time. I caught him up on the previous day’s events. An hour before, I would have said ‘horrors’, not ‘events’, but Mr Rudiger was always so calm that he helped me achieve some distance. After I’d finished, he sat quietly, not speaking.

  ‘It goes back to vanity, doesn’t it?’ he said, finally.

  ‘It does?’

  He was very sure of what he was saying. ‘Vain people can’t bear to be crossed. They are the centre of their world, and if the circumstances don’t allow the world to meet their needs, then the circumstances need to be changed. Their actions appear proportionate to them, because any situation where their needs aren’t being met is an affront.’

  I’d heard similar ideas before, but I’d never had a real-life example to apply it to. ‘Werner Schmidt was affronted that the world did not agree that he was a great artist. That might well be the case. Myra?’ I considered. She had certainly given me the feeling that she thought the gallery would collapse without her. ‘She’s worked there for a million years. Maybe being its registrar, not a partner, was an affront to her vanity?’ Mr Rudiger turned his palms up, Could be. ‘Celia is vain. Her needs – money – were not being met, so she tried to blackmail Frank and it went wrong.’

  It sounded sensible, but I wasn’t sure what it proved. Or didn’t prove. Or if it proved anything at all.

  It was after seven. Mr Rudiger had heard Anthony come in, but no Jake. But with people on both floors above me, my empty flat seemed less threatening. I thanked him for his company and went back downstairs. I pulled the note off the door and dropped it in the recycling box. Jake would probably be home soon. Food stocks were low, but I wanted to do something normal, like make dinner.

  I began to do that, but I wouldn’t call it normal, as I turned over and over in my mind all that had happened. Normal, I told myself. I looked in the fridge. Several elderly, tired carrots, a semi-dead fennel, and that was it. End-of-week soup was the only thing I could think of, even though it wasn’t the end of the week, only Tuesday. That reminded me, so in a further attempt to pretend my life was normal I emptied the bins. Wednesday was rubbish day.

  I like making soup. You start with a few whiskery carrots, you put in some elbow-grease, and before you know it, you have something comforting. Unlike Jake’s job. There you start with a body and a question, you put in some elbow-grease, and you end up with even more questions than when you began. If this were a crime novel, I thought as I chopped, we’d be on the last chapter. The forgery had been exposed, and now all that was left was to pull back the curtain and reveal the criminal mastermind, usually by having him show up on the detective’s doorstep, waving a gun and curiously anxious to explain his actions.

  It’s not that I’d become jumpy or anything, but my eyes did just flick over to the back door. Closed. And locked. And then to the door to the hall. But I managed to stay in the kitchen and not walk down to check the front door too. Honour saved.

  And if the criminal mastermind wasn’t ready to confess, the detective would stand with his back to the fireplace, explaining everything to the gathered suspects, playing eenie-meenie-miney-moe until he got to the guilty one.

  I didn’t think it would work for me. First off, I haven’t got a fireplace. And then there were the practicalities. How did those invitations get issued? ‘Hi, Celia. It’s Sam Clair. I know a splendid source of income has just vanished in a puff of smoke, but I wondered if you’d like to drop by for a drink. No? Pity. Another time, perhaps.’ That needed work.

  I ran through a list of invitees. ‘Hello, Viv. You’ve really got nothing to do with this, and have barely featured in the scenario. Tradition therefore dictates that you must be the lead suspect. Like to come for supper?’ Or, ‘Hi, Jim. I’m having a little soiree …’ He’d be the easiest. All I’d have to do was say that Lucy was coming. ‘Oh yes, I thought I’d invite as many people as possible who have no reason to be involved—’

  I stopped and stared out the window sightlessly. I had assumed – I assumed we had all assumed – that Frank had killed himself when he discovered the gallery was selling forgeries. But what if he hadn’t? Who stood to benefit, not from the forgeries, but from his death?

  Lucy and her sister. They inherited Frank’s share of the gallery.

  To the best of my knowledge, nice girls tend not to kill their uncles. Nice girls also tend not to attack editors they barely know. If they do, there has to be a reason for it. The reason to kill Frank was obvious. If the forgeries had become public knowledge, Merriam–Compton would have collapsed. No gallery could withstand a scandal of that magnitude. And Lucy wanted to make her career there. Why would she attack me, though? I thought back over our meetings. At Toby’s, when I first met her, we had discussed the show she wanted to mount, and I’d – I clutched the paring knife more tightly – I’d mentioned the book jacket collages and even said I had the same edition of one of the books, and mentioned the William Burroughs. I’d followed that up
by emailing Jim, who was besotted with her, and might easily have told her. I’d even mentioned Kafka’s Puppy, which turned out to be a suspected forgery. She’d then seen Myra work herself into a snit with me at the funeral, and – I took a deep breath – she’d even asked me if I was brave enough to start cycling again.

  I reached for the phone. A single ring and then, ‘Field’. Thank you, Lord.

  ‘It’s not Myra.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘She’s confessed.’

  That made no sense. ‘She killed Frank? And Schmidt?’

  Another silence. Then his voice gentled, as though he were talking to a small child. ‘Why would you think Myra killed Frank? Why would you think Frank was killed at all? She confessed to producing the documents for Schmidt’s forgeries. Although she is claiming she was coerced by Frank. She says he was the one who had briefed Schmidt, set the whole thing in motion.’ His voice said what he thought of that. ‘The thing is, it can’t have been her in the archive. We have her health records. She’s had a weak heart for years. She couldn’t have attacked you in the archive. She’s not physically capable.’

  I’d forgotten I’d moved on a few steps. ‘She doesn’t matter. That is, she does, but—’ I broke off and gathered my wits. ‘What kind of car did Frank drive? Or maybe Toby.’ More silence. ‘Humour me. Please.’

  He turned his head away and spoke briefly to someone with him. There was a pause. Then he repeated, his voice no longer in ‘humour’ mode. ‘A Volvo XC90.’ And I mouthed along with him the next part, ‘Dark blue.’