Dennis peered in. 'Well strike a light,' he said. 'What's happened here?'
'Nothing much.'
He looked at the hole she'd made in the wall with awed disbelief. 'Well, nothing that a year on a health farm and a team of top psychiatrists couldn't sort out. What did you do that for?'
'There's a picture underneath. Come and look,' she said.
'What am I looking at?'
'A ghost,' she said. 'Amelia's ghost. The woman who made this house. Do you see her just starting to show through?'
'I see a wall.'
'No,' said Amy. 'Look harder. Here and here. Follow the line up. Do you see now?'
'I think so.'
Very faintly, where the paint still covering it was at its thinnest, the Dutchman's sepia lines were coming out to greet the day.
'You can see her body, Amelia's body, and part of her head,too.'
'Look, kid. It's a very nice picture but the Hawk will do his nut when he sees that. So will old man Parrish. Do you want me to plop some plaster over that? Won't take me a moment to mix it up. The Hawk doesn't like holes in walls, particularly holes in walls caused by people of the wrong sex with aliases. If it was me he'd shave off my buttock hairs with a power sander.'
Amy couldn't help smiling. This was the Dennis she thought she knew.
'Have you got buttock hairs? Really?'
'Course I have. It's a builder's natural defence against wind-chill caused by the cruel demands of fashion, dictating as it does that we expose the top three inches of the aforesaid buttocks while working. Would you like to see?' Dennis twirled around and started to undo his trousers.
'Probably not.'
'Well, what about the plastering?'
'Thanks, Dennis. It's a kind offer but I don't think so.'
He looked at his watch. 'I've got something to do,' he said. 'I've got a new trick. I'll pop back in afterwards and see if you've aged enough to turn sensible.'
She waved at him absently, still staring at the wall. He went out. Twenty minutes later, the peace of the house was destroyed by men's shouts and pounding feet on the stairs. Gengko flew past her, wild-eyed, when she went out to the landing.
'Stay there,' he called back to her. 'Don't come down.'
Eric was close behind him and she blocked his way.
'What's going on?' she said.
He looked at her white-faced and staring. 'Bloody Dennis,' he said. 'He's bloody dead.'
TWENTY-ONE
The saw was still howling its song of savage triumph. Around it, but well back, stood a horrified half-circle of builders, dressed, half dressed or just wrapped in towels. Eric was poised on the balls of his feet, swaying as if his brain told him to go nearer and his eyes told him not to. Gengko was moving very slowly closer, taking tiny, tightrope-walker steps. At the centre of the tableau, Don knelt on the ground facing them, with Dennis slumped across his lap, but Don's hands and Dennis's chest were uniformly soaked in the bright arterial blood which had pumped Dennis's life out of the great wound bitten into his neck. Amy pushed through the middle of them and, finding she could not stop, walked towards Don and Dennis's cradled body, breaking the spell of stillness.
She stood in front of them and Don looked slowly up and met her eyes. Gengko moved past her, moving carefully to avoid the puddles and splashes of blood, and pushed the button that let the saw spin down from fury to resentment and then sullen silence.
In the absence of noise, Dennis's body became more real, more destabilizing.
'We'll call an ambulance,' she said, looking away.
'What's the point?'
Gengko came to her side, bent down and lifted Dennis from Don's legs, laying him on the ground to one side. 'Get a blanket,' he called, and they covered Dennis over. For a few seconds, his body was just a neat mound of cream wool until the scarlet evidence of death soaked outward into their sight, widening as the blanket moulded itself to his wound. She concentrated on Don then, inspecting his face, and could tell nothing from it. He stared back at her as if he expected her to have some answer, then he turned away and walked back into the house.
They had all edged in closer now. Nobody asked what had happened. It was too obvious.
'Bloody stupid tricks,' Eric muttered.
'Who saw it?' demanded Tel, as if only that information, that act of witness, would make it real.
Nobody volunteered.
'Don, I guess,' said Gengko.
After the car park had filled up with the official attendants of disaster, after the scene of crime officers and the coroner's men had measured and photographed and taken the body away, after the Hawk, coming in fate from a night spent in town, had wreaked indiscriminate verbal revenge on all of them simply for being there, it was Gengko who told them all that Don hadn't seen it either. Amy had gone to look for Don when the arrival of the police had broken the spell that kept them all standing round the blanket as if they were holding a vigil. All she had found in his room was the bloodstained overalls he had been wearing in a heap in the middle of his floor. Later, and time had stopped working so she had no idea if it was ten minutes or an hour, Gengko came into the kitchen where they were all sitting in silence drinking endless mugs of tea.
'I found him,' he said, 'down by the river. Fucking state of shock, he's in. He'll come along when he's ready.'
'What did he say?' asked Jo-Jo. 'Did he tell you what happened?'
Gengko shrugged. 'Not a lot. Said he looked out the window, saw Dennis switch the saw on, went down to the door and by that time it was all over. He was in a heap on the ground.'
'And that's it, is it? He wasn't down there with him?' There was an edge in Jo-Jo's voice.
One or two of the men glanced up sharply, Gengko swivelled round to look at Jo-Jo. The air in the room, thick a moment before with suffocating weight, became electric.
'He didn't maybe just happen to push him, did he? Just a little bit, maybe? He …'
Tel jumped to his feet, his mug smashing on the floor, and pulled back his fist and Gengko took a step forward to get in between them, arms raised to ward them off. In that moment, the door opened and a policeman appeared in the doorway.
'Looking for Donald Gilby,' he said. 'Is he here?' Then he looked again at the tableau of frozen figures. 'Something going on here, is there?' he asked. 'Something troubling you gentlemen?'
'I'll get him for you,' said Amy, suddenly desperate to get out of that room. Ten minutes. I'll be back in ten minutes.'
Three minutes to walk down to the river, three minutes to walk back leaving four minutes to sort out the ferment in her mind, to address the unthinkable made brutally thinkable by Jo-Jo's words. Things like that didn't happen in real life. Unless something very like that had just happened. Once she was in the lower field she could see Don ahead, standing on the bank just above the landing stage, right where she had known he would be. His back was turned and he was gazing out across the river and she walked more slowly on towards him, wondering what expression she would see if she could see his face. What would Don's portrait tell her now? Uneasy at the thought of taking him by surprise, she turned away, heading for the bank twenty yards to one side of him. There was nobody else in sight. Dennis's warning hung in the air around her, his voice clamouring in her ears. For a moment she was poised to run away, then Don turned to look at her and, seeing the tear tracks down his cheeks and the swollen red of his eyes, she ran towards him instead. With her arms around him, holding him tight, she let go of herself and sobbed out her horror and her fears but most of all her relief until she felt his hand stroking her hair, stroking her calm again. His tears were the sign she needed to show that Jo-Jo was wrong.
'They want to talk to you,' she said when she could.
'Who do?' he said, drawing away and holding her at arm's length.
'The police.'
For a moment, his eyes widened with an expression she hadn't seen before. 'Well, I'm used to that,' he replied. 'I'll go back in a while.' He let her go and looked out acr
oss the river again.
'They want you now. I said I'd get you.'
His head jerked round but he thought better of whatever he had been about to say, 'All right then, I'm coming.'
The whole morning was taken up with statements and the minutiae of death. There was no work going on. Amy went up to her room, unable to settle to any one thing. She was fiddling with her sketch pad when she heard footsteps approaching her door. There was a knock and she opened it to find a policewoman standing there.
'Amy Dale?'
'Yes.'
'WPC Percival. Can I come in?'
'Of course you can.'
Amy, feeling suddenly nervous, looked around the room at her dearth of furniture. 'Sit down,' she said, indicating the chair. 'I'll sit on the bed.'
The sketch pad was lying on the chair and she went to take it away but the policewoman, picking it up to hand it to her, looked at the drawing of Don.
'Is that Mr Gilby?'
'I'm glad you can recognize him,' Amy replied. 'I'm never sure anyone will recognize my pictures even when they're finished.'
'Particular friend of yours, is he?'
'No, not really. Well, I don't know. I've only been here a few days. I've talked to him quite a lot I suppose, being right next door, and we're working in the same room.' I'm talking too much, thought Amy, and stopped. Why does that uniform make me feel guilty?
'Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?' said the policewoman.
'No, of course.'
'I don't think we need a formal statement or anything at this stage, but it has been put to us that you might have had something to do with this morning's incident.'
'What? I wasn't even there. I was inside. I was down in the …'
'Yes, I know. I don't mean it like that.'
'Oh. What do you mean?'
'It's been put to us that Mr Greener might have been trying to impress you with his stunts.'
'Mr Greener?'
'Dennis Greener?' WPC Percival looked at her curiously. 'The man who died.'
Death had brought Dennis a dignity he would have hated.
'Of course. Sorry, we all knew him as Dennis the Menace.'
The policewoman frowned. 'In what sense was he a menace?'
'It was what he called himself. It was a joke. Anyway, who on earth said he was trying to impress me?'
'Do you think it might be true?'
'No. At least I don't think so. He used to do those horrible tricks before I showed up.'
WPC Percival looked uncomfortable, 'Did he … do you think he might have been attracted to you?'
'Oh, what? Look, he was a nice man, very funny.' Don's accusation stalked around in the back of her mind. She pushed it aside. 'He was thirty years older than me and he knew it. He wasn't kidding himself. You know how it is? I'm sure you've experienced it loads of times. You can tell instantly, can't you? You know, when some old man forgets his age and thinks he's love's young dream. He wasn't like that.'
'Don't tell me,' the other woman said. 'You should see what the uniform does to them. So he wasn't an old lecher?'
'Not for a moment.'
'It doesn't mean he wasn't trying to impress you.'
'No, it doesn't, but I think he was trying to impress everybody. He cast himself as the court jester. It was his moment of glory. Macho rubbish. I wish he hadn't.' She felt tears coming.
'I'm sorry, I had to ask.'
'Can you tell me who's been saying these things?'
'No, I can't. Someone who thought it mattered,' said the policewoman, getting to her feet to go. Then, as if she couldn't stop herself, her eyes drifted across to Don's picture on the pad. 'Nothing else you want to tell us, is there?'
Amy closed her eyes. There was so much she wanted to tell someone. At that moment she wanted to pour out all the muddy whirlpool of doubt swirling around her head. The chain saw, droning an evil harmony to this morning's violence. The triangle of Dennis, Don and Vin. The look in Don's eyes. She wanted to tell it all, but she wanted to tell it to someone who would listen, and smile and tell her it was nothing to worry about, that it was all imagination, not someone who would take notes and take action.
'No,' she said. It made no sense to raise doubts. 'I suppose … I suppose you couldn't tell me something about him, could you. About Dennis?'
'What sort of something?'
'Someone told me he had a record, a criminal record. I don't want to think of him like that. Can you tell me if it's true?'
'I can't help you there,' said the policewoman firmly.
When she had gone, Amy crossed to the window but down there, right in the middle of her view was the saw bench. Feeling trapped by the walls and the window she took the pad, went downstairs and out into the yard at the back, hoping to get away from all the people, all the searching looks. Instead she found Gengko, standing glaring up at the sun as if it had no right to be shining.
'You all right?' he asked, and she shook her head.
'Police seen you?'
'Yes.'
There was a short silence while he studied her. 'That stuff with Jo-Jo,' he said in the end. 'You didn't say anything, did you?'
'No.'
'It's our business, all that. It's not for anybody else's ears, right?'
'You don't believe it, do you Gengko?'
'That Don pushed Dennis?' He looked at her sombrely, then shook his head. 'Why would he do that? Listen, kid, Dennis was his very own accident, just wailing to happen. Go easy on Don. He's had a hard time.' He stopped talking as a policeman walked out into the yard, looked round and went back inside. 'I hope they do too,' he said.
Amy went for a walk, but grief and doubt make poor company and she took in very little of the countryside around her. She followed the road the other way, where it went inland away from the Humber, and after half an hour's walking she turned and retraced her steps to the point where she could just see the house away across the fields. There she sat on a wall and remembered Dennis and his rubber ducks and she wondered if he would still be alive if she hadn't happened along that road, that day. It occurred to her then that her life was dominated by hidden faces. Amelia hiding her face behind the plaster, just a fraction of an inch out of reach of her eyes. Don hiding his face at every opportunity, unable to accept that the sight of him could please her, scar or no scar. In her sketch pad, she had drawn him with his eyes closed and there was no clue as to whether darkness or light ruled behind them. Rubbing them out, she pencilled wide-open eyes in their place, the look she had seen most recently when she'd told him the police wanted to talk to him. His expression made her shiver. She quickly rubbed those out too and drew the closed eyelids back over them to make them go away.
Sitting there on the wall, with the sun coming out to warm her face, she shivered and then she resolved to take control. First there was Vin's account of what had happened. She had promised Dennis she would read it and so long as she could find it, that was what she would do. It would clear her mind. More important, it would clear Don, too, free him of all the swirling clouds of suspicion people had put in her head. Her soul was dancing in the flames with Don and whether she liked it or not, it was almost beyond her control. She needed to believe in him. It was the first time she had ever got out of bed with a man, shaken to the core by what they had done together. She wanted very much to be in that bed with him again, not just in the dark, but to wake up with him in daylight, to gaze at each other with nothing in the way. It should be the right Don, a Don who wanted the light on, who wasn't scarred inside and out, a Don who was good for her and for himself. She wanted a man whose eyes didn't change so much, a man who could look straight at her. She wanted a Don whose picture could plausibly exist on the same page as hers.
'Bugger,' she said, getting up to walk back to whatever Paull Holme Manor now held for her.
Back on her gloomy landing, she saw Don's door was open wide and the room was empty, so she turned and entered his room as if that might somehow make everything clear
er, looking at the chair and the bed as if they held the answer. Looking at the bed, remembering the feeling of him against her, she suddenly knew she had lied to Dennis, that she was in far deeper than her knees.
Then, belatedly, it came to her that the solution might lie in her own hands, in her brush and her palette, by painting Don either into her life or out of it. A picture was a two-way transaction. She could show him the version she saw, the one she wanted to be with and then see if he could be that man. That was what she had to do, to coax him into accepting the way he looked to her and to the world. Looking around, she knew this was the right place to do it, next to that bed with its memories and its promise. What had this tower room been, she wondered again? A defence post? A storeroom? Had people lived here, loved here? Had passion ever had the chance to soak into these old stone walls? It was Don's own separate space, apart from the house which had been built on to it. No normal rules would apply here. It made an unlikely studio, this room, but that was just what it was going to be.
There was a note under her own door. Peter Parrish was downstairs and would like to see her.
It was only when she pushed open the door of the room where she had been working that she remembered what she had done to the wall in that far-off time just a few hours before.
Don was sitting on a box, his back half-turned to Parrish who was standing with his hands clasped behind him, gazing at the wall. The noise of the door opening seemed to break a long silence.
'Hello,' said Parrish. 'I'm glad to see you. Are you managing?'
'So far,' said Amy.
'Mr Hawkins and I have put our heads together and we've decided it might be best for everyone if work carries on as usual. There'll be plenty of time to talk later. Is that all right with you?'
Amy nodded.
Parrish indicated the great hole Amy had made in the plaster, 'I see you've been a touch impulsive,' he said. 'I'm glad you stopped where you did.'
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