Kathryn Horton’s body turned up a week later on the west of the island – it was just the way the tides ran. It was half eaten by who knows what sea creatures. The pictures never resurfaced.
‘Do you think people are going to be hunting for the sunken Monets as much as they do for Blackbeard’s treasure?’ Nadine asked Sheriff Wilson.
They were sitting with Natasha Innocent at the viewing point, raising a glass to Josie and Johnny Finch.
‘Not sure oil paintings do too well underwater,’ Wilson said. ‘Especially under saltwater. But I doubt that will stop anybody. So “Probably” is my answer.’
He burst out laughing. Nadine and Innocent exchanged looks. He leaned in towards them.
‘Let me tell you a story about a cop in New York.’
‘You?’ Innocent said.
‘I would be that asshole.’ He looked out at the choppy waters and shook his head. ‘In my New York days I’d reasoned that a cowboy hanging out in the art galleries was cat-nip for the ladies. Kind of Coogan’s Bluff meets French art movies.’ He laughed again. ‘Boy, how wrong I was. You ever seen a film called Midnight Cowboy?’
‘I’m walking here,’ Innocent said in a terrible New Yawk accent. ‘The gay movie. All the gays fancy the cowboy.’
‘That’s right,’ Wilson said. ‘Only I’d never seen it.’
Nadine laughed.
‘I enjoyed the art though,’ Wilson said. ‘Especially the paintings of Monsieur Monet.’
Innocent looked at him sharply.
‘Something is coming here.’
Wilson took another sip of his bourbon.
‘There was something about Julian’s studio. Two empty easels in the middle of the room, couple of old frames against the wall. You know what I was wondering?’
Innocent smiled.
‘If he was copying two paintings why weren’t there still two paintings in his studio ?’ Innocent said.
Wilson nodded.
‘In some state of progress. But there was nothing. So I scoped the room. Went outside and studied the back wall of the house. I went back inside and looked at the back wall. The outside wall was about six feet longer than the inside wall.’
‘A hidden room,’ Nadine said, a thrill in her voice.
‘I tap-tapped along the side-wall, looking for loose joints, looking for a way into this secret room. A panel moved a little and I poked around and it came away from the wall.’ Another sip of bourbon. ‘I was looking into a storeroom. Stacked on shelves on one side were tiny jars of paint. Against the far wall were old canvases and picture frames. Leaning against the near wall, side by side, were two paintings. One of a man smoking a pipe, the other of the front of a cathedral.’
Nadine frowned.
‘Finished?’
Wilson nodded.
‘Phoebe always said when he had the bit between his teeth he worked like a madman. Julian had finished both paintings. The question now was which paintings were the real ones. These or the ones that had been stolen.’
‘Could you tell?’ Innocent said.
‘Julian was good,’ Wilson said. ‘But, yes, I could tell.’
‘How?’ Nadine said.
‘The backs,’ Wilson said. ‘He still had the backs to do. His forgeries had nothing on the backs. The pictures I found in the hidden room had all kinds of gallery marks and stuff.’
‘They stole the forgeries,’ Innocent said.
Wilson nodded.
‘Hang on, Sheriff,’ Nadine said. ‘So where are the originals?’
‘Somewhere safe,’ he said.
‘But they have to be returned to Bartram’s wife,’ Innocent said.
‘You think?’ Wilson looked into his glass. ‘She’s already made an insurance claim. As far as everybody knows the paintings are at the bottom of the briny sea.’
Nadine frowned.
‘If you’re telling us you can’t be aiming to profit from them.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Unless you’re offering to cut us in on the deal…’
‘How much do you say these paintings are worth?’ Innocent said.
Wilson smiled at her.
‘Around eighteen million on the open market. Around six on the black market.’
Wilson kept looking until Innocent got there.
‘The exact same amount we need for the wetlands centre,’ she said.
Wilson nodded.
‘Give or take.’
Innocent drained her drink.
‘It would mean doing something illegal,’ Innocent said.
‘For the greater good,’ Nadine said.
‘There’s a guy in New York…’ Wilson said.
Innocent looked at him.
‘Sheriff – is this turning the clock back?’
He looked at her and sighed.
‘Okay, I know the rumours. Hell, everybody knows the rumours. So I’m only going to tell this once. I hope it’s not going to go any further.’
Innocent jiggled her glass at him.
‘I’m going to need another drink if you’re in confessional mode.’
Wilson filled everybody’s glasses and took a deep breath.
‘I knew what Luke Hanson – Johnny – had got caught up in. I’d been first on the scene.’
Wilson looked at his feet.
‘I never said to Luke - or to anybody, for that matter – that I’d been at the scene of the crime.’
Innocent looked at him but said nothing. Wilson looked out at the glittering water.
Two days before Lewis, Santiago and Rojas committed that terrible crime, Wilson had come up against them. He had them cold – kind of. He’d been in a diner on 42nd street and they’d come in. They’d clocked him for a cop even before they sat down in the booth across from him. Civvies just never hung right on him.
They’d goaded him. Cop this and cop that in their conversation. Glancing across at him as they joshed with each other. Eventually, Lewis came over and plonked himself down on the opposite side of the table.
Wilson kept his eyes down, focusing on his salt beef.
‘Help you?’ he said after a minute that seemed to last an age.
‘Doubtful,’ Lewis said.
‘Then maybe you should rejoin your friends,’ Wilson said.
‘That an order?’
Wilson looked up then, and across at the other two men, leering at him.
‘What do you want?’ he said, addressing his question to them all.
‘To kill a cop,’ Santiago said with a cheerless laugh.
‘Go ahead,’ Wilson said. ‘Nothing I can do about it. Three bad boys against an unarmed man.’
‘That right you’re unarmed?’ Lewis said.
Wilson nodded.
‘Then where’s the fun?’
‘I never suggested it would be fun. Just that it was possible.’
‘Or we could buy you.’
‘I’m not for sale,’ Wilson said.
Lewis leaned forward.
‘Every cop I’ve ever met has been for sale.’
‘Have you heard of the exception that proves the rule?’ Wilson said. ‘That’s me.’
Lewis produced a gun from nowhere.
‘Then we’re back to option one.’
Wilson laughed, though he didn’t know where he found the bravado to do so. He was about as scared as a man could get. He knew they thought he really did have a gun but he didn’t. He was off duty and he’d left his service weapon at home and what a dumb fuck he felt about that.
‘So be it,’ he said, pretty sure only he could hear the quaver in his voice.
‘You know me?’ Lewis said.
And this was Wilson’s Cross. He knew Lewis and his compadres very well. But he looked into Lewis’s dead eyes and said:
‘No idea who you are.’
Lewis looked at him.
‘You should be arresting me.’
‘On my lunch break?’ Wilson said. The cock crowed again.
‘I’m a bad-ass motherfucker.’
&nbs
p; Wilson pushed his plate away and slid out of the booth. He dropped a $10 bill on the table.
‘We all think that about ourselves,’ he said and walked out of the diner, the sound of the men’s laughter following him.
Word got around. The owner told another cop and the story spread that Cowboy Harry Wilson had run away from Lewis and Co. Then, after the grotesque killings, that story got parlayed into a story that he took a bribe from them. And after that the story went that the bribe happened after the killings not before.
Stories have a habit of taking on their own lives and this one sure as hell had. And just like that he was loathed in the department. He kind of loathed himself but knew that was stupid. What could he have done? One unarmed law officer against three vicious, violent men? He could have done nothing but he was part of that macho culture that does the Die Trying thing.
‘So, that’s my sad story,’ he said now. ‘The one I carry around with me. The one the Mayor had heard a vague version of. The reason she thought I was pliable.’ Wilson stretched and straightened. ‘I’m not pliable.’
Innocent and Nadine were quiet for a moment. Then both lifted their glasses and looked at Wilson. He raised his. They chinked them. Nadine shrugged.
‘I liked Johnny. I guess I mean Luke.’
‘I did too, Nadine,’ Wilson said.
‘I suppose I’m saying there’s no fathoming people.’
‘That’s the conclusion I’ve come to,’ Wilson said, downing his drink in one.
Lewis would almost be sorry when Luke Hanson was dead. Almost. Every man needs a goal, something to aim for, whatever their age. Lewis realised that alongside all the other shit he had to deal with what had given his life focus these past years was the hunt for Luke Hanson.
So there was going to be a void but satisfaction too. Nobody gets the better of Lewis, however long it takes to see them right.
The only problem was that he couldn’t get hold of Wilbur. The man had disappeared.
“Get me J-Lo,” Lewis grunted, feeling the need for a little void-filling right now.
Wilbur Parker thought he had the flu. As if being half-blind wasn’t enough. Jesus. But when he woke up paralysed he thought maybe it was something else. Something much worse.
He hadn’t noticed the tick that had attached itself to his leg when he was hiding in the undergrowth behind Tom Haddon’s house. Lyme disease is painfully lethal when untreated.
J-Lo was wailing. Fucking most aggravating thing Lewis had ever heard - or seen for that matter.
“Be a man, for fuck’s sake,” Lewis said, pushing him away.
J-Lo sprawled on the cell floor, his quivering ass sticking up in the air, his arms caught in the dress bunched around him. His lipstick was smeared. He looked at Lewis out of runny mascara eyes. His tears were caught in the craters of his pitted cheeks.
“You really hurt me,” he hiccoughed.
Lewis spat at him. It fell short but Lewis felt he’d made the point.
“You can’t take it you shouldn’t offer it,” he growled.
Lewis glanced at the beer bottle he’d used on J-Lo, all the time thinking of Luke Hanson.
He was dimly aware of J-Lo trying to stand.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Lewis said, lying back.
Then J-Lo was standing over him, the beer bottle in his hand. Lewis watched him draw his arm back. Boy throws like a cissy, he thought, before the bottle connected with his skull and he stopped thinking forever.
A few weeks later WIlson got a card postmarked England. He thought at first it was maybe from Ruth. He’d seen her on the beach, the day she was leaving to go back home. He knew he looked a wreck, limping along, everything askew. Nevertheless, Ruth smiled when she saw him.
‘I saw a baby egret killed the other day,’ she said. ‘Its sibling pushed it out of their nest.’
‘That happens.’
Ruth nodded. He could see that wasn’t it. Not what she wanted to say. But she didn’t know how to approach it, how to say it.
‘Sometime we don’t have the language for it,’ Wilson said, ‘I wonder if there is any language for it.’ He paused uncertainly. ‘Once, a long time ago…’
She shushed him.
‘I know,’ she said, though she couldn’t know exactly what he was going to say. Maybe just the generality of it.
‘I’m thinking of quitting,’ Wilson said.
‘Yes? Sounds daft to me.’
‘Daft?’
‘What else could you possibly do?’
‘I meant: what does daft mean?’
She grinned. He grinned.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Maybe not right now. Maybe not today. But one day.’
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.
‘One day.’
He looked at the postcard and read the script. He showed it to Nadine and she grinned too.
The picture on the front of the postcard was of some lake with mountains all round it. Lake Coniston in England. On the back, the sender had written: ‘When from our better selves we have too long been parted, how gracious, how benign is solitude.’
Epilogue
Luke Hanson’s glass was empty. The landlord had noticed.
‘Another pint of bitter, Mr Wilson?’
Hanson looked out of the window of the cosy old pub and across the rainy lake to the mountain wreathed in mist on the other side. He automatically drew his coat a little closer around him.
‘Yes, I would enjoy that,’ he said. ‘But, please - call me Harry.’
In New York a wheeler-dealer called Joey was sitting in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel. He looked around at the usual bunch of junkies and rock stars – mostly both rolled into one. He watched that Limey punk rocker, Sid Vicious, and his drugged up girlfriend, Nancy, stagger by, holding each other up. He sniffed the air. Money. All he ever smelled. He stood, a reptile capable of walking on its hind legs. He walked outside into the foetid street. He revelled in the stink. He glanced to his left. Shook his head. Was that big guy limping towards him in a cowboy hat for real?
The End
Paradise Island Page 24