‘Sorry, Mr Fenton,’ said Sellers amiably. ‘I’ll make sure he puts a fiver in the swear-box when we get back to the nick.’
‘You don’t give a fuck what I think,’ Gibbs muttered, once Fenton had withdrawn. ‘You want me to ask you. Go on, then, let’s hear it. What is all this shit?’ He picked up one of Ruth Bussey’s wire animals and grimaced at it before putting it down again.
‘I don’t like half-measures,’ said Sellers. ‘Brazilian’s fine, natural and wild’s also good—the wilder the better. Anything in between . . .’
‘What? You’d say no?’
‘I’m just saying, I like the extremes. All or nothing.’
‘Half-measures is fine by me, as long as she’s fit,’ said Gibbs. ‘Anyway, a Brazilian’s not nothing—it’s a landing strip. You mean a Hollywood.’
‘A what? You don’t know what you’re talking about, mate.’
Gibbs shook his head.
‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Sellers. ‘These half-measures women—and that’s most women, far as I can tell—they’re only thinking about themselves, how they’ll look in a bikini. They’re not thinking about what men are going to like. I mean, you say you’re not bothered, but in an ideal world . . .’ Sellers tailed off when he looked up from Ruth Bussey’s desk and saw that Gibbs had left the room. He raised his voice. ‘I’m going to start asking around. If it turns out most men agree with me, well, then an important point needs making loud and clear, so that women get the message.’
‘Shut it and come and look at this.’
‘Where are you?’ Sellers went in search of Gibbs. He found him in the bedroom, and was about to make the sort of joke he was known for among his colleagues when he saw the wall. ‘Fuck me stupid,’ he said.
‘She’s obsessed with Charlie,’ said Gibbs, staring at the collection of articles. When he turned round, he saw that Sellers had a smug smile plastered across his face. For a second, Gibbs thought he was about to resume his musings on the subject of female pubic hairstyling.
‘She’s not obsessed, she’s following orders,’ said Sellers. ‘Look.’ He went out into the hall and came back with an open book in one hand and a bookmark in the other. ‘I’m glad I took my time when you and Muggins were trying to chivvy me along. Look at this.’ He handed the book to Gibbs, waited while he read the relevant section.
‘So? If she’s reading this shit, it proves she’s not right in the head. So does that.’ Gibbs nodded at the wall. ‘It comes from a book—so what?’
‘She might not be right in the head, but she’s not a danger to the sarge—that’s all that matters, right? What are you doing?’
Gibbs had his phone clamped to his ear. ‘Ringing Waterhouse. If some freak had pictures of my bird all over her wall, I’d want to know about it.’
‘We’re not supposed to be—’
‘So you keep saying.’ Gibbs turned on him. ‘You and the Snowman. You can be his best fucking frosty friend if you want to, but I’m with Kombothekra on this one. Waterhouse has done nothing—no more than usual anyway.’
‘I’m not saying he has.’
‘Then where’s your loyalty?’
‘It’s not our decision to make, is it? When the Snowman finds out you and Kombothekra have been feeding Waterhouse information behind his back, I’ll still have a job.’ Sellers grabbed Gibbs’ phone out of his hand and held it in the air. ‘You could keep yours too if you don’t do anything stupid.’
‘This is about Stacey, isn’t it? What Charlie said about her at the party—the vibrator and all that.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’
‘Course it has. With you, it comes back to pussy every time. Remember how the Brazilian conversation started? You were speculating about the Snowman’s daughter. How about I tell him that?’
Sellers slumped against the door. He knew when he was beaten.
Gibbs grinned. ‘It’s not a problem—I’m used to it. All you need to do is remember you’ve got no claim to thinking you’re better than anyone else and we’re sweet. Now give me back my fucking phone.’
‘Where is she?’ DS Coral Milward knocked her rings against the underside of the table. ‘I’ve left her two messages. She’s not got back to me.’
‘She mentioned something about an art gallery,’ said Simon. ‘Where’s DC Dunning?’
Milward’s eyes dipped at the mention of his name. ‘He’s not looking round White Cube, that’s for sure.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Why don’t you ask Sergeant Zailer? She’s an art lover, apparently. ’
‘Dunning not into art?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Is it the aftershave?’ Simon asked.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your antipathy towards Dunning.’
Milward pulled her thick arms out from under the table and folded them. The knocking sound stopped. She was wearing a new shirt since this morning, with pearl cufflinks. ‘So the rumours are true,’ she said. ‘I’d heard that overstepping the mark is your speciality.’
‘I’m on your side, for what it’s worth. You smile more. And stink less.’
‘Don’t fuck me about, Waterhouse. Is your fiancée’s art gallery jaunt this afternoon connected to my case?’
‘You’d have to ask her.’
Milward leaned forward. ‘We know Aidan Seed used to be an artist. He was a bright young thing, had a successful exhibition, then jacked it in. Why? Most people don’t deliberately balls up promising careers. Present company excepted.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Trouble is, I don’t believe you.’
Simon shrugged. ‘Your problem.’
‘Saul Hansard didn’t know either. Him I did believe.’
‘Why would Seed have confided in Hansard?’
Milward let him see that she was debating whether or not to tell him. She made him wait a few seconds for her answer. ‘Seed was working as Hansard’s assistant when he had his one and only exhibition in London. Also when he decided to stop painting and take up framing.’
‘Seed worked for Hansard?’ Simon frowned. ‘Ruth Bussey worked for Hansard before she worked for Seed.’
Milward seemed to be waiting for him to continue.
‘Mary Trelease used to have her work framed by Hansard.’
‘Not while Seed worked there. Later. Later still, she switched to a London gallery, the same one that hosted Seed’s solo exhibition in February 2000: TiqTaq, on Charlotte Street. That’s where Zailer is now, am I right?’
‘Think you’d have got as far as you have without our help?’ Simon asked her.
‘Where have I got? Two thirds of the way down a dead-end street, if you ask me.’
‘Did Hansard tell you Bussey and Trelease met at his gallery, and had a row that ended in a physical attack? Seed killed Gemma Crowther as revenge for what she did to Ruth Bussey. He’s going to kill Mary Trelease for the same reason. Maybe Stephen Elton too, unless Elton’s guilty plea and the fact that he didn’t actively participate in the attack on Bussey in Lincoln . . .’
‘You know about that?’ Milward smiled. ‘You didn’t know this morning.’
‘You didn’t tell me,’ said Simon, trying to keep his anger down.
‘So who did? See, the trouble I’m having is that you seem to know a fraction too much. If I find out you’ve had contact with Bussey, Seed or Trelease and not told me . . .’
‘I haven’t. Sounds like you haven’t either. What’s being done to find them?’
‘You should be pleased it’s not your problem,’ said Milward. ‘My problem is that I’ve got a chief suspect—’
‘You mean Seed?’
‘No. I don’t mean Seed.’
‘There was no break-in, right? Narrows your suspects down to Seed or Elton.’
‘I’ve got a suspect and a motive,’ Milward continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Nothing in the bag yet, but I’m hopeful. Meanwhile, on the fringes of my investigation
, I’ve got your little mess: Seed, Trelease, Bussey, Hansard.’
‘The fringes?’ Simon couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re wrong. I don’t know what’s going on, not yet, but I know one thing: my mess, as you call it, is centre stage. You’ll get nowhere unless you treat it as such.’
‘You’re an arrogant turd, Waterhouse.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
Milward looked as if she’d like to take a swipe at him. ‘I’ve got motive,’ she told him again. ‘Motive’s where I’m strong. What have you got? Phantom stranglings, pictures disappearing from art fairs, mysterious predictions: Seed naming a series of nine paintings Mary Trelease hasn’t done yet—you expect me to take all that seriously?’
‘No,’ Simon told her. ‘I expect you to bury it because it confuses you. And it’s not nine, it’s eight—the paintings Mary Trelease hasn’t done yet.’
Milward frowned. ‘Nine,’ she said, looking at her notes.
‘The first, Abberton, she’s already done.’
She slammed her file shut. ‘I don’t like all this . . . clutter around my investigation. I really don’t like it. How did Zailer know a picture went missing from Gemma’s flat the night she was killed? How did she know it was that picture?’
‘She didn’t know. She was guessing.’
Milward let out the breath she’d been holding in several short bursts. ‘We found it in the boot of Seed’s car,’ she said. ‘Abberton. It’s too weird for my taste, but it’s got something to it—not like most of the rubbish that’s peddled as art these days.’
Simon shook his head, trying to take it in. No, that couldn’t be right. Seed might abandon his car—Simon had told Milward this morning why he’d do that—but not the painting, not once he’d removed it from the house after killing Crowther, knocking her teeth out with a hammer and replacing them with picture hooks. Abberton was crucial. It had to be. No way he’d have left it in the boot.
Think. Seed gave Crowther the picture—he must have done. Then he killed her and took it back. Why? That part had never made sense, not really. Why had Simon allowed himself to overlook it for so long?
‘Stephen Elton says there’s no way Len, aka Aidan Seed, would have killed Gemma.’ Milward’s voice seemed to come from a distance. ‘Says the three of them were close friends. Seed slept on their sofa regularly rather than drive home late—and no, he and Gemma weren’t having an affair, before you ask. Elton was adamant Gemma would never be unfaithful—saw it as being beyond the pale. As opposed to nearly torturing a woman to death,’ she added tersely, ‘which doesn’t seem to have troubled her conscience unduly. I’ve seen Elton lie and I’ve seen him tell the truth, and he was telling the truth when he said that.’
‘I never thought Crowther and Seed were having an affair,’ said Simon. He’d seen the way he’d looked at her as they walked down the street together. It wasn’t how a lover would have looked at her; Simon knew that for sure, despite never having been anyone’s lover. Are you a virgin, Simon? Charlie had asked him once, years ago. He didn’t give her an answer, still hadn’t.
His phone rang in his pocket.
‘Go ahead,’ said Milward. ‘If it’s Zailer . . .’
‘It isn’t.’ Simon was relieved to see Chris Gibbs’ name on his screen instead of Kombothekra’s. Surprised too. He listened to what Gibbs had to say, keeping his replies to the absolute minimum, aware of Milward’s eyes on him.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked, seeing him put his phone back in his pocket.
Simon’s best ideas always arrived in a rush, like a shot of adrenalin to the brain. This one was no different. ‘What came first, Crowther’s death or the mutilation of her mouth?’ he asked.
‘The removal of the teeth was post-mortem. Why? What are you thinking?’
‘What about the weapons: gun, hammer, the knife used to cut back her lips? Have you found any of them?’
Milward shook her head, as Simon had known she would. The killer was hanging on to them, planning to use them again. A killer who knew how to stage a production, who liked melodrama, who had perhaps killed before . . . ‘You come across the name Martha Wyers?’ he asked.
‘The writer?’ Milward frowned. ‘What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘You’ve heard of her?’
‘Only since about an hour ago. She and Seed were part of a promotion that The Times and Vogue jointly—’
‘I know about that,’ Simon cut her off. ‘Mary Trelease did a portrait of Martha Wyers dead, with a noose round her neck.’
Incredulity flickered in Milward’s eyes. Then she said, ‘You’re not joking, are you?’
‘No. Kerry Gatti was part of the same promotion—a comedian. He can’t have been very funny, because he gave it up and became a private detective. He’s been following Ruth Bussey.’
Milward’s eyes narrowed. ‘On whose behalf?’ she asked eventually.
‘No idea. Tell Proust to lift his ban and I’ll go back to work and find out.’
‘We can find that out,’ Milward said through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve got to think this through: Mary Trelease painted a portrait of Martha Wyers? How did they . . .?’
‘Have you interviewed her?’
‘Mary Trelease? We’re working on it.’ Simon took this to mean that wherever Trelease was, she wasn’t at 15 Megson Crescent.
Milward leaned forward. ‘The witnesses who saw you outside Crowther and Elton’s flat say they saw an old woman there, too, after you’d gone. Unfortunately they were too busy making notes about you to pay much attention to her, but the one thing they were certain of was . . .’
‘Wrinkles and lines all over her face?’ said Simon quickly.
Milward nodded. ‘We’ve spoken to a bucketload of Mary Trelease’s reprobate neighbours at Megson Crescent. All any of them wanted to talk about was how old she looks, how much older than her real age.’
So Trelease had been at Gemma Crowther’s flat the night she was murdered. ‘I don’t think Martha Wyers’ suicide was suicide, ’ said Simon.
Milward threw her pen down on the table. ‘I don’t know whether to have you lynched or offer you a job,’ she said.
Neither option appealed. Simon didn’t want to work for Coral Milward. He wanted to work for that treacherous bastard Giles Proust. ‘Put me back where I belong,’ he said. ‘Let me help you as part of my team, helping your team—I know that’s what they’re doing, about a quarter as effectively as they would be if I was with them.’ He hadn’t meant to threaten Milward when he opened his mouth, but that was the way he seemed to be heading. Time to make it explicit. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘If you want anything else from me, you know what you need to do.’
Jan Garner didn’t smile when Charlie walked into her gallery. ‘I preferred it when the police didn’t turn up every five minutes,’ she said. ‘None of you ever buys anything.’ She was standing in the window, arranging artificial roses in a green glass vase— pink, yellow and white ones. They had tiny clear beads stuck to their petals and leaves: fake drops of water.
‘Any other police who’ve been here are nothing to do with me,’ Charlie told her. ‘They’d have been Met.’
‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’
‘They’ve probably told me less than they’ve told you.’ Charlie didn’t stop to give Jan Garner time to dwell on the subtle dishonesty of her answer. ‘The artist you told me about, the talented one who gave up painting after his first show sold out—was his name Aidan Seed?’
Jan nodded.
‘That’s why Mary Trelease chose you, this gallery,’ Charlie told her, aware that she didn’t have to.
‘Mary knew Aidan?’ Jan’s shock appeared to be genuine.
‘Not according to her. Did Aidan ever mention the name Mary Trelease, as far as you can remember?’
‘I haven’t spoken to him for eight years,’ said Jan. ‘I don’t think so, no. Although . . . this’ll sound daft, but when Mary walked in here last year and ordered me to
frame her pictures, her name rang a bell. I put it down to one of those spooky déjà vu things, but maybe Aidan did mention her. It’s impossible to remember after all this time.’
‘What about Martha Wyers?’ Charlie asked. ‘Did he mention her?’
Jan looked surprised. ‘That was the name of the dead writer Mary painted. You saying it jogged my memory. I don’t remember Aidan talking about her, no. Ow! Thorn,’ she explained, sucking her finger. ‘Not real, but still sharp. People look down their noses at silk flowers, but I love them. They’re not phoney, they’re representations. I’ve always thought it odd that the same people who buy paintings of flowers to hang on their walls wouldn’t give houseroom to man-made roses like these.’ Was there a nervousness to Jan’s chatter, or was Charlie imagining it?
‘A couple of months before Aidan’s exhibition here, he was featured in The Times,’ she said. ‘In an article called “Future Famous Five”.’
Jan was nodding. ‘It was a huge coup, publicity-wise.’
‘You don’t remember the name Martha Wyers from that article? ’
‘No,’ she said, after a brief hesitation. ‘You mean . . .?’
‘Martha was one of the five.’
Jan dropped the rose she’d been holding, pinched the skin of her neck between her thumb and index finger. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Of course you are. Stupid question. I couldn’t tell you any of the names now, apart from Aidan’s. I didn’t keep the whole piece, only the bits about Aidan and TiqTaq. I keep anything and everything relating to my exhibitions.’
‘Yesterday, you mentioned Aidan’s private view,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s like a private party for the friends and family of the artist, is it?’
‘And of the gallery. Collectors, critics, other gallery owners. We all like to impress . . . Yes.’ Jan stopped. ‘You’re right.’
Charlie had a feeling the question she’d been about to ask would prove unnecessary.
‘A couple of them came to Aidan’s private view, a couple of the future famous five. I remember him mentioning it. I’m not sure how pleased he was.’
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 35