‘The police?’
‘The various unlucky members of the Farnham constabulary who come round periodically, when I get paranoid, to check Aidan isn’t hiding in the house with an axe. Except the one last night, he didn’t ask to look inside. They’re so sick of me by now, they don’t check properly any more.’
She unlocks the door and pulls it open, standing aside so that I can see. The stench of paint fumes from the room is almost unbearable. At first I don’t know what I’m looking at. An enormous pile of something: rubbish. As if a skip full of some kind of debris has been emptied onto the floor. The mess looks fluffy in parts, like feathers from many different birds, none of them matching, but I can also see wood, cloth, every colour I can imagine, and pieces of . . . is it canvas?
Abberton. Inside the outline of a person, this is what Mary stuck on to the picture: rags and rubble from this pile.
I see, all at once, dozens of tiny fragments: a painted smile, a fingernail, a patch of grey-blue sky, a patch of something flesh-coloured. A small chair, no more than a few centimetres high and wide, torn in half. ‘Pictures,’ I breathe. ‘These were paintings, canvases. And frames, sawn into pieces. How many . . .?’
The mound is nearly as high as I am. Over it, someone has splashed several tins of paint, maybe even dozens, so that it looks as if it’s been wrapped in multi-coloured string. Hard, dried pools of paint cover the floor. As if someone stood next to the pile with a tin of paint and poured it in, so that it dripped all the way through and seeped out at the bottom. The same colours have been splashed randomly over the cream and gold wallpaper, over the three large framed botanical prints on the walls: yellow, blue, red, white, green, black. At the back of the room there’s a dining table, which has been pushed up against the large sash window, with more tins of paint on it, as well as a portable telephone lying beside its base, an ashtray, three unopened tins of Heinz ravioli and a rusty tin-opener.
‘Pictures,’ Mary confirms. ‘Frames. And stretchers—the wooden structures you stretch canvas around. I like the way that word sounds medical, makes you think of emergencies. It seems appropriate. If it hadn’t been for an emergency, I’d never have picked up a paintbrush.’
I am transfixed by the size of the mountain of broken wood and shredded canvas, the glimpses I keep getting of landscapes and interiors, people’s faces and clothes: an earlobe, a necklace, a jacket pocket. It’s almost as if some pieces have been cut deliberately larger than the rest, to allow part of something to survive. I narrow my eyes, blur my focus, and it looks like a heap of multi-coloured precious stones. The pile stretches almost all the way across the room, leaving only a small gap on either side.
‘Whose paintings are . . . were they?’ I ask.
‘Mine,’ says Mary. ‘All mine, now. I got them back.’ She turns to me and smiles. ‘Welcome to my exhibition.’
20
5/3/08
Charlie found Simon where he’d said he would be, in the bar at King’s Cross station, surrounded by a large group of squaddies in uniform, all of whom looked younger than twenty and had foam moustaches from the pints they were not so much drinking as throwing at their faces. Simon was wedged into a small space between a table that looked sticky with weeks-old beer and a fruit machine that leaned to one side.
There was no second chair at the table, so Charlie pulled one over. She missed the days when pubs and bars were smoky. Devoid of the smell of cigarettes, they were life-size models, not the real thing. ‘No drink?’ she said.
Simon shook his head in irritation. Shut up, I’m thinking. Charlie knew the look well.
‘Mine’s a vodka and orange.’ She perched on the cleaner half of the chair she’d grabbed, wishing she’d chosen more carefully. When he didn’t move, she sighed and said, ‘I hate London cabbies. They never shut up. You’d have thought seeing me with my phone clamped to my ear . . .’
‘Who’ve you been talking to? I’ve been trying to ring you.’
‘To say?’
‘Gibbs phoned. He and Sellers were at Ruth Bussey’s place.’
Charlie pressed her eyes shut. ‘They saw the wall.’ She tried to tell herself nothing bad had happened, nothing new. Sellers and Gibbs had known already. Everybody knew already.
‘It’s not as bad as you feared,’ said Simon. ‘She’s not going to break into your house in the middle of the night and stab you. She admires you.’
‘Admires me?’
‘She collects self-help books. One of them’s about building up self-esteem—I can’t remember the title. I was in with Milward when Gibbs rang me. He said the book’s got exercises in it, things you’re supposed to do if you want to learn to love yourself. Techniques and tasks and stuff. Homework, I suppose you could call it. One of them’s to identify someone you admire who’s been through a tough time and come out stronger and wiser.’ Simon shrugged. ‘You get the idea. Oh—the book said it should be someone famous, so that you can collect stuff from newspapers and magazines about them. A celebrity.’
‘You’re making this up,’ Charlie breathed.
‘Does it sound like the sort of thing I’d make up? There was a receipt in the book—Bussey bought it from Word in September 2006.’
‘Exactly when I was newsworthy,’ said Charlie, trying to make light of it.
‘Exactly when you thought the whole country wanted you dead, yeah. You were wrong. At least one person didn’t. If she admired the way you—’
‘Move on,’ Charlie warned him. ‘My self-esteem issues are my business—not yours and not Ruth Bussey’s.’ A sudden surge of emotion made it difficult for her to breathe. She looked down at her hands, picking at her fingernails. ‘Did the book say to cover an entire wall with character assassinations of your chosen celebrity?’ she asked. But there had been other articles stuck up alongside the hatchet jobs, she remembered—harmless ones about her community work, and pictures of her in uniform, smiling. Yes, there definitely had. Somewhere along the way Charlie had allowed herself to forget that because it didn’t tally with her worst case scenario: that Ruth Bussey was revelling in her suffering, that the bedroom wall display was there for no other reason than to humiliate her all over again.
‘Talk to Sellers or Gibbs if you want the details,’ said Simon wearily. ‘At first, yes, you put up everything you can find on whoever you choose, positive and negative write-ups, pictures of them looking their best and pictures of them looking like shit, all together. You look at it every day, if you haven’t got anything else to occupy your time, and you . . .’ Seeing Charlie’s stunned expression, Simon snapped, ‘Look, don’t blame me if it sounds way-out. I’m only telling you what Gibbs told me.’
‘Go on,’ said Charlie. She wondered if Ruth had drawn up a shortlist. Which other disgraced celebrities had made headlines in September 2006? Not that Charlie was a celebrity. Still, she was curious to know if she’d had competition. ‘You look at it every day, and?’
‘You focus on how whoever you’ve chosen hasn’t allowed their mistakes to defeat them, how they’ve bounced back, that sort of thing. The rest’s predictable: you realise no one’s perfect, everyone has their ups and downs, including you. Once you’ve got that straight in your head, you’re allowed to take down anything that shows the person you admire in a bad light. In place of what you’ve taken down, you put up some of your favourite photographs of yourself, and there’s your finished product: a wall-mounted display of you and the person you admire, both looking your best, having triumphed over all things nasty. I might have got a couple of details wrong, but that’s the essence of it. The book even specifies that it ought to be a bedroom wall, so you can see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.’
‘Outrageous,’ said Charlie. Still, she felt a little better. The idea of somebody thinking her admirable . . . Now she knew beyond doubt that Ruth Bussey was nuts.
‘Bussey had scribbled your name on the relevant page and put a big fat tick next to it,’ said Simon. ‘You should be flatter
ed. ’
‘Is she okay?’ Charlie felt guilty for caring more now than she had before. So that’s why Ruth had come to her last Friday. If the person you most admire works for the police, and your boyfriend’s scaring you out of your wits saying he murdered someone, the next step is obvious, surely—almost meant to be. And when you see that the object of your admiration doesn’t have a clue how to help you, what do you think then?
‘No one knows where Bussey is, Gibbs said. Same with Seed and Trelease.’
‘She hadn’t put any pictures of herself up,’ Charlie said quietly. She looked at Simon. ‘On the wall. Did the book say you’re supposed to put up your favourite photos of yourself?’
‘I think that’s what Gibbs said, yeah.’
Charlie knew why Ruth hadn’t got that far with the exercise: eighteen months after wasting her money on a self-esteem manual, she still didn’t like any pictures of herself. Flattering or unflattering, it didn’t matter; all images of her were images of a victim, someone to be reviled or pitied depending on your point of view. Takes one to know one.
‘What? What are you thinking?’
‘Nothing.’
Simon looked stumped. Charlie guessed he was wondering how hard he ought to try to make her talk about her feelings, and hoping that the answer was not at all.
‘I’d live where I live now,’ he said, after a few seconds of awkward silence.
‘Sorry?’
‘You asked me before—where I’d live if I could live anywhere. ’
A quick glance told her he meant it. ‘Where you live now? You mean Spilling, or your house?’
‘My house is in Spilling. I mean both. I like where I am—why would I want to live anywhere else?’
‘I’d live in Torquay,’ Charlie heard her voice harden as she said it. No way was she moving into Simon’s place after they were married. The kitchen was as narrow as a drainpipe and the bathroom was downstairs, behind it. The house was right on the pavement, too; people peered into the lounge as they walked past. And it was too close to Simon’s parents. No way.
‘I’d never live by the sea,’ he said. ‘It’s one big, blue dead-end. I’d feel hemmed in.’
‘You wouldn’t be.’ What other insane opinions was he harbouring that she didn’t know about? ‘You could take a boat.’
‘Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther. To get her picture back—Abberton.’
There goes our intimate chat, thought Charlie. She added ‘wouldn’t like to live by the sea’ to the list of what she knew about her fiancé.
‘She was outside Crowther’s flat on Monday night, when I was there—the same person who saw me saw her. She stayed after I’d gone. She knew Seed and Crowther were inside having a cosy evening together, with her picture up on the wall . . .’
‘No one broke in, remember?’
‘Trelease could easily have persuaded Crowther to let her in somehow, or maybe she used the gun from the off, backed Crowther into the flat at gunpoint, down the hall and into the front room where she shot her. She wanted her picture back—perhaps she was jealous, too. If she followed Aidan Seed to London, that suggests he was on her mind.’
‘Maybe you were the one she was following,’ Charlie suggested. ‘Maybe you’re the person she most admires in the whole wide world. No—that really is implausible.’
If she’d been trying to upset him, she didn’t succeed. Usually Simon was easily riled. He only wasn’t when he was in the grip of one of his fixations. Charlie knew the signs: verbal abuse rolled off him like rain off an umbrella. And that occupied look in his eyes, so that you could almost see his brain whirring . . .
‘Trelease killed Crowther and made Seed go with her somewhere, ’ he said. ‘She had a gun with her, must have had a car too. Wherever she took Seed, they went in her car, having first locked the painting in the boot of his, to make sure any suspicion fell on him.’
‘Why must she have had a car?’
‘She couldn’t hold a gun to his head as they walked along the street, could she? If she had a car, she could make him drive, sit behind him and—’
‘I don’t believe this!’
‘You said the picture hooks in Crowther’s gums was a woman’s touch,’ Simon reminded her. ‘Crowther was shot, then someone carefully knocked her teeth out with a hammer and replaced them with picture hooks. Compare that to Seed’s description of strangling Mary Trelease—a killing at close range, her struggling, naked, right next to him, or under him, or on top of him . . .’
‘So now he killed her while they were having sex? Another detail you’ve invented.’
‘. . . Seed feeling his thumbnail pressing into his own flesh as he held his hands closed around her throat . . .’
‘You forget, you’re describing a killing we know didn’t happen.’
‘I think it did,’ said Simon. ‘Aidan Seed killed someone, exactly as he described to me. Not Mary Trelease—someone else.’
‘Then why say it was Trelease?’
‘That’s what we have to find out. The first step’s obvious.’
‘Not to me it isn’t,’ said Charlie.
‘Seed grew up in the Culver Valley on a council estate—that Times article said so. Megson Crescent used to be council-owned. Seed’s in his early forties—let’s assume he didn’t kill anyone before he was eleven . . .’
‘Did they start quite so young in those days?’ said Charlie glumly.
‘Mary Trelease bought 15 Megson Crescent only two years ago. Who else has lived in that house? Who’s died there?’
Charlie stared at him. ‘Bloody hell,’ she murmured.
‘We’ve been focusing on the name instead of the other details. Like the house.’
‘But . . .’ Charlie was shaking her head. ‘Why offer a full confession—complete with an address, a description of the scene, the method of killing—and lie about the victim?’
‘I can’t answer that. Yet,’ said Simon. ‘It might not be as crazy as it seems, though. Some truth, some fiction: that’s the mixture that makes for the best lies. Mary Trelease’s death is the fictional part. She’s alive—we know that.’
‘And the true part . . .’ Much as Charlie would have liked to laugh at his theory, she couldn’t help wondering if there might be something in it. There wasn’t a bed in the front bedroom of 15 Megson Crescent now, but before Mary moved in there might well have been. Most people put beds in their bedrooms.
‘Aidan Seed killed someone in that house,’ said Simon. ‘Someone who used to live there. Years ago—just like he told Ruth Bussey.’
21
Wednesday 5 March 2008
‘Aidan and I used to paint in this room,’ says Mary. ‘Together. For hours at a time, without speaking. After Martha died, I had a key cut for him, for the cottage. He often stayed overnight.’ She turns to me. ‘He slept in the spare room, where you slept last night.’
I make sure to keep my face neutral. There’s something I don’t feel quite right about in this room, but I’m not sure what it is. I stare at the pile of ruined paintings in front of me, barely able to believe it’s real.
‘Do you mind that I didn’t tell you?’ It dawns on me that Mary is talking about Aidan, the spare bed. ‘It’s only a room. I don’t believe rooms retain memories of the past. There’s no such thing as an atmosphere—it’s in people’s minds, like everything of any interest.’
‘You had a key cut for Aidan?’ Suddenly, it seems important to check all the facts. ‘But it’s not your cottage. You don’t own it.’
Mary shrugs this off. ‘So? I’m the one who uses it.’
‘How did Martha’s mother feel about Aidan staying here?’ If I had a daughter who’d hanged herself after being treated badly by a man, I’d want him nowhere near me or any house of mine.
If I’d watched my best friend hang herself, or my lover, or ex-lover, the last thing I’d want is to spend any time at all in the room where it happened.
‘I didn’t tell Cecily,’ says Mary. ‘I
didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Why didn’t Martha’s parents give up the cottage after Martha died?’ I ask. ‘Why do they carry on paying the rent so that you can use it—someone who’s not even related to them?’
‘I’m a leftover from Martha’s life.’ Mary smiles. ‘Cecily doesn’t think much of me, but she wants me around even so—a dog-eared souvenir of her precious daughter.’
My eyes return to the mound in front of me. ‘How many paintings did you cut up to make . . . this?’
‘I didn’t count. Hundreds.’
‘Whose were they?’
‘Mine. I painted them and I owned them. Though for a while I thought I’d sold some of them to other people.’
I wait for her to say more.
‘Aidan used to tell me when my paintings weren’t good enough. He was always right, which made it worse. Eventually, with his help, it happened less and less often. He doesn’t find it easy to give praise, but the criticisms stopped. One day he asked me if I felt ready for my first exhibition. He mentioned a gallery I’d never heard of, said he knew the owner. If I didn’t mind, he said, he’d take my pictures to London for this guy to look at.’ Mary barks out a laugh. ‘Of course I didn’t mind. I was thrilled. Aidan took the pictures—eighteen of them, there were. Came back the next day with the best news—the gallery wanted me. They wanted to give me a show.’
I watch the happiness and excitement drain from her face as she remembers what happened next. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t ask to go to London with Aidan, see the gallery for myself—I did none of that, asked for nothing. Aidan kept saying, “Leave it to me,” and I did. When I asked him when the private view would be, he told me there wasn’t going to be one. This gallery never did them, he said. Now I know there’s no such thing as an art gallery that doesn’t do previews—they’re crucial for sales, and publicity. At the time, though, I was new to the art world. Aidan was the experienced one, the one who’d had a sell-out exhibition and residencies at Trinity College, Cambridge and the National Portrait Gallery. I believed what he told me. I said I wanted to meet the gallery owner who’d liked my work, but Aidan advised against it. “They hate it when artists hang around,” he told me. “Better to stay away, use me as a middle-man to communicate any messages.” He said the gallery owner was intrigued by the idea of me, and we needed to keep it that way by making sure I kept my distance. Like a fool, I fell for it.
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 38