Local Artist

by Paul Trembling

  There was no time to think, to plan it out. I crouched, pulling the pin out of the extinguisher’s trigger. Then, on impulse, I snatched up Emily’s laptop with my free hand, and ran across the room, blasting back the flames with the extinguisher, clearing a space round the stepladder.

  The aluminium was already melting at the top. I cooled it with another burst of CO2, and under my feet the floorboards were creaking and groaning. I remembered the gas canisters in the camping stove and wondered how long the fire would take to reach them, how long they would resist the heat, how big an explosion there would be.

  The extinguisher spluttered and died. I dropped it on the floor and stared upwards. Above the ladder I could see a hatch in the ceiling. Closed. But it was that or the window.

  Up the ladder.

  Heat had gathered under the ceiling, a layer of searing hot air. I pushed through it, holding my breath, wanting to scream with the pain, hammering at the hatch. It burst open and I hurled myself up and through with tendrils of fire chasing me.

  I rolled out onto the floor above. Sheets of plywood roughly laid over the beams, more paintings stacked and piled in every direction. Images that danced in the glow from the hatchway. Dead flowers, decaying rooms, hanging bodies. More images of Terry’s long obsession with his terrible past.

  The attic was already filling with smoke. I staggered to my feet. The boarded area extended about ten feet in either direction from the hatchway, but the open space continued beyond that, disappearing into the gloom.

  There were no walls.

  I walked into the darkness, bent over to avoid the low rafters as well as the smoke, a growing heat and glow from behind urging me on. At the end of the boarded section, joists continued on, while a faint daylight filtered up from below. Where the plaster had once been was an empty space – promising a way down, until I looked and saw that the floor below was missing as well. Rotted away or taken for some reason. There was no safe way down.

  Stepping precariously from joist to joist, gripping the rafters for support, and still keeping a firm hold on the laptop, I kept going.

  At some point I crossed a divide, and was over another house. The plaster was intact here. But it would give way if I trod on it, and falling through into the unknown didn’t appeal.

  The smoke was ever thicker. I was struggling to breathe, I could barely see. I had to get down again, I had to get out.

  Ahead, another faint glow of daylight.

  There was a hole in the plaster. Not big, about a foot across. Big enough so I could see through to the floor below; see that there was a floor, partly covered with a mound of old clothing, partly with empty bottles.

  Good enough.

  I perched on the joist and kicked at the edges of the hole. The old plaster crumbled away, falling in lumps onto the clothing. When it was big enough, I said a short but sincere prayer and stepped through.

  I was aiming for the clothing, but landed among the bottles. Fortunately, they were plastic, but my ankle twisted painfully as one slipped out from under my foot, and I stumbled forward onto the mound of clothing.

  Which sat up and roared at me.

  “Wha? Wha yer doing? Wha?”

  Now I was out of the smoke I could smell the stench of long-term neglect overlaid by cheap alcohol.

  “You’ve got to get out! Fire!” I shouted.

  Tried to shout. I couldn’t manage more than a whisper.

  A red face peered at me through a tangled mass of hair. “Wha?” he said again. At least, I thought it was a he. “WHA?” He added some other words. Swear words. Actually, only one, repeated.

  “Fire!” I tried again. “Fire.” Still no volume.

  “Go awa’!” he shouted back. More successfully than me. “My place! Go AWAY!”

  There was a distant boom. The building shook and more plaster fell from the hole I’d enlarged. The fire had reached the gas canisters, I assumed. The shaking didn’t stop, and the boom was followed by a rumbling and crashing, which sounded like walls coming down.

  “Wha?” he said again.

  I had to get out. I didn’t have time for this smelly piece of human wreckage.

  “Why bother?” Geraint whispered in my mind. “Why care, Sandra?”

  I stepped forward, leaned as close as possible, and whispered as loudly as I could. “What’s your name?”

  “Eh?” He looked puzzled. “My name? Sam. I’m Sam.”

  I nodded. Smiled. “Good name! My son is called Sam. I’m Sandra. But listen carefully, Sam. We’ve got to get out. The building’s on fire. It’s all coming down.”

  He looked round, bewildered. “It’s my place.”

  I pushed my mouth into the mass of hair, about where I judged his ear to be. “Fire, Sam! It’s on fire! Get out!”

  I grabbed a handful of whatever he was wearing and pushed him towards the nearby stairs. “Go! Fire!”

  The building shuddered again. Comprehension suddenly showed in Sam’s eyes.

  “Fire!” he said, and followed it with another stream of obscenities. Probably justified, in the circumstances.

  He turned to his bedding and began searching through it.

  “No time for that, we’ve got to go!” I tried to tell him, but he ignored me, reaching into the ragged remnants of a sleeping bag and pulling out a small rough-haired dog, who yapped sleepily at me.

  Without another word, Sam lumbered towards the stairs and down. I followed, hobbling because my ankle was adding pain at every step.

  The stairs lacked a banister, and in several places lacked even stairs. Sam stepped over them, which at least gave me a clue of what was coming, but I had to stop on the edge, unsure if I could get across. I could barely put enough weight on my ankle for a normal step, let alone to stretch across the hole.

  Sam was nearly at the bottom, but turned around and saw my predicament. Without a word – not even a swear one – he put his dog down, came back up, and extended an arm.

  “Come on, Sandra. Got to go. Fire!” he told me. He gripped my arm and with surprising strength pulled me across the gap.

  I still had the laptop. But I continued to hold on to Sam with my other hand as we carried on down the stairs, and then out through another one of the council’s metal doors, this one hanging half open, and finally back out into Quondam Road and the mercy of fresh air.

  But not very fresh.

  Thick smoke was rolling along the street, driven by the fresh breeze. Just a few houses up from where we stood, flames were pouring out from every window, while beyond them a pile of burning rubble blocked off the road.

  I turned to look the other way, and saw more walls, where Quondam Road ended in a small square, the Victorian buildings staring down from every side, doorways sealed off with brick or metal.

  “We can’t get out!” I whispered. “Sam, we can’t get out!”

  He didn’t say anything, but began heading down the street, away from the fire, still supporting me, and with the dog running ahead.

  The dog knew where to go. So did Sam: round the corner of the square, off to the left, pushing aside some boards to enter an enclosed alley running between and beneath the buildings.

  We came out on another street. This one was more open. The air was fresher. And at the end of it was another fence.

  “Come on. Not far.”

  There were sirens in the distance. Getting louder, getting closer.

  Sam was practically carrying me now. The strength seemed to be draining out of me. But he kept me upright, kept me moving, all the way up to the fence.

  Like Quondam Road, the further end, with slightly more modern housing, was still occupied, and people were coming out of the houses, staring at the huge cloud of smoke, packing kids and possessions into cars and vans.

  Sam pushed aside a section of fence, the barrier as porous here as elsewhere. People were looking at us. Speaking, asking questions. I couldn’t understand them, couldn’t manage to answer. I just wanted to sit down, or lie down, take the weight
off my ankle, go to sleep.

  “Safe now, Sandra,” Sam said, and stepped back as other hands came to take my weight. “Got to tell the others.” He disappeared, and someone was helping me across to a doorstep, sitting me down.

  “We’ll get an ambulance,” someone was saying. I didn’t know if they were talking to me, but an ambulance sounded good. An ambulance would take me to hospital. I might get to see Graham. I so wanted to see Graham.

  The sirens were very close now. And then a car was in front of me, blue flashing lights. Police. A constable was out of the car, telling everyone to evacuate, to clear the buildings and leave quickly. “We’re setting up shelters!” he was saying. “Go to the church hall. Saint Mark’s.”

  There were people round him, asking questions. He was telling them something. I couldn’t hear. Didn’t matter. Except that I needed to talk to him. Something I needed to tell him.

  Then he came over. Talking on his radio. Just like that night at the library.

  “November Charlie four-two, can we get an ambulance to Manatee Street, ASAP. Woman with severe burns here.”

  November Charlie four-two. That was Mike Newbold’s call sign.

  He was leaning over me. “Ambulance is on its way; you’ll be OK.”

  I looked up at him. “Mike?”

  His eyes opened in surprise. “Who… Mrs Deeson! What are you doing here?”

  I forced a smile. “Long story. Here.” I pushed the laptop at him. I’d been gripping it so hard that I had trouble letting go. “Give this to DI Macrae. Tell him it’s Emily’s.”

  He took the laptop. “Yes, OK, but…”

  I didn’t hear anything else. His voice faded away, along with the sirens.

  EPILOGUE

  I had a new phone now. I hadn’t downloaded the “Daily Eloquence” app. I’d decided on a different approach: from now on, I’d wait till the end of the day and then find a word that fitted it.

  Brodie snored contentedly on the sofa next to me as I stroked his fur – gently. Not for his sake but mine – my hands, along with a great many other parts of me, were still very tender. It was only my second day out of hospital, and I was still enjoying the simple pleasure of just being home.

  Graham had been out a lot longer than me, of course, and had had the door replaced and the house repainted before I came back. There was no longer even a lingering smell of smoke, which was just as well. I didn’t want to have the slightest whiff of that odour, ever again.

  He bustled in with the local paper. “Grim headlines,” he announced. “But at least it seems like something’s going to be done about Delford Mills.”

  “A bit too late, though.” My voice was still a bit croaky, and I couldn’t talk for long. “Nearly two hundred years too late.” I reached for the paper.

  “TENTH BODY DISCOVERED IN MILLS FIRE” the headline shouted. And, underneath: “Is This the Final Tragedy in the Delford Saga?”

  “I don’t want to read it.” I handed the newspaper back to him. “Summarize it for me, will you?”

  “Well, they’ve pulled another body out of the rubble, but they think that everywhere’s been searched now. Huge fuss over it all, of course – national scandal and so on. Big argument between government and council over who’s responsible. There’s a certain body of opinion suggesting that these bodies might have been dead before the fire – overdose victims and so on. Though to my mind that’s still a tragedy, if of a slightly different sort. But in any case, a lot of people are pointing out that if the wind had been in the other direction, the fire would have spread into the inhabited – officially inhabited – streets, and the body count would have been far higher.”

  “I hope Sam got out OK.”

  Graham sat down next to Brodie and took over stroking duty. “Ah, that’s a funny thing. According to some reports, the reason why a lot of the squatters made it out is that someone called Sam went round raising the alarm. They’re calling him ‘The Hero of the Mills’ and saying that he deserves a medal.”

  “I’d be happy to give him one. I wouldn’t have got out myself without him.”

  “Unfortunately, no one’s been able to find him. He disappeared off somewhere in the confusion; no one knows where to.”

  “So what happens to the Mills now?”

  Graham opened the paper, flicked through a few pages. “Apparently, some funds have finally been found to redevelop the whole area properly. Maybe this time…”

  Brodie suddenly woke up and looked suspicious, just before the doorbell rang.

  “He never goes to answer it now,” I observed. “Very sensible, Brodie.”

  “No need to worry, though. It’s probably DI Macrae. I’ll get it.”

  Brodie followed him to the living room door, and looked round cautiously as he opened it. David Macrae came in a moment later, stopping to give Brodie a scratch behind the ears.

  “Sandra, it’s good to see you looking so well,” he said.

  “I’m still looking awful, and I know it, so spare me the flattery!”

  “Well, you’re not yet at your best, I’m sure. But better than you were, perhaps?”

  “That’s true,” I conceded, and indicated a chair.

  He sat down, but refused Graham’s offer of tea or coffee. “I can’t be staying long,” he explained. “I’ve another murder investigation running, so things are a wee bit busy. But I wanted to see how you’re doing, Sandra. And to give you this.”

  He took a small object from his pocket, and handed it over. A flash drive.

  “That’s from Emily’s laptop. She’d photographed every one of Terry Naylor’s paintings, it seems, and catalogued them all. We’re holding on to the laptop itself, but I’ve been cleared to pass these to you. I understand you might have use for them?”

  I nodded. “When I finally get back to work, I want to have an exhibition in his memory. And Emily’s. It won’t be the same as having the originals, of course, but we should still be able to give an idea of how talented he was. And perhaps we’ll get some of Sir Arthur’s works as well. That would sort of tell the whole story, wouldn’t it?”

  Macrae nodded. “The local artists.”

  “Indeed.” I hesitated, then went ahead with my question. “I heard that you’d called off the search of Sheerside Quarry?”

  He nodded. “Aye. I’m sorry, Sandra, but there’s no certainty that Emily’s body is even down there, and the divers tell me that conditions are terrible. Visibility at the bottom is no more than a foot or two with all the mud and silt in the water. It took them a week to find Jonathan’s Porsche, and that’s knowing it was there.”

  “OK. I understand. It was just that… well, Emily deserved better.”

  “That she did. We may find something yet. There’s a team still going over everything we got from Geraint Templeton’s house – and very interesting some of it is, as well! – so we’re hoping we might be able to trace whoever was doing all the dirty work on his behalf. In which case, there’s a lot of questions we’d like to ask, but Emily would be one of the first ones, I promise.” He stood up. “Sorry to be rushing off so soon, but duty calls. Let me know about that exhibition. I definitely want to be there.”

  Graham showed him out. I sat back and closed my eyes, trying to remember Emily as I’d last seen her. “I wish I’d known what she was up to,” I said as he came back in. “Perhaps I could have done something.”

  “Hey, no more guilt trips over things you can’t help!” he admonished. “You did everything you could, and more than could have been expected, and things would have been a lot worse without you!”

  He was about to sit down when the phone rang, and he got up again with a sigh. “All this butlering about is getting tiresome,” he complained. “You need to recover faster!”

  He went out to the hall, and came back a few minutes later with the handset, and a strange expression on his face. “It’s for you,” he said, handing it over.

  I took it, raising an eyebrow at him, but he just shrugged.
/>
  “Hello, Sandra Deeson.”

  “Hello?” A familiar voice, but I couldn’t quite place it for a moment. I hadn’t heard it in a while. “Hello – Mum?”

  The breath stopped in my throat. “Sam? SAM! Is that you?”

  The voice held laughter. “Yes, Mum, it’s me! Listen, I’m back in the UK just now. I was wondering…” A note of hesitancy crept in. “Would it be OK if I came home for a while?”

  I didn’t answer at first. I struggled to get the words out.

  “Yes, yes! Come home, Sam! Come home!”

  The word for the day is “Prodigal”.

  COMING SOON

  LOCAL

  LEGEND

  Whet your appetite with Chapter 1…

  CHAPTER 1

  “I’m not saying that sport is corrupt. But money and corruption go together like nuts and bolts. And there’s a lot of money in sport.”

  Adi Varney, quoted in Adi Varney – A True Legend by Graham Deeson

  A lot of things start at weddings. A new life for the happy couple, obviously. New relationships among the guests, quite frequently. A fight, sometimes.

  For me, June and Rob’s wedding was the beginning of the end of a very long story.

  I picked my place card out of the detritus of the meal, and ran my thumb over the name. Nice clear font, slightly embossed printing, and they’d spelled my name right.

  “GRAHAM DEESON”.

  Perhaps a bit more businesslike than was right for a wedding, but on the whole I approved. Having some good contacts in the area, I’d been asked to recommend a printer who’d do a quality job at a reasonable price: I was glad to see that they hadn’t let me down.

  I picked up the card next to me, and checked that as well.

  “SANDRA DEESON”.

  It had a smudge of something on it, which I carefully wiped off. And finally admitted to myself that I was bored. Weddings are OK, up to a point. I like the ceremony and I’m always ready for a free meal. But I’ve never been one for parties. Not the loud and crowded sort, anyway. My idea of a social occasion is a quiet meal in a good restaurant with a few friends, and the reception was well past that point.