Revenge on the Rye

by Alice Castle

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Katie sharply. ‘I’ve got about as much dog as I can handle right now.’

  ‘Colin’s no trouble, though, are you, Col?’ said Beth, smiling over the bench at the old boy. He obligingly batted the ground with his tail.

  ‘But I don’t understand why you’ve got him at all?’ said the taller of the two women.

  Her friend butted in. ‘I’m sorry, Jules is quite upset about all this. We’re old friends of Mark Smeaton’s – I’m Miriam, this is Jules. Has he gone on holiday or something? But I don’t understand why he wouldn’t have told us? We could have looked after Colin.’

  ‘Now, come on, Miriam, you know Liquorice would have hated that,’ said Jules firmly.

  Mark Smeaton, thought Beth. Now she knew the victim’s full name. But she just said, ‘Liquorice? Oh, is that your dog?’ looking under the bench at the little wiry-haired creature, who was still keeping his distance from Colin and Teddy.

  ‘Yes, after liquorice allsorts, you know. He’s a Heinz.’

  ‘Is that a German breed?’ Beth asked. There was so much she didn’t know about Colin and his canine ilk.

  ‘It means 57 varieties – a mixture,’ said Katie, with the weariness of the long-time dog owner, while Teddy tried to lick her face.

  ‘He’s very cute,’ said Beth dutifully, looking at Liquorice doubtfully. She supposed it was like being presented with other people’s babies. No matter how much they resembled Winston Churchill sucking a lemon, you were still obliged to say how utterly gorgeous they were.

  ‘We’re straying from the point,’ said Jules rather forcefully. Her iron-grey hair was cut in a blunter, less flattering version of Miriam’s bob, and her waxed coat looked decades old.

  ‘You know, it’s quite difficult,’ said Beth, hunching her shoulders a little. Why must she always be the bearer of bad news? She’d already told that other woman – what was her name? Rebecca Grey. Now she’d have to break it to these two as well. She sighed inwardly. But, as she always said to Ben, better to get unpleasant tasks over quickly. Naturally, saying that to your child didn’t guarantee that you followed through in your own life, but this time, she saw she was just going to have to.

  ‘Something awful’s happened to Mark. I’ve got some very bad news.’

  Chapter Five

  Beth looked back later on that half-hour as one of the most uncomfortable of her life. All the cappuccinos in Dulwich Park couldn’t have soothed the two women as they came to terms with the sudden death of a dear friend. They took it in very different ways. Miriam melted into quiet, persistent tears, necessitating all of Katie’s stock of kitchen roll, which had been jammed into her poor, abused bag to cope with Teddy’s messes. Jules blustered and raged, venting her disbelief, shock, and grief on the two hapless women in front of her.

  Katie, exhausted by running after Teddy and demoralised by the strains of dog ownership, seemed to be letting the tirade wash over her. But Beth was getting increasingly annoyed. Eventually, she called a halt.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said firmly. ‘We are not responsible for what’s happened to Mark. You need to get hold of yourself and stop shouting at us. If you want to help us, you need to start thinking about people who might have had a grudge against Mark, a reason for doing this. How well did you actually know him, anyway?’

  Jules took a massive breath in outrage at this and was about to let fly again, when Miriam put a gentle hand on her arm and spoke at last, after blowing her nose luxuriantly on the soggy kitchen towel.

  ‘Forgive us, please. This has been the most awful shock. Jules and Mark were very close. We’re all artists, you see. We’ve worked together for years. Not exactly collaborators, but kindred spirits, you know?’

  ‘Artists? I see,’ said Beth, who transparently didn’t see at all.

  She thought back to the scene in the little copse on the Rye. Was there anything that gave a clue to Mark’s profession there? She didn’t think so. But then, he’d hardly have been lugging an easel and paintbrushes around with him, would he?

  ‘What sort of artist was Mark? Was his work controversial?’

  Jules and Miriam looked at each other. It didn’t take an investigative genius to work out that they were weighing up, very carefully, how much they should say next.

  At home later, with a cup of tea steaming in front of her and a clean sheet of A4 on the kitchen table along with a couple of well-chewed biros, Beth was deep in thought. Ben was already safely collected from school, and had assured her, as usual, that any homework that had been discussed during lessons had been mooted on a strictly voluntary basis only. And guess what? He wasn’t volunteering.

  On another day, Beth might well have remonstrated with him. After all, Year 7, its long shadow already almost touching Ben’s shoes, was going to be a very different story. There’d be homework aplenty and all of it would be compulsory, no matter which school he ended up attending. And if he managed to make Beth’s dearest dreams come true and wriggle through the portals of Wyatt’s, he’d be up to his little neck in the stuff.

  On the one hand, this made her more inclined to turn a blind eye to his reluctance to go the extra mile now. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that. But there was an opposing school of thought which made the case for getting him used to the whole process straight away. Then it would be less of a horrible shock when he was expected to toil for at least forty minutes a night after school, for the next seven years.

  Today, however, Beth had too much on her own mind to worry overly about what might, or more likely, might not be going on in Ben’s head. It was times like this that she blessed his PlayStation, devil’s work though it most assuredly was.

  On the sheet of paper in front of her she had a list of the facts about Mark Smeaton. They were sparse, but she also had her laptop fired up and was already delving into a surprisingly full Wikipedia page devoted to the late artist.

  He’d been quite a phenomenon. From what she had seen of him yesterday, sprawled across the Rye in a pool of his own blood, he hadn’t really looked an impressive figure at all. There was nothing like sudden death to strip you of all human dignity, as Beth had unfortunately discovered. But reading through what amounted to the man’s CV now, she couldn’t help but be impressed.

  He was a Dulwich boy through and through. He’d been to Wyatt’s – always a massive plus in Beth’s book – and then on to the cream of the London art schools for a foundation course and then a Fine Art degree. Unlike most artists, who finished with high hopes only to be sucked into designing ads for margarine, Mark Smeaton had been noticed at his graduation show and had promptly become one of the talents to watch in the art scene. His entire output had been bought up, very publicly, by Baz Benson. Benson, the thuggish kingmaker of the British art scene, had a huge gallery in Whitechapel, was married to an eminent and telegenic marine biologist, and lived in a massive Docklands mansion with wrap-around views of the Thames. But he looked like the kind of low-life who’d have minded the Kray twins’ coats, back in the day.

  Huge success at the tender age of twenty-three didn’t seem to have corrupted Smeaton, but nor did it seem to have led to the stratospheric heights one might have expected. He had apparently carried on working away and had not, visibly at least, fallen into any of the traps associated with such fast fame and fortune. He hadn’t been papped too often falling drunkenly out of nightclubs; he’d never acquired a string of status-hungry girlfriends. Instead, he popped up on highbrow TV shows, discussing that vital question, ‘whither art?’, where he’d let fly with trenchant views. And his comments were sought by the broadsheets whenever creativity was discussed.

  He’d seemingly shunned the cheap stunts that so many artists used to up their profiles, and appeared to have trodden an exemplary line, with no sign of the fallout that often partnered such Faustian pacts with glory. Yet, after the ferocious blaze of his first show, there was little to show, in terms of art, for his years of work. It was a little curious.


  Beth felt retrospectively embarrassed that she had known scarcely anything about him. She certainly could have passed him a million times in Dulwich Village without knowing that he’d been, briefly, one of the most accomplished and feted artists of this generation, or many previous ones.

  Now that she was studying the face that topped his Wikipedia entry, it was recognisably the one she’d seen prone on the scrubby ground of the little grove of trees. The photo, taken probably ten years ago, showed a pleasant young man, half-smiling, standing in front of a huge blobby canvas that she imagined must be one of his own works. If they were all like that, she wasn’t sure she could quite see what all the fuss was about.

  She was peering into features that looked, understandably, an awful lot livelier than the still form she’d come across only yesterday. Smeaton had been a reasonably attractive man, but not one you’d whip round to gawp at in the street, Beth decided, leaving aside the fact that she’d never really been the type to have her head turned. True, she’d felt a bit funny that time when Harry York had come through the door at Wyatt’s, his distinctive stride and that big coat signalling a presence that was impossible to ignore. But again, she’d been terribly off-balance that day. It had affected her judgement, she reckoned. Would she have felt the same if Harry had come in on an ordinary Tuesday when she hadn’t just found a bleeding corpse? She paused for a moment, thought hard, and realised she would.

  Anyway, she wasn’t here with her still-blank sheet of A4, to think about Harry. He’d been such a grump when they’d met on the Rye that she hadn’t really forgiven him. But she needed to shove all thoughts of him from her mind.

  As soon as she’d thought this, she reached automatically for her phone. She’d just look to see whether he’d texted, then she’d get right back to the job in hand. She scrolled through her messages, then peered at WhatsApp and her emails, too. Nothing. There were so many ways of being ignored these days. Voicemail, perhaps? But not a sausage there, either.

  She tutted at herself. She had to stop letting herself get so distracted by this nonsense. She wasn’t a teenager, waiting for a first date. She was a grown woman, and if she wanted to contact Harry and short circuit all this pointless waiting for him to do the right thing, she could. Except, that would give him the upper hand, wouldn’t it? And a chance to ignore her even more. And she really didn’t want that.

  Beth sighed and stuck her phone behind her open laptop, where she couldn’t see it, and glanced again at the snowy white emptiness of the sheet in front of her. She grabbed a pen, pulled the paper towards her, and started to write. At the top, underlined and in her neatest writing, she put ‘Mark Smeaton’, then a one-sentence synopsis of where and how she’d stumbled across him.

  Underneath, she wrote a few more words – the names of all those so far who’d wandered into the frame just by knowing Mark. Assuming this wasn’t some sort of crazy, random killing, the murderer had to be someone who knew the artist. After all, Colin hadn’t protected his master. Beth didn’t know much about dogs – though in the last twenty-four hours she felt she’d been on a bit of a crash course – but she wondered if Colin would really let a stranger stab his master multiple times and do absolutely nothing at all.

  She took a quick look at him, under the table, snoozing comfortingly near her feet, and she realised he probably would. Particularly if the assailant had a Bonio about his person. It wasn’t really much of a comfort. Why did people love dogs so much, if they didn’t perform one of the most basic services for those that fed and loved them? Beth was pretty sure that most dog owners thought they had a built-in bodyguard. But it seemed that wasn’t the case at all.

  Magpie, who’d been in high dudgeon ever since Colin’s arrival, would run straight for her cat flap without asking many questions if anyone attacked Beth in front of her, she was pretty sure. If she was sitting on someone’s lap, though, and that someone attacked Beth, then the cat might well bite, or worse – but mostly because she didn’t like her pillows to move around of their own accord. A judicious application of a razor-sharp paw usually reminded everyone of their place in the scheme of things.

  Magpie was attached to the house and to her food bowl, but was there any more to it than that? When they’d been burgled, a while ago, Beth had finally found Magpie in the garden, up a tree. She definitely hadn’t hung around to remonstrate with the thief or protect her territory then. Cats were unknowable creatures. Dogs were supposed to be so much simpler, so much more loyal, truly attached to their humans… but then look at Colin, who’d apparently done nothing at all to protect Smeaton. A thought suddenly struck her. Maybe dogs were just better actors than cats?

  In some ways, Beth preferred the straightforward transactional nature of her relationship with Magpie. There was no messing, no pretence of undying feline love. But then Harry had once told her a ghastly tale about an old lady lying dead for weeks, and her enormously fat tabby who’d been shut up in the flat with the body… Would Magpie? Could she? Would Beth even taste as good as the premium nuggets Magpie insisted upon? Ending up as substandard cat food was surely a fate worse than death. Beth didn’t want to go there, in any sense. She turned back to her sheet of paper.

  So, someone on this list might be the murderer. All she had to do was find a motive. Ha. That was a laugh. Teasing out people’s reasons for doing things was every bit as tricky as trying to predict the behaviour of her cat. But she wasn’t going to let a little thing like an impossible task put her off. She ran her eye down the very short roster of names again. There’d be more people she’d be adding, for sure. In the meantime, though, she needed to delve into what she had here, and see what their connections to Mark Smeaton really meant. It was easy enough saying the artist was an old and dear friend, as the women at the café had this morning, but he wasn’t around to contradict anyone now. Maybe they’d been at daggers drawn, and had all hated each other? It was hard to imagine, but not impossible.

  Things could definitely get complicated in Dulwich, that much Beth knew for sure. And there was something else she was certain of, too. It was up to her to find out the truth.

  Chapter Six

  Baz Benson stood in the immense white space of his gallery. A burly figure, more like a car salesman than a specialist in fine art, he had a pronounced paunch, a thick thatch of prematurely white hair, an insincere smile that was always playing at the corners of his mouth – and a devious glint in his eye. In the far corner of the hanger-like space, a scarlet canvas throbbed with vicious colour. Opposite that, a hundred paces away, was a fiercely architectural desk. At it sat a blonde girl in her twenties, her sheet of hair as straight as a plumb-line. Her head was bent over a pad of paper.

  Benson was pretty sure the paper was blank, but he couldn’t be bothered to stride over to find out. The place itself was empty; that was bad enough. Was it her fault? No, but she was around, so she was definitely getting the blame.

  ‘Magenta! Come here,’ he shouted. The sound bounced off the white walls and the girl skittered to her feet. Her heels, sharp enough to lance a boil, made her long, pale legs stagger across the blinding floor like Bambi on ice. Benson found himself tutting even as he leered at the shortness of her skirt and pertness of her breasts.

  ‘What’s wrong with this picture, Magenta?’ he hissed as she approached.

  ‘Picture? What picture?’ she stuttered, turning to take in the three blank walls and the one red canvas. ‘That one?’ she said eventually, pointing.

  ‘Not that one, you idiot. Why is this gallery empty, that’s what I’m asking?’

  Magenta looked at him, her startled eyes the velvet brown of a teddy bear’s paw. The combination of those eyes with that hair was what had attracted Benson and saved her CV from the bin. Every week, another sheaf of applications came in. The Russell Group universities churned out girls like her ceaselessly: 2.1s in Art History; bright; hopeful; full of promise; desperate to make their mark. Six months making less than the minimum wage as a gallery slave, or
nothing at all as an unpaid intern, usually sorted out the sheep from the goats. Unless they had a trust fund to fall back on, few could keep themselves in flat whites and high heels beyond that point.

  Well, it certainly hadn’t been this one’s towering intellect he’d employed her for, Benson thought, raking her body with a hot glance. And, to his disappointment, she was reluctant to stay late, open up early, or in any other way risk being alone with him. Anyone would think she didn’t want to get on in the profession. He’d have to get rid of her. And soon.

  ‘You’re supposed to get people into the gallery. Where are the crowds? Where are Mummy and Daddy’s friends? Where are your friends?’ he hissed.

  ‘But they’ve seen the painting. Last week, at the opening.’

  Benson’s eyes flicked crossly to the pulsating canvas. On one level, it was fair enough. He knew how they felt. He’d definitely seen enough of the thing. But one of them should have bought it. Then he could replace it with another. That was the way he worked. And bloody Magenta should have known that.

  He had a strong urge to slap her, but those days were dead and gone, his lawyer had informed him in no uncertain terms. He satisfied himself with shouting instead.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Get Slope on the phone. Now!’

  ‘Slope?’ Magenta looked confused.

  ‘Yes, Slope. You have heard of him, haven’t you?’ Spittle flew from his mouth. He was pleased when she flinched away.

  ‘I rang him twice yesterday, like you said. Hasn’t he called you back?’

  Benson sighed theatrically. ‘If he had, do you think I’d be wasting my time calling him again?’

  Magenta looked at him, bafflement apparent in those chocolate eyes. She didn’t quite shrug her shoulders at him, but it was clear she felt she’d done as much as she could to expedite matters.