Revenge on the Rye

by Alice Castle

  Then a man strolled out as though he owned the place, his energetic pace and the light behind him giving him the illusion of youth. As he approached, Beth was surprised to see he was well into his fifties, if not older. He had carefully brushed salt and pepper hair that looked blond until you studied it, coming to a widow’s peak on a high forehead. A mobile, tanned face was enlivened by green eyes that would give Magpie a run for her money. His firm hand was outstretched first to Harry, then equally ceremoniously to Ben, then he reached out for Beth’s little paw and pressed it to his lips with a flourish, bowing low – very low, thanks to her height – over it, before straightening up with just a twinge of difficulty.

  Beth felt for him. Maybe people had all been shorter in the days when such gestures were de rigeur? She’d recently dragged Ben round the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and had marvelled at Lord Nelson’s tiny little coat, worn at the battle of Trafalgar. It would have fitted her beautifully, and she quite fancied the epaulettes – though she wasn’t so keen on the bullet hole left by the French sharpshooter who’d done for the admiral. After seeing this – in her mind, at least – she liked to picture everyone in 1805 as her height or smaller. But the very tall man right beside her brought her back to the present day, by stiffening noticeably at this theatrical gesture. When she risked a glance up at Harry’s face, she saw it had that wooden look that meant he was Not Happy.

  Beth tutted inwardly at men’s territorial ways, but she did wonder what Michael made of this courtly chap who was doing such a good impression of the man of the house, offering them a gracious welcome and, he no doubt hoped, getting female hearts to flutter with his olde worlde charm.

  ‘Andy, Andy Kuragin,’ he said, his English charmingly accented with Russian. ‘What a pleasure.’

  Even if Beth hadn’t already known his name, and been forewarned of his ways by Katie, she would have suspected he was Russian, just because of the indefinable beauty of all the planes of his face. If everything Beth had read about this man was true, then she couldn’t really imagine why he’d find it such a pleasure to meet a simple London copper (albeit an Inspector, to give Harry his due) and a single mum-cum-archivist, let alone a ten-year-old whose hands, Beth suddenly realised, were probably still quite sticky after breakfast. But she couldn’t fault Kuragin’s impeccable manners, and he was certainly doing an impression of someone whose dreams had all come true thanks to meeting little old them. Beth immediately set her inner dial to ‘mistrust’, though she ticked herself off for doing it.

  ‘Come on in, let’s see where Michael’s got to,’ said Katie, with just a touch of asperity. Beth wondered if she was enjoying this man oozing his charm so thoroughly over her house and everything in it.

  ‘I might just go upstairs, see if I can find Charlie?’ Ben said hopefully, looking in Katie’s direction.

  ‘Course you can. You know where to go,’ she said, ruffling his hair as he passed. They wouldn’t be able to do that to each other’s boys for much longer, Beth realised with a shock. Already, even Ben was shooting up. In the next few years, they’d reach their full adult heights – probably not towering, if Ben took after her at all, but certainly taller than his mum. And their little boy selves would have vanished, as surely as all their Postman Pat books had been consigned to the attic.

  ‘Let me get you a drink,’ said Katie, leading the way into the magnificent sweeping kitchen. Here, there were the first real signs that things were awry. Normally, Katie would have done the grunt work of preparation long before her guests had arrived, and the only way they’d be able to tell she’d been slaving would be when she opened the oven door and brought forth some amazing dish.

  Today, there was a chopping board out, bearing some bits of chorizo that looked seriously mauled. And if Beth wasn’t mistaken, that was an actual badly-charred chicken leg lying abandoned on the floor near the bin. She picked it up and, after checking wordlessly with Katie, tucked it carefully into the rubbish. On the top, inside the bin, she was startled to see more chunks of incinerated chicken, plus several tell-tale empty cardboard sleeves from Frost – the tremendously swish frozen food shop that had recently opened in the Village, and was now doing a roaring trade with all those too posh to prep.

  Beth kept her face bland but resolved to ask Katie quite a few questions when an appropriately quiet moment arose. She washed her hands quickly at the sink to get the black bits of scorched chicken off, while her friend poured what surely were much more enormous than usual quantities of wine. Before even handing them round, Katie took quite a hefty swig from her own glass.

  ‘Let’s pop into the garden for a second, catch up with Michael,’ said Katie in an over-bright way, and with a smile that didn’t get within fifty feet of her eyes.

  Beth nodded, put her arm round Katie’s waist and gave her a squeeze, then wandered out in her wake. With anger in every stride, Katie marched over to Michael, who was at the far end of the garden. She made it long before Beth, with her short legs, and even Harry and Kuragin, who were making the desultory polite conversation of strangers who are rapidly discovering they have nothing at all in common.

  By the time they’d caught up with Katie, she had clearly said what she’d needed to say to Michael, who was looking a little chastened – not unlike Teddy, who was lying at his feet in a bundle of silky black fluffiness, a bit like one of Katie’s fancy cushions. Unlike them, however, Teddy had a mind of his own, as they saw a moment later when he jumped to all four of his feet and took a flying leap at Andy Kuragin.

  To give him credit, the older man simply rapped out the word, ‘Down!’ and Teddy dropped like a stone, sitting panting on the grass, gazing at the older man as though he’d been at dog obedience classes all his life.

  Harry and Michael exchanged a brief glance that Beth couldn’t quite decode, while Katie declared brightly, ‘Well, you certainly seem to have the touch. Now, isn’t it lovely to be getting a bit of air in the garden, already? You can really feel that spring is coming, can’t you?’

  Beth agreed enthusiastically, though she was giving the game away by wrapping her arms around her middle and even sticking her cold hands into the sleeves of her sweater. She was regretting having left her jacket in the hall, and wondered what Katie was playing at. Yes, Teddy was quite capable of being an utter pain, but surely they could just shut him out in the garden? Did they all have to suffer with him?

  Possibly Michael felt the same way, as he suddenly said, ‘I’ll just go and check I’ve opened the red wine…’

  ‘Oh no, you won’t,’ said Katie firmly. ‘It’s fine, I did it earlier. Let’s just enjoy the lovely blue sky for a while, shall we?’

  Beth looked up obligingly. The sky was, indeed, the same piercing blue as Harry’s eyes. But the lack of cloud cover meant the chill was all the more ferocious for it. If she stood outside for much longer, she’d be an icicle.

  ‘Forgive me, my dear Katharine, but my old bones… this reminds me a little too much of my beloved Siberia,’ said Kuragin with a laugh. ‘Might we admire the day through your wonderfully large windows for a while?’

  Everyone nodded enthusiastically, apart from Katie, who just looked resigned. A minute later, Kuragin was shepherding the ladies back to the house. At the last minute, Michael and Harry stayed put, toughing it out, or possibly just avoiding the Russian. And Teddy, clearly hesitating over whether to follow Kuragin or keep lolling with his master, settled for some random high-pitched barking and pointless running about before collapsing again near Michael.

  Katie snapped the doors shut and instantly Beth could feel sensation returning to her numb fingers as the warmth of the kitchen enfolded them. She looked at Kuragin speculatively. Might as well dart in a few questions while Harry was occupied.

  ‘I understand you’re an art dealer, Andy,’ she started.

  ‘Oh, some people call it that,’ said Kuragin expansively.

  ‘What do you call it then?’ Beth was puzzled.

  ‘It could be a me
tier, or some might say a calling. I like to think I’m nurturing talent,’ Kuragin said, looking down modestly.

  Inwardly, Beth thought he seemed to have done quite well out of his ‘nurturing’, which he clearly felt was as selfless a calling as being a nurse or a nun, and should be given commensurate praise. His jumper was cashmere, his shoes were the sort of soft and supple leather that even she, no connoisseur of footwear, knew cost an absolute bomb. And she was willing to bet that the huge bottle-green Jaguar parked outside Katie’s house, which Harry had wistfully said was brand new, was his, too.

  ‘I wondered if you might actually know someone we, erm, came across recently,’ Beth ploughed on. Behind her, Katie dropped the colander into the sink with an almighty clatter.

  ‘Oh? And who would that be, Miss Elizabeth?’

  ‘It’s Beth,’ she said shortly. Katie might not mind all this ‘Katharine’ palaver, but Beth hadn’t been called Elizabeth since she was being told off for filching a Twix from her parsimonious paternal grandmother’s store cupboard, and she didn’t warm to it at all.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Beth, please excuse my old Russian habits. We are used to at least three versions of our names in my home country. Here, I’m known as Andy, but I also answer to Anatoly, Anatole, and even Sunny. My name means sunrise, you see.’

  Despite her desire to crack on with her questioning as quickly as possible while Harry was out of the way, this was the sort of irrelevant detail that Beth adored. And before she knew it, she was becoming quite side-tracked, asking the meaning of loads of Russian names that had always intrigued her. There’d been a girl at school called Svetlana, always unfortunately nicknamed Sweaty, and it was fascinating to discover her name actually meant ‘Northern Star’.

  It wasn’t until she saw Harry and Michael finally walking slowly towards the kitchen, seriously hampered by Teddy bouncing around between them as though he was on his own personal trampoline, that she realised she had to get on with it.

  ‘Mark Smeaton. That’s the name of the person we, er, met, isn’t it, Katie?’

  Katie, still with her back to them and busy with the washing up, paused for a moment before replying. ‘Um, yes. I think so. That is, I think you know more about all that than I do.’

  As Katie was clutching a tea towel at the time and refusing to look round, it wasn’t hard for Beth to decide that she was literally washing her hands of the whole thing. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and Michael and Harry were getting ever nearer, despite Teddy’s best efforts to trip them up.

  ‘Did you know him, Andy?’

  ‘Did I? Or do I? Your language is so confusing sometimes. Well, I do know him. Of course. All of us in the art world know Mark. A talent I can only describe as… ferocious,’ said Kuragin, his face creasing in what Beth later remembered as a sneer.

  ‘That’s quite a word to use,’ said Beth, thinking back to her research on the artist. After his initial, searing debut show, there didn’t seem to be much in his career that justified the epithet. ‘Didn’t, er, don’t you like him? I thought you’d had some sort of collaboration?’

  She frowned, trying to remember everything she’d read in that Wikipedia page. Or what the ladies at the café had said about Smeaton. Her memory was getting worse and worse these days.

  ‘How much do you know about Smeaton?’ asked Kuragin, unconsciously echoing her thoughts. His eyes, cold green slits, focused on Beth intently. Suddenly she knew that beneath the charm, there was pure steel. She tried for the airy approach.

  ‘Oh, not so much. We just bumped into some friends of his recently, you know how you do. It’s a very small place, Dulwich.’

  ‘Yes, I’m beginning to see, I think. And you met Smeaton in Dulwich?’

  ‘Erm, no,’ said Beth, realising a little too late that her disastrous habit of telling the truth was going to trip her up. ‘We met him, um, on Peckham Rye.’

  ‘Peckham Rye? Was he exhibiting there?’

  ‘Well, no. I mean yes, in a way…’ said Beth.

  Katie swung round from the sink, clearly having heard enough of Beth’s bumbling, and proffered the wine. ‘Let me top you up,’ she smiled, filling Kuragin’s glass to the brim.

  Maybe she was hoping that if he was sozzled, he wouldn’t take exception to Beth’s questions. Then she performed the same trick with Beth’s glass, to the extent that Beth had to take an immediate sip to stop the delicious wine slopping over the rim. Was Katie hoping that getting Beth tipsy would stop her interrogation? In that case, she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought.

  Beth was just drawing a breath to come out and tell Kuragin the true situation with Smeaton, when there was a bang at the glass doors, as Teddy hurled himself against them, ricocheted off, and paused to renew his assault. Meanwhile, Michael and Harry were still deep in conversation not far from the gate to Dulwich Park which made this such a coveted property, and paying absolutely no attention to the frantic hound. Beth tutted under her breath. She knew, of old, how talented Harry could be at ignoring situations he didn’t want to get involved in. It looked as though he’d met a fellow exponent of the art in Michael.

  Teddy thudded against the window again, so hard that it must have really hurt the silly creature. Beth wondered if this was one of his new games, and the reason why Katie had had them all standing around in the garden earlier. But they couldn’t do that all through lunch, unless she was planning to serve sandwiches, and it was definitely not the weather for a picnic.

  Harry, she supposed, was hardened by spending so much time on the streets – plus, he had somehow hung on to his jacket while Beth had surrendered hers at the door. She was willing to bet that Michael was freezing, but it seemed he preferred that to spending too much time with Kuragin. Curious, as Katie had said they were friends.

  Beth wandered down the long room to let the dog in, but Katie bustled past her, muttering out of the corner of her mouth, ‘I’ll have to shove Teddy in the cage. Keep Kuragin talking!’

  Poor Katie. A moment ago, she’d been trying to stop Beth chatting to – or, if you preferred, cross-questioning – her guest. But Teddy’s wilfulness had trumped her own good manners. No wonder she was so fed up with the mutt. Beth turned around and trotted back to Kuragin, who was watching her with a strange sort of concentration.

  ‘I’m just wondering where I’ve seen you before,’ he said easily, seeing her raised eyebrows at his prolonged scrutiny. ‘Are you an art enthusiast?’

  ‘Well, only in an amateur way. I love Wyatt’s Picture Gallery, just round the corner. I don’t know whether you know it?’

  ‘But of course! Anneka Baker is a dear, dear friend. And her mother! What a ballerina, in her day,’ he sighed.

  Beth mentally rolled her eyes, then realised she was being unfair. She hadn’t even met Drusilla Baker, the famous former Royal Ballet star whose daughter, Anneka, was the Chair of the Gallery’s Board of Trustees. But Beth wasn’t a big fan of Anneka’s, that was for sure. The woman hadn’t exactly been obstructive during Beth’s investigation into the poisoning of a teenage girl, but given the circumstances, anyone who was less than wholeheartedly helpful was a monster in Beth’s book. Who wouldn’t want to do everything they could, faced with such a crime? And on a much more trivial note, Beth was honest enough to admit that the other woman’s effortless elegance had made her feel like a total bumpkin.

  Kuragin had the same quality. He was suave, and he’d been attentive, yet he had something about him which suggested that, if they’d met at a cocktail party, he’d definitely be the type to keep peeking over Beth’s shoulder – never difficult at the best of times – ready to dump her like a shot for anyone who’d be more use to him socially, financially, or sexually. But maybe Beth was letting her prejudices run away with her. She resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, if she avoided everyone who was wealthy, stylish, and well-connected, she’d have absolutely no-one left to talk to in Dulwich.

  ‘How would you describe Smeato
n’s art?’ Beth asked, trying to hold his attention. Suddenly, it looked as though she’d hit on the right tack.

  ‘Is it possible that you don’t know?’ Kuragin said, leaning towards her with his eyes narrowed again.

  ‘Know what?’ Beth opened her eyes wide. But Kuragin didn’t say what she was expecting at all.

  ‘Slope!’ he said, with a self-satisfied smirk.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ Beth was baffled.

  ‘You have heard of the artist, Slope? Who leaves these so-witty graffitis around with his little spray can that sell for millions? The terrorist throwing a birthday cake instead of a Molotov cocktail? The man painting out the twelfth star on the EU flag after Brexit with red paint, that drips down like your country’s lifeblood?’

  Beth stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘You’re not saying…?’

  ‘Yes, Slope and Mark Smeaton are one and the same.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure?’ Beth was staggered.

  The man she had seen had scarcely looked like the most celebrated graffiti artist of this, or any other, generation. True, no-one looked their best when dead, and perhaps particularly not when they’d been stabbed multiple times. But then, he’d been wearing those posh-boy red chinos. How did that fit with being an edgy, incognito street artist? And hadn’t he gone to Wyatt’s School? It wasn’t exactly an identikit portrait of a rebel.

  Yet the more Beth thought about it, the more she realised that could be a perfect disguise. Didn’t the Establishment always breed its fiercest critics from within? The Soviet spies, Blunt, Philby, and Maclean, had all gone to public schools before being recruited at Cambridge. Tom Driberg, the vociferous Labour MP, had spent large chunks of his life working on the true-blue Daily Express, where he’d started up the wickedly snobbish William Hickey column. Even the writers PG Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, who’d gone to a school only a shade less good than Wyatt’s in Dulwich itself, had both turned on their backgrounds to some extent. Wodehouse’s comic soufflés were tainted by his naïve dealings with Germany during the Second World War, while Chandler’s coruscating prose dripped glamour onto a vicious way of life that he’d certainly not seen for himself in Dulwich Village. Being put into a privileged system as a child didn’t mean you were guaranteed to come out at the other end as a supporter.