Still Life

by Val McDermid

  But he couldn’t help that, and in spite of her instinctive mistrust of people she believed hadn’t earned their privilege, she warmed to him. And then he’d done the devious thing with the earring, right at the start. That had left her on shaky ground, unwilling to take another step forward. But he’d persuaded her that it had been an uncharacteristically stupid move, one that had appealed purely because he wanted to be more to her than a witness in a cold case.

  Karen had let herself be convinced. He was, after all, the first man she’d been remotely interested in since Phil’s death. She’d thought she could maybe trust him enough to take the first tentative steps towards a relationship. And so they’d eased into it. She was glad that her job and his double-sided life meant they could only be part-time lovers; she had no appetite for anything more committed, not yet, maybe not ever. She’d already been wary of the differences in aspiration and expectation between them. But the events outside the prison that Monday morning had driven a wedge between them. She didn’t know how to get past something so deep.

  Nothing like that had ever come between her and Phil. She’d always thought that was a measure of how strong their love was. But maybe all it meant was that they’d never been tested in the fire. Both of her closest friends thought she should try to work things out with Hamish. She shouldn’t be afraid to take their advice, should she? And was she being disingenuous when she told Hamish he wasn’t in competition with a dead man? Was she holding him to an absurd standard?

  The intercom buzzed through her thoughts. Time to put this to the test. Karen pressed the outside door release then went to open her front door. The lift dinged and moments later, Hamish rounded her corner of the hallway. In spite of her misgivings, her stomach gave a jolt at the sight of him striding towards her, hair loose and glinting, carrying a huge bunch of exotic-looking flowers she didn’t know the name of. And that said it all, the cynical voice in the back of her head said. Phil would have brought daffodils and she’d have been perfectly happy with that. Hamish had to go one better.

  And she had to learn to stop comparing. Because she knew the dead always came out ahead.

  Hamish stopped a few feet short of her. ‘I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again,’ he said.

  ‘Hamish, there’s no way I’d ever stop buying coffee in Perk.’ She gave a mischievous smile. He met it with a tentative one of his own. ‘Come on in.’

  He thrust the flowers at her and followed her into the flat. Karen put them down next to the sink and turned to face him. Now there was no barrier between them. She gave him a level stare, then stepped forward and put her hands on the lapels of his overcoat. She turned her face up to his and he bent his head. Their lips grazed gently and she drank in the familiar smell of him. Beard oil with its notes of sandalwood and eucalyptus, the faint burned smell of roasting coffee beans and an undertone of undefinable masculinity. It was hard to resist.

  Actually, she didn’t want to resist. They kissed again, less provisionally this time, then they wrapped their arms round each other in a tight hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Hamish whispered. ‘I can’t help wanting to make everything right for you.’

  ‘That’s not your job,’ Karen said. ‘You think it’s how you show you care for someone. In my world, it feels like a marker for wanting to control me.’

  He sighed and screwed up his eyes in frustration. ‘I get what you’re saying. It’s hard for me to put that into practice.’

  ‘How about you wait till I ask for help, rather than breenge in when you decide I need it?’

  ‘The other side of that is you being able to ask.’

  A long moment. ‘So we both have lessons to learn.’ She gave him another quick kiss. ‘Now how about you take your coat off and make it look like you’re going to stick around for a while?’

  Hamish shrugged out of his coat and took it through to the hall to hang it up. By the time he returned, Karen was transferring the meze from the fridge to the table. ‘Need a hand?’

  ‘It’s fine. It’s from Aleppo.’

  ‘Excellent, that’s a treat,’ he said absently, moving papers aside to lean on the breakfast bar. Glancing down, he said, ‘Why have you got a picture of David Greig? And who’s the boyfriend?’

  ‘What?’ Karen turned swiftly, her tone sharp.

  Hamish waved the photograph of Iain Auld and the mystery man. ‘David Greig.’

  ‘Saying it again doesn’t help,’ Karen said. ‘Who’s David Greig?’

  He stabbed the mystery man with his finger. ‘David Greig. Don’t you know who he is? Or rather, who he was?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Now her interest was fully engaged. Was Hamish going to be the source of the answer she’d been seeking?

  ‘So why have you got a picture of a man you don’t know? Is this work?’

  ‘Yes, it’s work. You know I can’t tell you any more about it.’ She took the picture from Hamish, who let it go without a fuss. ‘Tell me about David Greig.’ Urgent now.

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t know who he is,’ Hamish said, sounding properly relaxed for the first time since he’d walked in.

  Exasperated, Karen said, ‘If I bribe you with a drink, will you stop treating me like an idiot?’

  Hamish grinned. ‘Deal. A glass of that red will do the trick.’

  Karen poured two glasses and returned with them to his side. ‘Tell me about David Greig.’

  ‘He was a YBA. One of the second wave, RCA rather than Goldsmiths.’

  ‘Hamish, I didn’t understand any of that. I’m a career cop from the back streets of Kirkcaldy. Can we just assume I know fuck all about fuck all?’ The relaxed mood of a few minutes before had gone as flat as day-old Irn-Bru.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help being a pretentious wanker.’ He tried an apologetic grin. Karen replied with a twist of the lips that might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘YBA, Young British Artists. Conceptual artists who used shock tactics and understood very well the economic possibilities of making art make money. Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, Tracy Emin, that lot.’

  Light dawned. ‘That lot. Sharks in formaldehyde and unmade beds and elephant dung.’ Karen rolled her eyes. ‘Seems to me that they didn’t create art, they created a whole generation of people like me shaking our heads and going, “what the actual fuck?” They were a machine for making philistines out of the rest of us.’

  Hamish chuckled. ‘I can’t disagree with you. I had a few mates who went to art school in the nineties and, honestly, I thought their stuff was the emperor’s new clothes, to the max. But I did go and see the Sensation exhibition in New York in 2000.’ He shook his head, a bemused look in his eyes. ‘I thought a few of the pieces were amazing but it didn’t change my mind.’

  ‘So where does David Greig fit in among the condoms and the giant vulvas?’

  ‘So you did take some notice?’

  ‘Red-top headlines notice. What did this guy actually make?’

  ‘Like most of them, he had a gimmick. He did portraits, but in a very weird way. What he did, he started with a landscape or a building that was integral to the subject of the portrait. So, if he was painting me, he’d maybe have gone up to Clashstronach and painted the glen with the croft house and the sea loch in the background. Or he might have chosen the interior of one of the Perk outlets. Then he’d take that landscape and cut it up into little pieces. Slices and triangles and squares and shards. And he’d build my portrait out of those fragments.’ Hamish drank some wine and made appreciative noises.

  Karen frowned. ‘You mean, a collage? Made out of the landscape painting?’

  ‘Exactly. I know it sounds completely mad, but somehow he made it work.’ He took out his phone and googled, ‘David Greig Tony Blair’. The screen revealed an image of the former prime minister that was almost photographic except that the colours were an odd palette of greys and blues, with the occasional shading o
f green. ‘You can’t see it on this scale, but he started with a painting of Fettes, where Blair went to school. Greig would photograph the original landscape painting and exhibit it alongside the portrait.’

  Karen shook her head. ‘It’s very tricksy. But how is it art?’

  ‘I think it’s meant to make us challenge our perception. That the context a person occupies shapes our view of them.’

  She groaned. ‘Talk about simplistic. It’s just showing off.’

  ‘Maybe, but showing off a high degree of skill.’

  ‘Seems like a waste to me. You said, “Who he is. Or rather, who he was.” What did you mean by that? Has he fallen out of favour?’

  ‘He killed himself,’ Hamish said. ‘I don’t remember all the details, but he threw himself off a cliff. His body never turned up, but it wasn’t like the guy out of the Manic Street Preachers who simply disappeared. Greig left his clothes and his wallet on the clifftop. I’ve got a vague recollection of a suicide note.’

  ‘When was this?’ She forced herself to sound nonchalant. Two men in a photograph. The look of love. One disappears, one apparently kills himself but his body never turns up. She didn’t believe in coincidences like that. But belief was nothing without evidence.

  Hamish puffed out a breath. ‘I don’t remember. Must be ten, twelve years ago. Is any of this helpful?’

  ‘Identifying Greig is a big step forward. I don’t know where it’ll take me, but it’s a lead.’ On an impulse, she picked up the newspaper cutting and flipped it over. ‘I don’t suppose you know who Hilary is, in the context of the art world?’ Her voice was a tease but it disguised a genuine inquiry.

  Hamish studied the scribbled lines on the page. ‘Did your guy go to Oxford, by any chance?’

  Karen stared open-mouthed. ‘How the hell did you work that out?’

  Hamish pointed to each line in turn. ‘Well, OUDS is the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and Hilary’s what they call the spring term there. In that context, I’d take a wild guess that “12 NT” stands for a production of Twelfth Night.’

  He spoke so casually, as if his interpretation was obvious. For Karen, it held the bitter sting of her limited experience. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘Why do they call a university term Hilary? That’s mad. I thought Hilary must be a person.’

  ‘It’s probably named after some saint. The patron saint of mortar boards or some such nonsense. I’d have thought the same as you except that I used to go out with a girl who fancied her chances at a career on the stage. She’d done a lot of acting when she was at Oxford. She was always talking about OUDS as if it was the Royal Shakespeare Company.’ Hamish pushed his hair back from his face with an awkward smile. She realised he was trying to not make her feel inadequate.

  ‘And did she make it?’ Karen didn’t really care but it seemed the easiest response.

  He grinned. ‘She’s working in HR in some City law firm.’

  ‘You dodged a bullet there.’

  He laughed. ‘In more ways than one, Karen. I’m a lot happier here than I would have been in her Docklands flat.’

  Karen picked up the paper to avoid meeting his eyes. ‘So you reckon this is something to do with a production of Twelfth Night in, what? Hilary Term 1992 or 1993?’

  ‘Does that make sense in terms of your investigation?’

  It did, but she wasn’t going to share that. ‘Stop fishing.’ Karen leaned over and kissed Hamish. She was longing to dive into researching David Greig, but she knew that could wait. Nobody was going to die before morning. She told herself that the important agenda for the evening was to make things right between her and Hamish. So she pulled him to his feet. ‘Time for food. I’ve hardly eaten all day and, now you’re here, I need to keep my strength up.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, then took his hand and led him to the table.

  He hesitated at his chair. ‘Are we all right? Am I forgiven?’

  Karen met his eyes. ‘I don’t want this to be over, Hamish. But we need to be honest with each other when either of us is uncomfortable with what the other one says or does. That goes for you as much as me.’

  Hamish stared at the table. ‘I’ll try.’ Then he looked up and gave her the disarming grin that always stirred her. ‘The trouble is, I don’t mind when you get stroppy. I love the challenge.’

  ‘Then stop trying to placate me. Now sit down and eat your dinner.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get on the laptop and research David Greig?’ He sat, giving her a mischievous look.

  He knew her better than she generally liked to admit. Karen pulled a face. ‘Dead men can wait. Especially when I’ve got a living one to take advantage of.’

  31

  Saturday, 22 February 2020

  Karen’s eyes snapped open. The low light from her bedside clock read 4:27. Next to her, Hamish snored softly, but that wasn’t what had woken her. She’d been dreaming, something about the sea. Looking down at the sea? Whatever it had been, it had slipped out of her consciousness now, gone too fast to grasp. She eased herself out of bed, shivering at the night air on her naked skin. She grabbed her dressing gown on the way out of the bedroom, knowing there would be no more sleep for her that night. There was only so much oblivion she could earn from good sex.

  Closing the door softly, she made her way back to the living room and turned on the heating and the desk lamp by her laptop. She’d have liked a cup of coffee, but there was no possibility of grinding beans without waking Hamish, and there was no need for both of them to be sleep-deprived. She settled down with a can of sugar-free Irn-Bru; any hit of caffeine was better than none.

  Karen sat for a long moment contemplating the blank screen, indulging herself in the buzz of anticipation. It had only been a couple of days since she’d discovered the photo­graph of Iain Auld and David Greig, but it felt as if the puzzle had been nagging at her for much longer. Now she had an answer, she wanted to savour this moment before the hard work started.

  She booted up and typed ‘David Greig artist’ in the search box. It might have been around a decade since Greig had disappeared but the internet had not forgotten him. Approximate 1.25 million hits. Wikipedia was the first port of call. Pinch of salt needed, of course, but although the entry could be underpinned by malice or adoration, there would be something to get her teeth into.

  David Greig (1969–2010) was an English conceptual artist, considered a member of the Young British Artists movement. His portrait of Ali Smith was shortlisted for the 2002 Turner Prize.

  Early Life

  Greig was born in Manchester and raised in a single-parent household by his mother. He attended Burnage High School for Boys. He was awarded a BA in painting from Edinburgh College of art and an MA from the Royal College of Art.

  The Edinburgh connection piqued her interest. She made a note to check whether anyone who had taught Greig was still in post. That would definitely be worth an hour of her time.

  Art Practice

  His primary interest was portraiture and he very quickly developed a unique practice involving landscape painting, collage and multimedia to construct portraits of his chosen subjects. The environments of the landscapes always had an intimate connection with the portrait subjects. His intention was to demonstrate how our personalities are integrations of many fragments. His work was considered to be more accessible than many of his YBA contem­poraries, not least because he generally chose subjects who were in the public eye – politicians, pop stars, actors, writers. From early in his career, his work achieved some of the higher prices paid for contemporary art. Balanced against that was the relative modesty of his output, given the time and intensity his method required. He seldom produced more than three or four paintings per year.

  Karen skimmed the details of exhibitions, galleries and critical responses to Greig’s work and scrolled down to the part that really interested her.

/>   Death

  Greig committed suicide on 10 June 2010.

  That sentence stopped her in her tracks. Three weeks after Iain Auld’s disappearance, the man pictured in an intimate moment with him had also vanished. Excited, she read on.

  He had complained to friends of feeling depressed at the ending of a relationship. His clothes, shoes and wallet were found neatly folded on the top of the Gogarth cliffs on Anglesey. In his jacket pocket was a suicide note which was read out at the inquest into his death. In it, he said he had lost his creative impulse when his lover had left him and that he did not want to live if he could not paint. His body was never recovered.

  Reputation

  His work is still held in critical esteem and remains popular with collectors, achieving good prices at auction, particularly since several of his portraits were destroyed in the catastrophic Goldman Gallery fire of 2017. Many of his portraits were sold privately and from time to time they emerge on to the market. In the past decade, eight previously unrecorded works have appeared. Their authenticity has not been doubted because of Greig’s unique method of validating his work. He would affix a selection of nail clippings to the back of his canvases. ‘My agent has legally verified examples of my DNA. If anyone doubts my work, they can have one of the nail clippings tested to clear the matter up,’ he told a journalist who was investigating the nature of authenticity in a contemporary art world that had come to rely heavily on the concept of the ‘factory’ production of artworks, which its proponents compared to the studio system of renaissance masters.