Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  ‘As it happens …’ He smiled rather awkwardly, showing terrible teeth.

  ‘Your Unicorn series is absolutely brilliant,’ I said. ‘The deceptively simple juxtaposition of silver-white purity with the dark creatures so obviously based on the monsters from Where The Wild Things Are, says something profound, speaking as they do of lost innocence and corrupted virtue … wonderful!’ Oh, I can produce artistic bollocks-speak with the best of them, when required.

  For a moment he stared at me as though I had suddenly gone insane or had stripped off in front of him, his expression a mixture of scepticism and complete agreement with my fulsome appraisal. Any minute now he was going to ask me if I was taking the mickey. ‘Are you taking the mickey?’ he asked.

  ‘I meant every word.’

  ‘And who did you say you were?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ I held out my hand. ‘I’m Alexandra Quick.’

  ‘Quick …’ It was immediately obvious that he recognized the name. It was equally clear that he did not want to admit it. Was this because it would imply that he was still in touch with his former wife? Or because he feared he might show up on the radar as having killed or abducted her? Or simply because he was a curmudgeonly old sod?

  He took my hand in his huge mottled ones and shook it rather too hard to be enjoyable. He glanced over his shoulder at the open doors into the house, then back at me. ‘And what’s your …’ He coughed. ‘… uh … area of expertise, Alexandra Quick?’

  ‘Come now.’ I smiled at him. There were fields beyond the house, bordered by thin woods, and I could see a black figure crossing one of them at a fast trot, obviously aiming to disappear among the trees. I thought I recognized Helena by the flow of blonde twists which hung down the figure’s back, but I couldn’t be quite sure. ‘I’m looking for Helena, on the off-chance she’s found refuge with you.’

  ‘Why would she do that? We haven’t been in touch for years.’

  ‘Whatever …’ I said. ‘As long as she’s not been kidnapped by some insane psychopath … that’s all I wanted to ensure. The police in England are after her, but I expect you know that. If you’re in touch, tell her that Ripe for the Picking is coming along splendidly, and there is a three-book contract sitting on my desk.’

  With that, I turned to walk slowly away from him, picking a sprig from a flourishing rosemary bush which grew beside one of the flights of mossy steps and crushing it in my hand while I waited for him – as I knew he would – to call me back.

  ‘Just a damned minute,’ came his voice behind me. Scottish, educated, and, yes, slightly sinister. A swift glance around showed me there were no other houses within window-sight of his pretty house and garden. Was I safe here?

  ‘What?’ I said, without turning to face him.

  He seemed wrong-footed, a state I guessed he didn’t often find himself in. Again he glanced over his shoulder. ‘Um … who do you think is … um … here?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious I mean your former wife?’ I said. ‘Doctor Helena Drummond.’

  ‘You’re not representing any current husbands?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not connected with that bastard, Hawkes, are you?’

  ‘Nope.’ I wondered why he asked and who the bastard Hawkes was. A creditor? A wronged spouse? Which raised the possibility that the figure hurrying towards the concealing woods was not Helena after all, but someone else’s wife. I had often considered the sexual allure of painters. Not just their allure, but their rampant sexuality, the women they bedded, their affairs and complicated love-tangles, such as those within the Danish group known as the Skagen painters, the French Impressionists, or more modern painters such as Lucian Freud or Augustus John. Why did women fall so heavily and so easily for them? What was it about them? Looking at the irascible man in front of me, with his clenched fists, deep frown and jutting jaw, I could concede that while I might not necessarily want him at my dinner table, there was an undeniable energy about him which, at the risk of using a cliché, I could only call animal magnetism. Didn’t work for me, but I could easily see why it might enthral others.

  He scowled. ‘Just as well for you. And how did you get here?’

  ‘By Ryanair from Stansted, then by—’

  ‘No, I mean what led you here to my studio?’

  I was tempted to tap the side of my nose and reply, ‘Aha!’ Instead I said, ‘I recently discovered that my missing friend Doctor Helena Drummond was once married to you. A total surprise, I may say. And since I’m trying to find her, coming to see you seemed a logical move. And you, of course, being so famous and all, were easy to track down.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Doctor Drummond is a major suspect in the murder of Amy Morrison.’

  His cheeks suddenly changed colour from sunburn-red to tomato-scarlet. ‘That little bitch!’ he said.

  Interesting. He’d obviously had dealings with the woman. ‘So …?’ I looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I taught for a year in New York,’ he said. ‘The slag tried to seduce me and then when I … succumbed … she wanted me to change her grades. Upwards, of course. And then …’ He choked on what seemed like righteous indignation. ‘… when I resisted her, she reported me to the authorities, said I’d harassed her from day one. Utter bollocks, of course, but I had the devil’s own job getting out of that.’

  ‘Putting that aside, have you seen Helena? Or has she been in touch with you?’

  ‘What’s it to do with you if she has?’ Strangely, I felt that aggressive though his behaviour was, he was frightened of something.

  ‘She’s my colleague,’ I said. ‘My friend. The police think she’s a cold-blooded killer, and she’s not.’ I felt close to tears. ‘And now she’s vanished.’

  After a silent pause, once again I turned as if to go.

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Instead of racing off, come in and have a glass of wine. There’s a good St Emilion, if you’re interested.’ I could hear the effort he was making to sound emollient.

  ‘That would be nice. And perhaps I could also look at some of your current work while I’m here …’

  ‘Of course.’ He gave me his under-used, gap-toothed, tobacco-stained smile again. He might have thought he’d got off lightly, but I planned to renew my interrogation once we were seated together with a bottle between us. It would be much harder then for him to wriggle out of my questions.

  I followed him into a wide single room, which it didn’t take much detective work to see was his studio. Wooden stairs led to an upper storey. The walls were made of rough rocks plastered together, what the French call pierre apparente. The big work table I’d seen from the road was covered in a clutter of tins of paint, jars of coloured pencils, pens, pairs of scissors, old clay pots with honey-glazed rims full of paintbrushes, the kind of tools a sculptor would need. Rolls of paper stood in corners, five or six unused canvasses leaned against a wall, pages torn from a large sketching block had been stuck untidily to the walls with strips of masking tape. There was a slight but pervasive smell of turps.

  From Gordon’s remarks, it seemed fairly obvious that he had been in touch with Helena recently, and also that she hadn’t given him all the details surrounding Amy’s Morrison’s murder. The question I was most anxious to discover an answer to was why Amy had been in Helena’s house in the first place. And there was another point I wanted to raise. But he indicated a bench running along one side of the table. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and started pulling the cork out of a bottle which was already open. He showed me the label.

  ‘Looks good.’

  ‘I buy it directly from the vineyard,’ he said. ‘It’s only about an hour and a half from here. Well worth the drive.’ He filled a large goblet for me.

  I held it to the light, sniffed, swirled, swallowed. ‘Mmm, lovely.’ I put my elbows on the table and leaned confidentially towards him. ‘I also learned recently that Helena had a child. A girl. Are you the father?’

/>   Again he did the complexional colour change, this time from scarlet to sunset-purple. He shook his head, but so unconvincingly that I thought he must be lying. If so, her surname was likely to be Gordon, unless she was one of those principled people who didn’t like to ride on the coat-tails of a famous parent. I wondered what line of work she might be in. Even if she existed, it was unlikely that he would tell me. Or that I would ask. I looked round the studio, trying to find a clue of some kind which might lead to Helena, which is when I noticed a lighter patch of colour on the grimy tiles underfoot, which had obviously not seen a broom or a mop for some months. Yet this area had clearly been scrubbed, and fairly recently, since the grouting between the squares of terracotta was still damp, and a darker colour than in other parts of the room. Perhaps I was being over-fanciful, but it seemed to me that violence had been done here not long ago. I was suddenly watchful, alert to any movement on the part of my host. On no account did I intend to turn my back on him: there were far too many weapons of destruction scattered about the room, from a rusty samurai sword to a couple of knobkerries with viciously heavy heads, to various sharp knives and several pointed things.

  There was a sudden tattoo of steps on the wooden floor above our heads, producing the drum-like noise I’d heard earlier. Moments later, someone appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the ground floor where we were sitting and clattered down them, Halfway down, seeing me, he stopped. A slender, wiry young man in close-fitting jeans, with a clean striped dress-shirt tucked into them, an elaborate leather belt, and a close-cropped head, stood there. He came further down the stairs, found a glass, filled it with wine and drank some, while eyeing me. ‘For God’s sake, Ainslie,’ he said disdainfully. ‘Two sluts in one day? Isn’t that overdoing it a bit?’ Good accent, bad manners.

  Ainslie held up a hand, as though to stop him. ‘Moderate your language, boy. It’s not what you think.’

  ‘It never is.’ The guy looked across at me. ‘So what’s your name?’ His voice was heavy with contempt.

  I took an instant dislike to him. Arrogance is one of the least endearing of human traits. ‘I can’t see that it’s any business of yours,’ I said.

  He was taken aback by my response. ‘Uh …’ He stared at me hard, willing me to look away, which I didn’t do. ‘Only asking,’ he said eventually, carefully avoiding my gaze as he slid onto the bench beside Gordon.

  ‘Never mind Laurence,’ Gordon said. ‘Laurence, meet Alexandra Quick. He’s my current pupil. Learning the trade and acting as my general factotum.’

  ‘So a wannabe painter?’ I asked. Laurence, Laurence? The name rang bells, and not the happy kind.

  ‘I’d like to think I was a bit more than just a wannabe,’ Laurence said sulkily, picking at the table with a red-handled Stanley knife which had been lying there. He rubbed the top of his short-haired skull as though surprised and uneasy to find it so near to nakedness.

  ‘You are, dear, you are,’ soothed Ainslie. ‘But there’s still a ways to go.’

  ‘And if you want a hint for future success, I would suggest you learn some manners before you try to advance any further,’ I said. Rude? Very. But not as rude as he had been.

  He raised his head and gave me a flat-eyed stare, full of menace. I wanted to say that nobody did the fish-eye as well as I did, but feeling that I might have met my master here, refrained, while Gordon rolled his eyes behind the little bastard and held the bottle over my glass.

  I shook my head. ‘I have to catch a plane back to England this afternoon, which means driving to the airport,’ I said. ‘So better not.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Gordon, generously refilling his own glass.

  I gestured at the clean patch of floor tile. I smiled innocently. ‘Goodness! Looks like there was an accident of some kind here. Even a murder! What did you do, drop a tin of green paint on the floor or something?’

  Both of the men looked at me. Laurence with alarm, Gordon with anger. ‘What?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ I said rapidly. My heart beat faster than usual. Even separately, these two men exuded threat. Together, they could definitely be lethal. For the first time I began to fear for Helena’s well-being, though I couldn’t think of any reason why either of them might want to harm her.

  Was she the woman I’d seen running away across the fields? Ever since entering the studio, I had been looking around for any sign that she had ever been there. Now I suddenly saw one. On a seduction couch set against the far end of the room, hidden beneath a pile of cushions of dusty velvet and fraying gold thread, shabby linen, shredding silk, I saw the corner of something I thought I recognized. One of Helena’s gaudy patchwork shawls, hastily shoved out of sight. I could think of no way I could retrieve it without them seeing me. Even if I could get my hands on it, it would be too bulky to hide satisfactorily in my bag. And maybe I was being over-imaginative. Maybe Ainslie – painter of fleshy nudes in lurid colours – used it as a prop to drape over the chaise longues and couches upon which he arranged his models. Those naked women were tourist pieces, I often thought, without any of the merit or class of his more reflective, muted landscapes.

  The petulant Laurence drained the contents of his glass and slid away from the table. ‘Work to do,’ he muttered, still not catching my eye.

  And as he did so, that sneering pout triggered some memory in my brain. ‘Laurence what?’ I asked. ‘Just so I recognize your name when you’re famous.’

  He looked over at Gordon, who gave him a tiny nod. ‘Turnbull,’ he said unwillingly.

  Laurence Turnbull. Of course. I might even have recognized him if he hadn’t shaved off most of his hair. It had been a sensational case about two years ago. High on cocaine and brandy, he had driven at speed down a suburban 30mph street, veered onto the pavement outside a school where kids were waiting for parents or school buses, killed two young girls, badly injured three others, driven off without stopping. There’d been enough witnesses for him to get no more than a mile away from the scene before he was apprehended. His lawyers had pleaded mitigating factors such as his abandonment by his natural parents when he was born, the trauma of being adopted, the abuse he had suffered on a systematic basis at the boarding school where his affluent adoptive parents had sent him, until he absconded and lived off the streets, earning enough as a rent-boy and dealer to get by, until a social worker had taken pity on him, brought him into her own home and tried to redeem him. She had finally got him accepted at an art college in London, where he had shown considerable promise until he got in with the wrong crowd and began on the drugs again.

  What had been particularly appalling about the case was the fact that owing to a technical error, the judge was forced to let him off the charge of culpable manslaughter with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, a suspended two-year sentence and a three-year driving ban. ‘Despicable,’ the judge had called it. ‘An act of the most depraved and contemptible irresponsibility.’ After that, Turnbull had disappeared and, despite the best efforts of the tabloids, had not been located since. Just as well. The internet had been toxic with death threats. And now here he was, standing opposite me, clearly unsure of whether I was familiar with his name. I wondered what he would have looked like if he’d actually been sent down. Pale, puffy, the cockiness kicked out of him, I guessed.

  So yes, I remembered Laurence Turnbull all right. And the frustration on the part of my colleagues at his lenient treatment. ‘Turnbull,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’ I endeavoured to give the impression I’d never heard of him.

  ‘He’s going to be good.’ Gordon patted Laurence on the arm. ‘Just needs to apply himself.’

  ‘Of course.’ I wondered what Laurence’s dreams were made of, whether he ever flash-backed to those girls being hurled into the air, the sound their heads made as they struck the pavement or fell beneath his front wheels, tumbling through the air in a rain of blood and broken bones.

  I also wondered what his connect
ion to Ainslie Gordon was – and if it had anything at all to do with either Amy Morrison or Helena Drummond.

  ‘So how well did you know Amy Morrison?’ I said to Ainslie.

  He did the swelling-tomato thing again. ‘Too well,’ he growled.

  ‘And how did that come about?’

  ‘Like I just said, she took one of my classes when I was a visiting professor in New York. She couldn’t paint, couldn’t write, couldn’t appreciate the artistic gems I offered the kids. On the whole, I’d say she was the most irritating, no-talent, selfish, ball-busting woman I have ever met. And—’

  ‘Believe him, he’s met a lot,’ put in Turnbull. He sniggered unattractively.

  ‘Ball-busting?’

  ‘She liked to find some talented but needy guy and then – if you’ll excuse the expression – suck him dry. She broke quite a few hearts – male and female.’ He gave a theatrical shudder. ‘God, what a bitch.’

  ‘She sounds like a monster.’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘But nobody committed suicide because of her?’

  ‘Not on my watch, they didn’t. Though I did hear a rumour somewhere or other …’ He gazed at me, his hot blue eyes flaming in his face. ‘I shouldn’t say this, but not only am I glad she’s dead, I also hope she died painfully. She caused enough damage in her lifetime.’ He seemed to be echoing Sadie Johns’ sentiments precisely.

  ‘Any names of broken-hearted students that I should know about? Any death threats made?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘None that you ever heard of,’ Laurence added in his sulky way.

  ‘This is very true. But they were a pretty open bunch of kids. Extroverts almost to a man. And woman, of course.’

  ‘Did you know her, Laurence?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I might have met her,’ he said. ‘Can’t quite remember where or why.’

  The conversation wasn’t going anywhere. I did a faux double-take. ‘Golly,’ I trilled. ‘Is that a piece of patchwork under the cushion over there?’ I was up and walking across the room as I spoke. ‘I’m so into patchwork …’