Indelible

by Peter Helton

  When the police officers came up I got to tell the story all over again, except they also wanted to inspect my bike and then they asked me the same questions for a second time. The paramedics confirmed Rick’s expert diagnosis and the younger of the police officers went off to call a doctor to make it official.

  The older one stayed with me, scribbling more notes in his flip-up notebook. He pointed his pen at the lane and knitted his eyebrows. ‘There’s no sign of tyre marks, no sign the driver made any attempt at braking.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that.’

  ‘Well.’ He tilted his head and half closed one eye. ‘Then he either crashed deliberately or he was asleep or very drunk.’

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ one of the paramedics said flatly, ‘that he didn’t brake because he was dead before he had his crash. My guess is he had a heart attack some time before this and the car kept going.’

  The constable looked at me, nodding encouragingly. ‘So when you say he started accelerating back there and driving erratically that means you were probably being followed by a dead driver. The car’s an automatic. If he was dead but his foot remained on the accelerator that would explain why the vehicle speeded up and shifted up through the gears. He must have slumped on to the steering wheel in the end, which set off the horn.’

  I gave an involuntary shiver, just as the first drops of rain began to fall. ‘Great. You ride home minding your own business and along comes a dead guy in a Volvo and tries to kill you.’ I spoke lightly but had a strong image in my mind of a dead man stretching an arm out from beyond the grave, trying to pull me over to his side, the other side. The older I get, the less I like the spooky stuff.

  It only takes one car to block the lane and the police car managed it admirably. Soon an impromptu traffic jam convened and each driver trying to reverse ran into the path of the next one arriving. The young constable was busy trying to explain the situation and redirect people. When the pathologist arrived he had to abandon his car half a mile back and walk the rest. It was raining steadily now but he appeared unperturbed despite being hatless and having no umbrella. I was less happy about it. I scrounged another cigarette off Rick and stood under the incomplete cover of a solitary unhealthy-looking oak away from the mangled car.

  By now the windscreen had been removed to make access to the victim easier and it didn’t take the pathologist long to confirm the paramedics’ diagnosis. When the doctor straightened up he handed a white envelope to the constable, who looked at it for a while, then looked at me for a while, from thirty paces away. He then talked into the radio clipped to his stab vest for a bit, listened, then talked some more while looking at me.

  Then he walked over slowly and deliberately. ‘You told me you didn’t know the accident victim,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘So I did.’

  ‘Strange, when he seems to have known you.’ He lifted up the white business envelope so I could read the name and address that was written across it in a spidery hand: Chris Honeysett, Mill House. ‘It was sticking out of the man’s jacket pocket. The doctor found it.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. Would you care to explain it?’ he said in a Sherlock Holmesian tone.

  ‘I would but I can’t. Thanks.’ I stretched my hand out for the letter but he snatched it away.

  ‘Oh, no, you can’t have that.’

  ‘It is addressed to me, therefore it’s my post.’

  ‘Ah, no, it’s got no stamp on it. So it’s not post. Hasn’t been posted, see. Hence not post. Just a letter in a man’s pocket.’

  ‘But clearly meant for me.’ I stretched my hand out for it again but he wouldn’t have it.

  ‘Perhaps. But I still can’t give it to you. It could be evidence.’

  ‘Of …?’

  This seemed to throw Sherlock for a moment. ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘This isn’t the Maltese Falcon, you know?’ I complained. We argued a bit more but he wouldn’t budge on the issue. It really looked like the chap in the Volvo had been on his way to my house to hand-deliver a letter but died before he got there and then nearly ran me over after he had expired at the wheel. It was a bit out of the ordinary for a Tuesday, but then it wasn’t as though he had staggered through my door with a mysterious note in his hand and a knife in his back. I trudged over to the car and got down on my knees so I could look inside. Now that the broken windscreen had been removed and the airbags deflated I could see the ashen face of the corpse. He looked pretty old to me now. I thought I might have seen the face before somewhere but couldn’t place him.

  ‘You still maintain you don’t know him?’ said the constable.

  ‘Don’t recognize him.’

  ‘And yet it looks like he was coming to see you,’ he insisted.

  I shrugged. ‘So what? Lots of people come to see me,’ I said.

  Prophetically, it turned out.

  TWO

  At breakfast the following morning, Annis and I were still talking about the crash. I could see the Norton through the half-glazed kitchen door where the old bike sheltered from further adventures and the rain in an open shed, along with all manner of slowly rusting and obsolete machinery. The potholes in the yard were filled with muddy rainwater and my gleaming black Citroën DS 21 stood on the sole surviving island of cobbles, looking as fine as it had when it rolled from the production line forty years ago. ‘I think I’ll stick to the DS from now on,’ I said and returned to the table to ladle more quince jam on to my croissant.

  Annis gave a prolonged shrug. ‘I was cured when I crashed into the bridge when the brakes failed.’

  ‘I was feeling more than a bit vulnerable when that guy rolled up in his tank of a car.’

  ‘What are the chances, though, of that kind of thing happening?’ She plunged the plunger on another cafetière of Blue Mountain. I was continuously surprised we could afford the stuff.

  I had fixed views on the Volvoman subject. ‘He was trying to kill me. He didn’t fancy crossing the Styx on his own and tried to take me with him.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted you to pay the ferryman.’

  ‘It’s just that I enjoy the acceleration of a bike,’ I mused.

  ‘Acceleration? On the Norton? Tell me, when did you last drive a modern car?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I said. Apart from your old Citroën and my old banger you haven’t driven anything for ages. Talk about acceleration. Cars have changed, you know.’

  ‘And what modern cars did you drive that you’re such an expert all of a sudden?’

  ‘Tim lets me drive his TT sometimes. The words shit and shovel spring to mind. Another croissant, slow coach?’

  I had forgotten about Tim’s shiny black Audi. ‘He lets you drive that?’ I felt an absurd pang of jealousy. Absurd, considering what else he let her drive.

  Annis dropped another warmed croissant on to my plate. ‘You should ask him to borrow it some time; you’d be instantly converted to the twenty-first century. Honestly.’

  ‘Nah, thanks.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too many buttons. Computers …’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She cut me short. ‘What are you doing today? Are you painting?’

  I had spent the evening poring through the summer’s sketchbooks and had finally settled on the image to work up into a painting. ‘As soon as I’ve primed a new canvas.’

  Annis’s eyes hardened as she stared past me. ‘I hope you’re right, hon. Look what’s coming down the track.’

  One of the many things we like about Mill House and the way it sits in the landscape is that to get to it one has to negotiate one’s way down a tortuous potholed and rutted track which allows its inmates to catch a glimpse of any visitor long before they arrive. I looked around. A large grey Ford saloon was picking its way down towards us. I couldn’t see its occupants and as a car it should have been anonymous enough, but visiting grey saloons usually meant only one thing.

  ‘What’s
he want now?’ Annis wondered.

  ‘Are you kidding? If I as much as breathe on the same day that someone dies in Bath, Needham pops out of the ground next to me.’

  ‘Sometimes I think he just comes for the coffee. Sometimes I think he comes because he actually likes you.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s because of the coffee then.’ I put the kettle back on the stove.

  When the car rolled into the yard I could see he was alone. Had I been in trouble then even the formidable (and rather large) Detective Superintendent Needham would have brought backup. I do have a shotgun licence after all, and he suspects, with good reason, that I also keep an illegal World War Two Webley .38 which came with the house. Needham didn’t make superintendent by being complacent.

  His body language seemed to confirm that I wasn’t in immediate danger of being carted off to the nick. Despite the drizzly rain he took the time to visit the Norton, huddled among the rusting remains of several lawn mowers in the open shed. Naturally Needham knew he was being watched from the house, so he made a point of having a good look around the ancient automotive junk in the yard before coming over to darken the door I’d been holding open for a couple of minutes now.

  ‘Your coffee is getting cold, Mike.’

  He sniffed the air in the hall. ‘I thought I could smell it when I got out of the car. You do make good coffee, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘You’ll give me that, will you? So what is it you won’t give me?’

  ‘Figure of speech, Chris, don’t go off on one. It’s just a friendly visit. Now lead me to it.’

  Annis, already in her bespattered painting gear, came out of the kitchen on her way to the studio as we rounded the corner. She was carrying a steaming mug of the stuff.

  ‘Morning, Ms Jordan. Is that for me?’

  ‘Dream on, Detective.’ Annis held the mug high out of Needham’s fleshy reach as she danced past us.

  ‘Never try and interfere with her coffee,’ I warned him. Annis had a serious addiction going.

  ‘Was her hair always that red?’

  ‘Yes. Gets redder when she’s angry. Is this about yesterday – the accident?’ I busied myself at the stove while Needham pulled up a chair.

  ‘Sort of. The man had this on him.’ He pulled out the envelope with my name on it and laid it in front of him on the kitchen table, then laid a heavy hand on top. The envelope had been opened. The cheek of it.

  I feigned indifference, though it was clear it contained something important enough to bring Mike out here during working hours. I put coffee pot and cups on the table and poured. Then I set the sugar bowl just beyond comfortable reach. Needham probably came to Mill House partly to escape for a moment from a life plagued by instant coffee, styrofoam cups, plastic stirrers and aspartame. He flicked the envelope across the table at me and I released the sugar bowl into his custody.

  ‘You did know the deceased; you used to work for him when you taught drawing at his private art school. John Birtwhistle.’ Needham didn’t look at me. He had obviously allowed himself one spoonful of real sugar and was concentrating hard on balancing as many sugar grains on a teaspoon as the laws of physics permitted. ‘It’s an invitation. Probably cancelled now.’ He avalanched the white poison into his coffee and stirred meticulously.

  ‘That was Birtwhistle?’ He had been the owner and head of the Bath Arts Academy when I covered for a sick tutor there for a few months. ‘I didn’t recognize him. He used to have flowing dark hair and a beard.’

  ‘That was seventeen years ago.’

  ‘Was it?’ Mike had certainly done his homework; it was a figure I could not have pulled out of a hat.

  ‘Post-mortem hasn’t been done yet but it’ll probably turn out he died of a heart attack whilst driving.’

  ‘That’s what the medic thought. I still can’t believe I was being chased down the lane by a dead man driving a Volvo. That’s all my nightmares in one basket.’ While Needham slurped happily at his coffee I unfolded the letter.

  Dear Chris,

  My plan was to surprise you at your home and studio but since you are reading this that plan has failed. I also hoped that a personal visit might increase my chances of persuading you to contribute to my little project.

  You might not be aware that the Bath Arts Academy is celebrating its 30th anniversary, which we are planning to mark with an exhibition of works by all the (more talented) tutors who ever worked with us, to be held next month in Studio One and various other parts of the college.

  I’m aware that you only worked at the academy for a short time but we would be proud and indeed honoured if you would contribute a new painting and a sketchbook for exhibition, thus giving today’s students an opportunity to view and understand your work. I am contacting as many ex-tutors as I can personally. I am also trying to persuade as many of you as possible, and I know I am pushing my luck here, to produce a work of art at the school itself, thus giving the students a chance to observe accomplished artists at work.

  While this is not a commercial exhibition, we will try and meet any (reasonable) expenses. If you are willing to participate or have any questions before committing yourself please contact me or Claire Kilburn in admin, who will help me coordinate the show.

  Yours faithfully

  John Birtwhistle

  I put the letter down. ‘So you thought you’d play postman.’

  ‘Yes, and why not?’

  ‘Because you’re a senior detective in the Avon & Somerset Constabulary and don’t get paid to deliver the post.’

  Needham smiled benignly across the table. ‘I was in the area.’

  ‘What, England?’

  ‘Well, it’s curious, isn’t it? Dead man drives down the road and ends up nearly killing the person he was looking for. I mean, it would have been more curious if he’d succeeded, of course.’

  ‘Sorry I spoilt it for you.’ The truth was Needham had a suspicious mind. I was pretty certain that even a parking ticket with my name attached to it automatically crossed his desk. Mike disliked the notion of private investigation. Unless of course it confined itself to things like chasing after missing persons, for which the police, despite having a duty to investigate, now hadn’t remotely enough manpower. No wonder my phone never stopped ringing. Not that I did many mispers; I usually passed them on to a much larger agency, Bentons of Bristol. They in turn sent me the deeply strange, bewildering and hopeless cases they wouldn’t touch with a barge pole because there wasn’t a hope in hell of collecting a fee.

  Needham gestured at the letter. ‘Looks like he wanted you to show some of your work at the academy. Posh little place. Are you going to do it?’

  ‘No idea. I’ll have to think about it, see if it’s still on, with Birtwhistle dead. Why are you asking?’

  ‘Because it’s a strange death and it’s to do with you and if you’re involved that means things can only get stranger. It was “Birtwhistle” then?’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Not “John”.’

  ‘See what you mean. No, it was John and we did get on well enough. I quite liked him, though I had little to do with him; he was busy running an art school and spent a lot of time in the print room. I was only there for a while. I had no teaching qualification, didn’t need one then. I was quite unknown then, too. I just taught off the top of my head whatever I thought the students ought to know.’

  ‘Are you quite well known now, then? Making money?’

  ‘So-so.’ I’d had a few good shows a while back and invested the money. It was just a dribble now but it kept us from starving. ‘I get by,’ I lied.

  ‘Sounds nice,’ Needham said, not believing it. He had finished the coffee and I could see he tore himself away from the coffee pot with difficulty. ‘Well, I can’t hang around here all day. I’ve got to work for my money.’

  ‘Unlike me, you mean.’

  ‘Call that work?’

  I waved him off as he squelched his Ford out of the yard, covering his normally imma
culate car in honest Somerset mud, then I took a fresh mug of coffee up to the studio. I was greeted by a strong smell of Venice turpentine. I often wondered how we could afford so much of it, considering it cost a hundred quid a litre. Annis had been busy on her new canvas. After the mural she had recently completed at a rock star’s mansion, no canvas seemed big enough for her. This new painting would be the largest she had ever attempted.

  ‘It still leaks, you know,’ she said, prising the mug of coffee from my hands. She pointed pointedly at the empty paint cans dotted around the floor into which the rain dripped melodiously.

  ‘I quite like it.’ After a passing storm had taken a fancy to the roof and made off with large bits of it, I had only been able to afford the most superficial repairs. For some reason most of the remaining drips seemed to fall in Annis’s side of the barn, which apparently was just typical.

  ‘What did Needham want?’ she asked from the other side of the barn. Her canvas was so big she had to tramp to the outer reaches of the studio whenever she wanted to take it all in.

  ‘To play postman with me.’ While I slotted together a more modest eighty by seventy-two inch canvas – modest by comparison; just large enough to be impossible to ignore – I filled Annis in about the letter.

  ‘Are you going to do it?’ she called from somewhere.

  ‘Not a chance. Have you been there? Batcombe House? It’s a very strange place. Huge house, huge garden. But it’s been an art school for thirty years so no one has done anything to it apart from occasionally sweep up, I suspect.’ I secured the stretcher with cross bars and pulled eighty-five inches of medium canvas off the roll, which I then wrestled across to the long table at the gloomy end of the barn. How Annis had stretched her monster canvas was beyond me. ‘It’s a real warren, Batcombe House. From sub-basement to attic, it’s got linseed oil, plaster dust and ceramic clay ingrained in its fabric. Not to mention charcoal. Absolutely freezing in winter but when it’s warm it’s OK, really. Students drawing outside or in the woods behind Batcombe. Late-night parties round Fiddler’s Pond. There’s always a few landscape painters among that mad lot too, who lug their paints through the valley.’ I punctuated my words with the stapler as I worked round the stretcher. ‘Sculptors working on huge stuff in the garden. I remember the old sculpture tutor, Lizzy Kroog, she used to live and work in the old bothy. Smoked a foul pipe and scared off all but the most determined students. I wonder if she’s still there.’