Indelible

by Peter Helton

‘What do you think?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said do it or she’ll close the ceramics department. After all, there is a perfectly good one at Bath University.’

  ‘Is there?’

  He sighed. ‘One of the best in the country.’

  ‘What makes your course different?’

  ‘Theirs is very cutting edge; ours puts more emphasis on the traditional.’

  ‘How traditional?’ I asked. I fished out my sketchbook and showed him my drawing of the kiln in the woods. ‘That traditional?’

  He scrutinized the drawing. I pointed behind me over my shoulder where a mere ghost of the kiln had made it on to my big canvas. ‘A wood-firing kiln,’ he said. ‘No, not that traditional, we don’t have one of those. Where did you draw this?’

  I pointed over his shoulder. ‘About five minutes’ walk that-a-way.’

  Dan nearly choked on his shortbread. ‘What? I had no idea! No one ever mentioned it. You must show me where it is. Can you do it now? I mean, finish your tea first, of course. How big is it? Is it in good repair? When has it last been used? Have you looked inside?’ Dan was as excited as a kid.

  So much for getting some painting done. It was back to the woods for me to show Dan the kiln. I took my sketchbook; I might as well do some drawing while I was out there. And of course while I had it with me nobody else could draw in it.

  When we reached the little clearing, Dan stopped and stood in awe. Then he looked at me as though I had given him the nicest present he had ever received before he went and danced all over the ruined heap. It was wonderful and perfect and so cool and he never imagined. He was as entranced as though I had shown him a lost city in the jungle, complete with a hoard of gold. ‘That’s the solution, of course. We’ll go ultra traditional – and of course burning wood is carbon neutral, how right-on is that?’ He cleared some of the debris from the entrance to the tunnel. ‘I can’t wait to see what it looks like inside.’

  ‘Is that a good idea? You don’t know how stable that thing is.’

  ‘It looks rock solid. Oh. You haven’t got a torch on you, by any chance?’

  Trust me, I’m a detective. I handed him my mini Maglite, which earned me more aren’t-you-a-marvel looks from Dan before he duck-walked into the tunnel of the kiln. Meanwhile I sat and sketched the thing in detail. Dan kept talking to me and though I couldn’t make out a word of what he was saying the melody of his chatter was a happy one. From time to time he appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, pushing heaps of broken pots in front of him. ‘Stuffed with broken vessels. Last firing must have been a disaster.’ Then he’d disappear again. As long as it wasn’t the first-and-last firing, I thought.

  It was getting late (in art-school terms, anyway) before Dan had had enough. He was covered head-to-toe in soot, charcoal and ceramic dust but right now I was willing to bet that he was the happiest tutor on the campus.

  ‘I’ll go out there again tomorrow,’ he said back at Batcombe House. ‘With a few volunteers to clear up properly, start a few repairs and collect firewood, of course.’

  ‘Great.’ So much for my idyllic oasis of peace in the forest.

  Dawn had already left but Hufnagel was still working, without Petronela, on the imaginary landscape of his painting. I just dropped off my drawing gear and left. Only a few cars were out front. Matthew, Stottie’s faithful chauffeur-cum-boyfriend, was leaning against his immaculately white Ford Focus, looking bored in immaculate leather jacket and designer jeans. He had parked as far away as possible from the rusting disaster area of Hufnagel’s ancient Fiesta.

  But, I noticed now, not everything about Hufnagel’s car was ancient. The I>
  SEVENTEEN

  Tim and I had never talked much about Annis, and recently, not at all. Right from the start we had decided that exchanging notes would probably lead to disaster. We were blokes, which meant we happily avoided all relationship talk anyway and so restricted our comments about our triangular arrangements to half-ironic remarks of the ain’t-it-awful and aren’t-women-odd category. In a strange way, however, our unusual connection had driven a wedge between us. Both of us had probably long decided that while we liked each other a lot, we both preferred Annis’s company to each other’s and as a result now saw very little of each other, except when Tim was helping out with my private investigation ‘lark’, as he called it. All of which meant that evenings like today’s, with the three of us on the verandah with our feet up and beers in our hands, was now a rare occasion. ‘That kind of thing always amazed me,’ said Tim when I recounted how half the doors and most of the windows at Batcombe House could not be locked. ‘I would walk up to a house that cost an absolute fortune. A hundred grand’s worth of cars in the garage. But can’t be arsed to fit forty quid’s worth of window locks to keep me out.’

  ‘That’s exactly how Anne Birtwhistle thinks. She’s desperate to save money so spending a tenner on each window seems too much to her. The door to our studio can’t be locked at all. Every day I go into the refectory and Mrs Washbrook asks me what I have done about the pilfering. What can you do about pilfering if you leave the doors open? And now someone is messing about with our paintings.’

  ‘Or in your case, helping to paint them,’ Tim said. ‘There’s a fairy tale like that, a shoemaker, I think, gets help from the little people. Every morning they have done all his work for him. So he and his wife hide one night to see who makes the wonderful shoes but the little people discover them and never come back. It’s obvious: you’ve got fairies up there.’

  ‘Well, if it happens again I’ll seriously consider hiding myself to see who does it. I might kill two birds with one stone and catch the pilferer at the same time.’

  ‘Might be the same one,’ Annis suggested. ‘Nick some food, get bored, do a bit of painting …’

  ‘I get such an ominous feeling when I drive through the gate up there now. According to Kroog, John did too. Something isn’t right. And I think it all hangs together somehow, all of it. The murder, the break-ins, the graffiti.’

  ‘What graffiti?’ asked Tim.

  ‘It’s like a large X, flattened out. I saw it at Landacker’s, who had his studio broken into; it’s on Hufnagel’s car, who had his studio trashed; I saw it in the woods and on the wall of the school next to our studio entrance. Here, I’ll show you.’ I drew it on a bit of paper and handed it to him.

  Tim took it and shot out of his chair. ‘That? I saw that earlier. It’s on your studio door.’

  ‘What?’ Annis and I said together.

  ‘Annis had left the door open, so when I got here I thought she was still up there. There was no one in there, at least I thought there wasn’t. And I closed the door, being a neat sort of guy. That,’ he waved the piece of paper, ‘has been scratched into the outside. Or not scratched, really …’

  In the dusk we all rushed up the meadow to the barn. There was the tag: I>
  ‘Anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a thing, hasn’t been touched.’

  ‘Anything else been disturbed?’

  ‘Not as far as I can see.’

  ‘What would you have done if they had had a go at your painting?’ I asked. ‘If someone had added to your canvas and it was absolutely brilliant. As good as your own. Or better.’ Annis’s eyebrows shot up. ‘If that was possible,’ I added quickly.

  ‘Now you’re getting metaphysical. It’s about authorship, isn’t it? And changing someone else’s art work is … well, I think it’s vandalism if it makes it worse but still mischief if it improves it.’<
br />
  ‘I agree. But that doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘You know, I’m not sure what I would do. It hasn’t happened, therefore I don’t know what I would feel when confronted with it.’

  An honest answer, as always. But no help at all.

  ‘What about Hufnagel’s arrow? They just made it disappear. He has to paint it again, now.’

  ‘That’s just plain mean. I do think you’ll need to try to catch your painting fairy if it happens again.’

  Outside we took another look at the tag on the door. ‘It’s called reverse graffiti,’ Annis enlightened us. ‘I’ve seen it elsewhere. Instead of spray-painting, they clean the stone or wood or whatever. I’m not sure you can be done for cleaning bits of a wall. I doubt there’s such an offence as illicit wall-cleaning.’

  ‘Strictly speaking you are stealing someone’s dirt,’ Tim suggested.

  ‘Ah,’ mused Annis, ‘but how did it get there? Is dirt on a wall private or public property? And how can you prove ownership of dirt …?’

  I was suddenly no longer in the mood for banter. Whoever was responsible for the tags had been here, in my realm, and whoever was responsible for the tags might also be responsible for Rachel’s death. I took another good look at the symbol on the studio door. It didn’t tell me anything new but it gave me a bad feeling. This kind of thing, like scratching cars and doors, is done in anger. And it almost always escalates because it can never be enough. Rachel was dead. I didn’t know if the symbol had appeared around her place too. I might try and find out, although it was too late for Rachel. But not for others.

  ‘I’ll have to go out again,’ I announced.

  ‘Oh?’ It was getting dark. Annis frowned and checked her watch.

  ‘Yes. This worries me. I’m going to pop round to Landacker’s place.’

  ‘Your number-one fan; he’ll be delighted.’

  ‘I know, I know. But that’s where I saw the symbol first and I want to at least warn him that it may be connected with a death. I don’t know, I’m beginning to get a bad feeling about this.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Tim. ‘Someone was definitely here and did that on your door. Must mean something.’

  ‘You want us to come with you?’ Annis asked.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine. And I won’t be long.’ How wrong can a man be?

  ‘I gotta go too,’ said Tim, ‘I have a presentation to make first thing tomorrow.’

  I felt ashamed for being relieved about that, but I didn’t think about it long. I suddenly had an eerie feeling that I was late for something, that I ought to hurry, that I was in the wrong place. I drove with the window open, despite the cool evening air that began to bluster through the lanes. The I>
  I drove on, more slowly now, still mulling it over, through the village and out the other end, down the lane to the Old Forge. Landacker would probably shrug it all off, as he seemed to have done with the break-in. I didn’t even like Landacker, so why was I bothering? I couldn’t have said. All I knew when I parked the car in the dark lane opposite his gate was that I now felt I was in the right place, while when I was standing outside my own studio I had felt that I wasn’t.

  I could smell it as soon as I got out of the car: raw petrol. By the time I had crossed the road I could see it too. The petrol was on fire.

  The light of it glowed eerily, yellow and blue on the other side of the gate. I tried to open it but the lock had been repaired. I jumped, grabbed the top and pulled myself up so I could see over it. A long line of fire was running along the outside of Landacker’s studio, with the core of the fire centring on the entrance door. Mostly it was petrol burning – a thin yellow tongue of it was running towards me – but the wooden door and door frame had already caught. The barn was part stone, part timber and would be a fireball in minutes. I dialled 999 and asked for the fire service. No, sorry, I did not know the sodding post code, but you could hardly miss it since the damn thing was on fire! Honestly. I heaved myself over the gate and dropped down on Landacker’s drive. I tried opening the gate for when the fire brigade arrived but it was locked. Well, they had ladders, didn’t they?

  Whoever had set the fire had to have done it literally seconds before I arrived, yet there was no sign of anyone. Landacker’s BMW was not here. Some of the petrol on the drive was slowly burning itself out, but fire was beginning to take hold on the door and doorframe and was creeping up a beam on the side. I knew from my first visit that the path between the barn and the house led into a substantial back garden and where there’s a big garden there’s usually a hosepipe. The fire hissed and spat as it consumed the varnish on the door. Squeezing past it, I averted my face; the heat and fumes caught in my throat. It was dark back here. A terrace with furniture and plant pots lay to my left; a paved area with a shed at the far end to my right. All else was lawn and trees. At last I found a stand pipe near the corner of the house but no convenient hose attached, not even a bucket or a watering can. I grabbed one of the plant pots and turned it over. The plants in it stuck firm. I shook. Nothing. I banged it on the patio and the pot broke in two. I grabbed the next one and shook that. Nothing. I banged it on the grass this time and eventually shook most of the plants and soil from the pot. It had a hole in the bottom, naturally. I stuck a finger in it and began filling it. The light from the fire increased as it spread. The plant pot was of thick glazed ceramic and got quite heavy but my finger managed to plug the hole. I filled it to the brim and ran towards the fire with it. The crash of the glass blowing from the half-glazed door nearly made me drop it. I stopped, hurled the water at the fire and nearly ripped my finger off in the process. The water made little difference that I could see. I ran back, filled the pot, chucked it at the door. And again. Now that the glass had blown, the fire had found something interesting inside and had started consuming the varnish on an interior beam. I was sweating from the heat and the exertion and was panting. But I couldn’t stop. I’d never put it out but I could perhaps buy a few seconds’ time for the fire brigade. I staggered back and forth with the flowerpot. My right side was now sodden with spilled water, my left was bone dry from the heat of the fire. I took a breather to drink some water from the tap. When I straightened up I could hear the glorious sound of the sirens wailing their way toward me but I might as well go on. I filled the flowerpot. It seemed to get heavier every time. The fire was roaring now as it sucked air through the shattered window into the vestibule behind it. At last there were the growling diesels of the fire engines outside the gate, flashing blue beacons reflecting off the house and a couple of firemen climbing over the gate. Two uniformed police came after them. Soon a hose was being dragged across and the pumps started to shoot glorious, high-powered water jets on to the fire – it collapsed in less than a minute. The police came over to me. One of them looked familiar. Then it came to me: he was the one who had attended the scene when the dead John Birtwhistle had nearly run me down. He recognized me t
oo. And promptly arrested me.

  ‘… on suspicion of arson. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence …’

  ‘Wait a second! I was the one who called the fire brigade.’

  ‘Oh yes, after you set the fire.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘I’m afraid you were seen climbing over the gate and the witness called us. Apparently the fire started soon afterwards.’

  Seen? By whom? ‘I climbed in because there was a fire. I was trying to put it out.’ I held up the flowerpot in my defence.

  ‘Yes, please put that down.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ It was true, I had tried. The finger in the drainage hole had swelled up beyond the second joint and the more I tried to pull it out the more painful it became.

  ‘Please don’t make this difficult, sir; put the pot down.’ He reached a hand out for it, but I withdrew it out of reach.

  ‘Would you just listen for a second …’

  ‘Put the pot down, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’ I sat down so I could at least rest the damn pot on the damp ground.

  ‘This is not helping. Please get up, sir.’

  ‘You asked me to put the pot down,’ I said childishly.

  He called across to his colleague, who was talking to a fire officer. ‘Terry, give us a hand here.’

  ‘Look, my finger is stuck …’

  ‘Up you come. Let go.’ The other officer tried to prise my hand off the pot. It hurt like hell.

  Apparently it is not the done thing to call a police officer a ‘complete and utter pillock’. Ditto ‘deaf moron’. ‘Educationally subnormal’ is also frowned upon these days, while ‘ow, my finger, you stupid arse’ got me additionally arrested for swearing at a police officer. I eventually got enough elbow room to smash the pot on the verandah’s railing, which the arresting officers mistook for a prelude to a fight. One squirted pepper spray into my eyes and the other handcuffed me. This didn’t improve my mood (or my language). Most of the pot had disintegrated now but I was left with a jagged saucer-sized piece of the bottom part with my finger still stuck solidly in the hole. This was the moment Greg Landacker chose to make an appearance in his BMW. He was wearing an expensive dark suit with a cream rollneck jumper and picked his way carefully across the broken glass and potsherds in his handmade brogues to inspect the damage. Then he spotted me between the two policemen. ‘You!’ He stared at me in bewilderment.