Pictures of Perfection

by Reginald Hill

He shook his head to clear away these disturbing images and glanced at his watch. Ars longa but enough was enough.

  ‘Time to be on our way, Sergeant,’ he said sternly.

  She was on to colours now, using fingers as much as brushes, the paint staining her hair as she pushed it back from her brow to stare with fierce concentration at Wield’s face.

  ‘It’s like granite,’ she said. ‘You’d think nothing but greys at a glance, then you get closer and suddenly there’s the whole spectrum … and such textures too …’

  Granite was right, thought Pascoe. Wield looked completely petrified. Then from below came the sound of a door slamming and Kee Scudamore’s voice raised in anger.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing there? Caddy, where the hell are you?’

  The spell was broken. Wield and Pascoe set off simultaneously for the door, but Caddy, whose feet clearly had a built-in memory of the studio’s minefield, was down the stairs ahead of them.

  ‘There you are,’ said her sister. ‘How many times have I told you not to leave the till unattended?’

  ‘I’m not here to steal,’ protested the figure standing on the wrong side of the till counter.

  It was Jason Toke at once furtive and defiant. He was carrying two bags, one the bloodstained gunny, the other a plastic carrier.

  ‘What are you here for?’ inquired Pascoe gently.

  ‘Brought something for Caddy,’ said the boy, regarding Pascoe uneasily.

  Definitely not Bendish’s head, decided Pascoe. Another dead rabbit, perhaps? The carrier looked as if it held something fairly heavy, but too square for a dead animal. Suddenly Toke plunged his hand into the gunny and brought out a bird. Even Pascoe, who was no ornithologist, knew at once what it was. Or had been. A kingfisher. Death had not dulled the brilliant blue of its wings, which shone with such intensity it seemed they might still beat the air and send the dangling creature arrowing from Toke’s careless grasp.

  ‘Said you wanted to see old kingy,’ said the youth, proffering the corpse to Caddy. ‘For the colours. That’s what you said.’

  ‘Oh, Jase,’ whispered the girl. ‘But not dead.’

  ‘Colours is the same,’ protested Toke. Some impression of the shock felt by all those in the room seemed to have got through. He tossed the corpse on to the desk. It fell so they could see the hole in its breast.

  ‘Colours is the same,’ he repeated. ‘And it’s a sight easier to paint, I’d say. You see him move, too fast to photo let alone paint. Any road, couldn’t just leave him lie. You take him if you want. No use grieving over what’s done. That’s no way to survive. Take and make, that’s the way. Take and make.’

  This spate of words took them all by surprise. Then he turned with that deceptive speed Pascoe had noticed before and was through the door before anyone could try to hinder him.

  ‘Something needs to be done,’ said Kee, looking at the dead bird. ‘This is going too far.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Caddy in a low voice, ‘I never meant …’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself, darling,’ said her sister, putting her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. ‘Could one of you please dispose of this thing?’

  Wield reached to pick up the dead bird.

  Caddy said, ‘Oh, can’t I keep it? Those colours are incredible … I know that killing it was wrong …’

  Wield said, ‘More than wrong. Illegal. Protection of Birds Act.’

  Pascoe nodded vigorously, delighted at this confirmation of the avian expertise he’d ascribed to the Sergeant on his first encounter with Toke’s dead birds.

  ‘Yes, and we’ll need the corpse as evidence,’ he said. ‘Young Toke’s got some answering to do.’

  ‘Make sure you ask the right questions,’ said Kee.

  ‘I’ve heard about the War Memorial,’ said Pascoe, regarding her curiously. ‘But Sergeant Wield here got the impression you didn’t think there was too much to worry about. Have you changed your mind?’

  She looked uneasily at her sister, who was still regarding the dead bird greedily, and said, ‘I think he’s ticking, Mr Pascoe. I don’t know whether he’s a bomb, a clock, or a death watch beetle. But I think perhaps someone should find out, don’t you?’

  It was, strictly speaking, another job for Filmer. There couldn’t be any connection with the missing constable. Could there?

  ‘You’d better tell us where he lives,’ he said.

  ‘Intake Cottage, it’s set well back from the road just beyond the Morris. They rent it from the Hall estate, but Jason looks after the upkeep himself.’

  ‘They?’ said Wield.

  ‘He lives with Elsie, his mother.’

  ‘And what do you mean, he looks after the upkeep?’ asked Pascoe, sensing an over-emphasis.

  Kee half smiled and said, ‘Why spoil a surprise? You can see that for yourselves!’

  A few minutes later Pascoe and Wield were seeing for themselves. It was certainly a surprise.

  For a start, Intake Cottage had a dilapidated look at odds with the well-tended appearance of most of Enscombe. Once painted white, its now greying walls were streaked with water and mud from the leaky gutters, giving the building the air of a leprous zebra which had limped away from the herd to die. The roof, with several slates askew and a couple missing, was the breeding ground for some interesting lichens which looked as if they might have crawled up there to escape the Great War battlefield beneath. Once it might have been a prototypical cottage garden, all hollyhocks and delphiniums, golden rod and old moss roses, but someone had gone to work with chainsaw and strimmer, razing all vegetation within a radius of twenty feet of the house.

  ‘What’s this got to do with the hunt for Bendish?’ wondered Pascoe, holding up the dead kingfisher in a plastic evidence bag.

  ‘Search me,’ said Wield sulkily. ‘If we’d gone into the caff, we’d never have seen it.’

  ‘It’s our next port of call, I promise,’ said Pascoe. ‘But look at it this way, if you hadn’t gone when Caddy called, she might have sent Jason looking for you too!’

  When they walked up the weed-crazed path to the door, they were faced with another oddity. It wasn’t the decaying mouse-gnawed raft of planks which might have been expected in such a dilapidated structure, but a solid aluminium slab with two mortise locks and a security peephole. As Pascoe waited for a reply to his knock, he observed that the windows too were metal-framed and double-glazed. Interesting priorities.

  The peephole darkened as an inward eye checked him out, then the door opened on a chain and both eyes, screwed up myopically against the light, peered out at about third rib level.

  ‘Yes?’ said a voice, soft as moleskin.

  ‘Mrs Elsie Toke?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Jason in, Mrs Toke?’

  ‘No.’

  The door began to close.

  ‘Mrs Toke, hold on,’ said Pascoe, hastily holding his ID up to the crack and introducing himself. ‘Can we come in a moment?’

  The door closed. There was a long moment when it looked as if it might stay that way, then it swung silently open.

  ‘Come in,’ said Mrs Toke.

  She was a tiny woman who must have needed to stretch on tiptoe to get her eye up to the peephole, but for some reason her size was less remarkable than it might have been. Pascoe found himself thinking the odd thought that you did not expect an elf to be large and there was certainly something elfin about her. Faces like this had peered out through ferns in his infant story books, anxious and curious and above all other-worldly. She stood still as he passed by her into the low-beamed living-room, yet she gave an impression of constant movement, like wood sorrel in a spring breeze.

  ‘He is a good boy,’ she said, ‘though he finds it hard to understand the world.’

  Pascoe sat down in a soft and pleasantly body-embracing armchair. If she was going to telepath his questions, he might as well telepath her offer of hospitality.

  Mrs Toke was regarding h
im with a gaze which seemed to rely as much on sound as light.

  He said, ‘There are things which have to be understood, Mrs Toke. Like the law, for instance.’

  He held up the kingfisher in the plastic evidence bag.

  She leaned forward to look close and said, ‘Oh, the lovely thing.’

  ‘Lovely indeed. And protected,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘And you think my Jason killed it?’ she said. ‘You’re wrong. He’d not do that. Not to old kingy.’

  She spoke with absolute conviction but Pascoe was unimpressed. In his experience ninety-nine out of a hundred mothers confronted by a video of their offspring robbing a bank or ramraiding a warehouse or even just jumping a red light would say, ‘No, not my Tom or Dick or Clint. He’d never do a thing like that.’ He was looking forward to meeting the hundredth who’d say, ‘Yes, that’s the little toe-rag. Why don’t you bang him up forever?’

  ‘But he does shoot birds, doesn’t he?’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes. For the pot. Only for the pot. What reason would he have to shoot old kingy?’

  Best reason in the world, thought Pascoe. Love, sweet love.

  He said, ‘Could we take a look at Jason’s room while we’re here?’

  It would be interesting to see if it did contain the secret arsenal Kee Scudamore suspected.

  ‘No,’ said the woman.

  Pascoe was only slightly surprised by the finality of her tone. She didn’t look the type to make a fuss about legal rights and search warrants, but these days the telly made everyone a barrack-room lawyer.

  He said, ‘Not to worry. I’m sure Jason will be back soon. Mr Toke, Jason’s father, is he still … here?’

  He glanced significantly at Wield as he spoke.

  ‘All right if I use your lavvy?’ said the Sergeant, rising.

  ‘First left up the stairs,’ said Mrs Toke. ‘Jason’s room is next one along.’

  So even the little people knew the interesting ways of coppers, thought Pascoe, amused.

  ‘You were asking about Toke,’ continued the woman. ‘Dead these ten years. Police killed him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chasing a stolen car, they said. Knocked him off his bike. He were out looking for work. Used to be a keeper up at Old Hall but got laid off when they started cutting back. Crowner said it were an accident, no one to blame.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Pascoe helplessly.

  ‘Not your fault. And he’s happier now. Find it all right?’

  Wield had reappeared in the doorway.

  He said, ‘Yes, thanks. Got a moment, sir?’

  Pascoe moved quickly before the woman could complain. The stairs were dark, narrow and creaky, the landing the same. But some things had changed in the last hundred years. One of them was the door next to the bathroom. It was the same breed as the main entrance, tight-fitting, metallic, with a peephole but no keyhole, just an electronic number pad.

  ‘Without the code, you’d need a bazooka to get in there,’ said Wield.

  ‘Perhaps bazookas are what he keeps in there,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Something else odd,’ said Wield. ‘Outside, this place looks semi-derelict. Inside, but, it’s right comfy. Nowt fancy, but everything well tended and spick and span.’

  Pascoe had registered this, but had not registered that it might be significant.

  He said, ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s good to keep people out,’ said Wield, rapping on the solid metal door. ‘But it’s best if you don’t have them wanting to get in the first place.’

  Pascoe pondered this as he returned to the living-room, where the woman was sitting with the evidence bag in her hand.

  He said, ‘I see why you said no when I asked if I could see Jason’s room. You meant you couldn’t open it. Doesn’t that bother you, Mrs Toke? Doesn’t it make you wonder what he’s got in there?’

  ‘I know what’s in there,’ she said, mildly puzzled. ‘And of course I can open it. No point otherwise.’

  ‘Point?’

  ‘Having a secure room if I can’t make myself secure in it too. Jason can’t be home all the time.’

  She was losing him but not Wield, who said, ‘Being secure matters a lot to Jason, does it? That’s why he won’t bother with the outside of the cottage?’

  ‘He says that when they come they’ll go for the rich-looking places first.’

  Pascoe was beginning to think that Kee Scudamore was if anything an optimist.

  He said, ‘Doesn’t it bother you, Mrs Toke? I mean, you must know there’s no one coming.’

  ‘Must I?’ she said, smiling a sad, fey smile. ‘May not happen what Jason thinks, but there’s something coming the likes of which Enscombe’s never seen before. I can smell it.’

  ‘And what’s it smell like, missus?’ asked Wield.

  ‘Blood,’ said the woman. ‘It smells like blood.’

  Volume the third

  PROLOGUE BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE

  Journal of Ralph Digweed Esq.

  June 13th, 1886. Edwina has asked me to paint her portrait. I told her I doubted if my poor skills were up to the subject, meaning I could not, as she desires, hope to produce anything which could stand comparison with that ancestral portrait from the last age which, if I am not mistaken, shows the hand of a true master. She, however, took this as a compliment to herself, the kind of compliment which to tell truth I have long been tempted to give, but have always lacked courage. Now she blushed, and looked modestly down, then looked up again straight away with such bright eyes and so pleasing a smile that I could not but hope perhaps she nursed for me something of the deep feeling I have long felt for her. So I have been bold by accident!

  When I told Jeremy of this, he laughed and said I was a booby and it is my shy diffidence which has forced Edwina into this subterfuge to throw us together! I can hardly believe this, but he assures me that in these matters, particularly where there is a difference of fortune, young ladies of the most unquestionable modesty are permitted by instinct and custom to drop an encouraging hint. So I have agreed to do the painting unless, as seems likely, her parents forbid it.

  June 15th. Her father, it seems, offers no objection! When I marvelled at this, Jeremy replied a trifle sardonically that the Squire would see no objection to indulging Edwina in this silly whim of wanting her portrait done so long as he didn’t have to pay a real artist, and in addition he could not imagine one so self-effacing and deferential as myself would ever dare aspire to his daughter’s hand.

  This was a mixed comfort to me! And I still have grave doubts as to my ability to perform the task as I would like. Edwina has sent the other portrait from the Hall to my studio so that I might better imitate the style and my heart sinks as I study it. I could see that Jeremy too had misgivings when he saw the painting for the first time, saying he had not thought it would be of so high a standard. But he has made a suggestion which may lessen the comparison: that if both the portraits are set in matching frames, this outward similarity may divert the uncritical eye from the differences of artistic quality! Edwina offers no objection, and Jeremy has undertaken to use his connections to find a fine framer, though I have not mentioned his name to Edwina. Not that she would object, but her father still flies into a fury at the name of Halavant!

  July 2nd. The portrait is finished! To tell the truth it might have been finished a good week or more earlier had I not been so reluctant to lose this excuse for being so often in my love’s sweet company. For now at last I have the right to call her my love. This forenoon, prompted by her own expression of regret that soon my task would be over, I made my declaration and she almost fell into my arms. I am the happiest of men. But this confirmed that these sittings must cease, for while love unspoken must take what chance it can get of proximity, once a man has declared and been accepted, it would be ungentlemanly to continue in a situation which takes advantage of her parents’ ignorance. Therefore the portraits have been given to Jeremy for dispatch to the framers, and Edwi
na and I have agreed that I shall use the occasion of their delivery to the Hall to seek the necessary interview with her father.

  I find that I am more pleased with my own painting than I had hoped. Though it is far beneath the transcendent quality of the older portrait, and though I cannot come close to catching the perfection of my loved one’s inward beauty, yet I think that what true love and deep devotion can do has been done, and if this shows through, then I need not feel ashamed to see my effort hung alongside the other.

  July 30th. Four weeks since the pictures went to be framed. I have never known time to pass so slowly! But Jeremy says that such work as these deserve may only be obtained in London. And he added, with a kind of sad knowingness, that perhaps I would not thank him for hurrying the framer for now, though I do not yet possess my love, I may at least continue to dream of her possession. I suspect he fears that my suit will be rejected by the Squire. Yet why so? I am not rich, it is true. But my family have been gentlemen as long as the Guillemards and Yorkshiremen a lot longer!

  August 4th. It is over. The pictures are hung, and so might as well I be. Jeremy was right beyond my worst fears. There was no raging rejection, just a terrible coldness. ‘It will not do,’ said the Squire. And I was shown the door, all so smooth and swift that I found myself walking down the drive with scarce any awareness of how I got there. And Edwina, I learn, is sent away to some old connection of the family in Wales.

  Jeremy has urged me to pursue her and persuade her to come away with me. Would she agree? I think she might. But what right have I to tempt her to a course which will separate her from her family, probably for ever? As Jeremy well knows, the Guillemards do not easily forgive. Nor are my own prospects so sure that I can, unaided, offer her anything but deprivation and hardship. Jeremy has offered to loan me money but I cannot take it. I will, however, accept his invitation to join him on the tour he proposes through Italy to Asia Minor as his aide-de-camp and secretary. I would go to the wastes of Lapland rather than remain in reach of such sights as rend my heart with sad remembrance here in my beloved Enscombe.