Charlie sniffed hard, wiping away her tears quickly so she wouldn’t need to admit to herself she was crying. Two tears didn’t count as crying. ‘I was desperate to get the hell away from her, but I didn’t, not immediately. I sat in her house for another two hours, listening to an elaborate story about an art fair. I kidded myself I was staying to try and figure her out, but it wasn’t that. It was fear. This woman’s had me in her sights for God knows how long, she’s toyed with me, manipulated me—me and maybe several other people. I’ve no way of knowing how much of this dead-woman-who-isn’t-dead act is genuine—it could easily be a trap of some kind. And last night she wanted to tell me a story, and you know what? I listened like a good girl, hoping that if I did what she wanted, if I could convince her I was her friend and her ally, then maybe she’d change her mind about whatever God-awful thing she’s planning to do to me.’
Lund looked unsurprised but amused by Charlie’s outburst. ‘Miss Zailer—Sergeant, rather. You’re in retreat from reality. From what you’ve said, there’s no reason to think this lady’s stalking you or that she wants to harm you. Yours was clearly a name she knew, so when she had a problem she wanted to take to the police, she thought of you. That’s not stalking. As for not explaining why she had the article on her person when she came to see you—so what? It’s not against the law to withhold an explanation, or to cut things out of newspapers and stick them on the wall. If everyone in the UK decided to fill their houses with column inches about you, there’d be damn all you could do about it.’
‘Okay.’ Charlie forced herself to breathe slowly and steadily. ‘Realistic. I can be realistic.’
Lund raised his eyebrows, making no secret of his doubt. His BlackBerry bleeped again, sucking his attention towards it like a mind-magnet. In an instant, Charlie had become invisible. Even more invisible. By the time Lund had finished prodding his machine, she’d composed herself. ‘What if we were sneaky about it?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you send the woman a letter, scaring the shit out of her? I’d be willing to pay over the odds.’
At this, Lund looked up and grinned. ‘I’m not a thug-for-hire. What’s your sister told you about me?’
‘I’m not asking you to give her a kicking.’ Charlie tried not to sound as if she was begging. ‘What about threatening her with a court case unless she takes the whole lot down and destroys it? Even if there’s no legal action we can take, she won’t know that. She’s a picture-framer, not a lawyer. She’ll be scared—anyone would.’
Lund shrugged, wiping his face with his napkin. His entire face, not only the area around his mouth. Now his cheek as well as his chin was smeared with orange grease. ‘And when she consults a lawyer and he tells her it’s a joke? That’s my reputation stuffed, isn’t it? Either I’m unethical or completely tonto. And if your woman’s got anything about her, she’ll take it to the press. I would.’
‘Please. There must be something you can do. I can’t bear it, knowing it’s there. I keep seeing it in my mind, wondering who’s seeing it in real life, reading all those things about me. Can’t you understand that? Are you telling me that’s not a violation of my privacy?’
‘The law doesn’t care how you feel,’ said Lund. ‘Legally, you’re trying to violate her privacy. I’d go to the papers if I were her, for sure. “I was harassed by psychopath’s ex-girlfriend, says picture-framer.” More headlines for her to stick up in her gallery, more infamy for you.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘What?’ Lund frowned. ‘Oh, come on. Let’s not pussyfoot around.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.
Charlie dug her fingernails into her palms as hard as she could. Focus on the physical pain. ‘I didn’t know he was a psychopath. I was another of that evil fucker’s victims.’ Seeing Lund’s expression, she said, ‘Not in that way. I just mean . . . it wasn’t my fault. The inquiry found in my favour, even if the shitty tabloids didn’t.’
‘I know all that,’ said Lund, yawning openly. ‘I’m telling you what the press would say, if this woman was canny enough to approach them.’
Charlie stood up, pushing back her chair. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Invoice me for the hour you’ve spent ripping my self-esteem to shreds. You can pay for your own lunch.’
He waved away the suggestion. ‘They know me well enough here,’ he said. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? ‘Don’t take it out on me—I’m trying to help you. The best thing you can do is forget the whole thing: the psychopath, the gutter hacks, the woman—all of it. Why let it bother you? You should put it behind you.’
Charlie couldn’t breathe. He’d refused all her appeals for real help, and now he was trying to fob her off with hackneyed snippets of homespun wisdom. She wanted to kill him.
Lund smirked as if he’d remembered a filthy joke. ‘Olivia tells me you’re getting married.’
Charlie moved the words around in her brain. Liv hadn’t mentioned knowing Lund personally. ‘Have you seen my sister recently?’
‘Last week. Simon, isn’t it? Your fiancé? Also a cop.’
‘How well do you and Liv know each other?’ Vogue, Elle, The English Home . . . The magazines Lund had suggested to Charlie were all ones Olivia subscribed to. No. Please, no.
‘How well does anyone know anyone? Liv can’t believe your parents haven’t tried to talk you out of marrying him,’ said Lund amiably. ‘Says she’s tried, but you won’t listen to her.’
Charlie’s insides had turned to lead. She opened her mouth to speak, but found she couldn’t. Every last word had declared itself unavailable.
‘My impression is that you don’t really listen to anyone,’ Lund added, his eyes drifting to the screen of his BlackBerry. Were there messages on it from Olivia?
Charlie pulled her handbag off the back of her chair and marched out of the restaurant. Outside, walking fast in no particular direction, she realised she’d broken the strap. She heard a stifled cry that must have come from her. Where to go, what to do next? Not Olivia’s flat. She’d kill her sister if she saw her now. Better to calm down first. Charlie pulled her phone out of her bag, made sure it was still switched off. She ached to ring Simon, but knew that if she spoke to him in her present state, they’d end up having a row. Simon, like Dominic Lund, didn’t understand why she hadn’t simply tackled Ruth openly about the newspaper cuttings. He thought the bedroom wall thing was odd, but didn’t understand why it had upset Charlie to the extent that it had. He thinks I’m overreacting.
A street sign caught her eye as she tried and failed to light a cigarette in the cold wind: ‘Charlotte Street’. How many Charlotte Streets could there be in London? Charlie answered her own question: more than one, easily. Still, it was possible. This seemed the right sort of area, and she could see what looked like a gallery further down the road.
She dropped her unlit cigarette and lighter back into her bag and broke into a run. A few seconds later, the possibility became a reality. There was the name, in orange and brown letters on the glass: TiqTaq. This was the gallery Ruth Bussey had mentioned last night. Charlie took a deep breath and went in.
Did a paper cut-out count as art? Charlie couldn’t ask the tanned middle-aged woman in the patchwork jacket who sat behind a battered wooden table at the back of the gallery. She was on the phone, trying to make an appointment to get her legs waxed, sounding upbeat at first, saying, ‘I completely understand, ’ and then increasingly impatient when it started to become apparent that even next week was fully booked. Charlie wondered if she was the older woman Ruth Bussey had met at the art fair: Jan something or other. TiqTaq’s owner.
If she was, presumably all work exhibited was approved by her. She evidently saw some merit in the framed lines of paper dolls holding hands that were up on the walls. Each had been cut out of different coloured paper and was a different size; each carried a price tag of between two and five thousand pounds. I could have done these, Charlie thought. A few big sheets of paper, a pair of scissors . . . What a scam.<
br />
‘Can I help you?’ The woman was off the phone. ‘Shall I talk you through the exhibition? I’m Jan Garner. TiqTaq’s my gallery.’
So Ruth Bussey had told the truth about that, at least. In fact, Charlie had believed every word of her story. Even feeling the way she did about Ruth at the moment, she could tell when a person stopped lying; the relief was unmistakeable. Simon disagreed; they’d argued about it last night, at some ungodly hour. ‘Anyone who’s lied once is untrustworthy always,’ he’d said.
‘Clever liars admit to old lies to distract you, so that you don’t spot the ones they’re in the middle of.’
Charlie shook Jan Garner’s extended hand. ‘Charlie Zailer,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping you can help me with something else, actually—nothing to do with the exhibition.’
‘Happy to if I can,’ said Jan. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’
Could this work as a matey chat? Charlie wondered. Useful if it could, since she had no official reason to be here. ‘Yes. Thanks.’
‘Earl Grey, Lady Grey, lapsang, green with mint, green with jasmine, lemon and ginger . . .’
‘Earl Grey’d be lovely,’ said Charlie. The long list of fancy teas made her think of Olivia, who drank things like fennel and nettle, and would no doubt drink weeds stewed in dirty bathwater if it had the right label on it. Charlie pushed the thought of her sister away.
While Jan made the drinks, she pulled an information sheet out of a plastic rack near the door and read about the paper dolls exhibition. It was called ‘Under Skin’. The dolls weren’t cut out of coloured paper, as Charlie had assumed, but out of pages from road atlases which were then stuck together and ‘encased in watercolours’ so that each row looked like a continous, uncut piece of paper. How long must it have taken, Charlie wondered, and what was the point of it, apart from to show that appearances could deceive? Big deal. Did anyone need something so obvious pointing out to them?
Jan appeared from the back of the gallery with two tall china mugs. ‘Right, fire away,’ she said, handing Charlie her drink.
‘Are you familiar with the work of an artist called Mary Trelease? ’
The smile on Jan’s face instantly became strained. ‘Not in touch any more,’ she said.
‘I just wondered . . . I’ve seen some of Mary’s paintings and—’
‘You’ve seen Mary’s work? Where?’
‘At her house.’
Jan laughed. ‘She let you in and showed you her pictures? So I’m guessing you’re her closest friend, if not her only friend.’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Charlie smiled and took refuge in her cup of tea. ‘I hardly know her. I’ve met her once, that’s it. I went to see her about something else.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the Mary Trelease I know, letting a stranger see her paintings. She hates anyone to see her work. She won’t sell it, won’t exhibit, won’t promote herself in any way.’
‘How do you know her?’ Charlie asked.
‘Why do you want to know, if you don’t mind my asking? What did you say your name was again?’
Charlie decided she’d better be frank. She told Jan her name, and that she was with the Culver Valley Police. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so used to firing off questions. I forget that when I’m out of uniform, I need to persuade people to answer me instead of ordering them to.’
‘Mary lives in the Culver Valley,’ said Jan, her eyes sharp. ‘Is your interest in her professional or personal?’
Charlie sipped her tea, and considered carefully before answering. ‘Today’s a day off for me,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose I’d have to say personal, though I first heard Mary’s name when someone—’ She broke off. ‘I’m afraid that, because there is a police angle to this—or, rather, because there might be—I can’t tell you too much.’
‘You said you went to see Mary about something else . . .’ Jan stopped, seeing Charlie’s expression. ‘That’s part of what you can’t tell me, right?’
‘’Fraid so. Look, as I say, I’m here as an interested visitor, not as a cop. There’s really no reason why you should tell me anything. ’
‘I’m happy to tell you what little I know about Mary.’ Jan seemed reassured. ‘You’re definitely not her best friend?’
Charlie smiled. ‘If you’re holding back some vitriol, there’s no need. It’s no skin off my nose whether you love her or hate her. I’m just interested to find out as much as I can.’
Jan nodded. ‘I’d never heard of her until one day in October last year, when she turned up here unannounced, no appointment, nothing. You’ve met her, right? So you know how striking she looks—that hair, the ultra-posh voice. Like a mad queen who’s lost her kingdom. I was a little intimidated by her.’
You and me both, thought Charlie.
‘She’d brought a picture with her, one she wanted framed. She told me she lived in Spilling and that she’d fallen out with her old gallery, the one that used to frame all her work . . .’
‘Did she say what about?’
‘No. I didn’t ask.’
‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘She informed me, rather regally, that I was going to frame the painting for her, even told me how much I should charge her—same as the old gallery would have. I’d have laughed if she hadn’t been so obviously serious. She told me that, from now on, I would be framing her pictures. At that point I had to interrupt and tell her I didn’t do framing—I’m not a picture-framer. It took a lot of guts, let me tell you. She’d been in here less than five minutes and already I was terrified of being a disappointment to her.’
Charlie smiled. She was used to dealing with people who released the occasional jerky, incoherent sentence if she was lucky. Jan Garner was a welcome contrast.
‘It was hard to tell her without sounding patronising that in London, galleries that sell contemporary art don’t do framing, whatever happens in Spilling. The artists I represent deliver their pictures already framed.’
‘How did she take it when you told her?’ Charlie asked.
‘Oh, badly. Mary took everything badly. I offered to recommend framers, but she wouldn’t let me. I asked her why she’d come to London. I mean, I know it’s a relatively short train journey, but still . . . wouldn’t it have been more convenient for her to find a picture-framer in Spilling? There must be others apart from the gallery she’d fallen out with.’
Apart from Saul Hansard, there was only one that Charlie knew of: Aidan Seed. ‘What did she say?’
‘That it had to be me. Beyond that, she wouldn’t elaborate. To this day, I don’t know why she chose me rather than anyone else, or how she first heard of me. I asked her again later, once we’d established a working relationship and knew each other better, but she still wouldn’t say.’ Jan caught Charlie’s puzzled look and said, ‘Oh, sorry. I should have said: yes, I did end up framing pictures for Mary. Having them framed for her, rather, by a friend of mine. Mary Trelease is a woman who makes sure she gets what she wants.’
‘But you’d told her you didn’t do framing,’ said Charlie. ‘How did she persuade you?’
‘She didn’t. Her picture did. Abberton.’ Jan’s eyes lost their focus and she sighed. ‘It was brilliant. Something really special.’
Charlie glanced at the nearest of the paper-doll pictures. ‘In a different league from those,’ said Jan, reading her mind. ‘Mary’s paintings—that first one I saw and every one I saw subsequently—they were alive. They were beautiful and ugly at the same time, full of passion.’
‘So you agreed because you liked her work,’ Charlie summarised. Abberton: another thing Ruth Bussey had told the truth about.
‘Not at first,’ said Jan. ‘At first I tried to persuade her to let me represent her. That was when she told me she’d never sold a single picture and never would. It was also when I got to hear her rules: I wasn’t allowed to show her work to anyone, or mention her name to anyone—oh, it was crazy! I didn’t understand the woman at all, but I quickly saw that if I w
anted to maintain any connection with her, I’d have to take her on her terms, which meant doing her framing. I hoped that in time she’d come round to the idea of exhibiting her paintings, but she never did. Not while I knew her, anyway. I don’t know what she’s doing now. You’ll know more about that than I do.’ Jan eyed Charlie tentatively.
Charlie didn’t see that it would do any harm. ‘She’s the same. Fiercely private about her work. And you have no idea why she’s like that?’
‘I could hazard a guess,’ said Jan. ‘Fear of failure? Fear of commercial considerations coming into play, and how that might change things? If you forbid the sale of something, you have no opportunity to see whether people want to buy it or not. If you don’t let people see your work, they can’t hate it. Mary used to say it was a matter of principle, that you can’t and shouldn’t put a price on art, but I never believed that line. I think she was scared, and I can’t say I blame her. The art scene chews people up and spits them out. It’s merciless.’
Charlie couldn’t help smiling. ‘We’re talking about people buying pictures, right? Or not buying them? Nothing life-threatening? ’
‘You can laugh, but I could tell you some horror stories. There was a young artist recently whose entire degree show sold to a world-famous collector. Usually if that happens, you’re made—you can write your own ticket—but in this case it didn’t work. There was a huge backlash against the idea that one collector could up the value of an artist’s work just like that. Both the collector and the artist became the target of some of the most vicious word-of-mouth I’ve ever heard. The irony is, the artist’s a talented guy. His work’s great.’
‘Then why the viciousness?’ Charlie asked.
‘Bad timing, that’s all. It had happened too often—the Charles Saatchi effect, we call it. All it takes is for a few artists to build their careers on it and become world-famous, and suddenly everyone’s suspicious and ready to make sure no more slip through the net.’
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 22
