by Rob Campbell
“What do the police think?”
“They’ve not got much to go on. Anja’s already been questioned, and they asked her if Ramón had a mobile.”
“Why would they ask that?”
“They initially thought it might be a robbery gone wrong, but they found his wallet full of cash.” Mick glanced once again at Anja before leaning in towards us conspiratorially. “He’d had his throat cut. Doesn’t sound like a robbery to me,” he whispered.
“Oh my God!” I managed.
“The only thing they have to go on is his missing mobile,” Mick continued. “They can’t find it anywhere, and they’ve got a team combing the woods.”
Mick must have seen the look cross my face. “Lorna, are you okay?”
Listening to him talk about Ramón’s missing phone – the stupid-looking one with the tiger pattern on the case – I couldn’t help but think back to what we’d heard at Lester’s data centre: the recorded call between Ramón and Gooch.
Did Gooch kill Ramón? Was he trying to hide something that was on the phone?
“I’m fine,” I replied. “Well, I’m not fine, but… it’s nothing… it’s just with everything happening in town.”
“Tell me about it,” Mick said bitterly. “I’m always complaining about the lack of news around here, but we could all do without this.”
* * *
We left Mick and Elaine to comfort Anja. I had a feeling that despite events in town, they’d struggle to put out an edition of the Recorder this week.
“What are you so gloomy about?” I asked once we were back on the high street.
“What do you think?”
“I’m not talking about that. You’ve been quiet all morning. I know you pretty well by now.”
“It’s nothing. Forget it.”
“Come on, I’m your friend. Spill the beans.”
Monkey heaved out a deep sigh and turned to me, looking like he was about to say something profound before shaking his head. “With everything that’s going on, it doesn’t seem important,” he said, giving every indication that those were his final words on the matter.
We’d planned to grab a coffee at the Beanfeast, but like every other café in town, it was overrun with members of the press. We skipped town and headed for the woods, being careful to give the cordoned-off area, where the police forensics team were conducting their macabre routines, a wide berth.
“You said you had a plan,” said Monkey, apparently keen to change the subject. Maybe the comforting surroundings of the woods had been enough to lift his mood. “Let’s hear it.”
A death in town, Ramón’s or anybody’s, only served to underline the wisdom in Victoria’s words.
Life moves fast, Lorna. Grab it with both hands while you still can.
When I told Monkey my plan, I wasn’t sure whether it was surprise or euphoria written across his face.
* * *
We met at dusk. I’d taken Monkey’s advice and dressed in dark clothes. Unfortunately, the gothic look faltered when it came to my footwear as the only pair of trainers that I owned were white, but given the amount of grime that covered the leather, it was a passable look. Monkey was kitted out head to toe in black and had even brought a black balaclava with him.
Despite the darkness, Monkey had suggested that we approach from across the field that bordered the ring road. That way, he’d explained, there was less chance of the curtain-twitching brigade spotting us. I bowed to his superior knowledge on such matters. We jogged across the darkness of the field. We’d brought torches, but given that secrecy was our main aim at this point, they stayed firmly in our pockets.
It was impossible not to think of our first mission together, roughly a year ago. That time, we’d been sneaking around in the dark behind a house that bordered the golf course, on our way to steal a garden gnome. Although we hadn’t known at the time, the whole escapade had turned out to be a test orchestrated by Lester, the result of which was us being formally accepted into his organisation. Just like tonight, the air had been crisp, breath frosting in front of our faces as we’d skulked about in the dark whilst more sensible people snuggled up in the warmth of their homes, probably sipping hot chocolate and watching the TV.
The similarities ended there. Tonight, we were out on our own. We’d have no back-up, and Lester certainly wouldn’t vouch for our integrity if things went wrong. A mere grab and run from the shadows of some garden wouldn’t be enough.
Tonight, the stakes were much higher.
Tonight, we’d be crossing a line from which there might be no turning back.
On our initial visit to Bernard Stanley’s abandoned house, we’d observed the rusted ironwork fence that ringed the front garden, giving a measure of security. The poorly-maintained fence at the back seemed like an afterthought in comparison, and it didn’t take long to spot a section that had split, allowing us entry to the back garden.
In keeping with the scene out front, the back garden was similarly overgrown. Bushes around the perimeter had grown unchecked, meeting in the middle to create a mini jungle. There was evidence that others had been snooping around before us – a couple of beer cans and cigarette butts lying in the long grass. We hunched down to get our breath and consider our next move.
Monkey was busy scanning the back of the house. “Security light,” he said, pointing up at the wall, just below the upstairs windows.
“Do you think it will still be working?” I asked nervously.
“Only one way to find out.” He tugged his balaclava lower on his forehead. “Stay here,” he added before moving off towards the house.
I peered above the long grass – the very long grass – to see him manically waving his arms about in front of the security light. He moved to his left and repeated his actions before doing the same to the right. The garden remained in darkness, and he gestured for me to join him. Together, we moved into the shadow between the large conservatory and the high fence bordering next door’s garden.
“What now?” I asked.
“It’s your plan.”
He was right, but I was hoping for a bit of help here. “I thought we were a team?”
“Just kidding,” he said, breaking into a grin.
“I’m thinking that getting in might involve some climbing, so I’m relying on your expertise.”
“Or we could go in through the conservatory.” He put his gloved hand against the glass and peered into the gloomy interior.
“It’s open?”
“No,” he replied, tugging on the handle, “but never overlook the obvious.” He stood back from the window, looking up to the first-floor windows. “Now that’s what I call lucky.”
“What? An open window?”
“Not that lucky. No, what do you notice about the windows downstairs?”
I took a moment to observe the house, looking for an obvious point of entry. There was no obvious way in that I could see. The silence was suddenly broken by some music from a few doors down, shortly followed by the sound of some bottles being tossed into a bin. We stood still, pressing our backs to the wall next to the kitchen, but the music died away as the door was closed. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a reminder that we couldn’t afford to hang about here too long.
“Look, if you’ve got a point, can you make it? We can’t stand here all night,” I said impatiently.
“The windows down here are PVC. Getting through there would be difficult, but look upstairs,” he said, pointing upwards.
I glanced upwards. Wooden window frames. I remembered my dad saying that some people preferred traditional wooden windows to modern PVC but that they required a lot of upkeep: sanding and varnishing every couple of years to keep the elements out. Left to stand a few years without the remotest hint of attention, wooden window frames would rot and crumble. The moonlight provided enough light so that I could see the state of disrepair of the upstairs windows from here.
“Nice,” I said with a grin.
“Nice f
or us, and there’s a drainpipe for us to climb. Plus look at all these creepers,” he said, tugging at the vines that had grown all over the back of the house. “They seem pretty solid.”
“It’ll be nice to get inside. It’s freezing out here.” Thank God we’d worn gloves tonight.
“This is it, Lorna. The point of no return.”
We’d discussed this moment earlier. Once we made the decision to enter, we’d be adding breaking-and-entering to our list of crimes. Of course, Monkey had already done this last year when he’d rappelled into a downtown city loft to snatch The Frenchman. But there was no Frank here to help on this occasion, and we weren’t working for Lester.
Plus, this time, I was going in as well. What would my dad say if he could see me now? I felt a flush of shame sweep across me but managed to push the thought to the back of my mind. There’d be time for recriminations later.
I had to know if The Truth was waiting for us inside this house.
“Let’s do it,” I said confidently.
Using a combination of drainpipe and vegetation, all Monkey’s training coming to fruition, I scaled the wall behind my friend with relative ease. Perched just below the window, Monkey slipped one of his climbing spikes into his hand and worked at the edge of the window. I cast nervous glances behind us as he grunted, chipping away at the crumbling wooden frame. I felt a sense of exposure that I hadn’t felt down on the ground. Although there were no windows in the neighbouring houses with an obvious line of sight, being stuck halfway up the wall with no good reason for being there was going to be difficult to explain if somebody came out in one of the gardens for a crafty cigarette.
When I turned back to Monkey, I was amazed to see that he’d removed enough of the frame to reach inside and pull the window open. He shimmied through the gap before turning around to help me in. I rolled off the window ledge and onto the floor inside, lying there, breathing heavily from the exertion.
Monkey gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “You did well!”
“I’ve got a good teacher.”
I felt exhilarated, yet not as frightened as a first-time burglar should feel.
It worried me how little I cared at this stage.
We lay on the floor for a couple of minutes, listening for tell-tale signs that we had made a horrible misjudgement. But there were no voices, there was no sound of water in pipes, nothing to indicate that this was anything other than an abandoned house.
We’d already spent long enough away from lights tonight that my night vision was sharp. The room into which we’d tumbled looked like a spare bedroom. There was a single bed, an old wardrobe and a dressing table.
I stood up and walked over to the dressing table, swiping my gloved finger over the surface. Dust, and lots of it. I opened the bedroom door and peered into the dark corridor beyond. Away from the moonlight falling through the window, it was harder to make out anything in the gloom. I took the torch out of my pocket and pointed it into the stygian darkness before stepping out into the unknown.
There was another bedroom next door. Same story – furniture covered in dust, no sign of anybody having been here for a long time. I opened the wardrobe and pushed the hangers one way and the other. Men’s clothes. An old man’s clothes to be precise: cream slacks, cardigans and formal shirts. A wave of sadness washed over me, and I shut the door quickly. I wasn’t here to rifle through somebody’s personal possessions – I was here to find a painting.
We made our way through the house like that, spotting old shoes in odd locations, a cup containing what might have been coffee dregs standing on the work surface in the kitchen, a pile of unopened letters lying behind the door. I wasn’t even remotely tempted to open the fridge.
The house was dark and cold. I had imagined that once we were inside, we would get some relief from the biting air, but the house had a chill all of its own. The walls retained a musty smell that permeated every room, and I had the sensation of a cold invisible mist wrapping slowly around me as we moved from room to room.
In the lounge, I picked up a newspaper that had been left on a table at the side of the sofa. I wasn’t surprised to see that the date was more than three years ago. Everything that we saw, everything that we touched, spoke of a house that had been uninhabited for years, just as the neighbour had told us. I placed the newspaper gently back on the table, a sudden fear welling up inside me.
“It’s not here,” I said.
“You don’t know that. We’ve still got a few rooms to go.”
I felt like pointing out that there was only so far that our luck would run. I followed Monkey back out into the hallway, desperate to believe that he was right but fearing that I was.
He gripped the handle on the door of the room opposite the lounge.
“It’s locked!” he said, his voice edged with excitement. He was about to push his climbing spike into the door frame to prise it open.
“Wait!” I whispered. “I think I saw a key back in there.” I went back into the lounge, shining the beam of my torch along the mantelpiece, grabbed the key and returned to the hallway. I handed the key to Monkey and watched nervously as he tried it in the lock.
“It fits!” He smiled back at me, and I licked my lips nervously as he pushed the door open. I shone my torch over his shoulder and jumped back in fright as a pair of gold eyes stared back at me.
“Jesus!” I yelped, causing Monkey to stumble sideways. Once I’d recovered from my shock, I realised that my torch had picked out the hideous face of a gargoyle rendered in gold. “That must be worth a fair bit,” I commented, stepping through the door and sweeping my torch around. There were no windows in the room, which appeared to be filled with junk, but if we were expecting to find an expensive oil painting, we were out of luck.
Two more rooms to go.
The door to the next room was unlocked. When we stepped in, my eyes were drawn to a large mahogany table, complete with the ubiquitous layer of dust. A large silver candelabra stood in the centre, and the table had placemats and cutlery set out as if a large party was expected for dinner. As I glanced down the table, I caught sight of a grand piano in the corner, and I walked over to it, unable to resist the urge to lift the lid and press one of the keys. The sonorous note echoed through the room and faded to nothing. Much like the life of the house.
“Lorna!” Monkey hissed.
At first, I thought Monkey was chastising me for making a sound in the otherwise deathly quiet of the house, but then I looked across to where he stood and followed the path of his torch beam where it fell on the wall.
I closed the lid of the piano and walked slowly to the far end of the room, like a moth drawn to a flame, not taking my eyes off the wall.
Or to be more precise, the painting that hung there.
It was smaller than I’d envisaged – about the size of a small computer monitor – and where Monkey’s torch illuminated the bottom corner of the canvas, I spotted the tell-tale sign that cast aside any lingering doubts.
In a faded mustard colour, there were the letters: D.A.A.
The same letters that Abernathy put on all his work, in tribute to his wife. The same letters that were carved into the base on the bottom of The Frenchman.
“It’s here!” I whispered hoarsely as if I’d found some long-lost treasure.
“The Truth,” Monkey echoed reverently.
I placed my finger on the canvas as if not quite believing that the trail from St Stephen’s church to Gerald May’s antique shop and now to Bernard Stanley’s abandoned home had not turned out to be a wild goose chase after all.
“You were right, Lorna!” In the torchlight, Monkey’s eyes blazed with barely concealed amazement as he took in the majesty of Abernathy’s masterpiece. “Abram was Abernathy all along!”
I stepped away from the wall so that I could get a better look, but with only Monkey’s torch trained on the painting, despite its diminutive size, it was hard to see the entire image in the darkness. I added my light to hi
s, focusing on the left-hand side of the canvas, and at last, with our two beams working in tandem, we were able to see the full picture.
Just like the two paintings that we’d seen in The Lamb and Shepherd pub, Abram – Abernathy, I corrected myself – had chosen to paint the Morning Tower. Unlike the others, there was no sunlit sky or beautiful sunset depicted in the scene in front of us. The trees to either side of the tower were bent, like an old man struggling home in a fierce gale. The sky was black, forked lightning coming down from the heavens and striking the top of the tower. The level of detail was exquisite. From the rendered stonework of the tower to the menacing clouds in the sky, from the leaves detached from their trees to the terrified figures that cowered at the base of the tower, every aspect of the painting bore the hallmark of an artist at the top of his game.
The whole scene spoke of an apocalyptic nightmare yet was stunning in its beauty.
Such was the level of detail on every corner of the canvas that it took me a while to notice the figure in the centre, but when I did, I nearly dropped my torch.
Once again, I stepped closer to the painting as if drawn by a magnetic pull. Monkey had obviously seen something too, because he closed alongside me, the twin beams of our torches illuminating the centre of the painting, all other details fading to black at the edges of the light.
“The Climber,” I said out loud, finally understanding why Gerald May’s father had renamed the painting according to the image. A lone figure made his way up the walls of the tower, his face looking back over his shoulder towards the viewer. Like the rest of the scene, the level of detail in the figure’s face was incredible.
Dumbfounded, I stared for a few seconds longer before turning my torch on Monkey and then back to the painting.
“I don’t believe it!” Monkey gasped.
The face of the climber was the face of my friend.
Monkey Arkwright was the climber in Abernathy’s painting.
