Local Artist

by Paul Trembling

There was something else as well. Those streets were within a mile of Bromwell Street Library. And what had Sir Arthur said about it?

  “I spent more time there than I did at home!”

  Well, you would, wouldn’t you, if you were a clever lad living in the worst slum in the town? And there had once been a school at the end of Bromwell Street. Probably the closest to that part of Delford Mills.

  In my imagination I saw a small boy in ragged clothing walking the mile to school every day and along to the library afterwards. Sitting and reading. I wondered when he’d discovered the art section, and how many hours he might have spent reading about Constable and Turner, Monet and Renoir, Van Gogh and Rembrandt and Vermeer and all the others, looking at the illustrations, catching the vision, dreaming the dream of becoming a painter.

  I couldn’t help but feel a certain pride in my library, in all libraries, and their impact on the world.

  But, back to business. I was confident that I’d narrowed “Memory Lane” down to a small area on the north side of Delford Mills. But that was still a dozen or more streets, hundreds of homes, thousands of people.

  The map helpfully listed all the street names round the Mills, many of them hotlinked to further information. Someone had spent a long time lovingly researching the history of the place. Probably a resident or ex-resident. And the history was certainly colourful, if a little sad. The names of the streets spoke of that.

  Murder Row, for example. Where, back in 1849, five people had been stabbed to death in their sleep and their meagre possessions stolen – in three different houses, on three different nights. The murderer was eventually tracked down, proving to be a lodger who had been sleeping in the attic of one of the houses. He had found a way through the roof spaces into the other dwellings, where he had committed his crimes to pay the rent and to supply himself with ale. For which he was quickly hanged.

  That was one to put the chills up you, I thought.

  What about Soldier Street? The first residents had included several ex-soldiers, it seemed, and the name had followed naturally – no matter what official name it had first been given. There had even been a pub on the corner of the street called The Barracks.

  Manatee Lane was originally Sea Cow Lane. Someone had somehow acquired a skeleton that he claimed to be that of a sea cow, and allegedly charged a farthing a time for people to come and view it. During the rebuilding of the 1920s, a zealous official had declared that the correct name for a sea cow was a manatee. Of course, the skeleton was long gone by then.

  And Quondam Road?

  I knew that word. It had been the Word for the Day a month or so previously. Meaning “former” or “that once was”.

  It had, it seemed, originally been “King Street”. But, again during the 1920s, it had been decided to rename it as there was already a King Street in the town. However, no decision had been made as to what the new name should be. Someone in the planning department – probably the same erudite person who had renamed Sea Cow Lane – had therefore written on the plans “Quondam King Road”.

  But somewhere along the line the “King” bit had dropped out, and it became simply “Quondam Road” – “Former Road”. Of course, not many of the inhabitants would have known about that, or probably cared.

  But a bright lad who spent most of his free time in the library might have found out.

  “Not bad, for a twelve-year-old boy,” Sir Arthur had said. I’d thought he’d meant his painting. But perhaps he’d meant the name. A pun. Memory Lane for Quondam Road. Not bad at all for a twelve-year-old.

  “That’s it,” I said quietly. “That’s your Memory Lane, Arthur.”

  And the person who had given him that picture had known that as well. They had known about Coren Hall, they had known about the farmhouse, and they had known about Memory Lane. And, what’s more, they’d wanted him to go there.

  Surely, I thought, it would be too much of a coincidence if the artist’s studio was on the same street where Arthur had once lived? Unless it was no coincidence at all, but something deliberately planned; if the location had been chosen precisely because of its link with Sir Arthur Templeton.

  Somehow, it was part of it all. Part of the murders and the mysteries that spanned the past thirty years. If you could draw a line between them – not a geographical line, but a line between events that connected the body in the farmhouse, the body in the library, Coren Hall, and Sir Arthur – it would somehow intersect with Quondam Road.

  In my mind, it was a theory. But deep down, I was certain. Just as I was certain that I was going there.

  After all, it wasn’t that far. June’s house was down in the southern part of town, the hospital was out to the east – but it was still a couple of hours before I could visit Graham. In the meantime, I could nip home, see how Brodie was – maybe go via the library, check on how things were going there – which would put me close enough to Delford Mills for a quick visit to Quondam Road.

  Or better yet, I could go straight there. Ten minutes to change back into my Sunday best, fifteen minutes at the most to drive over – I might have found the studio in half an hour!

  I should probably tell June or David first, but they were really busy. And there would be no harm in just taking a look.

  Dunderhead.

  *

  Over the course of the twentieth century, Delford Mills followed a course of steady decline. The vast complex had played host to a succession of small businesses and increasingly seedy enterprises, while the poorly maintained buildings decayed around them. Various schemes were proposed to revitalize the area, none with any success.

  By the turn of the century, the Mills were a national scandal, a huge blot on the town landscape. Most of the buildings – and a lot of the surrounding housing – had been condemned, but that didn’t stop them being inhabited by the poorest and most desperate. Meanwhile, local and national government had argued endlessly about who should pay to do something about it.

  The tipping point had come in 2010, when a rave party in one of the old factory buildings got wildly out of hand. A fire had started, half the building had collapsed, and a dozen teenagers died. The headlines were huge, heads rolled, and a consortium of government, council, and business finally found the money to do something about the place. Bulldozers went in, Delford Mills was razed to the ground, the surrounding streets were cleared out and marked for demolition, and a wonderful scale model of the shiny new Delford Mills Reclamation Project was unveiled.

  But the Curse of Delford Mills (as the papers called it) struck again. Three months after work had started, it came to a sudden halt, because all the money for it had disappeared – along with several senior members of the project. And that was as far as it got. The rubble-strewn wasteland remained just that, while the addicts and dropouts and those who had fallen through the social security net – or escaped it, from other points of view – drifted back into the area and took up residence in the abandoned houses.

  Crime and drugs and deprivation. The Mills’ long decline seemed to be almost complete – it was hard to see how much further it could fall.

  Just the previous year, Rob Seaton had nearly been murdered there, after a terrifying chase through the ruins. That had prompted a further attempt by the council to seal off the whole area, with fencing put up all round it – at considerable cost and with minimal effectiveness. It didn’t keep out anyone who really wanted to get in, but it did mean that I had to drive all the way round the perimeter to get to Quondam Road.

  It was an unfamiliar part of town for me, and the satnav, not being up to date with the latest road closures, wasn’t much help. Navigating by guesswork, I got onto Market Street, followed it past the Plaza, and then took a left turn. Which brought me eventually to a blocked-off street, so I knew I was close. I backtracked, took another road, and eventually came out onto Queensway.

  Queensway was the main route south out of the centre, a wide, fast dual carriageway. It was also the border between Delford Mil
ls and the better parts of town. On my left, I was passing row after row of terraced housing, all brick and asphalt. On the right, separated by four lanes of traffic and a gulf of history, were neat semis surrounded by grass and privet hedges and the occasional tree.

  A service road diverged from Queensway to skim the edge of the Mills area, giving me chance to slow down and look at the street names without a furious flashing of lights and blowing of horns from impatient drivers behind me.

  “Manatee Lane!” I said aloud. “I’m close!”

  And two roads further on, there it was. Quondam Road.

  I turned into it, and stopped. This was it. Arthur’s boyhood home, and the subject of his first commercially successful painting.

  A stiff breeze had sprung up, shredding the clouds and allowing a little bright sunshine through to show Quondam Road at its best. The two-storey rows of red brick had a mellow glow in that light, though it also showed up flaking paintwork and grimy glass. Perhaps it had been in better condition in his day. Or perhaps he was already seeing it with an artist’s eye, looking beyond the obvious and superficial to the human life and social history that had brought the buildings into existence and given them their meaning.

  A hundred yards or so down the street, the terraced houses came to an end. A cross alley marked the limit of the 1920s rebuilding. Beyond that towered the three-storey Victorian backto-backs, bricks blackened with over a century of soot and grime. Even the brightest of sunlight could do nothing for them.

  That would have been in Arthur’s first painting as well. He would have been fascinated by the juxtaposition of building styles, the contrasting years they represented.

  There were a few things that wouldn’t have been in his painting though. The row of vehicles down the left of the street – it was too narrow for parking on both sides – wouldn’t have been there in his day. I doubted if many working-class people would have owned cars back then. Even now, they were hardly symbols of affluence: mostly rusty, dented, and looking as if they’d been rescued from a scrapyard.

  And another thing that Arthur wouldn’t have painted was the ten-foot-high chain-link fence that divided the street, cutting off the Victorian slum from the slightly more modern housing.

  I drove further down Quondam. It was narrow, the parked cars taking up most of one side and barely leaving room for me to get past. It looked as though I would have to reverse out of it.

  Eventually I was able to squeeze into a space between a grey Mondeo with red doors and a rust-streaked Transit with no doors at all. I got out and approached the barrier.

  “Are you from the council?”

  It wasn’t so much a question as a challenge, and it came from a woman leaning in an open doorway across the road. She looked a bit older than me, a bit bigger, and a lot rougher.

  “No, I’m not,” I assured her. My smart Sunday-best clothes were out of place here. I would have been better off wearing the tracksuit.

  “You’re police, then.”

  She said it as a statement and accompanied it with a glare. I took it that she didn’t like the police much.

  Coincidentally, she was wearing a tracksuit – purple and yellow – underneath her pink dressing gown. She took out a lighter and a packet of cigarettes without diverting her glare.

  “No, I’m not police either.” I crossed the road towards her, hoping to put the conversation on a better footing than shouting accusations across the street.

  She snorted. “Why else would you be down here, then? You’re police, council – or social services?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a librarian.”

  That surprised her. So much that her cigarette nearly dropped out of her mouth. “A ruddy librarian? What the hell would a librarian be doing round here?”

  “I’m doing a bit of private research. About a famous artist who used to live round here. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Research, eh?” She lit up, and took a long drag, settling herself into a more comfortable position against the doorpost. “Does that pay well, doing that sort of thing?”

  “Pay well? No, it’s not something I’m doing for money.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her expression hardened. I got the impression that I’d given the wrong answer. “Waste of time then, if there’s no money in it.”

  Finally, I got it. “Well, of course I’m willing to pay for any information you might have.”

  She nodded, and relaxed a little. “How much?”

  I opened my handbag, took out my purse, and delved inside. I wasn’t carrying a lot of cash. I pulled out a tenner.

  Her expression changed into a beaming smile. “Well, I might know a bit about an artist, now I think about it. And where he lived – him and that girlfriend of his.”

  “Girlfriend?” My jaw dropped. Arthur had had a girlfriend?

  “Oh, so you didn’t know about her, then? I can tell you all about that.” She reached out her free hand expectantly while taking another lungful of smoke.

  She didn’t mean Arthur. She would have to be in her eighties at least to remember him living here, and she didn’t look that old. She was talking about another artist.

  I handed over the tenner. “I’d love to hear about them.”

  She nodded, slipping the note into her pocket. “Well, the artist bloke – can’t tell you his name, never heard it, people round here just called him ‘The Artist’ – he’s been living round here for as long as I can remember. Was holed up in the Mills before they knocked them down, then when they cleared the old houses” – she nodded her head at the barrier – “he found his way in there, with all the dropouts and druggies. Skinny little bloke, looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in his life. Never any trouble, though. Used to come round now and then selling his paintings and drawings. They was pretty good, too. Nearly everyone round here has had something off him at one time or another. I’ve got a few myself. For a couple of quid, he’d draw your picture, and it was a treat to watch him. A few minutes with paper and pencil and he’d have you dead on, good as a photograph. But he didn’t talk much. I don’t think I ever heard him say more than two words at a time.”

  She paused for another smoke and gave a significant glance at my handbag. I gave a similar glance at her pocket where the tenner now resided. She frowned, but carried on.

  “Well, a couple of years or so ago – more than that perhaps, I can’t really say – this girl started to hang around with him. I say girl – girl to you and me perhaps, eh?” She gave me a wink that I didn’t much appreciate. “In her twenties, anyway. Skinny little piece; pleasant enough I suppose but not much to her. Didn’t make the best of herself – brown hair in a bun usually, big glasses, wore clothes like she just needed a place to hang ’em.”

  Which sounded like Emily. Just like Emily. I forced myself not to get excited, pulled out my purse again but didn’t open it.

  “Yes, go on.”

  She looked at the purse, looked at me, and considered. “So, after she comes on the scene, the Artist stops coming round with his pictures. Reckon she must be feeding him and all. Perhaps selling his pictures somewhere, and maybe getting some more money as well, because he starts looking better dressed. Used to be practically in rags. She used to park her little car here on the street – that was before they blocked off the bottom end, where the old buildings are – and brought him all sorts a stuff. Lot of arty stuff, you know.”

  “Canvases?”

  “Yeh. Maybe.”

  “And where was he living? On this street?”

  She shrugged, met my gaze. “Not sure if I remember, exactly.”

  I opened my purse, took out the last note I had. A fiver. “Are you sure?”

  She looked disappointed. “Might be.”

  I shrugged, and put the fiver away again. “OK. Thanks anyway. I’ll ask around, perhaps someone else can remember.”

  “It’s number 17,” she said quickly. “Two doors past the barrier on this side.”

  I took the fi
ver out again. “And how do I get past the barrier?”

  “This corner.” She pointed with her cigarette. “You’ll see.”

  She held out her free hand and I put the fiver in it.

  “No point in you going there, though. They ain’t in. Ain’t seen ’em round here in days. Reckon they’ve moved out.”

  She gave me a triumphant grin, having put one over on me, as she thought.

  I smiled. “Thank you. That’s very useful information.”

  She blew smoke at me and slammed the door in my face.

  I walked on to the end of the street, my excitement rising. Surely, this had to be it! The Artist – and Emily – hiding out in the abandoned housing at the end of Quondam Street.

  The fence had been a serious attempt to seal off the area. The base had been concreted in at several points, and the ends were screwed to the walls. But, on closer examination, the tubular steel legs at this end had been cut through just above the base, and the screws were loose in their fittings. With a firm tug, the entire section swung open. With a slight sense of guilt – and a bit of a thrill – I stepped through into the forbidden territory.

  It was a depressing sight. The sunshine shone more brightly than ever, but it only served to show crumbling bricks and cracked asphalt, with weeds forcing their way through all across the road and pavement. At some point in the past, the council had attempted to seal off each house, but in accordance with the traditions of Delford Mills, they’d sought to do it as cheaply as possible. Wooden boards had been nailed across the doorways and ground-floor windows – I knew that, because a few splintered remnants were still there. The original doors were long gone, probably used for firewood, I guessed. So was most of the glass which had been in the windows, leaving gaping holes into the dark interiors.

  There was one exception. Two doors down from the barrier. No numbers showing, but – counting from number 11, the last house on the other side of the barrier – it had to be number 17. Here, the ground-floor windows were covered with sheet metal, and in the upper storeys the glass was grimy but intact. The door itself was galvanized steel, bright in the sunshine. It was held shut with a massive padlock – not something that was going to be forced off with a screwdriver.