A Bed of Scorpions (10 page)

We were barely around the corner before the orderly stopped and crouched down in front of me. ‘Are you OK?’

I tried not to look too abused. ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Thank you.’

He didn’t believe me. He knew the police were waiting to interview me, even if I was too stupid to be worried. ‘Do you want me to slow this down?’ he offered. ‘Often I can’t find a technician.’

‘Really, there isn’t a problem.’

He still looked doubtful.

‘I just need to …’ I cast about, and then realised that being truthful was the answer. Which was a surprise. ‘It was a hit-and-run. They want me to give a statement, that’s all.’

Appeased, he stood up and moved behind me. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure. Everything’s fine.’ Then I thought about Jake, arms folded, face grim. And his earlier silence. Pretty sure.

Back upstairs, I found Jake standing where I’d left him,
but now talking to Mr Tattoo and his friend. He nodded towards a registrar, whom he must have shanghaied in the meantime. ‘He’ll do your nose now.’

The registrar moved away my hand holding the swab, and great gouts of blood followed. We both jumped as Jake cursed under his breath. ‘It’s fine,’ I said, ostensibly to the doctor. ‘It just needs cauterising. This happens a lot.’

He looked slightly revolted, and I agreed, but it was part of life’s rich tapestry. Or something. Jake put his hand on my elbow. The registrar looked at me again. He hadn’t thought I looked the type to do a runner. I knew Jake had done it for reassurance, but I still felt like a felon. The procedure was no big deal, and in three minutes it was over. The x-ray had come up in the meantime. My collarbone was bruised, and the ligaments had been wrenched, nothing more. My nose wasn’t broken either, although it was leaning hard to starboard.

The doctor looked casual. ‘You can wait for orthopaedics, or I can just straighten it. If orthopaedics do it, you can have a local.’ He offered the anaesthetic like a treat for a very good child, but I knew the way hospitals worked.

‘You’ll do it now, right?’ He wasn’t keen – I could see his eyes flicking over to the desk where, no doubt, more interesting patients awaited. So I spoke quickly, before he could move off. ‘Go for it.’

He went for it. For a brief moment I thought he’d punched me, as everything sucked in and went black with the pain.

‘All right?’

I nodded. I couldn’t speak yet.

‘Get her some water,’ said Jake, in the icy voice he
might have used to an office junior. An office junior he didn’t like. An office junior he didn’t like and was going to sack in the morning.

The registrar thought he was going to point out that that wasn’t his job. Then he looked at Jake again and realised that what he most wanted to do was get me some water. So he did.

Jake didn’t move while we waited. I leant back against him, and he swore again. Then, ‘Have you finished bleeding? Can we get you home?’

I nodded again. Jake wasn’t any more talkative. In fact, he didn’t say a word on the way out. Or in the car. By the time I was tucked up on the sofa and he’d brought me some tea, I was willing to confess to anything – murdering Frank, being Lord Lucan, or keeping the Loch Ness monster in a bucket beside the bathtub. Anything to end the silence.

So, finally, I did it myself. ‘I’ve never come off my bike before. I was overdue.’

He didn’t answer. I was about to try again, when, ‘Who do you know who drives a dark blue or green car, possibly a Volvo?’

I blinked. ‘You think the person knew me?’

He stared at me with the same stony expression he’d had ever since he arrived at the hospital.

‘And you think I’d recognise a Volvo?’

That brought a small smile. I don’t know what kind of car Jake drives. Or my mother. Or anyone. I am officially registered Car Blind, and am eligible for a handicapped parking permit for the ailment. Or I would be, if only I drove. And would have been able to recognise my own car.

Jake knew this, too, but I reminded him of the facts
of life nonetheless. ‘Honey, I’m the girlfriend who knows about dead artists in Vermont. Did you think you were speaking to the one who spends her time at Brand’s Hatch?’

His voice warmed. ‘My mistake.’ He rubbed his hand fiercely through his hair. ‘The paramedics say the witnesses thought it was deliberate.’

I thought about that. ‘It was deliberate, in the sense that someone saw me as a cyclist in his way—’

Jake broke in. ‘Her. Everyone who saw agrees on that.’

I swallowed. ‘Her, then. She saw me as a cyclist in her way, and didn’t want to wait. We all know there are drivers like that. But deliberate, by someone I know?’ My voice had skittered up a few octaves. Minnie Mouse Does Helium. ‘
Why?
’

‘It’s a good question. Frank Compton killed himself, most likely. You met with his business partner and his business partner’s solicitor to discuss the death, the three of you.’ He looked at me levelly. I might have managed to brazen it out under normal circumstances, but my defences were down. I shifted and looked away. He nodded. Point made. ‘That Aidan Merriam is a friend, and his solicitor is your mother …’ He turned this around in his head for a moment, then continued: ‘You also had a meeting with Celia Stein, the daughter of an artist Frank Compton and Aidan Merriam represented.’ He turned that over too. ‘There’s been no follow-up to that?’ I shook my head, mutely, but he persisted: ‘You haven’t been asking questions?’

‘Questions about what? I don’t know what to ask. Or who.’

‘When you visited Toby, did you discuss Frank’s death with anyone?’

‘Apart from condolence chat? Of course not.’ What kind of question was that? Sitting in a room with his partner? What kind of person did he think I was? Then I realised, he would have asked those questions. That’s what the police do. ‘The only conversation I had there that was anything except the kind of thing you say when someone dies was with Frank’s niece, the one who worked for them in her holidays. I told you about her. She was the one who told me that the gallery represented Stevenson.’ Jake made a rolling gesture with his hand – keep talking. ‘That’s all. What did you think, that I’d march up to Toby and say, “Where were you at 7 a.m. on the morning of …”? Speaking of which.’ I sat up. ‘Someone must have confirmed Toby’s whereabouts?’

Jake’s lips twitched. ‘He was with seventeen civil servants at a paintballing away day in Buckinghamshire.’

‘You’re making that up.’ I laughed, which reminded me of how much my face hurt. That sobered me. ‘Paintballing at seven in the morning?’

‘A few of them went the night before. He and three others went for a run at six. They got back just before seven, and were identified by the hotel porter. Compton’s car park pass in central London was used at 6.25, and we’ve checked the CCTV footage. It was him. Merriam’s call to report the death came in at 7.05. Stafford’s out of it. So.’ He shifted. Physically and mentally. ‘Who else have you spoken to?’

I threw out my hands. Which reminded me that my arm and shoulder hurt too. I didn’t care. I’d fallen off my bike because an arsehole driver wanted to save three seconds. I glared at Jake. ‘I told you, I haven’t talked to anyone about anything because I don’t know anything about anything.’

He considered smiling, but didn’t. ‘That covers it.’

‘I can’t invent things to tell you.’ I slid into a generic American accent. ‘“Oh, yes, Officer, you see I was Nancy Drew in a previous existence, and so I got into my little roadster and …”’ I stopped. I’d emailed Jim Reynolds about Stevenson. So what, said my sensible self. People didn’t kill themselves over museum souvenirs.

‘What.’ It was a demand.

I told him about the email, vigorously adding my thoughts on the lack of mortality figures connected to museum souvenirs.

‘In the normal course of events I’d agree with you. And I agree with you that this is most likely a hit-and-run. Common sense, and statistics, would say that’s what it is. But I don’t like coincidences, and I especially don’t like coincidences when they involve you. I’ll keep an eye on the reports as they’re filed, see if anything stands out, although it’s unlikely.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going back to the office. I’ve got a deskful of paperwork.’

‘Why?’

He looked at me blankly. Then, ‘You’re under the impression we work one case at a time?’

I wasn’t. I nodded and lay back, closing my eyes. My head really hurt. So did my shoulder. A nap was calling to me.

‘Will you ring Helena?’

I opened my eyes again and crossed my single good arm. Pre-emptive crabbiness was the aim.

Jake was exaggeratedly calm. ‘You hit your head. You have a bloody nose and a badly bruised arm and shoulder. I don’t think you should be alone.’

Screw pre-emptive. ‘For heaven’s sake. I fell off my bike.
I’m fine. Now go away and detect something somewhere.’ I shooed at him, making the kind of gesture that really only gets made to dogs. In cartoons.

He shook his head at me. Not impressed. ‘Call if you need anything. If I’m not at my desk tell whoever answers it’ll be easy to find me. I’m the one in the corner, banging my head against the wall.’

‘I’ll be sure to remember that.’ I closed my eyes again.

When I opened them, I could tell from the light I’d been asleep for a good hour. Before Jake left to bang his head against the wall he must have gone upstairs, because Mr Rudiger was sitting in an armchair, peacefully reading. He looked up when I moved, but he didn’t close his book, indicating that he was happy to go back to it if I didn’t want to talk. I started to yawn, then quickly stopped when I felt a pulling across my face. I reached up to explore. The grazes had scabbed over. I winced not so much at the feel as at the thought of what it must look like. I sat up.

As if that were a cue, Mr Rudiger stood and went into the kitchen.
More bloody tea
, I silently groused. That would be my third cup that day, including the one they’d brought me at the hospital. More than I’d drunk in the previous year.

I should have known better. Mr Rudiger was definitely going to win the Neighbour of the Year rosette, because he came back with coffee. And with sandwiches neatly cut into triangles, their crusts removed. I don’t know if it was the thought of my elderly neighbour carefully removing the crusts because the injuries to my face might make chewing difficult, or if it was the reminder of childhood birthday
parties, but whatever it was, it made me feel cherished.

I got creakily off the sofa and he was there without seeming to move. ‘Let me get whatever you need.’

I shook my head. ‘Loo.’ His smile acknowledged that there were some things a girl just had to do for herself, but he trailed behind me to the door all the same.

I did have to go to the loo, but on the way back I scooped up my handbag and checked my phone. And there was an email from Jim.

No smiley for me, but he seemed happy to provide the information without thinking I’d had an ulterior motive. I forwarded it to Jake – I’d learnt my lesson – with just a question mark above it. I was staying out of it. Whatever ‘it’ was.

And then I sat down and, eating my sandwiches, I told Mr Rudiger everything. Why not? The police thought there was no case to answer.

He was quiet when I finished. I assumed he was thinking it over, but the last thing I expected was his ‘It was a strange time, the sixties’.

I tilted my head to indicate I didn’t understand.

‘From this time, looking back, the sixties were a big break, very different from the fifties. But at the time it didn’t feel that way.’

Mr Rudiger wasn’t prone to talking for talking’s sake. He was going somewhere.

‘The people we now think of as typical – Bob Dylan, or Warhol, or’ – he dipped his head towards me ‘Edward Stevenson, they were the exceptions. And they were the exceptions partly because of their talent, but mostly because of their …’ he stopped, searching for the word he wanted. ‘Because of their vanity.

‘When I look at Stevenson’s pictures, I like them, they’re good, but what always strikes me is how they shout, “Look at me!”’

I sat suspended, sandwich halfway to my mouth. I couldn’t have said why this seemed important, but it did.

He continued, speaking almost to himself. ‘I remember when the news came that he’d gone to India to join an ashram. That sounded right to me, that the man who’d made those pictures would want to do something that let him think, and talk, about himself.’ He sounded almost bitter, in a way I’d never heard from him before, this man who always appeared so gently amused by the world. ‘But when his body was found, that I didn’t believe. I know suicide is unpredictable. But I still didn’t believe that the man who had made those paintings would make that choice. His work screamed out that he loved himself too much to imagine a world without him.’

I had no idea what made him feel this strongly. He didn’t say, and I wouldn’t presume to ask. We sat quietly together as the room got dark.

I
SLEPT ON AND
off through most of the weekend. While Jake theoretically spent it with me, and technically we talked, in reality we both avoided saying anything of importance. He said he’d asked for the local divisional police’s report of the accident, and the statements all said the same thing: a woman driving a blue or green car, maybe a Volvo, who had tried to pass me where the road was too narrow. The only unusual aspect was that she’d driven off. Women, according to Jake, mostly didn’t do that. We left it there.

It was therefore Monday before we faced off again. When the alarm went off and I hauled myself out of bed he looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. ‘Where are you going?’

I gave him a who-has-lost-whose-mind evil eye. But it was early and without caffeine I wasn’t prepared to talk more than I had to. ‘Work,’ seemed like more than enough explanation.

Apparently not. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘Um-hmm,’ I said mildly, heading for the shower.

He stood in front of me, arms crossed. ‘No. You’re not.’

I walked around him without bothering to reply. He was naked, and it’s impossible to look truly ferocious when you’re naked. That’s just a scientific fact. The mirror in the bathroom though did give me pause. I’d seen the grazes on my face several times the day before, when looking in the mirror was unavoidable. But I had managed not to think about the rest. The stiffness had shrieked out at me when I woke up. Being the mistress of denial, I ignored that too. But my shoulder was a mass of bruises, and was swollen too. In fact, I was a mess. But staying at home would just give me time to brood, and I was more anxious to deny the coincidences Jake was seeing than I was to deny the serious mess that was my body.

By the time I was showered and had dried my hair, Jake was dressed and in the kitchen. Clothed he might be trickier. Coffee was imminent, so I decided attack was the best form of defence. ‘Why aren’t I going to work?’

‘You’re ill.’

‘I’ve got a sore shoulder and a scraped face. I don’t work in the construction industry. We don’t need to be physically fit.’ I thought about my colleagues. And me. ‘If we did, only four books a year would get published. Worldwide.’

He brought out the big guns. ‘You’re not going in to work because someone tried to kill you.’

He thought that? I dropped down into a chair and stared at him. Then, ‘No. No one tried to kill me. You know it and I know it. Stop. Just stop.’

He didn’t reply.

‘You’ve seen the reports, and all anyone saw was an
impatient driver. Don’t make this more than it is because my getting hurt upsets you.’

He didn’t deny that.

‘And definitely no one’s going to try to kill me on the way to the bus. The only people who want to kill me are my colleagues, and they’ve wanted to kill me for years.’

Jake must have realised he was on a hiding to nothing. ‘I’ll drop you on my way in.’

I nodded. I didn’t believe anyone had tried to kill me. I couldn’t let myself think that. But I’d appreciate a lift to work even if the reasons for it were far-fetched. Whatever I’d said to Jake, my arm still hurt like stink, and the thought of a rush-hour commute was not enticing.

At the office I stopped to chat to Bernie at reception. If I told her what had happened, she could start the story moving. That way I wouldn’t have to explain it over and over. I didn’t want to because talking hurt, the scabs pulling every time I opened my mouth. And I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to think about it.

By the time Miranda put her head around my door, around ten, she had already been primed, but I must have looked worse than she’d expected, because instead of a quick hello, as usual, she just stood there staring.

I held up a hand. ‘It’s all right. It looks much worse than it is.’

‘I hope so,’ she said bluntly. ‘Because it looks terrible.’

I winced. I’d been hoping for ‘not great’, or, at worst, ‘fairly bad’. ‘I’ve moved a bunch of appointments. Talking is hard, so I’ve cancelled whatever I could. I’ll give you the dates when they’re rescheduled. But I’ve got to keep the two meetings for the Culture Committee panel. It’s
only five days away and I’ve got at least another ten minutes to fill.’

I spent a quarter of an hour fooling around in the kitchen, listening to various theories about Olive’s mysterious breakfast sessions, and then, unable to postpone anymore, I set off. I was meeting Neil Simonson at his office on the South Bank, before Emma came to me later that afternoon

Neil was the director of London’s biggest literary festival. It was only recently that book events had begun to take off in London in an organised way. You’d think that if literary festivals could succeed in the wilds of Wales, the way the Hay Festival did, then they’d do even better in densely populated urban areas. Lots of people had gone broke thinking that. It turned out that people went to festivals in the country, driving for miles, because there wasn’t that much live entertainment near them. London had more live entertainment than you could shake a stick at, if stick-shaking was your hobby. So literary festivals had risen and died over the years. Only now, at arts venues that already had established audiences and great programming, were they beginning to find their way.

Neil’s summer neighbourhood festival was in full swing as I got off the bus on the bridge and headed down the stairs to reach the centre’s offices. London was having one of its prolonged fits of good weather, showing what it could do if it really tried, all designed to taunt us the other forty-nine weeks of the year. I walked past several school groups planting herbs in wheelbarrows which, signs said, were going to decorate the pavements and terraces of the surrounding streets for the rest of the summer. Residents
could ‘adopt’ a barrow, keeping it watered and weeded, and in exchange they were welcome to use the herbs. And, said the same notices, this would be accompanied by talks from gardening and cookery writers, demonstrations from television chefs and more gardeners, and a competition to find the next big cookery blogger.

So by the time I reached Neil’s office, a combination of sun and good-neighbourliness had put me in a better mood. That only increased as Neil bounced out to meet me. We were friendly without being friends, in the way people are in small but sociable professions. I’d known him for years, liked him very much, and knew nothing about him or his life, and cared less. And I was quite sure he felt the same about me. In an industry where friendship and work are so tightly entwined, it’s very enjoyable not to have to ask after somebody’s partner, or child, or dog, or breakdown.

I’d be willing to bet that Neil had never had the latter, though. He was like Tigger, all energy and exuberance, as though, if anyone thought to suggest it, he would happily wrangle those gardening schoolchildren singlehandedly into planting the entire riverfront. Now he pushed his glasses up his nose with a characteristic gesture, using the back of his hand, stared at me for a moment, and carefully kissed the single unscabbed bit of my face. Then he acted as though I looked the way I always did. I considered asking him to marry me on the spot, but then I remembered I was already going to marry Denise-with-the-wonderful-voice. Denise who worked with Celia. That punctured my mood of general benevolence.

Neil said, ‘Do we need to be in my office? Or would you like to get coffee and sit by the river?’

On a day like today, that was a rhetorical question. We collected the coffee and sat like an old married couple, staring out at the tourist boats as they went past. I was conscious of taking up his time, though, so I quickly laid out the aims of the panel, and my need to produce a twenty-minute talk that didn’t make me sound half-witted. ‘I’m shamelessly picking the brains of people who
do
need subsidies, and, in exchange, I’m offering to be the conduit to get across the points they want to make,’ I ended.

He grinned. ‘If you put forward the points I want to make, I’ll even write that section for you.’

‘Deal.’

He snorted a mouthful of coffee at the speed with which I’d replied. ‘Don’t you even want to know what my points are, and if you agree with them?’

‘Neil!’ I’d explained this. ‘I haven’t got any ideas for your points to agree with. I’m on this panel because I wasn’t paying attention at the committee meeting; I wasn’t paying attention at the meeting because I’d drawn the short straw at the office to attend in the first place. I’m sure there’s lots to be said about subsidy and publishing, but I’m not the person who knows. You are, so tell me what needs saying.’

He didn’t hesitate twice. ‘I’ll email it over to you by tomorrow. And I owe you one for presenting our case.’

He knew perfectly well that I owed him equally, for taking the work off my hands, so I didn’t bother to reply. Instead we sat enjoying the sun. Ten minutes later, coffee and gossip finished, he walked me back to reception, where I’d left my bag. As we got to the door, we merged with a large group that was filing into the venue’s main auditorium.
Someone pulled at my elbow and I turned. Jim Reynolds.

‘Hey,’ he greeted me, with the enthusiasm of Stanley discovering Livingstone. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming. That’s great. I’ve got to do the presentation, but will you wait for me at the end, and then we can talk about the panel?’

Before I could ask what presentation he was called away by a woman with a clipboard who looked as if she’d either cry or hit someone with it, or possibly both. I figured if I stuck around, I’d find out. I thanked Neil for his time, warning him that if he didn’t produce the material he’d promised I’d hunt him down and press-gang his firstborn into the navy. He seemed relatively unperturbed.

I slipped into the back of the auditorium and looked around. Fifty or sixty people, and from their scruffy clothes and their general aura of having got lost on their way to the job centre, I made a guess that they were arts journalists. On stage, four people stood in a little huddle. One I recognised, the director of the Tate. He was standing with a young, round, anxious-looking man, as well as an older woman with silver-white hair, and very elegant silver-white trousers and a jumper to match. She stood beside – I swallowed hard – she stood beside Celia Stein, as immaculate as before, in the only pair of linen trousers I’d ever seen that had not a single crease in them. She probably willed creases out of existence.

I decided that if I could produce mental commentary on her clothes, I couldn’t be frightened. Frightened of what? the little voice taunted. Since I had no idea, I willed myself to be calm, and looked around. Jim was standing beside the stage with three others, and I guessed that I had stumbled
across the press conference for the Tate’s Stevenson show. Jim was gesturing towards a laptop, which must have controlled the AV, because at that moment the director nodded at him, and on the screen behind him appeared
Poppity Princess
, Stevenson’s most famous work.

It is so ubiquitous, and used so frequently as a shorthand to say ‘pop art’, or even ‘the sixties’, that I hadn’t really looked at it in years. I did now, and was reminded involuntarily of Mr Rudiger’s comments. With Warhol, the pictures were superficial because the artist wanted to reflect the superficiality of the world around him. Looking at
Poppity Princess
, I didn’t feel that. It was as clever, funny, and subversive as it had always been, but it was also – I groped, not really sure. It was interested only in itself, I decided. It was an odd way to think about an inanimate object, but it almost smirked, as if saying,
Look at how lovely I am
. Once I’d seen it that way, I couldn’t un-see it.

And as I moved my eyes down from the screen as the director of the Tate began to speak, I looked again at Celia Stein. She stood very quietly at the side, doing nothing to draw attention to herself, but she said the same thing as the painting.
Look at how lovely I am. Look at how much I matter.

The director handed the microphone over to the
silver-haired
woman. I’d missed the introduction, but from her words she was Delia Stevenson, the artist’s widow. Her speech was bland, generic – she was so pleased to etc. etc. – so I tuned her out, and watched Celia some more. She looked very much like her mother. Both were very lovely. Both were very elegantly, but quietly dressed. But
the resemblance was only skin-deep. Despite their chilly beauty, they couldn’t have been less alike. Delia was very plainly unhappy to be onstage, unhappy to be the centre of attention. She was there because her husband, and his work, in that order I thought, mattered to her, but if she could have avoided playing a public role, she would have. Celia, by contrast, had officially no public role – the presentation was over and she had not said a word – yet she had chosen to stand on the stage. Did she like being looked at, as Mr Rudiger thought her father’s work did?

The journalists dispersed, and Jim ambled towards me. Celia and her mother had been walking to the exit, talking quietly to each other, but she followed Jim’s path, and as she looked up and saw me, she paused in mid stride. Then she continued. It was nothing, fleeting, but the odd part was, she looked frightened too.

I had no time to think about it. Jim and I did the hellos, and then the extra yes-doesn’t-my-face-look-terrible-I-
fell-off
-my-bike. Then he said he was heading back to his office, so once more we walked back together.

‘The pictures looked great,’ I said, figuring most of his mind would be on the upcoming exhibition. ‘Are you happy with the installation?’

He shrugged. ‘I suppose so. As happy as I ever am at this stage. I’m mostly seeing what doesn’t work. And the souvenirs for the shop haven’t been delivered yet. The change in images was a nightmare in terms of scheduling.’ As though that had reminded him, he looked over at me. ‘Why did you want to know?’ He was curious, not worried.

I shrugged too, or half-shrugged when my sore shoulder stopped my attempt at insouciance. ‘I was looking at the
paper clip you did for the Lichtenstein show – it’s on my fridge’ – if he hadn’t been a thirty-something hipster with a goatee, I would have described the expression on his face as a simper – ‘and so I was wondering how the decisions about what to use got made. When I think of Lichtenstein, I don’t think of the paper clip, I think of those comic-strip paintings.’