Gold Digger (25 page)

‘You mean what do
we
do, girl. My problem, too.’

‘OK, what do we do? What does he want?’

‘Don’t fucking know, can only fucking guess. But before I do that, you’ve gotta come clean with me about what you feel about him. Like you might try telling me that it was him who led the team who stuffed you through the shutters here, when was it, ten years ago this week. You always said it was someone else, but it was him, wasn’t it? Oh, all right, he wouldn’t be the leader, he never is, but he was there. Am I right, or am I right?’

She nodded.

‘He was there. He wasn’t the leader, but he was there, standing back.’

‘
And ain’t that typical of him, and ain’t that typical of you,
Di, never to say. You couldn’t shop your own dad, could you? You know there’s one clear way of getting rid of Quig. You can shop him now, for that and God knows what else. He’s buried a few bodies, your dad, and you know where they are. You can make a call and send them hunting, but it would have to be you, and you can’t fucking do it. What’s he got on you, Di?’

He looked at her. She looked at the picture of William Porteous, as if searching for a clue.

‘He knows things. He knows … ’ she faltered, and Jones thundered on.

‘Nah, you couldn’t shop even the lowest of the fucking low, ’cos you think anyone’d rather be dead than go inside. You’d kill him first before you told on him. Right,’ Jones scratched his head and took refuge on the view from the window. ‘Now I think I’ve got it straight. There’s no point trying to fucking psychoanalyse a screwed-up bastard like Quig, and you’re not going to deal with him by telling the cops, so we just have to deal with the fact that he’s here. And with the fact that he’s kept tabs on you all these years. Got someone in this town to keep him informed.’

Jones decided not to tell her who, and omitted to mention that Quig had been outside the Town Hall on the day Di got married. Later, maybe. There were a lot of things they were going to have to cover later, such as what really went on the night of the storm, all that, but Jones was transfixed by the present and highly excited by Saul’s plan, which he thought was pretty damn fine and made him feel indispensable. It was really going to work. He looked out of the casement window and saw a lowering sky, God he would like to be on the pier, but then he liked where he was, too. Being fucking useful. Get this over and then think about Quig: don’t let Di lose her
bottle. And don’t remind her she was still subject to those police enquiries, which his contact told him had gone quiet at the moment. Gone quiet, but not gone away. They didn’t like Di; they’d be back. One thing at a time.

‘I don’t know what Quig wants, Di love. He might want his daughter back, he might want money, he might want to hurt you. He might just want to help, but lets look at what he
is
.’

Another deep breath.

‘Take it in order, he don’t work for anyone unless he’s paid, and Thomas’s kids aren’t going to do that. Nor would that Edward have an inkling how to deal with someone like Quig for long, he ain’t even got the same fucking vocabulary. So Quig’s on the sidelines, probably doesn’t know what he wants, apart from being homesick. Might also be sick as a fucking parrot about his kid living up at the big house.’

Jones took a dead cigar out of the ashtray, lit it with his own lighter, found it disgusting and put it out, glad of the distraction all the same.

‘Look at what he is,’ he insisted. ‘You’re not afraid of what he might do to you, you’re afraid of him for what he knows.’

She looked at him, blankly, opened her mouth to speak, closed it again.

‘But you’re only afraid of him for what he knows about you, about this house where he went to school. But look at what he
is
. He’s a busted flush, love. He can’t run and he hasn’t got a gun and he’s frightened to be seen. All right he clocks me on the pier, but only because I was pissed and halfway down already. He might chase you and Patrick, but he can’t outrun you. He might try and get in when he thinks the place is empty, and he’ll bury anything already dead, but he never comes at anyone full on, never comes on to
someone who might hit back. So what’s the worry? Think of what he is.’

Di gave up. The moment passed. It was knowledge that she feared, not brute force.

He shook his head, walked to the window at the other end, raised his binoculars.

‘Quig won’t be here long, unless he gets an instant result. And what you’ve gotta fucking remember, Di, he won’t hurt you unless you’re lying down first, all by yourself, waiting to be kicked, and that’s not going to happen, is it? You’re not going to be alone, not once.’

She was listening.

‘Quig gives up easy, Di. Runs as soon as he’s spotted and he’s been spotted. Ignore him, get on with the main stuff.’

‘Any way of telling him that I’m never alone?’

‘If he’s still here, he’ll find out.’

He thought of Monica. Better not mention Monica: he wanted to wring her neck. Monica, the contact, the informer, who always knew where Quig was. Di looked better: she was suddenly businesslike and smiling at him, accepting reassurance like a good girl.

‘Anyway,’ Jones said, grinning back, ‘gotta get on with stuff. Get yourself back to the control room. Saul’s in overdrive. All this with Patrick and bloody Quig, just makes everything more urgent. And Di, after this, we’re really going to talk, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And pigs have fucking wings, right? In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I take orders from Saul, do I?’ He was still grinning. ‘It’s a pleasure.We’re sorting out the details. Good plan. Concentrate on that, hey? Forget your fucking Dad.’

B
ack downstairs in the gallery room, she began to write to Thomas, only to find that beyond a few lines, she couldn’t
.

Accusing a man who reveres children of abusing the trust of a child is a worse accusation than murder. I can see why you can’t forgive them, or her. You want to hoist them on the mast of their malice and greediness. And yet you want them protected from the knowledge of what their mother was like, and the worst she could do.

You said: tempt them, make them steal something; make them fight in a way they never have. Give them something and make them take risks.

I think I understand, but I don’t always know where you are.

She turned to the inventory of paintings instead.

D
i was still writing in the afternoon of the day that remained dull after Patrick had gone and she had talked to Jones. Before that, there had been an argument with Saul and then with Peg.
You
can’t
send him away,
Peg had yelled.
Let Patrick stay, he can hang out with me.

No, he has to go home.

And what about me, what about me, will you do the same to me?
Hysteria lurked near the surface.

No, Peg, I won’t. You’ll go when you’re ready
.

Peg was rude to Raymond Forrest, Jones, as well. All of them had retreated to the various ends and heights of the house, and even after she had talked to Jones, there was still the retreat position of the back yard. Best to let it all simmer down.

Saul came in. He stood by the desk and looked at the description she had typed.
Old man with kind eyes.

‘Back at the addictive keyboard, are we? When do I see the personal diary? You’re getting on with the alternative
inventory, I see. I do love your descriptions, Di. They’re so flippant and frivolous. Not a great help to a valuer. They’re written for a collector. Nothing about the quality of the fucking paint, abstract qualities, only about the narrative. Like they were all fucking stories. Sorry, I’ve been talking with Jones. It gets infectious.’

He moved to the window and looked out towards the sea, in which it seemed he had no interest, except for the changing colour of it. The rain had removed the salt from the windows and the view of the sky was painfully clear.

‘Have you sorted it out with fucking Jones? I thought so. He’s a good man for the purpose. Mustn’t let Daddy distract, nor any other neanderthal. I must say, my dear, that if your fortunes and your chances of winning through were to rest entirely with that lump of a lawyer, I don’t know where you’d be.’

‘Raymond’s a good man,’ Di said. ‘And much abused.’

Di had a tendency that annoyed him. If you criticised anyone, she defended them: if you sneered, she praised, if you denigrated, she supported. It was the same when they looked at paintings. If you said something was valueless, she pointed out the virtues in it; she said what it could be, not what it was: she existed to defend people, things, even pieces of flint which excelled hand-hewn sculpture in her eyes, it was all the same. If you put it down, she would try and bolster it up.

‘Raymond’s everything a lawyer’s supposed to be,’ she said. ‘Solid, dependable and unimaginative. He’s a properly responsible man. Doesn’t dabble. Hears what he wants to hear, does what he’s asked to do.’

‘Unlike me?’

‘Definitely unlike you. You are profoundly irresponsible.’

He paced between the windows, restless, speaking as he moved. He was dressed in olive cords, belted at the waist, bulking out the extreme narrowness of his frame. Saul was never just dressed; he was costumed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think everything’s going OK, all things considered. Just had a long chat with that dangerous, half-educated buffoon, Edward. Patrick is safely home.’

She turned quickly, anxiety written large.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s fine,’ Saul said, carelessly. ‘Safely delivered to the flat and into the arms of doting mother, for whose sanity her husband secretly fears. He will no doubt pump the boy for information and I’ve hinted that nothing would ever result unless the interrogation was gentle. And I have also, not so gently, hinted that should your dreadful daddy be in touch, they’d better choke him off. Said they’d be blackmailed forever if they didn’t. Have I done well?’

‘There’s nothing Patrick can tell them,’ Di said. ‘He’s not a pawn to be used.’

‘No, I know he isn’t, but Edward thinks he is. I’ve never met such an immoral man. He was all for leaving Patrick here longer, using him as a spy. He didn’t think twenty-four hours, or however long it was, was enough for the boy to confirm the whereabouts of certain
things.
Like the paintings in the basement they are going to steal. The odd thing is that there’s them sounding off about Patrick being in danger from
you,
and Edward never thought so at all. Nor I suspect, does ghastly Gayle. She never really believed the myth. This paedophilic
myth.
’

‘It can’t be great, being Gayle,’ Di said, after a pause. ‘Can’t be easy.’

‘You’re doing it again, Di.’

‘What?’

‘Always taking the other side. Can’t you sustain a good bit of hatred? Listen, love, they really despise you. Patrick coming here will have made that worse. They’re going to come back and raid you, just as planned. That’s what Edward wanted to finalise. Shall we give them the faux Fragonard or the faux Gainsborough?’

She was struggling with the thought that Patrick, whom she loved, had come with a mission, rather than arrived spontaneously. She decided it did not matter either way.

‘Both, of course, we decided both. The collection can live without them, especially the Fragonard. They were part of Thomas’s inheritance, rather than his choice, even though they’re exactly the kind of artists he liked. Shadowy people, the cousin, the pupil, artists who never had the limelight. My kind, too, but they’re slightly tainted, somehow.’

She was talking like a Collector again and he was nodding agreement.

‘Slightly dubious portraits of innocence on the cusp. Edward has the images, he’s seen the famous versions, and I’m taking him the transparencies this evening. He’s such a philistine, attention span of a gnat, always looking for the bottom line in euros. Encouraged to think he’s an expert.’

‘By you, I suppose.’

Saul shrugged, elegantly.

She joined him by the window. Clouds were better than anything. Clouds and flint. She felt nothing. She wanted above all to bury her husband having done what he wanted, with the freedom to do more of what he wanted. She could not enjoy conspiracies as Saul did.

‘You’re enjoying all this,’ she said. ‘Why does Edward trust
you so much? I trust you because Thomas did and I believe in Thomas’s judgement. If I were Edward, I’d never be sure.’

He laughed out loud.

‘I do notice your sideways glances, don’t worry, and I’m not at all offended. Your plump little lawyer man, Raymond, what a common name, he’s puzzled, too. Edward trusts me because he’s greedy and he doesn’t like me, in fact I’m anathema to him, but he trusts me, within limits of course, because I correspond exactly to his idea of what a shady Art Dealer should be. Effete, lounge lizard, morally bankrupt, ready to do anything for a commission. He thinks he found me, whereas I lured him in, like Thomas asked me to do, to find out what Goneril and Regan would do if they inherited, would they honour the collection? Would they share with you? The hell they would. They’d sell the lot, soonest, and the house for development. And spend it on anything other than the education of their children.’

‘I think Beatrice is the worst,’ she said.
Pervert, paedophile;
the words ringing back like screaming seagulls.

‘Do you?’ he said, surprised. ‘Oh, good. Because on current arrangements, it’s Edward and Gayle who are coming to take the designated pictures in the basement, a couple of nights hence. Lovely Patrick hasn’t got in the way of that at all. My word, that boy can draw.’

He held aloft two sheets from the sketchbook Patrick had left behind, one showing the ticket collector and one showing Quig.

‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing to the latter. ‘Now there’s a man who could skin a kitten but not a lion. Couldn’t do a thing unless someone shot the beast first. Is this a subject for discussion?’

‘No.’

She peered at the screen and wrote another line as if her fingers were connected to the keyboard. He waited.