Guns in the Gallery (19 page)

Among the objects on display were a rusty tractor and an assortment of car engines. A decommissioned red telephone box with its glass replaced by kitchen foil stood next to an antiquated milking machine. A broken neon sign reading ‘Kebab' was propped against a collection of blue plastic barrels which had contained pesticide. Three collecting boxes moulded in the shape of small blind boys with white sticks loitered in the company of some mangy cuddly toys. Two Belisha beacons leant against a wall with an assortment of golf clubs, fishing rods and ice-hockey sticks. Superannuated cigarette machines were piled up next to a set of giant plaster frogs.

Near the door were some artefacts Carole and Jude recognized – the photograph-covered gun and the framed pieces which had recently been returned from the Cornelian Gallery. They had been piled up higgledy-piggledy, almost as if the artist had lost interest in them.

In the centre of the warehouse was what appeared to be a fully functional fork-lift truck, though whether that was there to move about the other junk or destined to form part of an artwork in its own right neither Carole nor Jude could guess.

As they took in the warehouse's bizarre contents, they realized that the space was no longer uninhabited. On the floor at one end lay a life-size painted wooden crucifix into which a shaven-headed young man was banging galvanized nails. Laid out on the floor the other end was a giant poster of President Obama over which a young woman was laying a painstaking trelliswork formed by strips of Christmas Sellotape. There was no sign of Denzil Willoughby.

Neither of what were presumably his assistants took any notice of the new arrivals, but continued with the work of realizing their master's ‘concepts'. Carole couldn't somehow see a direct line in what she was witnessing back to the studios of the Old Masters, where eager helpers were allowed to do limbs and draperies while the boss took over to do the clever stuff like the faces.

She cleared her throat to draw attention to their presence, but neither of the assistants looked up from their toil. Then Jude announced, ‘Good morning. We've taken up the invitation on the website to come and have a look at the “Artist at Work”.'

‘That's cool,' said the girl, her eyes still fixed one her parallel lines of Santa-decorated tape.

Carole moved across to the young man with the crucifix. ‘And what are you doing here?' she asked.

‘I'm banging nails into the bloody thing,' he replied, as it talking to someone educationally subnormal.

‘Yes, but why?'

‘What do you mean, “why”?'

‘Why are you doing it?'

‘Well, because Denzil told me to.' Again he sounded as though he couldn't believe the stupidity of her question.

‘And because Denzil's told you to do it, does that make it art?'

‘I don't know, do I?' said the young man. ‘If you want to call it art, fine.'

‘I definitely don't want to call it art.'

‘Still fine.'

‘Does Denzil think it's art?'

‘Denzil doesn't care. He does what he does. He's not bothered by definitions. If people want to call it art, he's not about to contradict them.'

‘And if people want to buy it?'

‘He won't try and put them off,' said the young man, banging a galvanized nail into the wound where the soldier had pierced Christ's side.

‘Is Denzil around?' Jude asked the girl.

‘He may be,' she replied gnomically.

‘Are you expecting him?'

‘Usually. Sometimes.' An answer which wasn't a lot more helpful than the previous one. The girl, Jude noticed, was slight and dressed in black, perhaps rather like Bonita Green might have looked when she was twenty. And though she wore no make-up and seemed to have made no effort with her appearance, the assistant breathed an undeniable sexuality. Jude wondered whether Denzil Willoughby claimed the same
droit de seigneur
over his female assistants that artists are traditionally reputed to exercise over their models.

Since the person they had come to visit wasn't there, Jude could see no reason not to try and get some information out of his staff, so she asked, ‘Did you know that Denzil had recently had an exhibition in Fethering.'

‘Where?'

‘Fethering. The Cornelian Gallery.'

‘Oh, I heard the name of the gallery, yes. Didn't know where it was.'

‘Except, of course, the exhibition didn't run its full course.'

‘So?'

As interrogations went, this one hadn't got off to a very good start. And it didn't get any further, because at that moment Denzil Willoughby's feet in their toe-curled cowboy boots appeared at the top of the spiral staircase, quickly followed by the rest of his body as he descended. His dreadlocks looked more than ever like knotted string, and he was dressed in jeans and T-shirt. He stopped halfway down as he saw Carole and Jude. ‘Good God,' he exclaimed. ‘Ladies of Fethering.'

Carole was surprised that he'd even registered their presence at the Private View.

‘Good morning,' said Jude.

‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?' The sneer was still there, but the mock-formality took his voice back to its public school origins.

‘We saw on your website that anyone is free to come and watch the “Artist at Work”.'

As Denzil Willoughby reached ground level, he gestured around his workshop. ‘Well, here you see it. The “Artist at Work”.'

‘We haven't yet seen much evidence of you doing anything,' Carole observed tartly.

He looked at her pityingly. ‘You just don't get it, do you, Carole?' Again she was surprised that he knew her name. ‘You still think art is one guy sitting there with his pots of paint and brushes, “painting things that look like things”.'

That was even more of a shock, Denzil quoting her own lines back at her. It raised the possibility that he had been talking about them to someone else, a possibility that was both intriguing and mildly disturbing.

‘God, my brain's not working yet,' the artist announced to the workshop at large. ‘I need coffee.'

The girl immediately rose from her Obama poster and walked towards one of the doors at the back of the warehouse. In the alternative world of Denzil Willoughby, it seemed, male chauvinism still ruled. The other assistant hadn't looked up from his re-crucifixion of Christ.

‘Make a
cafetière
,' Denzil called after the girl. ‘My visitors may want some too. And bring it out on to the terrace.'

No ‘pleases', no blandishments of that kind. He crossed towards the other door at the back, gesturing Carole and Jude to follow him.

They found themselves in a surprisingly well-tended yard, whose red-brick walls were animated by colourful pot plants and hanging baskets. A wrought-iron spiral staircase led to the upper storey. White-painted Victorian cast-iron chairs stood around an equally white circular cast-iron pub table with Britannia designs on the legs.

Denzil indicated that they should sit down, and he joined them. Beneath his customary sneering manner, Jude could detect tension. And his next words explained the reason for that tension. ‘Presumably,' he said, ‘you've come to talk about Fennel Whittaker's death.'

TWENTY-ONE

‘
W
hat makes you think that?' said Carole.

‘Because Giles Green had told me all about you,' Denzil Willoughby replied.

‘Oh. I wasn't aware he knew anything about us.'

‘He's heard it from his mother. Apparently Bonita knows everything that goes on in Fethering.'

‘So what has Giles told you about us?' asked Jude.

‘That you're nosey, like most people down there.'

Jude spread her hands wide in a gesture of mock-innocence. ‘So little happens in a place like Fethering. The only growth industry in a village is gossip.'

Denzil Willoughby smiled, acknowledging her humour, but it was an uneasy smile. Both Carole and Jude sensed that he was at least as keen to find out things from them as they were from him. Or maybe he just wanted to find out how much they knew. Either way, from the point of view of their investigation his behaviour was very encouraging. It suggested that Denzil Willoughby had something to hide.

They were interrupted by the appearance of the girl with the tray of coffee. This too was produced with unexpected elegance, green, gold-rimmed
bistro
-style cups and saucers beside the
cafetière
. It was another detail at odds with the shabbiness of the adjacent workshop.

Denzil said no word of thanks to the girl, and she was silent too. He waited till she had gone before politely asking his guests how they would like their coffee and pouring it. Then he sat back and looked at the two women. ‘Giles heard from his mother that your particular style of nosiness takes the form of imagining murders and attempting to investigate them.'

Instinctively they both remained silent, waiting to see where his questioning would lead next. Appearing even more uncomfortable, Denzil took an iPhone out of the back pocket of his jeans and checked its display. Whatever he was expecting to see wasn't there. For the rest of their conversation he continued fiddling with the phone.

‘According to Bonita – via Giles – there's been talk in Fethering that Fennel's death wasn't the suicide that it appeared to be. That in fact it was murder.'

Still they let him squirm.

‘And apparently gossiping tongues have even suggested that because Fennel bawled me out at the Private View down there, my name's in the frame as her murderer.'

‘Well, it's a thought, isn't it?' said Jude with what her neighbour considered to be inappropriate levity.

‘It may be a thought, but it's not true,' protested Denzil Willoughby.

‘I'm sure it's not,' said Jude with a reassuring smile. ‘So maybe you could tell us why it's not true?

‘For starters I don't think Fennel was murdered. If you knew her history of depression, you'd—'

‘I do know her history of depression,' Jude interposed. ‘I had been treating her for it.'

‘Oh? Are you a doctor?'

‘No, I'm a healer.'

The expression on Denzil Willoughby's face suggested to Carole that, unlikely though it might seem, there could be at least one subject on which she and the artist might agree.

‘So,' Denzil went on, ‘you'll know that Fennel had made a previous suicide attempt. She was all messed up in her head. She talked a lot about topping herself. It was only a matter of time before it happened.'

‘And if it was suicide, would you feel any guilt?' asked Carole, at her most magisterial.

‘Guilt? Why should I feel guilt?' He genuinely did not seem to understand.

‘From all accounts, during your relationship you didn't treat her that well.'

‘Look, hell, I can't do anything about it if women fall in love with me,' said Denzil Willoughby. ‘I try to reciprocate, but I admit it isn't the highest priority in my life. I'm an artist.'

At that point both Carole and Jude would quite happily have knocked the young man's block off, but they both realized it wasn't the moment and restrained themselves.

‘At the Private View,' said Carole beadily, ‘Fennel accused you of only being interested in her money.'

‘That wasn't true.'

‘But you didn't mind accepting money from her?'

‘Look, her parents are loaded. If she wanted to give some of it to me, surely that was her decision.'

‘So long as it
was
her decision,' said Carole, still in inquisitorial mode. ‘So long as you didn't pressure her.'

‘Look, I'm an artist,' said Denzil Willoughby, again prompting block-knocking-off urges in both his listeners. ‘My art's the most important thing in my life. That has to be funded; that's the main priority. Where the money comes from to fund it isn't important.'

‘Are you saying you'd do anything to get money?' asked Carole.

‘Pretty much, yes.'

‘I thought your father was also loaded,' said Jude, causing her friend to look at her in some surprise. The secrets of Jude's healing sessions remained sacrosanct. Except for mentioning to Carole the rumour of Denzil Willoughby's violence to women, she hadn't reported any other details of her conversation with Sam Torino in the treatment yurt at Walden. ‘He's a big shot in advertising, isn't he?'

‘Yes, he's loaded all right,' Denzil admitted. ‘Just he doesn't always feel like sharing his goodies with his son. He's never forgiven me, you see, for becoming an artist. My Dad – the great Addison Willoughby – he did all his training at the Slade and everything, and then prostituted his talents for the rest of his life in an ad agency. How commercial can you get? He's jealous as hell of what I've done, jealous of me not having made any compromises in my life, and that jealousy is quite frequently expressed in a tightening of the purse strings.'

Carole decided to set out on another tack. ‘Since you've cast us as the snoopers of Fethering, we'd be failing in our duty if we didn't interrogate you about Fennel's death.'

Denzil Willoughby shrugged. ‘You can interrogate away to your heart's content. You'll find I have nothing to tell you on the subject. I didn't see Fennel after she stormed out of the Private View having given me that right royal bollocking.'

‘You didn't see her again on the Friday night?'

‘Of course I bloody didn't.'

‘So where were you? Did you stay in Bonita Green's flat?'

‘No way. It's tiny. Cramped enough with her and Giles there. Not that I wanted to stay there, anyway. Bonita's not really my type of person.'

‘Oh?'

‘Another of those who's frittered away her talents. She trained at the Slade, like my Dad, and like him, she never tried being a proper artist. Just set up that mimsy-pimsy gallery to sell Toulouse-Lautrec fridge magnets to people who wouldn't recognize a work of art if it came up and bit them on the shin.'