Strawberry Tattoo (44 page)

The note wasn’t enough to convict Barbara on its own. It said that Don had seen her trash her own paintings, then heard her ring Jon on her mobile to tell him she was coming home. “I haven’t just done the paintings,” she had said gleefully. “I’ve made sure that little bloodsucker won’t be able to tell anyone about our deal.” Hearing that, Don had insisted that it was Jon who came with the money.

“It was stupid of me,” I admitted. “I knew Don could only have been killed by someone he didn’t take seriously. Carol or Laurence, or Suzanne, or even Java—he knew most of them didn’t like him, or he respected their intelligence, so he’d have been on his guard. And that ruled out Barbara, too. You just have to look at her to know she’s capable of murder. But if Jon went in there, with a bottle of bourbon shaking in his hand because he was so scared—that part he wouldn’t even need to act—and offered Don some … well, Don would have thought that Jon was just Barbara’s errand boy, and despised him. I heard him call Jon a dumb candyass. He probably knocked back half the bourbon in one shot just to show Jon how real men drink. That was Don all over.”

“Thank God for that note,” Kim said heavily. “Dad was trying to say he killed Kate, too. Hopefully he won’t get away with it. Barbara must always have planned to kill her, to keep her mouth shut. She’d have worried that Kate would talk when she realised the promise to invest in the new gallery was a crock of shit.”

“Difficult, without implicating herself.”

“Not if she managed to get the new gallery going anyway. And she could just spread the rumour quietly. Everyone would love the story of Barbara’s being that desperate.”

She took a deep breath. “We’re talking about this so rationally … but even if my father didn’t kill Kate, there’s still Don. And he tried to kill you too.
You
. I mean, you’re practically my adopted sister. I still don’t believe it. You know what?” Her voice hardened. “All that fuss about Kate’s tattoo? Barbara knew about it. Dad let that slip. Kate showed Barbara when she’d had it done. That’s why Barbara picked Strawberry Fields. Maximise the news value.”

Her face was white and tense. There was nothing I could do. I sensed that she didn’t want a hug or words of support. The last thing she needed was the kind of softness that would break her down into tears.

“That bitch,” she said viciously. “Dad takes the rap and she could still get off scot-free, if she plea-bargains and testifies against him. Or just denies killing Kate and says Don made that part up. There’s no hard evidence.
Plus,” she added furiously, “she’s raking in loads of publicity. She’s made for life.”

Call me superficial, but this rankled with me, too. I didn’t notice the
New York Times
ringing me up and begging for an interview about my life and times. Who cared about some obscure British artist whose show had just opened? The entire media population of Manhattan was probably doorstepping Barbara right now. And she’d be pretending she loathed the attention while quietly planning how to maximise its effects.

“Thurber and Frank aren’t stupid, you know,” I said in an effort to be consolatory.

“Who?”

“Those two detectives. They’re pretty sharp. No way they think Jon did it all on his own. They’ll nail her if they can.”

“Really?” Kim brightened.

“Jon still has to explain why Barbara went straight to him and told him what Suzanne had said, about me knowing who the third investor in Kate’s gallery was. If Barbara didn’t know anything about it, why would she bother to tell him?”

Kim looked more cheerful. But it was a sop I was throwing her. If Jon were determined to confess to both killings, even the most conscientious cops would settle for that. Nobody would want to complicate things when they had nice neat guilty pleas to both murders.

I thought of Jon Tallboy as I had seen him being taken away by the cops; a broken man in every sense.

“Cracked two fingers and nearly put one of his eyes out,” Thurber had said to me with a hint of approval in her flat Dalek voice. “Nice going.”

“Brits must be tougher than I thought,” Frank chimed in.

“She’s trying to say something,” Thurber observed in exactly the same way that she might have used to comment on an animal in a zoo.

I coughed and gestured for her to come closer.

“She says will she have to testify,” Laurence said, tendering me another ice pack.

Thurber flipped her hand.

“The guy’s spilling his guts as we speak,” she said. “One of those confession nuts. He Catholic?”

“Don’t make her talk!” Laurence said crossly. “Can’t you see it’s hurting her?”

“Take a lot more than that to hurt her. Right?” Thurber gave me a one-tough-woman-to-another twist of her lips which on another person would have been a smile. “But yeah, unless he gets a fancy lawyer first who shuts him up, we’re looking at a guilty plea. Which lets you off the hook.”

“We gotta go,” Frank said. “Paperwork calls. Enjoy the rest of your stay in New York, Ms. Jones.”

Thurber huffed out her breath. “You crack me up,” she said to him as they moved away. “Are you serious? Enjoy the rest of your stay in New York?”

“Courtesy is my watchword,” Frank said blandly.

“Yeah, right. And I’m Doris Day.”

We were nearly there. The grey bulk of the Metropolitan Museum loomed up at us through the trees. As we turned onto Fifth Avenue a blader shot towards me along the pavement, an Alsatian racing along beside her, its lead in her hand. At the last minute, just as it looked as if the lead was going to catch my knees and send me sprawling, she let it go and she and the dog spun off on either side of me in a neatly executed splinter movement.

“Bet she does that on purpose to freak people out,” I muttered.

It didn’t break the ice. Kim hadn’t said a word for the last ten minutes. A pall of gloom wrapped around her, so thick I could almost see its dark shadow. The silence fell again and hung around us as we climbed the sweep of stairs leading up to the entrance of the Met. Kim led me through the great entrance hall and down a wide corridor. We skirted a huge cafeteria that looked as if it belonged at Bloomingdale’s, with its taupe walls and tasteful peach lighting to flatter ladies who lunched, and turned into a series of richly appointed galleries.

But Kim shepherded me into a lift which shot us up to the fifth floor,
and as the doors opened daylight flooded in, bright and unmistakable. We were on the roof. Through the glass lobby I saw a pergola, green leaves climbing up the stone wall, shining in the sunlight like a magic garden. Out on the roof a breeze blew gently, stirring the leaves. A huge bronze statue in front of us caught the sun and shimmered in its heat as if its surface were still molten. Behind it, running all around the edge of the balcony wall, was a thick box hedge, outlined by a silver rail.

“It’s the Sculpture Garden,” Kim informed me curtly as we pushed open the glass door and stepped out onto the roof. “I come here when I’m feeling down.”

In the centre of the space was a Rodin which I recognised at once: three superbly muscled naked men, bending over, their hands clasped at knee level. They were supposed to look mournful—these were the Three Shades from Dante’s
Inferno
—but no ghosts were ever that well built. Their genitals, thick and juicy, nestled in the crooks of their groins, as if they were so heavy they needed to rest, supported, for a brief moment. And their heads clustered together, touching affectionately, like their hands. It looked like they were making a pact: we three against the world.

Kim had moved past me. I watched her walk out onto the extension, whose floor was made of boards, reaching out to the Upper East Side like the prow of a liner. At its tip was a statue of a standing woman, poised on tiptoe, one hand to her face, the gleaming bronze set into relief by the skyscrapers behind us. Kim passed it and disappeared round the hedge. I went round the statue and leaned on the wall, looking at the New York skyline, as spectacular a view as the sculptures themselves. The stacked and stepped blocks and towers flowed into the distance, their pale greys and browns dazzled almost white by the sunlight, their windows flashing back the rays like signalling mirrors. And if I narrowed my eyes and stood back, the green flat-cut surface of the box hedge merged into the tree-tops of Central Park, which stretched away, thick and still and close-packed as a moss garden high above the city.

Hugo would have loved it up here. Anything to be on top of the world. If the devil had tempted him in a high place he’d have sold his soul
straight away for dominion over what he saw and counted it a fair bargain. And judging by his news, he’d already made a decent start.

“It’s a new drama series, BBC1, prime time,” he’d said gleefully when he rang me yesterday. “And I, my dear, am the Leading Man. Stardom beckons. The cover of the
Radio Times
is calling me. And I probably have to go on a diet. I thought I looked rather fat on screen.”

“Hugo, you don’t need to go on a bloody diet,” I said as testily as I could with the soreness of my throat.

He sighed gustily. “Wait till you see the tape.”

“I don’t care about the tape. I’m not having sex with a stick insect.”

“It would be technically difficult,” Hugo agreed. “But you’re so resourceful I’m sure you could if you put your mind to it.”

“Oh, I’ve got some more blonde jokes for you.”

“Just one. Then I’m going. You sound like Marlene Dietrich with a bad cold and I’m feeling guilty at torturing you like this.”

“OK. What do you do if a blonde throws a pin at you? Run like hell—she’s got a grenade in her mouth!”

I couldn’t help laughing, but my throat was so painful that I had to stop halfway through, croaking. Hugo swore at me for hurting myself and hung up to stop me talking further. It was his way of showing that he cared. I couldn’t help missing him.

“Great asses.”

“Where?” I looked round at once.

Kim had rejoined me. She propped her back to the guard rail so she was facing onto the terrace and the Rodin sculpture. I turned round too, setting my shoulder to hers.

“Mm,” I said appreciatively, not having looked at the statues from this perspective. “Don’t they remind you of American footballers in a huddle? You know, about to throw their arms overhead, yelling something rude.”

“That’d be the only thing that’d get me watching American football,” Kim said. “If they all played naked.”

“And looked like that.”

“Mm … Do you want a drink?” I suggested. “There’s a bar over there.”

“Shit, Sam, put you down in the middle of the Gobi desert and you’d know where the nearest bar was in five minutes.”

“We all have our special skills,” I said modestly. “I don’t like to boast about mine.”

The bar was tucked into an L made by the main building, out of the wind. Still, the guy behind it was snugly clad in a watchcap and thick leather jacket. I bought a couple of glasses of red wine and we sat down on a wooden bench in the pergola. An unwieldy steel sculpture to our left, its surface scratched to resemble amateurish brushstrokes, flickered in the sunlight like a cheap hologram postcard. It had been cruel to put it next to the Rodin. I wondered if the curator had a twisted sense of humour.

“To us.” I handed Kim her plastic cup of wine and we touched them together in a toast.

“To us,” she echoed.

She didn’t say a word about being a teetotaller, just took a long drink of the wine. It tasted like red ink and probably stained our tongues crimson. With my bruised throat, it hurt to swallow, but I forced myself anyway. Our silence was no longer loaded; the grief for her father was draining out of Kim as the wine went down. By the time we had finished it she was almost mellow.

“Guess what?” she said. “Mel’s boyfriend turned up last night, totally unexpectedly. Apparently he sensed something was wrong and came over from London to surprise her.”

“Takes the pressure off you and Lex.”

“Rob said he wants to try to look after her, get her to go to a shrink.”

“And an eating disorders clinic,” I added. “What does she say?”

“Oh, she won’t even see him.”

“Surprise me.”

“At least if they convince her to go, she can afford it now,” Kim said. “Did you hear she sold three paintings already?”

“Three? I only heard about one! Bitch!”

“Maybe you should start making giant sculptures of your body parts.”

“Hey, if it sells…”

“Any sales on the horizon?”

“Not a one. I think Carol’s going off me already.”

Kim squeezed my hand.

“Let’s have another glass of wine,” she proposed by way of consolation. Kim was back, alcohol abuse and all. I hadn’t envisaged it happening this way, though. Drinking to forget your father was a murderer wasn’t quite the joyful return to the booze I’d hoped for. Still, compromise is an essential part of life.

I found myself staring at the Rodin men as Kim went to the bar.

“Not for us,” she said as she returned, nodding at them.

“Much too handsome to be straight,” I agreed. “And look at the way they’re holding hands. Ah well. Hey, you got a bottle! Good woman.”