That Summer He Died (37 page)

Oh, Christ.

He let the painting clatter to the floor, jerked the one behind from against the wall. A pulse in his ear beat heavily as he unwrapped the blanket. Another nude. The same model. Only this time the painting wasn’t only of her but of the artist as well. The two of them together, limbs wrapped around one another, an expression of ecstasy clear on each face. And James knew the faces. Hers as well as his.

Alan’s wife, Monique.

And Jack Dawes, Alan’s best friend.

Together.

James shuddered. Sweat bled from his brow into his eyes. The conversation he’d had with Suzie’s father about the painting Oldfield claimed he’d found in the woods came back to him. The nude woman. The erotic pose. Her face hidden by her hair. Found in the woods between Dawes’s home and Alan’s.

The explanation the police had dismissed, attempting to pin theft on Oldfield instead. Not believing he’d just stumbled across one of Dawes’s paintings out there amongst the trees. Because paintings weren’t dropped in woods for other people to find. Because it was ridiculous. Because no one would have done that unless. . . unless they’d been panicked. Unless they’d been panicked and running through the dark with other paintings, and hadn’t realised that one had been dropped until it was too late to return for it.

James scrabbled to his feet and lunged across the desk, pressing his face up close to the newspaper cuttings. Front-page articles. Local and national press. Computer printouts from websites. Their photos were inscrutable. The same went for the small print. But the headlines read true. The death of Jack Dawes. A ritualistic killing. Then the body of Kenneth Trader had been found. He’d made his way into this gallery. Uncle Alan had witnessed the birth of a ‘Serial Killer’ too.

James slumped into the chair. No. Not Alan.

Because maybe he was reading this wrong. Maybe this was all just research. Maybe Alan had been planning to write a book about the killings. Maybe that’s what the articles were for: to keep him focused. It didn’t mean he’d had something to do with it. It didn’t mean he was somehow involved.

And the painting of Monique and Dawes? That didn’t have to mean anything either, right? So Monique used to model for him before she’d died. Big deal. They’d been friends. Alan might not have minded her modelling nude. Because he’d trusted Dawes, right? Dawes had been his best friend.

But then James looked back down at the painting of Dawes and Monique entwined together. Could Alan really have known about that? Even if it was just a fantasy on Dawes’s behalf, if it hadn’t actually happened like that in the flesh, could Alan really have known about that and not flown into a jealous rage? And not––

‘Stop it,’ James said out loud.

He needed to get a grip. His imagination was running away with him. Because what was he thinking? That Alan – not Will Tawnside, or Arnie Oldfield, or some other lunatic – had murdered Jack Dawes? That Alan had cut off his hands?

No. This was all circumstantial. Nothing more. He’d been down here too long with this maddening light casting its trickery. He was just tired. He was stressed. He needed to get out.

He stood. Just do it. Get out. His eyes ran over the desk as he stumbled back. He shouldn’t have come down here. These were just rantings. He looked at the painting, then started to turn. Just mad Alan. Ranting down here in the dark. Doesn’t mean anything.

Then he saw the gloves on the wall again. Up close this time. In detail. It was like seeing them for the first time. Thin fingers. Collapsed palms.

Not gloves. Hands.

The hands of an artist.

The hands that had painted and held Monique.

James stumbled back through the door to the foot of the stairs. He slumped against the wall and forced himself to breathe deeply and calm down.

But in spite of the gloom down here, everything was suddenly horribly clear to him. A sequence of Alan at Dawes’s funeral played through James’s mind. He saw once more his uncle’s gesture of throwing the keys to Dawes’s house on top of his friend’s coffin. The symbol of their trust. And he saw the anger in Alan’s eyes then. Only it wasn’t just anger. It was triumph. And the keys weren’t a symbol of trust, but of revenge.

And then the view in his mind’s eye switched to Alan’s own grave, and zoomed in on the incongruous epitaph his atheist uncle had chosen for his headstone after he’d made his decision to die:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.

And now – heart pounding, throat contracting – James was certain. Not circumstantial. The truth. Alan’s confession and suicide note rolled into one, there in black and white for the whole world to see. Just like the keys at the funeral, the keys that would have given him access to Dawes’s home whenever he wished, to instigate whatever grim sequence of events he chose and remove whatever evidence, too.

It was easy to speculate on what might have happened, to conjure up a chain of events that would fit the blueprint of evidence to be found in this room. After Monique’s death Alan would have sought solace with his closest friend, Jack Dawes. They would have spent time together, spent drunken evenings mourning her loss.

And on one of these nights, six months after Monique’s death, perhaps with Dawes asleep on the sofa, Alan would have gone wandering through to his studio, maudlin, knowing that his wife had modelled for their friend, seeking a glimpse of the dead woman he still loved.

And then he would have found the paintings. His love, naked and in another man’s arms. Words sprang back at James: Alan’s words as they’d descended the steps on to South Beach the morning of the search: ‘Some things you don’t want to know. Some things it’s best you never find out.’ Had he been talking about this?

And next, after Alan had discovered Dawes’s secret. . . what then? Rage? No. There’d been no sign of a struggle. Calculated, then. Premeditated. Cold revenge. Alan asking Dawes over to his house, knowing the path he’d take, waiting there in the darkness of the woods, an axe in his hand and only the whispering of the trees to repeat the tale of what would happen there.

Then back to Dawes’s house and all its intact domesticity: the smell of simmering stew drifting from the stove; Zack the dog waiting for his master’s return. James visualised him greeting his master’s friend, wagging his tail and following Alan to the studio, watching him remove the evidence of Monique’s affair, and carry his motive away and close the door.

James held a cigarette to his mouth and lit it. Yes, it was easy enough to speculate, but the order of events hardly mattered. Just the players. Just Alan and Dawes. Alone in the woods.

The hands on the wall next door told him that as sure as if they were spelling it out for him in sign language.

One killer.

One victim.

Not Oldfield.

Not Tawnside.

Not Murphy.

The picture – though he was reluctant even to think of the metaphor after what he’d uncovered just now – was almost complete. Alan killed Dawes. Alex killed Trader. Two killers. And only one of them was still alive when Dan had been murdered.

Only one.

‘Alex,’ he said aloud, and in that instant he was certain. Forget Murphy. He was just another face of fear; another demon from James’s past he’d failed to outrun – another ghost; nothing more. Alex was the only logical choice for Dan’s murderer. James’s cigarette fell from between his fingers to the ground. And it was only then that he noticed the light on the bottom of the stairs darkening as a shadow stretched towards him, elongated, and fell across him like a shroud.

‘So sorry to disturb you.’

‘Alex,’ he said again, this time in recognition as he looked up the steps to see him leaning against the broken doorframe. He was wearing a ripped t-shirt and an unbuttoned, stained shirt, old jeans and scuffed boots. A cigarette was gripped in one hand, a gym bag in the other.

Alex snorted in derision. ‘Look at the fucking state of you.’

And that was all it took. James snapped, like fusewire through which too much current had been fed. He was on his feet and charging up the stairs. Dan’s death. Trader’s death. All the misery he’d suffered for the last ten years channelled into his fists. Gonna get. . . gonna get him!

‘You fucker,’ he bellowed as he covered the last few stairs. ‘You killed Dan, you murdering piece of shit.’

And then he stopped still, the muzzle of the pistol Alex held only inches from his face.

‘Get your stupid fucking arse back down there.’ He slammed the bag into James’s shoulder, sending him spinning back down the stairs.

He landed in a battered heap at the bottom for the second time that day.

Run, a voice inside him yelled.

But where could he run? There was nowhere to go.

‘Keep moving,’ Alex instructed, walking down after him, the gun held straight in front.

James struggled up, winded, gasping for air. Red pain flashed across his back. His ribs – had he fractured one? Grimacing in pain, he raised his hands, backing through the second door, all the way to Alan’s desk.

This was bad. Way bad. There was only one way out of here, and Alex was blocking it and he was armed. Alex followed him through the door, which swung silently shut behind him, sealing the two of them in.

‘Always thought your uncle was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic,’ he commented, apparently seeing the room as James had at first, not understanding what this place signified, or what any of this chaotic jumble meant. Then he smiled, saying, ‘Oh, and thanks, by the way.’

‘For what?’ James said.

‘For confirming what I already knew.’

‘I don’t—’

Alex dropped his bag on the floor and held up one hand to silence him. ‘I had a chat with ‘I’ after your visit. Well,’ he reflected, ‘I call it a chat, but ‘I’ would probably call it GBH. Whatever, she let on she’d been stupid enough to tell you about me and Dan having a run-in that night. And what with you being a journalist, and probably giving a shit about Dan’s death and all, I kind of figured out that you might put one and one together and make. . . me.’

‘You killed him,’ James spat. ‘You killed Dan.’

Alex’s face, under the flickering bulb, showed no emotion. ‘Correct. Give yourself a gold star. But here’s a good question: can you possibly guess why?’

‘Because he wanted money. Because he said he’d go to the cops about Trader’s murder if you didn’t pay up. Because he knew I’d back up his story about you doing the killing.’

‘Correct again. I never trusted you after that night. Never really trusted Dan either.’ He ran his tongue across his lips.

‘Should have killed you both a long time ago. Best way to handle pests,’ he went on. ‘Like rats. Like lice. Like Murphy.’

‘Murphy?’ The word left James’s lips automatically, without intonation.

‘Oh, yeah. But surely you’re not going to begrudge me that one? Not much of a fan yourself, way I remember it.’

James was thinking desperately. How the hell was he going to get out? Think, he told himself. Think. And, for God’s sake, buy some time.

‘Where?’ he said. ‘Where did you do it? How?’

‘Well, would’ve been best to do another copy-cat, I suppose,’ Alex said, ‘but there were too many bullets in his fat gut for that.’ A note of pride crept into his voice. ‘So I took a leaf out of his book. Weighed him down and dumped him like the piece of shit he was into one of the flooded slate mines. Just like he did Hayworth. Oh, yeah, I got him to ’fess up to that before I finished him off.’ James opened his mouth, but Alex, as always, seemed to be one step ahead. ‘Made the mistake of getting him on board for shipping the gear in. Stuff in your barn, yeah? Been doing it for years. Nice Afghan hash tucked up safe inside little statues of Indian gods. Ship ’em out from here to Europe on fishing boats. You should’ve hung around,’ he reflected. ‘Might’ve made some real money. Murphy, though, he got greedy. I pay him to turn a blind eye, do fuck all for his money. and he gets greedy on me. Pig through and through, that one. Had to keep shoving his snout deeper into the trough. So I had to stop it.’ Alex’s expression flatlined. ‘Same as I always do.’

‘Listen. . .’ James said. The crowbar. He’d spotted it a foot or so away from him. ‘You don’t need to do this. I’m not going to say shit. Same as with the dope in the barn. You’ve already got me. That thing with Trader. . . Like you said, it was as much me as you. Your word against mine.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Alex grunted, and from the look on his face James knew this verdict was final, ‘but I’m fed up with equality. Look where it got me with Dan. Nah, the sooner you’re gone the better. Peace of mind, yeah? Like I say, should’ve done it years ago.’

‘And that’s it?’ James said. ‘You’re just going to shoot me?’

Alex laughed, reached down and unzipped the bag.

‘’Course not, mate. Got to do these things by the book, haven’t you?’ He pulled out an axe and weighed it in his hand. ‘Can’t go breaking with tradition – yeah? – depriving the press of their copy, letting the police wise up. Wouldn’t make sense.’ He stuck the pistol into his belt. Then grinned. ‘Bet you’ve never seen a chopper this big, eh, mate?’ he asked, holding the axe handle in both hands now, swinging it in slow arcs before him. ‘But I’ll tell you what: seeing as how we used to be such great pals, I’ll make it quick.’ He started forward, the axe suddenly held above his head. ‘Chop-chop, as they used to say. . .’

It was then that James made his move. He slid sideways and, in one fluid movement, grabbed the crowbar and sent it spinning through the air. He saw Alex duck, but it wasn’t him James was aiming for. What he was aiming for, he hit.

The bulb smashed. The room went black. As Alex swore, James moved silently sideways up against the opposite wall. He held his breath, waited, listened to the sound of Alex’s breathing coming strong, coming close.

‘You think you’re going anywhere?’ he was shouting. ‘You stupid prick,’ he continued to mock. ‘You stopped doing that the moment you stopped hanging out with me.’

James stretched his arms wide. He counted Alex’s breaths, the swish-swish of the axe slicing through the air, calming himself with their rhythm.