The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori (23 page)

“I see.” Oddie decided to go off on a new tack. “You mentioned your sister. I gather there seems to be some idea around the place that she enjoys telling everybody about your record and what you were inside for. Is that what you think, sir?”

“It's certainly one of her very small tally of conversational topics.”

“Why should that be, sir?”

“You'd have to ask her that.”

“You don't seem averse to mentioning the topic yourself.”

Ivor Aston grimaced.

“I don't have much choice, do I? If she hadn't wormed her way into Ashworth I don't suppose I'd ever bring the question up, unless someone here became a good friend, which no one
has
. As it is, the best way is to talk about it openly.”

“You are ashamed of your past, then, sir?”

“
No
,” he said with sudden force. “I am certainly not ashamed. I wouldn't have talked about it because I know what the popular attitude is—and the people here are nothing if not commonplace in their reactions. But don't imagine it's an attitude I share. I have certain tastes, and they were born in me. How can I be ashamed of things I had no choice about?”

“You weren't imprisoned for having tastes,” countered Oddie quietly.

“In effect I was. I get my kicks from looking at a certain sort of picture, and I shared them with other like-minded men.”

“The pictures and printed material you circulated,” Oddie pressed on, having done his homework before he left police headquarters, “covered a range of . . . interests, tastes, involving children; some of them were quite revolting, some of them extremely sadistic.”

“They were
acted
, Superintendent,
posed
. They fed the fantasies of people with those tastes. Pornography like that saves them, us, from acting out our fantasies in reality.”

“Oh? And do they never
stimulate
people to act them out in reality?”

Ivor Aston sighed.

“This is an old and well-trodden argument, as I'm sure you know. All right, I won't generalize, I'll speak for myself: as far as I was concerned, this was fantasy stuff I was circulating. In any case, what happened as a consequence was not my responsibility.”

“Nor how the photographs were obtained, nor the effects on the children who ‘acted' them out?”

“No. Children are remarkably resilient.”

“Hmmm. What made you decide to come here, sir, on your release?”

Ivor Aston sat back in his chair, relaxing his tense pose.

“I'd always admired Ranulph Byatt. I am a modest but a real artist myself—the only artist here, in fact, apart from Byatt, and the only one he can communicate with.”

“And you told him about your prison sentence and what it was for?”

“Of course.”

“And his reaction?”

“In his letter of reply he never mentioned it, and he never has since. Don't confuse Byatt with the mediocrities who have gathered around him.”

“You say you've ‘always' admired him, sir. How long would that be?”

“Well”—he smiled—“not my whole lifetime, I must admit. I went to an exhibition, a traveling one, at the Leeds City Art Gallery, oh, around 1985.”

“And what was it you admired about these paintings?”

“Oh, their power, the imaginative sweep, the completeness of the artistic vision.”

“I see. Would you say that was what attracted most of the disciples here?”

“You'd have to ask them. They wouldn't choose
me
as their spokesman, would they?” His face twisted into a sneer. “I'm the loner, the one out on a limb. And that suits me fine, just fine.”

 • • • 

“Fire away,” said Charmayne Churton. She was sitting in the one downstairs room of her bijou cottage, filling an old armchair, with her legs just too far apart for anyone's comfort but her own. For some reason, whether social, sexual, or personal, she had dabbed an unusual amount of makeup on her face, but she reminded Charlie of nothing so much as a battleship decked out for a fleet inspection.

“Could you tell us about your movements last weekend?” Oddie asked her.

“Saturday I was in Manchester practically all day: shopping in the afternoon, Cliff Richard in
Heathcliff
in the evening. Wonderful show. Got the train back to Halifax, then took a taxi back here.”

“When did you hear about Declan O'Hearn leaving?”

She had her pat answer.

“Someone told me on Sunday morning, when I was
pottering around the place. Surprised me. I'd rather liked the lad, and I'd've thought he'd have had more staying power.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about the place on Sunday—any
thing
or any
one
?”

“Nothing at all. Should I have?”

Oddie's face was impassive. If she had heard about Patrick O'Hearn, this was something she was not letting on.

“How did you come to settle in this place?”

“Well, of course I'd always admired Ranulph Byatt. I'm speaking as an amateur, a dauber and a dabbler,” she simpered, “but I'd been struck by the imaginative nature of his work, its tremendous variety, its sheer
punch
. So when I heard that Ivor was planning to come here when he got out—of Strangeways, that is—I thought: That's for me. I've got a bit of money from our parents: they left everything to me after . . . you know. So I came over to see if there was a vacant cottage, and, bingo!”

“You're fond of your brother?”

She paused before she replied, wondering, Charlie thought, whether to lie or to sugarcoat the truth.

“Not really. We've never had much in common. But I thought I should do what I can.”

“In what way? You don't live together or anything.”

She snorted.

“God forbid. I mean rehabilitation, getting back into the community, that kind of thing.”

“But you've never made any secret, I believe, of his prison sentence?”

“No. Should I? If you're going to rehabilitate yourself, you shouldn't do it on the basis of a lie.”

It should have sounded good, but it didn't, coming from her.

“It's a point of view,” said Oddie noncommittally.

She leaned her prow forward and pushed her stern back.

“If you had young kiddies, would you want a man like that living near you? People are waking up to the dangers these days. They've a right to know. People like that never change.”

So much for rehabilitation and getting back into the community.

“Does your brother have any convictions for offenses against children?” asked Oddie, very conscious of having changed his position too.

“He peddled child pornography. Isn't that an offense against children? As far as I'm concerned, that tells you where his tastes lie, and tells you what a danger he will always be.”

“Maybe.”

“There's no ‘maybe' about it. As long as there's breath in my body I'll make sure people know what kind of a man he is.” She groped into the recesses of her mind and produced an old-fashioned phrase to cloak her motivation: “I'd be failing in my duty if I didn't.”

Both men watching her had the strongest sense not just of pleasure and satisfaction—that, they had expected from what Colonel Chesney had told Charlie—but of a life that had been adrift, rudderless, but which had suddenly found a purpose: the persecution of her brother and an unfailing, never-ending means of accomplishing it. To Charlie they seemed locked in a perverse bond, and he wondered whether there was any great moral difference
between the persecutor and the pornographer. He also wondered whether there was anything in their childhood, their background, that would account for it. He was willing to bet that Ivor Aston's first sexual experiments had been with his younger sister. That, surely, must have been the origin of the perverse bond. He felt sad that he could summon up no sympathy for the victim.

 • • • 

“Now, then, what is it you want to know?” asked Arnold Mellors, rubbing his hands.

They had already run through his activities of the past weekend, established that he was at home virtually all of the time, but had seen no strangers in the area and noticed nothing out of the ordinary at the house. Kipling's monkeys, Oddie decided, had nothing on the Ashworth community.

“You say you spent a lot of time on the phone, sir.”

“That and consulting the
Directory of Art
. I was looking for an agent for Ranulph's new pictures. Of course I could only ring those who looked as if they were working from home, it being a Saturday.”

“Byatt is thinking of changing his agent?”

Mellors's face fell a fraction.

“Well, acquiring one again. I've been doing the donkey work for him these past few years. Frankly his . . . his genius has been in remission. Mostly rather tame, ordinary pictures, and prices had to be modest accordingly. There was nothing much an agent could do for him. I was announcing that he was starting a new and remarkable phase, and sizing up possible agents to act for him. Just trying to be useful.”

“What personal qualities were you looking for?”

“A willingness to subdue their own personality to Ranulph's. An ability to take orders, to take abuse.”

“To be subservient, at least apparently?”

“Yes, I think that would be fair.”

“You have no illusions about him?”

“I have no illusions about his
greatness
,” corrected Mellors. “So I take all the rest as part of the package.”

“This new phase, how long has it lasted?”

Mellors shuffled his feet a little.

“Oh, only a few weeks so far. You think it ridiculous to talk of a new phase on that basis, but, you see, we know Ranulph. When he is gripped by his de—when inspiration strikes, it lasts: picture after picture tumbles out. Of course, in his condition we don't expect the feverish production of his red period, but a series of remarkable pictures
is
very much in the cards. In fact, I would say it's a certainty.”

“And Byatt is concerned that they fetch the best possible price?”

“Of course. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No, no.”

Mellors rubbed his hands, gripped by the enticing prospects.

“What would be ideal would be a much-talked-about exhibition, as much publicity as Ranulph could stand in his current state of health, and then the pictures released on to the market, probably gradually. But, of course, that will be up to his agent.”

Wistfulness came into his voice with the last sentence. Oddie decided to press him.

“You found an agent for him?”

“Oh, that will be Ranulph's choice. I talked to several, and selected three or four possibilities. I'm just trying to be useful.”

“You seem to have enjoyed acting as Byatt's agent.”

“Oh, I did, I did. Even if I never handled first-rate stuff.”

“I find this community here rather puzzling,” said Oddie, in confessional mode. “I expected to find a community of artists, kindred creative spirits to Byatt, and that's apparently its local reputation. But it's not, is it?”

“No-o-o.”

“What exactly brings you together, motivates you?”

Arnold Mellors pondered.

“Well, of course we've all been interested in art, in different ways. And when we discovered Ranulph's work we realized he was
the
great modern British artist, as far as we were concerned. When a cottage became vacant I was over the moon. It's a privilege to live near him—we all feel that: to watch him making art, whether on a lower level or, as now, the finest, most creative level.”

“Hmmm. You're saying it's a sort of residential cheer group, a very superior fan club.”

Mellors's face expressed distaste.

“All right: mock us. I'd prefer to say we are a circle of appreciation.”

But Oddie felt that neither of them had really got to the heart of the matter.

 • • • 

“What was I doing last weekend?” asked Jenny Birdsell. “Oh, gracious! If you asked me what I was doing yesterday
I probably couldn't give you a clear statement. But last weekend! Impossible! Do you remember, Mary Ann?”

“I wasn't here,” said Mary Ann, looking up from a book with bright pictures of men in white bathrobes in the Holy Land. “I was working in the bookshop in the morning and bearing witness in Keighley market in the afternoon.”

“Oh, dear, I suppose you
would
have been.” She shot her a look, uncaught by her daughter, that was baleful to the point of dislike. “I
wish
you would do the normal things that other girls do—you know, like bringing home boyfriends instead of elderly men in peaked caps who bang drums and hand out hymn sheets. Oh, well—where was I?”

“Saturday,” prompted Oddie. “Let's start with last Saturday.”

“If only I
could
. I just can't remember. Unless I visited old Mrs. Young in Stanbury. In fact, I think I probably did.”

“My mother tends people's bodies,” said her daughter in her clear, fresh voice. “Bodies are within her scope, souls way outside it.”

“I don't
tend
them. It's so long since I was a nurse I'm way out of date with medicines and techniques. But I do know enough to be able to bring them a bit of ease and comfort, and, of course, some of them never get a visitor from one week to the next. Do away with me if I ever get to that stage!”

“When was this visit? Morning or afternoon?”

“Oh, afternoon, I should think.”

“And what did you do for the rest of the day?”

“Pottered in the garden, I would imagine. Or pottered in the kitchen and around the house.”

“You noticed nothing unusual around here either then, or when you went to and from Stanbury?”