Darkmans (38 page)

‘Oh yes it is,’ she said.

‘Where is this…uh…?’ Gaffar interrupted them, putting an anxious hand to his neck.

‘The scarf? It’s here. On the floor. With your jacket. I took them both off to check your vital signs,’ Beede said. He reached down and retrieved them.

‘Kane’s mother knitted him this scarf,’ he said, proffering it, tenderly. ‘It’d be a shame to lose it.’

‘Sure.’

Gaffar took the scarf and began rewinding it back around his neck.

‘You should probably cancel the ambulance,’ Beede told Susan Pope. ‘He seems fine – quite back to his normal self.’

‘Really?’

‘Well as normal as he ever
gets
,’ Beede averred.

‘I am good,’ Gaffar confirmed.
‘I love passing out. When you come to it’s like starting afresh. Everything feels clean and new.’

‘He loves passing out,’ Beede interpreted, ‘he’s very accustomed to it. He’s a boxer, by trade.’

‘
Great
boxer,’ Gaffar stressed. ‘Champ.’

Susan Pope still didn’t seem entirely convinced that he was all right.

‘It was just the shock,’ Beede said. ‘He has this morbid fear of salad…’

‘A morbid fear of
salad
?’ Susan Pope echoed, taking out her phone.

‘I have a ten-year-old at home who suffers from the exact-same complaint.’

‘I’ll wheel him to the canteen, if I may,’ Beede said, ‘and buy him a cup of sweet tea.’

‘Good idea…’

Susan Pope stood up. She staggered slightly. ‘My poor knees,’ she sighed.

‘Lovely knees,’ Gaffar said, inspecting them.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, tutting, ‘his eyesight’s obviously still not quite up to scratch.’

‘His eyesight’s fine,’ Beede insisted.

Her cheeks pinkened.

‘I could always get a member of staff to ring through your shopping for you,’ she twinkled, ‘if that’ll help.’

‘That’d be great,’ Beede said.

Gaffar started to push himself up.

‘Sit
down
, Gaffar,’ they chorused.

It wasn’t so much a barn as a huge, converted storage space; a labyrinth of mysterious, dimly lit, air-conditioned rooms crammed with fascinating objects (mostly crated, or – in the case of some of the larger pieces – free-standing and fastidiously preserved in reams of brown paper and sheets of opaque plastic).

The rooms were connected by a warren of stark corridors with white walls and highly polished concrete floors, punctuated – at regular intervals – by heavy, metal, aircraft-carrier-style doors.

Kane felt like he’d inadvertently trespassed into the private back rooms of a museum, or a large art gallery, or an exclusive European auction house. Every detail – or lack of detail – oozed class;
refinement
; exuded that sense of effortless pared-downness which was – in Kane’s not especially extensive experience – the exclusive prerogative of the extremely well-heeled.

‘This place is deceptive,’ he said, ‘outside it seems ancient – kind of ramshackle – but inside it’s fantastic…’

‘You think so?’ she shrugged. ‘There was virtually nothing on this site when Peter first arrived, just the foundations of the old cottage. He built it all up pretty much from scratch – take a look…’

She pointed to a montage of photographs and architectural plans on a nearby wall. Kane walked over to inspect them. ‘You weren’t kidding,’ he marvelled. ‘It was literally just a field with some old rubble in one corner…’

‘That’s the site of the old cottage there…’ she pointed. ‘See? Those were the foundations. It was just a skeleton, a shell…If you look over here you can see a
very
rare photograph of how the farm once was…’

Kane gazed at a tiny, blurred picture of the original cottage and its surrounding outbuildings.

‘Wow. It’s pretty much identical.’

‘Yup. It was a monumental project. A real challenge. Definitely a labour of love…’

‘But why bother?’ Kane wondered. ‘Why not just build something new?’

‘Where would’ve been the challenge in that?’ she demanded.

Kane snorted, ‘
God.
It’s no wonder he and Beede have so much in common. They’re both men obsessed…’

He moved further along the wall to a slightly more recent image of a group of builders applying the last few tiles to the cottage’s roof. One was lounging against the chimney, grinning widely, toasting the photographer with a bottle of champagne.

‘Is that Peter?’ he asked, pointing.

‘No,’ she smiled, reaching out a gloved hand and gently plucking a stray goose feather from the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Let’s head off, shall we? I won’t put the lights on,’ she continued, moving swiftly ahead of him, ‘it’s so wasteful if we’re just passing through, don’t you think?’

Kane drew away from the photograph and followed her, directed through the surrounding gloom by the sound of her voice and her jauntily bobbing ponytail.

‘They’re Russian Arsamas, in case you’re interested,’ she volunteered, waving the feather at him over her shoulder.

‘Pardon?’

He was momentarily distracted by the sudden shudder of his phone.

‘The geese. They’re an especially ferocious breed, and terribly rare. Their bills are pink – you’ll’ve noticed – not orange, like the descendants of the western greylag…‘

She pulled open a heavy door, with a grunt. He reached out to help her.

‘Fire door,’ she puffed, allowing him to take the weight of it, then ducking through and walking on.

‘They were raised as fighters,’ she continued. ‘They had this infamous Goose Pit in St Petersburg where they fought them as late as the turn of the last century. On the up-side they’re very hardy – will withstand virtually anything the British climate can throw at them – but on the down: they’re bad layers and the meat’s abysmal. Gamey. Very tough.’

‘So what’s the point in keeping them?’ Kane asked.

‘What’s the point?’ she echoed, pausing and turning. He paused too, gazing down at her. She was small, exquisitely well-preserved and hard as a ball-bearing.

‘What an
absurd
question,’ she said, peering up at him, pityingly, still
casually twirling the feather in her free hand. He could smell cigar smoke on her skin and in her hair.

He liked her. There was something…

What was it?

Mordant?

Ballsy?

Wicked?

‘We used to worship geese,’ she darted on. ‘The
English
, I mean. Apparently when Caesar visited the island in 55 BC the primitive Celts kept huge flocks of them which were held sacred and never eaten. Geese’ve had this long and incredibly rich relationship with man. After the second ice age – when we evolved from nomadic hunters into farmers and cultivators – the goose was absolutely pivotal to the success of that transition; a kind of
civilising
force…’

They arrived at the base of a wide, oak staircase. Kane’s phone shuddered, once again, inside his pocket.

‘I had this
appallingly
handsome Russian lover in the sixties,’ she confessed, taking the first step, ‘a stone mason. Astonishingly talented but a revolting drunk. The Arsamas were his, originally – and a perfect symbol of the kind of relationship we had…’

She chuckled. ‘
You
know; fierce. Uncompromising. Passionate…’

She glanced over her shoulder at him, raising a single, sardonic, charcoal brow.

‘The birds living here today are their descendants,’ she continued, her breath quickening slightly with the exertion of the climb. ‘I mean we always kept geese when I was a child – just your classic English whites and greys…My mother was raised in Essex and one of her favourite stories was of how she used to watch huge flocks of them being driven down from Norfolk to Smithfield Market. Over 8,000 birds at any one time. A journey of over 80 miles. She said they would dip the birds’ feet in tar to help preserve them.’

Kane blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Tar,’ she repeated, ‘they dipped their feet in it.’

As she spoke she led Kane into a beautiful, high-ceilinged studio, awash with natural light.

He winced – struggling, at first, to adjust to the sudden brightness –
then gazed around him, awed. It was a massive room; like a glass-ceilinged chapel, a smart Docklands penthouse, and an Old Curiosity Shop, all rolled into one.

‘What’s that smell?’ he asked.

‘Wax and honey. I’m re-canvassing a painting.’

She pointed to a large, aluminium table in the corner of the room.

‘It’s a hot bench,’ she explained.

Kane walked over and gazed down at it. There was a lead running from the table to a plug in the wall.

‘And this table heats up?’

He tentatively touched it. It felt cool.

‘The bench? Yes.’

His phone began shuddering. Peta tucked the feather into a large vase full of feathers which was standing on an old dresser nearby, then joined him at the aluminium bench, grabbed hold of a small pair of tweezers and carefully eased off a tiny fragment of the ancient canvas.

‘There,’ she said, holding it aloft.

He squinted through his fringe at it. ‘Is that the actual painting, then?’

‘The canvas
behind
the painting. Yes.’

‘Come again?’

‘These tiny pieces of fabric are the dead canvas. The canvas was disintegrating behind the paint – rotting away – and when that happens the paint begins to peel and fall. The work is lost. So we preserve the paint by suspending it in a mixture of warm honey and beeswax, then gradually pick off all the dead threads. It’s an incredibly laborious, time-consuming process.’

Kane gazed down at the painting, quite fascinated.

‘Is this what you do for a living?’

‘As a living? God no. It’s just a tiny part of what I do.’

He glanced around him, frowning. ‘And does Peter work here too?’

‘Peter?’

She seemed momentarily thrown off-kilter by this question. ‘But of course. That goes without saying. Everything here belongs to Peter. It’s Peter’s bench, Peter’s barn…’

‘Peter must be loaded.’

‘
Stinking.
’ She shrugged. ‘Although it’s never been about the money with him. It’s always been about the work. He insists that his prices
are astronomical only because we live in a culture where an object’s price and its inherent
value
are considered virtually one and the same thing.’

As she was speaking Kane’s roving eye alighted on a large, wooden structure over to his left.

‘Stocks,’ he exclaimed, walking across to them. He reached out a hand to caress the ancient wood. It felt wonderful to the touch: rough, thicky-grained, almost primitive.

‘It’s a pillory,’ she corrected him. ‘Stocks are the ground-level version which they fastened around the ankles. The pillory constrains the arms and the head.’

‘Is it still functional?’

‘Absolutely.’

She strolled over to the pillory, reached up and opened one side of it. ‘Try it,’ she said, ‘these holes are for your wrists, and this…’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s for the neck.’

He carefully slotted himself in. She gently closed the top half around him.

‘It’s a tight fit,’ he said, feeling a strain in his shoulders and a slight constriction in his throat. He started as he heard some kind of bolt being shot.

‘People were considerably smaller then, remember,’ she said, stepping back to appraise him. He tried to peer up at her through his fringe, but the wood fell too closely around his flesh for any kind of ease of movement.

She returned to the hot bench, bent over it again, and was soon deeply engrossed.

‘Is it very old?’ he asked, rocking his body back and forth. The structure was heavy. It barely shifted. His phone, meanwhile, shuddered silently in his pocket.

‘Each individual element of the whole is totally legitimate,’ she answered.

‘How d’you mean?’ he frowned. ‘Is it a replica?’

‘No. It’s an original. Peter made it. He made two. This was the first, but he wasn’t entirely happy with it.’

‘Why’d he make it?’ he asked.

‘He made it for a museum of medieval life in Durham.’

‘And what’s wrong with it?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Pardon?’

He was concentrating on his phone. The vibration (she was right, he thought. I
am
addicted to it).

‘You tell me,’ she repeated.

‘What’s wrong?
Uh…
I wouldn’t have a clue.’

He tried to inspect the structure, but it hurt to twist his head around.

‘Your father couldn’t guess either,’ she observed, ‘when I locked him in there.’

‘Beede?’

Kane’s competitive instincts were immediately activated. He struggled to examine the pillory again.

‘Is it the metalwork?’

He didn’t know why he thought so. He just did.

‘Good theory.’

‘The joinery. There’s something…’

But what?

‘…slightly
wrong.
’

‘You’re close…’ She sounded impressed. ‘They didn’t do much mining in the late medieval period. Most of their metalwork was recycled – they’d simply smelt it down and re-use it. So there was a very specific kind of
finish
…’

‘Hang on a second,’ he interrupted her (having finally digested the full implications of what she’d just said). ‘You don’t mean to tell me you put
Beede
in the pillory?’

‘But of course I did,’ she smiled.

Kane blew a strand of hair from his eye. ‘Seriously?’

‘Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.’

She was still bending over the hot bench, working, methodically.

Kane pondered the idea of Beede in the pillory a while. He was both amused and perplexed by this unlikely concept: I mean
Beede
– the
indomitable
Beede – disempowered; held at bay;
constrained
?

‘Fuck…’
he swore (he couldn’t help himself – the thought of it was simply so…so tantalising. So naughty. So
delicious
). ‘Didn’t he go nuts?’

‘Beede?’ She glanced up. ‘Go nuts? Don’t be ridiculous. He trained in the military. He was fine about it.’

‘How’d you get him in here?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Did you use force?’

‘
Force?
’ she seemed astonished by this question. ‘Against your father?’

‘How else?’

‘He climbed in himself. Voluntarily. The same way you just did.’

Pause

Kane cleared his throat. ‘Was he in here long?’

‘No. At least not by
ancient
standards…’ she shrugged, ‘four hours…Maybe five.’

‘Five
hours
?’

Kane was horrified.

‘I didn’t trust him,’ she explained, her voice tinged with regret, ‘not at first. I’m naturally suspicious – in my line of work I have to be. And he never actually
asked
to be released. He was too proud. And I never actually
said –
I mean not in so many words – that I wouldn’t release him. I just left him in there, as a kind of experiment, really, to see how things might pan out…‘

‘Your line of work…?’ Kane scowled, confused.

‘And much to his credit,’ she continued, ‘he bore it all very bravely, without complaint, which I thought at the time was wholly admirable.’

‘Your line of work…?’ Kane repeated. Then suddenly everything just fell into place. ‘Good
God
,’ he grinned, ‘you’re a
forger…
’

‘In all honesty,’ she confided, straightening her spine (with a slight wince), ‘that’s not a word I’ve ever particularly
warmed
to.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

She removed the cigar from behind her ear and rolled it, dreamily, between her fingers. ‘It just seems so…I don’t know…so
coarse
; so
limited
in its application, so
naive
, somehow…’

‘And what about Peter?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Does he feel the same way you do?’

‘Peter?’

She considered this question for a second and then nodded, emphatically. ‘
Exactly
the same, I’d say.’

‘
Ah…
’

Kane beamed at her. She smiled straight back at him. They were flirting with each other.

‘…It’s all finally coming together,’ he said.