Darkmans (39 page)

‘Is it really?’

She was searching the pockets of her overalls for a lighter.

‘Yes it is. Would you like to hear my little theory?’

‘Your little theory? Sure…’ She found her lighter. ‘Although…’ she held it, poised in her hand, thoughtfully ‘…perhaps it’d be more fun if we waited for Peter? I’m sure he’d be just fascinated in what you have to say…’

‘That’s a fine idea in principle,’ Kane conceded, ‘but it
could
be rather a long wait…’

She shrugged.

‘Or no wait at all,’ he countered.

She appraised him, steadily.

‘Just call it a gut instinct,’ he smiled.

She appraised his gut, at her leisure. ‘It’s a charming gut,’ she said finally, ‘if just a fraction
soft.
’

‘An infallible gut,’ Kane insisted, tightening it up.

‘So what’s this infallible gut of yours telling you?’

‘It’s telling me,’ he told her, ‘that there
is
no Peter.’

She gazed at him, blankly.

‘Peter’s just another forgery.’

‘Urgh…’
she shuddered. ‘That
awful
word again.’

‘Sorry,’ he apologised.

She popped the cigar between her lips, struck her lighter, leaned into the flame and puffed.

‘In actual fact,’ he continued, ‘the
spelling’s
a bit of a giveaway…Petaborough Reproductions. Peta, I believe, is the feminine form of the name…’

‘I’ve often found that my most successful lies,’ she finally stopped puffing, removed the cigar from her mouth and inspected the burning tip, ‘
you
know…those outrageous untruths, those
real
hum-dingers…generally benefit from the addition of the odd loose screw. If all the facts add up, if everything feels too neat and pat, if all the elements fall too readily into place, then you automatically arouse suspicion, because life simply isn’t
like
that.’ Kane was frowning.

‘Put it this way,’ she continued, ‘if the truth was a woman she’d
be a whore. She’d be an extremely supple, highly sinuous, ridiculously wanton
slut.
’

‘Let me get this straight…’ Kane suddenly found himself panting slightly as he spoke (the former strain in his back was now a burning ache, his arms were cramping, his neck felt like a blade of grass endeavouring to support a bowling ball) ‘…Peta
Borough
? Does that make Borough your maiden name?’

She nodded, inhaling on the cigar, holding the smoke in her lungs, then exhaling, with a small cough.

‘And you don’t mind at all?’ he wondered.

‘
Mind?
Mind what?’

‘Being named after one of Britain’s most pedestrian towns.’

‘Peterborough’s a city,’ she corrected him, pedantically.

‘Never cared enough to find out,’ he admitted.

‘Well shame on you. It’s a wonderful place. Its transport links are incomparable.’

‘But why, I wonder,’ he demanded, heading off on a complete tangent, ‘did J.P. – your own
brother
– misspell your name on the business card Beede had?’

‘And it has a fascinating history…’ she maintained.

‘Oh
fuck
,’ he snorted, ‘J.P.
isn’t
your brother…’

She gazed up at the glass ceiling, piously. ‘And then there’s the cathedral,’ she sighed. ‘If ever you get the opportunity…’

‘
Is
J.P. dead? Do you even
have
a brother?’

She just smirked. ‘A lovely market. Several really wonderful restaurants…’

Kane was silent for a while. His phone vibrated. He tried to ignore it. A million tiny beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. She inspected the cigar again, fondly. ‘Don’t you think it
sweet
, though,’ she enquired, ‘the two of you – father and son, purportedly so very
different
– being immediately attracted to the exact-same object?’

‘I was attracted to the table first,’ he insisted.

‘The hot bench,’ she corrected him.

He paused, speculatively. ‘Actually, no. That’s not entirely true. I was attracted to
you
first.’

She snorted, jovially.

‘You don’t believe me?’

He peered up at her again, with an intense amount of effort.

‘I think
you
believe you,’ she smiled, ‘and that’s what really counts.’

‘You think I’m full of shit?’

‘Full to capacity.’

‘And how about Beede?’

His head sank down again.

‘Beede? Good
God
, no. The most straightforward man I ever met.’

‘Oh come
on…
’ he scoffed.

‘His
life
, on the other hand,’ she freely conceded, ‘is extremely complicated.’

‘Do you know Beede at
all
?’ he wondered.

‘I know him well enough.’

‘Do you
like
him?’

‘Like him?
Like
Beede?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m utterly besotted.’

Kane’s head jerked up –

Ow

He winced.

‘You seem shocked,’ she said.

‘Not shocked, no…’

‘Then what?’

‘Perhaps just a touch disappointed,’ he conceded.

‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘Because you’re gorgeous.’

‘And?’

‘And he’s such a fool.’

‘But such a
genuine
fool, don’t you think?’

Silence

‘So does Beede know?’

‘Know what?’

‘How you feel.’

She deliberated over this question for a second. ‘Probably.’

‘But you haven’t actually told him?’

She glanced up, frowning. ‘Why should I?’

‘Why
shouldn’t
you?’

‘Because there wouldn’t be any point. My feelings aren’t reciprocated.’

‘How can you be sure? Beede can be pretty hard to read…’

‘Beede’s easy to read.’

Kane was quiet for a while.

‘I
was
attracted to you,’ he murmured, almost sullen, now.

‘So what do
you
do?’ she cheerfully ignored him.

‘For a living? Didn’t Beede already fill you in?’

‘Why would he?’ she snorted. ‘Beede never tells me anything…’

She looked around for an ashtray but couldn’t find one, so she walked over to Kane, pulled open his jacket pocket and tapped her ash into it. ‘Not so much as a peep. In fact he was so evasive at first, so
secretive
, that I was actually obliged to go to ridiculous lengths to satisfy my curiosity.’

‘But I thought you just said…’

Kane frowned, confused.

‘I said that Beede was straightforward, not that he was willing to wear his heart on his sleeve.’

‘So what did you do?’ Kane wondered.

‘How d’you mean?’

‘To satisfy your curiosity?’

‘I hired a detective.’

‘You did
what
?’

Kane’s head jerked up again.

‘I hired a private detective. But he wasn’t terribly good. And everything got ridiculously complicated. But – please God – let’s not get dragged into all of
that…
’

She idly pushed his hair aside and stared into his face with her green eyes.

‘So what did you find out?’ he asked, struggling to meet her gaze. She dropped his fringe, with a sigh, and returned to the hot bench. ‘Nothing, really. Only as much as I’ve told you. That he was married, then divorced. That his ex-wife was ill. That he had a son who made his living from selling drugs…’

‘I manage pain,’ Kane interrupted her, haughtily, ‘if you must know.’

She lounged against the bench, grinning. ‘You consider it a
calling
?’

‘Yes. I eliminate pain. I bring people relief when they can’t find it elsewhere.’

Peta stopped smiling. ‘Is this because of what happened to your mother?’

‘No,’ he snapped, ‘it’s because of what happened to me.
My
experience.’

‘I see.’

‘And my experience is that there’s simply no need for it.’

‘No need for what?
Pain?
You really believe that?’

‘Of course. Why celebrate pain when you can celebrate pleasure?’

‘Because of J.C., I suppose,’ she answered, boredly.

‘Who?’

‘Jesus Christ. The crucifixion. We strive to be better people because we believe – or we’re taught to believe, at least – that Christ suffered to deliver us from sin. And when
we
suffer – like Christ – we are brought closer to God, or if not God, then beauty. Without pain – the theory goes – we lose the ability to experience true ecstasy…’

‘Sin?
Suffering?
’

Kane was having none of it.

‘Too old-fashioned for you, eh?’

Kane gave this question some consideration. ‘I mean it’s not that I don’t
like
antiques…’

‘You like
me
,’ she smiled, ‘and I’m antique.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what’s
your
moral vocabulary consist of, then?’ she wondered. ‘I mean what are its parameters?’

‘Is that a good cigar?’ He ignored her question. He couldn’t answer her question. And it seemed pointless, anyway.

‘Why?’

‘It smells good,’ he grunted.

‘It’s very
pleasurable
, certainly,’ she teased him. ‘Would you like a puff?’

‘I’d love one.’

Peta pulled off a glove and strolled over to him again. Kane tried to lift his head at her approach, but he could not.

‘Poor boy,’ she said, carefully sweeping his fringe from his eyes, then tightening her fingers around it and yanking his head up by his hair.

He grimaced. His face was glowing. His vision was bleary. He blinked, repeatedly. She made as if to proffer him the cigar, but kept it too far away from his lips for actual contact.

‘Know about cigars, do we?’ she teased him as his lips kissed thin air.

‘A little,’ he demurred, humiliated.

And then, before he’d even finished speaking, she suddenly pushed the cigar into his mouth. It hit his teeth. He tightened them around it. He bit into it. He took a deep puff. It tasted wonderful.

‘Is that good?’ she whispered softly, touching her nose to his ear. ‘Fantastic,’ he said, still holding on to it, still inhaling, his head spinning (five hours? How the hell’d he
do
it?).

‘Really?’

A droplet of sweat trickled down from his hairline. She stopped it with her finger.

‘Yes.
Really
,’ he croaked. ‘Is it Cuban?’

He was mortified to discover himself developing an erection.

‘Nope,’ she dried her finger, off-handedly, on the front of his t-shirt, then snatched the cigar back and released his hair. His head dropped, sharply. ‘It’s from the local
Spar
, you ignorant
goon
,’ she snorted, shoving it back into her mouth and turning away from him, contemptuously, ‘£1.99, for a pack of four.’

She stalked – quietly, like a cat – across the oak floor and back over to the hot bench where she grabbed a hold of her glove. She gazed at him, ruminatively, as she pulled it back on. ‘You do know you’re not locked in there?’ she said.

Kane didn’t respond. He remained exactly as he was.

‘You’re not locked in there,’ she repeated. ‘You do
know
that?’

Still nothing. No reaction.

She shrugged, removed the cigar from her mouth, and wandered off in search of an ashtray. She found a blue and white striped saucer propped up on the draining-board in the kitchen area. She extinguished the cigar on it and then tipped the stub into the rubbish bin.

‘I only smoke the damn things,’ she confided, ‘to spur myself into giving up.’

She sighed. ‘Although it’s disturbing how the mind – the
taste
– will so readily adapt itself, if needs must, from something extremely good to something so much worse…’

As she spoke Kane lifted his arms, tentatively. He felt the top half of the pillory shift. He raised them again, this time more determinedly. The pillory slowly creaked open, like a nutcracker.

And then, just as he thought he might’ve
actually
got away with it…‘Impressive hard-on, coincidentally,’ she muttered.

Gaffar took five sugars with his tea.

‘Will you be taking any
tea
with your sugar?’ Beede asked, looking on, appalled, as he tipped the sachets in, one after the other.

‘I think this…uh…this pretty
manager
is hot for you,’ Gaffar crooned, delightedly.

‘Pardon?’

‘Like father like son, eh?’

‘How d’you mean?’

Beede seemed affronted.

‘You like to play the angry, old bull, but there’s definitely a touch of the randy, old goat in there somewhere…’

‘So we definitely need to get to the bottom of this,’ Beede interrupted him, carefully stirring his mug of oxtail soup.

‘Huh?’

‘This problem you seem to have with salad.’

‘
Urgh…
’ Gaffar waved his hand, dismissively.

‘How long’s it been going on?’

Gaffar took a small sip of his tea, then smiled, vacuously.

‘And don’t think for one moment that I’m falling for that ludicrous “simple Turk” act,’ Beede snapped.

‘Is no big deal,’ Gaffar waved his hand again.

‘You don’t have any idea as to what’s at the root of it?’

Gaffar shook his head.

‘No clues at all?’

He shrugged.

‘Well when did it all
start
? Do you remember?’

Gaffar frowned. ‘Always,’ he said, ‘since boy. But not so…’

He grimaced.

‘Not so severe? Not so bad? It’s grown worse? Is that it?’

Gaffar nodded.
‘Before it was simply…uh…a slight aversion…’

‘Before what?’

A woman with a pram hurried past them and inadvertently swept
Gaffar’s collection of sugar wrappers on to the floor. He reached down to retrieve them.

‘So what did your parents make of it?’ Beede asked, once the Kurd had straightened back up again.

Gaffar stared at him, blankly.

‘Your mother? Your father?’

As he uttered the word ‘father’, Beede observed Gaffar flinching slightly.

‘Your father?’
he persisted.
‘Does he get leaf afraid sometimes same like what you do?’

‘Susa Pope…’ Gaffar mused, gazing distractedly over Beede’s shoulder.

‘You get this lady number?’

‘Pardon?’

‘For phone?’

He mimed ‘phone’.

‘Susan
Pope
?’

‘Sexy lady manager.’

Gaffar made a suggestive clicking sound with his tongue.

‘Don’t you
like
talking about your father, Gaffar?’

Beede went straight for the jugular.

Gaffar shrugged. ‘My father he is long time…uh…’ he pondered over the right word ‘…dead.’

‘Oh.
Right.
I see. And your mother?’

‘Tough as a pair of old boots,’
he smiled fondly,
‘God preserve her.’

‘So what age were you when he died?’

Gaffar shifted in his chair and peered under the table again, as if one of the wrappers might’ve secretly eluded him.

‘Were you very young?’

‘Sure. Young. He was hero,’ Gaffar informed him haughtily.
‘He died in the service of his country.’

‘Ah,
now
I get you…’ Beede finally caught on. ‘He was a soldier with the PKK?’

Gaffar looked horrified.
‘A terrorist? Never! He was a proud Turkish citizen. He died on guard service in Silopi. He worked for the local Kurdish lord. He stepped on a landmine. I was three years old. My mother was pregnant with my brother. When I saw the body there were no legs left, no groin. They’d stuffed a spare pair of trousers with straw to protect our feelings. I saw it poking out at the ankles and at the waist…’
he shrugged.
‘That’s all I really remember.’

‘This was in Silopi?’ Beede asked. ‘Is that where your family hail from, originally?’

‘No. I was
bor
Silopi. My mother family from Marlin. My father…’

He shrugged, uneasily.

‘Where?’

‘Sinjar.’

‘Sinjar? That sounds familiar…
Sinjar…
’

Beede considered it for a moment. ‘Is Sinjar actually
in
Turkey?’

‘Sure…’ Gaffar nodded, unconvincingly.

Beede frowned. Gaffar took off his jacket. He hung it over the back of his chair. He seemed ill at ease.

‘Nice jacket,’ Beede said.

‘New
leather
,’ Gaffar grinned, half-turning and stroking the hide, patently relieved at the change of subject.

‘Did Kane buy it for you?’

‘Kane? No. Is Mrs Broad.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Kelly mother. Dina. Mrs Dina Broad.’

Beede looked confused. ‘Dina? Dina
Broad
?
She
bought you a jacket?’

‘Sure.’

Gaffar seemed completely unfazed by the idea.

‘Dina Broad? But why on earth would she do that?’

‘We go for shop. We two. She buy.’

He shrugged.

‘She took you out
shopping
? Dina
Broad
?’

‘Sure. Whas problem? We go. Taxi. Shop-shop. Is my idea. Shop for Dina. Shop for Gaffar.’

‘And this is in exchange for…?’

‘Pard me?’

‘For drugs, perchance?’

‘Drugs?!’

Gaffar leaned back in his chair, surprised. ‘For what is this?’ he asked, almost indignant. ‘For what is all this drugs-drugs?
You’re a man obsessed!
You…Kelly Broad…
You’re worse than each other!
’

‘Then what else?’ Beede demanded.

Gaffar scowled. ‘What
else
? I walk dog. I do hoover. Massage. Even just little-bit chit-chat. Is good. Is enough.’

‘You mean you’re working as a kind of…’ Beede frowned, ‘
gigolo
cum…’ he paused ‘…cum
au pair
?’

‘I work for Kane,’ Gaffar explained irritably. ‘This Kane client. He want for client being
happy.
He send Gaffar. Gaffar is
bring
happy…’

Pause

‘…Without all this
drugs
you so crazy about.’

‘Did you hang a bell on the cat?’ Beede suddenly asked.

‘Pard?’

‘The cat. The Siamese. Did you hang a bell on him?’

‘Bell?’

‘Ding! Ding! Bell. On a collar. Around his neck.’

‘Bell?’

‘Yes.’

Beede felt his shoulder tensing up again. He put a hand to it.

‘No. No bell.’

‘Oh.’

‘What for I hang “bel”?’ Gaffar scoffed.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Did
you
hang bell?’

‘Of course not. If
I’d
hung bell…
the
bell – then I wouldn’t be asking
you
about it, would I?’

‘Okay.’

Gaffar scratched his head and then looked away, as if embarrassed on Beede’s behalf –

Bell?!

Beede took a sip of his soup. A member of staff approached them clutching a carrier. ‘I think this is everything,’ she said. ‘We took the precaution of wrapping up the greens in a double bag…’

‘Great. That was very kind. Thank you.’

Beede took the carrier from her. She showed him the till receipt.

‘Right. Of
course
,’ he muttered. ‘Do you have any cash, Gaffar?’

Beede peered over at the Kurd. Gaffar was engrossed in checking the texts on his new mobile phone.

‘Gaffar?’

Gaffar glanced up. ‘Cash? Sure.’

He delved into the pocket of his new, leather jacket, withdrew an indecently fat wad of mulberry-coloured notes, licked his thumb and peeled one off.

‘Lid…Rug…Drugs…
Bell…
’ he murmured, shaking his head as he passed it over.
‘You need to get out more, old fella.’

‘So who’s it by?’

As soon as he’d finished eating he’d been drawn back to the painting.

‘That’s the million dollar question. Medieval artists rarely – if ever – put a signature to their work. It’s meant to be from the Cologne School…’

She was tidying away the remains of a basic lunch they’d just shared (water biscuits, blue Brie, cherry tomatoes and a jar of huge, home-made pickled onions, bobbing around like apples in a rich and luxuriant, dark malt vinegar).

‘German?’

‘Yes. Although obviously Germany – as we know it now – didn’t actually exist back then…’

‘Obviously,’ Kane parroted.

‘I’m hoping it’s a Stephan Lochner,’ she continued. ‘He was a cut above most of his contemporaries – very heavily influenced by the Flemish painters of the time…’

‘Which time?’

‘1430, 1440. He died of the plague on Christmas Day, 1451.’

She went over to her desk and opened up a large scrapbook.

‘Lochner is best known for his
Adoration of the Magi
which takes pride of place in the cathedral in Cologne…’

She turned the pages of the book until she reached a fine, colour reproduction of the painting in question, surrounded by a plethora of comments and observations written in a dark, blue ink.

‘Come and look.’

Kane strolled over. It was a beautiful painting; a triptych. In the middle panel three wise men made offerings to the baby Christ.

‘This is Saint Gereon,’ she pointed to one of the side panels, ‘and this is Saint Ursula…’ she pointed to the other. ‘They’ve augmented The Adoration with them because the two saints have a special relevance to Cologne. They were both martyred there.’

‘Do you like it?’ Kane wondered, detecting an element of fastidiousness in her tone.

‘But of course,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s magnificent, don’t you think? Finely observed, meticulously finished. A masterpiece of its time – of any time – although not, I’ll admit, what you might call the world’s most “emotionally involving” work of art.’

Kane didn’t see fit to comment.

She turned the page over.

‘What’s that?’

He pointed.

‘That’s a reproduction of
The Paradise Garden
by the Master of Frankfurt. He’s another contender, another candidate on my shortlist. He would’ve been one of Lochner’s contemporaries…’

Kane drew in closer. It was an exquisite little piece. A fairytale-style walled garden containing eight quaint figures. The Madonna (although she looked more like a princess than a religious figure) sat in the centre of the composition reading a book. Around her a group of servants and a child (he presumed the baby Christ) entertained themselves with a series of innocent (if somewhat mundane-seeming) pastimes.

‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ she said.

He shrugged.

‘Although these works are never as straightforward as they look. In medieval art the messages are all
encoded…
’

He glanced up, suddenly intrigued. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well each figure, each colour, each bird and plant resonates at a symbolic level as well as at a physical one. An important symptom of what I like to call the “Medieval Disease” was that everything generally represented something else. People weren’t encouraged to conceptualise, to question, to range freely. They were boxed in by Christian doctrine. They couldn’t think in abstract forms. Everything was self-referential. It was an intensely restrictive system of thought…’

‘Give me an example,’ Kane demanded.

‘The whole notion of “a garden”, for starters. Medieval gardens would generally be divided into an inner and an outer area. This is an inner garden. You can see the walls which surround it. An inner garden is a highly formalised space, full of rules and elaborate structures. The outer garden represents “the untamed”: the wild, the pagan, the uncontrolled, the fertile…The inner garden is based around the mead…’

‘The mead? Isn’t that a kind of drink?’

‘No. Same word, different meaning. The mead you’re thinking of is a beverage of fermented honey and water. This kind of mead is a lawn. In medieval times the lawn was planted with wildflowers because scent was incredibly important to them – here we see the violet, which is quite prominent. The violet represents humility – more specifically the humility of the virgin. She’s referred to again in the roses in the borders. The red rose…’

She pointed to the rose. Kane nodded.

‘That represents divine love. Initially Venus, and then, with the advent of Christianity, Mary. The purple or blue of the iris is traditionally a royal colour…’

‘Royal Blue…’ Kane interrupted.

‘Exactly. And the Royal Blue represents the Holy Virgin as the Queen of Heaven. The columbine has petals which are shaped – to the medieval mind, at least – like a dove…’ She sketched the approximate shape, in the air, with her hands. ‘For that reason the columbine was taken to symbolise the Holy Ghost. Carnations – which were relative latecomers to Europe – represent the
in
carnation…’

‘But what’s the actual point in all of this?’ Kane wondered, apparently nonplussed.

‘The point? The point is to instil everyday objects with a devotional meaning. To underpin the commonplace with a profound sense of the holy. If God created the earth then the earth and everything in it must function simply as an extended homily to Him and His Work.’

‘How
turgid
,’ Kane drawled.

‘No more turgid, I suppose,’ she responded (half-smiling at his ready use of this unexpected word), ‘than some of the apparently complex yet equally meaningless ramifications of modernity.’

He frowned at her. ‘Such as?’

‘
Uh…
’ she gave this question a moment’s consideration. ‘Well how about your trainers, for starters?’

‘My trainers?’ Kane looked down at his feet, bemused. ‘What’s so complex about my trainers? They’re just a basic pair of functional shoes…’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she scoffed. ‘When you chose that particular make, that particular design, it was to send out a message.
Many
messages, in fact. But like the flowers in the border here that message is heavily encoded. Only a very specific kind of person will understand the exact nature of the message you’re relaying. To me – for example – they’re just a rather ungainly pair of white, rubber excrescences, but to someone who speaks the sophisticated dialect of Nike they represent a million different aspirational preferences. These artists…’ she patted the scrapbook, fondly, ‘speak the language of devotion. You speak the language of Capitalism. They’re both equally meaningful on the one level, and both equally meaning
less
on another.’