Paint. The art of scam. (15 page)

‘But they're
asleep Sarge.’

‘Well wake 'em up
Ricketts. Wake 'em up!’

Shoal shook his
head impatiently and turned to the medic who'd been tending Mr. Arnold.

‘How is he?’

‘Not good, got a dicky
heart by the looks of it.’ said the medic as he stood up and tapped one of the
stretcher bearers on the shoulder. ‘OK, take him away. Right, let's have a look
at these.’

Most of the
clerks were semiconscious by now and were groaning and disorientated. The medic
looked around the room and picked out one of the women for a closer inspection.
Gently holding his hand on her head, he stared into the woman's cloudy eyes;
feeling for her pulse on her wrist at the same time.

‘Some sort of
tranquilliser, probably a barbiturate or something, they'll be OK in a few
hours.’

‘So they were
drugged,’ said Shoal proudly, as if his suspicions had been confirmed.

‘No flies on you
are there Shoal,’ said the medic, smiling sarcastically.

The disrespect
the medic was showing was clearly based on a long and troubled acquaintance;
but Shoal was unable come up with a spontaneous return. His fellow officers
smiled to themselves as they continued shaking the clerks. Shoal, annoyed,
summoned up an attempt at authority and briskly went over to the woman the
medic was checking out.

‘Right. What
happened then miss?’

She looked up to
him and smiled angelically.

‘Leave her alone Shoal,
for Pete's sake!’ said the medic.

Shoal shook his
head dismissively.

‘Right you lot,
check everything for clues, witnesses, anything, and find out how the drugs
were administered!’ said Shoal addressing everybody in the room. He turned back
to the medic. ‘And you. Is there a doctor coming to look at this lot?’

The medic nodded
and went on to another woman. Shoal turned to Ricketts.

‘Right, as soon
as you get clearance I want a statement from all of these people!’

Ricketts nodded
as he concentrated on his task with the toupee. Shoal stormed out of the
office.

As Shoal walked
down the corridor methodically scanning the floor with his eyes, he stopped and
sniffed the air. Reaching the front door, he looked down, picked up some small
fragments of glass that lay in the residue of the now evaporated perfume and
inspected them closely.

Seymour toyed
with the TV remote control as he sat slumped in the old armchair, his index
finger teasing the on/off button. He needed something, anything to occupy him
for an hour or so to disperse the strange mood he was in. He was having a bad
day and there were no signs of it getting better. His easel stood in the middle
of the room, armed with a blank canvass: waiting.

Experience had
shown Seymour that his present state of mind was not convivial to creation and
leant more to destruction: he would undoubtedly slip deeper into depression if
he attempted to work. He had smoked just one hash joint, that's all, just
before he had gone to DIYland. Time for another one maybe. Might settle things
down a bit. The washing-up could wait, as could the broken glass in the doorway,
no, he needed something. He went over to the kitchen area, made his second mug
of high octane coffee, rolled a joint, lit it and sat back in the old armchair.
It felt warm and comforting as he sipped at the coffee and drew in deep drags
of sweet hashish. As he sat staring at the blank TV screen, the caffeine and
THC kicked in and began zipping through his veins. His brain began buzzing as
the next stage of his daily ritual started to form. Boredom.

Boredom was a
word Seymour felt sorry for. It was a wildly abused word that was used to
describe a negative state of wasteful time. Seymour called it a state of void,
a chance to think. Seymour enjoyed boredom. It was like sitting in outer space
to him. Life was always happening somewhere out there, but in the studio there
was a vacuum, and it was his alone. It was then that he had the freedom to do,
or not to do, whatever he wanted.

Seymour always
sat through boredom: he never felt tempted to break the spell by doing
something as that would defeat the object of being bored. Boredom was something
to be relished, embraced and felt: not avoided. It was an honour and a
privilege to be bored. He felt no shame, no frustration and no guilt at that
moment. Humans have lost the art of doing nothing at all and maybe the
repercussions of that loss are being felt in illusive ways as the human race
barges on relentlessly doing things and denying itself the opportunity to think
and philosophise about what it is actually doing and what the consequences are.

Seymour smiled at
his well used thought that he always brought up whenever the occasion arose.

Polly slipped
into his mind unexpectedly. He could smell her, all of her, not just the smell
of the wonderful perfumes she wore but the smell of her juice, her sweet sweat.
Suddenly a voice boomed out from the television trying to sell him garage
doors. It took a moment for him to realise that he was now sitting on the
remote control and as he reached under his bum to find it, the channels flashed
from one to the other. The sudden intrusion angered him. At last he pulled the
remote out and fired it at the TV. The picture and sound collapsed as if he'd
punched it. The sudden silence felt spooky and uncomfortable for a moment: the
buzz of his body pronounced. This was the feeling he loved. It was a shame that
he had to go through such a messy process to achieve it, but that was all part
of the journey to what others may refer to as boredom. He smiled, staring at
the blank TV, feeling a sense of glory.

Looking across
at his easel, he reflected on the connection of the two images: the TV and
canvas. The TV tells you what it thinks but you tell the canvas what you think.
The idea lingered in his mind for a while, gently wafting around with no
particular place to go. He often tried to intellectualise on thoughts that
accidentally bumped into him. It gave him the hope that he could enter into a
dialogue with his work for once and explain its meaning to others.
Unfortunately, his lack of training in the language of art meant that his
conceptual thoughts were unguided and conclusions as elusive as his desire to
bother. Instead of working with painful self-expression, he worked for beauty,
and, despite the ugly world he was forced to inhabit, his vision beyond reality
exuded in waves of creation, often spurred by panic; for fear of losing the
moments he cherished and boredom led him there.

Almost in a
trance he got up from the chair, went over to his rack of works in progress and
slid out a landscape he had been fiddling with for weeks.

After holding it
up in front of him at arms length, he took it over to the easel, removed the
blank one and placed it gently on the pegs. He stood there, staring it. It was
good, he knew that, Polly thought so too, but he always had the sneaking
suspicion that her judgement was clouded by her undying love for him.

Seymour declared
that the painting was finished and took it gently across the room to rest in
peace, leaning it against the wall next to The Vase Lady. His eyes couldn't
leave the painting as he walked away backwards, his legs instinctively
negotiating the furniture. He was thinking of what to call it.

‘I never plan the
outcome, because I never see it through. That'll do it.’ Its original name was,
"Bodmin Moor at Ten o'clock," when it had looked like that. But the
windswept stark heather and undulating hills had since become surreal rolling
paddocks of loud swooping colours that somehow worked: in a Van Gogh sort of
way. Whilst painting "Bodmin Moor at 10 o'clock," the starkness of
the subject had haunted him and conjured up thoughts of cruelty and industrial
misery. He became depressed for days; that he could produce such ugly images.
He thought he had lost it, again, his only ticket to beauty. But a couple of
weeks ago he had laid in bed, with Polly draped, post coital across him,
sleeping peacefully, his mind racing in desperate panic over his dilemma. The
notion of him having to get a job had already been bandied around with growing
frequency and quite rightly he had held that idea directly responsible for the
ugly painting he had created. This was man's ability to make hell from heaven,
he was becoming part of it and the idea of collaborating with the human race to
reach its devious ends horrified Seymour. He had spent his life avoiding a role
in society: the mere threat of it was making his work ugly.

In a fury driven
by his conclusion, Seymour had gently eased Polly off of him, sprung out of bed
and mixed strange fiery colours with his bare hands, daubed the canvas with his
fingers and rid himself of Bodmin Moor at Ten O'clock forever.

Returning to bed
he felt a magnificent power. He could change the world; well, his world anyway
and he wanted nobody, with the exception of Polly, to have any part in it.
Polly woke: he held her. His raw passion took him over and he ravaged her
wonderful body like a wild animal, covering her with smooth creamy yellows,
deep rich greens and spacious blue paint from head to toe. This was why she was
late for work that particular day.

Picking up the
newly primed canvas again he placed it on the easel and stared at its
blankness. The texture of the white brush strokes of primer drew him in. Then.
Nothing. It was gone. His mind had gone for a walk, slamming the door behind
it.

It was nearly
time for the midday news anyway, that takes an hour, and it takes two and a half
hours for the TV to cool down. He grappled with the idea for a moment and concluded
that the midday news was different. It didn't count as daytime television.
Knowing what was going on in the world was a valid input to his work. Like
research. Off he slouched back to the armchair and flicked the remote.

Polly kicked
leaves into a hole in the base ancient oak tree that stood a few metres from
the track on the edge of some woods. It had taken her several paranoid minutes
to find a good place to put the bags, but only seconds to decide to do it. It
was all quite automatic, something that both scared and excited her.

Again she froze
and listened. Still nothing, but the occasional distant passing car. In the
distance she could hear wailing sirens, their direction uncertain as the trees
around her muffled and threw every sound into random places. These sounds were
not unusual these days, part of the human soundscape.

She went back to
the car and rummaged around in the boot to find the spare wheel and jack.

She had only
changed a wheel once before, but such a task was designed for fools that could
barely be trusted to sit the right way on a toilet; yet could be empowered to
fix a problem that could easily result in a messy death. She found the jack and
wheel brace and looked at them. They to made no sense initially, but after a
few moments she looked down under the car and spotted a hole in the mud clogged
chassis matching the protruding bar of the jack. She went back to the boot,
lifted the flooring and found the spare wheel. Just as she was lifting out the
wheel, she heard something coming up the lane. A loud, thumping, roaring sound.
She looked back in its direction and froze, dropping the wheel back in the
boot.

"Oh God no,
please!" she muttered.

A car suddenly
appeared behind her, an old Jaguar, driving fast, heading straight for her. She
looked back again to see the Jaguar lurch to a clumsy halt: loud heavy metal
music boomed from it. After an immeasurable moment, the driver's door opened
and an incredibly tall, insect looking man dressed in skintight leather jeans and
a chunky, heavily studded leather jacket climbed out with a twisted grace. He
looked around, puzzled: then strode over to Polly.

As he reached
Polly he craned his sinewy bald head down and looked at her. Polly looked at
him, frozen.

His piercing eyes
stared at her, the crazy aggression in his face was frightening. Suddenly his
face contorted and morphed into an equally scary smile.

‘Sorry to bovver
you lady.’

Polly still
stared at him, afraid to take her eyes off guard.

‘I'm a bit lost
see darlin', lookin' for Willow Farm, I fought it was a pub, but it ain't, you
know where it is love?’

Polly shook her
head emphatically.

‘Bugger,’ said
the man. ‘Ere you broken dahn or somefin'?’

‘I, I, I've got a
puncture.’ stammered Polly, her words clumsily tumbling out of her mouth
through her chattering teeth.

The man's mouth
suddenly created a smile that virtually touched his ears and made a sound
unknown to Polly. With that he went to the front of the car, looked at the
crumpled tyre and kicked it.

‘Bloody poxy modern
cars, seen betta wheels on a fuckin' dinky toy. Move aht the way love. Get in
me motor if you like, get aht this poxy rain.’

‘No, no. Thank
you. I can't really get any wetter.’

Polly stood back
and watched as the man grabbed the jack, spare wheel and brace from the boot,
took them to the front of the car and changed the wheel in a matter of a few minutes.

‘There ya go,’
said the man as he stalked back to his car mumbling to himself.