Still Waters (7 page)

His old partner, Grice, was still detained at Her Majesty's displeasure, and no substantial loss where Grabianski was concerned; a great third-floor entry man, one of the best, but unable to see beyond the newsagent's top shelf when it came to culture.

And Thackray—Thackray had been living in Stamford then: a mid-Victorian brick house with columns at the front and high arched windows looking out over a sunken pond and three-quarters of an acre of shrubbery and graveled paths. A gallery on the second floor, in which he could show off his select collection of British art. A small oil by Mabel Pryde aside—a self-portrait, dark, the shadow of her husband barely visible in the background—there was nothing that couldn't leave the premises for the right price, courtesy of Federal Express.

Thackray, meanwhile, had relocated to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast, drawn there by migrating poets and the annual music festival in honor of Benjamin Britten. Grabianski considered this a retrograde step. Thanks to a brief, early relationship with a middle-aged psychotherapist, he had once endured Peter Pears singing Britten's settings of English folk-songs—an experience so graphically engraved on his memory as to provide him with an instant definition of Purgatory. It also meant that Thackray was no longer calling distance away. Save by telephone, that is, and both of his lines—the one displayed in the directory and the other only available to select business acquaintances—were permanently out of order.

The last occasion on which Grabianski had seen him, it had been embarrassingly necessary to explain how it was that having broken into the house where the Dalzeils were kept, he had walked out again empty-handed.

They had been sitting in a hotel bar in Market Harborough, shaded through the long afternoon, dust prancing in the low shafts of steeply angled light. Thackray had been less than pleased: this left a good customer to be pacified, a matter of principle, of re-establishing trust.

“Tell him to be patient,” Grabianski had said. “Tell him you always keep your word.”

Which, in so far as his word to Grabianski was concerned, had since proved untrue. The paintings freshly acquired, he returned to the same bar and sat there for two hours, sipping wine, waiting in vain for Thackray to arrive. It made Grabianski uncomfortable: whatever else he was, Vernon Thackray was not a man to miss an appointment. Promptness, reliability, these were Thackray's cardinal virtues. But perseverance, patience—save for the occasional rush of blood, those were two of Grabianski's own. If one buyer could no longer be found, well, he would find another. Simple as that.

Even so, as Grabianski approached the southern edge of Hampstead Heath, it continued to nag at him, and he had walked beyond Parliament Hill itself and down into the first thickening of trees before the splendor of his surroundings eased it from his mind.

Nine

“Whatever sort of time do you call this?”

“Um?”

“I said, whatever sort of time …”

“Alex, please, don't start. Not the minute I get home.”

“I'm not starting anything. I was merely worried …”

“You weren't worried, Alex, don't pretend. You just can't stand the thought that I might have been doing something on my own. Enjoying myself without you.”

“Jane, why so hostile?”

“I really can't imagine. I must be premenstrual, that's what it usually is. Or else it's school. That's it, the stress of my job.”

“I do sometimes wonder …”

“Yes?”

“Well, you know, whether you wouldn't be better off moving to part-time …”

“We're not going to start this again, are we?”

“I'm only thinking of you.”

“Of course.”

“If you did mornings, afternoons, maybe just three days a week …”

“Alex, we've been through all this; it just isn't practical.”

“I don't see why not.”

“Because it isn't, that's why. Because if I went part-time, always supposing that were possible, which as things are going it might not be—then I wouldn't be doing the same job.”

“I would have thought it would be the same, essentially anyway. More time to yourself.”

“Alex, I don't want more time, that kind of time. Time to get the shopping, do the washing.”

“That wasn't what I meant.”

“Wasn't it?”

“No.”

“You know very well, I enjoy what I do and I certainly don't want to risk losing the little bit of responsibility I've got.”

“I should hardly have thought getting kids to watch
EastEnders
in school time constituted responsibility. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Very funny.”

“I'm not being funny.”

“No, you're not.”

“All right, why don't we stop all this?”

“A good idea.”

“Come here.”

“No, Alex, I …”

“Come here.”

“Alex.”

“Sweetheart, I shouldn't have shouted at you, I'm sorry.”

“You didn't shout.”

“Nag you, then. Get on at you, whatever.”

“It's all right, just let me …”

“Stay here for a minute, come on.”

“Alex, the dinner.”

“Bugger the dinner!”

“No, Alex, really. Besides, I've got to go out again afterwards.”

“What d'you mean, go out?”

“A meeting. Finalizing the arrangements for the day school. It shouldn't take long. But I do have to leave at seven.”

“Seven! It's a wonder you bother to come home at all.”

“Oh, fuck off, Alex!”

“What?”

“You heard me, just fuck off. I can't do a bloody thing without you interfering, trying to make me feel guilty.”

“All I did was make a remark. Is that so terrible?”

“Yes. It feels like I can't breathe without you standing over me, waiting to make some kind of comment.”

“Some wives would be pleased …”

“Would they?”

“At least I show an interest.”

“In criticizing, yes, making me feel inadequate. Why didn't you do this, why don't you do that?”

“Oh, don't be so pathetic!”

“You see?”

“What?”

“You see what I mean. If ever I stand up to you, argue back, try to get you to see things my way, I'm being pathetic.”

“Right.”

“Poor, pathetic Jane, running around in circles, all the while fooling herself that what she's doing is so important when anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see it doesn't count for shit.”

“You said it, I didn't.”

“You didn't have to.”

“Good.”

“You're right, Alex, it was a mistake. I should have stayed at work, gone round to Hannah's, gone for a drink. Anything but this.”

“Wait.”

“No.”

“Where d'you think you're going now?”

“Anywhere. Out. I'll be back around nine.”

“You're staying here …”

“Alex, let me alone. Let go of me.”

“No! Don't you run out on me. Don't you dare.”

“Alex, you're hurting. Let go.”

“I warned you.”

“Let me go!”

“I'll let go, you stupid bitch!”

“Alex, no!”

“Stupid, selfish bitch!”

“Alex, no. No. Oh, God, please no. Don't hurt me. No …”

Ten

For once, there were no small children running full pelt between the tables, mean mouths and shrill little voices. The garden attached to the Brew House restaurant was mercifully devoid of mothers in long, flowing dresses from Monsoon, au pairs from Barcelona or Budapest who shopped at the Gap. Grabianski carried his tray, bearing filter coffee and an encouragingly large chunk of carrot cake, up the short flight of steps and across the flagstones to a table in the shadow of the far wall. With a flap of the hand, he scooted away a trio of blue-gray pigeons feasting on the remains of somebody's buttered toast. Sparrows jostled hopefully around his feet.

Quarter past the hour: he had no way of knowing whether Eddie Snow would be early or late.

On the low bench seats to Grabianski's right, two elderly men from Poland or the Ukraine were playing chess; a woman with startling white hair and spectacles that hung from a filigree chain was talking loudly to her companion about a recent visit to Berlin and the depressing legacy of the GDR; farthest from where Grabianski was sitting, a couple in their late thirties, wanly married but not to each other, held hands across the wooden table with the special hopelessness of those for whom happiness was the memory of damp afternoons in Weymouth or Swanage, hotel rooms that smelt of disinfectant and had a meter for the gas.

He was contemplating going for a second cup of coffee when a skinny man with thinning, short-cropped hair pushed through the door into the garden. Shiny leather trousers sheathed thin legs, a hip-length gray leather jacket hung loose over a black T-shirt bonded closely to his ribs. Despite the almost total absence of sun, he was wearing shades.

“Jerry?”

Half-rising, Grabianski reached out a hand.

“Eddie. Eddie Snow. Here, let me put this down.”

His plate was loaded with sausages and bacon, grilled tomatoes, fried bread and scrambled egg that had been sitting too long. “Best meal of the day, right?” Snow used his teeth to tear open two sachets of brown sauce and dribbled the contents across the curling, crispy bread. “Between me and my arteries, eh?” Behind dark glasses, Snow winked. “You want to get something more for yourself, go ahead. I'm going to get stuck into this lot before it gets cold.”

Grabianski nodded, pushed back his chair, and opted to wait.

The first time he had met Eddie Snow, himself and Maria Roy had been snapping at each other in the departure lounge at Orly Airport, a lunge toward romance that had been too calculated and too late. Eddie Snow had been drinking champagne and wolfing down packets of honey-roasted peanuts he had carried off from his last flight. “Couple of days in Cologne,” he told them. “Just two days and I earned so much fucking money, it'd make your head spin to count it. Here, have some more of this bubbly, eh?”

“What is it you do?” Maria asked, careful to touch his wrist as she offered her glass. Money had always been a great aphrodisiac where Maria was concerned.

“Everything,” Eddie Snow laughed. “Little of this and that. Just about everything. You know how it is.”

He had shaken hands on a deal with a private collector, whose principal acquisitions up to that point had been twentieth-century American; a quarter of a million for a painting, oil on board, of a former hospital for the chronically insane in Dalston. One of the many the artist had sketched on his travels east and west along the North London line. Snow had picked it up cheap from an ailing British rock star, who had once had hits on the label Snow had set up in those heady days of love and commerce when Virgin Records was a warehouse off Portobello and a hole-in-the-wall shop on Sloane Square.

Eddie Snow was not quite as youthful as he looked; sunglasses aside, it showed around the eyes.

Midway through his meal, Snow took a packet of Marlboro from his jacket pocket and lit up. “So, Jerry, what happened to that TV guy's wife you were screwing? Arse on her like the Pope's pajamas.”

By way of reply, Grabianski slid an envelope up onto the table and from it eased out two Polaroid photographs. Using middle finger and thumb, he swiveled them round for Snow to see.

“Straight to the business, eh, Jerry. I like that.” The photo on the left showed a landscape painting, a typically rural English scene; sheep grazing under the careless eye of a straw-chewing youth, an avenue of trees angled behind.

The second was as singular as that was conventional. The sun, full and faint, lowered through clouds over an expanse of ground, purple and brown, that could either be moorland or field. Trees stood sparse on the indistinct horizon.

It was this picture that Eddie Snow picked up and angled to the light. After a long moment, his face broke into a smile.

“Had me there for a minute.” He replaced the Polaroid. “
Departing Day
: study, isn't it? Not the real thing.”

Grabianski waited.

“Eyesight'd started going by then, poor tosser. Either that or he'd got the DTs.”

A sparrow, perversely brave, dipped its slate-colored head toward a piece of bacon rind and narrowly missed a backhander for its pains.

“So what you saying here, Jerry?”

“I'm not saying anything.”

“Yeah, so I noticed.” Snow picked up the photographs, first one and then the other, and studied them again. “You'll want to get shot as a pair?”

From Grabianski a nod.

“Two a penny these,” Snow said, indicating the sheep.

“Not by him.”

“Crap all the same. This first one. Pastoral bollocks. Whereas this … Going for it, that's what he's doing there. Color. Light. All them gradations of blue in the sky. Whistler in a way, but Turner closer still.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah, course I do, but that's not the point.”

Grabianski smiled. “Your friend in Cologne …”

Eddie Snow shook his head. “Strictly kosher. Never touch anything without it's got perfect pedigree, properly authenticated bill of sale, the whole bit.” He lit a second cigarette. “I don't suppose you've got a bill of sale?”

“And you,” Grabianski said, “have you got buyers who are less scrupulous?”

Using his tongue, Snow fidgeted a piece of sausage from between his teeth. “Let me know how to get in touch.”

“Better I get in touch with you.”

Snow scraped back his chair and stood up. “Legit business. I'm in the book.”

“I know.”

As Grabianski watched Eddie Snow walk, slim-hipped, away, he noticed that though the couple were still holding hands, the woman was crying. He restored the Polaroids to his pocket and moved the remains of Eddie Snow's breakfast to another table, where the birds could scavenge in peace. He would have another cup of coffee and then that second piece of carrot cake would go down a treat.