Half Moon Chambers (10 page)

"No. They were here when I moved in."

The walls were covered, floor to ceiling and
up
across the arching roof, with painted murals.

The coverage was so bold and complete that at
first
I hadn't taken it in. Now, though, they almost
knocked
me off my feet
--
I took a step backward
and
steadied myself against a chair. The designs
were
huge, powerfully simple in form but so
vividly
coloured that they seemed to reach out to
meet
perception halfway
--
to be in a kind of
arrested
motion that renewed itself at every fresh
glance
. I let go a low whistle. "Incredible. He
wasn
't shy, was he
--
whoever did these?"

Rowan had gone to lean by the window. He
was
watching me curiously, as if interested in my
reaction
. "Do they offend you?"

I shook my head. The idea of being offended
hadn
't occurred. It had taken me a while to realise I
was
looking at vision after vision of men in erotic
embrace
. Their delineation was almost abstract,
and
yet when you got the idea of it, became almost
shockingly
real. Limb twined with golden-skinned
limb
. Strong hands clasped round muscular
backsides
. And all this was happening in a kind of
paradise
garden, or as part of it. A loving embrace
became
a vine. Upraised shafts sprang from
velvety
petals. Mouth met open mouth in a
vertiginous
swirl of foliage, night sky and stars.

My eyes adjusted to the light, and I saw that the
hallway
I'd passed through was also a wilderness
of
sensual plants and forms. "They make me think
of
Georgia O'Keefe, if she'd been a gay man,
or
Tamara de Lempicka." I caught his glimmer of
surprise
. "What?" I asked defensively. "I'm a
copper
, so I'm not supposed to know my arts from
my
elbow?" The fact that I'd only acquired my
cultural
knowledge when the time had come
for
Jane's kids to acquire theirs was none of his
business
. Their father had shipped out, and up until
six
months ago I'd tried to fill a bit of the gap, from
football
to trips round the galleries and help with
projects
for school.

"And are you?"

"Am I what?"

He shrugged. "Well, what you said
about
O'Keefe
--
and it's not the stupidest comment I've
ever
heard... I wondered if you were seeing these
as
a gay man. From that perspective, I mean. I
made
my assumptions when I saw you with
Brad
Pitt, but maybe I was wrong."

Did it matter to him? There was an odd
undercurrent
to his casual tone. I shrugged in my
turn
. "Brad and I might just have been friends. As
it
happens, though, he was my partner. Work type
and
lover type, before you ask."

"Oh. And was that... Is that tough, in the
police
?"

"Not dramatically so." Another passionate
collision
of flesh and muscle caught my eye and I
answered
him distractedly. "It's still a bit
don't
ask
, don't tell
. We're about five years
behind
London with that, same as with everything else." I
stopped
myself. I couldn't understand how he'd got
me
talking even this much about my own life
--
I
was
there to interview him, not the other way
round
, and we were way off topic. I turned my
back
on the seductive paintings. "Sorry. I'd better
get
to business. Can we sit down for a minute?"

"Were you okay the other night, after I left
you
?"

"I was fine. I have to tell you about
--
"

"Would you like a coffee?"

"Rowan."

He ran a paint-daubed hand over his hair,
making
it stand up in spikes, and glanced at me in
sheepish
acknowledgement. "Okay. Clumsy effort
to
put you off has failed. I do, however, have some
great
coffee perked. There's no milk or sugar in the
flat
, so all I have to do is chuck it into mugs. And
there
's no fire escape from the kitchen, I promise."

I set myself not to smile. If I wasn't careful,
there
was a great deal I could find charming
about
Rowan Clyde. I wanted to ask if he shared my gay
man
's perspective on art, and not so I could
discuss
painting with him. "All right. Coffee
would
be good. And I couldn't chase you down a
fire
escape if you did decide to leg it, so I'll have
to
take that on trust."

He disappeared through a doorway over
-
arched
by two embracing young gods, and I sat
down
at the table in the chair he'd indicated.

Everything in this place was extraordinary.
Where
I had functional melamine, he had a large bench
table
that could have come from a junkyard or
the
British Museum. Its worn surface was a patchwork
of
different polished stones, some with fossils in
them
, nautilus shells and the little flowers I'd
helped
Lily discover were called crinoids. The
four
chairs around it were in four different styles,
but
all were painted with twisting vines and jungle
blossoms
, so similar in style to the murals that they
had
to be by the same hand. The oculi windows
added
to the offbeat, slightly under-sea effect. My
flat
left me exposed to the elements beyond the
thinnest
shell of concrete and glass, but in here I
could
lose myself, forget all about the noisy world
in
the streets below. It was Friday night, almost
sundown
. Soon the daytime city people would go
home
, passing on their way to their buses and
trains
the first wave of incoming party animals, the
girls
in their microskirts and the lads all tattoos
and
cropped T-shirts, alcopop running like
antifreeze
in their veins. I'd used to love the
prickling
change in the atmosphere. The beginning
of
a night shift, and trouble almost guaranteed to
break
out somewhere. Jack and I had thrived on it,
waiting
in our squad car for the call...

"Here you go."

I hid a startled flinch. The process of losing
myself
had already begun
--
I usually avoided
mournful
comparisons between that time and this.

"Thanks," I said, taking the nice stoneware mug he
handed
me. A china one would have burned my
fingers
. I was indefinably relieved when he sat
down
opposite me, not close by my side. "This
won
't take long. I don't want to keep you from your
work
."

He glanced at the canvas propped up on the
far
wall. "Oh, that's not urgent. I'm on an
apprenticeship
programme with the Langring. They
give
me stuff out of their basement to work on at
home
--
low-value pieces where it doesn't matter
too
much if I screw up
--
and their senior curator
gives
me feedback, and lets me loose on the real
thing
once I've got it right."

"Do you like it?"

"Well, it beats the call centres. The pay's
barely
enough to cover this place and the next
stage
of my training, but that's okay. I like cold
beans
, and they lose flavour once they're out of the
tin
."

There went my preconception of the wealthy
parents
. I didn't usually get that kind of thing
wrong
. What was it about Rowan Clyde, that I
couldn
't reach past his smoke and mirrors? I was
allowing
the conversation to drift. With an effort I
pulled
back onto track. "Rowan, I have to ask you
to
reconsider standing witness in the Goran Maric
case
."

Immediately he tensed. Social call or not,
until
now he'd seemed open, almost pleased to see
me
. "I've told you I didn't see anything. I'm not
sure
," he said slowly, "which part of that you don't
understand
."

"I understand what you've told me." He'd
been
right about the coffee
--
it was excellent, and I
felt
almost guilty for enjoying its rich, nuanced
flavour
while I set about tying him to the rack.

"Forgive me if haven't been convinced by it. I'm
sorry
our uniformed officers weren't more subtle
about
approaching you, but they'd had clear intel
from
our crime-scene guys that you were in the
ground
-floor hallway soon after the killings
happened
. I had a look around down there. If you
cross
the hall, you can hardly help but see into the
basement
."

"Then why aren't you chasing the other twenty
people
who must have been through there that
night
?"

"We did. We had two good witnesses - the
couple
who lived next door. And we've
interviewed
pretty much everyone else in the
building
. You're the only one who ran away from
us
. No-one else attracted Goran Maric's thugs."

"So?"

"So it's tough for me to believe you don't
have
anything to tell us at all."

His dark gaze fixed squarely on mine. The
gold
lights were very apparent, and tonight they
weren
't friendly fires. "What the hell does it matter
to
you? If you've got the neighbours - "

"We don't. Not any more. They took fright
and
they skipped the country, taking most of our
case
against Maric with them. If we can't find
other
testimony, he'll walk. Do you understand?"

A low chuckle broke from him. It was
genuine
, but so bitter it made me catch my breath.

"What I
understand
is... that the first two ducks
you
lined up on your fairground rifle range came to
their
senses and flew. And now you're trying for a
third
. You must think I'm off my bloody head."