In Cold Daylight (8 page)

I wrenched off my helmet and let the rain lash against my face. I took in gulps of air and waited for my heart rate to settle down. Eventually I became conscious of the cars racing past me. I spun round, there was no one else parked and the motorbike had vanished.

When I arrived home Faye was in the lounge.

I went straight to the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of whisky half of which I downed in one go. Faye joined me and looked pointedly at the glass. I thought if she so much as utters one word about my drinking so help me I’ll throw the bloody glass at her. She opened her mouth to speak but must have seen the warning in my expression because she closed it again and moved across to the cooker.

‘I can put a pizza in the oven if you’re hungry.

I ate lunchtime at a client meeting.’

Food was the last thing on my mind. I could have been killed. I very nearly was. Where the hell had that Mercedes come from? It must have shot out of a side road. Had it been waiting there for me? But no, that was ridiculous.

‘Did you hear me, Adam?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ I muttered, tossing back the rest of the whisky, feeling the warmth slide down my throat and wrap itself around my heart. It stilled my nerves but not my racing mind. Now I was beginning to settle down I wanted to think through the incident rationally and calmly. First though I had a job to do. I guessed it wasn’t going to be easy but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to tell Faye about my father. If I didn’t then Faye might find out from Simon. How could I guarantee that she wouldn’t be here when he or Harriet called about the arrangements for the funeral?

I poured myself another whisky. Faye tutted. I said, ‘ Before you say anything about this,’ I waved the glass at her, ‘there’s something you should know.’ The words froze in my throat. It wasn’t that I was so upset that I couldn’t speak; I just didn’t know how to
begin
to tell her something that I should have spoken about ten years ago, when we first met.

My silence only served to increase her agitation. ‘Something’s gone wrong with the exhibition?’ I heard the alarm in her voice.

‘It’s not the exhibition. I’ve just returned from London…’

‘But you never go to London, you hate it there.’

She was looking at me now with a mixture of trepidation and anger.

‘I had no choice. My father’s dead.’

‘You haven’t got a father.’

‘I have. And a brother, called Simon. My father passed away this afternoon.’

For once I had rendered her speechless. I tossed back the whisky. ‘I didn’t tell you because I’ve been estranged from my family for fifteen years.’

I held my breath waiting for her to ask why.

There was no way I was going to tell her about Alison or my breakdown. Eventually, she would find out. Husbands shouldn’t have secrets from their wives, least not like mine. It wasn’t right not if you really loved one another…

She said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?

Why lie to me?’

‘I didn’t mean to lie. I just didn’t want to speak about it. I had cut myself off from them.’

‘What else haven’t you told me?’

Quite a lot, I thought, but didn’t say. She hadn’t offered her condolences but I didn’t hold that against her. My surprising news had probably driven it from her mind, or at least that’s what I told myself.

‘My father has left everything to Simon.’ I could see she was grappling with this new information. ‘I shall attend the funeral and that will be it.’

‘How much has he left?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Well of course it does. You’re his son.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where in London did he live?’

‘Belgravia.’

‘Those houses are worth a fortune!’

‘It’s not in a very good state of repair.’

‘You can’t let your brother take everything, that’s not fair. You should have told me about your family before. You’ve as much right to your father’s money as he has. Just think what we could do with it.’

I could feel my anger rising. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You’re going to have to, Adam. With that kind of money we could buy a decent apartment in London.’

‘I don’t want an apartment in London.’

‘You said that after this exhibition you’d consider it. Here’s a golden opportunity and you’re going to let it go past,’ she said crossly.

‘I am not living in London.’ I shouted.

‘And that’s it! What about me? Don’t I get a say in this? I’m the one who has to work there and travel back and forth. You can paint anywhere. ’

‘That’s just it, Faye, I can’t. I can’t even paint here.’ My anger subsided as quickly as it had risen. It was only then that I knew how much I hated this house, and how I loathed being even five miles away from the sea. Before I had met Faye I had lived opposite it, in a studio apartment at Old Portsmouth.

‘So what are all those images of the Festival of the Sea that we’re exhibiting? Rubbish?’

‘They’re mediocre.’ I moved away from her. I needed space. I tried one more time to make her understand. ‘I need to be near the sea, Faye. I need to breathe it, smell it, taste it. I need to see and feel it in all its moods, all its seasons.’ She was staring at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘This house is wrong.’

‘Then move.’

‘Not to London.’

‘We can have a place in London and an apartment here but we can’t do that without your father’s inheritance. Have you any idea of house prices these days? You haven’t exactly been earning a lot in the last couple of years.’

‘Jesus, Faye! You really know how to hit a man when he’s down, don’t you?’

‘Well it has to be said, Adam. My job’s kept us living here and allowed you to paint…’

She nearly said it but snapped her mouth shut before she could. I heard her unspoken words

‘
instead of getting a proper job’.
I turned away.

‘What’s happened to you, Adam? You’ve become so selfish?’

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t much I could say to that. I went to the studio. I picked up Jack’s postcard. Turner had been a genius: creative, imaginative, and innovative. Everything I aspired to. Was Turner’s ‘The Fighting
Temeraire
’ trying to tell me something? She was a warship. This was her last journey, is that why Jack had chosen it? Had he had known that this would be his final quest?

I studied the painting: the brilliant sunset reflected in the water at the end of the day. I thought of Jack, of Alison and my father, their days had ended. I thought of my near miss on the way home from London. I knew it had been no accident. Whoever had been driving that Mercedes had intended killing me. It had almost been the end of my days too. He hadn’t succeeded but I had no doubts that whoever it was would try again.

Saturday night and I stared at my paintings in the ancient stone warehouse that had been converted to an art gallery and despised every single one of them, wondering if I was the only person who saw their faults. How could I not when the image of ‘The Fighting
Temeraire
’

burned in my brain?

The room was crowded and hot. I nodded at people and even spoke to some but I was on automatic pilot. When I wasn’t thinking about Jack, and that Mercedes, I was thinking about my father’s funeral. I was cursing myself for walking out on Simon when I had. I should have extricated my files from that cabinet. I could have got Simon out of the study long enough to do so. Now I would have to wait until the funeral.

By which time he might have gone through the file. I didn’t relish the fact of him knowing all about my sessions with the psychiatrist. His superior attitude would be more than I could stomach.

I gazed around the room with a glass of wine in my hand. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and quite a few people had congratulated me. I was disappointed that Jody hadn’t shown up but there was time yet.

My eyes alighted on Faye. She was elegantly dressed in a short midnight blue dress; her straight blonde hair was glowing after the three hours she’d spent in the hairdressers that morning and her silver jewellery showed off her fair flawless skin to perfection. She caught my eye, raised her glass and smiled at me. No one would have guessed that we had spent the day in a sullen silence, only communicating when we had to.

Her gesture reminded me of my first exhibition in 1996. I had met Faye through the marketing agency the art gallery had engaged to help promote themselves and promising artists. My paintings had formed only part of the exhibition, but it was mine that Faye had chosen to promote through magazine reviews and articles. She said that my dark, lean looks would photograph well.

The brooding young artist was how she had positioned me. I was dark, yes, and lean but I was silent because I was shy, totally uncomfortable with crowds. I couldn’t tell her then that I had suffered a complete breakdown because I sensed she would run a mile and I needed her. Not for her ability to promote me but because I had fed off her self-confidence. I had gorged myself on her strength. She boosted my ego and it had needed a lot of boosting. I had felt that with Jack’s friendship and Faye’s love I could finally close the door on my past. Stupid.

I smiled back at Faye; it was an effort. I wasn’t as good an actor as she was. She was talking to the tubby little Lord Mayor, exuding self-confidence and bonhomie. She’d already telephoned one of her lawyer friends in London to ask how we stood about contesting the will. If there was a way then I had every confidence that Faye would find it, but I didn’t want a penny of father’s money. I also didn’t want her attending the funeral, but I couldn’t see how I could keep her away from it.

‘Wonderful exhibition, Adam.’ A voice broke through my thoughts and I found Nigel Steep, the manager of the commercial port, beside me.

He was a rotund man, immaculately turned out in navy blazer and khaki-coloured slacks with a crease in them that made your eyes water.

‘I’m glad you like them.’

‘We’re going to buy a couple to hang in our reception.’

I laughed. ‘I would have thought you’d got enough by me already.’ I’d previously been commissioned to paint the scenes from the bustling port.

‘Never can have too much of a good thing,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s an investment.’

‘Then you’d better get in quick before Faye’s friend from London snaps them up,’ I said, tossing my head in the direction of Faye and a tall, snakelike man dressed from head to toe in black relieved only by a yellow spotted bow tie. I pointed Nigel in the direction of Martin, the gallery manager, who was conversing with the waiters and he bustled off to speak to him.

I began to circulate, nodding at this person, making the occasional remark to another but it was agony for me. Faye was giving me the evil eye, though, so I had better do my best.

The door opened. I hoped it would be Jody but it was a slight man with limp brown hair.

He was flanked by two burly men in smart suits.

His eyes scanned the room but Faye, who has an inbuilt antenna when it comes to spotting VIPs, was beside him in a flash with her outstretched hand. The Lord Mayor had been hastily dumped on a woman with a hairstyle that reminded me of Margaret Thatcher, and which appeared to be rigidly held in place with enough hair spray to cause a hole in the ozone layer. Faye glanced over her shoulder and beckoned to me and reluctantly, like a recalcitrant schoolboy, I sidled across the room.

‘Darling, this is the Right Honourable William Bransbury, Minister for the Environment, Energy and Waste,’ Faye introduced brightly. I knew who he was.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said dutifully, surprised to find his handshake rather weak.

‘Not at all. I’m very pleased to be invited. It’s good to support local talent and I hear you have quite a reputation as a marine artist.’

His voice was rather high and nasal, and he looked nervous as his hazel eyes flickered around the room. Maybe he didn’t like these events, a considerable handicap for a politician, I thought.

I had expected someone more self-assured.

Perhaps television made them appear like that.

‘Would you like a drink, Minister?’ Faye beckoned one of the waitresses.

Bransbury took the glass of white wine. ‘How about showing me round?’

‘Of course.’ I was somewhat surprised, but Faye seemed pleased.

I found myself with a small but growing entourage, as I explained the paintings that had commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar: the private yachts lining the pontoon at Gunwharf Quays with hundreds of coloured flags flying from the halyards; the elegance and majesty of the tall ships, the working boats and warships from the Royal Navy and from around the world, and the little private leisure craft bobbing on the azure blue of the Solent amidst the Isle of Wight ferry and the hovercraft. Suddenly into my mind once more came the image of Turner’s painting of the
Temeraire
. She had been active at the Battle of Trafalgar. Was that why Jack had chosen to send me that particular postcard? Was there some connection with my exhibition? Had the fire been in an art gallery or at an exhibition? Then it clicked. Nelson’s flagship, HMS
Victory,
was here, in the Historic Dockyard. The fire that Jack was referring to must have been in the dockyard.

I almost cried out with excitement. I was right, damn it. I had to be. I wanted to rush away and check. I could barely contain my impatience.

Bransbury said, ‘What are you working on at present?’

With an effort I dragged my mind back to the politician. ‘I’m thinking of painting something as a tribute to a close friend of mine, Jack Bartholomew. He was a fire fighter. He was killed in an arson attack.’

‘I read about it in the newspapers. Poor man, quite tragic.’

Who could tell me about a fire in the dockyard?

My eyes shifted away from Bransbury towards the door, standing just inside it was Jody. My heart lurched and all thoughts of escaping vanished from my mind. I glanced around guiltily in case Faye had witnessed my transformation but she was busy talking to her London friend with the bow tie. Jody spotted me, and the way her face lit up sent a rush of blood through my body and filled me with a desire that I hadn’t experienced since Alison.