Maiden ogled the ceiling. ‘That would be before or after he wrote about the fucking daffs?’
‘Nah, what I’m saying, a man like him …’ Suzanne leaned her head back, blew out smoke. ‘I can see, a man like your dad, why he wouldn’t want you to be a painter or nothing like that.’
And then you get out of your nancified art college, what happens then, eh? Norman Plod, gardening in police boots and ragged old police shirts. What you gonna do for readies then, with no government grant to prop yer up? Eh? Eh?
Maiden realized he was doing his Norman Plod out loud.
Artists? Parasites, lad. Nobody wants ‘em till they’ve snuffed it. Live off the State and sponging off their mates. Go bloody mad, cut their ears off.
‘Cut their ears off.’ Maiden shook his head. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’
‘Right. Yeah.’ Suzanne’s white face bobbing like a Japanese doll’s. ‘I think I heard of a guy that happened to.’
‘Fancy.’ Was this woman real?
Look, Norman said, back from the Conservative Club, flattening a tube of flake white with his size nines. Do yourself a favour. Get rid of this nancy shit. Else they’ll think you’re a poof. Think you’re a poof, lad!
‘What a bastard. Did you?’
‘What?’
‘Get rid of it.’
‘No. Just went undercover.’
And still was. There were nights now when he was painting through till dawn: pale, minimal, imaginary landscapes, not much more than air and light. Paintings of the white noise in his head. Not, in fact, a long way from the cutting-off-the-ear stage, when you thought about it.
‘What do you paint?’
‘Places. Feelings. Usual crap. Never sold one. Never tried. Copper’s little hobby, who needs it?’ Me, I need it, he thought. There’s nothing else. Isn’t that terminally pathetic?
Suzanne smoked in silence for a few seconds, then she said, ‘So you wanted to paint and he was determined you were going to trail in his big footsteps. Where was your mother all this time?’
Bobby Maiden stared into his glass.
‘In heaven.’
You know what happens to them, coppers like Maiden, the sensitive ones … Two possible career projections. Either they go to the top faster than they deserve…
This was Martin Riggs, Divisional Super now, talking to veteran DI Barry Hutchins at the CID Christmas binge. Barry just loved to tell this story, especially loved telling Maiden, who — unforgivably — avoided the Christmas binge. Barry had taken a retirement deal, worked for Group Four Security now, so he could say what he liked.
… or else they crack up, Riggs tells Barry. Top themselves. Look at the situation. He’s thirty-five, still a DI. Goes off to the Met, can’t stand the heat, and he’s back after a year. In this job, Barry, if you want to get on, you don’t come back.
This was very true. You certainly don’t come back when the new boss is someone you happened to run into in London, in circumstances that convinced you he was bent.
‘You still got them, Bobby?’
‘Huh?’
‘Your paintings.’ Her eyes were opaque.
‘Oh.’
‘Only I wouldn’t mind seeing them,’ Suzanne said.
He choked off a laugh into the whisky.
‘Let me get this right. You’re saying you would like to come up and see my etchings?’
‘Whatever.’ Suzanne ground her cigarette into the ashtray and reached across the table for her bag.
‘You mean now?’
Got to think, got to think.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll just pop to the bog.’
Alone in the gents’, Maiden slapped cold water on his face.
OK. Think.
Owen Anthony Parker, entrepreneur. Fairly new in town. Cheery, beaming Londoner making a fresh start in the provincial leisure industry. Looks dodgy as hell, but no record. In no time at all, Parker has two clubs, one lowlife, one upmarketish, and five pubs. Public figure, hosts charity evenings. Thanks to Mr Parker, Elham General Hospital has its long-battled-for new body-scanner.
Also, thanks indirectly to Mr Parker, the recently opened drug-dependency unit has a whole bunch of extra clients.
Tony Parker. Mr Immunity.
Why?
Well, several people have a good idea. And somebody in CID has to be fully in the picture.
Maiden dried his face on a paper towel. Too many whiskies for this, really.
Still. See what happens, then. Suzanne.
By the time the minicab dumped them outside the blackened Victorian block at the bottom of Old Church Street, where it meets the bypass, her perfume was everywhere. At first it was sexy, then it became nauseating. Maiden always got sick in the back of cars.
Thigh to thigh, they hadn’t talked much. He hadn’t made a move on her — he still had some style. Plus, there was the problem that the quiet, grizzled cabbie just might have been the father of a kid nicked for dealing crack three months back. A kid who’d sworn the bastards had planted the stuff. Clutton. Dean Clutton.
‘This is nice, Bobby.’
‘It’s just a nice front door.’ Sorting drunkenly through his keys. ‘Not nice at all inside.’
Might not have been Clutton’s dad; too dark to tell, really. He unlocked the communal door with the lacquered brass knocker and five illuminated bell pushes.
Dean Clutton had hanged himself in his cell while on remand, this was the thing. Before Maiden got a chance to talk to him.
‘Sad, isn’t it?’ Suzanne said wistfully, long fingers playing with the collar of her black silk jacket.
‘What?’
‘You start your married life all fresh and clean, get yourself a nice, tidy little home together …’
‘It was a little Georgian-style semi. In Baslow Road. Yeah, it was nice. For a while. And tidy.’
Except for the night Liz had impaled four canvases, one after the other, on the pointed newel post at the top of the stairs. One after the other, with a stiff, crackly, ripping sound. That was when he’d taken the chance of a transfer to the Met. A new start, somewhere neither of them had connections, where they’d need to rely on each other.
As it turned out, Liz had hated it. Hated her job at the huge, crazy London hospital. Liz wanted to come back. There was a vacancy for a DI in Elham Division; he’d walked into it. Back with the old crowd. Who resented him. Naturally.
‘Baslow Road,’ Suzanne mused. ‘I wouldn’t know where that is. Being a stranger.’ She followed him inside and he felt for the light switches, flipped all three, but only one greasy yellow bulb came on.
‘You’re right.’ Suzanne’s nose wrinkling as she took in the state of the hallway. ‘It is a bit of a shithole. You OK, Bobby? You’re not going to throw up, are you?’
He said, ‘You’re not serious about this, are you?’
‘Course I’m serious. Why I came,’ Suzanne said. ‘Come on, let’s see them.’
‘All right.’ Despite the half-dozen whiskies, Bobby Maiden, on the last night of his life, was feeling almost shy as he propped the biggest canvas against the TV.
This was weird. He couldn’t figure this out at all. Started out like a direct approach, now it was just very strange.
Just as coppers in the Met above a certain rank could expect an invitation to join the Masons, in Elham there’d be a friendly, innocent overture from the Tony Parker organization. It was like a recognition of status. Almost above board.
Because Maiden stayed off the police social circuit, it had been a long time coming. But now it was here, and it was strange.
‘Little haven you’ve created here.’ Suzanne ran a finger along the art books. Grinned. ‘Bobby’s burrow.’
Maiden propped the other pictures against the table legs. Acrylics. And some watercolours, because there was less mess and they were easier to conceal if anybody turned up. Nobody at the nick had ever known about it.