The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down Read online

  Like Aidan Seed. Charlie frowned at the idea. It would be a strange reaction to fear, pretending you’d killed somebody. Unless you can’t bear the thought that they exist. So you pretend they don’t any more, and you cast yourself in the role of killer because it makes you feel brave instead of like their victim… Charlie smirked at her silly theory. It was impossible to speculate, that was what made this different from every other situation she’d dealt with since joining the police. Different, and harder to stop thinking about. Usually she could come up with some sort of hypothesis to use as a starting point, however wrong it turned out to be. Not now. She could think of literally nothing that would explain the behaviour of Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed-even a rampant shared insanity didn’t seem to fit the bill. It made her feel stupid, which she hated.

  At the cul-de-sac end of Megson Crescent, three young boys with shaved heads were doing wheelies on their bikes. When Charlie got out of her car and they saw her uniform, they disappeared so fast that she couldn’t help thinking of the scene in the film E.T., where the kids pedal so hard they take off into the sky.

  She locked her car. Loud, aggressive music was coming from one of the houses at the far end of the road, near where the boys had been. She supposed she’d better try and track them down to whichever house they’d holed up in, encourage them to make their way to school. Not that their teachers would thank her for it.

  As she walked along the cul-de-sac, she counted off the odd numbers. Five and seven each had a boarded-up window. In a first-floor window at number nine, she saw parts of small faces before the curtains were yanked shut. She knew that if she rang the doorbell, she’d get no answer.

  Higher priority than the boys was getting that music turned down. As she got closer to the house it was coming from, she felt the pavement shake under her feet. She couldn’t believe it when she saw the number on the door: fifteen. The thumping noise was coming from Mary Trelease’s house. Ruth Bussey had said Mary Trelease was around forty, so what was she doing listening to…? Charlie dismissed the ridiculous thought, embarrassed by it. What were forty-year-olds supposed to listen to? James Galway, with the volume turned down extra-low so as not to wake the cat?

  She’ll never hear the doorbell, thought Charlie, pressing it anyway. She stood back and stared at the house. Like the others on the street, it was an ugly red-brick semi with an entirely flat faμade, no bay windows to give it character. Weeds grew between the broken flagstones that led to the front door. By the side of the house, next to a drain, was a scalloped lead pot with a small dead tree in it. Charlie touched one of the branches. It crumbled between her finger and thumb.

  She stepped back out on to the road and looked up at the top windows. None of the curtains were open. All were as thin as handkerchiefs, she noticed, and they’d been hung badly, so they didn’t fall straight. Some had holes in them where the fabric had decayed, been torn or burned. This was far from being the sort of house Charlie would have expected an artist to live in. She struggled to bring to mind the few facts she knew about art or artists. Vincent Van Gogh had been dirt poor. Olivia had made Charlie watch a docu-drama about him once. Admittedly, he probably wouldn’t have given a toss about the state of his curtains.

  ‘They can’t have called you already. I’ve only been gone five minutes.’ An angry, skinny woman with deeply ingrained wrinkles around her eyes, nose and mouth appeared beside Charlie. It looked almost as if someone had scored down the middle of her face with a Stanley knife, so pronounced were the lines. She had a caramel-coloured birthmark, the one Aidan Seed had described to Simon, and was wearing a black duffle-coat, black trousers, white trainers and a purple woolly hat that looked as if it had a lot of hair stuffed into it. Her ears, Charlie noticed, were tiny, the lobes almost non-existent-again, as Aidan had described. In her gloved hands the woman-Mary Trelease-held a packet of Marlboro reds, a red plastic lighter and what looked like a small green box.

  ‘They?’ Charlie asked. On first appearance, there was nothing sinister about Trelease. She dressed like someone who didn’t give a damn what she looked like. Charlie had been through similar phases.

  ‘The neighbours. I’ll turn it down, all right? Give me a chance.’ She sprinted off round the side of the house. Charlie followed her. It was hard to avoid hearing the song that was blasting out, the word ‘survivor’ being repeated again and again. It was a more stringent and hysterical than usual variation on the theme of he-done-me-wrong-but-I’m-still-strong. It was the sort of song Charlie would write if she could write songs, full of posturing and bravado.

  After a few seconds the music stopped, though its imprint still pulsed in Charlie’s brain. She took the open kitchen door as an invitation, and was about to go inside when Mary startled her by jumping down from the doorstep on to the narrow path that adjoined the house. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Satisfied?’ She eyed Charlie contemptuously, shifting her negligible weight from one trainered foot to the other, still holding the cigarettes, lighter and green container, which Charlie now saw was a box of Twinings Peppermint tea.

  ‘Are you Mary Trelease?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was the song?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The song you’ve just turned off. What’s it called?’ Some people were willing to answer harmless questions; others weren’t. Charlie wanted to know which category Mary Trelease belonged to before she asked her about Aidan Seed and Ruth Bussey.

  ‘Is this some kind of joke? Look, if the petty arseholes at number twelve have-’

  ‘I’m not here about the music,’ said Charlie. ‘Though while we’re on the subject, that volume’s unacceptable at any time of day. Why leave it on so loud if you’re going out?’

  Mary opened her packet of cigarettes, put one in her mouth and lit it. She didn’t offer one to Charlie. ‘If you’re not here about the music, I can guess what you are here about.’

  Her voice was at odds with her surroundings. Charlie hadn’t been able to hear it properly for as long as the music had been playing. What was someone who spoke like a member of the royal family doing on the Winstanley estate? Why hadn’t Simon mentioned her accent? ‘My name’s Sergeant Zailer, Charlie Zailer. I’m part of the community policing team for this area.’

  ‘Zailer? The same Sergeant Zailer who was all over the news a couple of years back?’ Mary’s brown eyes were wide, avid.

  Charlie nodded, struggling to contain her discomfort. Most people weren’t quite so open about it. Most people shuffled and looked away, as Malcolm Fenton had, and their awkwardness made her forget, for a second, her own pain and humiliation. I should have resigned two years ago, she thought. All her allies, the people who had told her she’d done nothing wrong and advised her to brazen it out, had done her a disservice. For two years, Charlie had felt as if she’d been in hiding in public; if there was a trickier professional situation to be in, she couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  ‘Community policing,’ said Mary, smiling vaguely. ‘Does that mean they demoted you?’

  ‘I transferred. By choice.’

  ‘It was just after I moved to Spilling when it was in the papers, ’ said Mary. ‘Made me wonder what sort of area I’d moved to, but I don’t think there have been any policing scandals since, have there?’ She smiled. ‘You’re a one-off.’ Seeing Charlie flustered and at a loss, she added, ‘Don’t worry, it makes no odds to me. You’ll have had your reasons, no doubt.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Charlie brusquely, ‘and obviously I’m not here to talk about that.’

  ‘Well, you’ve picked the wrong house if your visit’s community-related. You won’t find much of a community round here. And, such as it is, I’m not part of it. I’m an outsider who drinks funny tea.’ Mary waved the green Twinings box at Charlie. ‘You should have seen their faces in the corner shop when I asked them to stock it. Anyone would have thought I was proposing to drink babies’ blood.’ She raised her cigarette to her thin lips. Her index and middle fingers were stain
ed a dark yellow, almost brown.

  ‘No, it’s you I want,’ Charlie told her.

  ‘Then I know why.’ The response was smooth and instantaneous. ‘You’re here to ask me about a man I don’t know. A man called Aidan Seed. DC Christopher Gibbs came on Friday for the same reason, and DC Simon Waterhouse on Saturday. Unlike you, they didn’t pull bits off my tree.’

  ‘I didn’t… The tree’s dead,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Taking its pulse, were you? If dried flowers can be beautiful, why can’t dried trees? I like my garden. I like my dead tree, and its pot. Look at this.’ She led Charlie over to the wall that separated her house from the one next to it. There was something protruding from one of the cracks that looked like a green rose, but with petals that were oddly rubbery, almost cactus-like, pink-edged. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Mary. ‘It’s called a sempervivum. It’s not there by accident or neglect. Someone planted it so that it would grow out of the wall, but you could easily mistake it for a weed. I’m sure you did.’

  ‘Can I come in for a few minutes?’ Charlie asked, feeling as if she’d lost any potential advantage she might have had. She wished she was in her office, ‘helping’ Counsellor Geoff Vesey to draft his letter and questionnaire-writing them for him, in other words. Vesey was Chair of the Culver Valley Police Authority, an organisation that monitored, among other things, public confidence in the police. Charlie’s confidence in him was zero; the man couldn’t even come up with a list of questions on his own.

  ‘You can come in, but only because I’m not working,’ said Mary. ‘If I were busy, I’d ask you to leave. I’m a painter.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But you know that already. I’m sure you know all about me.’ In spite of what she’d said, she was still blocking the entrance to the house with her narrow body.

  ‘You didn’t let Chris Gibbs in,’ said Charlie. ‘You nearly didn’t let Simon Waterhouse in.’

  ‘Because I was working on a painting, one I stayed up all night to finish. As soon as I’ve got rid of you, I’ll be going to bed. Anyway, that’s why the song was on so loud, if you care: I was celebrating. Do you have a favourite song?’

  It was ridiculous not to want to answer. ‘ “Trespass” by Limited Sympathy.’

  ‘The song that was on before-that’s mine.’

  Charlie wasn’t going to ask again what it was. If you care. She didn’t.

  ‘ “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child,’ said Mary in a brittle voice, like a pupil forced to hand over a treasured forbidden item to her teacher. As she spoke, the lines on her face rearranged themselves, criss-crossing around her mouth. Charlie had heard that excessively thin people aged more severely than plumper ones, but even so… ‘I could tell you what I love about it, but I don’t suppose you’re interested. I suppose you’re one of those people who only puts on a CD if you’ve got guests for dinner, with the volume down so low that nobody can hear it.’

  ‘I don’t do that, actually,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t rupture my neighbours’ eardrums, either.’

  ‘I told you: I was celebrating. Finishing a piece of work you’re happy with-it’s such a buzz. Like being able to fly. I wanted to reward myself, so I put on my favourite song and went round the corner to buy some smokes and peppermint tea. I put the volume up high so that I’d hear the song while I was in the shop.’ Mary smiled vaguely, a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was thinking back to something that had happened years ago.

  Charlie’s skin prickled with apprehension. She thought of Ruth Bussey saying, ‘I’m frightened something’s going to happen. ’ ‘Could I see the painting?’ she asked. ‘The one you’ve just finished?’

  ‘No.’ A reflex response. Anger. ‘Why? You’re not interested in my work. The other two weren’t. You just want to check I’m who I say I am.’ Mary dropped her cigarette on the path, didn’t bother to extinguish it. It lay there, burning. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and dig out my passport and driver’s licence again. This time I won’t bother putting them back in the drawer, since one of you’s certain to turn up tomorrow.’

  Charlie followed her into a tiny brown kitchen that contained a free-standing electric cooker with a grime-encrusted top, a stained metal sink and a row of cabinets with uncloseable doors that hung askew. Mottled brown linoleum covered the floor, studded with cigarette burns. No one has touched this place for at least thirty years, thought Charlie, and then: it looks even worse than my house, and that’s saying something. ‘I don’t want to see any ID,’ she said. ‘My colleagues are satisfied that you’re who you say you are, and that’s good enough for me.’

  Mary undid the buttons of her duffle-coat and let it slide off her arms. When it hit the floor, she kicked it to one side. It lay in a heap by the kitchen door. ‘It doubles as a draught excluder,’ she told Charlie. Her refined voice sounded so out of place in the drab, cramped room that Charlie wondered if she was a Trustafarian-playing at slumming it, rubbing shoulders with bona fide poor people in an attempt to make her art more authentic, knowing she could escape to Daddy’s mansion in Berkshire whenever it suited her.

  Mary pulled off her hat, releasing a huge silver-black frizz that tumbled down her back. ‘Aidan Seed’s a picture-framer,’ said Charlie matter-of-factly. ‘Did Chris Gibbs or Simon Waterhouse tell you that?’

  ‘Yes. I see the connection: I’m a painter, he’s a framer. Doesn’t mean I know him.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the name? Perhaps from other artists, even if you don’t know him personally? I’d have thought, with Spilling being the size it is…’

  ‘I don’t know any artists,’ said Mary. ‘Don’t think that because I’m a painter I’m in any way part of the art world. I hate all that nonsense. You join some group and next thing you know you’re on a committee, organising quizzes and raffles. That’s what the local art scene would be like in a town like this, and as for the London scene-all that Charles Saatchi garbage has got nothing to do with art. It’s marketing-it markets its own brand of marketing and nothing else. It’s about creating appetites, artificially-there’s no real hunger in it. There’s nothing real about it.’

  ‘Do you know Ruth Bussey?’ Charlie asked.

  Mary’s surprise was unmistakeable. ‘Yes. Well…’ She frowned. ‘I don’t exactly know her. I’ve met her twice. I’m hoping to persuade her to sit for me. Why?’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘Why’s Ruth of interest to the police?’

  ‘If you could answer my-’

  ‘This is someone who’s been inside my home.’ Mary’s voice was shrill. Frightened, thought Charlie. ‘Why are you asking about her? Has she got some connection to this Aidan Seed person?’

  ‘How about we do a swap?’ Charlie suggested. ‘You show me some of your work, I answer your question. I am interested, although I know sod-all about art, except that all the best stuff seems to be by dead people.’

  Mary’s face went rigid. She stared at Charlie. ‘Are you playing games with me?’

  ‘No.’ Of all the pissing stupid things to say. All over her body, Charlie’s skin felt cold. ‘I meant, you know, Picasso, Rembrandt… I meant that nowadays art seems to mean slices of dead cow and balls of elephant dung.’

  ‘I’m not dead,’ said Mary very carefully, as if she wanted Charlie to pay attention.

  Charlie thought that people who believed in ghosts deserved to have their brains confiscated indefinitely. She couldn’t understand why it should freak her out so much to be standing in the kitchen of a shabby ex-council house listening to a straight-faced woman insist that she wasn’t dead.

  ‘I’m alive and my work is excellent,’ said Mary less vociferously. ‘Sorry to jump down your throat, but it’s depressing to hear what Joe Public thinks: that anyone with talent is famous already, basically. And dead, of course-all geniuses are dead. If they died young and tragically and in poverty, then all the better. ’

  Charlie exhaled slowly. Simon hadn’t told Mary what Aidan Seed had said about her. Ne
ither, he’d told Charlie, had Gibbs. What did it mean? What did any of it mean?

  ‘Do you think you need to suffer-I mean suffer deeply-in order to be a true artist?’ Mary asked, screwing up her eyes, pushing her wild hair behind her ears with both hands. Was it scorn in her voice, or something else?

  ‘I wouldn’t say the one follows from the other,’ said Charlie. ‘You could suffer the torments of the damned and still not be able to draw or paint for toffee.’

  Mary seemed to like that answer. ‘True,’ she said. ‘Nothing great is so easily reducible. I asked DC Waterhouse the same question. He said he didn’t know.’

  Another thing Simon hadn’t mentioned. He’d certainly have had an opinion, thought Charlie. Clearly he hadn’t wanted to share it with this peculiar woman.

  ‘I’ve changed my my mind,’ said Mary. ‘I will show you my work. I want you to see it. There’s one condition, though. We agree now that nothing I’m going to show you is for sale. Even if you see a picture you think would be perfect for-’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ Charlie told her. ‘I haven’t got the money to buy original art. How much do you normally sell your paintings for? Does it vary depending on size, or…?’

  ‘I don’t.’ Mary’s face turned blank. As if she’d been expecting trouble and now it had arrived. ‘I never sell my work. Ever.’

  ‘But… so…?’

  ‘You mean why. That’s what you want to ask me: why? If that’s what you want to ask, ask.’

  ‘I was actually thinking more… are all your pictures here, then? In this house?’

  There was a long pause before Mary said, ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Wow. How long have you been painting?’

  ‘I started in 2000.’

  ‘Professionally, you mean? What about as a child?’