Bloodhounds

naughty bits. She' has three upstairs, if you're interested. They retail at between eight hundred and a thousand. Two years back I couldn't keep up with the demand, but everything went flat in the recession, including my nudes.' He flashed the immaculate teeth. 'Joke.'

'So you combine painting with working in the gallery?'

'No. I don't work here. Just hold the fort for Jess on occasions. She's stuck with it all day, poor duck, so if I'm passing I look in and let her get some air. You're as hooked on crime as she is, I hear.'

'Crime fiction,' Shirley-Ann made clear.

'Jess buys books by the yard. You've got to find something if you're in here every day sitting on your butt. She doesn't get all that many callers. And about one in ten is seriously into art. Correction, One in twenty. Some people come in to ask the way to the nearest loo, for pity's sake. Or in the hope of making a killing with some faded print of The Stag at Bay that they picked up for a couple of quid in a car boot sale. Soul-destroying. But even that's better than no visitors at all. She can spend hours in here alone. Which is why she reads the Sara Paretskys and the Sue Graftons. The thickeared action whiles away the time.'

Shirley-Ann found herself galloping to the defense of two of her favorite writers. 'Thick-eared? That's just what they aren't. They're intelligent. They take on issues.'

'Like feminism.' He barely concealed a sneer. 'Or should I say postfeminism?'

'You can't have read them. They say more about modern society-and more convincingly-than most of the so- called serious novels.'

He laughed. 'I was winding you up. And I haven't read them. Being an artist, I'm into graphic novels, told in pictures- what you would call comics for adults.'

'Thick-eared.'

'With a vengeance. But the artwork can be brilliant.'

'And do you enjoy winding people up, as you put it?'

'Enormously.'

'Women in particular?'

His lips twitched out of the smile that was forming. 'You're about to accuse me of sexism, or something worse. Women are just as good as men at piss-taking, you know. No, I treat 'em all alike. A sucker is a sucker is a sucker.'

'Is that what you took me for?'

He grinned. 'Just testing.'

In spite of bridling at almost everything he said, she was beginning to enjoy the exchanges. She wouldn't confide in a man like that except under extreme torture, but she found the argument stimulating. Men of his sort should be put to work like bowling machines in women's assertiveness classes.

The sparring went no further because Jessica burst in carrying a Waitrose bag full of groceries. On seeing Shirley-Ann, she put her hand to her blond hair and pushed it back from her forehead, but there was no need. Even after the hassle of shopping she looked ready to step onto the catwalk in the pale blue suit she was wearing. 'Well, this is so terrific!' she exclaimed.

'I just dropped in as you suggested,' said Shirley-Ann. She had got up too quickly from the chair, teacup in hand, and slopped some in the saucer. She would never be poised like Jessica.

'I'm so pleased you did.'

A.J. added without the hint of a smile, 'And we just agreed that Mickey Spillane is the greatest crime writer in the world.'

'We did not!' protested Shirley-Ann.

'Or was it Peter Cheyney? Dames Don't Care.'

Jessica said, 'Give it a rest, A.J.' Then, to Shirley-Ann, 'He's full of crap. Do sit down.'

'He's one of the New Men,' said A.J. about himself. 'He made the lady a superb cup of tea. Pot's still warm. Want one?'

'Warm is no good to me. Make a fresh pot.' When they were alone, Jessica said to Shirley-Ann, 'Sorry you had to find him in charge. He can be fun in small doses. I'll get rid of him, and then I can show you around in peace. He's extremely rude about all the work except his own.'

'He kept me entertained. Does he really know anything about crime fiction?'

'A smattering. Just enough to irritate. You don't want to tell him too much about yourself. He's a dreadful tease, and he'll use anything he can discover.'

'That doesn't surprise me at all.'

When AJ. returned with the tea, Jessica thanked him for standing in for her and said she'd just seen a traffic warden starting to check the cars in Walcot Street.

'Did you make it up?' asked Shirley-Ann, after A.J. had dashed out.

She smiled. 'He lives dangerously. Never buys a parking ticket. He'd do the same to me, only worse, much more bizarre. Probably tell me he saw a circus procession passing through and an elephant leaned against my car. And I'd fall for it, because the one time I disbelieve him you can be damned sure there will be a damned great jumbo sitting on my bonnet.'

'He's an artist, he told me,' Shirley-Ann said, keen to know more without probing too directly.

'Yes, that's how we got to know each other. His work sells quite well. Life studies, rather different from the usual thing. I'll show you presently.'

'Of women?'

Jessica shrugged. 'What would you expect? Male nudes don't sell unless they're by Michelangelo.'

'Is that so?'

'Think about it. Would you like one in your sitting room, however well hung?'

In a more relaxed situation Shirley-Ann would have giggled. She wasn't sure if the image she received was intended, so a smile did for an answer. She let her eyes travel to the far end of the gallery. 'It's bigger in here than I imagined.'

Jessica showed her around. Her policy, she explained, was to specialize in the work of a select group of artists. By refusing to crowd the walls with everything that was offered, she was putting her judgment to the test. Early on, she had made a decision not to show abstracts, not because she disliked them, but because she found that the sorts of people who called at her gallery wanted something that gave them a way into the artist's vision. None of the work was slavishly representational. Each image from real life was enhanced by exciting and original use of color and design. All this was said with conviction. The people of Bath might be unadventurous in their taste, but Jessica wasn't knocking them.

They were large canvases, many priced in four figures, and Shirley-Ann thought with amusement of the shock it would give Bert to see her being escorted around this gallery. Her devoted partner had it firmly in his mind that she only ever bought pictures from charity shops, and it was true. The pictures of elephants and dancers in the flat they shared in Russell Street had cost under a pound, every one. She'd had to brighten up the walls with something, and quickly. All they had when they moved in was a collection of framed James Bond book jackets dating from Bert's days as a student at Loughborough College. He was quite fixated on Bond.

Up a white spiral staircase were more paintings, including A.J.'s nudes, which weren't the crude or flashy things she had expected. The figures were painted with subtlety and draftsmanship, posed against strong light sources that cast much of the form into heavy shadow, letting the spectator's eye make sense of the areas exposed to the light.

'He's good,' said Jessica. 'I have to admit he's bloody good.'

'Who are the models?' Shirley-Ann asked, and heard herself saying, too late to hold back, 'Have you ever posed for him?' It was a tactless thing to have said, and she felt like slapping herself.

Jessica's large, shrewd eyes widened, but there was no obvious embarrassment. She answered coolly, 'No. Why should I? They're professional models, I imagine.'

They moved on to a view of a village church that Shirley-Ann was profoundly glad to recognize as one she knew. 'Oh, Limpley Stoke! It is, isn't it?'

It was, and the moment passed.

Downstairs, they made fresh tea. The evening paper had been pushed through the door, and the headline was about a million-pound stamp theft in the city. It had pushed the story of the murdered bank manager off the front page.