The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

5

Monday 3 March 2008

I’m cutting glass when I hear footsteps on the path outside. I look up, see a man’s face through the window. I don’t recognise him. Aidan stops what he’s doing. His foot is on the pedal of the mitre machine, but he doesn’t push it down. Normally he stops work only when he has to, when a customer is standing in front of him, and to pretend not to have noticed for a second longer would be too rude even for Aidan to get away with. A lot of the people we frame for dislike him, but they don’t go elsewhere. When I first started here, he told me, ‘You can be friendly to clients if you want to, but friendliness takes time. Your job, our job, is to protect the art people bring in. Remember that. Think of a picture as being in danger until it’s properly framed. Protection is at the heart of picture-framing. That’s why we do it-it’s not for decoration.’

The wooden door scrapes along the ground as it’s pushed open. ‘Hello?’ a deep voice calls out.

I’m about to answer when I see another face at the window and my breath turns solid in my lungs. Charlie Zailer. What’s she doing here? Are she and the man together?

‘You must be Ruth Bussey. DC Simon Waterhouse, Culver Valley CID.’ He opens a small wallet and shows me his police identification. He’s a heavy, rough-faced man with big hands and too-short trousers that don’t quite reach the tops of his shoes.

Sergeant Zailer smiles at me. She says nothing about my coat and I don’t ask. She hasn’t brought it with her. When she tells Aidan her name, I will him not to look at me, not to let his surprise show. ‘Okay if we have a chat?’ she says.

‘I’ve got work to do.’ Aidan doesn’t sound surprised, only sullen.

‘It won’t take long.’

‘I talked to him on Saturday.’ Aidan jerks his head in Waterhouse’s direction. ‘I’ve got nothing to add to what I said then.’

‘Have a guess where I spent most of this morning?’ Charlie Zailer’s tone is soothing and teasing at the same time.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Fifteen Megson Crescent.’

This is followed by a long silence. DC Waterhouse and I look at one another, wondering if one of us will have to break it; at least, that’s what I’m wondering.

‘Fifteen Megson Crescent is where Mary Trelease lives. That’s who I spent the morning with: Mary Trelease.’

Aidan gives her a cold look. ‘How can a dead woman live anywhere?’ he says. ‘I killed her.’

Sergeant Zailer nods. ‘Simon-that’s DC Waterhouse-he told me you’ve convinced yourself of that. I can assure you, you’re wrong. I met Mary Trelease, spoke to her, saw her breathing and moving around.’

Aidan pulls the underpinner towards him, takes two mitred frame edges and puts them in the machine. Back to work.

‘Do you think I’m lying?’

I can’t stand the stifling tension in the air. ‘Aidan, answer her!’

‘If you hop in the back of my car, I’ll take you to her house so that you can see for yourself that she’s fine.’

‘No.’

‘How did you meet Mary?’ Sergeant Zailer’s voice is gently insistent. ‘You didn’t tell Simon the full story, did you? Will you tell it to me?’

‘No.’

‘Mary says she’s never met you. Which, if she’s telling the truth, means you’ve never met her.’

He looks up, angry to have his attention taken away from his underpinning. ‘If I killed her, I must have met her. It’s simple logic.’ How can he be angry? How does he expect the police to react?

‘Okay,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘So tell me about meeting Mary.’

Silence. I stare at him, silently urging him to answer, knowing he won’t. My last hope is disintegrating and there’s nothing I can do. Nobody can help if Aidan won’t talk, not even the police.

‘Aidan? How many times did you and Mary meet before you killed her?’

‘He hasn’t killed anybody,’ I say, starting to cry.

Sergeant Zailer turns her attention to me. ‘Did he tell you he strangled Mary when she was naked? That he left her body in the middle of the bed, in the-’

‘Shut up,’ Aidan snaps.

A violent, sick feeling tears through me, making me gasp. Strangled. Naked.

‘I don’t think he told her,’ says Waterhouse. ‘Something I don’t understand: you did tell Ruth that you killed Mary Trelease years ago. And you told me I’d find the body in the bed if I went to 15 Megson Crescent. Did you really think a dead body might lie undiscovered in a house for years?’

Aidan measures a length of nylon hanging cord and cuts it, as if no one has spoken. He isn’t ignoring Waterhouse-it’s more than that. He’s pretending to be alone in the workshop, wishing us all away. ‘Say something, Aidan!’

‘Why don’t you, if he won’t?’ Charlie Zailer asks me. ‘You lied to me. You said you didn’t know Mary Trelease, but she knows you. She told me she lost you your job, then felt guilty about it and gave you a painting. That true?’

I nod, forcing myself not to look at Aidan. I have no way of knowing how much of the story Mary told her.

‘So you first met Mary when?’

‘Last June.’

‘June. So when Aidan told you in December that he’d killed her years ago, you’d in fact met her six months previously. Presumably you told him he was mistaken. Ruth? Did you tell him that?’

‘I…’

‘She told me,’ says Aidan. ‘I told her she was wrong, same as I told DC Gibbs and DC Waterhouse.’

‘Mary Trelease is an artist,’ Waterhouse takes over, and I release the breath I’ve been holding. He isn’t interested in the Spilling Gallery, my run-in with Mary. No one can force me to talk about it if I don’t want to. ‘Your work must bring you into contact with lots of artists. What do you think of them?’

‘Some are all right.’

‘The ones who aren’t-what’s wrong with them?’

Aidan sighs. ‘They treat me like a skivvy.’ He raises his hands. ‘Manual work. It can’t be a skilled profession if you get your hands dirty, that’s what some of them think. You meet them in a restaurant in town and they stare at you blankly-they don’t recognise you clean. When you say hello to them and they make the connection, you can see the shock on their faces: a common labourer in a posh restaurant-who’d have believed it? Then you get the ones who paint the same picture over and over again and think they’ve got a unique style, rather than only one idea, and the ones who only paint in their favourite colours, the same ones they buy all their clothes and carpet their living rooms in.’

‘You really don’t like artists,’ says Sergeant Zailer.

‘Let’s have one thing clear: I didn’t kill Mary Trelease because of anything to do with her being an artist. I didn’t know she was one until Ruth told me.’

‘Where’s the painting she gave you?’ Waterhouse asks me. ‘Can we see it?’

Pressure builds in my head. ‘I haven’t got it any more.’

‘How come?’

‘I…’ I look at Aidan, but he turns away, lines up two more lengths of glued moulding. Why should I lie to protect him when he won’t tell me what I’m protecting him from? ‘I gave the picture to Aidan,’ I tell Waterhouse. ‘I haven’t seen it since.’

Aidan shoves the underpinner away. ‘Mary Trelease is dead,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘Dead people don’t paint pictures. Ruth brought home a picture by somebody-it was ugly, so I took it to a charity shop.’ He’s lying.

Charlie Zailer takes a step forward. ‘The front bedroom at 15 Megson Crescent is full of Mary’s paintings. So full