girl running by a riverbank. Running with bows in her hair. Running.
Past one guard, past two. Lunging at them. The alarm is, ringing somewhere. Maybe it's just his imagination. All these paintings. Where have all these paintings come from? Through one door, turn right, through another.
They kept him at home. The schools couldn't teach him the way they could. Home taught. Home made. His father, some nights, drunk, would knock over his mother's canvases and dance on them. `Art! Fuck art!' He'd do his little dance, with a chuckle in his throat and all the time his mother would sit with her face in her hands and cry, then run to her room and bolt shut the door. Those were the nights when his father would stumble through to his bedroom. Just for a cuddle. Sweet alcoholic breath. Just for at cuddle. And then more than a cuddle, so very much more. `Open wide, just like the dentist tells you.' Christ, it hurt so much. A probing finger . . . tongue . . . the wrenching open . . . And even worse was the noise, the dull grunting, the loud nasal breathing. And then the sham, pretending it had been just a game, that was all. And to prove, it, his father would bend down and take a big soft bite out of his stomach, growling like a bear. Blowing a raspberry on the bare flesh. And then a laugh. `You see, it was only a game, wasn't it?'
No, never a game. Never. Running. To the attic. To the garden, to squeeze behind the shed, where the stinging nettles were. Even their bite was not so bad as his father's. Had his mother known? Of course she had known. Once, when he had tried to tell her in a whispered moment, she had refused to listen. `No, not your father, you're making it up, Malcolm.' But her paintings had grown more violent: the fields now, were purple and black, the water blood-red. The figures on the riverbank had grown skeletal, painted stark white like ghosts.
He'd hidden it all so well for so long. But then she'd come back to him. And now he was mostly `she', consumed by her, and by her need for . . . Not revenge, it couldn't really be called revenge. Something deeper than revenge, some huge and hungry need without a name, without a form. Only a function. Oh yes, a function.
This way and that. The people in the gallery make way for him. The alarm is ringing still. There's a hissing in his head like a child's rattle. Sss- sss-sss. Sss-sss-sss. These paintings he is running past, they're laughable. Long nosehairs Johnny. None mimicked real life, and less so the life beneath. None could ape the grim caveman thoughts of every human being on the planet. But then he pushes open another door and it's all so very different. A room of darkness and shadowplay, of skulls and frowning bloodless faces. Yes, this is how it is. Velazquez, El Greco, the Spanish painters. Skull and shadow. Ah, Velazquez.
Why couldn't his mother have painted like this? When they died. (Together, in bed. A gas leak. The police said the child was lucky to be alive. Lucky his own bedroom window had been open a couple of inches.) When they had died, all he'd taken with him from the house had been her paintings, every single one of them.
`Only a game.'
`Long nosehairs, Johnny.' Snipping with the scissors, his father asleep. He'd pleaded with his eyes, pleaded with her to stick the point of the scissors into his father's fleshy noiseless throat. She'd been so gentle. Snip. So kind and gentle. Snip. The child was lucky.
What could they know?
Rebus walked up the stairs and through the bookshop. Other officers were close behind him. He motioned for them to spread out. There would be no escape. But he also warned them to keep their distance.
Malcolm Chambers was his.
The first gallery was large, with, red walls. A guard pointed through the doorway on the right and Rebus strode towards it. By the side off the doorway, a painting showed a headless corpse, spouting blood. The painting mirrored Rebus's thoughts so well that he smiled grimly. There were spots of rust-coloured blood on the orange carpet. But even without these, he would have had no difficulty following Chambers's trail. The tourists and attendants stood back from him, pointing, showing him the way. The alarm bell was bright and sharp, focusing his mind. His legs had become solid once again and his heart pumped blood so loudly he wondered if others. could hear it.
He took a right, from a small corner room into another large gallery, at the far end of which stood a set of hefty wooden and glass' doors. Near them another attendant stood nursing a wounded arm. There was a bloody handprint on one door. Rebus stopped and looked through into the room itself.
In the furthest corner, slouched on the floor, sat the Wolfman. Directly above him on the wall was a painting of a monastic figure, the face cowled and in shadow. The figure looked to be praying to heaven. The figure was holding a skull. A smear of blood ran down and past the skull.
Rebus pushed open the door and walked into the room. Next to this painting was another of the Virgin Mary with stars around what was left of her head. A large hole had been punched through her face. The figure beneath the paintings was still and silent. Rebus took a few paces forward. He glanced to his left and saw, that on the opposite wall were portraits of unhappy looking noblemen. They had every right to be unhappy. Slashes in each canvas almost ripped their heads from their bodies. He was close now. Close enough to see that the painting next to Malcolm Chambers was a Velazquez, `The Immaculate Conception'. Rebus smiled again. Immaculate indeed.
And then Malcolm Chambers's head jerked up. The eyes were cold, the face stippled with glass from the BMW's windscreen. The voice when it spoke was dull and tired.
`Inspector Rebus.'
Rebus nodded, though it had not been a question.
`I wonder,' Chambers said, `why my mother never brought me here. I don't remember being taken anywhere, except perhaps Madame Tussaud's. Have you ever been to Madame Tussaud's, Inspector? I like the Chamber of Horrors. My mother wouldn't even come in with me.' He laughed, and leaned against the foot-rail behind him, ready to push himself to his feet. `I shouldn't have torn those paintings, should I?' he was saying. `They were probably priceless. Silly really. They're only paintings, after all. Why should paintings be priceless?'
Rebus had reached out a hand to help him up. At the same time, he saw the portraits again. Slashed. Not torn, slashed. Like the attendant's arm. Not by human hand, but with an instrument.
Too late. The small kitchen-knife in Chambers's hand was already pushing through Rebus's shirt. Chambers had leapt to his feet and was propelling Rebus backwards, back towards the portraits on the far wall. Chambers was infused with the strength of madness. Rebus felt his feet catch on the foot-rail behind him, his head fell back against one painting, thudding into the wall. He had his own right hand clasped around Chambers's knife-hand now, so that the tip of the knife was still gouging at his stomach but could go no deeper. He jerked a knee into Chambers's groin, at the same time jamming the heel of his left hand into Chambers's nose. There was a squeal as the pressure lessened on the knife. Rebus twisted Chambers's wrist, trying to shake free the knife, but Chambers's grip held fast.
Upright again, away from the wall now, they wrestled for control of the knife. Chambers was crying, howling.
