Sophie Hannah - The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

‘Why’s there nothing in them?’ I blurted out. ‘Why have you framed… nothing ?’

His expression hardened. ‘These are highly collectable,’ he said. ‘It’s not nothing, it’s black card. It’s a statement. The artist wants to make you think.’ His mouth twitched. Then he started to laugh. ‘I’m having you on,’ he said. ‘It’s just backing card.’

I don’t like being tricked. The joke over, he didn’t explain. I didn’t find out why he’d put frames on his walls with no pictures inside them. I didn’t particularly care. All I wanted was the orange juice and the cheese sandwich he’d offered me. I was so hungry that I was finding it hard to keep thoughts in my head. I was also worried my breath stank. Had I even brushed my teeth?

Standing in Aidan’s one-room home, the stark fact of how low I’d sunk in two months hit me like a boulder in the chest. What was wrong with me, that I’d let it happen? I could have reacted differently. Better.

‘What are you thinking?’ Aidan asked, cutting cheese with a paint-spotted Stanley knife.

‘Nothing,’ I said quickly.

‘Yeah, you were.’

He hadn’t answered my question about the frames, so I didn’t have to answer his. I knew he was as aware of this as I was.

He gave me my sandwich and a glass of orange juice. I sat cross-legged on the floor to eat it. It tasted divine. ‘Want another one?’ Aidan said, watching me devour the sandwich as if I’d never seen food before.

I nodded.

‘Want to tell me the story of why you left Hansard’s place?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. An artist brought in one of her paintings to be framed; I asked her if I could buy it; she said no, it wasn’t for sale.’ I recited woodenly. ‘I asked her if I could buy any of her other pictures, and she said none of her work was for sale.’

‘That’s crazy,’ said Aidan, his back to me as he foraged in the fridge again. ‘An artist who won’t sell any of her work? I’ve never heard of that before.’

I shivered. Crazy. Like having empty frames all over your walls, with no pictures in them.

‘So? What happened?’ Aidan asked.

‘She accused me of harassing her.’ I took a sip of my orange juice, hoping he would leave the subject alone.

‘Sounds like a standard shit day at work,’ he said. ‘Why did you leave? Hansard weighed in on your side, didn’t he?’

He sounded as if he was guessing. Saul hadn’t told him.

Aidan handed me another cheese sandwich. It had dents in the bread from his thumb and forefinger. He looked down at me, frowning. ‘You’ll have to toughen up,’ he said. ‘I’m not having you resigning on me after the first visit from some awkward bugger artist.’

I ate my food to avoid having to answer.

‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ said Aidan, watching me carefully. ‘Isn’t there?’

I nodded.

For a second he looked wary, perhaps even afraid. ‘You’re just like me,’ he said. ‘I knew it, soon as I saw you. That’s why I gave you a hard time.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask again.’ He stared at the empty frames on his walls, as if making some kind of silent pact with them.

I was smiling at him when he turned to face me, and he smiled back. Having established the ground rules, we could both relax. From that point on, we talked about art, framing-things we were happy to talk about. Aidan started-immediately, while I was still eating-to tell me everything he knew about his craft, everything he thought I should know. He told me that all the concepts and designs in picture-framing come from classical architecture. He dug out dusty hardback books from under piles of black T-shirts and faded jeans, and showed me photographs of tabernacle frames and trompe l’oeils and cassettas, explaining what each one was. He railed against people like Saul, who didn’t read up on the history of picture-framing, whose libraries on the subject were less extensive than his own, and against all the art books that contained photographs of unframed pictures, free-floating against a black background, as if the frame were not crucial to the work of art.

I remember being struck by his anger, his apparent determination to make my brain a replica of his, containing the same information. Apart from the bits that were missing, that is. He didn’t tell me, not then and not ever, why he had framed emptiness and hung it on his walls. And I didn’t give him the missing details from the story about why I’d left my job at Saul’s gallery. I’d made what had happened sound so straightforward, but it wasn’t at all-my reaction to the picture, my conviction that I had to have it, all the different ways I’d tried to persuade the artist to sell me some of her work, hounding her so that she had no choice but to lash out at me…

My fault. My fault, again.

And of course, the main thing I didn’t tell Aidan, because I didn’t know it at the time, I only found out months later: that the artist’s name was Mary Trelease.

‘Have you been bullying DS Kombothekra, Waterhouse?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Filling his petrol tank with porridge, putting laxatives in his coffee?’ Proust pressed his hands together church-and-steeple style, index fingers protruding.

‘No.’

‘Then why is he afraid to give you a simple instruction? You might as well spit it out, Sergeant, while you’ve got me here to protect you.’

Beside Simon, Sam Kombothekra shuffled from one foot to the other, looking as if he would prefer to be in an abattoir, a skip full of rubble-anywhere but the Snowman’s office. ‘I’m assigning you the statements in the Beddoes case,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ For a second, Simon forgot Proust was in the room with them. ‘You told me you’d given that to Sellers and Gibbs.’

‘Sergeant Kombothekra changed his mind,’ said Proust. ‘He decided it was a task best suited to a pedant with a keen eye for detail. That’s you, Waterhouse. As it happens, I agree with him.’

Simon knew what that meant. There was no way this was Kombothekra’s initiative. ‘I don’t mind doing my share if we’re all chipping in,’ he said, doing the calculation in his head as he spoke. Kombothekra would have to do his bit too if he was making Simon do it; he wouldn’t dare not to.

‘Good.’ Proust smiled. ‘Tell him what his share is, Sergeant.’

Kombothekra looked as if someone had inserted a hot poker into a tender part of his body as he said, ‘I’m giving you all the statements.’

‘All of them? But there are two hundred-odd.’

‘Two hundred and seventy-six,’ said Proust. ‘In this instance, no one will be chipping in apart from you, Waterhouse. This is something you can make your own. I know that’s important to you. You’ll have no one interfering, no one to cajole or negotiate with. From here on in, Nancy Beddoes is your exclusive territory. You can plant your flag unchallenged.’

‘Sir, tell me you’re joking. Two hundred and seventy-six people, all living in different parts of the country? It’d take me weeks!’

The Snowman nodded. ‘You know I’m not one to gloat, Waterhouse, or push home my advantage, should I be so lucky as to find myself in possession of one, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that if you were a sergeant, as you certainly should be by now and could be in a matter of months if you put in for your exams-’

‘Is that what this is about?’

‘Don’t interrupt me. If you were a DS, you’d be the team leader. You’d be the one assigning the actions.’

‘To a different team, maybe hundreds of miles away!’ Simon struggled to compose himself. Charlie was in Spilling, his parents were here, everything he knew was here. Proust couldn’t make him move, couldn’t force a promotion on him that he didn’t want.