Gillian Galbraith - Where The Shadow Falls

The unplastered brick walls of the dilapidated studio were covered, as before, with sketches of human figures, cavorting at the circus, riding bareback, or performing exercises within a gymnasium. Her study of the drawings ended when her attention was caught by the sound of the hammer and she saw Ian Melville, seated on a sofa in the corner of the room, concentrating hard, absorbed in fashioning a picture frame and blithely unaware of her entrance. She began to move towards him, but stopped at an easel to view the drawing resting on it. A light pencil sketch of a naked woman reclining on a bed. The work betrayed tenderness; imperfections recorded but not dwelt upon; a portrait, not simply a ruthless exercise in observation. Looking at the head, she started on recognising her own face, felt momentarily rattled to find herself scrutinising someone else’s image of her, as if she was indulging in some form of extreme egoism.

‘When did you do it?’ she asked, her voice sharper than she had intended.

The man looked up and she watched as his face reddened, suffused with blood, more embarrassed now than ever when naked, as if his drawing of her had exposed something far more personal than his own unclothed body. He recovered quickly.

‘When do you think? Early in the morning when you were still asleep. D’you mind? I’m just making a frame for it, to give it to you.’

A quick succession of unwanted thoughts flitted through her head before she answered. Had he drawn all the other women that he had slept with? Was the picture a form of record of a conquest, like the notches on a Spitfire’s wing? Would it have been worse if he had photographed her, unconscious and asleep, instead? She glanced again at the picture and found that what she saw allayed the sudden panic that had risen within her. It was not some stolen glimpse of a meaningless encounter; rather a depiction that could only have sprung from genuine intimacy, true sympathy with the subject.

‘No, I don’t mind. I’ve just come from the hospital. Nicholas Lyon’s dead. He died less than an hour ago.’

She had not expected his death to affect her as it had, but somehow in her mind his fate had become linked with that of her mother. If he could just survive, then she, too, would survive. And the sadness she had felt, gazing at the still, small figure in the hospital bed had, to her shame, expanded, swollen and consumed her, releasing all the anxieties she had been trying to control, to make her day-to-day life possible. But all she could think about then, and now, was her beloved mother in the shadow of that evil disease.

The next morning Alice was swearing to herself, unable to find the paper copy of Doctor Zenabi’s report in among the midden of papers covering her desk. Alistair plonked a mug of tea on her diary.

‘You heard?’

‘Heard what?’ she asked, irritation at this interruption clear in her voice.

‘The Sheriff’s partner. He died last night.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘How come? Anyway, apparently, he’s got a child. A grownup daughter actually. The boss wants us to spend the morning tracking her down.’

‘Well, Bingo!’ Alice said, abandoning the search and taking a sip from the mug, ‘we’ve done it already!’

‘What on earth are you going on about?’

‘Yesterday night… I spent some of it with the old fellow at the hospital. A nurse came in, just before he died. She would have shooed me away unless I claimed to be a family member. So I said I was. He couldn’t be left to meet his Maker on his own.’

‘Jesus Christ, Alice. You could have mucked things up nicely! Anyway, haven’t you got a home to go to?’

She smiled at him. ‘I have, thanks, and I can do without the lecture. Don’t worry, pal, I’ll speak to the DCI about the phantom child. By the way, I’ve just been on the phone to traffic. Dan there says that they’ve found a few flakes of paint. It seems the car was white and, they reckon, probably, one of the smaller, cheaper makes. Some of the slivers are with the lab now, so they think they’ll have a better clue as to the exact type before too long. They’re attempting calculations on the tyre marks as well, and the photographers are busy at the scene. Dan also said that some uniforms brought in a few shards of broken glass but they’re not sure if they’ve come from the vehicle we’re looking for. Apparently, the fragments are dirty, as if they’d been at the locus for a while. After I’ve seen the boss and explained things, let’s go and see Mrs Nordquist again, eh?‘

‘Certainly. With you as my chaperone.’

Beside her, as always, stood a small glass, filled to the brim with golden fluid. It rested within a hand’s reach of the striped deckchair, which sagged beneath the weight of the solid Swedish matron. She did not rise from it to greet the two detectives when they were shown into her paved back garden. Instead, she pulled up the rug that concealed her naked body until it almost reached her chin. On one side, however, an expanse of pink flesh was visible. Conscious of their surprise, she said to her visitors in a matter of fact tone: ‘…the sowna. I haff von in the basement.’

Both officers towered over the seated figure, feeling awkward and ill at ease, unsure of the etiquette in this situation. Their hostess, in contrast, seemed unflustered, relaxed even, despite the unmistakeable tension of her visitors and her own relative undress. Eyes half closed, she said: ‘Why don’t you both jusst sit on the ground, officers,’ before adding, as an afterthought, ‘I haff only von deckchair ant I neet it.’

And so the interview began with her interrogators squatting at her feet, each wishing that they had taken the initiative earlier and requested, or even demanded, that the session be conducted indoors. Alice, painfully conscious that any authority she might once have possessed had evaporated on finding herself at eye level to a bare knee, began: ‘I understand that you were the first one to find Mr Lyon on Wednesday night. Is that right?’

‘Yess.’

From under the rug Mrs Nordquist found a cigarette, and endeavoured, ineffectually, to light it while preserving her decency.

‘Can you tell us how that came about, you finding him, I mean?’

The remaining lobster-red arm extended itself to grasp the glass, and a large swig was consumed before any answer was forthcoming.

‘Waal, I wass upstairs in my betroom actually-it faces the street-ant I heard a car. The noiss of sutten acceleration… high speet. From nowhere. Then there was the sort of… thut… ant then the sount of the car drifing away. I looked out,’ she stopped momentarily and sighed before continuing, ‘ant there he wass. Nicholas, I mean, lying on the copples, blut all around him. Sso I put down my hairbrush ant ran out to see him. His eyes were clost. I shouted “Mrs McColl, Mrs McColl! Nine, nine, nine.” She gott the ambulance ant brought blankets to keep him varm. I state with him… but he nefer opened his eyes or spoke.’

Alice looked up at Mrs Nordquist’s face. Her lower lip was trembling and she was blinking copiously, fighting to keep control of her emotions. Wordlessly, the policewoman passed her the glass of aquavit and wordlessly, she drank from it, draining every last drop.

‘And when did all this happen?’ Alistair asked.

‘The night before lasst. Oh… say, nine o’clock, possibly, a little after when I heard the noisses.’

‘But you didn’t see anything happen? The collision? The first thing you saw was Mr Lyon, injured on the street?’