Alex Gray - Never Somewhere Else

‘No.’ She had paused for a moment before continuing. ‘It was her friend who packed everything up for her. So sad. All these boxes and materials. Such a waste.’

‘Which friend?’ Solly had enquired.

‘Oh, Janet Yarwood. She was Lucy’s tutor, of course. She wants to put on some sort of retrospective exhibition. Maybe when the final-year students exhibit in the summer term.’

Solomon recalled the conversation, his mind already turning over Lucy Haining’s possessions. Possessions that her parents didn’t want. Then the secretary had mentioned the portfolio. It was still in the office. Yes, of course he could borrow it. If he just left a contact number?

Solomon drained the last of the sweet blackcurrant and put the mug aside. The large portfolio was resting against the wall as if waiting for him to uncover its secrets. Solomon unzipped the cover and drew out a large stack of drawings, their tissue coverings rustling. Designs for Lucy’s final-year jewellery project were revealed on the first sheets. There was an obvious African influence here, thought Solomon. Some sketches contained pencil notes written in Lucy’s spidery hand giving details of materials she would have used in the final creation of these unusual pieces.

Solomon turned the pages slowly, careful to smooth the tissue back onto the pastel drawings. Here was real talent, he thought, as page after page revealed elaborate designs. Some were on a theme of silver and gold, with rare touches of colour, enamels and lapis. Others used painted wood and inks, their shapes rounded and bulging like parts of human anatomy. Suddenly the designs were replaced by a series of life drawings. Portions of bodies were sketched in some detail. Solomon could see the influence in Lucy’s jewellery now. There seemed to be a preoccupation with buttocks, breasts and shoulders. A few life drawings followed, mainly of young boys. These were good enough to sell to a gallery, thought Solomon. The young artist had had a talent that was not confined to her chosen medium.

He gazed thoughtfully at the boys; sitting, recumbent, slouching against a wall. There were details of heads, some on darker paper, white highlights giving the young eyes a sad and luminous quality. There was even a sketch of an old man, bent with age but still grinning up from the page. Solomon put it down to lift the next sketch from the diminishing pile when something about the old man’s face made him take it up again. A shiver suddenly shot down his spine as he recognised the grinning face. For the image captured in Lucy’s drawing was one he had seen in police custody.

It was Valentine Carruthers.

Lorimer stared at the face that lay on his desk. The image of a burnt corpse kept interfering with Lucy’s drawing. But now he knew so much more about this old man whose name alone had aroused his curiosity.

His team had not been idle following Valentine’s disappearance and their discoveries had multiplied considerably after his death. Other Glasgow derelicts had provided information about old Carruthers’s recent way of life. Pieced together with his police record, newspaper cuttings and a particularly detailed report from a rehabilitation clinic in Leeds, the present file made sad, but interesting reading. Solomon’s discovery had prompted further investigation at Glasgow School of Art, adding several more facts to the sum of knowledge about the old man. Much of his past life had been recounted during therapy sessions in the rehabilitation clinic. Lorimer sent out a mental thank-you to the psychotherapist who had kept her files in such meticulous order.

Valentine Carruthers’s life story had ended in agony and flames but it had started in a world of relative luxury, Lorimer read. The Carruthers family boasted several generations of sons who had made their fortunes at sea. One had even risen to the rank of Commander. Valentine had broken with that tradition, however. His father, apparently a rather taciturn man, had married a young Frenchwoman. According to the psychotherapist, Valentine’s mother had never wearied of telling him how his parents had met. Valerie Bouverat, dark, pretty and petite, had captured the attention of the young Lieutenant Carruthers one night at a party in the Officers’ Mess.

Lorimer read on, imagining the conversations between the therapist and Carruthers. Confidential discussions, of course, up until now.

His parents’ marriage had not been a great success but nor had it been an unqualified failure. Mrs Carruthers had apparently found her husband’s long stretches at sea hard to bear. With his spells ashore becoming increasingly tedious, the Frenchwoman had lavished her pent-up affection on her little son, who had grown up to be a rather pampered child, shy of the father whom he rarely saw and tongue-tied in the presence of adults.

Mrs Carruthers had fought a long battle to keep her little boy at home when her husband would have packed him off to school at an early age, Carruthers had claimed, and it was not until his mother became ill that the twelve-year-old Valentine was sent away. What followed was a familiar story, according to the therapist. Public school buggery is a well-known fact of life, and there are those adults in society who constantly claim that the sordid practices of their boyhood did them absolutely no harm. Valentine Carruthers was not one to voice such an opinion . Lorimer read the therapist’s handwritten notes, then continued piecing the whole picture together. Young Carruthers had left school and drifted into the civil service, eschewing the family tradition of taking to the high seas. Then his mother’s death had given him the excuse to cut all ties with home and make his own way in the city of London.

Lorimer pictured the old man years before, pouring out his life story to this therapist. How much of it was true, he wondered, and how much the self-pity of a man trying to make sense of his wasted life?

Nothing much seemed to be known about his twenties but Lorimer guessed that his later preference for young male company must have begun at least by then.

His first conviction had come on his thirty-first birthday. He lost his job, spent two years in prison and came back to society to find that his life had changed forever. There had been nothing like the modern provision for rehabilitation of child abusers then and Valentine re-offended regularly, coming to the attention of the police several times in the twenty-five years that followed. He was well into his fifties by the time any attempt was made to turn him away from paedophilia. His crimes were detailed in the Press, his neighbours hounded him from their communities and eventually the man travelled further and further north. Until he reached Glasgow.

Valentine’s descent into dereliction was not so very surprising, Lorimer thought. Rejected by a fearful society, unable to control his desire for the company of small boys, he had slept rough and taken what pleasures he could whenever he had dared. Nonetheless the Chief Inspector’s natural revulsion was tinged with pity.

They had met in a park, according to the statement by Lucy’s tutor. Meeting Lucy must have opened up new horizons for the old man, thought Lorimer. He imagined how she had sketched the tramp impassively, as she might have sketched a robin’s nest or an old mossy log. He would have made an interesting subject, that was all. Then Lucy had offered to pay him to sit in her children’s drawing class. The old man would have accepted this without hesitation.

It must have been hard to sit still surrounded by these earnest young faces, Lorimer thought, his mouth tight with distaste. They had become accustomed to their wizened subject, however, and saw no harm in accepting his polo mints and sherbet lemons. Questions recently asked of the youngsters in Lucy’s drawing class had so far suggested that none of them had been interfered with by the old man. In fact they had felt sorry for him rather than afraid.