Ian Rankin - Beggars Banquet

I swallowed. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

Hefferwhite took my arm and led me around the table, so we were directly in front of the painting. ‘Ronny was my friend. He blew his brains out. Your Prime Minister thinks I want to be reminded of that? I think this is supposed to tell me something.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure. It’ll take some thinking. You British are devious bastards.’

‘I feel I should object to that.’

Hefferwhite ignored me. ‘Ronny painted the first version of Herbert in Paris, ’forty-nine or ’fifty.’ He frowned. ‘Must’ve been ’fifty. Know who Herbert was?’ He was studying the painting now. At first, his eyes flicked over it. Then he stared a little harder, picking out that section and this, concentrating.

‘Who?’ The champagne flute shook in my hand. Death, I thought, would come as some relief. And not a moment too soon.

‘Some guy we shared rooms with, never knew his second name. He said second names were shackles. Not like Malcolm X and all that, Herbert was white, nicely brought-up. Wanted to study Sartre, wanted to write plays and films and I don’t know what. Jesus, I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I know Ronny did, too.’ He sniffed, lifted a canapé from a passing tray and shoved it into his mouth. ‘Anyway,’ he said through the crumbs, ‘Herbert – he didn’t like us calling him Herb – he used to go out running. Healthy body, healthy mind, that was his creed. He’d go out before dawn, usually just as we were going to bed. Always wanted us to go with him, said we’d see the world differently after a run.’ He smiled at the memory, looked at the painting again. ‘That’s him running along the Seine, only the river’s filled with philosophers and their books, all drowning.’

He kept looking at the painting, and I could feel the memories welling in him. I let him look. I wanted him to look. It was more his painting than anyone’s. I could see that now. I knew I should say something… like, ‘that’s very interesting’, or ‘that explains so much’. But I didn’t. I stared at the painting, too, and it was as though we were alone in that crowded, noisy room. We might have been on a desert island, or in a time machine. I saw Herbert running, saw his hunger. I saw his passion for questions and the seeking out of answers. I saw why philosophers always failed, and why they went on trying despite the fact. I saw the whole bloody story. And the colours: they were elemental, but they were of the city, too. They were Paris, not long after the war, the recuperating city. Blood and sweat and the simple, feral need to go on living.

To go on living.

My eyes were filling with water. I was about to say something crass, something like ‘thank you’, but Hefferwhite beat me to it, leaned towards me so his voice could drop to a whisper.

‘It’s a hell of a fake.’

And with that, and a pat on my shoulder, he drifted back into the party.

‘I could have died,’ I told Jance. It was straight afterwards. I was still wearing the Armani, pacing the floor of my flat. It’s not much – third floor, two bedrooms, Maida Vale – but I was happy to see it. I could hardly get the tears out of my eyes. The telephone was in my hand… I just had to tell some body, and who could I tell but Jance?

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve never asked about the client.’

‘I didn’t want to know. Jance, I swear to God, I nearly died.’

He chuckled, not really understanding. He was in Zurich, sounded further away still. ‘I knew Joe already had a couple of Voores,’ he said. ‘He’s got some other stuff too – but he doesn’t broadcast the fact. That’s why he was perfect for Herbert in Motion.’

‘But he was talking about not wanting to be reminded of the suicide.’

‘He was talking about why the painting was there.’

‘He thought it must be a message.’

Jance sighed. ‘Politics. Who understands politics?’

I sighed with him. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

‘Don’t blame you. I never understood why you started in the first place.’

‘Let’s say I lost faith.’

‘Me, I never had much to start with. Listen, you haven’t told anyone else?’

‘Who would I tell?’ My mouth dropped open. ‘But I left a note.’

‘A note?’

‘For my boss.’

‘Might I suggest you go retrieve it?’

Beginning to tremble all over again, I went out in search of a taxi.

The night security people knew who I was, and let me into the building. I’d worked there before at night – it was the only time I could strip and replace the canvases.

‘Busy tonight, eh?’ the guard said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Busy tonight,’ he repeated. ‘Your boss is already in.’

‘When did he arrive?’

‘Not five minutes ago. He was running.’

‘Running?’

‘Said he needed a pee.’

I ran too, ran as fast as I could through the galleries and towards the offices, the paintings a blur either side of me. Running like Herbert, I thought. There was a light in my superior’s office, and the door was ajar. But the room itself was empty. I walked to the desk and saw my note there, still in its sealed envelope. I picked it up and stuffed it into my jacket, just as my superior came into the room.

‘Oh, good man,’ he said, rubbing his hands to dry them. ‘You got the message.’

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to still my breathing. Message: I hadn’t checked my machine.

‘Thought if we did a couple of evenings it would sort out the Rothko.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘No need to be so formal though.’

I stared at him.

‘The suit,’ he said.

‘Drinks at Number Ten,’ I explained.

‘How did it go?’

‘Fine.’

‘PM happy with his Voore?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You know he only wanted it to impress some American? One of his aides told me.’

‘Joseph Hefferwhite,’ I said.

‘And was he impressed?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, it keeps us sweet with the PM, and we all know who holds the purse-strings.’ My superior made himself comfortable in his chair and looked at his desk. ‘Where’s that envelope?’

‘What?’

‘There was an envelope here.’ He looked down at the floor.

I swallowed, dry-mouthed. ‘I’ve got it,’ I said. He looked startled, but I managed a smile. ‘It was from me, proposing we spend an evening or two on Rothko.’

My superior beamed. ‘Great minds, eh?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Sit down then, let’s get started.’ I pulled over a chair. ‘Can I let you into a secret? I detest Rothko.’

I smiled again. ‘I’m not too keen myself.’

‘Sometimes I think a student could do his stuff just as well, maybe even better.’

‘But then it wouldn’t be his, would it?’

‘Ah, there’s the rub.’

But I thought of the Voore fake, and Joe Hefferwhite’s story, and my own reactions to the painting – to what was, when all’s said and done, a copy – and I began to wonder…

This is the way the sixties ends.

Someone told you Anita’s a witch. You can believe it. When you ask her: ‘Black or white?’ she says: ‘Black.’ So you don’t put any milk in her coffee. She tips some of it on to the carpet, leaving room for a measure of JD. Then she goes to find Keith or Brian. Or somebody.

You screw the top back on the bottle, stepping around the coffee patch. The floor accepts this latest insult, this new recruit to its wash of…

Wash of what? Come on, you’re the writer here. You need to describe that carpet, keep the metaphor going. ‘Recruit’ because the floor looks like a battlefield. Original carpet colour: raw liver. Not much of that on view beneath the layered effluvium of trodden crisps, sandwich crusts, paper bags, butt ends, spent matches, roaches, chocolate wrappings. The drinks cans, the bottles, the music papers and magazines, autographed photos, flash-bulbs, envelopes and tape reels.