Playing With Fire

She had been surprised to hear from Banks that Thomas McMahon had also been there, and when she cast her mind back, she thought she remembered a short, burly fellow with a glass of wine in his hand chatting to some of the center’s committee members. It had been a crowded room, though, and she had been there partly to keep an eye on the painting in the adjoining room, so she could easily have missed both McMahon and Hayward.

A

Finally, she heard Hayward throw down the brush and play himself a brief fanfare. “Finished.”

“It’s a wonderful view,” A

“What?” Hayward looked confused. “Oh, yes,” he said, catching on, “I suppose it is, if you like that sort of thing. Personally I think landscapes are vastly overrated, and landscape painting died with the invention of the camera. It just hasn’t had the decency to roll over and accept the fact. A good digital camera can do anything the Impressionists ever did.”

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” said A

“It is, isn’t it?” said Hayward, waving his hand dismissively. “I try to break free from conventional ways of thinking and living. Anyway, it’s the isolation I like. I keep the curtains closed most of the time.”

“Good idea,” said A

“Tom? Friends?” He ran his hand through his lank, greasy hair. “Yes, I suppose we were, in a way.”

“Did you have a falling-out?”

“I disagreed with his artistic direction, or lack of one – the kind of abstract effects he was working on went out with the Cubists, and then there were those dreadful landscapes he churned out for the tourist trade.”

“To pay the rent?”

“I suppose so. But rent’s not that important in the grand scheme of things, is it?”

A

“Must have been four, five years ago.”

“Not since?”

“No. He just sort of dropped out of the scene. What scene there is.” Hayward scratched his crotch. “I saw less of him. He became more distant and moody. In the end, I didn’t even know where he was living. I thought he’d left town.”

“You didn’t bump into him at the Turner reception last summer, then?”

Hayward pulled a face. “Do me a favor. Turner? You think I’d waste my time with that sort of tripe?”

“Of course,” A

“No. We were always on good terms. Polite terms, at any rate. And whatever it was he did, it wasn’t art.”

“But you’ve no idea what he was up to more recently?”

“None at all.”

“His work hasn’t appeared anywhere?”

“Thank God, no.”

“Would it surprise you to hear that we think he was squatting on a boat on the canal, a boat that was set on fire on Thursday night, killing him and the girl on the neighboring boat?”

If A

“Do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill Tom McMahon?”

“For painting bad pictures?”

“Mr. Hayward.”

Hayward gri

“You seem to be very aware of the effects you’re striving for,” A

“What would you know about it?”

“Nothing. Just an opinion.”

“Uninformed opinion is about as interesting as a Constable landscape.”

“Ah,” said A

“Look,” said Hayward, when A

“That’s okay,” said A

Hayward stood in the doorway, leaning on the jamb and blocking the exit. “Maybe your visit wasn’t entirely wasted, though,” he said.

A

“No. I mean, there are often other purposes, aren’t there? Hidden purposes. You do something for one reason, at least on the surface, but it turns out there’s an underlying, deeper reason you just weren’t conscious of. A more important reason. Fate, perhaps.”

“Speak English, Baz. And get out of my way.”

Hayward stood his ground. “I’d like to paint you,” he a

“Paint me?”

“Yes. We could start now, if you like. Perhaps some preliminary sketches?”

A

She grabbed his wrist so quickly he had no time to stop her, twisted his arm behind his back and pushed him into the room. He stumbled into the easel, knocking the painting he had been working on to the floor. Then A

When Banks walked down the front steps of Eastvale General Infirmary, it was already dark, and the drizzle had turned into a late-afternoon mist that blurred the shop lights on King Street. For some reason, he was overcome with a vivid memory of a similar afternoon when he was fifteen or sixteen, when he’d been upstairs on a bus coming home from town, a copy of the Fresh Cream album and the latest Melody Maker tucked under his arm. Looking out at the yellow halos of the streetlights and the hazy neon signs, he had lit a cigarette and it had tasted magnificent, by far the best cigarette he had ever smoked. He could taste it now, and he automatically reached in his pocket. Of course, there were no cigarettes in his pocket. He looked across King Street at the light in the newsagent’s window, bleary in the late-afternoon mist, strongly tempted to dash over and buy a packet. Just ten. He’d smoke only the ten and then no more. But he got a grip on himself, turned his collar up and trudged up the hill to the station.