Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EMMA
W e pulled off the road and drove through huge, wrought-iron gates, that opened automatically for us, onto a long, winding driveaway. All the while, I was subtly watching Alex, trying to assess his body language as I quizzed him about Sirius Bell. He didn’t give much away. And his answers were what you’d expect any sane, upstanding member of the community to say after a heinous crime had been committed.
In all honesty, I didn’t think Alex was capable of assisting in something of that magnitude of hideousness. But at the same time, I couldn’t shake the little voice in my head, reminding me that he had the largest collection of S.K.A.M. art in the country. That perhaps he knew who he was. And maybe, he was friendlier with him than he’d let on.
I stared out of the window as we drove through sprawling fields as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the sky was grey and full of rain clouds, but the view was vibrant and green, with lush grass and trees. The driveway we travelled down was lined with short, neat hedges and Victorian lampposts that I knew would look stunning when they were lit up in the evening.
I watched the scenery roll past the window, and then I held in a gasp as the house came into view. Sunford Manor was a huge stately home, a mansion that would give Buckingham Palace a run for its money. There were so many windows I felt sorry for the window cleaner having to clean them all, and I found myself wondering who else lived here. Surely Alex didn’t rattle around inside this mansion alone? He’d have staff, I knew that, but it’d take a whole army to keep an estate like this running. I struggled to stay on top of my housework, and I lived in a tiny, terraced house.
I tried to keep my nerves in check as Alex drove the car around the circular driveway to park by the steps that led to the front doors. A man had already opened the doors to the house and was heading to the steps to walk down and meet us.
“Remind me why I’m here again?” I asked, trying not to panic, as the man approached us, and Alex waved him over to my side of the car.
“You humoured me and agreed to come here,” Alex announced chirpily. “And we had an appointment. I hate to upset my schedule. And like I said in my text, I think I can help you.” He leaned closer to me, and added, “Try not to overthink it, Emma. We can have a coffee and chat. No pressure. Maybe see the art I told you about. Whatever you feel comfortable with.”
If he could peer into my brain, he’d see that comfort was the last thing on my mind. I was on edge. My brain was darting from one wild theory to another, and my world was on a fast-track to destruction. There was a crazy killer stalking me, and I was about two weeks away from being a desolate, homeless, down and out.
I gave a fake smile in response, a smile that didn’t reach my eyes as I stepped out of the car, thanking the man for holding my door open.
“I’d prefer a tea to coffee,” I replied, as I walked around the car to join Alex on the steps of his manor. “And I’m intrigued by your art collection.”
And sickened by the man who created it.
But I kept that thought to myself.
“I’m pleased you said that. I’ve been dying to show you around.”
Alex instructed the man, who was called Thomas, to park his car in the garage for him, and told him he wouldn’t need it again today. I didn’t say anything. I guessed he thought I’d book an Uber to get home.
We climbed the marble steps towards the front doors of the manor, and as we walked inside, I saw a middle-aged woman standing beside a beautiful table with a stunning floral arrangement of lilies on it in the middle of the foyer.
“May I take your coat?” she asked, stepping forward as I tried to keep my jaw off the floor at the grandeur of this place.
There was a sweeping staircase in the foyer with luxurious cream carpet and brass rails leading to the second floor. I couldn’t help but lift my head to look up at the chandelier that sparkled above us, as Alex answered, “Thank you, Alma. And I’d appreciate it if you could hold all my calls while Miss Belmont is here. We don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Of course, Sir.” She bowed and smiled at Alex, and he came to stand behind me and slipped his jacket off my shoulders. I’d completely forgotten I was still wearing it.
“Could you put Miss Belmont’s own coat in the dryer, ready for later?” he asked.
I went to protest, but I didn’t. It’d be nice to get my worthless, non-waterproof raincoat dry before I left.
Instead, I smiled politely and said, “Thank you.” As I let him slip that off my shoulders too, and hand it to his housemaid.
“And a pot of tea when you have time, to be served in my office,” Alex added as she nodded and backed away.
“Of course,” she replied.
“Let me get you a sweater, you’re still shivering,” Alex said, and I glanced down at my arms to see goosebumps on my skin that I hadn’t noticed.
He went to walk away, but I called out, “No, don’t worry. I’m fine. It’s just the breeze from the open door.” I turned to see the door in question was now closed. There was no breeze. “I’ll be okay. Honestly.” I turned to face him, and to move the subject on, I added, “Why don’t you show me your paintings? I’d love to see your collection.”
He grinned back at me, and the way he smiled made my stomach swirl with nerves, like they had the first time we’d met.
But then I remembered who’d made the artwork he wanted me to see. The artwork he collected so fanatically, and I felt sick again.
Did I really want to see the work of a man who was making my life hell, even though Alex was going to be the one showing them to me?
“Okay,” Alex said. “Follow me.”
And I did, knowing I’d have to fake my enthusiasm.
Nothing that artist did would ever fill me with awe again.
Not now.
I strode forward, walking in step beside Alex as he led me down the hallway. The walls were wood-panelled but painted cream to match the carpet, and there were huge sash windows that let in so much natural light it gave everything a bright, airy feel. It was the opposite of what I’d expected when I saw the building from the outside. I thought it would be all dark wood and antiques, not this modern haven of a home. I couldn’t deny, I loved the feel of the place.
“Your home is beautiful,” I said, as I admired the detailed coving along the ceiling. “It’s very warm. Very... stylish.”
“You’ve only seen the hallway,” he gave a light chuckle and added, “And the foyer, but thank you. I made a lot of changes when I took over the estate. I’m glad you like what you’ve seen so far. I have to admit, I like beautiful things.” He gave me a boyish grin, like he was talking about more than the house, but when he turned and pushed open a set of double doors to reveal a room filled with artwork, I stopped still, staring in awe.
“Wow,” I gasped. “This room is amazing.” And it really was.
I stepped inside and peered around at all the art on the walls. There were portraits, landscapes, modernist, impressionist, every type of ‘ist’ painting you could think of in this room. It was an impressive collection and not at all like the S.K.A.M. pieces I’d seen so far.
“This is my mother’s collection,” Alex stated as I crept further into the room, studying each painting as I went. “She loved art. She was the reason I went on to collect myself. She taught me a lot.”
I stopped in front of a painting of Sunford Manor, and leaned forward, squinting to read the artist’s name.
“My mother painted that one,” Alex said, his voice near my ear, making the skin on my neck prickle. Now I had goosebumps for another reason than the cold. “She was an amateur painter.”
“It doesn’t look amateur to me,” I replied, feeling breathless and a little dizzy. Having him so close was doing things to me. Things that I couldn’t deny I liked.
“She’d love you for saying that,” he replied. “But she only painted for herself. She didn’t sell anything or have anything in a gallery. I think it was her dream, though.” And he sighed. “But I guess sometimes, we have to find other ways to make our dreams come true.”
I moved along, staring at each painting as I walked slowly on, and then I reached a portrait. The lady in it had long black hair that was threaded with delicate daisies, and she was smiling for the artist with her head tilted slightly. She was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, a white sundress skimming her ankles, and her feet were bare. In front of her, on the wooden floor, was a globe. If I had to describe her look, I’d say it was bohemian.
“That’s my mother,” Alex said as he came to stand next to me. “She commissioned a local artist to paint that.”
“She looks like a free spirit,” I commented, “Like nothing could faze her.”
“She was. She loved to travel, hence the globe in front of her. She was something of an anthropologist. She found other people fascinating.”
“I think I’d have liked her.”
“She’d have loved you,” he replied, and my cheeks grew red.
I turned to face him, staring for a second, lost for words as he stared back at me. Then I watched as he swallowed, and in a gruff voice, he said, “I’m glad you like this room, and my mother’s paintings, but what I really want you to see is through there.” And he gestured to an open door at the far side of the room. A door that made fear cloud the pleasant haze that I was currently revelling in.
That was the room with his art.
I wasn’t sure my legs would move to take me into it. I was frozen to the spot.
Alex stalked towards the open door, then stood there waiting for me to join him. Slowly, I stepped forward, noticing how his smile grew wider the closer I got. And once I was standing in front of him, he said, “I know you felt the same way I did when I saw you at the Berkeley exhibition. Some of those pieces really spoke to you, they touched you. I hope you have the same reaction when you see this collection. It’s something I’m really proud of. And I know your opinion of the artist has been tainted recently, but I hope you can look past that and see the beauty in his creations.”
He moved aside to let me enter first, and even though I knew what he wanted to show me, I still wasn’t fully prepared for the effect it’d have on me to see all these pieces together in one room. My breath hitched as my stomach rolled.
How could a man who embodied so much evil create such beauty?
I had no doubt he was evil. He’d told me as much himself. But glancing around the room, his art took my breath away.
“There’s a lot of his earlier work here. Some of it is a little rough around the edges, but the first time I saw a S.K.A.M. painting, I knew he was something special.”
My eyes didn’t know which painting to take in first, there was so much to digest. It was like a sensory overload.
“How did you discover him?” I asked, and Alex paused, taking a moment to think about his answer.
“He was a local artist.” He rubbed his chin in thought, then added, “I have to admit, I first saw his name on a wall of graffiti in the town. Not the tags you see when you’re on the train or in an underpass, but proper art, graffiti with meaning. Then one day, I was at a local art dealers and I saw that piece there...” Alex walked over to stand in front of a graffiti style painting and went on, “This was the first piece I bought. After that, I became hooked.”
I went to stand next to Alex to get a closer look at the painting. There was the image of a little boy, only about three or four years old, sitting on the ground in a puddle, but the puddle was red. He held an umbrella above him, to shield his body from the red raindrops falling all around him. And if you looked closely, you could see that each raindrop had a knife hidden inside it. The little boy had his head down, but his little fists held the umbrella handle so tightly you could see the strain in his hands.
“What do you think?” Alex asked me.
“I think...” I paused, swallowing to clear my dry throat. “It’s really tragic. The little boy feels danger coming from every direction. The puddle he’s sitting in shows a lot has already hit him, but he’s still hopeful of protection from the umbrella. He’s still fighting.”
“You interpret it the same way I do. There’s been a lot of tragedy in his life. You can see it in all his work,” he said, referencing the fact that he thought the boy in the painting was S.K.A.M. “Take this one, for example.”
Alex stepped to the side to stand in front of another painting of a huge eye. The iris was black and looked like shattered glass, and the pupil in the middle was red, with what looked like a drop coming down, as if it was bleeding. And hidden within the lashes were the words, ‘See No Evil’.
“It isn’t as sophisticated as the Follow Your Heart piece that was showcased at Berkeley,” Alex said as he stared at the painting. “But you can see the raw talent.”
“You were always going to buy that painting, weren’t you?” I asked, meaning the Berkeley piece. “It didn’t matter that I chose it. You’d already decided.”
And he smiled.
“The Heart piece? Yes. I’d already bought it before you picked it out, but it was nice to know you felt the same way I did.”
“You’re really passionate about his work, aren’t you?”
I thought I might break his heart if I told him what his idol was really like.
Maybe he already knew.
The idea of him having an accomplice was still floating in my mind, but it couldn’t be Alex. It just couldn’t.
“He was a guy who was down on his luck,” Alex replied solemnly. “A diamond in the rough. All he needed was someone to notice him. To take a chance and give him the platform he deserved.”
“And you gave him that platform.”
“I helped. But his talent gave him the platform. These days, people are only too happy to shout about what they hate. When they find something they love, they’re quieter. I was just a man who bucked that trend. I shouted about him, and now, other people can see his worth too.”
I felt a ripple of nausea wash over me. He wasn’t the person Alex thought he was, and that was something I wanted to shout about, but I’d always been silenced. My review, well, the words that Mr Gold stained me with, had brought out the worst in the artist, and now, I was living with the consequences.
People might shout about what they hate, but shame? That stays silent. Even I wasn’t speaking up about it as much as I should’ve. And I wanted to. I’d tried when I went to the police, but they didn’t want to know. Nobody wanted to know.
“Have you ever met him? Do you know his name?” I asked, anxious to hear the truth.
Alex frowned, considering his response, and then said, “You know I can’t answer that, Emma. His anonymity is something he takes very seriously.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. You know who he is.”
And if you told me who he was, you could help me stop what’s happening.
Alex paused for a moment, seemingly in thought. Then he said, “I may have got word to him, through his people, that you weren’t behind any of the articles in the newspaper. I thought it was important that he knew the truth... for your sake and his.”
I was surprised and grateful that he’d done that. It hadn’t helped, but at least he’d tried.
“Thank you,” I replied, despite not feeling thankful. He was still threatening me, after all. “Has he responded?”
“No,” Alex said, which didn’t surprise me. He hadn’t responded because he didn’t agree.
Alex proceeded to sing S.K.A.M.’s praises, telling me, “He started to do his live performances about two years ago. I was at the first one. Me, and about six other people in a park in the city. Now, he only performs to a select few, and those tickets are like gold dust. He’s an artist, a poet, a performer, a philosopher. There’s nothing he can’t do.”
Except keep himself restrained when things don’t go his way, and refrain from leaving bloody organs in women’s houses to scare the shit out of them. But I stayed quiet.
“Are you seeing him perform in Italy on Thursday?” I asked.
Alex’s brows shot up, and he turned to regard me with admiration. “You know about that? I guess you’re more of a fan than I realised.”
I was about to tell him that Lloyd had told me, but he started to talk about how he’d arranged a business trip to coincide with the performance, and it didn’t feel right to butt in. I let him talk about the plans he had with Ethan and Tobey, the trio as Lloyd called them, and then I saw the painting we were standing beside, and again, I was left speechless.
There was a little boy, about six or seven, standing with his back to us, dressed in tatty clothes, a dirty T-shirt, worn jeans and no shoes on his filthy feet. The room he was standing in had wallpaper peeling from the wall and black mould on the ceiling. The window was broken, the pane cracked from top to bottom and droplets trickled down it, maybe from the rain outside, but more probably from the condensation and damp inside. At his feet were broken toys, an army doll with no head, a deflated football, and the smashed glass from a ship in a bottle. The glass was so close to his bare feet that it made me fearful for him, even though he wasn’t real.
But the thing that caught my attention the most was that he was standing in front of a mirror, and in that mirror was a reflection of the boy, with clean clothes and shiny shoes. The room in the refection was full of toys that weren’t broken, but shiny and new, and the bedroom looked immaculate, spotless. The perfect room for a privileged little boy. The opposite of where he stood as he looked at himself. And what also stood out was the smile on the boy in the mirror’s face. I don’t think the one looking into the mirror was smiling the same way.
“He hoped for better things,” I said, my mouth working before my brain could engage.
Alex peered down at me, his face unreadable as he stated plainly, “He saw the truth.” And then his eyes widened slightly as he looked past me over my shoulder. “Alma,” he said. “You didn’t need to bring the tea in here.”
I turned to see his housemaid place a tea tray onto a small table against the far wall.
“I know what you’re like.” She smiled kindly back at him. “Once you come in here, you don’t leave for hours. I thought Miss Belmont might appreciate the refreshment.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and Alma nodded politely back at me, then backed out of the room, leaving us alone again. Alex walked over to the table and poured a cup of tea from the pot, asking me, “Milk? Sugar?”
“Milk, no sugar,” I replied and went towards him as he poured a dash of milk into a cup and stirred it with a silver spoon. There were no mugs served in Sunford Manor. No. This tea was in a bone China cup and saucer. I hated holding saucers; my hand always got twitchy, and the cup rattled. But I didn’t want to appear rude, so I took the saucer and lifted the cup, taking a sip, then another when I discovered the tea was only lukewarm, and I was thirstier than I realised.
Alex poured a cup for himself, but he didn’t drink it right away. Instead, he went over to another painting and started to tell me about it, detailing all the elements that made it one of his favourites. But as he spoke, I began to feel woozy and zone out. I took another sip of my tea, then placed the cup and saucer back on the tray. But as I did, my hands became clumsy, I couldn’t control them, and the China clattered from my grasp to the floor.
Alex stopped speaking and spun around, asking frantically, “Are you okay?” As he stalked towards me.
“I’m fine,” I replied, touching my forehead and gently wiping the sheen of sweat gathered there.
Alex wasn’t convinced, and he put his hand on my arm.
“Emma, you don’t look so good.” He reached for a nearby chair and pulled it closer to us. “Sit down. You’ve gone really pale.”
“I’m always pale,” I said, brushing it off, but as I stumbled towards the chair, I felt a rush to my head, and everything went blurry. The world tilted like I was swaying on a cruise ship in the middle of the worst storm to ever hit the seas.
“Emma, sit,” he commanded, but I couldn’t answer him. My mouth was moving, but the words coming out were slurred, and his words sounded like they were slowing down, being spoken from underwater and becoming distorted. “Emmmaaaa. Sssssit. Heeerree.”
I shook my head, trying to focus on the chair in front of me, but now it looked like there were multiple chairs, all moving in front of my eyes.
I could feel the touch of his hand on my arm as I swayed, and then I managed to croak, “I’mmmm... no...n...nottt... well,” before my body slumped to the floor and everything went black.