Still Death Page 2

  “As in Scotland Yard?”

  She nodded. “Homicide mostly, with the occasional case of robbery or extortion.”

  “Knock me over with a feather.”

  “It’s a living.” She shrugged.

  “Tell that to the victims,” I countered. “Homicide? And here I am just a struggling artist. I’ll shut up now and look impressed.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Hanay. My cousin was at the Royal College of Art. He likes your work, which is saying a lot. One of your paintings was in a show he dragged me to a while back. He generally hates everything.”

  “Must have been the student show at the Slade,” I answered. “What’s his name? Mine’s Alec, by the way, not Mr. Hanay.”

  “Charles Grantley. And whatever you’re struggling with isn’t your nightlife,” remarked Tessa, taking another look around. “What a brilliant room.”

  “It is.” I sipped and looked at Tessa. “That’s not your color, you know,” I said, meaning her coat. “No offense. Not sure why I thought that was an appropriate comment. Never mind.”

  “ ‘Bird-turd blue.’ That’s what a colleague calls it. What are you, the fashion police?”

  “No!” I said. “None of my business; strike it from the record. Sorry to be rude.”

  “You’re trying to tell me I should make more of an effort.”

  “Again, so not my business.” I poured more champagne for each of us.

  “You’d be right, though. It’s funny; this place is lovely, but it makes me feel kind of shopworn. Like I need to clean up my act.”

  “Maybe you just need a new coat,” I suggested.

  “And a new hairstyle and a list of other things. Right now I don’t have time to grab lunch most days.”

  “Are you hungry? ’Cause we can fix that. The food’s pretty good here.” I motioned to a familiar waiter, who came immediately.

  “Good to see you, Mr. Hanay,” he said.

  “You too, George. My friend here’s a bit peckish.”

  “I’m really fine,” Tessa said.

  “Have something. Any dietary restrictions?” I asked.

  “Just work.” She smiled.

  “George, how about a tuna burger?” I said.

  George nodded. “Medium rare?”

  “Ask the lady,” I said.

  Tessa looked at me, then at George. “That’s what he gets?”

  “Precisely,” George replied.

  “All right. I’ll go with that,” Tessa said.

  “Wise decision,” George said and walked off.

  “Okay, talk,” I demanded, nicely, I think.

  “About the new coat I’m going to buy?” Tessa smiled again.

  “There’s a reason for everything, right? I’m thinking you don’t care about the damn coat, which is fine. What I’m wondering is why.”

  “We don’t really know each other, Alec.”

  “So let’s change that. I’m living in London now in part to see if I like it. My dad was a Brit, but he’s long gone. I guess I kind of wanted to see if I like myself better here.”

  Tessa’s eyebrows rose. “And what’s not to like about you?”

  “I think I’ve been kind of a jerk to a lot of people the past few years. Might just be that I needed to grow up. Basically, I wasn’t very happy.”

  “Oh, I know unhappy,” Tessa said. “We go way back.” She drank more champagne. “Why were you unhappy?”

  “How long have you got?” I smiled. “That would take far too long to explain.”

  “Is your mum living?”

  “She is, just not living near me. Not if I can help it.”

  “Got it. Mine died six years ago. Dad’s great, but I rarely see him. Growing up, Mum used to tell me how pretty she was at my age, the implication being I wasn’t. Pretty, that is.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said and meant it. “Boyfriend? No ring, I see.”

  “Well, I was engaged, but it didn’t work out.”

  “You going to tell me how it didn’t work out?”

  Tessa said nothing for a moment. She took another sip of champagne.

  “A drunk driver on the M25 made it not work out. Killed instantly. Jonah. His name was Jonah.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Three years. I could give you months, weeks, days, and hours, but I’ll spare you.”

  I put as much sympathy as I could in my gaze, which she held a long while until finally she blushed and leaned back in her chair.

  The burger came. Tessa ate.

  “Good?” I asked.

  “So good.” She chewed, swallowed. “It’s the first time I’ve said his name in months. Jonah. I know I need to get over it. Him.”

  “Yes you do. But if anyone’s giving you a deadline, fuck ’em. It takes what it takes.”

  “Nothing like a little light conversation. With someone you just met.”

  “I think of my dad every day. It’s part of my routine. I don’t want to stop thinking of him, you know?”

  Tessa nodded. “What about you? Girlfriend? Fiancée?”

  “Yes. Girlfriend.”

  “You say that with such enthusiasm,” Tessa said.

  “Actually, she’s pretty amazing. It’s just that sometimes I don’t feel like being amazing with her, you know?”

  Tessa nodded again. “Sounds exhausting.”

  “Exactly.”

  Both of us smiled. What a rare, pleasant surprise she was.

  “You don’t need to speak about Jonah if you don’t want to, but we’ve got half a bottle to finish, and we’ve got to talk about something.”

  She talked. I was glad. Tessa told me about her fiancé’s death and how she’d buried herself in work, which she called “the killing fields.” Her bloody knee worried me more than it did her. When I mentioned it, she said it was nothing; she’d seen a lot of blood lately. It went with the job was all she said when I asked. Some job. She spoke of the solitary, insular life she’d found herself leading the past few years.

  “My dad thinks I’m depressed,” she said. “Maybe he’s right. All I know is it feels sometimes like my life has been reduced to work, eating, and sleeping. I’m really quite pathetic.”

  “You’re not, you know,” I replied. “I get it, Tessa. Been there, done that.”

  How many conversations in your life have been truly memorable, aside from shaking some star’s hand and babbling inane words of praise? Like the first time you met a person who became a best friend—that kind of connection? I remember thinking that talking to Tessa was like opening a box and finding something remarkable and unexpected. A pearl in a smoked oyster. She was easy to talk to. I told her of how I’d come to London from L.A. a little over a year before. I spoke, as I rarely do, of the loss of my father, born in Suffolk near Lowestoft, famed as a film director, knighted over twenty years ago, dead by his own hand days before my ninth birthday. It’s possible that Tessa knew much of my story; many did. We had that connection of both having lost a loved one. No grief is simple, each made-to-measure. Still, there’s a bond that comes from having experienced it, one Tessa and I shared that night. Our conversation was exceptional, even therapeutic—for both of us, I believe. We even talked about my work, which intrigued her—that or she faked it well. I mentioned I’d been focused lately on figure studies.

  Finally, a nearby clock chimed one, which startled Tessa.

  “I really must go. I have work tomorrow,” she said as she rose from her seat. “Thank you very much indeed for…an unexpectedly nice evening, wounds and all.”

  I escorted her outside. We walked a few steps from the club entrance. I asked if she would let me paint her. Silently, she buttoned her coat. Finally, she asked, “How?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you were working on figure studies. In what state of dress or undress?”

  I blushed. “Well…”

  “Well…pos
ing nude doesn’t sound like a very bright career move for a police inspector, but thanks for asking. I think.”

  Point taken. I didn’t feel rejected. We both had these genuine, smug smiles on our faces. She extended her hand for me to shake. None of that British reserve bullshit for me, not that night; I hugged her. It was a great hug.

  I smiled again, pulled an index-sized card out of my coat pocket, and handed it to her. Tessa perused what was an invitation to the opening of an exhibition of my work, my first solo show, a month away at a gallery in Hoxton Square.

  “Tessa Grantley,” I said, “Detective Inspector, this is the first time in my life I can truly say to someone, it was great running into you.”

  She laughed. “My pleasure. Well, after my knee stopped throbbing. Good luck with the exhibition,” she finished, folding into a cab that had just pulled up.

  “Come!” I yelled as she rode off. We locked eyes until the taxi rounded the corner. I walked back inside, thinking how surprising people can be. How a lonely heart like Tessa can be so appealing.

  After seeing Tessa off, I went on a search. The hunt was for a type of woman, someone I would enjoy and appreciate painting. Although I was taking classes at the Slade School of Art, the models they came up with weren’t working for me. Now in my second term, I was taking a seminar on figure studies. Knowledge of the human form—anatomy for artists—and the ability to draw it, in repose, in motion, in various stances. Figure + Study. Admission to this advanced class was by audition. I made the cut with a portfolio that evidently impressed the instructor. I’d done figure studies before, even painted my mother when I was a teen—her idea, by the way, not mine. People seemed to like my work; from a fairly young age, I was told I “showed promise.”

  A series of models came through the classroom, some lookers, most not. Beauty wasn’t the point, of course. Form (and following it) was. One who sat for us, a curvaceous brunette named Allison Tyson, turned out to be even more uninhibited than her fellow models. Prior to the session starting, as she settled in, her eyes lit on me. She had no problem making it clear she liked what she saw. She warmed to her task considerably, letting out a kind of coo. The result was the eyes of the class were on me as much as her. It was as if she were doing some sort of striptease, except there was nothing to shed but a bathrobe. Allison lay more than sat, reclining on a chair—nearly supine—legs dangling over one arm, her head extending past the other. I’ve since thought that she may have been on something, but all I know for certain is how damned uncomfortable she made me feel.

  Later, after storming out of class—me, not her—I tried to sort what it was that bugged me about the experience. Maybe I should have been flattered. I wasn’t. What I came up with is this: Model Tyson broke the wall that normally exists in such a setting, the veil of professionalism that purports to cover such fraught, uncovered situations. The woman walked in, checked me out, liked the view, and let us all know. Then, as she sat for the class, she added sensuality—sexual desire—to the equation of her pose. She didn’t stare into space as she was drawn in ink or charcoal; she stared at me—as she disrobed, hell, throughout the session. It was highly irregular, but was it inappropriate? After all, nothing overtly prurient was going on, other than a coy sending of signals through body language. Allison was posing, but she was doing so as a kind of seductress, not a hired model. Had a line been crossed? The class had continued, so I wondered: Could I capture this added element on canvas? Could I, should I, depict her form and the desire apparent in the arched back, say, or the slightly-too-spread legs? Capture it not just by portraying these matters of form but also by getting down her intentions? Was I drawing only a figure? Or could I draw a living person and the desires she displayed: skin and bones and what else? Or did even trying to convey intent reach too far? There was no clear answer.

  The spotlight was never for me. That was my parents’ world, not mine. As a kid, I had more than my share of unwelcome attention. As an adult, I avoided it. Ms. Tyson’s brazenness didn’t sit well with me. Still, could I depict such desire without crossing the line into obscenity? Capture it, walk right up to that nebulous wall between pleasing art and fulsome smut, acknowledge its presence, but leave it at that? Did I have the talent? This was the notion planted in my mind, and its growth brought a blossoming of my artistry. Attempting this would be my first truly personal, original foray as a painter, I thought. Looking back, it was a disaster.

  —

  As I walked into Dean Street, I saw what I wanted. Across the street, a gorgeous girl was walking. Petite, with pale white skin and large eyes. She was too bundled against the cold for me to know much of her shape, but the face alone did it for me. I decided to follow, for she looked like an ideal subject. She turned the corner and approached a group of a dozen hopefuls angling for entry to one of the current hotspots. I knew the place, which had opened less than a month prior. Word of it had buzzed around; it had been blogged about, but the mainstream media hadn’t yet got the scent. The object of my interest sized up the situation in a second. Then she walked past the others as if she owned the place. It worked. She was waved through lickety-split. Not that I was surprised; she was just what any competent club owner wanted in his place—a beautiful woman who drew others, others who shelled out for that overpriced drink called hope. I crossed the street.

  Game on.

  The doorman nodded and palmed the £20 note I slipped him. In I went. The place was typical: loud, dark, packed. I instantly felt annoyed: I’d lost sight of the girl. I elbowed my way to the bar, yelled (out of necessity, not discourtesy) for a fizzy water, and decided this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Except at that moment, the woman in question leaned into the bar not far from me. I saw men giving her the eye, one attempting to chat her up. He got shot down pronto; she never even looked his way. The guy slinked off in defeat. The woman ordered something. As the bartender passed, I pulled a £50 note out. “That’s for her drink,” I told him. “Keep the change.”

  In slick choreography, the note was pocketed, the glass filled with vodka and cranberry, the mix rushed to Ms. My-Next-Subject. Her attempt to pay thwarted, the bartender pointed to me. Initially, she was wary; her face bore no smile. In venues like this one, on a woman like this one, smiles only encourage. Undaunted, I shouldered my way to her side and extended a hand.

  “Alec Hanay,” I said as we shook.

  “Gemma Ferguson.” She played nice. Good sign.

  Over the din, a superficial chat up ensued. The usual questions: what do you do, do you have a boy/girlfriend, etc. She was firm and fit; she held herself with a confidence in her beauty and had every right to. Blond, shapely, and so pleasing to the eye, at least to mine. All this led up to my professing my profession, lighting on my current figure study work, and, ultimately, asking the question.

  “Are you serious?” she replied to my request that she pose.

  “I am.”

  Gemma was silent for a beat or two, as if pondering the offer. Finally, she said:

  “Does that really work?”

  “Asking women to pose?” I asked. “Actually, it does.”

  Gemma finished her drink. She gave me a long look.

  “But you’ve got a girlfriend, so you don’t want to date me; you don’t even want to fuck me; you just want to paint me. Naked.”

  “Correct.”

  “Amazing,” she said, rose from her barstool, kissed my cheek, added a pat to my butt, and walked away. Speechless, I watched Gemma Ferguson make her exit. Then I laughed at the insanity of it all.

  An hour later I was home. Alone. You see, you can’t always get what you want.

  Tessa

  Home by half one in no mood for sleep, I took a Hanay family Wikipedia tour on my laptop. The evening, which had been kind of magical, left me wanting a refresher course on Alec’s well-known history. Alec had a gift; when one talked with him, it was as if no one else were in the room. His blue eyes never left mine. To maintain eye contact like that, I thi
nk, one must be very secure in one’s own skin. No need to check out others, the surroundings. I had told him things I hadn’t talked about in years. He had opened up as well, as if he welcomed the cue from me. I would go to his exhibition, I decided, but first I’d spend serious money on a new outfit.

  Already I knew Alec was a gifted painter. I learned a lot more from the Web. His background: fame and fortune. His deceased father, Sir Jonathan Hanay, an Oscar-winning director born and raised in England; his mother, Gloria Golden, a famed and beautiful American actress not working much lately. I’d no need to be schooled on his appearance: Alec was stunning. His charm: captivating.

  In his father’s biographies—two so far, which I’ve since read—not much attention is paid to the man’s only child. Alec was very young when Sir Jonathan Hanay killed himself after murdering his new wife, Olive Chang. The news rocked the world. Nothing in Jonathan Hanay’s past indicated a propensity for violence; he’d never even gotten a speeding ticket. Alec’s parents had divorced after an increasingly unhappy decade together. According to the Los Angeles Times, Alec found the two bodies after being dropped off at his father’s Nichols Canyon house on a Sunday morning by his mother’s assistant.

  He was nine.

  Alec

  I was almost ten when my father died. Over twenty years ago, and I still miss him every day. He’s still working on me, with me, for me. He wasn’t perfect. He never had a lot of patience, although with me he tried mightily. He worked too hard and wasn’t always around. I didn’t get to grow up with him, so I didn’t get to hate him during puberty or thank him for putting me through college. He never saw me marry, but neither has anyone else. He never saw me fall in love—or out of it. Never consoled me over a broken heart I was certain would never heal.

  If I self-analyze, I think I probably saw Susan, my nanny and cousin, as my mother then. She was the one who was always around. She talked like Dad accent-wise, for he’d imported her from England to care for me. Susan was the one who held me when I cried, who kissed my bruises. My mother stood on some sort of unreachable platform, one I felt no need to scale. I remember this didn’t seem odd to me at the time. How would I have known that my bizarre life was abnormal? Didn’t everyone live in luxury in the leafy L.A. hills with two rich, celebrity parents, plus staff?