Chapter 14

14

‘What did you think of the Sunday Times piece?' Sebastian stands at the kitchen counter, running a knife through a bunch of parsley with chefly grace. He has a dishcloth flung over his shoulder and a burning cigarette balances in the ashtray at his side. He looks like he owns the place. He does own the place.

‘It was all right,' Becker says ungraciously. He wants to say, it was fine, I suppose, except for the bit where you started blethering on about the black paintings, ascribing narrative and meaning to the work of an artist you know almost nothing about. But he bites his tongue. He is just back from driving a thirty-mile round trip to the nearest wine shop stocking not Tesco Finest; he has come home to a warm house, a fug of cooking, his pregnant wife laughing and drinking wine with her ex-fiancé, his lord and master; he feels ungracious.

‘I thought it was good,' Helena says. She's at the hob, tipping a pan at an angle with one hand, spooning melted butter over fillets of Dover sole with the other.

‘I thought we were having beef rib,' Becker says flatly. She turns and looks at him, the trace of a smile on her lips. He holds up two bottles of Barbaresco.

‘Oh.' She tilts her head, wrinkling her nose. ‘Sorry, darling. Changed my mind. It's all right, though, Seb brought Chablis.'

Becker yanks the fridge door open with unnecessary gusto. Neither Sebastian nor Helena seems to notice. He pours himself a large glass of white and takes a sip. It's very good. He slams the fridge door and this time gets Helena's attention. She shoots him a look, gives him a tiny warning shake of the head.

There's an agreement between the three of them, unspoken but binding. They will behave like grown-ups, they will be civilized. It's the only way they can continue to live and work together, to remain friends. The hurt and the damage has to stay beneath the surface so that eventually, at some point, it will rot away. That's the theory, anyway. The odd thing is that, of the three of them, it is Becker who finds their little triangle uncomfortable and unrealistic. Helena is unfazed, inured perhaps by a lifetime of men competing for her affections, and Sebastian – the loser – has taken it on the chin. Becker won, so why can't he get over it?

‘I thought it was a good piece,' Helena says again, ‘considering the readership. The stuff about the black paintings was great – what did she say? Astonishing, strange … it was all very selling. And you did well to get the Julian angle in there, Seb. That's the sort of stuff people are intrigued by, isn't it?'

As opposed to his witterings about assemblage, Becker thinks bitterly, but of course she's right. Selling isn't his strong suit. Selling isn't what he's here for.

Over dinner, they talk about upcoming exhibitions in London, a band Helena wants to see who are playing next month in Glasgow, old friends, people Helena and Sebastian knew when they were younger. Their families have known each other for ever – Helena's mother went to school with Emmeline. Sebastian is charming, Becker is quietly civil; he tries not to grind his teeth. Helena sits between them, now peacemaker, now hand grenade; she can defuse a tense situation with a wave of her hand and then somehow stir up another with a word, a look.

When talk turns to Emmeline, Helena places a hand on top of Sebastian's. ‘Of course it's impossible for her to talk about, Seb. What happened was … unimaginable. In any case, her generation, her class, they don't talk, do they? They don't do weakness. You, though, it's different for you.' Sebastian smiles at her affectionately, rolls his hand out from under hers as she adds, ‘You definitely ought to talk to someone.'

‘I'm not sure she'd like that,' he says, and then he drains the last of his wine, shaking his head as though dismissing something. He turns to Becker. ‘Tell us about Eris,' he says. ‘You haven't told me anything about the wicked witch.'

Becker raises his eyes heavenwards. Helena gives him a kick under the table. ‘Come on, Beck. What was she like?'

‘She was nice,' he says. ‘A bit frightened. And very lonely, I imagine. The house is rather run-down. It looked … stripped. I felt sorry for her.' He slips his hand into the pocket of his jeans, rolling between his fingertips the white pebble he took from the house. ‘We've already taken a great deal from her.'

‘Did you press her about the missing works?' Sebastian asks, clearly unmoved. Ice in his veins, indeed.

Becker sighs, topping up his glass. ‘We don't actually have evidence that there is anything missing. Douglas said he remembered Vanessa promising him certain paintings for an exhibition, but that exhibition never even happened, so—'

‘He saw them!' Sebastian interrupts. ‘My father went to Eris a few months before the exhibition was due to happen, he saw the pictures in her studio. He told me this. He saw the pictures, as well as dozens of ceramic pieces destined for her solo show. They were there,' Sebastian jabs the tabletop with his forefinger, ‘in the studio, ready to go – it was part of the reason he was so shattered when she suddenly cancelled.' Helena tries to intercede but Sebastian holds up his hand. ‘Look, even if she had sold the paintings privately, it simply isn't credible that we wouldn't have found a single trace of any of them.'

Becker shakes his head. ‘No, you're right, you're absolutely right about that, it's not credible. But that's still not evidence. We have no proof of anything, all we have is—'

‘My father's word.'

In the chilly silence that follows, Helena pushes her chair back. Sebastian half-rises from his seat, but Helena shakes her head at him. Leaning back in his chair, Becker catches the tips of her fingers with his hand, squeezing them in a gesture of apology. ‘I'll do the dishes,' he says.

‘I know you will,' she replies, jutting her chin out at him. ‘I was going to make tea. Does anyone want one? Or a coffee, or …?'

‘Whisky,' Sebastian says. Stretching his arms up over his head, he yawns expansively. ‘I'll have a whisky.'

Becker gets up to fetch a bottle of Springbank from the cabinet. ‘What about Division II ?' he asks. ‘When are we getting it back?' He finds the bottle, turns around.

Sebastian is only half - listening; he's watching Helena as she clears the table.

‘Sebastian?'

‘It's … uh … it's with this private lab in London, they have better facilities—'

‘Jesus Christ!' Becker slams the bottle down on the table. Helena flinches and cuts her eyes at him; she places the teacup she is holding on the counter and leaves the room. Neither Becker nor Sebastian says a word as they listen to her footfall on the stairs, the slam of the bedroom door.

Sebastian throws up his hands. ‘I asked the people at the Tate to get another forensics guy to look at it, just like you suggested, and they did. They agreed with the chap who wrote the letter – they think the bone is human. A human rib. So now we are duty - bound to investigate, at least until we get an idea of how old it is. We don't have a choice.'

They come to an agreement: the testing will go ahead but Becker will be there when the case is opened. That, Sebastian reckons, is unlikely to be for a few weeks at least. It's not a priority case.

‘We'll need to let the insurers know,' Sebastian says to him.

‘And Grace Haswell,' Becker replies.

Sebastian shakes his head, bemused. ‘It's none of her business, Beck.'

They finish their whisky and Sebastian says goodnight. Once he's gone, Becker does the washing - up, tidies the kitchen and puts everything away save the whisky bottle and a glass. He pours himself another drink, turns off the lights and sits in the darkness in front of the dying fire.

He didn't argue about Grace Haswell, but now, sitting staring into the embers, he makes his case in his head. It is her business. If you'd talked to her, if you'd listened to Grace talk about Vanessa's fingerprints, her DNA, her breath – you'd think so, too.

He didn't argue because he doesn't want to argue with Sebastian, just as he doesn't want to alienate Grace. He wants to please everyone. He does not have ice in his veins.

Here's the crux of it: he already feels guilty, and he doesn't want to exacerbate his guilt. He has behaved badly in the past; he wants somehow to balance the scales, though he knows full well he cannot. He cannot turn back time. He cannot go back to his early college days, when he befriended Sebastian not because he liked him – back then, he regarded Seb as just one among the herd of entitled, public-school mediocrities that populate Oxford colleges – but because he knew that Sebastian was Douglas Lennox's son, and that Douglas was Vanessa's gallerist. No more can he go back to the afternoon when, just three days after Douglas's death, Becker brought Helena back to this house and spent the afternoon in bed with her.

Nor would he want to.

But he can do this right. He can do the job that Sebastian has given him as well as he possibly can; he can make a success of the museum, show the collection in its best light, he can honour Vanessa's work and his mother's memory.

He will do all this, for Sebastian and for Grace, and for Vanessa, too.