Chapter 8

8

Grace Haswell is ugly. Becker is surprised by how ugly she is, and ashamed of the thought even as it occurs to him. She's afraid, too. He has frightened her.

For a minute, perhaps longer, he stands in front of the slammed door, thinking less of the frightened woman cowering behind it than of the humiliation he will feel when he is forced to relate the day's events to Sebastian. Perhaps he should simply lie? It wouldn't be the first time.

He's on the point of turning away when the door flies open, its edge almost catching the side of his head. He lurches back. ‘Did you not hear me?' Grace Haswell is glaring at him. Her eyes are iced water, her thin lips drawn back from her teeth in a snarl. Not cowering after all.

Becker retreats a little further. ‘Dr Haswell, I should explain, it's not about … it's about Division II . The sculpture? That's what I want to talk to you about.'

Grace shakes her head, frowning. ‘You have that, it was in the second shipment, or perhaps the third. I have the paperwork … are you telling me it never arrived?'

‘No, no, it arrived. The thing is, we lent the piece to the Tate for an exhibition, you see, and—'

‘And they damaged it.'

‘No … at least not yet.' Grace's frown deepens. Becker draws a deep breath, exhaling slowly, cowering himself as a fresh cloudburst opens upon his head. ‘It's a bit complicated,' he says weakly. Her lip twitches, just slightly, and for a moment he thinks she's about to smile. She doesn't, but she does pull the door a little further open and steps backwards to allow him in.

He crosses the threshold. His heart is pounding, he feels lightheaded, he's holding his breath: he's waited so long for this, to be here, in her home – Vanessa Chapman's home! – and it's … dark. It's dingy, full of clutter – he wants so much to revel in this moment, but he's disappointed.

‘In here!' Grace barks at him, and he turns, closing the front door behind him. He follows her along the hallway to her left and – oh!

Now there are yellows and blues and light, there's a view. He knows this view. It's the causeway, the sands, a trio of peaks in the distance, capped in pure white.

‘It's Eris Sands ,' he says, a smile spreading over his face. He looks at Grace Haswell and beams. ‘ Eris Sands! '

Grace is leaning against the Aga on the right-hand side of the room, her hands tucked behind her back, expression inscrutable.

Becker can't contain his excitement, can't suppress his smile. ‘She must have been standing right here, right on this spot, when she painted it! The perspective, the way the light falls … I suppose I'd always thought she painted it outside, but it was here, wasn't it?' He looks down at his feet and sees spatters of paint on the floor and on the walls where she once flicked her brushes; he feels all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. ‘Right here!'

When he looks at Grace again, he is sure he catches the edge of a smile just before she turns her back on him. She picks up a kettle and takes it over to the sink to fill. ‘She preferred to work outside, of course,' she says, ‘but it wasn't always possible. She braved most weathers, but sometimes the wind got the better of her.' She places the kettle on the Aga. When she turns back to face him, her expression has softened. ‘When she was unwell, towards the end, she worked more and more in here …'

Becker nods. ‘Of course,' he says, forcing his features into a more solemn arrangement. ‘I'm sorry, I'm … excited . I've wanted to visit this place for so long.' Grace tilts her head back, lifting her chin just a little, her expression shifting again. He can't quite read it, but it looks almost like distaste. He's being insensitive, he ought to be more respectful. This is Grace's home, it's not a tourist attraction. Chastened, he falls silent.

Grace waves a hand at him, indicating a seat at the kitchen table, and goes back to making the tea.

Becker sits. He looks around the room, at the dark beams running across the ceiling, the wood burner tucked into the alcove on the back wall. It is cosy – sun-drenched, he imagines, when the weather is good – but worn. The painting on the wood trim has faded, some of the cupboard doors hang on their hinges, and the walls, which once might have been primrose, have turned the colour of nicotine. Here and there they bear the ghostly outlines of pictures long hanged and then removed.

Becker tries to imagine what it was like when Vanessa was here – did she display her own pieces on the walls? Was the sea view once mirrored by its likeness in oil? Or did she hang something completely different? Grace catches him staring at the grimy outline above the alcove and scowls.

Grace really is not at all what he expected. Strangely – given the number of articles he has read about Vanessa Chapman and her life here on Eris – Becker has never seen a photograph of Grace Haswell, so the person he has been holding – until today – in his mind's eye comes from pure imagination. He pictured an ageing pre-Raphaelite, tall and raw-boned, with wide green eyes and long, auburn hair streaked with grey. In fact, Grace is short – no more than five feet – and stocky. He's not good at guessing the ages of older women, but if pushed he'd put her at around sixty-five. Her face is soft, cheeks relaxing gently into jowls, and her colours are muddied: from her bowl of hair to her slightly protuberant eyes, her long cardigan and the trousers puddling at her ankles, she is painted in varying shades of brown.

Why, he wonders now, had he thought she would be beautiful? Partly it's about her name, which conjures up the image of a sylph, long-limbed and lovely; but more than that, it's by virtue of association, the echo of a lesson learned at school: the pretty girls hang out together. Because Vanessa Chapman was a beauty, he assumed her companion would be, too.

Grace thumps a mug of tea down in front of him, sloshing a little on to the table surface. It is strong and, when he tastes it, sugary.

‘Is there a question about authenticity?' Grace asks, sitting down opposite him. ‘Because if there is, it's unfounded. Division II is unquestionably Vanessa's work.' Becker puts down the mug, sits up straight in his seat, surprised. It has never crossed his mind that the sculpture might not have been made by Vanessa. ‘It is unusual,' Grace continues, ‘because sculpture isn't what she was known for. I think in the end she only completed seven in the series. They were done during a period of her life when she was struggling to paint.' She sips her tea. ‘There are notes, there are sketches,' she says. Becker feels the inside of his mouth go dry but before he can speak she holds up her hand. ‘ Don't ask to see them right now this instant because I won't be able to lay my hands on them immediately. Though I'm well aware how impatient you people are.'

Becker takes another sip of tea, wincing at its sweetness, wondering whether perhaps he should tell her that he's only a recent employee at Fairburn, that he's an outsider, that he's not exactly part of the family.

‘So?' Grace snaps. ‘Is that it? A question about authenticity?'

‘No, no.' Becker shakes his head vehemently, launching straight into the story he came to tell: about the visitor to Tate Modern, the forensic anthropologist; he tells her about the email, about the bone. When finally he gets to the point, Grace starts to laugh.

‘Human?' she repeats, and he nods. She laughs again and the laughter lightens her features, rounding her cheeks into apples, transforming her face. Is she early sixties, perhaps, or maybe even late fifties? ‘You do know, don't you, that I'm a doctor?' she says. ‘If Vanessa had been using human bones in her sculptures, do you not think I might have noticed?'

Becker can feel his face reddening. ‘Well, I did say I thought someone would have noticed before now, but I'm told it's not uncommon to mistake a deer rib for a human one.' Grace purses her lips, cocks her head to one side, as if considering this. ‘When I heard,' he carries on, ‘I reacted exactly as you just did – I laughed. I pointed out to my boss that that particular sculpture has been displayed not just at Fairburn but at other galleries, too. But the fact is that the people at the Tate are nervous. They've withdrawn the sculpture from the exhibition, and they've been trying to persuade Sebastian – that's Sebastian Lennox, my boss – to test the bone, to establish whether—'

‘You can't test it!' Grace interjects. ‘You can't open the case! It's—'

‘Part of the piece,' Becker finishes her objection. ‘That's what I said. That's exactly what I said.'

Their eyes meet. ‘She made it herself,' Grace says, her voice a little strained. ‘The case, she put it together herself, her fingerprints are on the inside of the glass. There are … traces of her inside that case. Her fingerprints, her DNA. Her breath.'

Becker looks down at the table, swallowing his shame. Five years might have passed, but it's clear this woman is still grieving. Her house has been stripped, paintings pulled from her walls; it doesn't look as though she has much money. Meanwhile, she's been met with accusations of incompetence, and worse, she's been hounded by lawyers. And now he's shown up at her house at dusk, unannounced.

‘I'm so sorry to have had to bother you with this, Dr Haswell,' he says, as gently as he can. ‘I thought that … in order to avoid any question of opening the case, I might be able to take a look at any sketches or notes that relate to the sculpture; at least if I could get some idea of where the bone was found, and when, then perhaps I—?'

‘Well, I can tell you where she found it,' Grace replies flatly. ‘Not exactly where, but it'll have been in the wood up on the hill behind the house, that's where she went scavenging. There, or on the beach. There's bones all over the place here, deer and sheep and cattle. Seal, too.' She tips her head to one side, looking at him through narrowed eyes. ‘But even if you could say where she found it, or when, I don't see how that helps. What does that really tell you?'

‘Not a great deal,' Becker concedes. ‘But if she mentioned the bone in her journals, if she mentioned finding it, she might say what she thought it was, and that would be something, I think, to demonstrate that the artist had no intention of using—'

‘Of using what? Of using human remains in her sculpture?' Grace lets out another bark of laughter. ‘Why would anyone imagine—' She breaks off then, getting abruptly to her feet, her expression quite changed again. That look of distaste is back, and then some. ‘Oh, God . I've only just realized what this is. You think it's him , don't you?'

Becker inhales sharply. ‘ No , I—'

‘Oh, this is absurd,' she says, her mouth twisting in contempt, ‘it's completely absurd .' She leans forward, snatching away his half-full mug of tea, whirling around and hurling it into the sink. ‘I want you to leave!' she shouts.

‘Please, Dr Haswell, I don't think it's him, that's not what this is about—'

‘Right now!' She points towards the door. ‘Out you go!'

Becker has no choice, she's giving him no choice. He grabs his coat and shuffles back into the hallway with Grace following on his heels, barking at him all the while. ‘You people! Trying to cook up some ludicrous, sensationalist nonsense to publicize your museum! You're really not all that sharp, are you? Julian Chapman went missing in 2002! Division II was made in 2004!' The date on the piece is 2005, Becker thinks, but he's not about to argue with her. ‘He'd hardly be dry bones in a couple of years, would he?'

‘Well … I don't … I've really no idea—' Becker says miserably, turning to face her.

‘I'm telling you he wouldn't!' Grace snaps. ‘Christ, if you'd only bothered to ask someone who knew what they were talking about! You people !' she says again. ‘You don't deserve to sit in her kitchen, to walk on her island. You don't deserve to hang one single piece of her work on your walls. Is this what you think of her? That she … what ? Killed her husband and made a sculpture out of him?'