was as dead as a doornail.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t ask. It was a bad week and I had to sleep rough, that’s all. Denton was 40 going on 300 by then, or his liver was, so it was hardly a surprise. At least he’d had a hot meal for a change. Sometimes,’ Gabriel pouted thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if it was the pie and mash that did for him, but I couldn’t have said no to the poor bugger.’
‘Ah. Well. Sorry. Still breathing.’ James spread his hands in a demonstrative gesture and took a deliberate deep breath through his nose. ‘See?’
Gabriel grinned. ‘Well, keep it up. The paperwork for reporting a death is tedious, and more to the point, if you shuffle off the mortal coil, what am I supposed to do for a place to live?’
‘If you like, I can leave you the old pile in my will,’ said James thoughtfully. ‘There’s nobody else to take it. Then you can have all the fun of scoping out lodgers and making the monthly payments.’
‘Now you’re giving me motive for murder.’
‘I’ll take you with me to see my bank manager next time I have to negotiate a delayed payment. Then see how motivated you are to stab me in the gullet.’
‘I wouldn’t stab you. Too messy.’
‘Aye?’ James’s good humour had returned, and he awaited elaboration.
‘Poison, maybe. Or I’d take you for a walk by the canal, smack you with a rock and push you in.’
‘You’ve thought this through.’
‘I got bored yesterday. It passed the time.’
James’s laughed morphed into a positively infectious giggle, setting Gabriel off. Gabriel liked James’s laugh, the more so because most of the time James seemed unspeakably sad. A happy James was a lovely thing.
‘So,’ said Gabriel. ‘How would you get rid of me?’
‘Fork to the kidney,’ said James without hesitation. ‘And I’d eat you over a couple of days. Dispose of the evidence in a nice French casserole with peas and tatties.’
‘Bullshit. You’d never eat me. You never eat.’ Gabriel smirked at James’s startled expression. ‘Baxter said so, and you’ve nothing in the house except that half pack of gingernuts he didn’t finish nicking off you. In any case, you’re a doctor. You’d use me for terrible experiments in the cupboard under the attic stairs. Like Dr Moreau.’
‘Sprung,’ said James ruefully, but the startlement had fled.
Gabriel unpacked the groceries neatly into the kitchen cupboards while James returned his attention to the TV. That done, Gabriel picked up a fresh apple from the mound he’d stacked in a dusty fruit bowl, dropped into the spare chair and bit into the fruit.
‘I googled your stuff online,’ said James, muting the program. ‘At the Dupre Gallery. Your work’s extraordinary.’
Gabriel knew what the critics said of his art; the ones who hated it, and thought it “cheap emotional exploitation”, as well as the ones who loved it. Dare’s art, said one of the favourable analyses, paints glimpses of street life, homelessness and crime with compassion as well as a palpable sense of danger. Another had called his work stark but humanising. On the whole, Gabriel didn’t much care what the critics thought of his work one way or the other, though it was, as Helene said, a relief that some were selling at last. Anything that kept him from having to use his father’s money was a good thing.
But Gabriel liked it very much that James liked his work.
‘My family would prefer I painted things that were more conventional,’ he confessed suddenly. ‘They think my work is too dark.’
‘The world is dark,’ said James. ‘You find the hope in it anyway. That’s important. The capacity to see hope in the darkness is important.’ His tone was oddly yearning.
‘I think so,’ said Gabriel, taking another bite of his apple. He wondered exactly what in James’s experiences had made him understand, and long for, hope in the dark and dangerous places of the world.
Over the next fortnight, Gabriel and James settled into a comfortable routine.
True to his word, James didn’t pry into Gabriel’s odd visitors, who arrived sporadically from Gabriel’s third night in his new home. He noticed them, though. Haunted, harried people. Young people who looked out of old eyes; old people who looked out of eyes dimmed with pain. The people from Gabriel’s paintings.
Gabriel made sure that James was aware of the visitors, whatever time of the night they arrived, with a soft tap on the bedroom door. James was always awake, betrayed by discreet tell-tales from his small bedroom – the soft footsteps pacing the carpet, the crinkling hush of pages turning, and a low light that glimmered faintly under the door. Other nights, Gabriel would hear his landlord padding about the living room on bare feet. He went out for a glass of water once to see the doctor watching the lamplit street.
As far as Gabriel could tell, James Sharpe rarely ate, either – the half packet of gingernuts remained undiminished, although James drank black tea regularly and an uneaten biscuit often rested on the saucer. He had no friends that Gabriel could see and James never spoke of any.
James had other peculiarities, harder to define. Like the day Gabriel returned from the paint suppliers mid-morning only to find James setting out teacups and biscuits as the door opened.
‘How did you know I was coming home?’
‘I heard you on the stairs.’
Gabriel hadn’t made a sound on the stairs, he was sure.
On top of this was the afternoon he’d taken his sketchbook to the garden to capture the shrivelled ivy vine’s patterns on the brickwork. One moment, James was a dozen yards away at the laundry door, and the next moment he was at Gabriel’s side, a wasp held by the wings in his pinched fingers.
‘It was on your neck,’ James explained. ‘About to sting you.’
‘You’ve got good eyesight,’ Gabriel had noted, determined not to be startled at the speed and unlikelihood of the rescue. ‘And quality reflexes, as promised.’
James was odd.
Which could as easily describe me, Gabriel thought, and didn’t dwell on it.
He had other problems. Some of his street acquaintances had, for want of a better term, disappeared.
Chapter Four
Gabriel lay awake in his bed, facts tumbling over and over in his head without making the slightest bit of sense. Ben Tiller had gone missing; so had Alicia Jarret. Both of them were old hands on the streets.
The last he’d heard, Alicia had found a bed in a proper shelter, and now pfft. Gone. Ben had been doing better, too. His brother, Ethan, had been in touch and while Ben hadn’t been comfortable trying to stay in the small, neat suburban house with Ethan and Ethan’s girlfriend Jess, they’d connected. They were trying. And now Ben was missing
