Guns in the Gallery

She was trying to think what to do next when her mobile rang. It was Carole again.

‘I’ve just googled “Ingrid Staunton” and found her website. She’s an artist.’

‘What kind of stuff does she do?’

‘It says,’ replied Carole, contempt curdling her words, ‘she “plays with the defamiliarization of everyday objects until they reach a state of figurative reciprocity”.’

Jude giggled. ‘You must get one of hers for your front room.’

‘Very amusing,’ said Carole drily.

‘Is there a photograph of her on the website? Does she look like Bonita Green?’

‘There isn’t a photograph.’

‘Oh.’

‘But there are contact details for her. Including a mobile phone number.’

‘Great,’ said Jude.

‘Now will you please tell me what the hell you’re doing in Pimlico?’

Carole Seddon felt very restless after the end of their call. In terms of their investigation, Jude, it seemed, was having all the fun. It was Jude who, on a whim, had followed Bonita Green up to London and found out what happened on her ‘special Fridays’. It was Jude who had met and interviewed Addison Willoughby. It was Jude who had got the lead to Ingrid Staunton. Carole felt marginalized and useless.

She vented some of her spleen by cleaning the bathroom. It didn’t really need cleaning, but the task made her feel a little more virtuous. Only a little, though. There was still a deep dissatisfaction within her.

Then she wandered back to the laptop, incarcerated in the spare room. Idly, she once again googled ‘Ingrid Staunton’, hoping to find out more about the mysterious artist. But she drew a blank. There were other references to the woman, but only names of galleries where she had exhibited and that kind of listing. Nothing that would come under the heading ‘revelatory’.

Carole’s frustration grew. She had finished The Times crossword at breakfast. An easy one, as it usually was on a Friday, demonstrating some psychological ploy on behalf of the newspaper to cheer people up for the weekend. But that afternoon she wished the puzzle had been a stinker, something into which she could channel her anger.

It was then that she had the idea of having another look at Denzil Willoughby’s website. Once again she tutted inwardly at the number of four-letter words the home page contained. Then she clicked on the ‘Artist at Work’ link.

After a moment she found herself looking at the webcam’s view of the converted warehouse. The artist didn’t seem to be doing much work, because there was no sign of the two assistants to whom he delegated most of it. But there were two people in animated discussion at the far end of the space. Denzil was one, and the other Carole recognized from his photographs as Addison Willoughby. Their hairstyles seemed to symbolize the contrast between them, the father’s expensively shaped white coiffure and the son’s pale stringy dreadlocks.

The webcam was a long way away from them and its inbuilt microphone was not very good quality, so Carole could not at first hear very well. But after boosting the sound level on her laptop up to its maximum and attuning her ears to the sound, she managed to pick up most of what they were saying. It would have helped if the two men were near enough for her to lip-read, but they were not, and anyway they kept moving about.

‘. . . and when I told you I was doing the exhibition at the Cornelian Gallery,’ Denzil was protesting, ‘you still didn’t say anything.’

‘Why should I have said anything then?’ asked his father. ‘It wasn’t as if you didn’t know Bonita. You’d seen her lots of times when you were with Giles.’

‘That’s not the point, Dad! None of those times did I know that she was screwing my father.’

‘Look, there’s no way I could have told you earlier, Denzil. Not while Philomena was still alive.’

‘Oh, you think now Mum’s dead, that changes everything, do you?’

‘Of course it does. She can no longer be hurt.’

‘But you were hurting every time you screwed Bonita.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Philomena didn’t know that was it was happening.’

‘And you think that makes it better? It was still deceit on a massive scale.’

‘I think it’s pretty rich, you criticizing my morals. Your own track record with women hasn’t been particularly distinguished, has it?’

‘Maybe not, but I’ve never married any of them, have I?’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘If you don’t know the answer to that, then there’s no bloody hope for you. Mum said you were still a Catholic.’

‘Well, I am a kind of Catholic.’

‘Then you should know about the sanctity of marriage. Has it ever occurred to you, Dad –’ Denzil Willoughby managed to put a lot of sneer into the monosyllable – ‘that the reason why I haven’t got married is that I still have some respect for marriage. I wouldn’t go into it with the firm intention of screwing someone else.’

‘That is not how it happened.’

‘Oh, no? You were deceiving Mum, that’s all I know.’

‘But I did it discreetly. I didn’t hurt her. Would you rather I’d gone public and put your mother through the humiliation of a divorce?’