threats.
‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘I’d call that possessive.’
I turned to Maggie. ‘So how long was Pope out of her life?’
‘Um, let me see. She was with Atkins for fifteen years. She was with Pope possibly twelve years before that. So she was rid of him for anything between fifteen and twenty-seven years.’
‘So where might he have been for that length of time?’ I asked.
They all adopted deep-in-thought poses, Dave with his fist against his forehead, Jeff stroking his chin. ‘Wowee, that’s a difficult one,’ somebody said.
‘Perhaps he’s been on missionary work in Malawi,’ Jeff suggested.
I nodded my approval.
‘Or maybe he’s been with the Antarctic Survey, and they became stranded on an iceberg and have survived on a diet of penguins,’ young Brendan expounded.
‘Could you live that long on chocolate biscuits?’ I wondered.
‘No, silly me.’
Maggie started to speak. ‘Charlie,’ she began, hesitantly, ‘I know this might sound outrageous, but please don’t laugh. When you’re dealing with people whose behaviour deviates somewhat from the norm, you sometimes have to expand the envelope. You don’t think, do you, that it’s just possible that our man may have been, so to speak, living off the hospitality of Her Majesty?’
‘In jail, you mean?’
‘Well, yes, if that’s not a dirty word.’
‘No,’ ‘Nah,’ ‘Never,’ came the disagreement of everybody else.
‘The girl’s got a point,’ I declared, holding up a restraining hand. ‘Perhaps he’s been out of circulation. So how far have you got?’
Dave produced a list. ‘Nine Popes in Heckley, Chas. Fourteen in Leeds. Similar numbers in neighbouring towns. We haven’t checked them all against the PNC but they appear to be a remarkably law-abiding lot. Must be something to do with the name.’
‘Any who stand out?’
‘A couple, but nothing special. We’ll see them first.’
‘What about the prisons?’
‘Haven’t looked, yet. If he murdered Magdalena and he’s been inside for a long term he could be a lifer, in which case he’ll be easy enough to pick up.’
‘A lifer who came out to kill again,’ someone suggested.
‘Which is hardly unknown,’ I admitted.
The average lifer serves about twelve years, but is only released on licence. That’s the life bit. His address would always be on a file somewhere. I had a three-egg omelette for tea, with curly oven chips and marrowfat peas. I brought my easel into the kitchen and ate the meal while studying one of the nearly finished paintings. Abstracts aren’t as easy as people think. There are no rules, no guidelines. You aren’t striving to make the picture look like something. It’s all down to personal taste.
Kandinsky is a hard act to follow. He came to Germany from Russia and became one of the pioneers of pure abstraction. I love his paintings. He wasn’t the typical artist of the time, having trained as a lawyer and dressing accordingly in sober suit and tie. His orderly lawyer’s brain tried to put some discipline into his art, tried to lay down rules. He wrote articles about his theories in which he gave meaning to colours and related them to different musical notes. There’s a name for it, but it escaped me. You play a note, or make a sound, and some people, one in a thousand or so, see a colour. Or they say they do. Connections in their brains are cross-wired, and one stimulus produces more than one response. Kandinsky claimed he was like that, and the experts say that it’s a gift rather than a handicap.
Me? I can’t tell one musical note from another, and they never look like colours. All I know is that I look at one of his paintings and something inside me goes: Pow! I like that. It pleases me greatly. Not all of his paintings, but some of them. And I still couldn’t think of the name for it.
I made a few decisions about the painting as I finished my meal. After I’d loaded my plate and cutlery into the dishwasher I made
‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘I’d call that possessive.’
I turned to Maggie. ‘So how long was Pope out of her life?’
‘Um, let me see. She was with Atkins for fifteen years. She was with Pope possibly twelve years before that. So she was rid of him for anything between fifteen and twenty-seven years.’
‘So where might he have been for that length of time?’ I asked.
They all adopted deep-in-thought poses, Dave with his fist against his forehead, Jeff stroking his chin. ‘Wowee, that’s a difficult one,’ somebody said.
‘Perhaps he’s been on missionary work in Malawi,’ Jeff suggested.
I nodded my approval.
‘Or maybe he’s been with the Antarctic Survey, and they became stranded on an iceberg and have survived on a diet of penguins,’ young Brendan expounded.
‘Could you live that long on chocolate biscuits?’ I wondered.
‘No, silly me.’
Maggie started to speak. ‘Charlie,’ she began, hesitantly, ‘I know this might sound outrageous, but please don’t laugh. When you’re dealing with people whose behaviour deviates somewhat from the norm, you sometimes have to expand the envelope. You don’t think, do you, that it’s just possible that our man may have been, so to speak, living off the hospitality of Her Majesty?’
‘In jail, you mean?’
‘Well, yes, if that’s not a dirty word.’
‘No,’ ‘Nah,’ ‘Never,’ came the disagreement of everybody else.
‘The girl’s got a point,’ I declared, holding up a restraining hand. ‘Perhaps he’s been out of circulation. So how far have you got?’
Dave produced a list. ‘Nine Popes in Heckley, Chas. Fourteen in Leeds. Similar numbers in neighbouring towns. We haven’t checked them all against the PNC but they appear to be a remarkably law-abiding lot. Must be something to do with the name.’
‘Any who stand out?’
‘A couple, but nothing special. We’ll see them first.’
‘What about the prisons?’
‘Haven’t looked, yet. If he murdered Magdalena and he’s been inside for a long term he could be a lifer, in which case he’ll be easy enough to pick up.’
‘A lifer who came out to kill again,’ someone suggested.
‘Which is hardly unknown,’ I admitted.
The average lifer serves about twelve years, but is only released on licence. That’s the life bit. His address would always be on a file somewhere. I had a three-egg omelette for tea, with curly oven chips and marrowfat peas. I brought my easel into the kitchen and ate the meal while studying one of the nearly finished paintings. Abstracts aren’t as easy as people think. There are no rules, no guidelines. You aren’t striving to make the picture look like something. It’s all down to personal taste.
Kandinsky is a hard act to follow. He came to Germany from Russia and became one of the pioneers of pure abstraction. I love his paintings. He wasn’t the typical artist of the time, having trained as a lawyer and dressing accordingly in sober suit and tie. His orderly lawyer’s brain tried to put some discipline into his art, tried to lay down rules. He wrote articles about his theories in which he gave meaning to colours and related them to different musical notes. There’s a name for it, but it escaped me. You play a note, or make a sound, and some people, one in a thousand or so, see a colour. Or they say they do. Connections in their brains are cross-wired, and one stimulus produces more than one response. Kandinsky claimed he was like that, and the experts say that it’s a gift rather than a handicap.
Me? I can’t tell one musical note from another, and they never look like colours. All I know is that I look at one of his paintings and something inside me goes: Pow! I like that. It pleases me greatly. Not all of his paintings, but some of them. And I still couldn’t think of the name for it.
I made a few decisions about the painting as I finished my meal. After I’d loaded my plate and cutlery into the dishwasher I made
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