Page 24 of Go Now
‘We were discussing it,’ Shinwell said.‘Neither of us really liked the idea, but after our neighbors were robbed, we thought maybe it was time.’ He made a small, joyless laugh.‘Too late now.’
‘Did your wife’s work… did it deal with religious themes?’
‘Some.She painted a lot of Long Island landscapes, rural, you know… the kind of stuff that sells to people with big walls and big wallets.But her personal obsession is…was… with the Madonna-figure. She’d painted upwards of three hundred of them.Here –’
He tossed them a catalogue that was lying on the coffee table.‘That was a touring exhibition that took place last year.Sixteen States.’
Kate flipped through the glossy pages: each one a variant on the Madonna and Child theme, rendered in heavy oils, with an eerie light that seemed to come from the figures themselves.There was a military Madonna with a cropped head and a camouflage flight-suit, a Madonna nursing a cat, a Madonna covered in tattoos and piercings.
‘What about the work on the wall?’Marcus asked.
Shinwell glanced over at the smashed canvas, without reacting to it.‘That was the one that caused the trouble.‘Our Mother of Love’.It’s in that catalogue if you want to see it.’
Kate quickly flipped to the index in the catalogue and then to the image.As the title suggested, this Madonna was a crimson-lipped seductress in high heels and stockings, gazing defiantly out of the canvas.The 'infant' on her lap was a small man in a business suit, gazing up at her adoringly.
‘Someone threw an egg at it,’ Shinwell said.‘In Detroit.And there were a couple of protests outside other galleries.Atlanta, I think.And Austin.’
‘Was that the only work that attracted criticism?’Kate asked.
‘It kind of bled into…’ Shinwell stopped himself, presumably wanting to choose a better word.‘Kind of affected all the others.You know, the tattooed Madonna probably wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, but because of the ‘Mother of Love’ one, people decided that they were all bad.’
‘How did your wife react to the criticism?’
‘It upset her,’ he said, running his hand through his short, neatly cut hair.‘She didn’t do it to cause offence, in fact, she often said she was going to stop painting them.But of course, her agent loved that it caused a ruckus, so she was always under this pressure from all sides.From herself, too.She felt kind of driven to keep on painting them.But she didn’t want the aggravation that came with them.’
‘Did she receive any direct threats?’
‘Not to her.But some of the galleries got warnings.They never sounded very serious to me.It was either “you’re going to burn in Hell” or “we’ve planted a bomb in the ladies’ restroom”.But I think the galleries kinda liked it.It suited them to be edgy and controversial.Kind of free advertising for them.’
‘Could you give us a list of the galleries where she’s exhibited?’
Shinwell shook his head, slowly.‘I can’t think straight enough for that, I’m sorry.I can give you her agent’s details.Like I say, it’s probably only ten percent of her paintings that might have crossed the line.But she tended to get lumped in with that set.“The Controversial Artists”.Like that guy who died just –’
The words died in Shinwell’s throat.He’d seemingly just joined the dots, just realised why his wife had been killed.He gazed at the agents in horror, as a single tear travelled slowly down his face.
‘She never hurt anybody,’ he said, with a faint edge of shock, as if he was grieving anew.‘My Ellie was the kindest, sweetest…’ He stopped.All out of words.
‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ Kate said, uselessly.
CHAPTER NINE
A second killing meant another life lost and a killer probably getting better and bolder at his deadly game.A second killing meant that they had to scale up the investigation on all fronts, without scaled-up funding.A second killing meant they were hunting a serial killer, who might be sizing up a third victim whilst they struggled to make progress on murders one and two.In the movies, the serial killer always got too ambitious; the more they killed, the greater the likelihood of them slipping up and getting captured.But actually, it worked the other way.The bigger the body count, the less able anyone was to bring them to justice.
If it was possible to say there was a plus-side, then it was all down to the boss, Assistant Director Winters.She had argued their case with the notoriously grudging Resourcing Unit and they'd been given a proper base from which to run their operation.It was a relatively low-status office, down in the basement of the NYC field office, in between Broadway and the Brooklyn Bridge, with a single window looking out on trash cans, and a persistent smell of hot rubber.It was still light-years better than working out of a cramped and stuffy hotel room, though, or begging space in a chaotic police precinct.The desks were big, the lights bright, the coffee bearable, and that was really all they needed.
‘How soon before we get the lab results?’Marcus asked.
Kate sighed.‘I guess I’m going to have to chase.I hate speaking to that team.’
‘There’s a kind of comfort in knowing that forensic techs are exactly the same, all over the world,’ Marcus said, with a dry smile.‘It’s like dentists.They all say, “You might feel a bit of pressure now” just before they do something that sends you right up the wall.’
Chen appeared with coffees and a box of donuts.That was the other upside. The NYPD officer had joined the team for the duration of the investigation.Although it had to be said, she didn’t look too happy about that right now.
'I had to argue for like ten minutes with the guy on the desk,' she fumed. 'Tell me, why is it that wherever you are in the world, the person on the reception desk is a total…' She frowned.'What's so funny?'
‘We were just saying the same thing,’ Kate explained.‘What news?’
‘Well, now we’ve got two victims, we can look for intersections.Galleries, exhibitions, acquaintances, events.Want to double up on that?’She pointed to Marcus.He grinned back.It was a tiny interaction that Kate didn’t miss.Her partner could be quite a flirt.She wondered if that habit of his could have played a role in his recent quarrel with Cheryl.There were two sides to every break-up…
