Festival of Murder by Ross Macfarlane KC, Chapter 17: Maybe Warhol Was Right

Illustration: Lesley-Anne Barnes Macfarlane | Illustration: Lesley-Anne Barnes Macfarlane

After the interview with Alex Bryant, on her way home Maddy Price gave Wood a lift back into the New Town. She let him out at St Stephen’s Church. As he was getting out of the car, the young detective stopped him: ‘Oh, and – by the way - can I ask you a question?’

‘Anything.’

‘Did you kick me in that room? Under the table? Was that intentional?’

‘Um, can I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it might incriminate me?’

‘You admit that you assaulted me?’

Wood ‘I’ve marked it ‘Justifiable Assault’ - no further proceedings.’

Madeline Price shook her head and laughed: ‘Justifiable Assault’ - I bet that’s not even a thing. I bet you just made that up!’

Wood gave a shy grin: ‘You’re the detective. I leave it in your capable hands.’

She pointed into his chest: ‘And you are a retired prosecutor – retired! Maybe you should leave the questioning to me…’

Wood held up his hands: ‘Maddy - it’s well known - if you put the scorpion on the back of the fox, then they’re both likely to drown.’

The young detective closed her eyes and shook her head: ‘Of course, as usual, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sometimes, Wally Wood, just sometimes I think that you are the biggest mystery of all…’

*****

JD held up his pint glass: ‘At last! A woman who understands you - because she understands that she’ll never understand you…’

Wood rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands: ‘Is it a measure of how much I have had to drink that I actually understood that?’

Doc steepled his hands and began to tap the tips of his fingers together: ‘You know, I think the problem here is actually a societal one…’

Wood groaned: “I’m sorry I spoke now…’

Doc continued: ‘The problem isn’t you, Wally. The problem is the rate of social change. You can’t blame the young lady for not understanding your cultural references. The world is spinning so fast now. I was standing in W H Smith in Waverley Station the other day - standing at the magazine rack - and I looked at the covers. And I didn’t recognise anybody on them. Not a single person. All these…what’s the word… ‘celebrities’…famous for what? Famous for being famous? You tell me.’

Wally Wood sipped from his Guinness: ‘Maybe Warhol was right…’

JD leaned over to Wood: ‘So did you explain to the young detective that ‘The Fox and the Scorpion’ was a fable - a bit like Aesop’s Fables? All about how you can’t change your true nature - even if it kills you and everybody around you?’

Wood shook his head: ‘I thought that I would spare her the Old Fart Lecture Series. She’s already compared me to her grandfather more than once.’ He sipped his Guinness: ‘Jings, I feel so old.’

Doc raised his glass: ‘You’re not old, Wallace Wood KC - you’re ‘vintage’…or…or, in fact…’classic.’ You’re like a Classic Car. That’s what you are, Wally - a classic car.

JD piped up: ‘I had a classic car once. Broke down every twenty minutes,’ he motioned, ‘and I needed a hand-crank every morning to get it working.’

Wood frowned: ‘I don’t like the way this conversation is going…’

*****

In the kitchen of his basement flat in Cumberland Street, Wood had spread out all the papers from the case on the country kitchen table.

At his request, Maddy Price had emailed him over all the case papers from her file, so they could - literally - be on the same page when they discussed the case. He had tried - and had been trained - to do it the modern way, computer programmes that saved pages, highlighted sections, searched keywords - programmes that generally cast a dispassionate robotic eye over the papers, but Wood was more comfortable with the blizzard of paper scattered across the table.

He had once dated a nice sculptor lady - Eva from Argentina, an exchange academic - oh, those nights of spicy food, passionate arguments and liquid attempts to learn the steps of the Argentinian Murga - frustrated by the appearance at the door of upstairs neighbour, Old Mrs Cunningham with complaints about the unusual cooking smells and the faint rumblings of a rhumba.

Eva had taken one look at Wood’s messy table and had declared: ‘You are like me, Wallace Wood - you are An Artist…’ She pointed to the mess, ‘…and this…this is your clay. Remember - when The Almighty One…’ (a good Catholic - she made the sign of the cross at this point) ‘…when He made the heavens and the earth, he made them out of nothing - out of the…the caos.’ She shouted in Argentinian in an attempt to make her point more persuasive: ‘CAOS! And that is what we do, Wallace Wood, you and I - we make the order out of the caos. And eet ees…eet ees…una cosa hermosa.‘

It might have been ‘a beautiful thing’ to a passionate Argentinian sculptor, but it had to be admitted that in its current state, the kitchen - strewn with papers over the table - had turned the place into what his old mother used to call ‘a right cowp’.

‘Ah! The Grampa Wally of Old is back!’ Wood looked around to see a grinning granddaughter.

‘Abbie - you’re up early.’

‘Training day. Early start.’

‘Coffee?’

‘Always.’

Wood got up and walked over and made some coffee in the little black coffee machine. Abbie sat down on his empty seat and motioned towards the papers strewn everywhere: ‘Can I help?’

‘Do you have a flame-thrower?’

‘That bad, huh?’

Wood put Abbie’s coffee down on a space on the table. He nodded towards the papers. ‘The answer is in there somewhere - I can feel it.’

Abbie lifted the mug, took a sip, then smiled: ‘You remember, when I was little, you used to tell me about your cases?’

‘At last. An explanation for how you turned out…’

‘You used to explain the case to me - like a Mini-Murder Mystery - and I had to guess the answer.’

Wood smiled and nodded: ‘Believe it or not, dumbing it down for a ten-year-old girl was excellent preparation for explaining the whole thing to a jury.’

Abbie sat back in her chair and pointed to the piles of papers: ‘Okay, Grampa - I’ll be ten years old again - do your worst.’

The retired prosecutor laughed - but prepared to do as he was told.

*ting*

He pointed at his phone on the kitchen work surface: ‘No! I am not going to answer that bloody thing – so here’s the story.’

He started with the spine of the tale. The vertiginous descent of the aged - already-dead- Lady in Red.

*ting*

Wood ignored the phone and shook his head as if to ward off the noise: ‘So the old cleaning lady – Mags Hampton - kind of sweet, but dim. Her own son was like a second son to the lady, Mrs Bryant. He would help out with the chores, he would unblock the sink and change the plugs and…’

*ting*

Wood was silent. The *tilt* point had been reached. He motioned to Abbie to pick up the phone: ‘Could you maybe mute the bloody thing and we’ll…’ But as Abbie walked over to pick up the phone, it began to ring.

‘For pity’s sake – who is it?’

Abbie looked at the face of the phone: ‘Just an unrecognised number, it says ‘Possible Spam’…’

Wood grabbed the phone, put to his ear and shouted: ‘No, no, no – I don’t want to buy anything, thank you. So please, please, please just get yourself to…’

Despite the loudness of his voice, he heard a tentative voice on the other end: ‘Wally? Wally - is that you?’

This took the wind out of angry sails: ‘Um, um…’

‘It’s me. Katharine Livingstone.’

A pause.

‘Is this a bad time?’

*****

Festival of Murder wraps up tomorrow in: What Did You Learn from All of This?