‘Do you remember that place selling the mattresses? Next to it was an Indian shop with a stall and some nice carpets and rugs. With the pine floor, it might be nice to have a rug beside the bed, and we could do with another little chest of drawers. What do you think?’
‘Do you want me to paint this now or come back and do it?’
Maggie grinned. ‘Marius is downstairs; he can take you in his van.’
‘My God, you’ve already organised it,’ Jack smiled wryly.
‘I didn’t organise it really, he came by to fix the showerhead upstairs and, well...’
Half an hour later, Jack and Marius left for Portobello Road. Their first stop was the carpet shop, where Jack bought a rug, and then managed to find a nice six-drawer cabinet with brass handles.
Jack was sweating as he carried the heavy cabinet, while Marius had the rug over his shoulder. Getting to the van, they removed the drawers from the cabinet to stack beside it and laid the carpet on top.
‘What about the paint you need?’ Marius said. ‘There’s a good place halfway up the market.’
‘Screw that, I’ve had enough for one day,’ Jack said grumpily as he slammed the van doors.
‘Give me a few minutes. I’ll run and see what I can find. If you go home without it...’ Marius shook his head. ‘Let’s get the job done and dusted.’
Jack climbed into the passenger seat as Marius went off towards the market. He had not been gone long when he came hurrying back, yanking open the driver’s door.
‘Something’s going on down the road. Loads of police cars and they’re putting up crime scene tape. I can’t get down.’
Jack hesitated as Marius got into the driving seat. ‘Hang on, Marius, I’ll go see what’s happening.’
‘I’ll turn the van around and wait here for you.’
Jack headed back towards the market. After a couple of minutes he could see that the framer’s shop was sealed off with yellow crime scene tape while squad cars were blocking off the road. Jack watched as two white-suited SOCOs with their equipment bags got out of a forensics van and entered the shop.
Keeping well back, Jack turned to a woman with a shopping trolley and asked if she knew what was happening. ‘Well...’ she said, ‘I heard one officer say murder.’
Jack took a few steps backwards, telling himself to get away and not get involved. He returned to the van and told Marius vaguely there had been an accident. As they drove home, he hoped there might be something on the lunchtime news about it. Already he had a sinking feeling that Adam Border was somehow involved.
Chapter 17
Maggie was delighted with the chest of drawers but not that keen on the rug. Having lugged it up to the loft, Jack would have been annoyed, but he was more concerned with finding out what had happened at the framer’s shop.
He went downstairs to his office and brought up the latest local news on his laptop. There was a video of what looked like a hectic scene with forensics and uniforms going in and out, but, frustratingly, no further details.
Jack went down to the kitchen to make a coffee. Penny was tucking Charlie into his pushchair, ready to take him to the park with Hannah, as Marius stirred some paint outside the kitchen with a stick. Maggie gave Jack one of her sour looks then said, in that flat tone of voice he hated, ‘Don’t worry about painting the chest, Jack. We are doing it, so there’s no need for you to bother yourself!’
‘Fine,’ Jack retorted. ‘I need to go out. I won’t be long.’
‘Please yourself,’ she said. Jack grabbed the car keys as Penny opened the front door and pushed the pram out.
‘It would be nice if you took Charlie out with Hannah one day. She really loves the swings,’ Penny remarked.
‘Tomorrow, I’ll take them both out tomorrow,’ Jack said, squeezing past her.
In the car he began to feel bad and thought about going back to apologise but then thought better of it. He’d buy his mum a bunch of flowers instead. He decided to drive to Adam Border’s abandoned school to see if he knew what had happened in the framer’s shop.
There were police cordons blocking his usual route, so he did a detour using Waze. When he arrived at the school, the barrier was down, and it looked as if demolition had started on the smaller outer buildings. The lean-to shelter had gone, the bike shed and toilets had been flattened, and Jack, unable to lift the barrier, had to park on the road.
He made his way round the rear of the building to the double doors he had used previously. There was a no entry sign and a double chain was padlocked through the door handles. He went round to the rear of the building to find many of the windows were broken and some had been boarded up. Jack stood on some crates and carefully knocked out the broken shards before climbing through a window.
The kitchen had been stripped of anything of value, even the cupboard doors, and there was no electricity. Rubbish had been left in plastic bags and old coffee cups and takeaway food cartons were everywhere as he made his way towards the drill hall. It had been stripped bare. The vast room was desolate, but he could still make out the lingering smell of oil paint and terps. There was nothing: Adam’s clothes, his sleeping bag and blankets had all gone. Just a layer of old dirty newspapers remained, which Jack guessed he’d probably used as insulation beneath his sleeping bag.
Jack made his way back to his car. He recalled the time he had instructed the Gardai to search the studio in Ireland for Adam. He was told there was nothing left, not even fingerprints. It was as if Adam Border had never been there. It was the same here. And the entire building would soon be flattened.
He started the car, did a U-turn, and headed back down the road. He tried to work out when he’d last seen Adam. Surely he wouldn’t just have disappeared without a word? Unless something had happened that forced him to clear out quickly. But he would have needed more than just the jeep to move everything out: all the paintings, the table and frames, not to mention his equipment. Jack thought he might come back when the workmen were present to see what he could find out.
Maggie called out from the loft when she heard the front door shutting behind him. She caught Jack hurrying into his office. ‘Come and see what we’ve done, I think you’ll like it.’
‘Not now Maggie, there’s something I have to do.’
She could tell immediately something was wrong so followed him into his office. He was throwing his jacket off and pulling out his desk chair. ‘What’s happened? You look freaked out.’ He tensed, at first not wanting to say anything, but then she came and put her arms around him. ‘Tell me, Jack.’
He took a deep breath. ‘OK, you know I went to the market earlier... well, part of the market was shut off with forensic guys and crime ribbons across the road. I spoke to a woman watching, and she heard there’d been a murder in the framer’s shop.’
‘Oh, my goodness. Is that where you went off to?’
‘No, I needed to speak to Adam, so I drove to the school he was using as a studio. There was no sign of him or his equipment, and the place was being demolished.’
‘You think he could be involved?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just, there was nothing left.’ Jack was struggling to make sense of it all. ‘He would have needed help to move all his gear, he can’t just have disappeared.’
‘He did before, though, didn’t he? Isn’t there anything on the news?’
‘I looked earlier but they didn’t have any details.’
‘Try now.’
Jack logged on again but there was still nothing beyond the fact that ‘an incident’ had occurred and police were investigating. Jack knew details were routinely withheld from the press in murder cases, while the family were informed.