He was about to leave when he noticed a movement. A black cat was inside, among the lobster pots, preening itself. Seeing him, it gave a plaintive cry that anyone except a cat owner might interpret as distress. Raffles sometimes got attention the same way. The thought of his own cat touched a sympathetic chord in Diamond and he crouched and offered his hand to nuzzle against.
‘Leave her alone,’ a voice behind him said. ‘She likes it in there.’
He stood up and turned. ‘Would you be Ella?’
She was in her own clothes rather than the school uniform worn by the junior kids, a black dress cut low to display more cleavage than a seventeen-year-old is entitled to possess and worn over baggy black trousers. Untidy dark hair. Eye shadow, probably in defiance of school rules. This young lady didn’t strike him as the sort who would pay much attention to rules. She ignored his question.
‘If you are Ella, I heard you created this,’ Diamond went on. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Are you, like, visiting the school?’
‘I work for the police.’ He could have been a window-cleaner, the offhand way he spoke. ‘Where did you get all the pots?’
‘Fishermen.’
‘You went to the beach?’
‘Loads of them are lying about broken. Pots, not fishermen. They’re, like, only too pleased to get shot of them.’
‘Your idea — building this wonderful thing?’
Flattery is a sure persuader. She started telling him about her work of art. ‘It wasn’t planned. I talked to those guys and learned some cool stuff about pots, like they have eyes, did you know?’
He shook his head slowly.
‘Where the poor old lobsters go in, soft or hard eyes, depending if it’s net or wire. If it was me, I’d call them mouths, but the fishermen don’t. I had this thought about doing a sculpture, making a statement about emptiness. Have you heard of de Chirico?’
He shook his head again.
She didn’t need any prompting. She was away. ‘Doesn’t matter. When I stacked them on top of each other, the different types, old-fashioned beehives and boxes, some on end and some flat — well, D-shaped — they stopped being lobster pots, right? I thought what I was producing was shaping up to be an abstract, but then, like, this structure starts to appear and I talk to Tom and he agrees with me it could be a building with towers and I’m away. Do you think the seaweed works?’
‘As the creeper? I’m no expert, but it took me in.’
‘It’s not meant to be a creeper. It’s fungus, tiny fungi hanging from the eaves in a kind of web.’
Fungus or a creeper. Did it really matter? To humour the girl, he nodded sagely. ‘I see it now.’
‘I want it to look right.’
‘It does, believe me.’ Her flow of words had stopped. She needed another confidence boost if he could provide it. ‘So this is your A-level effort, is it?’
‘Extended personal project.’
‘It’s big. Hope you don’t have to send it in to be marked.’
‘We can send images.’
‘When you do the photography try not to get the bins in the shot.’
‘Don’t know about that,’ Ella said. ‘I’m thinking the symbolism is stronger with them in the background.’
‘You’re the artist,’ he said. ‘Is it gothic, this building?’
‘Don’t you recognise it?’
‘Em...’ He didn’t want to be discouraging.
‘Have you heard of The Fall of the House of Usher?’
‘The horror film? Never actually seen it.’
‘It’s a story by Edgar Allan Poe.’
‘I’ve heard of him, but I’m not much of a reader.’
She almost stamped her foot, she was so put out. ‘If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this must look like a heap of old tat.’
‘Not at all. It’s spectacular. Now you’ve said what it is, I’m lost in admiration.’
He was subjected to a long, penetrating look. ‘Well, now you know what it’s meant to be, the House of Usher, an ancient mansion in a state of decay. Poe says, like, it gives you a feeling of insufferable gloom, right? The walls are bleak and the windows are like vacant eyes. If you know about lobster pots having eyes, there’s an extra layer of meaning. They’re mostly broken, too, so that’s in keeping with the story. But I’ve got a problem. The house is supposed be beside a tarn, a dark, lurid tarn. Do you know what that is?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m pretty ignorant about this kind of stuff.’
‘A lake. In the story, after Roderick’s twin sister Madeline is left for dead and he and his friend bury her in a vault downstairs, she comes alive and terrifies him and they both die and the house collapses into the tarn. I haven’t worked out how to show the tarn.’
‘Tinfoil?’
‘Wouldn’t work.’ But she seemed grateful that he’d tried. ‘How did you know about me and my gothic interest, then?’
‘Stands out a mile, doesn’t it?’ Diamond said and moved on smoothly to what he hoped would be a more productive topic. ‘One thing I was told is you’re the expert on Mr Standforth’s — Tom’s — artist friends.’
‘Someone was having you on. I’ve only met them a couple of times.’
‘Let’s say you know more than the other students.’
‘Why? Why do you say that?’ Her mood had changed. She was wary of a trap.
‘I’m going by what I was told. It could be that the professional artists sense you’re one of them, a rare talent.’
She wasn’t falling for that. She grasped a stepladder and moved it right up to the House of Usher. ‘I can’t stay talking.’
Art had never been one of Diamond’s talents, but thinking on his feet definitely was. ‘What you could do for the tarn,’ he said, ‘is transport the whole thing to some place that has a large pond and position it there, close enough to catch the reflection. Is it possible to move all this?’
‘I’d need a bloody great truck, wouldn’t I?’ She was up the steps and rearranging seaweed.
‘Is that impossible?’
‘For crying out loud, where would I get a flaming truck?’
‘Is there a pond at Tom’s place, Fortiman House?’
‘A pond? You’re joking. It’s more like a lake.’
‘Ideal, then.’
It seemed this possibility hadn’t occurred to Ella. She continued with her task while she considered. ‘I could ask Tom,’ she said finally. ‘He might agree.’
‘Does he own any heavy transport?’
She laughed. ‘Like his little old MG?’
She’d dropped a strip of seaweed. He stooped and handed it up to her. ‘If you have to dismantle the house and reassemble it, the artists might help. Are they there most days?’
‘Saturdays. Now I think about it, they do have quite a large van. His dad grows orchids commercially and it’s used to deliver them, I suppose.’
‘And you only go there Saturdays, you say?’
‘Except when they have a party, and they wouldn’t want to help with my project on party nights.’
‘Do they all get drunk, then?’
‘No worse than the average party. There’s wine and fruit juice if you want it, pineapple or...’ She had stopped in mid-sentence, making it all too clear that she’d given away more than she intended. She added limply, ‘The drinks are handed out free. I was told, anyway.’
He didn’t miss an opening like that. ‘And I was told you’ve been to one of the parties.’
She gripped the ladder with both hands. ‘Who said that — Jem?’
‘In fact, no. I talked to Jem earlier and she didn’t mention parties. But you’ve been to one, haven’t you?’
‘What if I have? It’s no big deal.’
‘I knew if anyone was bold enough, it would be you. Are they wild, these parties? Soft drinks don’t sound all that wicked.’