‘There’s a long and honourable tradition of painting the naked human form,’ he said soothingly.
‘I paid for the models myself, out of my own pocket,’ Markov concluded, with a steep descent into bathos. ‘I don’t know what they had to complain about.’
‘Look,’ Slider said encouragingly, ‘I’m not here to criticize your teaching techniques. I’m only saying I understand why Zellah hid her sketch pad from her parents.’
He looked relieved at the sympathetic approach. ‘God, yes! That philistine of a father of hers! I met him at parents’ meetings and school events and so on. Onward, Christian soldiers! He was an absolute ogre. No wonder Zellah was terrified of him.’
‘Was she? I’m trying to understand her, you see. Different people give me different accounts of what she was like. You obviously knew her better than her other teachers—’
‘Why do you say that?’ he interrupted.
‘Well, you saw her out of school hours, with your art classes.’
‘As a teacher.’
‘Quite. But I’m sure she revealed things about herself through her drawings. That’s what art is for, isn’t it?’
‘Oh – well, yes, I suppose so.’
‘So, how would you characterize her?’
He took another swig before answering, and stared thoughtfully at the middle distance. ‘She was a clever girl, as I’ve said. But a quiet one. It wasn’t easy to get anything out of her. She never talked about herself.’
‘Her friends say she was a bold spirit, defiant of convention,’ Slider said. ‘Sexually active, for one thing.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’ He glanced at Slider and away again. ‘You know how schoolgirls like to show off and exaggerate.’
‘You mean her friends are exaggerating about her? Or that she exaggerated about herself?’
He hesitated. ‘You saw her life-study drawings? What did you think of them?’
‘I thought they were very good,’ Slider said. ‘I thought they had a great deal of feeling, not just technical accuracy.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He paused, as though thinking something out. ‘Zellah did talk sometimes about boys, the way girls of that age do, but I always thought it was – well – a way of trying to fit in with the others. Because of her parents she was rather cut off from the other girls. I think she felt like an outsider. But those drawings showed the real Zellah.’
‘Meaning . . . what exactly?’
‘Meaning I think she was attracted to other women,’ he said, returning his gaze almost reluctantly to Slider, and surveying his face as if for reaction.
‘You think she was a lesbian?’ This was a new turn.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know, but I would guess that she was still a virgin. But young people of that age are often puzzled and confused about their sexuality, especially if they’ve had few chances to experiment. Perhaps she was just beginning to feel these feelings – finding women attractive – and worried about being different from other girls. So she joined in the girl talk and the boasting with her friends, to hide her real self from them. But in her drawings she could only be honest. That’s where the real Zellah came out.’
Slider pondered this for a moment. It made sense in its own psychological terms, all right; but he knew Zellah had not been a virgin, so whatever she may or may not have felt about it, she had certainly put her money where her mouth was. But those lyrical drawings of females nudes – was that what they were saying? He had thought the nakedness was in direct line of descent from the naked horses; that the freedom from clothes represented a greater, spiritual freedom – the freedom denied to the caged thrush. Though of course, longing for spiritual freedom and a suppressed attraction to women were not mutually exclusive ideas.
After a moment he asked, ‘Did you think her a happy person, at the bottom?’
Markov looked grave. ‘No, I thought her very unhappy. In fact . . .’ A hesitation. ‘In fact when I first heard she was dead, just for a second it flitted through my mind that she might have committed suicide. But from what the media seem to be saying that wasn’t the case.’ He finished on what was almost a wistful note, as if he hoped that somehow or other Slider could tell him it was suicide after all.
‘I’m afraid it wasn’t suicide,’ Slider said.
Markov sighed. ‘But you’ve caught the man, anyway, haven’t you?’ he went on, more briskly. ‘It was on the news last night. Some ghastly serial killer, who picked on her at random. Dreadful thing – awful. But at least there’s no mystery about it, is there?’
‘No,’ Slider said. ‘There’s no mystery about Ronnie Oates. What we don’t know is what Zellah was doing in that place at that time.’
‘Walking home from the fair, probably. No buses that time of night. Taking a short-cut.’
‘How do you know she was at the fair?’ Slider asked.
He blinked. ‘Well, there’s nothing else around there. And it said on the news report that’s where the murderer – this Oates man – had been. So I just assumed.’ He stared at Slider an instant and then laughed loudly. ‘That wasn’t one of those Columbo questions, was it? “But I never mentioned what the murder weapon was, sir.” Oh dear, you can’t possibly think I did it! What possible reason could I have for wanting to kill poor little Zellah?’
‘I wasn’t thinking that,’ Slider said calmly. ‘It was a simple question, nothing more.’
‘Well, if the next question is, “where was I that night?”’ he went on, still laughing, ‘I was here at home, painting. But I’m afraid as my wife was working I can’t call on her for an alibi. So you’ll just have to take my word for it. I can produce the painting I was doing, if you want to see that.’
‘That won’t be necessary, sir,’ Slider said. He thought the laughter was rather overdone, but the man was down the bottom of the second large glass, and he doubted they had been the first two of the morning. He stood up. ‘By the way, the car outside, parked on the hardstanding – is that yours?’
‘I don’t own a car,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly worth it in London, with the cost of parking and everything. One of the reasons we bought this flat is it’s so handy for both our places of work. My wife can cycle to the hospital from here. She works at St Charles’s. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason in particular. I’m just interested in cars. Well, thank you for giving me your time, and your opinion of Zellah. It was very helpful. One of the hardest things about an investigation like this is that one never gets to meet the victim. And there’s something about Zellah that haunts me, I don’t know why.’
‘She was a sweet kid,’ Markov said seriously. ‘And I must say it’s refreshing to hear you talk like that. One somehow assumes that you policemen all get so hardened to stuff like this that it doesn’t affect you any more.’
‘It affects us,’ Slider said. ‘You learn to cope with it, but you never stop feeling it.’
Atherton was being regaled with tea and biscuits by the Wildings’ next-door neighbour, who was plainly thrilled to bits with the whole affair and couldn’t wait to be asked her opinion. She was a woman in her sixties, thin, with a tight perm. Her face – so wrinkled it looked like a dry river bed – was thick with foundation and powder; she wore crimson lipstick, and the strong lenses of her glasses emphasized that she was wearing not only eye-shadow but mascara. Done up like a Christmas turkey, Atherton thought, in case there was any chance of getting on the telly or in the papers.