Sister Avril cut me off. “Size twenty-eight,” she said.
“Ah,” I said. Not much dignity for the client if we had to move the racks back against the wall to wheel her in. “Twenty-eight. Wow. I’ll see what we’ve got.”
“God be with you,” said Avril, like she always did, making it sound as if he’d phone her at the end of the shift to tell her what I’d been up to. She and my mother would have got on like a house on fire, if only each of them didn’t sum up the other one’s hunch that Satan still walked among us.
I took Steve his coffee and switched the computer on.
“So what’s he working on?” he said. “It wasn’t like a statue of her or anything, was it?”
So I told him about Dave’s House and was pleased to see the frown growing. Hah! I thought. You might have done a hundred and fifty Open University courses, but you’re still one of us. You don’t get it, do you?
“Have you seen it?” he said.
“No. Why?”
“Just… it sounds… ” He couldn’t seem to finish.
So I told him all about Shed Boat Shed, laying it on thick. His frown deepened.
“Yeah, that too,” he said. “Did you see that one?”
“No, it’s sold. That too what?”
“They sound… familiar,” said Steve. I could feel myself blushing. Not only did Steve get Gus’s kind of weird sculpture, but he’d heard of them, read about them in the kind of Sunday papers they’d get mentioned in. Maybe he’d even been to a gallery and seen them.
“There must have been publicity when Shed Boat Shed got sold,” I said. “I know it went for a bundle.”
Steve shook his head and sipped his coffee. His wee round glasses steamed up and when they cleared, he was staring at me. “But the one you say he’s doing now sounds dead familiar too,” he said. “And you haven’t actually seen either of them.”
“What are you saying, Steve?”
“Just… sounds like he talks a good game,” Steve said, and I don’t think I managed to hide how I felt to hear my own thoughts come back at me.
“But I have seen something he made,” I said. “Listen to this, eh?” I might have made it sound better than it was. “Lights and like… landscapes inside, like a grotto. You can’t really see it. It’s a bit of a nightmare to be honest, and you wouldn’t want it in your house if you lived alone. But it’s totally brilliant and it’s right there in the workshop. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Steve had finished his coffee and he fiddled with the cup, not looking at me.
“You didn’t see him make it,” he said. “He might have bought it.”
“He couldn’t afford it! God’s sake, Steve. He’s got a workshop full of bits and bobs and a half-finished sculpture and a finished sculpture and he says he’s a sculptor, and you knew he was an artist from knowing his family, but you still can’t work out how all that fits together? What’s your problem?” I knew, of course. It was just like the disciples, except for the other way on. You believe what you want to believe, and you don’t believe what you don’t want to believe. Steve didn’t want to believe in Gus, so it didn’t matter what I said, he’d find away to make it seem dodgy.
“I don’t trust him,” said Steve, right on cue. “It’s been a week, Jessie, and he’s… it’s like he’s put a spell on you. He’s got his hooks right in you, and I can’t see why.”
“Thanks a bunch!”
“I didn’t mean that. God, hardly. Just, you’re usually so careful with people. Even with… us.”
He’d been going to say me.
“I just don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I trust him.” I felt a flicker, but it was small enough to ignore. “I’m glad I was careful with people all these years, so nobody else managed to get their hooks into me and I was free when Gus came along.” I didn’t care if I was hurting him. He didn’t look hurt, though. He looked puzzled.
“You make it sound as if you’ve only just met him,” he said. “I thought you were friends.”
The shop door dinged before I could answer and I turned, gratefully, away. I didn’t recognise the man who stood there. Definitely not a client. He was in his fifties, dressed in jeans and Timberland boots, with a Gore-Tex fleece on top and a Gore-Tex shoulder harness on top of that with a phone velcroed on. He smiled at me.
“Miss Constable,” he said. “I’m here about the clothes.”
I blinked. Then I got it. This was the volunteer care worker, and I hadn’t started searching for what we might have in a twenty-eight. I smiled back. A few years ago I’d have said he didn’t look like a typical volunteer, back when they were all church ladies. But it was getting hard to tell now. Folk were getting nervous about their jobs and rounding out their CVs. And some of the big companies in town had cottoned on to giving time instead of money too, all those middle managers taking an afternoon to streamline some charity into efficiency and sending the little old church ladies packing with the new rules and the computing system.
Father Tommy was sick of the lot of them. “Say it with cash” was one of his slogans. He’d tried to tell that to the Peter Pan steering group. But he’d said a lot of other stuff too. “Hierarchy, a line of command, central control of resources. It’s not a quilting bee.” And someone at the meeting had piped up-I knew because Dot had told me-“Would His Holiness be interested, Father?” and there’d been a lot of tittering and a few jokes about Bishoprics and Presbyteries, which didn’t sound all that funny and Father Tommy resigned from the committee saying that it would all end in tears.
And hadn’t it just! Poor old house was lying there with the roof off and the blue polythene sheet flapping and a bulldozer sitting chained up in the garden, because the plant hire company wouldn’t let the volunteer building crew use it and wouldn’t send a driver (or even come and pick it up) until they got paid. A fiasco, just like Father Tommy had said, and who could blame him for sounding a bit chuffed about it.
I was on my way to the outsize section when I turned.
“Women’s clothes?” I asked. How could a male volunteer help a woman try clothes on?
“Men’s clothes, Miss Constable,” he said. And that was another thing. Volunteers were Miz users all the way. Only the little old church ladies ever Miss’ed me.
“Size twenty-eight is a woman’s size, though,” I said.
He stared at me. I stared back. Steve cleared his throat and disappeared through the back. When he had gone, the man moved forward, pretty fast, between the rails and tables.
“I hear you didn’t want to say where you’d seen them,” he said. He spoke without moving his bottom lip, as if his teeth were clenched. Made him look like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Bit late for that,” he said. “You did better than that yesterday. ‘If only he hadn’t been wearing a donkey jacket, he might not have drowned.’ ” He said in a high, mincing voice, mocking me.
“Those clothes!” I blurted. I started back, but he grabbed my arm.
“Hey!” I said. “Steve?” I heard the toilet flushing and shouted louder. “Steve!”
“Where is he?” he said. “What do you know?”
He was gripping my arm really hard just below the elbow and he started turning it back, like you do when you’re taking a drumstick off a roasted chicken, until it snaps. But I’d been well trained in getting out of someone’s grip who was bigger and stronger and thought they could bully you. I looked quickly to check my aim and then stamped down on his boot. My foot bounced back, aching. Steel-toe caps? But I’d distracted him long enough to let me knee him hard in the groin. Then I felt his grip slacken, and I twisted my arm away. I got myself behind the counter and yelled again.