`Hang on,' Rebus called.
`To what, pray?'
And Rebus laughed. He roared with laughter. Then he realised the line was still open to Chambers's BMW. He laughed even harder, picking up the handset, his knuckles white against the steering wheel, left arm aching.
`Having fun, Chambers?' he yelled. `Like the TV programme used to say, there's no hiding place!'
And then the BMW gave a jolt, and Rebus heard Chambers gasp.
`You bitch!' Another jolt, and sounds of a struggle. Lisa was retaliating, now that Chambers was intent on this speeding circuit without end.
`No!'
`Get off!'
'I'll—'
And a piercing scream, two piercing screams, both high-pitched, feminine in their intensity, and the black car didn't take the next bend, flew straight for the pavement, mounted it and bounced into a bus shelter, crumpling the metal structure and driving on into the walls of the National Gallery itself
`Lisa!' Rebus cried. He brought the Jaguar to a sudden, pivoting stop. The driver's door of the BMW creaked open and Chambers stumbled out, slouching off in a half-run, clutching something in his right hand, one leg damaged. Rebus struggled with his own door, finally finding the handle. He ran to the BMW and peered in. Lisa was slumped in the passenger seat, a seatbelt passing in a diagonal across her body. She was groaning, but there were no signs of blood. Whiplash. Nothing more serious than whiplash. She opened her eyes.
'John?'
`You're going to be all right, Lisa. Just hang one Somebody will be here.' Indeed, the police cars were closing in, uniforms running into the Square. Rebus looked up from the car, seeking Chambers.
`There!'` The judge was out of the Jaguar and pointing with a rigid arm, pointing upwards. Rebus followed the line to the steps of the National Gallery. Chambers had reached the top step.
`Chambers!' Rebus yelled. 'Chambers!'
But the body disappeared from view. Rebus started towards the steps, finding his own legs to be less than solid. As though rubber instead of bone and cartilage were keeping him upright. He climbed the steps and entered the building by its nearest door—the exit door. A woman in a staff uniform was lying on the ground in the foyer, man standing over her. The man gestured towards the gallery's interior.
`He ran inside!'
And where Malcolm Chambers went, Rebus would surely follow.
He ran and he ran and he ran.
The way he used to run from his father—running and climbing the steps to the attic, hoping to hide. But always caught in the end. Even if he hid all day and half of the night, eventually the hunger, the thirst, would force him back downstairs, to where they were waiting.
His leg hurts. And he's cut. His, face is stinging. The warm blood is trickling down his chin, down his neck. And he's running.
It wasn't all bad, his childhood. He remembers his mother delicately snipping away at his father's nosehairs. 'Long nosehairs are so unbecoming in a man.' It wasn't his fault, was it, any of it? It was theirs. They'd wanted a daughter, they'd never wanted a son. His mother had dressed him in pink, in girls' colours and girls' clothes. Then had painted him, painted him with long blonde curls, imagining him into her paintings, into her landscapes. A little girl running by a riverbank. Running with bows in her hair. Running.
Past one guard, past two. Lunging at them. The alarm is, ringing somewhere. Maybe it's just his imagination. All these paintings. Where have all these paintings come from? Through one door, turn right, through another.
They kept him at home. The schools couldn't teach him the way they could. Home taught. Home made. His father, some nights, drunk, would knock over his mother's canvases and dance on them. `Art! Fuck art!' He'd do his little dance, with a chuckle in his throat and all the time his mother would sit with her face in her hands and cry, then run to her room and bolt shut the door. Those were the nights when his father would stumble through to his bedroom. Just for a cuddle. Sweet alcoholic breath. Just for at cuddle. And then more than a cuddle, so very much more. `Open wide, just like the dentist tells you.' Christ, it hurt so much. A probing finger . . . tongue . . . the wrenching open . . . And even worse was the noise, the dull grunting, the loud nasal breathing. And then the sham, pretending it had been just a game, that was all. And to prove, it, his father would bend down and take a big soft bite out of his stomach, growling like a bear. Blowing a raspberry on the bare flesh. And then a laugh. `You see, it was only a game, wasn't it?'
No, never a game. Never. Running. To the attic. To the garden, to squeeze behind the shed, where the stinging nettles were. Even their bite was not so bad as his father's. Had his mother known? Of course she had known. Once, when he had tried to tell her in a whispered moment, she had refused to listen. `No, not your father, you're making it up, Malcolm.' But her paintings had grown more violent: the fields now, were purple and black, the water blood-red. The figures on the riverbank had grown skeletal, painted stark white like ghosts.
He'd hidden it all so well for so long. But then she'd come back to him. And now he was mostly `she', consumed by her, and by her need for . . . Not revenge, it couldn't really be called revenge. Something deeper than revenge, some huge and hungry need without a name, without a form. Only a function. Oh yes, a function.
This way and that. The people in the gallery make way for him. The alarm is ringing still. There's a hissing in his head like a child's rattle. Sss- sss-sss. Sss-sss-sss. These paintings he is running past, they're laughable. Long nosehairs Johnny. None mimicked real life, and less so the life beneath. None could ape the grim caveman thoughts of every human being on the planet. But then he pushes open another door and it's all so very different. A room of darkness and shadowplay, of skulls and frowning bloodless faces. Yes, this is how it is. Velazquez, El Greco, the Spanish painters. Skull and shadow. Ah, Velazquez.
Why couldn't his mother have painted like this? When they died. (Together, in bed. A gas leak. The police said the child was lucky to be alive. Lucky his own bedroom window had been open a couple of inches.) When they had died, all he'd taken with him from the house had been her paintings, every single one of them.
`Only a game.'
`Long nosehairs, Johnny.' Snipping with the scissors, his father asleep. He'd pleaded with his eyes, pleaded with her to stick the point of the scissors into his father's fleshy noiseless throat. She'd been so gentle. Snip. So kind and gentle. Snip. The child was lucky.
What could they know?
Rebus walked up the stairs and through the bookshop. Other officers were close behind him. He motioned for them to spread out. There would be no escape. But he also warned them to keep their distance.
Malcolm Chambers was his.
The first gallery was large, with, red walls. A guard pointed through the doorway on the right and Rebus strode towards it. By the side off the doorway, a painting showed a headless corpse, spouting blood. The painting mirrored Rebus's thoughts so well that he smiled grimly. There were spots of rust-coloured blood on the orange carpet. But even without these, he would have had no difficulty following Chambers's trail. The tourists and attendants stood back from him, pointing, showing him the way. The alarm bell was bright and sharp, focusing his mind. His legs had become solid once again and his heart pumped blood so loudly he wondered if others. could hear it.
He took a right, from a small corner room into another large gallery, at the far end of which stood a set of hefty wooden and glass' doors. Near them another attendant stood nursing a wounded arm. There was a bloody handprint on one door. Rebus stopped and looked through into the room itself.