Adriana Borrell was tall, taller still thanks to boots with a serious heel. She was strikingly dressed: a suede jacket, several sizes too large, hanging loose over a pink shirt with a ruffled front; camouflage trousers secured by a scarlet leather belt and a patterned scarf tied loosely around her head. Her face was leathered and deeply lined. Her voice, when she spoke, suggested someone for whom the health warning on cigarettes held no meaning.
Her grip, when she shook Hadley’s hand, was firm and strong. ‘Your boy said you wanted to see me.’
Hadley suppressed a smile. The word ‘catamite’ flashed wickedly across her mind.
‘I thought we might talk about Anthony Winter.’
‘You still looking for the bastard who killed him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ten, twelve years back it could cheerfully have been me.’
Hadley smiled. ‘I take it this isn’t by way of a confession?’
‘Call it more wish fulfilment, if you like.’
‘You weren’t sorry, then, to hear what had happened?’
A smile creased the sculptor’s face still further. ‘Opened a bottle of Chablis I’d been saving and drank a toast. Or two.’ Her laugh was as rough and robust as her voice.
‘Your relationship ended in what? Two thousand and eight? Nine?’
‘Fifth of November, two thousand and eight. Gatwick to Larnaca. When we took off you could see the first of the fireworks. Seemed kind of suitable. Celebratory.’ She looked around. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way I can smoke in here, is there?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Adriana laughed. ‘Infringement of my human rights.’
‘Two thousand and eight,’ Hadley said, pressing on. ‘Ten years ago, give or take. It’s a long while to stay angry, harbour that much hate.’
‘Oh, don’t worry yourself. I haven’t exactly been sitting around dwelling on it. Don’t suppose I gave him a thought for months at a time. Over there especially. Too much living to do. Too much work.’
‘But still you cheered when he died?’
Adriana shrugged her shoulders as if to say, why not?
‘What was it, made you so angry?’
‘At Winter? You mean, aside from him being a total shit? Which is what most artists, those that are any good and know it, have to be just to get on, get noticed.’
‘Yes, aside from that.’
Adriana stretched her arms sideways and flexed the muscles in her back. ‘Are you sure I can’t sneak a cigarette?’
‘Sure.’
Now Adriana stretched her arms in front and spread her fingers wide. ‘Sorry. Sit too long in one position, I seize up.’
‘Would you rather walk around a little? Talk somewhere else?’
‘Can we do that?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
Adriana’s eyes lit up. ‘And then I could smoke?’
‘No rules to say you can’t.’
They crossed the car park and turned right along Regis Road, crossing at the lights towards the open space by the railway bridge and the seats between Natasha’s Flowers and Bean About Town.
Hadley nodded in the direction of the coffee wagon and Adriana shook her head and took a slim packet of cigarillos from her pocket.
‘Each to her own addiction,’ she said, when Hadley came back with a double espresso.
‘Okay, so now … Anthony Winter …’
Adriana took smoke down slowly into her lungs; released it through her mouth and nose. ‘I think I knew from the start he wasn’t going to be what you’d call faithful. And I took that on board. Or thought I had. But it was the lies that went with it that got to me, undermined whatever it was he had. And then the tying up, the bondage … I was happy to go along with a little of that. Nothing, you know, too serious. Nothing that was going to really hurt. But Winter, he got into it more and more. It got so normal sex – whatever that is, but you know what I mean, I think – it got so normal sex simply wasn’t on the menu. And I got a little tired of being tied to the bed or whipping Winter across his backside just so he could have an orgasm.’ She tapped away a sliver of ash and watched it fall towards the ground. ‘And then there was the business with the girl …’
‘The girl?’
‘Melissa.’
‘His daughter?’
‘His daughter, Melissa.’
Hadley’s skin felt electric. ‘What about her?’
‘She modelled for him. I don’t think at first she wanted to. I don’t think her mother wanted her to, either. But somehow he persuaded them.’ She gave a quick shake of the head. ‘He wasn’t easy to say no to, Winter.’
‘And that was it? She modelled for him, that’s what you didn’t approve of?’ Hadley’s mind was racing back through the reproductions of Winter’s paintings she’d seen. ‘Modelled nude, you mean?’
‘Yes, of course. With Winter, what else?’
‘And she would have been how old? Fourteen? Fifteen?’
‘Somewhere round there, yes. You’d have to ask the girl herself if you want to know for certain. Ask her mother.’
Hadley held the question for a second longer, tasting it on her tongue. ‘Aside from the modelling, was there anything else you didn’t approve of? Between Winter and his daughter?’
Adriana stubbed out the cigarillo. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to. I’m sorry.’
Hadley was already selecting a number on her phone. ‘Alice, drop whatever you’re doing. Time to go back to Munchkinland.’