The following day, Hanlon pulled into Luke’s reserved parking space in Dean Village. Wemyss looked at her hopefully from the back seat. ‘OK, you can come…’ The dog leapt gracefully out of his basket in the rear of the car onto the pavement.
‘Come on, then…’ She clipped his lead onto his collar and they walked up to the door of Luke’s studio. There was a café opposite; she could make out the shapes of two people sitting inside, looking out of the window, who had a perfect view of her and the dog as she rang the bell. Luke buzzed them up and they walked up the stairs to the studio, Wemyss’s claws clicking on the granite of the steps.
Luke opened the door. He was wearing a shirt several sizes too big for him and a blue T-shirt and jeans, all spattered in paint. His longish hair was tied up in a rudimentary man-bun. He looked very young.
‘Come in… nice dog.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘his name’s Wemyss’
‘Like the castle?’
‘It’s where he was found, he’s a rescue dog.’
Luke smiled and they walked into the small hall. ‘So the dog’s OK?’ Hanlon suddenly thought of wet paint. ‘I should have asked.’
‘Sure.’ Luke scratched Wemyss gently on the head. ‘But not in the studio – I don’t want dog hairs sticking to my canvases… Do you mind leaving him here a moment while we go through? I’m just in the middle of something.’
‘No, not at all. Sit, boy, stay.’
The dog sat, then lay down on a rug by the door to the living room and looked at Hanlon with mournful eyes as she disappeared with Luke into his studio. He closed the door behind them.
She looked around the large, high-ceilinged room. Outside it was completely dark, lights were on in the houses on the other side of the river. It was as she remembered: the long trestle table, the paints, the general mess and clutter you find in a studio.
‘How can I help?’ he said.
‘Who was Aurora’s dealer? Do you know?’ she asked.
Luke was standing with his back to her, adding some detail to a picture of Arthur’s Seat. It sounded an unpromising choice of subject, dull, the kind of tourist kitsch that you could see in shops on the Royal Mile, but in Luke’s hands the iconic hill was a brooding, powerful menace under an elemental, pagan sky. It somehow sent a shiver down her spine. Although his back was to her she could see his face reflected in a mirror opposite; it was totally absorbed in what he was doing.
‘Her dealer?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Aurora hasn’t been using for months.’
‘Yeah, so people keep telling me.’ Despite that, she couldn’t get Wyre’s point out of her mind, that Aurora might have had a huge drug debt to pay. Even if drug dealers weren’t looking to kill her they might be wanting to give her a good beating to force Aurora to pay up. Was she hiding from that?
If that were the case, that was something she could help Aurora with. Cameron wouldn’t be able to scare off a dealer, but she could. She knew which buttons to press, what threats would work, and she was more than capable of inflicting a beating herself if need be. In fact, it was the kind of job she would relish.
‘I met her at the tail-end of her addiction,’ Luke said, his eyes not leaving the painting. ‘She was really fucked up…’ He turned round and looked at Hanlon as though evaluating her. ‘I’ll show you something. I’ve never shown these to anyone before – they’re private.’ He put his brush down, ‘it’s why I wanted you to come over, I think they’ll help you understand her better.’
He walked over to a tall cupboard in the corner, the kind of thing you might find in an old-fashioned primary school to store books and materials. Like everything else in the studio, it was paint-splattered. He opened it. On the floor of the cupboard, several unframed canvases were stacked upright. Luke took out a couple at the back and put them down on the big trestle table.
‘Come and have a look.’
She did so. If she had thought that the Arthur’s Seat picture was good, then, Jesus, these took her breath away.
They were shockingly, gut-wrenchingly brilliant. Aurora slumped across a table, glassy eyed, clutching a goblet half full of red wine. In her mouth was a half-smoked joint that had gone out; you could see a light frosting of coke on her nostrils. There was a clock on the wall that read two-thirty. Her eyes were dead, devoid of any expression or light.
There was no hope, no life, no joy, no animation, just a dull, mechanical, slave-like addiction.
In the other, Aurora had passed out in the corner of what was recognisably this studio. She was wearing a short strappy dress that had ridden up so you could see her pants. You could also see that she had wet herself. Her long blonde hair was matted. Hanlon got the impression that she had thrown up and her hair was slick with vomit.
‘This was her, what, a year and a half ago maybe. We’d started going out, she was new in recovery, and then something happened, she relapsed.’ He sighed. ‘She never told me what it was about and I never asked, must have been painful though… Anyway, after that, she put the past behind her. She’s been clean ever since.’
Her eyes went from these to the Aurora on the wall, the pictures which had previously been on easels. She was beautiful, intelligent but with a challenging, guarded expression in her lovely eyes, saying, ‘You don’t really know me. You can never know me.’
But Luke did. It was a chilling talent. Hanlon wondered what he would make of her, should she accede to his request to paint her. Part of her felt she would be afraid to find out. She looked at Luke; those eyes were so young, but they saw so much. His talent was frightening, almost freakish. It wasn’t surprising that Hamish Cameron wanted to add him to his roster of artists.
Luke waved a hand at the paintings on the table. ‘Aurora’s past.’
‘They’re very moving, Luke—’ she pressed the point ‘—but who was her dealer?’
‘A guy called Jordan.’
‘Jordan, any surname?’
Luke shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I asked the Muirhouse boys when I was doing some pictures of them. I had some crazy idea of confronting him…’
Hanlon hid a grin at the idea of this nice, middle-class kid confronting an Edinburgh gangster. Jordan would hardly be shaking in his boots.
‘They laughed, they said he was big-time, he works for some Glaswegian psycho called Millar, seemingly.’
Millar, thought Hanlon. I know that name. She remembered what Campbell had told her.
Everyone’s scared of Millar. He’s an evil bastard. We found a body in the Clyde last year, an informant. His tongue had been cut out. Millar let it be known that he’d done it himself. The guy’s crazy, but unfortunately far from stupid.
She doubted Aurora would run from Wyre or Griffiths, but Millar, now that made sense. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Luke’s voice jolted her back into the present. ‘Anyway, I had nothing to do with her getting better – she’d just had enough. She said she wants those two pictures framed, just to remind her of the bad old days. I wonder where she’d put them. Over the fireplace, do you think? In her bedroom? Something to show the kids.’
There was a note of finality in his voice; he’d moved on.
‘And what happened between you?’ Hanlon asked.
Luke stepped back from his picture, evaluating it. ‘When she got clean she wanted her own space. We grew apart. We’re still good friends. But art comes first, Hanlon. Artists are like that – you’ve got a relationship with the muse, everything else is secondary.’
‘Even Aurora?’ she asked.
‘Even Aurora,’ he said firmly.
The intercom buzzed and Luke went over to it.
‘Police,’ said the disembodied voice.
He looked at Hanlon questioningly. She shrugged.
‘Better let them in, then,’ Luke said.