Free The Coldest Blood by Jim Kelly

privacy.’
    Dryden put his head in the bedroom. The mattress and sleeping bag were gone, the single bed up on one edge. ‘Did she find anything, anything she didn’t expect?’
    Buster shook his head. He was standing by the locked cupboard in the hall with the keys. He turned the Yale silently and stood back: ‘She said I could have one of these, but I’m not bothered.’
    The lower half of the cupboard contained canvases, tacked on stretchers and stacked on edge. The smell of turpentine was pungent. Dryden flipped them forward, craning his neck to see each composition – some vividlandscapes, a field of Fen rape, a view from the lounge down onto the allotments, a still life of a table top with a single apple. And there were nudes, female, the skin colour dominated by angry reds, the faces indistinct.
    But the top half of the cupboard held a canvas on a stretcher which had been pegged to a cross-wire to dry.
    ‘Jesus,’ said Dryden, taking one edge of it in his hand.
    It was of two men, naked, standing waist deep in a pool. The colours were dark, soiled and crude, but the brush work adept. One of them had white hair and Dryden recognized the same box-like features as in the painting that hung above McIlroy’s fireplace: the elusive Joe. Was the other man Declan? Dryden found it difficult to tell, the features here were smudged and chaotic. But the picture’s real impact was not in the composition but the colour of the pool. It wasn’t blue, grey or white but a startling arterial red, and from each man a trickle of blood ran down from wounds on the arms to replenish the pool beneath.
    ‘That’s Joe, I guess?’ said Dryden, pointing. Buster nodded. ‘Don’t know where he lives, do you – or his surname?’
    ‘Just Joe. Lives on the Fen, that’s all I know. He didn’t come much; they met down at the allotments. He just called when Declan was sick, ’cept this time of course.’
    ‘Did you know Declan painted?’
    ‘No idea. I asked Marcie – that’s the sister – and she said it was therapy. No – therapeutic, that’s what she said. But she didn’t want the pictures, coz he’d given her one with loads of paint on she could feel – a landscape, she said; reeds and stuff. And he’d always said to burn ’em anyway. Said I could have one of ’em for being neighbourly, to remember him by.’ Buster laughed: ‘Must be fuckin’ jokin’.’
    ‘It’s blood,’ said Dryden, leaning forward to look more closely. ‘Can I take this one?’
    Buster was shivering. ‘Be my guest. She’s gonna pick up the others tomorrow for the tip.’ He watched as Dryden took down the canvas and rolled it.
    ‘What do you think it means, then?’ asked Buster, backing off.
    ‘Looks like a nightmare to me,’ said Dryden.
    They went back into the lounge. ‘Bloke from the council said they’d have someone new in by the end of the month,’ said Buster, picking up his tea mug from the table. ‘Missus says it’ll be a bunch of darkies with loud music. I hope it is, give her something to fuckin’ moan about ’cept me.’
    Dryden felt the cool wind from the north blowing through the gaps around Declan McIlroy’s picture windows. ‘I don’t think Declan did kill himself, Buster. What do you think?’
    Buster held his dressing gown to his throat. ‘If the police are happy, I’m happy. Why make trouble, eh?’
    He was watching Buster’s face when it froze, the eyes looking over Dryden’s right shoulder. He wheeled and saw what he’d seen: through the frosted glass of the hatch to the kitchen, a face, the parallel opaque lines distorting the features.
    The intruder sensed that the sudden silence signalled discovery and bolted for the door, heavy boots thudding on the cheap lino.
    Dryden was ten feet behind him as he made it to the balcony in time to see him take the steps down by the landing. As Dryden followed he heard the lift wheezing, the doors clattering on the floor below, then the lift again.
    Heart