Free Still Waters by John Harvey

on the left showed a landscape painting, a typically rural English scene; sheep grazing under the careless eye of a straw-chewing youth, an avenue of trees angled behind.
    The second was as singular as that was conventional. The sun, full and faint, lowered through clouds over an expanse of ground, purple and brown, that could either be moorland or field. Trees stood sparse on the indistinct horizon.
    It was this picture that Eddie Snow picked up and angled to the light. After a long moment, his face broke into a smile.
    â€œHad me there for a minute.” He replaced the Polaroid. “ Departing Day : study, isn’t it? Not the real thing.”
    Grabianski waited.
    â€œEyesight’d started going by then, poor tosser. Either that or he’d got the DTs.”
    A sparrow, perversely brave, dipped its slate-colored head toward a piece of bacon rind and narrowly missed a backhander for its pains.
    â€œSo what you saying here, Jerry?”
    â€œI’m not saying anything.”
    â€œYeah, so I noticed.” Snow picked up the photographs, first one and then the other, and studied them again. “You’ll want to get shot as a pair?”
    From Grabianski a nod.
    â€œTwo a penny these,” Snow said, indicating the sheep.
    â€œNot by him.”
    â€œCrap all the same. This first one. Pastoral bollocks. Whereas this … Going for it, that’s what he’s doing there. Color. Light. All them gradations of blue in the sky. Whistler in a way, but Turner closer still.”
    â€œYou like it?”
    â€œYeah, course I do, but that’s not the point.”
    Grabianski smiled. “Your friend in Cologne …”
    Eddie Snow shook his head. “Strictly kosher. Never touch anything without it’s got perfect pedigree, properly authenticated bill of sale, the whole bit.” He lit a second cigarette. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a bill of sale?”
    â€œAnd you,” Grabianski said, “have you got buyers who are less scrupulous?”
    Using his tongue, Snow fidgeted a piece of sausage from between his teeth. “Let me know how to get in touch.”
    â€œBetter I get in touch with you.”
    Snow scraped back his chair and stood up. “Legit business. I’m in the book.”
    â€œI know.”
    As Grabianski watched Eddie Snow walk, slim-hipped, away, he noticed that though the couple were still holding hands, the woman was crying. He restored the Polaroids to his pocket and moved the remains of Eddie Snow’s breakfast to another table, where the birds could scavenge in peace. He would have another cup of coffee and then that second piece of carrot cake would go down a treat.

Eleven
    She could feel it happening. The listlessness that crept over her, those evenings when he had neither arrived nor phoned; evenings which previously she would have used productively, reading, preparing work, enjoying the space and time before settling back downstairs at ten to watch whatever was on TV. Northern Exposure. Frasier. ER . Or she would be on the telephone to friends, arranging to meet for a drink, a chat, a movie perhaps. And there were those evenings when she would crawl home from school like someone who had been beaten, those days when for one reason or another the kids had left her exhausted and drained. But all of this was okay, this was what she could handle, it was her life: pleasant, controlled, contained. And she could feel what was happening with Resnick beginning to threaten that in so many ways and, much as she enjoyed being with him, it was hard not to resent him for it.
    She recognized the feelings from before; first with Andrew and then with Jim. An Irishman who taught poetry and a musician who taught clarinet, oboe, and bassoon. Andrew aggressively and Jim by default, both men had made her dependent upon them. Not for money, stability; not, exactly, for love. Presence, that’s what it was: need, the need of one