Free Blue Skies by Helen Hodgman Page A

the two girls in the case of Jonathan Pickup, well-known restaurateur, spoke with our reporter in his suburban home today. Angry that the case against Pickup had been dropped, he said: “The man should be locked up. He’s no better than a filthy animal. Young innocent girls should be protected from the likes of him. He must have drugged them or something to get them to do those things in the photographs. I won’t rest until justice has been done. It’s too late for my girls, but I’m thinking of others. All they wanted was to make a bit more money waitressing in the holidays and look what’s happened. It’s a bloody disgrace, and if the police aren’t prepared to do anything about it, then it’s up to us ordinary decent citizens to deal with the likes of him.” ’ There was a lot more. Until now the details had not been publicly known, but now they were, and Jonathan had fled, although the police had decided not to prosecute.
    I looked along his bookshelves and took out any interesting-looking books I could see. I carried them into his bedroom and piled them on his bed. I opened his wardrobe door and removed a pair of rich-looking dark leather boots and a thick natural-wool cable-stitched jumper, and put them on the bed with the books. Behind the kitchen door was a canvas hold-all hanging on a hook. I carried it through to the bedroom and put the books, the boots and the jumper into it, adding two bottles of red wine and one of white that were left on the kitchen shelf. Then, thinking such wanton waste of good food wicked, I went back into the kitchen and collected a dozen deserted eggs and some cold cooked sausages in a brown paper bag. I hoped Ben would like the boots and jumper—that they would fit him and that he would be pleased with me for bringing them to him.
    I took a last sentimental look around the flat. Wishing to leave it all neat and tidy, I straightened the crumpled bed and plumped up the pillows. My hand closed on the handle of a leather whip—quite a small one, the plaited leather handle not more than six inches long, but the thongs, the regulation nine, much longer. They curled nastily inwards as I whisked them through the air. I wound them neatly round the handle and put the whip into the bag, taking care not to break the eggs. Everything has its uses. I picked up the bag, now unpleasantly heavy, and left.

    I walked back through the town to the Museum and Art Gallery, down the main shopping block, through the square with the fountain and up the stone steps to the main entrance. The building was in two parts, the museum on the left, the art collection on the right, the two joined by a large foyer complete with potted plants in large plastic tubs, a cloakroom, toilets and a small shop selling postcards and souvenirs. I left my canvas bag in the cloakroom and turned into the public rooms of the art gallery.
    The paintings blazed bright and brazen, along the walls of the ground-floor gallery. I stood looking down the length of the room. They shone forth like windows looking out on landscapes full of rare surrealistic vegetation—rich, glittering acrylic jewels.
    I walked to the first picture. A lagoon shimmered: blues, greens, yellows and edges of violet. Lily pads floated on the surface. A tall waterbird picked its way fastidiously across the thickly textured paint solidity. The wavering figure of a pale white girl with straw hair was reflected on the waters, wading into them. My toes curled inside my shoes, feeling sympathetic terror at unknown slimy things wriggling buried in the mud—hidden nastinesses, waiting to be disturbed, waiting to attack that perfectly smooth white body, tearing lumps from it, staining the pretty water crimson.
    I escaped to the next picture. And to the next. And so round the room. Each held one of these vulnerable white bodies—a soft centre exposed in its beautiful landscape beneath the flawless blue skies. Like