Water Canvas

Chapter 12 – Unexpected Encounter

Three yards, half a mile – a mile.

He didn't know how far, how fast –

But there it was at last, the opaque shadow of the shed against the blue thicket of trees, the single lamp swinging wildly from the reapers.

He stumbled up the steps, threw himself at the door.

Keys slipped from his fingers, frozen despite the summer heat, clattering as they fell.

Up above the dachas on the high road, the car stopped, the rich purr of the engine melting away into the night. A door opened and banged.

Footsteps on the narrow path, sand crunching underfoot –

Giving up on the keys, he picked up a candle stand that stood on the rickety table nearby, and braced himself –

A figure emerged from the greenish haze, resolving into the person of Anthony Donn. "Hello, Morse," he said cheerfully. "Fancy a spin in old Bluebell?"

.

.

In the intervening weeks since his first ride with Tony and this last, his friend had explored the many mysterious pathways of the woods. Now he guided the car along the twisting miles surely and safely. Tony's eyes, in the reflected glow of the headlights, were dark, his usually cheerful countenance sombre. Morse let his own gaze rest for mere seconds, redirecting it quickly to the darkness ahead when Tony twitched.

"You went back, then," Tony said evenly, "did you get what you wanted?"

Tony'd always been direct.

A straight bat, old man –

"No," he said, and even as he spoke, the hollows of his chest filled with an unaccountable anguish. "It isn't enough."

Tony bowed his head; a mere flick, but the sinews in his neck were rigid. "Nor for me," he murmured.

"You knew him well, didn't you?" He asked. "He said – you'd been to the Belvedere as his guest, and here at the big house too. But you never let on – not to Kay, not to Bruce…"

And not to me –

Tony's face was carved of marble; lips drawn taut, brows smoothed. "You know Bruce – would you, if it was you?"

"You knew," he said, realisation dawning, sick and pulsing in the pit of his stomach, "you knew he was an imposter. Why didn't you come forward? You could have been charged with obstructing a police inquiry. Your information could have made a difference" –

"He was dead," Tony said sharply, and it was strange, to see his grief reflected back at him, a distorted form through a heavily fogged mirror. "He is my friend," Tony said, and the force of the words struck Morse like a worldwind, "and his secrets were not mine to tell. I didn't know the particulars anyway," he continued, guiding the car down a turning at the crossroads, away from the path to the big house, onto the Carson Downs road, "I met him a year or two ago, in France, actually. Been to America, then toured the Continent. Also at the tables, funnily enough. A man could see at once that there was something odd about him."

"And that didn't put you on your guard?"

"I don't see something suspicious in every shape and shadow, Morse. That's your speciality. He is – was – a decent enough chap. Helped me out of a spot or two of bother."

"France? That's unexpected – for you."

Tony shrugged, eyes suddenly shuttered. "New habit."

"Hmmph," said Morse. "When was this? May – June?"

"Thereabouts, yes."

"Girl was it?" He asked interestedly.

Tony shook his head, hands tight on the steering wheel.

"The tables, then?"

Toy's lips thinned.

"Not horses – not you, anyway. Billiards?" Morse persisted.

"Morse," Tony snapped.

He let it drop, and the silence between them ballooned, expanding outwards and upwards, pressing in on his chest until he grew dizzy. He blinked, and the shimmering halos on the streetlamps shrank to pinpoints. On either side, the occasional hut and cottage gave way to large houses with manicured gardens, standing shoulder to shoulder in a bizarre display of lush evergreens and gated solidarity.

"Speaking of," he said, shaking himself out of his stupor, "have you had word from Bruce – Kenya, was it?"

Tony snorted. "Not a whisper. He pissed off to who knows where and left me to manage the whole show myself – not that I mind, precisely – but it's a hell of a lot of work, Morse. A man's got to have a bit of joy now and then, too. Can't be working himself to the bone, all for the old name, these days. It's a terrible business." He turned the car onto yet another winding road, narrow enough for branches to brush against the doors as they passed.

In the distance, the moon-silver glimmer of the lake beckoned.

"You don't have to leave, you know," Tony said, opening the door ad walking down to the water, right to the edge, so close that a rippling wave hit his ankle. "Mater and the old man are quite the globetrotters now; the Riviera, the West Indies… the dachas can be yours for the present, if you want it."

Morse followed as though in a dream. "How did you know that I'd" – He paused, then snorted a laugh. "Have you been following me in that rattletrap of yours?"

"Bluebell's a tip-top quality lady," Tony said offended. "But no – I haven't been following you. I just – knew."

Just as he'd known when – things – had gone south with Susan, turning up at Morse's flat with black coffee and solid, silent friendship. Tony, who'd abruptly stopped calling him Pagan, even as Bruce and the others, past masters in the fine art of humiliation, used the name over and over despite his subtle hints to stop, their mocking calls echoing in his ears as he walked the grounds of Lonsdale.

"Don't forget who your real friends are" –

Tony, who'd never asked him to M'Lord it, even with the weight of a half a millennium of pedigree behind him.

Tony, who'd stood, with all the nonchalance of a practised Pleb, lighting up a cigarette, against the wall of His Majesty's Prison when Morse walked out, head swimming with images of Peter's and Strange's shadowy faces, ears still ringing with the whistle of bullets, bundled him into that infernal blue car and driven him to the dachas. Who'd stood on the veranda once there, looking out over the lake while Morse scrubbed away the grime of jail, and pretended he couldn't hear the wailing sobs that mingled with the water that ran down in torrents.

Tony, who like a spirit, materialised from the mad, jagged world –

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. Perhaps, like the Bede, Tony was clairvoyant.

No, wait –

He opened his eyes. He squatted, picked up a stone and threw it into the lake. An echoing splash; the stone danced on the edge of the lake, wobbled undecidedly around an eddy, and then sank, somewhere near a clump of trees. "You didn't tell… them… that I was a policeman."

Tony shrugged. "Not mine to tell." He followed suit with a stone. It sank considerably closer to the bank than Morse's stone.

Morse suppressed a smile.

Tony pulled a face. "I'd have taken her away from there, if I could," he admitted. "His moods are not easy to deal with, even for me."

"And yet you gave Bruce an alibi," Morse pointed out.

"Nobody can be all things to all people, Morse. Not you, and certainly not me. I did my best for my cousin."

"And did you do your best for Bixby, too?"

Tony stepped back. "Morse."

"I'm sorry. That was not fair." He picked up another stone, a heavy one, and lobbed it over the water. It sank immediately.

"You knew him for – what was it – a week?" Tony removed his shoes, rolled up his trousers and waded in. The water rode up his leg and parted again, residue droplets shimmering like mercury on the flesh. "And you are still a better friend to him than I have been in two years."

Suddenly, without pausing to think, he followed Tony into the water. Warmer than he expected, it gathered in a silken blanket and ran over the tips of shoes. Wading out one yard, then two, he stood next to Tony. "The day we went up to Bruce's place – it wasn't Bruce or the girls you wanted me to meet, was it?"

In the sinking light, the curl of Tony's lip was barely visible. "I thought you could do with a friend."

"I have friends," he said sharply, and swallowed and swallowed, trying to scrape the bitterness off the edge of his tongue.

"The thing with you, Morse," Tony said lightly, and turned, so close his wet trousers flapped against Morse's coat, "is that you can't recognise a good thing if it slapped you in the face."

"Right," he snapped, "that's… that's…"

"That's the truth," Tony said softly. "I won't mince my words when it comes to you, old boy. You can take it or leave it."

"Right," said Morse again.

"Ridiculous in hindsight," Tony continued, and the sheer singularity of Tony being philosophical struck him dumb, "a chap builds his life on the plot of a novel, old manning it everywhere… now if it were you, Morse, you'd base it on an opera, wouldn't you? What would it be? Wagner – or Tosca?"

He shook his head, tightened his fist. "The mathematics of illusion is not in my favour."

"If anyone could beat the system, my money's on you."

That surprised a genuine laugh out of him, tickling the sore spots in his throat. "You're better off marshalling your hopes at the tables. Why don't you, anyway – you're in London often enough." Three feet away, winds bent low, lifting the water into white frothing crescents. At his side, Tony's eyes were dark and wide, the expression in them older than mountains, closed and crumbling at the edges.

"It doesn't feel right," Tony murmured.

"What was it like – the Belvedere?" Images of it – or what he imagined it to be – often danced on the edges of his mind; enormous stone halls, half-panelled with wood and varnish, smoke rolling up in gusts, lingering over the forms of men at the tables, music thrumming, throbbing through the ancient houses like blood through a body.

And emerging, out of the blue haze –

Beyond that point, he'd stilled his mind when it began to wander.

"Big," said Tony, matter-of-factly, "All green and blue velvet, you know the type of thing. Bruce would've said it's bourgeoisie, and once upon a time I might have been inclined to agree, snobbery be damned, but it isn't. Not really."

"Elva called the house on the lake a vulgar pile, I recall."

"Oh he went out all with that, hoping to impress her" –

"Yes, well, that failed spectacularly."

"Nothing does impress her, much," Tony said thoughtfully. "I offered to take Bruce to the Belvedere, once or twice, but he wasn't interested. Kay refused outright, though Elva did come along once." He eyed Morse carefully, mapping the arc of his brow, the bags under his eyes. Morse shivered under a deeper chill than the summer winds striking at his damp skin. "She liked you well enough, though."

Morse shrugged, wrapped his hands in the pockets of the sopping coat.

"I saw the way she was with you – there was a look in her eye. Bruce didn't like it. He couldn't put it there. I did wonder, with Bixby…"

"Whatever there was between them – he was holding onto a phantom, in the end."

"Morse." Tony's voice was heavier than he'd ever heard, scraping at all the raw places inside him harshly enough to draw blood, "don't."

"Don't – what?"

"You're pining," Tony said.

"So are you," he snapped back, and Tony drew breath, hard enough that his shoulders jerked against Morse's, the air before him whirling as he sucked it in.

Tony turned, eye to eye with him, suspiciously bright in the creamy moonlight. "You know," he said, voice steady but soft, "that must be the most straightforward thing you've said to me in years."

"In the car, on the way back from the fair." That night was etched in his memory, raw-hewn, as though from stone, the edges serrated beneath wickedly sharp razor blades. Kay's unwanted advances against his torso, and Tony at the back with Elva… "And at the party. I see more than you know."

"You always do," Tony murmured. "That's both the saving and the ending of you, old boy."

"I don't mean police work," Morse pointed out.

Tony looked at him keenly, eyes like bright burning diamonds. "For someone who's the Eye of Ra incarnate, you can be excruciatingly oblivious."

"You should go," Morse said. He turned and made his way out of the lake. Tony followed close behind, a warm shadow against the water at his ankles. "This isn't a healthy place anymore. Too easy to lose yourself here."

Tony smiled wryly, slid into the driver's seat. "Why do you think I came for you that day? Anyway, where would I go? Who would I see – not Bruce again" –

"Not there," Morse said. "There are better places to rally yourself. I hear it's nice across the pond in August and September."

"Ah," said Tony, and grinned.

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.

Tony's hands on the wheel drew them slowly, inexorably towards Bixby Manor. At the crossroads halfway between Cacklebury and Carson Downs, they turned onto the high road that ran on the banks of the lake, then further on through the twisting trees, past large houses on either sides of the quiet lanes. In the unresolved gleam of the streetlights, posters glared out at them – Diana Day advertising Burridges' new summer collection, Philip Madison's latest recital at TOSCA – but the path leading up to the house itself was quiet – dead, almost – thick and drooping with sorrow. The gat was not secured

One lone electric bulb cast a weak light over the entrance porch.

Sweeping up in a graceful curve, Tony stopped, summarily abandoning the car, then made immediately for the thick chain hanging on the gate.

"Wait, it'll be locked," Morse called, "here, I have" –

Tony turned, brandishing a key.

Morse stopped short. Then blinked, striding ferociously towards Tony. "How? You aren't supposed to have that! If the old man knew of this, or Mr Bright, it'll be my head on the chopping block."

Tony's eyes hardened, turning like steel in flames. "He gave it to me."

"And you've been hiding it away, have you?"

Tony stood his ground, and suddenly, unaccountably, Morse was reminded of Peter. The lines on Tony's face were etched in stone. "Wouldn't you?"

Morse huffed and brushed past him into house.