MURDER IS SKIN DEEP, M.G. Cole [i can read with my eyes shut TXT] 📗

“You really admired that crap back there? A kid could have painted them!”

“No. I thought they were awful.” Garrick stopped so suddenly that she almost bumped into him. “I recognised them from the magazine article,” she explained quietly. “I thought it would help if I made him think we had some knowledge…”

“PC Liu… that was good thinking,” he admitted. They glanced back at the shop in time to see Mark switch the door sign over to ‘closed’. “Tell me what you got from that little show.”

“He is worried about something, but I don’t think it’s the murder. And that was before he realised he may lose his bestselling artist. Some of those other pieces were dire, and that’s compared to the rubbish that sells. When he was printing out the invoices, I caught an email on his screen from his letting agent. It was only a glimpse, but I think he’s in arrears on the shop. I suspect he’s not cash fluid. Did you see his phone?”

“An iPhone. I am a Detective,” he reminded her. “I get paid to spot these things.”

“A two-year-old model.” She chuckled when he frowned. “His skin and hair regime must take up a substantial part of his evening. A man like that is all image, Mr Metrosexual. He can’t function in the social circles he orbits with a phone that is two years out of date.”

“Money problems.” Despite his irritation, he was impressed with her eye for detail. “That still doesn’t explain what he was worried about when he realised we were police.”

“Well, he deals with art, so the natural worry there would be forgery.”

“But why forge an artist who is only just on the rise, and frankly, could be copied by me when I’m drunk?”

“Perhaps he owed money to Fraser or Hoy, or both.”

“I want more background on our little art friend. And a list of Fraser’s next of kin. Get somebody to comb through his house for all his contacts. He must have Hoy’s details copied down somewhere.”

“I would keep it on my phone.”

“Which we assume was stolen…” Garrick finished.

“Could that be what the thief wanted? Tortured him to reveal Hoy’s identity?”

“You watch too many movies.”

A nest of motives was opening, but many centred around the one phantom artist who could disappear into the ether as quickly as they arrived. And there was something else bothering Garrick. Something he was struggling to put his finger on.

By the time they returned to his Land Rover, he was furious to see a parking ticket on his windscreen. Fanta had forgotten to pay for the ticket on the phone as she was so excited to be doing some actual work out of the office.

The rest of the trip back to the incident room was conducted mostly in silence.

6

Before they arrived back in the incident room, word came in that Fraser’s only identifiable next of kin was his ex-wife and he’d left a will disavowing her a single penny in the event of his death. That left his child as the next in line, and the news from Chib was that they had tracked the mistress down in London, and she was going to visit her in the morning for a statement.

Back at home, Garrick showered, heated a dubious-tasting noodle meal in the microwave, then sat at his dining room table and removed the sheet from the fossil he had been diligently cleaning for the last month. He had found it a relaxing, meditative experience, but over the last couple of weeks he hadn’t touched the black spiralling snail shell. He had used an air scribe, a small pneumatic needle like a miniature jackhammer, to remove the surrounding rock material. Now mostly free of the matrix that had imprisoned the evidence for millions of years, the basic shape had been revealed. With a small stainless-steel set of tools, which he had purchased on eBay and looked more at home in a sadistic dentist’s surgery, he began to clean his prize. Angling a pole-mounted magnifier so he could get a better look, he gently scraped the tiny fragments loose.

Almost two hours passed, only interrupted with thoughts on what type of creature once called this shell home. Ordinarily, he would turn to John Howard for such scholarly advice, but that was now another part of his life slammed closed.

The lovely Dr Harman had once compared his fossil restoration, not as a hobby, but as an extension of his work. Effectively, he was finding a dead body on the shore, albeit one that was millions of years old. Then the process of chipping away the deceit and lies began until the truth was revealed. Garrick had tried to point out he had a love of fossils from his schooldays, but she had been set on her analogy.

Sometimes people only see what they want to see.

Just like Hoy’s paintings. All it took was one influencer to say they were groundbreaking, and the sheep would follow, paying astronomical sums of money for the privilege. Garrick was most definitely in the wrong profession.

His headache returned, perhaps from straining his eyes through the magnifier. It was a more palatable excuse than thinking it was because of the growth in his head. His consultant had prescribed co-codamol to deal with the pain, but he had tried not to use it for fear of developing an addiction to the stuff. That was the last thing he needed. Yet the pain became unbearable, forcing him to abandon the ammonite, take the medication, and curl up in bed.

He jolted awake at four in the morning. He could have sworn the landline had woken him. Running down the stairs he saw the answerphone didn’t have any message and dialling 1471 revealed the last call was three days ago from a freephone number. Shivering in his boxers and a t-shirt, Garrick was now wide awake and feeling unusually anxious. A text from Wendy had come in while he was asleep. She proposed they see