Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

was waiting. They hugged, tight, and when they parted Gilchrist dabbed a hand at his eyes. Jack faced him, eyes glistening in the chilly landing air.
    ‘How are you holding up?’ Gilchrist asked.
    Jack shrugged. ‘Over the worst of it. Pity you couldn’t make it yesterday.’
    ‘Got an urgent call. Pressure of work, and all that.’
    ‘Turned out to be a good do. Well . . .’ Jack gave a twisted smile. ‘If you could ever call a wake good.’
    Gilchrist tightened his lips, held out The Macallan 10. ‘It’s a bit early for Christmas,’ he tried, forcing a joke. ‘But anyway, Merry Christmas.’
    ‘Any excuse’ll do, right?’ Jack studied the label. ‘This looks good enough to open right away.’
    ‘I see you still take a lot of persuading.’
    ‘Only where drink’s concerned.’ He placed a hand on his father’s shoulder and pressed him towards the open living-room door.
    Gilchrist stepped into a room he remembered as being dull and drab. Now, woodwork sparkled with off-white gloss. Bold oil paintings of indeterminate subject hung from ceiling to floor on every wall and brightened the room in blues, greens, reds, yellows, with shapes that swirled and swooped like some multicoloured maelstrom. He recognized Chloe’s work.
    ‘Can never sell them,’ said Jack, and placed two tumblers on a bleached coffee table stained with enough paint for Gilchrist to think it doubled as a palette.
    Jack cracked open The Macallan 10.
    ‘How are her exhibitions going?’ Gilchrist asked, and almost cringed at his question. He had promised to come along to the most recent one, but had called off at the last minute, tied up with the case of the week.
    Jack poured a hefty measure. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘A lot of interest in her work.’ He handed the glass to Gilchrist. ‘But they pissed me off in the end.’
    ‘They?’
    ‘All those wankers who think they know a bargain when they see it.’
    ‘You don’t like her work?’ Gilchrist asked, failing to hide his surprise.
    ‘I love her work. She’s brilliant.
Was
brilliant. I told them that.’ Jack held out his glass, chinked it against Gilchrist’s. ‘Cheers,’ he said, and threw it back as if it was a shot, then grimaced. ‘How good is that?’
    ‘Good enough to savour?’
    ‘Always like to slam the first one.’ Jack refilled and took a measured sip, licked his lips. ‘Well, this one guy in particular. A real English plonker. Fancied himself as some art connoisseur. A right prick. With the grey-haired ponytail and the bow tie and the public-school voice. Offered me ten grand for the lot. I told him to fuck off.’
    ‘I can’t imagine that going down well.’
    Jack chuckled. ‘He kept upping it, as if that was going to make me change my mind. When he told me twenty-five was his final offer, I told him I wouldn’t sell even one of them for that. He looked at me like I was crazy. Just like you’re looking at me now.’
    ‘Twenty-five thousand’s a lot of money.’
    ‘And your point is?’
    With Jack it was never about money. It was about freedom of expression, the exploration of self, the discovery of the new or even the old. Jack would never change. But paintings did not pay bills, and Gilchrist worried that Jack always appeared to live a penny or two above the poverty line. Chloe’s display, rather than putting money in the bank, was also keeping Jack locked in the past, not letting him move forward.
    ‘How’s your own stuff selling?’ he tried. ‘Last I heard you were back to painting some of your own.’
    Jack chinked his glass to Gilchrist’s. ‘Like me to show you?’
    Glass in hand, he followed Jack into a back bedroom that felt arctic-cold. The sharp tang of turps and paint caught the back of his throat. The room was stripped of wallpaper, carpet and furnishings. Their footfalls echoed as they crossed the floor. A bare window stretched almost from floor to ceiling, next to an artist’s easel on which rested an unfinished painting, nothing more than brush strokes of bright colour that converged in the middle and gave the impression of being sucked along some kaleidoscopic corridor.
    ‘What’s it supposed to be?’ he asked.
    ‘Whatever you want it to be.’
    Gilchrist cocked his head. ‘I suppose the colours are bold, refreshing even. But . . .’
    ‘You don’t like it.’
    ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’
    ‘Wow. Andy
almost
liking my stuff.’ Jack grinned. ‘Now that’s a first.’
    ‘I didn’t say I liked