Whispers Under Ground

the relationship between the artist and his materials which drove the art. ‘It may look like just a collection of random junk to you,’ he said. ‘But there’s always something. When I was about sixteen, I suddenly understood that I wanted to find the meaning in those juxtapositions, to push the way I saw the world out through the aperture of what little talent I had. Can you understand that?’
    ‘Yeah, definitely,’ I said, and before I could stop myself. ‘I wanted to be an architect.’
    Ryan’s mouth actually dropped open. ‘An architect?’ he asked. ‘What happened?’
    ‘I was taking the right A-levels but I was told that my draughtsmanship wasn’t good enough,’ I said.
    ‘I thought it was all done on computers these days,’ said Ryan.
    I shrugged. I’d done my best to bury that bit of my life, and I really wasn’t going to talk about it with half a dozen police listening in.
    ‘It was more complicated than that,’ I said. ‘What about you?’
    ‘Oh, me?’ he said. ‘I had the luck of the Irish. I was the right boy in the right place at the right time. I burst upon the scene just as Dublin acquired a scene worth bursting upon. I was mad keen on Japan and China and India. Seeing a theme yet? Anything hot and exotic.’
    Apparently, they ate it up in Dublin in the roaring years of the Celtic Tiger. The Irish had the bit between their teeth and nothing was going to stop them. ‘Not the British, not the Catholic Church and especially not ourselves,’ said Ryan. ‘And I was close, almost there, local boy makes good.’
    And then it all went away. There was the credit crunch, the bank bailout, and suddenly it was like it never happened. ‘And the worst thing was,’ said Ryan. ‘I think people were pleased that it had all gone down the crapper. “Ah, well,” they said. “Nothing lasts for ever.” And they put the old Ireland back on like an ancient, worn but comfortable pair of shoes – the bastards.’ He smacked his empty teacup down on the table. ‘Two more years and I’d have been international – one year if I’d known there was a rush.’
    ‘So you came to London to make your fortune?’ I asked.
    ‘You’d like to think that, you English bastard, wouldn’t you?’ said Ryan, but without rancour. ‘Truth is I wanted to go to New York, but you have to have a certain weight, artistically speaking, to make it in the city that never sleeps. So London here I come, and I have to say this about your bloody city – war, depression, peace or whatever – London is always London.’
    This was all very interesting, but I was intensely aware that Ryan’s lawyer was fast approaching and Seawoll had been adamant that once it was all legal no one was ever going to bring up ‘any weird shit whatsoever’. As far as the Murder Team were concerned, they had Ryan Carroll bang to rights and they didn’t need to know anything else.
    But I had to know if I was right – and this was going to be my last chance.
    ‘So you made contact through the Beales?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh yes, the Anglo-Irish Beales with the emphasis strictly on the Anglo,’ said Ryan. ‘They put me on to the Nolans, who introduced me to Stephen, and down I went into the very bowels of the earth. I watched him make a fruit bowl, a really plain boring fruit bowl. He shaped the clay, he let it dry and in the kiln it went.’ Ryan grinned. ‘You know they run their kilns on pig farts? Very modern, but we’re talking secret subterranean race here so I’m expecting something a little bit more than pig farts.’ He wagged a finger at me.
    ‘I know you know what’s coming next, because I saw the way you reacted to the work at my show.’ He folded his arms. ‘Oh, the herd felt something. But you, you recognised it.’
    ‘Magic,’ I said.
    ‘The real thing,’ said Ryan. And like me, once he’d seen it in action there was no way he wasn’t going to try to learn it. So Stephen set out to teach Ryan how to make an unbreakable pot, and incidentally imbue it with enough vestigia to give any interested art lovers what Ryan called a ‘Glimpse into the numinous’. What he hadn’t counted on was that learning how to do it would take months.
    ‘But I’ll bet money you know that already, don’t you?’ said Ryan.
    Stephen described the process to Ryan as singing a song in your head while you worked. You worked the clay, sang the song in your head and somehow that made it magical.
    ‘Month after month I was down