Sturden in the Precinct - Part 4

Photo: Gerard O'Brien
Photo: Gerard O'Brien

Last week Sturden was short of leads, and decided to follow the only one he has - a waitress called Rose. 

David Loughrey
David Loughrey
David Loughrey’s short story continues, in association with Dunedin City of Literature Creative Cities Southern Hui, the University Book Shop and Zeal Steel. 
 

Sturden was in no rush to reach his destination.

He had been told of a waitress who turned white at the mention of the killing, that was all, but it seemed worth talking to her.

Perhaps she knew something, perhaps not.

There were threads to the case he could not, as yet, pull together.

He took some time to look at examples of the street art that had kept cropping up as he had undertaken his investigation.

They were a strange mix, plastered as they were on brick and concrete in alleys, by car parks and on walls left exposed by the aftermath of demolition allowed when the city's heritage architecture was seen as expendable.

Some were extravagant, a lurid intensity of violet, purple and orange, a homage to psychedelia perhaps, while others were an uncomfortable mix of the organic and the mechanical, spitting chips of metal into space as they disintegrated across their concrete canvas.

Not all were to Sturden's taste; there were those that exhibited a cloying sweetness that grated a little.

Each to their own, he thought.

The Bond Building was a two-storey structure with an arched door surround, simple, yet elegant in its own way, and one that would increase in worth both as part of the streetscape and as a financial unit as redevelopment spread across the area.

Sturden again considered whether money was behind the killing, but he had felt strongly from the start - and nothing had changed his mind - it was not.

As he drew closer to the building he saw on its side wall, partly shaded by a neighbouring building, the art he had been told the occupant had created.

It featured a child, a waif-like figure, its huge eyes staring skyward towards a disembodied hand formed in a peace sign, and an overused homily spelled out in a 1980s-style graffiti font underneath.

It was a jarring assemblage of cliches, and Sturden wondered that any artist could exhibit such a lack of originality.

But at the same time it triggered something, something that was swimming through the darker waters of his mind, a relationship between factors he could not pin down.

He thought about what the bar owner had told him, that John Edmond, the victim, had been direct, particular, that he had thought some of the street art was tired and overdone.

There was a word on the tip of his tongue, a thought that fluttered on the periphery, half formed and then dissolved, like a partial memory of a dream.

Rackney came into his thoughts, but he could not say why.

He mounted the staircase of the building, his shoes treading a path the worn floor covering showed had been trod many times before, in a building that no doubt had many uses over the years.

At the top of the stairs was a door ajar, and Sturden knocked lightly and poked his head inside.

He entered a large space where a skylight's diffuse glow illuminated an artist's studio, its floor littered with tins of paint and spray cans, every surface drawn on, painted or somehow decorated, and large colourful drips pooled and hardened on the floor.

But there was a pall of tension in the room, a feeling something was very wrong.

In one corner stood a lithe figure he immediately recognised - he had no need to recognise the face - and seated in front of him was a woman he guessed was the waitress, Rose.

Sturden had often wondered where his ideas came from.

They were the result of input, there was no doubt, information was loaded, factors were processed, but then the result appeared to come from the blue, as if it developed without conscious thought, somehow without his involvement.

And as he stared into the studio, the idea, the realisation, came as swiftly and as fully formed as if it had been beamed to him from outer space.

It wasn't ``Rackney'' the killer had shouted in the basement of the Athenaeum.

It was ``hackneyed''; tired, overdone.

That was what John Edmond, who spoke directly, had told the lithe figure in the basement of the Athenaeum; his art was hackneyed, and he did not want it on the walls of his building.

The artist, Tapley, had shouted the word - the librarian said as a question - as he approached John Edmond with a hammer.

That was why he died.

Sturden stood glued to the spot, and he wondered for a moment how long he been standing staring at Tapley and the waitress, and them at him.

Tapley's face was grey, and held a look of shock that distorted his mouth and stretched his eyes wide.

Sturden pulled himself together and clumsily held out his ID, though the act felt like pantomime in a scene where there was no confusion about who was who.

``There is no point running this time,'' he said. ``There is nowhere to go.''

He approached Tapley, who stood gaping, seeming to barely understanding what was going on.

``You were in the Athenaeum. You wanted your art on one of John Edmond's buildings. He told you it was hackneyed, it was no good, he didn't like it. You picked up a hammer. You killed him.''

``No ...'', Tapley stammered.

``Your art is all peace and aspiration, but you are just a weak man who can't face rejection.''

``No,'' Tapley said, louder, his face morphing from shock to confusion and alarm, and his eyes no longer staring at Sturden, but over his shoulder, a little to the right.

Sturden swung round.

Behind him stood Rose, a length of timber in her hand.

She swung the weapon, though the act was half-hearted, one of hopelessness, of despair, and though it grazed the edge of his coat, it fell impotently to the ground nearby, and the young woman, she could only have been in her early 20s, sank also to the floor, her face crumpling with her limbs.

For moments - how long? - it seemed an age, she sat, uttering no sound.

Tapley started to move towards her, but Sturden held out his arm and stopped him.

Rose did not look up, instead she stared blankly towards the wall as she began to speak in a strange, brittle monotone.

Her face, which had been distorted with emotion, began to reassemble into something close to its normal state.

``We wanted to do good,'' she said.

``The art was everything. We planned it together. I helped to sketch it. He turned it into something wonderful. People need hope. It was about peace, it was aspiration. We just needed somewhere prominent to paint it so people could see. John Edmond wasn't interested. We showed him what we wanted to do. He didn't get back to us. I was angry. I was beside myself. We had worked so hard for this. It was so rude. We knew he was at the Athenaeum in the morning. I just wanted to make him see. We showed him what we wanted to do. He used that word, hackneyed. That's what he said it was. He had no right. Harold argued with him, then he just looked sad. I asked him how he could say that. I couldn't bear it. He turned away. I hit him. I hit him with the hammer. Harold made me leave. He said he'd do something. There was nothing that could be done. Nothing. It was over.''

Sturden stood aside, and the artist knelt by her and took her hands.

She sat on the floor, crying softly.

Sturden took his phone from his pocket and called for a car.

The sun was high and hot, the air hazy as he watched the patrol car take the pair to the station.

He had made an excuse, something he said he needed to wrap up, and took a walk back along Vogel St.

He passed four tourists on Segways who wobbled unsteadily under the Jetty St overbridge.

Sturden felt a bitter sense of loss and of waste, and he considered for a moment the passions he had as a youth, for music or for political ideas, passions that seemed so urgent, but then faded as the complexities of experience diluted his certainties.

He had an idea once of what life should be, but time passed and the idea was dulled by a series of necessary compromises and stark realities.

Yet another food outlet had opened on a corner, this one with a bar.

He entered, took a seat, tossing up between coffee and beer.

A waiter approached, and he ordered whisky.

Comments

You chose a fine time to shut the Mechanics Institute, Lucille.