A Bed of Scorpions Read Free Page A

there are, I’m not aware of them.’
    All I knew about the art world was the bits Aidan had dropped over the years, and what I read in the papers. Both suggested that money was far more important in their business than in mine. Even as I thought that, I knew that it was stupid. Money ruled my working life: how much could I offer an author, how many copies of each book were sold, at what price, how much could we squeeze out of subsidiary rights? But I never saw the money, never invoiced for it, never received the payments. I never had any real sense of the cash flow of the business as a whole.
    The art world was different. A gallery like Aidan and Frank’s – like Aidan’s, now, perhaps – dealt with vast sums. Whenever I heard the two men talking about work, the commodity element was always right there on the surface. Art was about buying and selling, it was about trading an object for cash in a way books never were for their creators, or their version of art dealers, the publishers. Someone would say, ‘Fabulous show, I love what the artist is doing,’ and the answer was ‘Yes, we’ve sold six pieces’, or ‘But no one’s buying’. I’m not saying that publishers don’t think about selling books. We do. It’s just that, at £7.99, one sale more or less doesn’t matter; when you’re selling a single object for six figures, it does.
    None of that was relevant, though, so I returned to detail. ‘What happens now?’
    Aidan looked blank at what I realised was a question vague to the point of inanity, and I clarified. ‘Can Toby makeplans for the funeral? Does – did – Frank have family?’
    Aidan sighed and rubbed his face again. He looked bereft. He was temporarily done with being angry with Frank, temporarily done with worrying about the financial havoc that might be lurking. Frank was once again his working partner of two decades, the man he probably spoke to more often than he spoke to his wife.
    ‘His parents are dead. There’s a brother and sister-in-law, and two nieces. He was close to them.’ He paused as the waitress brought our food. We looked at it, slightly nauseated, but automatically spooned random dollops of salads onto our plates. Neither of us picked up our cutlery, though. We waited until the wine arrived. That we picked up. Just as quickly, Aidan put his down. ‘I need to keep a clear head. And I don’t think I’ve eaten since …’ His eyes widened. ‘Since the plane.’
    That was more than a day and a half. I pushed his plate towards him. ‘Then eat something now. Even if you don’t want to.’ I sounded like his mother, but that was a good thing at the moment, I decided.
    He picked up his fork, but he just held it, as though he were pacifying me by making the gesture. He returned to where he’d left off. ‘One of his nieces, Lucy, works for us in the holidays. She’s at university, but she fills in, and Frank was hoping she might join us full-time.’ He paused, his mouth thinning again. ‘How could he do that to her?’
    I touched his hand, nudging it towards his plate. He smiled gently at me, and brushed his other hand across my cheek, a gesture of intimacy we hadn’t had for years. Then he ate a couple of mouthfuls, although it was to show me he was OK, not because he was OK.
    ‘The other thing is that I’ve had to cancel all my trips.’
    ‘You do? I know Frank does – did – the admin and gallery side, but is there so much that you have to be there?’
    He looked at me as if I were an idiot. ‘It’s not that. The police don’t want me to leave the country for the moment.’
    I sat back, shocked. ‘They said that? That sounds like television.’
    ‘It was like television: finding him, being told not to leave London without checking in with them first. Oh, they were very polite. But I thought it was best to speak to a lawyer, and a forensic accountant.’
    I tilted my head. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Not the kind who does your books, or your tax returns. The