She pushed and thumped at the wood panelling until she felt something give beneath her hand and a section of wall was revealed to be a hidden door. It opened, without grinding or creaking, to reveal a small dark staircase. Even now, her heart was thumping wildly and she half-expected to be coshed by an unseen hand, but there was nothing looming overhead when she got to the top and peered ahead. It was too dark t
o see much, but a smoky grey cat ran over quickly and stood miaowing at her head with an air of righteous indignation.
‘All right, kitty,’ she said, lifting the animal down and letting him jump on to the landing. ‘I expect you’re starving, aren’t you? Have you been mousing up here? Are there any more of you?’
She made a kissing noise with her lips, but no more cats appeared.
Now the attic was attained, she wanted to investigate. She went to get her phone and put on the torch app, returning to the attic. The cat bounded around her feet, still mewing, in a fury.
‘I’ll feed you in a moment,’ Jenna promised, although she didn’t think she had anything a cat might be interested in. She’d have to nip to the shop for some tins, unless the remains of the Thai takeaway were acceptable.
She climbed the hidden stairs again and shone her torch into the big dark space.
‘What the fuck?’ she breathed, staggered by what met her eye. The wall in front of her was painted as intricately and beautifully as anything she had ever seen on her trips to Italy. But instead of cherubs and saints and churches the scenes were of local landmarks and people, the hills outside and the mineshaft, the high street and the working men’s club. They were executed by the hand of a master, and Jenna could not do anything but haul herself up, into the attic to look more closely.
‘Harville Charity’ read the title of the closest panel, and on it were painted scenes of the Victorian bigwigs of the town cutting the ribbon in front of the old workhouse – now a sheltered housing development. All around the well-dressed, well-fed men in top hats were thin men, women and children holding up wooden soup bowls. Many of the men had coal-blackened faces along with crutches or bandaged heads, indicating that they were workers fallen on hard times. And the Harville version of charity had been to send them to the workhouse, where they would be separated from their wives and children and set to harsh, futile labour for the rest of their days.
Jenna brushed a tear from her eye at the image of the queue of hopeless, helpless people. She had studied local history at school, but care had been taken not to point any fingers at the Harvilles, even though it was open knowledge that they had never done a working man a favour in all their lives.
‘Bledburn’s Lost Heroes’ was the next panel. It was a depiction of the famous Harville Pit disaster of 1869, when twenty-seven men were killed after a seam collapsed in on them. The bodies were brought up from the shaft, one by one, while weeping women and children were provided for and comforted by their fellows and neighbours. Meanwhile, in the distance, Harville Hall stood remote, no representative of the family to be seen amongst the mourners.
Fascinated, Jenna drew closer, shining her torch on every poignant detail. The people were tiny and cartoon-like and yet each possessed a three-dimensional humanity that shone from their expressions and stances. Who had done this work? Was it old? It didn’t look in the least faded or timeworn. And the anti-Harville sentiment was an odd thing to find in Harville Hall itself.
‘This is crazy,’ she murmured to herself, shining her phone on the next panel, which showed the general strike of 1926. It was unfinished, and in front of it stood a legion of paint tins and a bucket of white spirit with brushes in it.
Her throat tightened with sudden fright and she wheeled around, shining the torch behind her.
‘Oh fuck,’ she whispered.
An indeterminate bundle under the opposite eave proved to be a sleeping bag and lying in the sleeping bag was a person.
Chapter Two
She could see it was a man, and she could see that his eyes were shut, scrunched up against the torchlight, but they didn’t open. She moved the beam swiftly aside and went closer, to investigate. An open backpack lay next to his head, which was covered in a dishevelled mop of dark hair. He looked as if he’d never seen the sun, his blue-tinged pallor making his dark stubble stand out all the more. He had full, sensual lips that made him look sulky in sleep. Long eyelashes fluttered and shadowed his high cheekbones.
He could be very attractive with a bit of a makeover, Jenna thought. But what the hell was he doing here? And what would he do if he knew she’d found him?
She stepped back again, intent on finding her phone, but a peripheral glimpse of one of the paintings stopped her in her tracks. If this was her artist – and it surely must be, judging by the paint streaks on his fingers – then she wanted to know more about him.
She wanted to wake him, but she sensed that to shock him into consciousness might well be dangerous. She would go down, get her phone, and if he gave her any trouble at all she’d call 999. But with luck he would take it well and tell her about his painting. Already, a nebulous vision of sponsoring his first gallery show was developing in her brain. She was a professional talent-spotter, after all. OK, her field of expertise was music, but why not diversify into art? And such art! A hazy feeling of being in the presence of greatness had quickened her spirits and awakened that intangible sense of excitement she got when something special came to her notice. She’d had it with Warp and Weft, with Crew Two, with Sophie Cator. This could be her next big thing.
She went downstairs, got her phone and, in a flash of inspiration, picked up the cat, who was standing on a windowsill, howling at the birds in the garden. He could be deployed to wake up her mystery artist.
The cat seemed quite happy to be picked up and cradled in her arms, purring away as she ascended the stairs. At the door to the attic rooms, she popped him on to the floor and let him run up the stairs ahead of her. Whilst she made her way up, he padded over to the artist, as she had hoped he would, and sat down by his head to commence a volley of miaows.
She watched the artist’s face move from one expression to another, then he spluttered as the cat waved his tail beneath his nose.
‘Bo,’ he muttered, still not quite awake. ‘Fuck off, I’ll feed you in a minute.’ The stranger had a strong local accent so that ‘Fuck off’ sounded more like ‘Fook off’. The richness of his accent made the swearing sound almost affectionate rather than hostile, the vowel luxuriously elongated.
The cat put its front paws on his shoulder and started to climb all over the sleeping bag. The man groaned, shifted position then reluctantly opened his eyes.
‘What?’ The light coming in from the open attic door was evidently a shock to him. He sat bolt upright and stared at Jenna, who stood by the open square, ready to make a speedy getaway if needed.
‘Don’t panic,’ she said, quickly. ‘It’s OK.’
‘Fuck!’ he said forcefully, fighting his way out of the sleeping bag. He reached for the backpack, repeating the expletive. For someone who was clearly sleeping rough, his clothes were relatively clean and Jenna could see that there was plenty of power in the body beneath his cheap tracksuit.
‘Fucking hell, Bowyer, leave it!’ he scolded the cat, who was trying to leap inside the bag as he rummaged through it.