‘Hello, my girl,’ he cries as he carefully bends down and ruffles Cady’s neck. ‘Yes, I know. I know. So lovely to see you too.’ Then he stands up and smiles unapologetically. ‘As you can see, we’ve missed each other. Do you want to come in?’
I hesitate, preferring to get home but sensing Dennis might be lonely. He must miss Dorothea and he also might be able to help me with this sculpture.
I step into his hallway. ‘Both dogs are a bit mucky, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I have wooden floors everywhere. Come into the kitchen and we can towel them dry.’
I follow him down a hallway with dark-green walls and into the square kitchen where I glimpsed him lying in his own blood that day.
He hands me an old towel and I rub down Solly’s muddy legs and paws and then do the same to Cady while Dennis makes the tea.
‘It’s good to be home,’ he says as I perch on a leather sofa that’s seen better days. There are rips in the arms and it smells of wet dog. He hands me a mug. ‘Sugar?’
‘No, I’m good, thanks.’ He joins me as the dogs loll at our feet.
‘Any more news about Dorothea’s hidden sculpture? I couldn’t stop thinking about it while I was in thehospital. You know, in all the years I knew her she never mentioned working on anything in secret, and we talked about a lot of things.’
I explain how I went back down to the bunker with Rachel and the lighter we found.
Is that a flicker of recognition when I mention the initials? He doesn’t say anything. He sips his tea and then smacks his lips together. ‘So good to have a decent cuppa. It was weak as piss in the hospital, excuse my French.’ His eyes twinkle and I laugh. I’m tempted to tell him about the biography but decide against it, wanting to read it first. I’m itching to get back to it.
‘You know, I was always asking Dorothea questions but she didn’t always answer. It depended on her mood. She was very private. But slowly, over the years, she began to open up to me,’ he says. ‘Yet she never told me about the sculpture.’
I reach into my bag and retrieve my phone. I pull up the photos and then pass it over to Dennis. ‘I tried to take some close-up shots of different aspects of the sculpture – look, can you see here the magpies? Some have different trinkets on them. Could they mean something?’
Dennis takes the phone and then slowly scrolls through the photographs with his sausage-like fingers. ‘Hmmm. Hard to say. I’m not an expert but I think Dorothea’s work always spoke of … well, turmoil.’
‘I’ve called Gabe Mitchell a few times,’ I say. ‘You know, Dorothea’s agent.’
‘Ah yes. And?’
‘He never returns my calls. I’ve left messages.’ I’d need to be careful I don’t reveal there is another sculpture that wasn’t destroyed in the fire, but Gabe, more than anyone, would know how her mind worked when it came to her art.
‘These photos aren’t very clear,’ Dennis says as he reaches for his reading glasses. ‘And I’m finding it quite difficult to recall the sculpture. I do think we’re right about what we were saying before, you know, about the sculpture being left for you to find. It’s quite big. And I imagine awkward to carry. She wouldn’t have worked on it down in that bunker only to then transfer it to her studio. It would have been too difficult without help. And we know the others in this series were in her studio because they were destroyed in the fire. I saw them in there myself.’
I’m surprised by this. ‘When?’
He looks up from the phone. ‘Not long before she died and only very briefly – she was quite secretive about this new collection. We’d been walking the dogs and she wanted to give me back a history book she’d borrowed, and I was standing on the lawn while she went into the house through her studio. Then she pulled back the glass door and I saw them, well, most of them.’
‘And? What were they like?’
‘I was too far away to see much, but they were life-like and varied in size.’
‘Did you see birds?’
He crosses his ankles, which look scrawny compared to the huge slippers he’s wearing. ‘Yes. I think so. Although I’m not sure if they were magpies, but I assume so. And, like I say, the sculptures varied in size but were all life-like. They were …’ He pulls a face.
‘Macabre?’
‘Yes. And strangely glamorous. A lot of fabric and wigs. I’m sure I spotted some kind of headdress. And one … yes, I remember now because it was kind of strange – one of the sculptures was in a skeleton costume.’
My breath stills. I instantly think of my dad and the costume he’d worn to Rosemary’s fateful Halloween party the night my mum died. They are popular, I know, but this must be a reference to him. If her theme was abuse, had she used my parents as inspiration? The thought sickens me.
‘That was it, really. I didn’t get a closer look.’ He continues to scroll through the photographs, absent-mindedly touching the side of his head. I notice a patch of white hair by his ear which has been shaved, revealing the puckered edge of stitches.
‘Please be careful, Dennis,’ I say, feeling a sudden rush of affection towards him. ‘I’m worried you’ve been targeted because of the bunker. Do the police have any leads?’
He glances up, his shaggy eyebrows drawn in a frown. ‘No. At least, not that I’ve heard.’ He hands me back my mobile. ‘I don’t really get what she’s trying to say in thesephotographs, if I’m honest, Imogen, dear. I have never really understood art, although I’ve tried.’
