The Artisans Read online

“I saved him,” Sutton said. “But he wouldn’t let me take him out of the city.”

  “But he’s alright?”

  “Yes. For now.”

  Andy sighed.

  “Then that’ll have to do, I suppose.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 1

  PRESENT DAY

  Aimee Graham stood at the window by the front door, holding the blinds back, looking out.

  Waiting.

  She hated waiting.

  “Where is he?” Greg demanded, from behind her.

  She answered without turning.

  “Greg, I told you: he’ll be here.”

  There was a pause.

  “He better be.”

  “He will be.”

  “Nothing, for three weeks, Aimee, three fucking weeks…”

  “Greg, please.”

  There was a pause.

  “He better be all you said he is,” Greg said in a deadly voice, fully in the grip of his foul temper.

  Aimee closed her eyes.

  Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  He doesn’t mean it.

  Count to ten.

  He’s just upset.

  “He is,” she said calmly, opening her eyes.

  She was remembering the first time she had met him.

  It had been at a corporate conference in a hotel, almost four years ago.

  The two day lecture programme had finally finished, and the attendees were milling about the large function room. Networking, Aimee thought. It was all the same: business men with loosened ties talking about last year’s successes and next year’s budgets. Aimee had wandered out of the room, bored; not looking for adventure exactly, but something more than forecasts and figures.

  Sutton Mills had been staring at a painting in the hotel lobby when she had first seen him.

  He had longish dark hair down to his jaw, swept back from his face. He was handsome. Not pretty, but good looking nonetheless. He wore black jeans and a black leather jacket over an unbuttoned light blue shirt and white T-shirt. There was a monochromatic design on the T-shirt, but she couldn’t make out what it was. He cut a nice shape, she thought: his chin was strong and dark with fuzz, and he had broad shoulders tapering to a thin waist. Her first impression of him was that he didn’t belong here. Her second impression was that he was foreign. There was something about him, an aura, that singled him out amongst all those conservative British businessmen spilling from the conference room into the lobby, and something too about the way he held himself…Over the coming years, she would notice it again and again: a sense of poise; as if he were a clockwork mechanism, ready to spring into his automated movements.

  Or a panther waiting to pounce on a white-tailed deer.

  A tough man, she thought in that moment. A hunter.

  “Art is so boring,” she said.

  It was designed to needle him in to a response. She thought she might have a little fun, if nothing else.

  He turned to her. Now that she could see all of it, the face was even better than she had first thought.

  And the eyes…dark enough to be almost opaque.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” she said, turning to the painting that had captured his attention. It was an Expressionist painting, a hot colourful mess of blue, red, terracotta, white, and black lines, but she didn’t know the artist. “I mean, what is this meant to be? Is it actually meant to be something?”

  “It’s an Expressionist painting,” the man said, as if that was an answer in itself.

  Of course it was, but…

  “It is?”

  He smiled when he said, “it’s not meant to be something, as such. Expressionism was more about colour over form, to express mood or to create an emotional effect rather than presenting something realistic. I think this is an Elaine de Kooning, although what it’s doing here, in this hotel, I have no idea.” He paused, and then added, “it’s probably a little hard for the laymen to understand.”

  He was so patronising, she had the urge to slap him.

  Instead, she said, “I don’t know Elaine de Kooning, but this piece reminds me of Franz Kline’s later stuff. I saw one of them in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. Have you seen it?”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously; he had an inkling that he was being played with.

  He said, “no.”

  “It’s pretty good. I mean, after his monochromatic pieces, it was a pleasure to see him returning to colour, but he still makes an homage to that very important part of his life. But there’s something about seeing it in the flesh, so to speak…you can see the paint, alive, on the canvas…” She smiled. “It’s probably a little hard for the laymen to understand.”

  He looked around.

  “Who are you here with?” He asked.

  “Why do I have to be here with somebody?” She challenged him, amused.

  “You have that look.”

  “Look?”

  “Like your someone’s expensive date.”

  She felt herself getting prickly on the defensive. And she was meant to be needling him. She was about to tell him what she did for a living – that she was a Director for Administrative and Financial Services, and that this was her lecture – when he said:

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “You’re one of them.”

  “I am? And who is them?”

  He smiled

  “A Swiss Army Wife,” he said, as if that was some kind of explanation.

  “And what the hell is a Swiss Army Wife?”

  He made a face, looking over her shoulder briefly. When his eyes fixed on hers, she felt a little thrill.

  “You’ll do anything and everything,” he said. “When spread open.”

  Two nights later, she was lying in bed next to him and running a finger down the line of his nose.

  “Do you always insult women you like?” She asked.

  He rose up slightly.

  “What?”

  “When we first met,” she said. “You basically intimated I was a whore.”

  He smiled slightly, and settled back down.

  “Just a joke.”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway. It got your attention.”

  “Oh. I see. Is that how you hippies work.”

  He laughed softly.

  “You corporate robots…Anyway, you looked like you could handle it. And I thought…”

  “What?”

  He turned his head to look at her.

  “I thought there might be more. To you. And I was right. I just had to prod it out of you.”

  They were never going to be together – they were too different – but they had met up over the years, sometimes to go to bed, sometimes to just hang around: he took her to galleries, which she liked, and she took him to corporate events, which he seemed to get a kick out of. She had even taken him to Rome once, to get a look at the real masters…but of course he had already been. It usually lasted a couple of days, never more than a week, and then they might not talk to each other or see each other for three or four or six months. They each had their own lives, and were busy with them.

  It had been two years before he had finally confessed what he did for a living, the strange things he did for people who had no other option but to come to him, when the police could do no more…She couldn’t understand it, this unusual and dangerous career path. Sutton was smart, he could do anything…and yet he did this. Still, in some odd way she wasn’t wholly surprised by it; the stray fragments of seemingly random behaviour all coalesced to fill in the gaps of who he was at this revelation. She knew a Formula One driver who wasn’t much different from Sutton. They both seemed to have no fear.

  But it still peeved her to think he hadn’t trusted her for two years.

  “He said he’d be here at eight,” Greg said, steel in his voice. “It’s ten past. Where the fuck is he?”

  “He’ll be here,” she insisted.

  “He fucking b
etter be.”

  “Greg, just…relax. Okay? Just relax.”

  There was a pause, and then Greg said, “Aimee…this is my son.”

  His voice cracked on the last word, and Aimee turned to him then.

  Gregory Matheson was no more – and no less – than your average millionaire. He had gone bald two decades ago, and his head gleamed under the spotlights. His beard was trim and streaked with grey, and hooked over his ears. He was in his fifties, moderately well preserved for his age: he didn’t have many lines in his face. Aimee always thought he looked like what a surgeon should look like, even though she knew two and they looked nothing like Greg: trim, severe, with thick glasses, an outdoor tan, and an affectation for dressing so impeccably it was almost unconscious. Greg wore designer jeans, a white Polo shirt, and a light blue blazer. The top button of his Polo shirt was undone, and a rude amount of chest hair jostled for space in the opening.

  She let the blinds fall back into place over the front window and crossed the parquet flooring to him. The house in Long Ashton was very modern: five bedrooms, three bathrooms, steel and wood and mirrors. The ground floor was split level, dropping into a kitchen recess and a reading area. A large fish tank on the back wall bubbled innocuously, exotic fish swimming in symmetrical patterns at the edge of her vision. She had been here once before, for an office party exclusively for upper management. Greg had hired a barbershop quartet to sing old Phil Spector songs throughout the night. It had been a very gay affair.

  She took his hands in her own. Right now he needed her to be strong for him; she could do that.

  “I know,” she said softly, clearly. “But Sutton Mills is everything I said he is. If he said he’ll be here with your son, then trust me, he’ll be here with your son.”

  In the kitchen, Dr Ruminatra dropped the knife he was using to butter his crackers. It landed with a loud clatter. Greg jumped but didn’t turn. The doctor made an apologetic face and hurriedly retrieved the knife.

  “God,” Greg said, and extricated his hands. He took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes. “This is killing me. I hate it.”

  “I know. But I’m sure he’s just been delayed. Okay? So we need to-“

  From outside, the sound of a car made her stop.

  Both Aimee and Greg turned as one toward the sound, just as headlights swept over the blinds hanging in the long front windows.

  The engine died, and a car door opened.

  Greg rushed for the front door; he fumbled at the latch, and then opened it.

  Aimee joined him as he stood there waiting.

  She recognised the figure walking towards them.

  She would know that figure – that walk – anywhere.

  Sutton Mills.

  In his arms he held the limp body of Greg’s son, Toby.

  Greg gave a strangled cough, as if overcome with emotion and unable to express it.

  “Quick,” Sutton said, pushing past Greg to get through the door. “They’ve given him something. Where’s the doctor? If we don’t get him looked at right now you’re going to lose your son forever.”

  ◆◆◆

  Greg had been pacing the first floor conference room when Aimee had finally found him. He hadn’t been in for two days, nobody had been able to reach him, and that was unusual. Greg was a workaholic, was notorious for it in fact: he did it, and he couldn’t understand anybody who didn’t.

  “Greg?”

  When he turned to her, it was a shock: it was as if he had aged ten years.

  “Aimee,” he said, his mouth stretching into a strange rictus of misery…like those old theatre masks of Tragedy. It scared Aimee to see it. Greg was so controlled. “They’ve got my son.”

  And the story spilled from him almost as if he couldn’t contain it; in that wide empty conference room, with rain spitting at the windows, he told her how he had found the note Toby had left, told her how he had gotten in his car and driven around for four hours with no idea where Toby might have gone, had told her that when he had finally returned home he had struck on the idea of contacting a friend in the police force to help him. Within hours, the friend called back and told him where he was located. He hadn’t even thought about not going, he confessed to her, although he admitted in hindsight that it wasn’t the smartest thing he had ever done; he just went.

  But when he got there, Toby didn’t want to come back, and he was forced to return home without him.

  “I’ve been doing some research on them, talking to the police,” Greg said. “That’s why I’ve not been in. They’re called the Church of the New Artisans.”

  They were an eighty strong group of people, of mixed ages…but mostly teenagers or people in their early twenties. When Greg had confronted Toby there had only been two other members nearby; after the shouting, thirty of them had appeared from behind vans and cars and from inside motorhomes, and they had all lined up in front of his son and forced him to leave.

  “Their faces, Aimee…it was like they were all robots. Like somebody had unplugged them. There was no emotion there whatsoever. I was pleading with them…and they just stared at me. It was…it was unnerving.”

  “And the police can’t do anything?”

  Greg shook his head.

  “The police won’t help because he’s not there involuntarily.” Greg rubbed a nervous hand over his forehead. “He’s sixteen, for fuck’s sake.”

  Dr Patel Ruminatra had converted one side of the garage into a temporary medical facility…at Sutton’s instruction, and with Greg’s approval. Further in, two vehicles sat under long fluorescent strips: a Mercedes Benz Viano MPV People Carrier and a Mercedes S Class Coupe. Between them and the door to the kitchen, the dusty concrete floor had been covered with plastic sheeting, and the work table below the gardening tools pinned to the back wall was now home to small medical devices and bottles of different coloured fluids: drugs. A box of latex gloves sat at one end, and Dr Ruminatra pulled out two and put them on.

  “Here,” he said, pointing.

  Sutton laid Toby on the hospital gurney in the centre of the plastic sheeting and the doctor felt Toby’s pulse and checked his eyes. Aimee was shocked to see nothing but the whites: his eyes had rolled back into his head. He was pale and sweating, and swallowing convulsively, as if something was stuck in his throat.

  She turned to Sutton and was about to ask him what they’d given him when Toby screamed suddenly.

  It gave her such a fright she almost screamed herself.

  Toby began bucking on the gurney.

  “Hold him,” Dr Ruminatra directed.

  Sutton stood at the head of the gurney and held the boy’s arms, while Greg went to the end of the gurney and held his legs. The boy writhed like a fish out of water.

  “What is it?” Greg asked the doctor. “Is he having a fit?”

  He shook his head: he wasn’t sure. He put a stethoscope to Toby’s chest and listened.

  He said to Sutton, “do you know what they gave him?”

  “They call it Star Shot,” Sutton said. “It’s Bellafont’s personal recipe.”

  “You mean Broadbent,” Greg said, with hate in his voice.

  “Yes. Broadbent.”

  Dr Ruminatra said, “you have no idea what’s in it?”

  Sutton shook his head but said, “they all take it. Eventually. I’ve seen what happens to them when they do. They’re never the same again. They start screaming, and then they start hallucinating. They lose control of their bodily functions. They bite their tongues. One Disciple couldn’t stop cutting himself.” Sutton’s eyes looked haunted when he said, “they usually come out of it but…one girl didn’t.”

  “What happened to her?” Aimee asked.

  “She’s still alive. They look after her, the Church. But it’s like…I don’t know. She’s lost. Like she had a lobotomy.”

  Greg looked ill.

  “It’s a rite of passage,” Sutton said. “They all have to go through it at some point, to become a member of the Churc
h. A Disciple. And you have to do it again if you want to be a Soldier. Or a Bride.”

  “Soldier?” Aimee said.

  “Bellafont’s elite,” Sutton explained.

  “How the fuck could you let this happen?” Greg barked at Sutton. His face was bright red.

  “He wasn’t meant to take it until next week,” Sutton explained. “For some reason they accelerated his schedule.”

  “Fuck you!” Toby screamed, bucking on the table once again. His eyes were open, the pupils now visible, but they were wild, searching the room; Aimee wasn’t sure he was seeing any of it. Large distended veins throbbed at his temples. “One time and down! One time and down, you fucking cunt!”

  It was a shock to hear Toby say such things. He was a quiet, thoughtful, sensitive boy. He liked poetry. He always had his head in a book of poems. He was soft spoken and shy, and never seemed to say anything out of turn. Aimee knew him quite well; she had never heard him speak like this before.

  Greg obviously felt the same, as he said, “that’s not my son.”

  “Mr Matheson,” Dr Ruminatra said, hanging his stethoscope back around his neck. “I’m going to have to take a guess at what they’ve given him. But I must warn you, if I’m wrong, what I give him could make him worse.”

  “You get that fucking thing away from me!” Toby shouted, straining against the hands holding him down. “Get it away from me! Cocksucker!”

  Greg said miserably, “oh God. Toby?”

  “Mr Matheson, do you understand what I’m saying?” Dr Ruminatra said.

  “What have they done to him?” Greg looked pale with shock.

  Toby started laughing. It was high pitched, and eerie.

  “Mr Matheson!”

  “What?” Greg’s head came round, as if he was dazed.

  “I want your permission to treat him,” Dr Ruminatra said. His dark face was intent.

  “But…” Greg looked back at his son. “If you don’t know…”

  Toby’s laughing died abruptly.

  “Take this body, oh Lord,” he whispered. “Otherwise I’ll give it up to Hell and every perverted cunt in its caverns.”

  “Jesus,” Aimee said, covering her mouth with a hand.

  Dr Ruminatra said, “if what Mr Mills says is true, then there’s a possibility that if I don’t treat him his mind may be lost.”