MORNING SERIAL
BUT still, I expected to be glad to be leaving. It was curiosity that had got me there in the first place, and my mind had been on the ten-year absence of Francis perhaps more than it had been on any potential danger from the Russians. But here was an altogether unexpected environment. There was something of the eccentric in his castle about Illarion Prostakov.
Outside in the open air, however, he seemed to grow in stature. His chest barrelled out and his shoulders broadened, and I noticed for the first time that in black slacks and a skin-tight black T-shirt he showed clear definition of his excellent physique. I had little doubt this old man could pack a punch.
“Walk with me down to the studio,” he said.
We took a path that stretched along a ridge looking down to the pool and pool house – there was nobody there now – and then over to the foot of the opposite side of that shallow valley wall.
And as I looked down from the ridge to the other side from the pool I could see what appeared to be – from its unusually straight edges and eerie isolation – a man-made woodland. It was quite dense in the centre, but out at the edges the trees were still only halfgrown, and they became smaller as the edges thinned out. And then I saw where we were headed.
“This was Francis’s studio,” Prostakov said. He walked at a glide, his nose raised to the breeze, his aviators now on, his face serious, and he seemed more the intimidating figure I had encountered at the funeral.
“He worked here?” I said, unable to hide my surprise. Francis Benthem’s studio was a converted brick water tower in the middle of scrubland a good few hundred yards away from any other structure on the estate.
Prostakov gestured that I was correct.
The picture was now becoming clearer, less blurred, although I still could not figure out any of the details.
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks. com