Her Quiet Legacy E-Book

Bowes K T

• Herausgeber: K T Bowes
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

He's a trained killer. She's a refugee. Art unites them.

Together they're unstoppable, but who's saving who?

New Zealand's Banksy hides in plain sight, despite the frenzy surrounding his anonymous art. Lieutenant Jack Jethro retired from the army with a chest filled with medals, slipping into small town New Zealand to create the sought after paintings by 'X'.

When a local thug dies after an argument with him, the cops become overly interested in his activities. But Jack has more than one secret to hide and doing so might cost him everything.

Because the woman he rescued from slavery is not who she claims. And 'X' is more than a pseudonym.

It's an escape.
 

Leseprobe

Her Quiet Legacy

K T Bowes

Published by K T Bowes, 2021.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Before you read this novel

Dedication

Would you like to be part of it?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Dear Reader

About the Author

Other books by this author:

Last Chance

Disclaimer

Before you read this novel

I’d already written half of Jack Jethro’s story when a glass of wine and a tentative suggestion found me laughingly committing to taking a neurodivergence assessment.

It didn’t matter because I was the right side of normal, whatever that was. So, I went into it glibly, firing my answers from the hip and feeling strangely understood.

Until I saw the results.

It shouldn’t have come as such a shock to have my neurodivergence confirmed. I mean, I’d always sensed that I was different to everyone else but I’d learned to live with it. We all have flaws and talents. I figured I just kept mine hidden deeper than most people.

I’d written Her Quiet Legacy because it struck a deep chord in my soul, but I didn’t imagine Jack’s story would ever see the digital light of day. It was private, personal, and probably the most honest thing I’d ever written. The novel flowed with frightening ease and the test results provided the reason I’d found it so cathartic. Jack made sense to me in all his agonising complexity.

But seeing the results written down in language which concluded I was very likely on the broader autism cluster caused a crisis in my understanding of myself.

Who was the woman in the mirror who faked joviality during stressful social gatherings? Behind her smile lurked the knowledge she’d checked the lock on the front door seven times before she left for her appointment. She worried she’d left the iron on, even though she hadn’t used it. The urge to drive home and check felt overwhelming. So, she did. Too many times to count.

Finding patterns no one else probably noticed provided some escape. It’s incredible how much light relief a carpet design or a particular sound can produce in someone seeking a focal point to cling to when they’re drowning. Those same factors can also cause intense misery.

My stress tells were many and varied but I hid them behind a mask of affability. Influenced by peers and authority, I became the view of myself which most satisfied society’s picture of a neurotypical female. It’s easier to raise a smile if the screams stay inside your own head.

The test results forced me to take stock of my self-image and make peace with myself. In the cold light of day it brought relief because it depersonalised my struggles with scientific labels. I found understanding in a colourful graph which demonstrated my unique shape within humanity. I’m different but that’s okay.

And so, I’m sending Jack out into the world to fend for himself. He’s talented and wonderful and impossible all at the same time. But his story deserves to be told in his own voice and I’ll leave him to do that.

I have a feeling he’ll be just fine.

Dedication

For my friend, Dorothy Rico.

For your unwavering faith in me.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Would you like to be part of it?

I’m a believer in ‘try before you buy.’

There’s nothing worse than forking out your hard-earned cash on a doozy and regretting it.

I don’t want stinky reviews.

I want you to love my work and feel like you got value for money.

All the novels below are free series starters.

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Chapter 1

A Broad Brush:

Used to cover large areas not requiring detail

“I live by two simple rules.” I flicked the beer mat with my thumbnail and it flew into the air, spiralling twice before I caught it between fingers and thumb. The kid next to me pushed his baseball cap further back on his head and eyed me as though wisdom might miraculously grace him. Twenty something and skinny, I knew of his reputation for hitting women. Roddy, the local cop, told me that fact four months, five days, twenty-three hours and four seconds ago. I remember because he breathed beer fumes into my ear and I’d tried not to flinch. I would have remembered anyway.

“What are they?” the kid demanded. “What are your fancy rules?”

I shrugged and let a smirk play across my lips. The barman stopped wiping the counter and waited, already knowing the answer. “Don’t play unless you can win.” My customary stammer on the last word lulled the kid into thinking I was stupid.

He frowned and shifted in his seat. Pushing out his bottom lip, he considered the cash he just lost on the card table behind us. I sensed the cogs of his brain ticking through their rotation as he paused. Fail one. “What’s the second?” he snarled.

“Never hit a woman.”

Roddy let out a snort at my elbow, spraying beer across the counter in front of him. The barman’s face creased in disgust as he moved over to mop up the mess. The kid swallowed, his fingers straying to the red and purple hickey beneath his jawline. Fail two. “What if they deserve it?” he asked.

I bit my lower lip and shrugged, tension easing from my shoulders and ebbing back through the muscles either side of my spine. “They never deserve that,” I replied, adding menace to my tone. My interest waned, and I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I’d mapped out this hour as my social time, structuring it so I could sit next to Roddy and watch him grow drunker as the clock hands moved towards the magic moment of my escape. The kid’s interference threatened my routine. The large hand ticked past the twelve and the small hand moved too far over the nine for comfort.

Roddy nudged me with his elbow, slopping beer into his sleeve. “Leave the kid alone,” he wheezed. “If I don’t understand you after ten years, he sure as hell won’t after five minutes.” I jerked away from his mess, not wanting it to touch me. Not wanting him to touch me.

I reached for the bottle of ale in front of me and almost knocked it flying. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I turned up at the club and bought the beer. I took one sip and Roddy drank the rest after I left. Now I’d touched it twice, and the realisation sent a coil of dismay firing through my brain. My hand rested back on my thigh and I clamped it with the other one to stop it from trembling.

“You hit on my girlfriend.” The kid balled his fists and spoke through gritted teeth. I figured the friendly chat might be over as he climbed off his stool.

“Which girlfriend?” Roddy set his bottle on the beer mat and I saw the barman reach for his phone.

“Tahlia!” He spat her name with more bile than sentiment. “And he hit on her.” His dirty finger jabbed close enough to my cheek to contaminate my air space.

I pursed my lips to halt the smart ass reply I’d learned from a squad member in the army. To stop it tumbling out, I took a decent inhale of the bar’s fetid air. Discarded slops and cigarette smoke from the beer garden’s open doorway filled my lungs. Roddy shook his head. “This guy’s been the hottest bachelor in town since before you wore long pants. He doesn’t want any of them.”

I slipped off the stool and faced the kid, watching his eyes narrow in determination. He slid sideways and blocked my exit. The clock’s large hand moved onto the five and my nerves jangled. His expression shuttered, and I saw he expected me to lie my way out of trouble. “Excuse me,” I said, and waited for him to move aside.

My mother’s voice echoed in my head. ‘Be polite, Jack. Use your words, son, but only the kind ones.’ Like a navigational reference point in my mind, I focussed on the memory of her favourite blue scarf. It smelled of lavender because of the vibrancy of the colour, convincing my brain of its presence like visual onomatopoeia. I liked lavender. It pained me I couldn’t speak to Mother. Not until tomorrow could I obtain her wisdom on the skinny kid’s behaviour. We spoke on Thursdays. I wasn’t sure what might happen if I rang her on a Wednesday night after nine o’clock. Bad things. Awful things. She wouldn’t answer, but someone else might. My mind sparked with possibilities, and I shut it down before it could get into the swing of informed tragedies.

“Blonde. Blue eyes.” I drew myself up to my full height and dwarfed him. Conversation at the card table ceased. Lifting one hand, I patted the air as though measuring his girlfriend’s height. The kid’s nostrils flared like a bull’s and he squared his shoulders.

“What?” he snarled.

“Your girlfriend.” I patted the air again. “Blonde. Blue eyes. Sometimes black eyes if she upsets you. Your girlfriend.” My attention wandered to the swathe of ugly carpet meandering towards the door. Twenty-one yellow squares and twenty-two blues made up my route. Odd and even. Wednesdays were odd days. Usually. One shoe per square. If I messed up, I needed to think of a plausible reason to walk back and repeat the exercise. Roddy liked it. I often used the excuse of buying him another beer.

“You’ll be sorry you ever noticed her.” The kid took a step towards me.

Behind me, Roddy let out an unpleasant swearword. Despite being our local cop, he didn’t hop down off his stool. But his foul language made me want to add another rule. The barman brought the local police station’s number up on speed dial, his fingers working on the keypad while he kept his gaze fixed on me. Clever guy. Dialling without looking. I angled my body sideways to the kid’s, attempting to diffuse the situation before he blew a gasket and hurt himself. Forty three steps to safety called to me from behind him and the large clock hand moved to cover the ten. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I said.

Chapter 2

Speck in the Paint:

Can be intentional and used for texture

The kid let me walk away, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps the sight of Roddy hauling himself from his stool and staggering across the carpet made him think twice before picking a fight with the biggest guy in the room. Roddy sprayed beer from his lips as he addressed the kid. “Let him go, Nathan. Look at his muscles, dude. He’ll crush you like a bug.”

Nathan looked me up and down before jabbing a knobbly forefinger into the wall of defined pectoral muscle, which created a plate across my chest. “Stay away from Tahlia!” he growled.

I ignored him, tilting my head at Roddy as a silent farewell. The neat cravat tied around my neck seemed tighter as I moved, tension swelling my blood vessels until it became a noose. He jerked his chin upward before reaching for my full bottle and drowning his life in hops and foam for another evening of small-town fun. The alcohol negated his memories of a wife he lost through neglect and a son who crossed the street to avoid him.

The forward motion of walking eased my nerves, each touch of my soles to the sticky carpet providing comfort and the solidity of routine. Twenty-one yellow squares. Twenty-two blue. I passed over the threshold, paying lip service to the fallen soldiers commemorated on a verdigris plaque on the lobby wall. My fingers knew their names with the accuracy of braille, and I paused to touch the third one down in the right column. Jonathan George. He’d died in Normandy generations before mine. We shared no connection other than his placing on the memorial board. Acknowledging his name with a touch satisfied another of my compulsions and kept the monsters at bay. I’d work through the entire list in five years, top to bottom, left to right. Then, with anticipation and a faint sense of thrill, I’d start again at the top left like a snail traversing a wall. I liked to think of it as progress. If the patrons of the Returned Services Association bar thought it weird, they kept their opinions to themselves. The medals nestling in the safe at home rewarded bravery during active service, but the ghosts in my mind betrayed a body count I’d buried beneath routines and habits designed to suppress them.

Roddy’s drawl carried through the open doorway, and I paused as I heard my name. “Don’t pick a fight with Jack. That guy can strip a gun in half the time as any normal human. Show him a map and he’ll know the terrain after five seconds.” His cackle accompanied the scrape of my abandoned glass bottle across the wooden bar and the hiss of the bubbles as he poured it into his glass. “Hell, he’ll even correct it for you and put in routes you never noticed.”

“Shut up, Roddy!” The growl of an older patron rebuked him. No one in the RSA talked about their service. Those who boasted brought suspicion to themselves, their bravado tales alienating instead of ingratiating them with the locals. Real warriors didn’t tell war stories. They showed up each night, played Housie or dominoes and drank to forget.

Four steps took me into the car park and the fresh winter air. Sixteen more would take me to my truck on the road, but my phone vibrated in my pocket before I could begin the familiar count. I let it ring five times and then answered, my reply curt. “Jack Jethro.”

“Hey Jacques.” Her Parisian tones filled my ear like syrup, enticing me towards a life I’d rejected. She whispered my name, embracing it with her tongue.

“Yeah.” As always, she stripped the words from my throat and left me with nothing but a grunted acknowledgement. Julia knew me well enough not to bother with niceties.

“I have a contract for you, mon amour.” She left the sentence hanging, waiting for the information to percolate through my brain and perhaps encourage a different answer from last time.

“No more.” The two words elicited her dramatic sigh which whooshed into my ear. I’d said them twice in recent months and four times the previous year. “You said you understood.” She’d said that last time, accompanying the sentence with a promise. It caused a physical ache in my chest that she’d lied.

“I know.” Her tone became conciliatory. “I do. But you’ll want this one. I need to see you again, anyway.” She paused. “I want to see you again.”

“No.” A stabbing index finger disconnected the call. I knew what would happen when we got together. The pattern was always the same, but one which grabbed a hold of me and took control. I couldn’t afford to engage with habits and patterns over which I had no authority.

The phone slid into my back pocket with ease, but my fingers twitched. As though given a mind of their own, they formed around an imaginary cylinder and the auditory centre of my brain joined them in their conspiracy. I heard the hiss of a spray can and the tinkle of the ball bearing at the bottom. The heady scent of Acetone, Xylene and Toluene returned to haunt me, and I shook my head to shuck off the lure. Thirteen steps and counting took me almost to my truck.

“Hey, you!” The skinny kid raised his voice as he left the safety of the lobby and crunched across the car park.

I turned to face him, obliging him with a reaction he expected. My arms hung by my sides in a non-threatening manner, and I schooled my features into an impassive mask. His steps quickened as he moved towards me, growing in confidence with each stamping step. My fingers twitched, changing the imagined sensation of the paint cannister for the deep ridges surrounding a grenade. I pictured releasing the pin and filling the kid’s mouth with the hard metal object. Messy, but fun.

“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!” He added a bullishness to his tone, assisted by the alcoholic fuel he’d imbibed at a discount in the RSA. Dilated pupils occupied the space where cobalt irises should have glittered under the glare of the street lamps. Something else accompanied the beer to tickle his sense of righteous indignation.

“I’m not walking.” I stated the obvious, my most infuriating gift in life.

His eyes bugged, the whites like boiled eggs in the darkness. “Smart ass!” he growled. He ground to a halt before me as though his thought processes hadn’t taken him beyond this moment. “Go near Tahlia again and I’ll kill you.”

“Right.” I remained stock still, weighing the possibilities of his next move. The laws of probability activated, filling my brain with ratio and percentage as I trawled through scenarios. When his fist rose and headed towards my chest, a wave of disappointment exhaled with my sigh. The sum of the probabilities for all outcomes is one.

I blocked his fist with my forearm, the fingers of my other hand closing around his throat. “There were better options,” I mused. My thumb and middle finger constricted the arteries on either side of his neck, and his hands clawed at my sleeves. I held him at an arm’s length, reducing the effectiveness of his feckless kicks. “Leave. Me. Alone.” The words ground from my throat, and I hardly recognised the guttural tones created by my frustration. A hard shove set him on his backside in the road. I shaped my fingers into an imaginary gun, levelling them towards his face. He leaned on the asphalt with his arms splayed behind him, feet still lifted in the air. “Boom.” I whispered the word, filling it with the venom of a kill shot before pulling my keys free and unlocking the driver’s door of my truck.

“Weirdo!” he shouted. “You’ll get what’s coming to you. I know something you’d rather I didn’t. You’re gonna pay.” The diesel engine roared to life, and I counted to four before slipping the gear lever into reverse. The kid scrambled sideways on his hands and knees, perhaps realising he’d fallen outside my range of interest. Backing over him would cause a heap of issues, not least a wasted hour of pressure-washing the tyres in the dark. I spun the vehicle in an impressive U-turn before wincing as I travelled in the wrong direction. That wasn’t meant to happen. It wasn’t how I ended my evenings at the RSA. I’d allowed the kid to get to me and he’d spoiled my routine. I drove to the main road and all the way home before returning and starting again. When I parked my truck for the second time that evening, the kid was gone.

Chapter 3

Counterfeit;

A copy of an original

Instead of arriving home at ten minutes after nine, I breached the incline to my mountain hideaway an hour late for the ultimate time. Julia’s call rattled me, muddying the usual routine which corrected mishaps in my timetable. I went through my series of actions without relief. Locking and unlocking the truck seven times led to walking back and forth to the porch steps in equal number. The security light strobed on and off with my activity. But by the time I’d unlocked the front door for the seventh time, my hands shook, and the keys fell to the lobby floor with a loud clang. I squatted in frustration, resting one knee on the floorboards while I fought for equilibrium. The roundness of one key in particular drew my attention, my fingers smoothing its worn edges as I kept my eyes closed. It helped, the familiar sensation of the smooth metal soothing my soul. The key to Julia’s house. I inhaled and exhaled seven times before rising.

Seven.

The number of completion or divine fulfilment.

Something I would never achieve.

“Enough now.” I spoke to myself out loud, my voice echoing in the empty house. They were Mother’s words, her familiar cadence a balm to my battered soul and the only constant in my turbulent childhood. She’d tried to help me cope, strategising structures to carry me into adulthood. The education system left her no choice. Her pleas for assistance were disregarded. Anyone capable of labelling me as a dot along the sliding scale of a behavioural spectrum declined. I didn’t throw desks or disrupt other children. Silent and friendless, I presented no obstacle to others’ learning and sucked up information like a sponge. I became one of life’s Grey Men, invisible but dangerous.

The rounded key slipped through my fingers and a fast wrist action caught the bunch in my open palm. The bothersome evening threatened to fry the tentative synapses which kept me connected to reality. It dictated evasive action. I rose to my feet, not needing to switch on the overhead light. The satisfying clicks of my cowboy boots against the floorboards dulled as I crossed the doormat and snatched another key from the dresser.

The front door closed behind me and I locked it once. “No more, Jack,” I repeated, terminating the number seven’s hold on my actions through a sheer act of will. My truck still cooled on the driveway, a random click issuing from beneath the bonnet. The fingers of my left hand caressed the new key as I strode to the detached double garage which crowned the hill. The man who built it thought me foolish for blocking the panoramic view from the ground floor windows of the house. He said I’d regret it, but I proved him wrong each day. I ate and slept in the renovated 1950s house, but I spent my life in the building disguised as a garage.

The ground floor housed my gym. I enjoyed owning my own equipment, able to work as little or as much as I pleased. Thirteen years in the army demanded peak physical condition, but I’d resented the sweat stained plastic and hand prints decorating everything at the public gyms. I’d spent too many years feeling dirty in my own skin.

The Wellington builder installed a bathroom at the rear of the structure and learned after the first few weeks not to question my plan. I paid for his flights, his food and his time, allowing him the free use of a granny flat behind the main house. The previous owner had secured planning permission for a similar structure but never followed through on the design. It was the reason I purchased the house after leaving the army. I paid the builder in cash, dug the holes for the footings and hired any heavy equipment required from a haulage firm in Hamilton which delivered to the house. The town gossips didn’t notice my project or make it the subject of their speculation. A bank of well-placed trees hid the structure from across the river and an automatic gate at the bottom of the three-kilometre driveway meant it remained my greatest secret.

I hung all my keys on their peg next to the door and flicked on the lights. A satisfying click sounded as the fluorescent strips paused before lighting up across the ceiling, powered by a generator hidden in the bushes behind the garage. Lifting my phone, I made a call to the power company. The woman who answered yawned before speaking. “Welcome to Zenith. I’m Bobby. How may I help you?”

I cleared my throat. “I live at 250 Hakarimata Road. I registered my bills to Dexarn. The power supply to my property is out again. I have a generator, but I’d like you to fix the issue, please.”

“I’ll just check to see if there are any other reports.” Her voice gained a sing-song quality as she got into her stride. A keyboard tapped in the background. “I’m seeing nothing yet. Can you estimate when it happened?”

I ground my teeth against her mouth-breathing, the sound amplified in my ear by the connection. “I arrived home a few minutes ago and the front gate worked, but it has a back-up battery. The house is out, but I just heard the generator start.”

She hissed through her teeth, and I yanked the phone away from my ear. “Ah, I’m sorry Sir, but I think it’s just you. There’s a charge for visits relating to a single property. We have a crew in your area. I’ll dispatch them now to at least administer a temporary fix. They’ll check the junction box on the boundary, but I’ll ask them to call if they need access to your property. Is it okay to give them this contact number?” She mouth-breathed again as she read from the caller ID unit to confirm my contact details.

“That’s fine.” I exhaled, knowing the engineers would find the problem at the junction box they’d replaced less than six months earlier after a season of unnatural surges and outages. It’s why I’d invested in the generator. Bobby closed out the call after assuring me the engineers would text or call with their inspection report. She promised they’d add the surcharge for the visit to my next power bill. Unless their equipment proved faulty, which she doubted.

My body pulsed, aching for the satisfaction of exercise, and I obliged it. A cupboard at the end of the room disgorged a clean tee shirt and shorts, socks and trainers. Relief filled my chest as I stripped and folded my clothing into a neat pile and set it on a shelf. My tan cowboy boots slipped into place next to it, the left sole butted against a stray twenty-cent piece. I removed the cravat at last, smoothing out the creases and pressing it into a square. It had done its job, hiding the tracheotomy scar which marred the skin at my throat. A jagged knife wound in my left pectoral rose like a pink and white craggy mountain of ruined flesh. The army field medics aimed for survival. They weren’t plastic surgeons.

Fourteen kilometres later, I slowed the treadmill to a walk and hit the weight bench. Silence hissed around me as I subdued the compulsions raging through my brain, beating them into submission through exhaustion. My biceps bulged as I lifted the bar, my lips moving in whispered counts as I stilled the monster in my soul. The wind blew across the mountain as the evening progressed, throwing leaves and twigs at the roll doors at the end of the structure.

My phone vibrated on the floor, and I almost dropped the weight bar onto my head. I remained lying down as I answered the call. Moving leaves and the roar of a passing car formed the backdrop for the engineer’s baritone. “Hey, mate.” He shouted into the phone, forgetting his surrounding noise didn’t affect my hearing.

“Hello.” I kept the greeting short, not wanting a long explanation for the fault.

“It’s a horrible bend and I know the last engineers moved the pad-mounted transformer on your boundary higher, but it’s possible a truck clipped it with a wing mirror again. The casing is hanging off and rain is going into the unit. We’ve made it safe for now, but another crew will come back tomorrow morning and replace it. The management might need to think again about where to site it if it gets hit again.”

“Thank you.” Rain pounded against the roof of the structure, and I wrinkled my nose, sparing the unfortunate man a moment of pity for his commitment to duty.

He ended the call at the same time as a shout coincided with the squeal of wet tyres. I heard the words, “Bloody truck almost hit me!” and pursed my lips.

Hours passed unnoticed, and I only checked my wristwatch as I smoothed shower gel over my forearms. The big hand marked the three, but the short hand grazed the twelve with a lengthy caress. “Thursday.” My voice echoed back to me from the tiles, and I crossed my arms over my chest to push the hot water from my shoulders. The awfulness of Wednesday had passed beneath me without notice and moved aside to allow the emergence of a fresh new day. My heart lightened, and I dried and dressed myself in clean underwear from the cupboard. Julia’s intrusive phone call nipped at the edges of my resolve, and I pushed it aside with an aggressive mental shove. I couldn’t allow her to affect my hard-won state of calm. Not now.

I took the twenty-cent piece from the shelf and turned it in my fingers. Like the key to Julia’s house, I’d smoothed its edges through constant contact. Despite my aching arms, I reached around the side of the cupboard as though preparing to haul it forward out of the way. Instead, the coin slipped into a metal slot between its back panel and the wall, causing a gratifying click. The Wellington builder had signed a non-disclosure agreement in his crabbed hand, but it hadn’t proved necessary. He died in a car smash six months after finishing my building and returning home. His alcoholism hadn’t hindered his competency in the same way it affected his driving.

The planning officer had shrugged at the finished structure and signed the paperwork to legitimise it in the council’s Land Information Management system. But he hadn’t seen its beauty behind the ugly roll doors and boxy, cedar wood facade.

The cupboard swung forward to reveal the Wellington builder’s greatest work. I fixed the cupboard in place and stepped onto the ladder leading to the lower level. He’d called it a panic room. It offered the exact opposite to me.

Chapter 4

Abstract:

Art that is not representational or based on external reality or nature

At the bottom of the narrow staircase, a wall of solvent hit me. The hydrocarbons I’d released into the air hours earlier still lingered, their scent both sugary and chemical. I flicked on the light switch and another button next to it. A fan whirred to life in the back wall, filtering the air and venting the noxious chemicals through a pipe which led into the darkness. The strong air currents on the mountain would snatch the particles and hurl them away to be diluted and subdued. And my secret room would remain my own.

An oil painting rested against an easel, the colours muted in a sepia, 1960s style. A music stand next to it contained the photograph I’d painted from. The client emailed it to my business address with the request for a quote. A woman bent to pick roses in a garden rich in tone and shadow. Behind her, a 1900s era villa nestled at the bottom of a hill. I’d stuck to the original photo until almost the last brush stroke, subduing my urge for drama. The woman’s skirt hung to her ankles in swathes of rich auburn fabric, her head bowed and covered by a wide brimmed straw hat. I stood back to admire the textures captured in the two-metre-wide painting and nodded with satisfaction. The vintage hues diminished the leafy greens and the reds of the brick house, giving them a washed-out effect. It held the elusiveness of a revived memory, and I liked it. The woman’s fingers clutched a single rose, her trophy for persevering in the harshness of colonial New Zealand. Blood red tones gave the petals an ethereal appearance, standing out against the rest of the painting like a beacon of hope. I didn’t care whether the new owner approved of my creative licence or not. The twenty-thousand-dollar price tag gave me permission to interpret the photograph in any way I wished. And the scrawled ‘X’ in the bottom right corner made it mine. I often wondered if signing my single initial on canvas and auctioning it would produce the same interest. On lazy days when the demons whispered their threats in my mind, I wished it was that easy.

With the oil paint still tacky for another week, I’d already turned my attention elsewhere.

A glass screen hung from the ceiling, one side splattered with paint and stained by escaped coloured mist. My protective mask and suit hung on a wall peg just inside the sliding door. Built from the remnants of a greenhouse, the cubicle kept the oil canvasses safe from drifting. ‘A room within a room,’ the Wellington builder called it. The metal door squeaked on its sliders as I moved it aside and stepped through the gap.

Spray paint dried within seconds, adding a versatility I’d discovered late in life. One colour could blot out another in seconds, unlike oils and watercolours. I’d secured my place in the art scene with unsolicited murals on prominent businesses in Auckland, favouring the anonymity of Banksy with all his sarcasm but none of his political commentary.

‘X’ brought me notoriety and more money than I earned in the army. Jack Alexander Jethro. I plucked the ‘X’ from my middle name, calculating it as the eighth letter in my full signature. The number eight represented creation and new beginnings, and that’s what ‘X’ gave me. It also held the place of the twelfth letter from the end of my name. Twelve brought perfection, entirety, and order. It added the irony in relation to my constant state of flux. I became ‘X’, dotting my signature on murals around the Auckland scene and promoting my brand through secrecy. Each installation meant something to me, communicating my love for the paradise of New Zealand against the backdrop of a war-torn world. I should know. I’d seen both sides.

My latest work featured a yellow kowhai bud bursting into bloom. The iconic national flower took centre stage in a riot of ochre and sunshine hues. Behind it, a sludgy green tide betrayed the fruits of decades of ignorance and mismanagement. I closed my eyes and let my fingers coast across the original work. I’d spent the afternoon slicing out a stencil, which would expedite the spraying process once I’d chosen the desired location. The spray paint held a different texture with every stroke. While it appeared uniform from a distance, each squirt of the can communicated its personality. Though I’d continued with commissions for oil and acrylic paintings, I hadn’t sprayed for over a year. Not since last time.

When my mobile phone rang upstairs, I closed the sliding door and jogged up the steps to answer it.

“Jacques.” Her tone held frustration. Instead of her usual smooth J, it held a sharp clang. “We need to meet, mon amour.”

“No more murals.” She couldn’t see my frown, but I sensed she felt it, anyway.

“You’ve never been precious about your work. Why start now? Auckland City Council painted over five of them before you became famous, and it didn’t bother you. Why did that one in Wellington affect you so much?”

“She paid for it.”

“You keep saying that, but who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” It didn’t. The painting had been her final request before the dementia stole her personality and her ability to care about the past. I’d done as she asked, and they’d obliterated it with a wall of cream emulsion and normality.

“I put the refund back into the account like you requested.” Her tone held a familiar disbelief. I balled my fists and hoped she wouldn’t probe, the wish futile, as she took a breath and continued. “Five bucks, Jacques. A night’s work for five dollars and you refunded it. I just don’t understand.”

“But I do.” My index finger trembled as I ended the call and closed up the secret room. The cupboard seemed heavier than usual as I pushed it over the gap and waited for it to click shut. The cool wood soothed my warm forehead, but not the war waging beneath my skull. I contemplated starting something else, but a glance at my watch showed the small hand nudging the one of Thursday morning.

My body ached for sleep and my brain concurred. I turned my phone onto silent and left the garage, carrying it on top of my folded clothes. A cool breeze nipped at my exposed skin as I padded across the driveway in my boxer shorts and entered the silent house. Julia’s disappointment settled over me like a mantle, and I knew she’d call again. The key turned in the lock and I pushed my dirty clothing into the basket in the laundry, retrieving my phone at the last minute and setting it on the counter. Heavy steps carried me upstairs to the king size bed, which allowed my long legs to remain beneath the covers, and I sighed as I flopped face down on the mattress.

It was Thursday. Mother would call later. The electricity generator would last as long as I fed it diesel, meaning the landline would accept her call. I’d ask for her advice about the skinny kid. It would give her something else to think about.

Chapter 5

Expressionism:

Means by which an artist communicates ideas and emotions

Army life filled my dreams. Despite my mother’s frustration, lack of a label enabled me to enlist on my seventeenth birthday. I forged my social worker’s signature and left two months later, bound for Waiouru Army base and twelve weeks of intensive training. I loved it. Structure and routine filled my world from dawn to dusk and all the other hours on either side of them. I did everything they asked. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I woke from sleep with my fingers twitching. During my dream, I’d stripped, cleaned and rebuilt a 7.62 Minimi, the army’s light support weapon of choice. No one yet had beaten my record.

Birds rustled in the trees near my window, calling to each other with an irritating shrillness. My wristwatch displayed the time as just after nine, but my aching body begged to stay in bed. I rose, using my stomach muscles and planted my feet square on the floorboards. Yesterday had been an odd number day. The narrators decreed today would be too. The coolness of the wood grounded my first thoughts of the day with their solidity. An urge to paint sneaked into my mind like thread veins and I stretched my arms above my head, enjoying the satisfying crack of my joints.

The stairs creaked as I took them two at a time. The Thursday-odd-day demanded I step only on the odd ones and I gripped the banister rail to make sure I didn’t screw up the first five minutes of my day. Two more commissions demanded my attention, and I didn’t have the energy to go back to bed seven more times.

For breakfast, I ate three wheat biscuits. On less busy days, I favoured rice pops, but only when time allowed me to count out one hundred and forty-four into a bowl. Today was not that day. I sat at the counter to eat, rejecting the stained milk once I’d pushed the last spoon of wheat strands into my mouth. Flecks dotted the milk’s surface and reminded me of the debris floating in Hamilton’s Rotoroa Lake. Nausea bubbled into my throat and I ran the bowl under the tap seven times before dumping it on the top rack of the dishwasher. Rain pelted the kitchen window, mist drifting from the mountain to engulf the house in its precipitous embrace. Foreboding squeezed my heart, and I glanced at my watch. Mother would phone in less than half an hour.

I retrieved my phone from the laundry and checked the camera at the front gate. The black and white static of a snowstorm betrayed a fault which appeared in the night. Tutting, I walked to the fuse box and flicked the switch back up into position. The system reset and the camera flickered to life, displaying a clear image of the space in front of my gate. Sheet rain spread across the asphalt road beyond it, the hiss of a passing vehicle exacerbated by the echo through the speaker. I continued my journey upstairs, dodging the even steps. Eleven missed calls from an unknown number had depleted its charge and I plugged it in after deleting Julia’s five texts. I shampooed my hair and soaped my body in the shower, eager for my Thursday ritual to begin. A successful start would cement a satisfactory day, one in which I could paint without distraction.

My phone screen lit up as I shaved off the rough beard, which grew during the previous week. I stopped the electric razor and stared at the number strobing across the display. My watch showed I had five minutes remaining until Mother called, so I ignored it and hoped they stopped. A text message told me the engineer had been the unknown caller and that he’d replaced the green dome and reconnected the wiring. I wrinkled my nose and winced. Good manners dictated I text back to thank him.

Wearing the aftershave Mother gave me five Christmases earlier, and a shirt and trousers she liked, I settled on the reclaimed pew in the lobby and waited for her weekly call to the landline. A blue and white checked cravat hid the scar and stopped the curious questions, which burst like staccato gunfire from the lips of strangers. The aftershave held a strange, funky scent. It had arrived a few days before Christmas with a card in Mother’s handwriting. It seemed rude to question its composition when she’d gone to so much trouble to procure it. I’d Googled the term prison aftershave and not liked the conclusions.

My phone had gleaned a thirty percent charge, and I bounced my knee in time with the flashing dots from the digital clock. With less than a minute to go, I forced my body into a state of calm to avoid jiggling the device onto the rug. At one minute past ten and twenty-three seconds, the receiver for the landline rang. I snatched it up and held it against my ear, holding my breath and waiting for her gentle cadence to sweep over me.

But the voice wasn’t hers. Anger surged in my chest like a flash of fire and I pulled the receiver away from me to stare at the smooth brown plastic. The old analogue phone couldn’t show me the identity of the caller. “Don’t hang up!” the voice urged, loud enough to carry from the device and boom into the empty hallway. “She said you might.”

I forced my dry throat to swallow and lifted the phone to my ear. “Jack Jethro.” The change in routine had thrown me for a loop and I resorted to the familiar, beginning again at the start.

“Mr Jethro, my name is Doctor Tyndale and I work at Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility. I’m calling on behalf of Alexandra Jenssen. I understand she’s your mother?”

An invisible hand glued my teeth closed, and I struggled to grunt a reply. The demons in my head threw paint and brushes in the air, screaming about disaster as the doctor destroyed my routine in less time than it took me to climb the eleven odd steps up to my bedroom. He continued as though I’d acknowledged him. “Your mother’s health is a little worse this week. She doesn’t remember why she’s here. The Alzheimer’s has accelerated, and it’s possible she suffered a stroke in the night.” His tone changed to one of consolation. “But she remembers you and that she needed to call you at ten o’clock this morning. I’ve tried your mobile number a few times but couldn’t reach you. She insisted I use this number at ten o’clock.”

My teeth ground in my head, my mind empty of answers. I’d never managed passing conversation or meaningless chatter and no words arrived to assist me. “Mother?” I asked for her, a plea in my voice.

“Okay.” He admitted defeat. A cacophony of sounds carried through the connection as he bumped the handset with the clank of a wedding ring and whispered just out of earshot.