Buying Time Page 17

  From the Guardian, July 18th, 2025

  Best-selling Author Missing

  ED RICHIE, THE author of eight best-selling and critically acclaimed novels, was reported missing from his North Yorkshire home yesterday. TV scriptwriter and friend Digby Lincoln contacted police yesterday, concerned as to the writer’s whereabouts. “It’s quite unlike Ed to go away without telling me,” said Lincoln.

  Richie, 65, sprang to fame in 2019 with the publication of his second novel, Statecraft. It became an instant best-seller, was translated into thirty languages, and short-listed for the Booker Prize. He went on to write six more novels, lauded for their realistic portrayal of the political situation in Britain and the West. Mr Richie was also a TV scriptwriter…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  January, 2030

  ONE OF THE most forbidding sights in nature, Ella told herself, was an expanse of cold grey sea without any sign of reassuring, encompassing land. From the comfort of the old Airbus rattling high above the Baltic, she stared down on a cold, grey sea. It was so still and barren, with not even a fishing boat to give a sense of scale to the vastness, and she half expected to see ice floes down there. Was it any wonder that the artist Emmi Takala had forsaken her northern homeland for more than twenty years and set up a studio on the island of Crete?

  Takala, both the woman and her work, had obviously held a deep fascination for Ed Richie. According to his journal, he’d met her in the summer of 2008 when he’d accompanied Digby and Caroline Lincoln to Crete. He’d gone with his then lover Marsha Mallory, their relationship already on the rocks, the holiday paid for by Lincoln as Richie went through something of a lean time: commissions had dried up and he was finding it hard to make the mortgage repayments on his barn conversion.

  One particular entry caught her attention.

  3rd July, 2008: Our last full day on Crete. My last day with Emmi. We made love all afternoon, dined at her farmhouse, and then went back to bed. She has said nothing about our affair, about the possibility of my coming out here to live with her, and I know I’ll do nothing of the kind. The simple fact is that Emmi Takala is too good for me, and I don’t want to hurt her – and if I were to pursue the relationship, that is what would happen: I would hurt her, as I have all the others.

  Ella read the entry again, then stared down at the grey sea.

  The passage was remarkable for being the only place in the journal when Ed Richie admitted to himself that the fault in his many failed relationships might be his own.

  The simple fact is that Emmi Takala is too good for me, and I don’t want to hurt her.

  He had returned home and hung her painting in his house and often sat before it, reminded of his time with Emmi on the sun-soaked Greek island.

  1st December, 2010: Greta walked out this afternoon, and I helped myself to a few large measures of Glenfiddich and stared for an hour at Emmi’s Plakias at Sunset, dreaming of what might have been but knowing that, had I returned to Crete, what was beautiful would, in time, have spoiled.

  25th February, 2012: Emmi’s painting sings to me. It springs to life at my every glance. It’s infused with her personality. Today I remembered an afternoon towards the end, when I outlined to her the plot of a radio play I’d been thinking about for a year or more. And Emmi, with devastating insight, told me where I was going wrong. Physically, and intellectually, she reminds me so much of A…

  10th October, 2017: I wonder if Emmi Takala is still living on Crete? She will be forty now, and no doubt still beautiful. Should I fly out there, on the off chance… or am I thinking this because Jessica has just left me and I’m very, very drunk at the moment?

  It was obvious to Ella that though he’d been with Takala for just ten days, her influence on him had been profound – perhaps all the more so because he had followed his intuition and not pursued the affair.

  The simple fact is that Emmi Takala is too good for me, and I don’t want to hurt her.

  Back in London, Ella had decided that she must meet the woman, the only woman, to her knowledge, who’d provoked such self-critical insight from Ed Richie. She was intrigued by her, and wanted to view her paintings at first hand. There were examples of her work online, but precious little about the artist herself. All she knew of her recent whereabouts was that she had left Crete in 2026 and returned to Finland. When Ella tried to contact Takala for an interview, via a gallery in Helsinki that stocked her paintings, she was informed that the artist valued her privacy and did not encourage contact with the press.

  All the more intrigued, Ella had made arrangements to fly to Helsinki in an attempt to track down the artist.

  SHE TOOK A taxi from the airport to the old centre of the city, passing through seemingly endless suburbs of squat grey residential blocks that brought to mind the brutalist architecture of Soviet Russia. This impression was not helped by the weather: the sky was a monotone grey, a shade darker than the buildings, and snow came down in wind-whipped vortices. Old snow formed levees in the gutters of wide, tree-lined boulevards. In the back of the taxi, Ella shivered and wondered why Takala had come back to this.

  All the more odd because in 2025, the year before Takala returned home, the People’s Party had swept to power in Finland, promising an end to immigration and a ban on all asylum seekers. They had made good on the promise, and instituted harsh austerity measures besides, to no beneficial effect.

  Ella was booked into a small hotel in the old Kruununhaka district of the city, and after a coffee and sandwich in the snack bar on the first floor, she took another taxi to the harbour.

  The car, an unheated, clapped-out Skoda driven by a gnome lagged in a bulky overcoat and a balaclava, pulled into a cobbled quayside. She paid the fare, braved the keening wind that blew off the icy sea, and ran across a gritted pavement and into the rosily illuminated refuge of the gallery.

  A well-dressed elderly couple stood before a huge abstract, speaking in low tones to a young woman assistant. On the far wall, bringing Ella to a sudden halt, were half a dozen large oils, unmistakably the work of Emmi Takala.

  She could see why the paintings had struck such a chord with Ed Richie, and the effect could only have been enhanced by knowing the artist. All but one were scenes of a sun-soaked landscape, rocky coasts with olive trees, shimmering sea, and setting suns; the colours were extraordinary.

  The only painting not of Crete showed a bleak winter landscape and a distant, setting sun. Ella wondered if it were the artist’s comment on the state of her nation.

  She heard a soft voice at her side, speaking Finnish.

  She smiled at the young woman. “I’m sorry…”

  “The work of Emmi Takala,” the woman murmured in perfect English, “one of Finland’s finest, if most overlooked, artists.”

  Ella nodded. “They’re… beautiful, striking,” she said. “I wish I could be a little more original, and articulate, in my appreciation. The colours are remarkable. I feel as if I’m there, under the sun in Crete.”

  The woman moved to a counter and returned with a brochure. “Takala’s full catalogue. These hanging here are only a small sample of her work we are selling.”

  Ella took the catalogue. She stood back and examined the paintings on the wall, then looked for the price tags. Anticipating her question, the woman said, “They are colour coded.” With her little finger she pointed to tiny coloured dots beside each canvas. “You will find the prices in the catalogue.”

  She retreated tactfully to the counter as Ella leafed through the catalogue, finding the page where half a dozen multi-coloured dots indicated the various prices in Euros. She stared, wondering if there had been a misprint. She had expected the paintings to cost thousands: the largest, she saw – a sunrise over a tiny harbour – was priced at just over three hundred Euros.

  She moved to the counter. “I’d be very interested in purchasing one,” she said. She pointed to the paintings reproduced in the catalogue. “Is there any chance I could see these in the flesh, as it were?
”

  “I could arrange for you to visit Emmi Takala’s studio. It is only ten kilometres out of town, along the coast. A short taxi ride.”

  “Her studio? I wonder if I might meet Takala?”

  The woman gave a thin-lipped smile. “I am afraid that Ms Takala is a very private person.”

  “Okay…” Ella smiled. “But she’s still painting, I take it?”

  The woman answered elliptically, “The studio is run by her brother Sanu, Ms…?”

  “Shaw. Ella Shaw.”

  “If you wish, Ms Shaw, I will ring Sanu and arrange a viewing? When might be convenient?”

  Ella shrugged. “Why… this afternoon?”

  “One moment.” The woman picked up a phone, dialled and spoke in lowered tones.

  Ella strolled back to the paintings, noting the signature in childish capitals: EMMI.

  Emmi Takala would be in her early fifties now; she wondered how the passing years had treated the artist; whether she would be able to discern, when they finally met, Takala’s fey beauty as described by Richie in his journal.

  The woman was at her side, proffering a card printed in Finnish. “Sanu will be at the studio all afternoon, and will be pleased to meet you, Ms Shaw. Would you like me to call you a taxi?”

  “Please, yes.”

  She stood before the window as the woman spoke on the phone. It was not yet three o’clock, yet a louring violet twilight had descended over the sea. A raging wind whipped the snow into a dizzying pointillism; the only pedestrian in view was an old man, leaning into the wind. A dark blue police car idled along the harbour front.

  A taxi pulled up before the gallery – unfortunately the same freezing Skoda that had brought her here – and Ella thanked the woman and hurried out to the car.

  They left the centre of the city and passed through the grey, block-built suburbs, Ella wondering how people were able to endure existence in an environment lacking in the slightest aesthetic appeal. The landscape improved slightly once they were out of the city and into the frozen countryside, following a flat coastline made all the more stark by the occasional bare fir tree.

  After twenty minutes the taxi turned off the main road and took a narrow lane along a headland covered in a dense pine forest, and Ella’s spirits picked up.

  In a clearing overlooking the wintry sea, a large weatherboard house stood beside a long, low building clad in red-painted timber. The house was in darkness, but orange light glowed in the cabin’s windows.

  The taxi pulled up outside the studio, and the driver told her in broken English that he’d wait and take her back into town. She thanked him and hurried into the cabin, then stopped in her tracks at the sight of a hundred vibrant canvases.

  A tall, severely thin old man, leaning heavily on a black cane, turned as she entered. A bleak smile split his face; with his ice blue eyes and rather grim expression, he looked like an elderly general who had fought too often on the losing side.

  “Ms Shaw, how pleasant this is,” he greeted her in slightly accented English. “We get too few visitors these days. You are, of course, familiar with Emmi’s work?”

  “I’ve admired it from afar for quite some time. Today’s the first time I’ve seen one of your sister’s paintings in real life. They’re stunning.”

  “I am delighted you think so, Ms Shaw. Perhaps,” he suggested diffidently, “I might take you on a little guided tour. But first would you care for a warming drink. Tea, coffee, or perhaps a little glögg? It’s a Finnish spiced wine.”

  “That’s kind of you. I’ll try the glögg.”

  He moved to a side room, and returned with two big mugs of a thick, brown mulled wine. “To be sipped delicately. It will warm your soul on this winter’s day.”

  She sipped; it burned, but with a spicy finish like the best single malt.

  They proceeded, their pace dictated by Sanu Takala’s limp, clockwise around the studio, taking in the artwork in chronological order.

  Sanu talked Ella through the various stages of his sister’s artistic life, from the early abstracts of her twenties, to the mature, more representational landscapes of her thirties and forties.

  “Her finest period, in my opinion, was in Crete. She was there for more than twenty years, and it was the happiest time of her life. Her paintings, I think, reflect this. Observe the colours, the vitality. I come in here on the coldest days, Ms Shaw,” he laughed, “and warm my hands before these canvases!”

  “I can well believe it.”

  “My sister is well respected in Finland, but little known outside our country. She is a special person, Ms Shaw; all who have known her say so. Her friends bewail her lack of fame, but it is a measure of the person she is that fame matters not at all to Emmi.”

  Ella stopped before a large canvas and stared. The painting showed a tumbledown farmhouse in an olive grove, with the figure of a man in the mid-distance, leaning against a tree.

  She stepped forward, peering at the figure, then smiled to herself and backed away to get another view.

  There could be no doubting her eyes, or mistaking the figure in the painting: it was Ed Richie.

  “You like this one, perhaps?” Sanu asked.

  “It’s… yes. It’s marvellous,” she said then hesitantly, “How much…?”

  “To you, two hundred euros,” he said.

  “Then I’d very much like to buy it,” Ella said.

  “I will have it delivered to the gallery in town,” Sanu said, “and perhaps you could return there to arrange payment and collection?”

  She regarded the painting, and the tall, sun-tanned man it depicted.

  They moved on around the gallery.

  “I read,” she said, “that your sister returned to Finland a few years ago.”

  “That is correct. Emmi married a fine man in 2009,” Sanu said. “He, like her, was an artist, a sculptor from Norway. They had many happy years together, until four years ago when Bjorn died in a swimming accident. His ashes are scattered on the coast where Emmi lived and worked. She tried to go on, to remain there, but perhaps you can appreciate… Crete held too many memories, happy as well as painful, and so she came home.”

  “I wonder…” she began. “I wonder if it might be possible to meet your sister?”

  That thin, bleak smile again. “Just last year, Ms Shaw, Emmi left Finland again.”

  Ella looked up at the old man; his bright blue eyes were far away.

  “She returned to Crete?”

  “No,” he said, “she went to England.”

  “England?” She smiled to herself at the irony of the situation. “To work?” she asked.

  “To meet someone,” Sanu said, and Ella’s heart commenced a thudding that sounded loud in her ears.

  “You see,” he continued, “before her marriage she met someone, an Englishman.”

  Ella found her voice. “Do you know his name?”

  “Emmi said that he was called Edward, and that he was a writer. I think they were lovers, many years ago, and then last year I think he contacted her. At any rate, she received a letter from England, and she told me that she must go to England to meet him.”

  “Last year?” she said.

  “Last year, in July.”

  Ella felt dizzy. She sipped her drink, feigning interest in the paintings as her thoughts raced.

  Could Sanu have got it wrong? Or could this Edward, a writer who had loved Emmi long ago, be another, different Englishman…? What were the chances of that?

  Buthow could it be the same Edward? Five years ago, a small, cold voice said in her head, Ed Richie disappeared.

  “Do you know if they met?” she asked.

  “I presume so,” he said, “though Emmi keeps her thoughts, and her emotions, very much to herself. I received one email from England last year, six months ago. She said she was well, but little else, and she did not mention the Englishman.”

  “Do you happen to have her current address in England?” she asked, her mouth dry. “
I’d like to look her up, when I return.”

  “Unfortunately Emmi left no address,” he said. He hesitated, then said, “Late last year, in December, I received a card. I will show it to you.”

  He reached into an inside pocket of his blazer and withdrew a postcard showing a snow covered scene of the Yorkshire Dales. On the back was a message written in Finnish.

  He read, “To my dearest brother, Sanu, with love. Goodbye… Emmi.”

  He returned the card to his pocket, his gaze distant.

  “Goodbye…?” Ella said.

  “And I have not,” Sanu said, “heard from her since.”

  From Ed Richie’s journal, 2nd January, 2019

  JUST HEARD ABOUT the air crash on the radio. One of those shocking moments I’ll recall for a long, long time. I’m assuming it’s an assassination – the media in the US are already suggesting that the President’s plane was brought down over Kentucky by a bomb in the hold. I can’t say I’m that surprised – I recall talking with Diggers in the Bull a year or two back, wondering how long it’d be before the establishment had a stomach-full of the buffoon and decided to get rid of him. Already, not surprisingly, some sources close to the President are blaming it on ‘terrorist operatives…’ What is significant is that none – not one – of the President’s aides or advisers was on board the flight with him.