No Trace (22 page)

Tait sat back as if he’d been slapped. ‘You have my phone records?’

‘This is a serious case. Anyone who obstructs our inquiries is going to find themselves in very deep water. Well?’

A faint glisten of sweat had appeared on Tait’s forehead. ‘It could have been anyone making that call.’

‘Really?’ Brock and Tait stared at each other for a moment, then Tait looked away.

‘I get a lot of calls . . .’

‘There are cameras in the concourse at St Pancras, Mr Tait.’

‘Oh . . .’ Tait swallowed, wiped his forehead. ‘All right, I did speak to him, yes, that one time. That’s all, I swear. It was that same evening you went through his room. He was agitated. He was telling me that he thought he would go away for a while, see his folks up north. I tried to persuade him to come back to the Factory, to have a talk with me first. He didn’t seem to be listening, so I made a mistake . . . I told him you’d been into his room, and found the cast of the old lady and the other stuff. That really made him panic. He became hysterical, abusing me for letting you in. I begged him to calm down and come back, but he just hung up. I haven’t heard from him since. I swear that’s the truth.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’ Brock said softly.

‘Like you said, Chief Inspector, I was trying to protect him. He’s not a bad fellow, I’m sure of it. He couldn’t have done this thing to Betty. I think he must have taken a train up north.’

‘The camera shows him leaving the station. We don’t think he ever caught that train.’

At that moment Tait’s mobile phone sounded in his pocket, a cheerful rendering of ‘Danny Boy’, and for a second Tait seemed uncertain what to do. Then he snatched it out.‘Hello? . . . Not now, Trudy, I’m . . .What?’ He listened in silence for a while, a look of consternation growing on his face, then he said, ‘Hold on,’ and looked up at Brock. ‘That’s one of the girls on Gabe’s support team at the gallery. She says they’ve been going through his messages for the past twenty-four hours and there’s one they want me to look at. It seems it contains pictures . . . terrible pictures, she says . . . of an old woman, naked, hanging by the neck, being tortured . . .’

One of the people inside the gallery unlocked the glass door as their car drew up and let them in. They had the impression of suspended animation, as if everyone there had been waiting motionless for them to arrive. Gabriel Rudd was standing against the wall of his cube, hands pressed to the glass, face as white as his hair. He still wasn’t coming out, and there was something both bizarre and pathetic about his figure as he watched what was going on around him. People began to move, indicating the monitor that had opened up the attachments on the email message. The three police and Tait crowded behind the operator’s chair as she clicked in the instructions. The screen went blank, then burst into motion, a movie clip lasting just a few lurid seconds, showing a figure wearing a full-length black cape, the face obscured, and holding an electric cable against the thigh of Betty’s hanging figure, as she jerked violently on the end of the rope like a helpless puppet. There was no sound.

‘Oh, dear God . . .’ Fergus Tait breathed.

Three more brief clips followed,in each case with the exposed wires of the cable applied to a different part of the body.

Silence.

‘That’s the lot?’ Brock asked.

The girl, pale, nodded.

‘What about the email it was attached to?’

She showed him. A sender address, [email protected], no message, received at four-oh-three a.m.

‘Who’s L. Sterne?’ Brock asked.

‘We don’t know who it is. We haven’t had a message from that address before.’

Bren pulled out his phone and began to make a call while Brock turned to Tait. ‘Where can we talk?’

He led Brock and Kathy through a doorway into the small gallery office, the walls lined with shelves of catalogues and books.

‘This isn’t very roomy . . .’ Tait muttered, closing the door, looking distracted.

‘Never mind,’ Brock growled. ‘Sit down. Now, what do you have to say?’

‘It’s him, isn’t it? Stan.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well . . . she looks like the figure in his room, suspended from the chain.’

‘Anything else?’

Tait blinked rapidly. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘What does it mean, Fergus?’ Brock insisted, leaning over the desk and glaring at him as if he wanted to tear the answer out of his throat. ‘The hanging, the electrocution, what does it
signify
?’

‘Perhaps . . . to make the body convulse, distort, like his sculptures.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Christ, I don’t know.’

Brock stared at him, pondering, then came to a decision. From his pocket he took a photograph of the scene they had found in the basement, and handed it to Tait. ‘When we found her this morning she was wearing a blindfold. What does that mean?’

‘But there was no blindfold in the film.’

‘Exactly. When he was finished he posed her for us to find, with a blindfold. Why? What does a blindfold mean to you?’

‘I don’t know, blind man’s bluff, three blind mice, blind justice, love is blind, blind leading the blind . . .’

‘What about in the world of art? Can you recall a blindfolded figure?’

‘No . . . no, I can’t.’

Brock straightened, his mouth tight with frustration. ‘And you’ve no idea where he might be now?’

‘None at all.’

Out in the gallery, Bren confirmed that a search was under way for the source of the email. ‘And they’ve got the other artist, Poppy Wilkes, waiting for us at the station.’

Brock nodded.‘You finish up here, Bren. Kathy and I’ll talk to her.’

Poppy said she hadn’t heard the news about Betty. She had woken late after a restless, dream-filled night, seen the drizzle falling outside her window and stayed in her room, trying to work up an idea for a new version of the cherub sculpture. Then a woman police officer came knocking on her door, asking if she’d attend another interview, and she’d been taken directly to Shoreditch police station, where she’d been provided with a cup of tea while she waited. She seemed to sense their subdued mood as soon as Brock and Kathy walked in.

‘Is it bad news?’ she said, clutching her cardigan tightly at the front. ‘You’ve found Tracey, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ Kathy said, taking the lead while Brock sat off to one side. ‘It’s not Tracey, Poppy. Can you tell us when you last saw Betty?’

‘Betty? I saw her in the square yesterday afternoon, I think.Yes. She seemed okay.Why, is something wrong?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Betty was found dead this morning. We believe she was murdered some time during the night.’

Both Yasher and Tait had described themselves as being ‘devastated’, meaning sympathetically upset, but in Poppy’s case it didn’t seem like an exaggeration. Her eyes, wide with shock, stared down unseeing at the table in front of her, and she seemed to withdraw into a state of paralysis.

‘Poppy? Poppy?’

She finally registered Kathy’s voice. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me what happened.’

As Kathy told her everything, little shocks registered in her eyes with each new dreadful detail; the basement room, the hanging, the abuse of the body.

‘Oh,’ she said finally, then closed her eyes, gave a little gasp as if she herself were giving up the last breath in her lungs, and seemed about to pass out.

Kathy reached forward and touched her hand.‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, taking a sip of water. ‘I haven’t been eating lately.’

That seemed true, Kathy thought. Even in the few days since she’d last seen her in the square, Poppy seemed to have lost weight and taken on an anaemic pallor. ‘Would you like something now? I could get food sent up, a sandwich, or something hot . . .’

But Poppy shook her head, the thought of food making her gag. ‘Do you know who did it?’ she gasped.

‘We’re not certain. I’d like to show you a picture, Poppy. It’s disturbing, so maybe we should wait for a bit.’

‘It’s all right. Show me.’

Kathy passed her the picture of Betty hanging in the basement room. She regarded it unblinking, for a full minute, then said flatly, ‘You think Stan did it, don’t you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

Then an odd change came over Poppy. She suddenly seemed to notice the recording machine on the side table, its red light glowing, and then the eye of the camera suspended in the far corner of the room. She became agitated.

‘Why do you say that?’ Kathy asked.

‘What? I don’t know, maybe he did. I don’t know anything.’ She wiped the cold sweat on her face. ‘I don’t feel good. I want to go now. I think I may be sick.’

‘I’ll take you to the loo.’ Kathy got to her feet and took hold of Poppy’s arm, while Brock spoke to the machine again, halting the interview.

The toilets were empty, and Kathy was intrigued to see that Poppy checked this before she went to a washbasin and splashed water over her face.

Kathy moved close to her shoulder and spoke quietly. ‘You had a reason for saying that Stan didn’t do it, Poppy. What was it?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to talk to you. I want someone else to see me out.’

‘I want to help you, Poppy.You believe that, don’t you?’

‘But what if you can’t?’ She saw the disbelief on Kathy’s face and blurted out, ‘Betty
knew
something. Stan told me . . . the people who took Tracey, he told me, they have a friend, in the square. Someone who looks after them.’ Then her body froze as the door to the toilets swung open and a uniformed woman came in. Poppy rushed abruptly past her and out into the corridor, Kathy on her heels. The main stairs lay ahead, and Poppy was down them and out into the front lobby before she caught up with her.

‘Poppy!’

But Poppy didn’t stop until they were out on the street and Kathy had hold of her arm.

‘Let me go!’ she yelled in a real state of panic, and a passer-by stared at the two of them.‘Leave me alone or I’ll fucking scream!’

‘Poppy, for God’s sake, talk to me!’

She glared wild-eyed at Kathy. ‘Don’t you see? It’s a warning
to
Stan, not
by
Stan!’ Then she turned and ran off through the rain.

18

K
athy took the tube to Piccadilly Circus and began walking west down Piccadilly. The rain had eased to an irregular spit and umbrellas were being folded away. She passed the arched entrance to the forecourt of the Royal Academy where a large group was waiting to get into a new exhibition, then she turned into Burlington Arcade. The little shops lining the arcade were stuffed with luxury items—jewellery, clothing, travel paraphernalia and curious little accessories that might have been essential to the ladies and gentlemen of another age—and Kathy couldn’t help thinking that, as desirable objects went, they could hardly be more different from the pieces that Stan Dodworth had to offer.

At the north end of the arcade she continued into Cork Street, lined with commercial art galleries. She spotted the sign for Adrian Schropp’s and pushed the door into a brightly lit space displaying large hazy landscapes, painted, so the publicity said, by a well-known Norwegian artist. A young woman at the front desk pointed the way to stairs leading down to a basement, crammed with paintings in tall racks, at the back of which Kathy found the owner’s office.

‘Mr Schropp?’ She tapped on the door, and a large man with plump pink features emerged with outstretched hand.

‘Do come in. Grab a pew.’ They settled themselves. His accent was an odd mixture of upper-class English and German. ‘Vell, you seem to have your hands full over in Northcote Square, by all accounts. After you phoned I listened to the news on the radio. My goodness! Poor Mrs Zielinski!’ Adrian Schropp’s jowls trembled indignantly.

‘Yes. As I said, Mr Gilbey thought you might be able to help me make sure that all of her artworks are accounted for.’

Schropp leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You think theft vas the motive? My God, the violence they use now!’ He shuddered.

‘Not necessarily, it’s just something we have to check. It seems her paintings were her only valuables.’

He nodded vigorously. ‘Mm, mm, that vas my impression, too. I called in at her house several times during visits to Reg, vhen she vanted to sell something. Some of the furniture may be worth something, but so bulky! I tried to check my records . . .’ He indicated papers pulled from the drawers of a filing cabinet.‘I’m not sure if I’ve found them all, but I can probably remember, anyvay. Do you vant to know vhat vas there or vhat I bought?’

‘Both, if you can. I have a list of what’s left there now, and Reg told me what he could remember.’ She handed over the typed lists and he considered them.

‘Ah, the Ben Nicholson, I’d forgotten that . . . Mm, mm, that looks pretty complete. Vait a minute, there vas a little Bacon, mm, very tasty.’

He smacked his lips appreciatively and Kathy was unsure if he was talking about food. ‘Bacon?’

‘Mm, Francis Bacon, a little study for one of his figures at the base of the crucifixion. I made her an offer for it the last time I vas there, towards the end of last year . . .’ He rummaged through the papers. ‘Here ve go, last December, she sold me a small Eric Ravilious vatercolour, but she never vent ahead vith the Bacon. Maybe she got a better offer.’

‘She was in touch with other dealers then, was she?’

‘I vasn’t avare of any until that last time. I mean I vouldn’t have minded if she had got a second opinion, of course, but I alvays offered her a fair price and Reg told her not to bother.’

‘But last December she said she had spoken to other dealers?’

‘Yes, she said Fergus Tait had been around to have a look at her things, and had been quite interested in several of them.’

‘Fergus Tait? I thought he was strictly contemporary.’

‘Oh yes, but he vouldn’t let an opportunity pass him by.’ Schropp chuckled. ‘Come to think of it, of all the things she had, the Bacon would be most up his street— rather bizarre, and vith a quite contemporary feel to it.’

‘Could you describe it to me?’

‘Mm, not easy. An oil sketch, roughly eighteen inches square, grey figure, orange background. The figure is strange, like a dog vith a long neck and a mouth instead of a head.’