No trace bak-8

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Your mother?’ Kathy asked, whispering now, moving towards the door.

  ‘Yeah, she’s very poorly.’ He followed and Kathy had a glimpse of grey hair against a pillow before he gently closed the door.

  They moved on, flat after flat, each a glimpse of a moment in a life, a collection of short stories. At the end of it they returned to the ground.

  ‘I’ll put someone onto checking these,’ Bren said, looking at his notes.‘Then I’ll go home and get some kip. I’m all in. Thanks, Kathy.’

  It would come to nothing, Kathy thought, but she agreed to look through the photo album of local suspects they’d put together in case she recognised anyone visiting Northcote Square, and Bren looked happier.‘Don’t forget about tonight,’ Kathy said.‘Why don’t you bring Deanne? She would be interested. It’s what she’s studying, isn’t it?’

  Later that day, the report of Bren and Kathy’s visit to the flats, together with the follow-up checks, reached Brock’s desk. Of the residents on the top two floors, five had previous convictions-car theft, break and enter, assault. Brock noted further action against their names. There were also several discrepancies between the names that Bren and Kathy had gathered and those on the council rental roll. The flat with the pale-skinned ‘babysitters’ was rented to a Nigerian family, and another, occupied by four students, was in the name of an elderly grandmother. Such was the nature of intelligence. Brock initialled the cover sheet and moved on to the next file. ren’s wife Deanne was very interested in attending the opening of No Trace, as it happened. She had been an art student herself for a while before marrying Bren, and was currently doing a part-time master’s degree in art history. She was also a big fan of Gabriel Rudd. She arranged for her mother to look after the girls and arrived at Northcote Square with her husband just as Kathy joined the crowd converging on the entrance to The Pie Factory. It was a clear, dry night, and there was a party atmosphere in the square. Women in expensive Italian suede rubbed shoulders with young, arty girls in bright colours like parrots, men in suits and celebrity couples.

  ‘That’s what’s-his-name and his girlfriend, isn’t it?’ Deanne whispered, pointing at faces familiar from the movies. ‘God, I wish I’d got something more exciting to wear.’

  ‘But how can you like Dead Puppies?’ Kathy asked her.

  ‘Oh, that was just about our hypocrisy towards animals-you know, eating some and idolising others as pets. He was just winding everybody up.’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t really puppy meat?’

  ‘Oh, I think it would have to have been, don’t you? For the point to work, I mean, and knowing Gabriel Rudd. And it was also about labelling and packaging, and about the idiocy of the art market. It was a pastiche of other famous art icons, of course-Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, and Manzoni’s excrement.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Kathy thought she’d misheard.

  ‘In the sixties, this Italian artist made up cans of his own faeces, each one containing thirty grams, labelled and numbered. Of course we can’t be sure that they do actually contain that, because they’re far too valuable to open- they’re worth tens of thousands each now.’

  ‘So they made him rich?’

  ‘Well, not really. He died soon after, at thirty, of cirrhosis.’

  ‘That’s ironic.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? But Gabriel Rudd certainly did all right out of his cans of puppy meat-after his TV appearance they were worth a bomb.’

  They were almost at the door now, and Kathy pointed at the looping letters of the graffiti on the wall, ‘same old shit’.‘Appropriate.’

  ‘Very,’ Bren said heavily. Despite some sleep and a shower, he still seemed very ragged.

  ‘It’s a quote,’Deanne said.‘A New York artist from the eighties, Jean-Michel Basquiat, started out as a graffiti artist and signed his work “Samo”, short for “same old shit”.’

  ‘So this is intentional, is it?’ Kathy asked. ‘You think Fergus Tait had it done?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised. Basquiat died young too, at twenty-eight, of a drug overdose.’

  ‘You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?’

  Deanne smiled ruefully.‘Takes my mind off nappies.’

  ‘We should hire you as a consultant. I’m lost.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Bren murmured.

  They had reached the entrance desk, and exchanged their invitations for catalogues of No Trace. Inside they found that the main gallery had been cleared of Poppy’s cherubs and the other work, and was now the setting for five pearly-grey banners, each about a yard wide, the full height from ceiling to floor. The subdued lighting was supplemented by ultraviolet lamps, making the banners shimmer like ghosts, and the images and text covering them appear at first like spiders’ webs or wrinkles in ancient skin. The catalogue explained that each banner represented one day since the artist’s daughter Tracey had disappeared, and there would be a new banner every day until she was found, even if it meant filling the whole gallery. The dominant image on banner number one was that used on the posters, Gabe’s pencil sketch of Tracey’s face, and looking around Kathy recognised other images, too-the upturned faces of the press in the square photographed by Rudd leaning out of his window, chains of uniformed police searching a piece of waste ground, the face of a TV newscaster reading the evening news. The images seemed mainly to be derived from photographs, but processed and simplified to become grainy, abstract clouds of dots, so that they had to be stared at for some time before their meaning emerged.

  ‘Rudd has a thing about Henry Fuseli, an eighteenth-century English painter,’ Deanne said. ‘His prize-winning picture The Night-Mare was based on a Fuseli painting of the same name. I think some of these scenes may be modelled on Fuseli’s work too.’ She pointed to a figure of Rudd himself crouching on the floor, like some kind of beast, and to an image on the first banner of a dark figure leading a small child by the hand into a dark tunnel.

  ‘This is sick,’ Bren said. He was looking around in disgust at the people chatting, drinking, idly studying the works.‘Hundreds of coppers are out there tonight busting a gut trying to find Tracey, and her father is in here supping champagne, exploiting the whole bloody thing, trying to make cash out of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kathy said.‘I think you’re right.’

  Deanne looked at Bren’s face, tense, angry, and said gently, ‘I know what you mean. It looks like that, but it’s the business he’s in. He’s a celebrity. It wouldn’t matter what he did, the papers would be full of him and Tracey. He’s dealing with it in his own way, trying to make sense of it through his art.’

  Kathy noticed that some of the other people in the gallery were looking pointedly at her and smiling and whispering to each other. She was about to ask Deanne what was wrong when she stopped short and stared in shock at the banner in front of her, number four. On it she saw her own face, staring back at her.‘Oh no.’

  In the picture Gabriel Rudd was standing beside her, with an arm around her shoulder. She remembered the scene from the previous day in his studio, when she’d asked him something about his work, but she didn’t remember anyone taking photographs. She was filled with embarrassment and then dismay, that her image should have been stolen and used in this way without her knowledge.

  Bren and Deanne had seen it now, and were equally startled. Bren moved closer and read the title underneath; Explaining Paintings to a Dead Cop, it said.

  ‘What!’He sounded incensed.‘What the bloody hell…!’

  ‘It’s a quote, Bren,’ his wife said quickly.‘Joseph Beuys, Explaining Paintings to a Dead Hare…’

  Her explanation didn’t pacify him.

  ‘I feel like an idiot,’ Kathy said.

  ‘I feel bloody angry,’Bren replied.‘Where is this creep?’ He glared around, and people nearby shrank away. Usually calm, almost placid in his manner, he looked formidable now, all the frustration of the past five days concentrated in this outrage. They spotted Gabriel Rudd across the r
oom, looking pale and tragic, wearing a suit that appeared as if it had been tailored from the same polymer material as the banners. He was talking to Fergus Tait and a circle of admirers, his white hair luminous beneath the lights.

  Deanne said,‘I think you should leave it, Bren.’

  ‘You two stay here,’ he growled, and strode off across the room, the crowd parting before him. They watched him approach the group, saw Rudd’s face turn in surprise as he broke in, then Tait was gesturing, Bren said something in reply, and Tait was abruptly still.

  After several minutes, Gabriel Rudd turned and walked towards Kathy and Deanne, ignoring the congratulations of the people he passed, Bren at his shoulder.

  ‘Kathy,’ he said,‘your colleague here has explained how offended you are by my use of your image. I want to apologise, I meant no offence.’ He was standing stiff and formal, his face even paler than usual. ‘Artists are terrible magpies of other people’s images, and I didn’t think you’d mind. I know that you and your people are doing everything possible to find Trace, and the last thing I want to do is upset you, okay?’

  Kathy had expected arrogance or defensiveness, but this almost painfully polite apology was disarming.‘Well, I wish you’d asked me.’

  He nodded humbly.‘I’ll fix it,’he said. Reaching into a pocket, he drew out a folding knife. People nearby strained to see what he was doing, then gasped in alarm as he raised the knife to the banner. With a smooth sweep of his arm he brought the blade scraping down across its surface, erasing part of the printed image. Then he did it again, and again, until Kathy’s face was removed, leaving only a ghostly smudge. He shrugged at Kathy with a weak little smile and walked away. A buzz of excited conversation followed him.

  Bren, Deanne and Kathy left soon after. They paused outside in the sudden cool of the square. A silvery fog had descended, blurring the streetlamps. Bren said, ‘I overreacted, didn’t I?’

  ‘No, I’m grateful,’ Kathy said.

  Deanne slipped her arm through his and said,‘You blew Kathy’s chances of immortality, darling. Now she knows how Mona Lisa felt, or all those nude models down the ages. At least she had her clothes on.’ She shivered and looked at the skeletons of the trees in the central garden silhouetted against the mist, and said,‘This is a rather sinister place, isn’t it? Not a very cheerful spot for a little girl to grow up.’

  A man was locking the gates of the garden, walking slowly around the railings, limping on a stick, and the sight of him brought a memory into Kathy’s mind. ‘You remember the bloke we spoke to at the flats this morning, Bren? The one with the sick mother? He had a limp, didn’t he. Did you see if he had a walking stick in the flat?’

  Brenthought.‘Yes, I sawoneon thefloorbesidethearmchair. An aluminium job, adjustable, with an elbow brace.’

  Kathy visualised it, trying to tickle a memory into life. ‘I’m sure I saw someone with a stick like that, here, in the last couple of days. A young man with a limp, but I didn’t get a good look at him.’

  ‘Well, those sticks aren’t that uncommon. I think hospitals lend them out. Which leg had the limp?’

  Kathy stared into the darkness of the gardens, remembering.‘The stick was in his right hand, so I suppose that was the bad leg.’

  ‘Like the bloke this morning.’ Bren pondered this, then said, ‘Just a coincidence, I expect.’ All the same, luck often did play its part in these cases-a comment overheard in a pub, a car pulled over for speeding with something suspicious in the back, perhaps a chance sighting of a limping man.

  Then something else occurred to Bren. ‘The bedroom window of the second girl, Lee, was fairly narrow. Forensics found threads of fabric from a pair of jeans snagged on the side of the frame, as if the man had knocked his knee or hip against it, climbing in.’

  ‘The man’s name was Abbott, wasn’t it? Why don’t we check if they’ve found out anything about him?’

  Bren called in and was put through to the Data Manager.

  ‘Abbott? Yes, I’ve got it. He’s not known to us, Bren.’

  Bren made a face, then the voice in his ear added,‘You got a bit mixed up with that one. You know how you said his mother was sick? Well, she’s a lot worse than that.’

  Kathy caught Bren’s look as he rung off.‘What’s wrong?’

  He stared at Kathy.‘You remember Abbott’s mother?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Apparently she died three months ago.’

  ‘But I saw her…’ Kathy replayed the brief glimpse she’d had of pale hair on a pillow in dim light.‘Oh my God.’

  Deanne, who hadn’t been listening, was staring enviously through the windows at the diners in The Tait Gallery.‘I’m hungry,’ she broke in.‘Where are we going to eat?’ Then she saw her husband’s face. ‘Something’s happened?’ she said with practised resignation. He explained.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘they were bringing in finger food when we left. I’ll go back in and wait for you. Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to Gabriel Rudd.’ She kissed Bren on the cheek.‘Good luck. Be careful.’

  ‘Be careful yourself,’ Bren said. ‘You might end up on one of his banners.’

  As they approached the block of flats, Kathy looked up and counted the illuminated windows on the top floor.‘I think his light’s on,’ she said.

  The lift seemed to take forever, and they were itching with impatience when they finally arrived. They hurried around the corner onto the access deck and stopped short; there ahead of them, backing out of his open doorway as if about to leave, was Abbott, juggling his walking stick and keys. He turned his head and for a frozen moment they stared at him and he stared back. Then, as they moved forward, he jumped with a strange lopsided skip back through his door and slammed it shut. As they ran towards it they heard the rattle of a chain. Bren hammered on the door, then stooped to the letterbox slot and bellowed,‘Open up, please, Mr Abbott. We have to talk to you.’ There was no reply. Bren peered in and said,‘I can’t see, the lights are off.’

  ‘We have to get inside, Bren,’ Kathy said, and pulled out her mobile.

  While she called Shoreditch station, Bren moved back to the other side of the walkway and charged the door with a lowered shoulder. Kathy winced at the crash, but the door held. Bren backed off to try again. He had played for the Metropolitan Police rugby team, and he had the look on his face of someone charging an oncoming pack of forwards. The door burst open, then held on the chain. Bren used his boot to kick it clear.

  As he went in, Kathy heard him cry, ‘The window’s open! He’s gone out the bloody window!’ She entered the darkened flat, feeling for the light switch. Ahead she saw the dark shape of Bren standing at an open window. She found the switch and the place flooded with light. At the same moment she became aware again of that hospital smell.

  She ran to Bren’s side, past the discarded stick on the floor.‘He jumped?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Bren was leaning out, peering down into the darkness.‘I reckon that’s him down there.’ He was pointing to a dark shadow one floor beneath them and two bays along.

  The facade of the building had projecting ledges and ribs of concrete, and Kathy could see how it would be possible to climb across it, if you had the nerve. Through the pounding in her own ears, she heard the murmur of traffic from fourteen floors below, and then something else-a grunt, a muffled curse.

  Abbott had the nerve, perhaps, but he also had an injured leg. As her eyes adjusted, Kathy made out an arm reaching from the shadowy blob across a panel of pale concrete. Then the blob moved after it, slowly shifting towards the next bay of the wall.

  ‘Abbott, there’s no point to this,’ Bren was shouting. ‘Stay where you are.’

  The warning seemed to galvanise the dark shape, which suddenly scrambled across its narrow ledge like a huge spider, reaching the next column, then crouching as if to lower itself down to the level below. There was another muffled snort, a cry, and suddenly the figure’s legs seemed to fly out from beneath him and
he was toppling, limbs flailing, out into the void. It took several seconds for him to scream, as if he couldn’t quite take in what was happening to him. Then they heard a distant, piercing shriek, cut abruptly short.

  Bren and Kathy were still for a moment, then he gasped,‘Ambulance,’and started working his phone. Kathy turned away, feeling giddy and sick. She wanted just to sit down, but there was something she had to do. She went inside the bedroom and opened the door. Gagging at the sour chemical smell that billowed out, she switched on the light.

  There was the grey hair spread over the pillow, the motionless form of a small body beneath the blankets. Kathy stepped towards the bed, gently lifted the bedclothes away from the form. She saw a floral cotton nightdress, pink roses. She reached to the grey hair and stroked it away from the face, feeling cold, hard, wrinkled skin. The features were those of an old woman, sunken eye sockets, flesh shrivelled by illness and death.

  Kathy forced herself to turn and walk steadily out, away from the smell, out onto the access deck, where she filled her lungs with the cold foggy air.

  Brock arrived with the first patrol car. He met Bren in the car park at the foot of the block, where Abbott’s body lay smashed on the ground. The ambulance arrived as they were searching him, and the driver baulked for a moment at the sight of them, two men like vultures in their black coats crouching over a scarlet mess. They found a wallet with a picture of his mother in the plastic window. Then they peeled off their gloves and took the lift up to level fourteen, where Kathy had remained to secure the scene, standing outside Abbott’s door, talking to agitated neighbours.

  The three of them entered the flat, and Bren and Kathy related to Brock exactly what had happened. Then they went through to the bedroom, and compared the face of the figure on the bed with that in Abbott’s wallet.

  ‘I think it is her, don’t you?’ Brock said, very calm, which Kathy found a comfort, for she was still feeling quite shaky. She watched him stroke the leathery old skin, then examine his fingertips.‘Make-up.’