I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  “Right now, I could almost believe in alien abduction,” Donna said. We had both sat down in the bar for coffee in the brief lull between preparation and the arrival of customers. “It doesn’t add up,” she said, “and you know what really gets me is that normally we leave the same time as Jenny but she didn’t stop for a drink that night. She was running the next day and wanted to get back.”

  “I should have been there,” I said. “Maybe she’d be okay if I’d left work the same time as we usually do.”

  “It’s not your fault.” We both fell silent as we finished our coffee.

  Over 210,000 people go missing every year. I had checked the statistics online.

  “The police call them mispers,” I said.

  “You what?”

  “Missing persons – they call them mispers, sounds like whispers, doesn’t it? Like they’re already ghosts the rest of us can no longer hear.”

  “Don’t say that, you’re creeping me out.”

  They only search for the vulnerable or where there’s been a crime.

  The police had already come out and said they thought Jenny had been abducted and yet no CCTV footage of her had been traced from any of the cameras in the city centre. She must have got in a car whether willingly or otherwise. And no significant sightings had been made though the police remained convinced someone must have seen something. But if there was a witness, he or she was not keen to come forward whether due to fear of reprisals or the simple fact he or she was not meant to be on that street at that time.

  From my bedroom window I looked out at the lamp-lit crossroads. Can anyone tell me where to find my friend?

  The street was empty. The girls must have been taking heed or were they in danger in a stranger’s car at that very moment?

  Windows glowed in the period conversions opposite: other students, the unemployed, the old, low-paid, and immigrants. A car crawled past. Bang! One of its wheels burst a crisp packet. The driver sped away – Loser.

  I withdrew from the window, closing the heavy curtains; I had work to do. How can I concentrate? What if it’s Flood? I had introduced Jenny to Flood the night I went for a drink at his hotel. Did he go back for her? I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I should go to the police. I felt sick. Reporting what may or may not have happened would make it real.

  Hold on, no, it can’t be Flood. He’s back in London. I’d seen him pictured in a newspaper at the opening of the latest Royal Academy show in London.

  I’d know if he was here. I would sense it.

  I looked back at my self-portrait from a few nights before. The painted figure looked bemused and wary and that was before I’d even heard about Jenny. I had to have something to show. I had a crit the next day. What else could I do but take the watercolour sketch and develop it – thicker paint, texture – put it on canvas? So what if it showed vulnerability, bemusement and even fear – that’s life isn’t it?

  A police siren whirred. Have they found Jenny or is it someone else?

  Please, let Jenny be safe.

  Eleven

  Flood’s DVD. Interior, loft apartment: large multi-paned windows, exposed brickwork and in the middle of the room a calico-covered chair. The date in the bottom right-hand corner states: Thursday 2 June 2005, the Wire Works, Spitalfields, London.

  “Who lives in a house like this?” It’s Flood’s voice. “Let’s take a look at the clues.” The camera points upwards. “Lovely high beams, perfect to hang yourself from as and when your genius goes unrecognised.” He moves into the kitchen area. It’s small with the usual fitted appliances and units.

  “Cooking may not be a priority for this person,” he says. “Although, there is a large fridge freezer...” The camera shifts to a stainless steel American-style side-by-side fridge freezer, and sweeps back towards the living area. “Note a distinct absence of any statement pieces – no mid-century design-classic furniture, no oversized flat-screen TV. We can only surmise this is no flash city slicker’s crash pad. But what to make of the generous expanse of empty space?” He points to the corner. “And the large canvases lined up against one wall and the pile of sketches?”

  The camera switches to a fixed position and Flood comes into view. He walks over and begins to leaf through the drawings, holding a couple to camera. “Here’s a woman’s face in ecstasy, this one has a wanton lolling tongue, while she’s asleep with legs akimbo – racy stuff. And paint on the floor, turps by the sink – who lives in a house like this?

  “In fact, it’s not a house; it’s a loft, a lateral conversion of an old wire factory – my studio, a live/work space. Eleven years I’ve been here, watching Spitalfields change from button-makers, hat shops and general decay to a hipster theme park, but at least there’s decent coffee to be had.

  “I’ve been working away – just got back, and Dora Maar isn’t talking to me, are you, my sweet?” He lifts a dark brown cat from the calico-covered chair. “She’s named after one of Picasso’s mistresses – the one he only ever portrayed in tears. She adopted me.” He holds the cat out in front of him, face-to-face. “She couldn’t resist my indifference – it’s a girl thing. Look at her, what a beauty, the colour of bitter chocolate.” Dora Maar wriggles out of his arms. “Very well, have it your way.”

  He selects a sketchbook and sits down to flip through the pages. “There she is, that’s Angela.” His finger traces her jawline and he holds the page up to camera. The drawing is fine, the expression sad, lonely and vulnerable. He snaps the sketchbook shut and tosses it to the floor. Moving up close, he rubs his eyes and looks into the lens. “I have to sleep. It’s been a week.” He does look rough.

  He shuts his eyes and holds his head as if in pain. And he goes to a laptop open on a desk and keys something in. “Lab rats deprived of sleep die after a matter of only weeks instead of their usual two years or so. That’s what it says. Ten days is the record without sleep, or 260 hours – but that’s without drugs or torture.”

  He walks down the corridor towards what must be his bedroom.

  Interior, Flood’s studio: the light pours in from skylights in the roof and the large warehouse windows. Two police officers are seated on paint-splattered wooden chairs. One is young and slim, the other old, fat and nearly bald, like a handsome son next to the disappointing older man he’ll become.

  “Would you like tea or coffee, gentlemen?” Flood is dressed in a fraying T-shirt and jogging bottoms.

  “Coffee, two sugars, please,” the bald policeman says.

  Flood turns towards a dark-haired young woman busy tidying piles of paper. “Rita, do the honours, there’s a love.”

  “We’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” the younger policeman says.

  “I’ve been away.”

  “Where have you been?” the bald one asks.

  “I have a show in Nottingham at the moment.”

  “You know why we’re here?”

  Flood shrugs. “It’s to do with Angela?”

  “What can you tell us about Angela Fields?” the bald officer asks.

  Flood looks away. “She was special.”

  “Go on,” the bald one says.

  “It wasn’t supposed to end like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She had talent. But it was getting harder for her out there.”

  “She was a model?” the younger one says.

  “A model, actress, whatever, you know how it goes. She was good, though she didn’t get the breaks, not the big ones anyway – came close a couple of times, missed out in LA. It wasn’t to be and she was all washed up. Back here in London at the age of thirty-five, she thought it was all over for her. Her beauty was fading.”

  Flood goes to a chest of drawers and retrieves a slim portfolio. He passes them a series of line drawings. “This is Angela.”

  The policemen rotate the sketches, trying to work out what it is they are looking at. “They’re very modern,” the older one says.

  “Do you have any r
ecent photographs?”

  Flood shakes his head. “I never filmed Angela.”

  “You normally film your models?” the older officer asks.

  “I record what’s around me, whether I’m filming, sketching or taking photographs.”

  “Did you think Angela was depressed in any way?”

  “Yes, but only mildly, it was a shock.”

  “She’d just got back from holiday; surely she would have been feeling relaxed?” the bald officer says.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “When was the last time you saw Angela Fields?”

  “It’s been a few months since we split.”

  “Can you tell us what you were doing the night of Wednesday 25 May?”

  “It was the eve of my show, the night before the private view. I was in Nottingham, staying at the Merchant’s House Hotel. Here, I’ve got their card.”

  Interior, Flood’s studio: Flood is at the breakfast bar while behind him a young woman in her early twenties with black hair in a tight ponytail wipes down the sealed concrete work surfaces. It is the same woman who made coffee for the policemen.

  “Have you seen this, Rita?” Flood asks, as she sprays cleaning fluid into the sink. He holds up a newspaper cutting.

  Rita holds up her wet Marigolds and peers at the paper. “Why are they dressed like that?” she asks.

  “It’s a forensic team; they have to wear overalls.”

  “Where are they?”

  “It could be anywhere, but it’s Glasgow, Scotland.”

  She wipes at her brow with the back of her gloved hand. “Why you cut that out? You are interested in strange things.”

  “It could be anywhere – just your average 1930s semi, looks like so many streets in Britain. That’s what attracted Damian Hirst.”

  “Damian Hirst?”

  “You know – shark – you must have heard of him.”

  “Oh, you mean the shark in a big tank?”

  “Yeah that’s right, pickled.”

  “I have seen a picture of that.”

  “Imagine raking over the putrid remains of the dead for a living?” Flood shakes his head. “Do you think anyone goes to their school careers adviser and mentions that?”

  Rita wipes down the cupboard doors. “What does it have to do with Damian Hirst?” she asks.

  “At first glance it’s just another suburban murder, probably domestic, and yet it could have been something else, something special, because Damien Hirst took an interest. He was having a photorealism phase, ripping pictures out of papers and magazines and getting his team of assistants to phone around for permission to reproduce them as photorealist paintings. Only the grieving family of this particular victim objected.”

  “That is their right,” Rita says. “I would not be happy.”

  “This is BBC News 24 with the headlines at five.”

  They both look at the TV mounted on a shelf in the corner.

  “As police release details of the woman murdered in Nottingham last week, another body is found. Loretta Peters was a forty-year-old mother of two...”

  Flood approaches the TV. “Loretta? What sort of a name is that? I bet she got that from her job at the lap-dancing bar.”

  “You know her?”

  “Where is she in that photo? She’s too tanned, like a frankfurter.”

  “It is an old photo I think.”

  “These girls, they look like they’ve been working the fields, like peasants out of a painting by Millet – turnip pickers.”

  “You are critical man.” Rita sprays Mr Sheen across a cabinet.

  “Skin should be pale.”

  Rita pauses at Flood’s work area. She has a yellow duster in one hand, furniture polish in the other. “What you want me to do? It is difficult to dust your home right now. There are many things. Should I move, clean, and put back?”

  “No, don’t move a thing – you’ll have to work round it.” He lounges back in his calico-covered armchair.

  “You artists...” She shakes her head.

  “You clean for other artists?”

  “I do for one other but there are many round here, I think.”

  “Who else do you clean for?”

  “I should not say.”

  “You have to tell me now you’ve mentioned it.”

  “You have that camera on. I don’t like...”

  “Don’t worry about that, it’s only for me...”

  “I let you guess. She is untidy also – messier than you.”

  “I dunno, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas – Paula Rego?”

  “It best I not say. That reminds me; I wanted to ask you something. On television there was artist who left a tap running in an art gallery. He said it was to show how we all waste so much.”

  Flood looks at Rita intently. “What did you think?”

  “It is not art. It cannot be. It takes no talent to turn on a tap. Anyone can do that. Does it not make you mad when you spend so many hours drawing and painting and someone just turns on a tap? Look, I can do it now. I am artist also.”

  “Why not, Rita – you’re a lousy cleaner.”

  “You not happy with my cleaning?” She pauses, hands on hips.

  “I’m kidding. Here, turn around, look at the camera – allow me to introduce you: this is Rita, my overqualified cleaner from Hungary. Wave, Rita.’’

  “Why you always have that thing on?”

  “I won’t miss anything.” He looks into the lens.

  “What you mean?”

  “I’m expecting a visitor – Mr Moneybags.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Nicholas Drake, my patron.” Flood rearranges his cameras, training one on the entrance and one on the main studio area.

  “Why you want to film everybody all the time?”

  “Do you not wish to know what lies beneath? I’m going to record his arrival. I have to know whether he gets it or not. Should be fun, don’t you think?”

  She shrugs. “If you say so.”

  “That’s what I love about staff – they have to agree with you. Right, I’m just going to play that back – make sure it’s set up properly. There, beautiful – did you notice how I’ve positioned it by my Seventies deluxe leather couch?”

  “That is new? I like.”

  The sofa is black and worn and yet stylish in a retro fashion.

  “I’ve had a sudden improvement in circumstances.” Flood grins. “Drake has bought five works from my Nottingham show, though he’s yet to take delivery – there are still a few weeks left to run, and then it’s on to London.”

  “Then you won’t have to travel there the whole time leaving poor Dora?”

  “Lovely Rita, artist’s maid….” From behind, Flood puts his hands on Rita’s waist as he sings. “Uh oh, she didn’t like that – better shut up.” He wags his finger at the camera as if he’s telling off a young child.

  “This is impossible. How am I supposed to clean when I cannot move a thing?” Rita pushes at the Hoover attachments.

  “Don’t complain, Rita – that’s not part of the agreement. Just do the best you can, love.”

  “I am not ‘love’.” She glares at him.

  “Spirited, you Hungarians – I like that. You’re very pale.”

  Her face is pale and yet her cheeks appear flushed.

  “Is that usual in Hungary – pale skin, I mean?”

  “Maybe, I never give it a thought.”

  “You don’t like the sun, sweetheart?’

  “I am nobody’s sweetheart.”

  “Stop dyeing your hair black – you’ll probably have more luck.”

  “You are rude man. I promise I only clean your place to take care of Dora.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Anyway, you nearly done ’cause I’ve got the main man coming round any minute and I don’t want to be disturbed?”

  “I cannot finish quick enough.”

  “Call me rude – here, what do I owe you?”

  “T
he usual.”

  “But you’ve only been here half the time.”

  “I come here when you say. It is your choice to let me go.”

  “You’ll go far. What was it you said you were studying in Hungary?”

  “Business studies.”

  “You gonna do that over here?”

  “Of one thing I am sure: the word ‘cleaner’ will not be carved on my gravestone.”

  “Gothic ball-breaker, perhaps.”

  “I ignore that. You want me Tuesday?”

  “I want you Tuesday.”

  “Well, I come – for Dora.”

  “All the best, Rita.”

  “Whatever.”

  Flood paces the room.

  “That’s the door.” He turns abruptly. “It’s either Gothic psycho-cleaner forgotten her handbag or the man himself. Let’s have a look. I’ve had one of those video entry-phones installed. I can choose not to be in if needs be. It’s him all right, Mr Nicholas-don’t-keep-me-waiting-Drake. Jesus, look at that – a study in impatience, I’d like to capture that.”

  Drake’s pate appears shiny in the picture on the video-entry machine.

  “Nicholas, hello, I’m second floor. Come on up.”

  A few moments later Drake enters, wearing a crisp blue shirt open at the collar, dark cords and pointed shoes.

  “Welcome, Nicholas, can I get you a drink?”

  “I don’t have much time.” Immediately he looks around.

  “Bear in mind it’s all work-in-progress. None of it is finished, as yet.” Flood walks to the far end where he’s piled sketches on a trestle table. Drake follows. “I like to start with sketches, very fast and free.” Flood goes through them one by one, letting Drake look for a moment before placing them to one side. “And that energy – I like to carry it through,” Flood says. “These are the canvases. I work on several at once over a number of months, adding layers then leaving them aside for a while – contemplation is part of the process.”

  Drake ponders for a moment, and says, “Has Marcus seen any of this?”