No Trace

by Barry Maitland

  The house was cold and very still, and a faint smell of fried onions hung in the air.While the two SOCO women went to work in the kitchen, Brock and Kathy moved on into the interior. The furniture was old and heavy and dark, like heirlooms from an earlier generation, and everywhere there were dolls, forlorn and abandoned, staring accusingly at the intruders. Nothing seemed disturbed downstairs, and they continued up to the bedroom floor. They found Betty’s bedroom at the rear, facing onto the lane. The bedclothes were thrown back, an electric underblanket still switched on. There were pieces of a broken china vase in a corner, and a damp stain on a rug beside the bed.

  They continued from room to room, but nothing else seemed disturbed. The victim had had a bath, it seemed, brushed her teeth and gone to bed. Then someone had broken into her house.

  ‘Poor Betty,’Kathy breathed. ‘She said she was afraid of a monster, just like Tracey.’

  They opened the front door and were about to start searching the well leading down to the basement when they both noticed the looping letters of new graffiti on the footpath outside Betty’s house: ‘this is real’. At the same moment, a belligerent voice barked at them from the neighbouring house.

  ‘What d’you think you’re up to?’

  Reg Gilbey was standing at his open front door, peering at them suspiciously in the grey morning light. His eyes were bleary through the thick lenses of his glasses, his sparse grey hair sticking up in wispy clumps as if he’d only just got out of bed. He was wearing a heavy cardigan with frayed cuffs and his baggy trousers had been darned at the knee with a thread several shades too dark, as had his thick socks. In one hand he was cradling a fat black cat and in the other he held a lighted cigarette.

  ‘Morning, Mr Gilbey,’ Brock said. ‘Remember us? Metropolitan Police, DCI Brock and DS Kolla.’

  ‘What’re you doing in Betty’s place?’

  ‘We’d like a word with you,’ Brock replied.

  As they came up Gilbey’s steps Kathy said, ‘That’s Betty’s cat, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, woke me up this morning, mewing at the back door. Greedy tyke. What d’you want?’ He backed reluctantly into his hallway as they followed him in.

  ‘When did you last see Betty?’ Brock asked.

  Gilbey pondered, thought processes apparently sluggish. He cleared his throat with a rasping gurgle and Kathy caught a strong whiff of whisky along with the tar. ‘Yesterday evening. Brought me a pie she’d baked. We ate it together with a glass of vino.Why? What’s the matter?’

  This unexpected glimpse of domestic harmony between the two neighbours surprised Kathy. ‘I thought you two didn’t get on,’ she said.

  ‘There was that big crowd in the square, all those weirdos. Made Betty nervous. Scared her cat. What’s it to you, anyway?’

  ‘I’m afraid we have bad news about Betty, Mr Gilbey. She’s been found dead.’

  Gilbey stared at her, then at Brock, face blank. ‘Dead?’ he said slowly, as if the word meant nothing to him. The cat sensed something and leaped abruptly from his arm. ‘Betty?’

  ‘Let’s sit down in the kitchen,’ Kathy said. She steered him towards the open door at the end of the hall where she could see a pine table and chairs. Along the way the cigarette dropped from his fingers and Brock, following behind, picked it up. He doused it in the kitchen sink, next to the remains of a home-baked cheese and onion pie and an empty bottle of wine, and ran a glass of water for the painter, who had removed his glasses to rub his eyes. The frames were old and worn, Kathy noticed, heavy plastic, like a museum piece from the 1960s. She wondered if Gilbey, presumably a successful and prosperous man, looked so resolutely down at heel by choice or through self-neglect.

  ‘How did she go?’ Gilbey grunted after taking a swallow of water, hand trembling. ‘Was it her heart?’

  ‘We’re not sure at the moment exactly how she died.’

  Gilbey picked up the evasion in Brock’s answer and said sharply, ‘She didn’t hurt herself, did she?’

  ‘No,she . . .’

  But before Kathy could go on, Gilbey interrupted. ‘Who found her then?’

  ‘A builder. She was found in the basement of one of the houses they’re doing up.’

  Gilbey’s brow wrinkled in astonishment.

  ‘When did she leave you last night?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . ten, ten-thirty. When the crowd began to break up. But how . . .?’

  ‘Was there anything specific about the crowd that bothered her? Did she mention anything?’

  ‘Not really. They just made her nervous. When they began to drift away she said she’d go home and run a hot bath. How did she come to be in the building site, for God’s sake? It’s locked up at night, and she didn’t get on with any of those men.’

  ‘We’re not sure at the moment. Did you hear anything unusual last night, after she left?’

  ‘Well . . . yes, I did. Some time after midnight, getting on for one, I’d say, I was getting ready to turn in. Her bedroom is through the wall from mine. I heard a thump from next door, and I wondered about it. She could be a clumsy old cow, knocking things over. In the end I did nothing.’

  ‘You know the layout of her house then?’

  ‘Course I do, we’ve been neighbours for thirty-five years.’

  Brock’s phone rang and he listened for a moment, then murmured, ‘Right, I’ll be over in a minute.’ He rang off and said,‘I’m going back to the scene, Kathy. You finish up here with Mr Gilbey, will you?’

  He left by the back door while the old painter lit another cigarette with an unsteady hand.

  ‘Do you want to lie down, Reg?’ Kathy asked, wondering if she should get a doctor.

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me that might help us?’

  ‘How did she die then?’ he asked.

  ‘It seems she was hanged.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone who’d want to do that?’

  He shook his head distractedly. ‘She could be cantankerous, of course, accusing people of wanting to steal her things, stuff like that, but I never took it seriously.’

  ‘Did she have anything particularly valuable?’

  He pondered, taking a faltering drag on his cigarette. ‘Never saw her wear jewellery, and she never had much cash. As far as I know, the only things of value that her husband left her apart from the house were his paintings. He’d been a bit of a collector, and his father before him.’

  ‘And they were valuable?’

  ‘The best English artists of the time: Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Sutherland, several Henry Moore drawings— stuff like that, all very solid, bought through reputable galleries. I know she’s sold a few of them over the years. I’m not sure what’s left.’

  ‘Later on, when the scientific people have finished, I’d like you to come next door with me and have a look to see if you can spot anything missing.’

  He shrugged. ‘If you want.’

  ‘So you’ve known Betty a long time?’

  He seemed lost in thought for a while, then he stubbed out his cigarette and got stiffly to his feet. ‘Come on, I’ll show you something.’

  He led her along the hall and began climbing the stairs, using the banister to help haul himself up. Kathy followed him up to the studio she’d visited before, recognising the smells of oil and pigment that seemed to impregnate the walls. Gilbey was searching through a rack of unframed canvases set up in a corner of the room. Finding the one he was after, he pulled it out, turning it towards the light for her to see. It was a large painting of a young nude woman, sitting in front of a window. Gilbey propped it up on a chair and stepped back, his eyes fixed on the face of the model. As she came closer, Kathy thought she recognised the large eyes and angular features, the central parting of long thick hair, jet black. The style of painting, with the paint densely applied in scoops and whorls of browns and white and black, was very different from the portrait of the judge s
tanding nearby on its easel. Kathy assumed it must have been the work of another artist, but then she recognised the windows behind the seated model as those of the corner bay in this same room, with the trees of the central park beyond.

  As if answering her unspoken question, Gilbey said, ‘I painted differently then.’ He gently touched the corrugated surface of the pigment with his fingertips.‘Laid it on thick, squeezed straight from the tube. I wanted to show the force of the material thing, the energy of its presence in the world, just as it was, without frills and tricks. The Kitchen Sink school, they called us in the fifties.’

  In the corner of the painting Kathy noticed lettering, blunt and square: GILBEY 1969.

  ‘Later I moved on. I became less interested in the material presence and more in the spirit of what lay behind it.’ He sounded nostalgic, regretful, as if the texture of the paint against his hand had reminded him of an old friend. ‘The paint became thinner, more calculated, as I tried to show the soul . . . but it’s so bloody hard. I did this in one session, ten hours, and I knew I’d finished when I ran out of paint. Now . . .’ He looked over his shoulder at the judge’s portrait, ‘Well, I’ve been doing that for eight months now, maybe seventy or eighty sessions, layer upon layer, and I still haven’t captured the old goat, not really. I may never finish it.’

  Comparing the two paintings, Kathy suddenly understood what he meant. The girl in the window had a real presence, but was flat and stylised, like a Byzantine icon, whereas the judge seemed to emerge out of the canvas as a human character in full, a man of judgement, intelligence and authority, yes, but also something else; crafty, predatory even, dangerous.

  ‘She was the one who made me want to change,’ Gilbey went on, and seeing the query on Kathy’s face he explained, ‘She was the first model I had who talked. Couldn’t shut her up. Told me more than I wanted to know about her life, and Harry. Harry was her husband, owned the house next door. I wanted quiet to concentrate on the paint, but she had to talk, and gradually I came to realise that the person that the talking revealed was more interesting than the body I was trying to represent. Took me a long time to come to terms with that.’ He turned back to examine the old painting, lost in memories.‘Resisted it until I began to see that my work was becoming just decorative, pattern-making. Then I had to start again, with sitters who would talk about themselves. And most of them will, with a bit of encouragement.’ He nodded his head, thinking, talking more to himself than to Kathy.‘Reckon it’s something to do with having to hold the same position all the time—frees the mind, like the psychiatrist’s couch. The judge is a great talker, oh yes.’ Gilbey gave a snort that sounded like contempt. ‘Well, I knew his reputation, of course. A man of fine words and firm moral judgement. But why was he so strict with certain types of criminals; the sex offenders, the rapists and pederasts? Was it because he felt so deeply for their victims? Or was it because he understood what drives them only too well? Now how do you show that in a portrait?’

  ‘He told you that?’ Kathy asked.

  Gilbey looked up sharply, as if he’d forgotten who he was talking to. ‘What? No, no, of course not.’

  He turned away, a stubborn set to his jaw, as if he’d said too much and wouldn’t say any more. ‘So Betty was your model all that time ago,’ she tried, but he just grunted and refused to respond.

  ‘I need you to help me, Reg. I need to understand her, how she came to be the way she was. Paint her portrait for me now, in words.’

  She waited, and then he began to speak again, voice low. ‘She was always like that, damaged goods. I don’t know where Harry found her or when they came to the square, but her English was still very ropy when I first arrived in the late sixties. Harry was twenty years older than Betty, and he’d had an eventful war by all accounts, and was pretty damaged himself. Couldn’t have sex with her, so she told me, after she’d been modelling for me for a while. Sounded like an invitation to me, so I obliged. Got her pregnant.’

  Gilbey was speaking in a monotone, addressing himself to his portrait of Betty, stroking the surface of the paint like a lover.

  ‘Harry scared me, to be honest. He got this odd look in his eye sometimes.I didn’t fancy fronting up to him,or facing the complications that would follow. So I arranged for her to have an abortion. Practically frogmarched her to the place. Not like now. Backstreet knitting-needle stuff. Nasty . . . I was so self-centred, you see, I couldn’t imagine what it was like.You’ve lost your whole family in Europe somewhere, and then you fall pregnant, life returns, new hope. And then you have it snatched away from you, like that.’

  He sniffed, ran a hand absent-mindedly across his head, making the tufts stand up more wildly than ever. ‘Nearly did for her. Tried to kill herself twice. Then Harry died one bitter winter, of pneumonia, and Betty went into a kind of trance. I tried to help, but she wouldn’t have me near her. Gradually she took on a role, Batty Betty, the mad woman of Northcote Square. She’s gone on playing the part ever since, an actor in a long-running show, becoming more extravagant year by year. At least that’s how I saw it, thinking of myself again, seeing it as a form of persecution of me, but maybe there was nothing voluntary about it.’

  He fell silent, and Kathy became aware of sounds from beyond the window, of children’s cries from the school playground. Gilbey heard them too, and said, ‘Has this got something to do with the little girl . . .?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They knew each other. I used to see them talking together, through the school railings or out there in the park. They seemed drawn to each other, two lost souls.’

  ‘Could Betty have known something about Tracey’s disappearance, or seen something? Did she hint at anything to you?’

  He frowned.‘I don’t know. She liked to pretend she had secrets, it was part of her role . . .’

  Then his concentration was broken by a loud rap on the door downstairs and a man’s voice, harsh, imperious. ‘Gilbey? I’m here. Where are you, man? Are you ready for me?’

  Gilbey swore under his breath and Kathy heard footsteps, more than one pair, on the stairs. Then a tall, elderly man, hawk-nosed and severe in appearance, marched into the room.

  ‘Ah, here you are,’ the man said, and then, noticing Kathy, gave a stiff little nod of his head.‘Going to introduce me to the lady, Reg?’

  ‘Sir Jack Beaufort, this is Detective Sergeant . . . I’m sorry, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Kathy Kolla,’ she said.

  ‘Hackney?’

  ‘The Yard,’ Kathy replied.

  ‘Brock’s crew? Aha.’ Beaufort eyed her narrowly, then carelessly indicated his companion. ‘You know DI Reeves, Special Branch?’ Kathy recognised the man who’d come to see Brock on that first morning. She particularly noticed his eyes, watchful, but with an ironic glint, as if well used to Beaufort’s antics. He nodded to her with a hint of a smile.

  ‘I can’t do it today, Judge,’ Gilbey said. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to cancel.’

  Beaufort looked from Kathy to Gilbey and back again, as if he suspected some kind of conspiracy in his courtroom. ‘Nonsense. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just had some bad news. A friend of mine has died.’

  ‘At our age that happens every week. Close?’ Then he noticed the portrait of Betty against the wall. ‘My God! I haven’t seen that one before, Gilbey.You’ve been hiding her from me.’ He moved closer, taking out a pair of narrow glasses and putting them on. ‘Oh my! Sixty-nine, eh? Your best year, in my humble opinion. It’s the same model as the Woman in a Bath, isn’t it? Yes . . . yes . . .’ He absorbed it, then barked, ‘I’ll have her. How much do you want?’

  ‘She’s not for sale.’

  ‘We’ll see. So who died?’

  ‘My neighbour,’ Gilbey muttered, staring at the floor, apparently intimidated by his client.

  The boisterous mood seemed suddenly to desert Beaufort, and he became serious. ‘Not the mad woman?’

  ‘You know her?’ Kat
hy said.

  He took his time to turn his gaze to her and respond, as if to make the point that it was his habit to interrogate police officers and not the other way around. Then, at the last minute, he flashed what might have been intended as a disarming smile. ‘Yes indeed. We’ve seen her in the street, haven’t we, Reeves?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘She was being pursued by a flock of little girls, at a safe distance.What were they calling her?’

  ‘Batty Betty, I think it was.’

  ‘Yes. Were you close friends, Gilbey?’ Then he stared again at the painting and realisation lit his face. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? The Woman in a Bath was the lady next door, yes? How fascinating.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘And is this of interest to you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kathy bit off the ‘sir’ that almost followed. ‘It seems probable she was murdered.’

  ‘Really!’ Beaufort looked startled. ‘But why? Was it a robbery?’

  ‘We’re not sure at the moment.’

  ‘But you people are looking into it, are you? Not the local division? So you think . . .’

  ‘It’s too soon to say, sir.’

  ‘Well . . . yes, that is a shock for you, Gilbey. Northcote Square is becoming quite a hotbed of crime, it seems . . .’ he regarded Kathy with a malicious glint in his eye,‘. . . despite the heavy presence of Special Operations.’

  Kathy caught the sarcastic tone and noticed a thoughtful frown cross the face of DI Reeves in the background.

  ‘Well, anyway, I’m here now, Gilbey old chap.You need something to distract you, and our deadline is fast approaching, so let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  The way he spoke to the painter reminded Kathy of the way Tait had spoken to Gabriel Rudd that first morning, as to a distracted child needing to be brought into line. And Gilbey seemed to accept it, giving a resigned sigh and shuffling across to his easel while Beaufort draped himself on the chair placed by the window. It was the same place where Betty had sat almost thirty-five years before, Kathy thought. She also noticed that the pose Gilbey had given Beaufort had his head facing towards the window, although his eyes were turned back at the painter, as if the sitter had just been caught looking out at something—the children in the playground, perhaps.