No Trace

by Barry Maitland

  Kathy yawned as she read this and took another sip of the coffee she’d made. She was in her office at Queen Anne’s Gate, where she came when she wasn’t required at Shoreditch or elsewhere. Since that Monday morning two weeks ago when the case had begun she’d barely had a day off. It didn’t seem right with Tracey still missing. She looked again at the girl’s picture pinned to the screen behind her desk. Today she had been searching Gabriel Rudd’s web site for some clue as to the connections or references that Brock had suggested must lie in the style of Betty’s murder. The trouble was that the material in the site really was as extensive as the teacher had said, and there were endless references to the work of other artists, from Giotto to Koons.

  She needed help. She picked up the phone and rang Bren’s home number. Deanne answered, the sound of children’s voices in the background.

  ‘Hi, Deanne, it’s Kathy. Is this a bad time?’

  ‘No, it’s fine, Kathy. How are you? I’ll get Bren.’

  ‘It’s you I wanted to speak to, if you’ve got five minutes.’ She explained her problem.

  ‘How about Fuseli?’ Deanne said.

  ‘Yes, you mentioned him before, but I can’t find any references to him in connection with the work Gabe’s doing at the moment.What made you suggest him? Didn’t you say that the image of the little girl being led off by a stranger was his? Because there’s no reference to that on the website.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Deanne hesitated. ‘I just assumed it was Fuseli, because of the melodramatic style. I mentioned him because he inspired Rudd’s last really successful show, The Night-Mare, and because he seemed to consciously model himself on Fuseli—brooding, eccentric, a bit violent and wild.’

  ‘I heard someone mention that Fuseli’s hair turned prematurely white, like Rudd’s.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know that.Well, there you are.’

  ‘But I don’t know that this has anything to do with Rudd’s sources. It might be Stan Dodworth’s that I should be looking at.’

  ‘Oh . . . I’d have to think about that. Goya? Maybe Giacometti . . .’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Kathy groaned, feeling the ground sliding out from under her again.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Deanne said. ‘I have to go to the university library this afternoon. Why don’t I get some books for you to look at? That might give you some ideas. Are you free tonight? Come and have dinner with us and we can talk about it.’

  After another fruitless day, the idea of spending the evening soaking in the warm tub of the Gurneys’ domesticity seemed quite appealing, although Kathy almost changed her mind as she heard the sounds of squealing children through the front door. They were overtired and ready for bed, and after greeting the older two and handing over the colouring books she’d brought, Kathy kissed them goodnight and Bren coaxed them away. He was immensely patient and gentle with them, so huge and protective alongside their little figures that Kathy was touched with a sense of sadness and loss that she couldn’t quite pin down.

  Deanne was in the living room, about to feed the youngest girl, Rachel. At six months, Rachel was just beginning to appreciate her mother’s fine art books, one of which she was trying to get into her mouth. Deanne whisked it away, wiped it with a kitchen towel and substituted her breast.

  ‘Sorry, Kathy. You know how it is. There’s a bottle of wine on the sideboard next to the books I got you.You can set the table if you feel like it. The stuff ’s on the tray. Dinner’s nearly ready. How was your day?’

  ‘Useless. I achieved nothing.’ She began laying out the knives and forks.

  ‘Oh dear. Mine was much the same.’

  ‘Well, at least at the end of it you can say you filled a small stomach.’

  Deanne gave her a curious look. ‘Not envious, are you? Take her, she’s yours. Let me have her back in a year or two.’ She shifted the baby across to the other breast. ‘I’ve been trying to think about your problem, but I couldn’t come up with anything brilliant. I’m not sure I really understand what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Me neither. It’s just that there were some odd things about the way the body of the murdered woman in the basement was treated.’

  ‘Yes, I talked to Bren about that—the electric torture. It’s disgusting. The only artistic allusions I could come up with were Andy Warhol’s images of the electric chair, and a man called Leon Golub did some creepy paintings in the eighties of people being interrogated and burned with cigarette ends. Dodworth went to art school, didn’t he? I suppose he’d have come across those.Was he a smoker?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kathy thought back to the foetid atmosphere in his room, but couldn’t recall the smell of tobacco smoke. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, maybe he substituted electric burns for cigarette burns.’

  ‘There was the blindfold as well, that was put on after she was dead.’

  ‘Yes, that is weird. That didn’t ring any bells at all.’

  Kathy finished setting the table and, picking up her glass of wine, came and sat opposite the mother and child.

  ‘I’m sorry I never got in touch with you when you broke up with Leon,’ Deanne said. ‘I wanted to, but I didn’t know what to say. I suppose I’ve forgotten what it’s like. You were together for quite a while, weren’t you?’

  ‘He lived with me for six months.’

  ‘I think that’s a good way of putting it. More independent than saying you were living with him, or you were living together . . . So you’ve got over it?’

  ‘Mm,’ Kathy replied vaguely. Deanne was talking about it as if it were the subject of one of her master’s assignments, something remote and academic that happened to other people. Seeing her there with her baby, her third baby, so pinkly fecund, Kathy hoped she would never have to make the sympathy call to her; You’ve lost him, he’s gone.

  ‘Well, try the books, anyway. You never know, something may strike a chord. It happens to me sometimes when I’m stuck for ideas—the pictures get my imagination going again. Maybe, when this case is over, you should take a holiday. You’re looking tired.’

  ‘Me? Not me. Hell, look at you and Bren. I don’t have babies crying through the night.’

  They both laughed.

  • • •

  Later, lying alone in her bed, Kathy thought about their conversation. They were about the same age, she and Deanne, and had known each other, through Bren, for some years, but tonight they had felt like strangers. She didn’t mind being alone, she told herself, tucked up in a warm bed with a good book. Well, the book wasn’t very gripping, as it happened—a thick biography of Henry Fuseli—and she was struggling to stay awake. She decided to focus on the illustrations, but didn’t find them very inspiring either, scenes of posturing characters from mythology and Shakespeare . . . Feeling herself dozing, she sighed and turned to switch out the light, barely noticing the illustration in front of her as she closed the book, Justice and Liberty Hanged, while Voltaire Rides Monster Humanity and Jean-Jacques Rousseau Takes his Measure. It showed two eccentric eighteenth-century gentlemen, one sitting on the back of a crouching man and, in the background, not one but two figures hanging from a gallows, hands tied behind their backs, one of them blindfolded.

  20

  Gabriel Rudd took three sleeping pills that Sunday night, then switched off the lights inside his glass cube and lay down on the camp bed, wrapping the black duvet around him. The rest of the gallery lights had long been extinguished, and the last curious faces had disappeared from the gallery window. After a while, the tartan blanket on the floor began to stir and a nose emerged, sniffing the air. A head followed, white with two strong black stripes running back over the eyes to the ears, then finally, the coast being clear, the full yard-length of Dave the badger appeared. Following the clever nose, he made his way to the corner of the cube where two dishes had been set out for him, one containing Perrier water and the other an artfully arranged confection of egg, rabbit and fresh vegetables prepared by the Tait’s second chef,
another cousin of the Fikret family. Dave made short work of his meal, left a compensating deposit beside the empty plates and set off to explore his prison. Dave would have been able to see through the glass walls that another banner had been added since the previous night, making fourteen now in all, like ghosts suspended in the light seeping in through the window from the street. The latest one featured two huge mug shots, Abbott and Wylie. Gabriel Rudd heard Dave’s snuffling progress, the soft scrape of his claws on the polished timber floor, just before sleep came.

  The artist slept very soundly that night, on account of the pills.When he awoke, he blinked his eyes open briefly and was aware of the pale grey of dawn in the sky in the upper part of the gallery window, though the street lights were still on. He closed his eyes and pulled the duvet over his head again and, as he always did, examined whatever was in his brain for clues to his work for the day, a fragment of a dream, a pungent smell of animal droppings, a memory of getting up on winter mornings to go to school—any of these might spark a thought about the colour, texture or theme for the next banner. They were going well, he knew it in his gut, but he was conscious that as time went on people’s interest might begin to fade, the number of hits on his website might begin to drop off. How long could he keep it going? What for number fifteen? Something vertical, something dark, something harsh, shocking. He opened his eyes and peered out at the phalanx of pale ghosts beyond the glass. One . . . two . . . three . . . They work, he thought, they bloody well work! . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . Nothing quite like this has ever been done before . . . thirteen . . . fourteen . . . fifteen. He blinked and stared, for there it was, at the end of the line, number fifteen materialised—vertical, dark, and most definitely shocking. A suspended figure, motionless on the rope by which it was hanged from the roof truss. He thought they seemed familiar; the shaved head, the black T-shirt and jeans, the big clumsy feet.

  At least, that was the way Gabriel Rudd later described it to the police. The shock of discovering Stan Dodworth hanging there in the gallery had driven him out of his glass cube for the first time in eight days. After checking that the body was real, he’d rushed out to the corridor that led to Fergus Tait’s elegant apartment at the back of the building and hammered on the door, rousing Tait from his bed. The two of them had returned to the gallery, where Tait had rung triple-nine.

  Brock was crouching beneath the dangling feet, carefully examining the floor and the chair standing nearby, when Kathy arrived. She took in the limp figure, the thoughtful expression frozen on the sallow face as if surprised that death wasn’t quite what he’d expected, and she felt a sudden jolt of recognition—two hanged figures, one blindfolded, both with hands tied behind their backs, in this case with a loose cord.

  Brock looked up, shook his head. ‘I’d have said suicide this time, if it weren’t for the tied wrists.’ He spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard by the others moving around nearby—the photographers setting up, and beyond them two men erecting a screen against the gallery window, across which a new graffiti message had appeared during the night, ‘this too’.

  He straightened upright with a grunt and pointed at the man’s throat. ‘Nice clean rope burn, livid edge. Ah . . .’ Brock’s voice returned to normal volume as he saw the medical examiner arrive with a scene of crime team. He went over to brief them while Kathy remained with Stan’s body, studying the fingernails, the shoes, the knot that had been used to secure the free end of the rope to the leg of a nearby table loaded with computer equipment. Out of the corner of her eye she saw two men sitting together by the open door of the glass cube. Fergus Tait, in a green dressing-gown and leather slippers, looked bemused; the other man, Gabriel Rudd, wore a long overcoat, feet bare, and was drawing in a sketchpad on his lap. They both looked up as Brock approached with one of the SOCO team, and again Kathy was startled to see how gaunt and hollow-eyed Rudd had become. They appeared surprised as Brock explained something to them and the officer began examining their clothing. Theatrically, Rudd placed his sketchbook on the floor and raised his hands to be checked and have fingernail scrapings taken. As Kathy went over to hear what they had to say she saw that the drawing he’d been making was of Stan.

  ‘Did either of you touch the body?’ Brock asked.

  ‘I did,’ Rudd said. ‘I gave him a pinch just to make sure he wasn’t one of his own sculptures. Funny, he seemed less real than they do. He was stone cold.’

  ‘I touched him, too,’ Tait said. ‘I thought I’d better try to find out if he was actually dead. I mean, there seemed little doubt, but I tried to find a pulse anyway, in the wrist, and then,’ he gave a grimace, ‘in the throat. Nothing. If I hadn’t been so sure he was gone, I’d have cut him down, but I thought I’d better not. I mean, it’s not a situation I’m used to dealing with.’

  He sounded shaken, unlike Rudd, who had shifted his attention back to the corpse, narrowing his eyes, leaning his head from side to side as if mentally composing the image on a banner.

  ‘How did you reach up to the throat?’ Brock asked Tait.

  ‘I stood on the chair. It was lying on its side beside his feet. I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have touched it, but . . .’

  ‘That’s all right. Did either of you disturb anything else?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘What about the cord around his wrists?’

  ‘I don’t think I touched it,’ Rudd said, and Tait said, ‘Oh, I probably did when I was looking for a pulse. That’s what really shook me up—I mean, it couldn’t have been suicide, could it?’

  ‘And you have absolutely no recollection of any noise during the night?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘One other thing before I let you get dressed,’ Brock said. ‘Who’s spraying these messages on your building?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Tait said. ‘But he’s a bloody pest. It’s not just this building, several others in the square have been done over the past three or four months. “Property is theft” on the building site, adolescent stuff like that.’

  Suddenly Rudd exclaimed and made a move towards the cube, but the SOCO put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Where’s Dave?’ Rudd said, and pointed at the tartan blanket lying flat on the floor. ‘Where’s my badger?’

  Brock nodded to the officer to have a look. He made a quick search and shook his head. Dave, it seemed, had done a bunk.

  Soon the photographers were finished and Dr Mehta arrived. The body was lowered onto a plastic sheet on the ground and the doctors conferred on body and air temperatures and the state of rigor. Mehta finally offered Brock a preliminary estimate of time of death—between two and five in the morning. ‘I won’t be sure until I get him on the table,’ he added, ‘but there’s something odd about that cord on his wrists. It’s quite loosely tied and I can’t see any bruising underneath. It almost looks as if it was applied post-mortem.’

  ‘Like Betty Zielinski’s blindfold,’Brock said. ‘And make sure they take care with his clothing and shoes, Sundeep. I’m very interested in where he’s been for the past week.’

  The body was removed along with everyone else except the SOCO team, which continued its painstaking search of the gallery and hallway outside. Elsewhere in The Pie Factory detectives were working from room to room, establishing who was present, and taking statements and swabs for aerosol paint traces on hands and clothes.

  On the way back to the station, Kathy mentioned the engraving in the book Deanne had given her. ‘I barely noticed it just before I fell asleep, but I registered the two hanging figures. Then I arrive here this morning and find a second hanging. It made me think.’

  ‘Fuseli, you say?’

  ‘Yes.You remember he was Rudd’s inspiration for The Night-Mare after Rudd’s wife died.’

  ‘Mm, but still, it seems a bit obscure.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have made much of it if it hadn’t been that one of the figures in the book was blindfolded—“Justice”, I suppose—and they both had
their hands tied behind their backs, as if they’d been executed.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘If Rudd studied Fuseli’s work, he might be expected to recognise the allusion. Poppy said that Betty’s murder was a warning to Stan Dodworth, and maybe it was. Now Stan’s death may be a warning to Gabriel Rudd. It’s almost as if they’re being stalked in turn, the artists in Northcote Square.’

  ‘Betty wasn’t an artist,’ Brock objected, ‘and we don’t know that Stan was murdered.’

  ‘Betty was an artist’s model and someone tied Stan’s wrists,’ Kathy countered.

  Brock obviously wasn’t convinced, but he said, ‘All right, why don’t you discuss the two hanged figures with Rudd, see what he makes of it . . . Justice,’ he pondered. ‘Any word from your friend Nicole?’

  ‘Not yet. She said it might take a few days if she couldn’t do it openly.’

  They reached the room at Shoreditch station where the team was assembling, and whiteboards and display panels were being cleaned off to make space for information on the new case. As the meeting progressed, Kathy began to understand Brock’s reluctance to make much of the Fuseli illustration, for it soon became apparent that he had ideas of his own—ideas which, Kathy had to admit, made a lot more practical sense.