No Trace

by Barry Maitland

  When she finally arrived at the Nolans’ house they were still reading the Sunday papers over the remains of their breakfast. They seemed embarrassed to be caught out in this state, and Bev started clearing dishes.

  ‘I’d like to speak to you both together, if that’s all right,’ Kathy said, and led the way to the sitting room overlooking the back garden, the Nolans following reluctantly. Through the French windows they could see a thrush with a snail in its beak, trying to crack its shell on the brick path.

  ‘It’s about Gabe, of course?’ Bev said, still flustered. ‘We weren’t sure whether to ring you again. What a shocking thing.’

  ‘Have you caught someone?’ Len asked, still not inviting Kathy to sit.

  ‘I think we’re getting close.’

  ‘Really? Well, thank goodness. A maniac, I suppose? A stalker?’ Len put an arm around his wife’s shoulder as if to protect her from this, but she pulled away, glancing uneasily out at the garden. ‘Look,’ Len continued, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Kathy, but this isn’t a very convenient moment for us.You really should have phoned. Could we do this another time?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kathy said. ‘Do you mind if we sit down?’

  ‘Of course. Where are our manners? I’m forgetting myself,’ Bev said. Her voice sounded strained. ‘I think we could all do with a nice cup of coffee, don’t you?’

  As she bustled out, Len said, ‘She’s still in shock, Kathy. We both are. Let’s hope you do clear this up soon. But we really didn’t expect to see you on a Sunday morning.’

  ‘I understand, Len,’ Kathy said getting up and moving to the door.

  ‘No, don’t worry . . .’ Len called after her, but Kathy was already out of the room. She found Bev in the kitchen, pressing the buttons on a phone. She stopped and looked up guiltily when she saw Kathy, who came to her side and gently lifted the phone to see the number on the display.

  ‘Yes, they’re probably back from church now. Come on, Bev, it’s time to talk.’ Bev seemed to have shrunk a little as Kathy led her back into the sitting room.

  ‘That’s the Lovells’ house over there, isn’t it?’ Kathy nodded at the back of another house directly behind their garden, identical to the Nolans’ and all the others surrounding the block. ‘They must be good neighbours. You phoned them the last time I came here. It was the first thing you did as soon as Enid across the street rang you on your mobile to tell you I was waiting for you. And then you rang them again as soon as I left.’

  ‘You’ve been tapping our phones?’ Len said, aghast.

  ‘I checked last night, after I remembered something.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘When we first met you told me you’d made Tracey a dolls’ house and a farmyard. I saw the farm upstairs in her old room, but where’s the dolls’ house?’

  They looked stunned. ‘Did we tell you that?’ Len said. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘So where is it?’

  Len’s face flushed red. ‘You tap our phones and come here on a Sunday morning to ask us about dolls’ houses? What’s got into you people?’

  ‘I see you’ve put a gate in your back fence since I was here last, so you don’t even have to go out onto the street to visit the Lovells. That’s handy. Oh . . .’

  They followed her gaze, staring through the window at a small hand reaching over the top of the gate and fumbling with the latch. Bev took a sharp breath as if she were about to cry out. The gate swung open and a small girl dressed in Sunday best, with a smart tan coat and polished shoes, stepped into the Nolans’ garden. She had dark brown hair, cut short, but Kathy recognised the features straight away. She’d been staring at them across her desk for the past three weeks. She felt a sudden sense of lightness, as if a dull weight had been lifted from her heart.

  ‘How long have you known?’ Len said.

  ‘Not long.’

  They watched the small figure come down the path between the vegetable and flower gardens, under the clothes line, to the kitchen door, then heard the voice, ‘Grandma! Grandpa!’

  Len roused himself. ‘In here, cherub.’

  Kathy looked at him, but there was no sign of irony. They seemed unaware of the reference. In fact, they both looked grey and defeated, barely aware of anything, and the little girl sensed it as soon as she came into the room.

  ‘Are you all right, Grandma?’ she said. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Yes, dear. This is . . . a friend of ours.’

  ‘Oh.’ The little girl looked frankly at Kathy. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kathy. What’s yours?’

  ‘Tra . . . Lucy,’ she corrected herself. ‘Lucy Lovell. I live at thirty-six Nightingale Crescent with my great-aunt and uncle.’

  ‘Do you like that?’

  ‘Oh yes.When I’m seven I’m going to join the junior school orchestra.’

  ‘I see. And where do you keep the dolls’ house that your grandpa made for you?’

  ‘In my other bedroom, of course. Grandpa’s going to build an extension for it, aren’t you, Grandpa, for my Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, cherub,’ Len said faintly.

  ‘If you’re busy with Kathy, can I watch cartoons on TV?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They watched her leave, and Kathy said, ‘She seems happy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bev said, an edge of resistance entering her voice. ‘She’s changed, even in three weeks. She’s so much happier.’

  ‘Took to it like a duck to water,’ Len said.

  ‘What have you told the school?’

  ‘That the Lovells have taken in the daughter of their nephew, whose marriage has broken down. It’s a common story, our generation having to step in to pick up the pieces. The school sees it all the time, didn’t doubt us for a minute.We provided some paperwork.’

  ‘And the Lovells were happy to go along with this?’

  ‘They understood.We’d have done the same for them. It was only to be until you stopped looking for Tracey, then she’d have moved back in with us.’

  ‘What about Gabe?’

  ‘What about him? It was his idea.’

  ‘His idea?’

  ‘That’s right.We’d been fighting with him over Tracey for years, and finally he came up with this. He admitted she was at risk staying with him—there were some dodgy characters in the square, apparently, and those other little girls had gone missing. So he said we could have her.’

  ‘But why didn’t he just transfer guardianship to you? Why the secrecy?’

  ‘This was the only way he would do it. It was this or nothing.We had no choice,’ Bev said, a note of desperation in her voice.

  Len said, ‘The question is, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘There are lots of questions to be answered,’ she said, and their attention was suddenly diverted to another movement in the garden. Brock was coming through the gate, and at the same moment the front doorbell chimed. ‘Why don’t you let those people in while I go and fetch Tracey?’

  The television noise was coming from her bedroom upstairs. Kathy tapped on the door and a little voice said, ‘Come in.’

  ‘I just wanted to say hello, Tracey.’

  ‘Hello.’ The girl was stretched out on her stomach on the bed and didn’t turn away from the screen, where some children were painting with their fingers on a wall.

  ‘You are happy here, aren’t you, Tracey?’

  ‘Oh yes. Aren’t they stupid? They think they’re being like artists but they’re just making a mess. My Daddy’s a real artist, and so am I.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Look, I’ll show you.’

  She suddenly ducked forward and reached under the bed, pulling out a small canvas. ‘I did this with real brushes. It’s a picture of me with yellow hair.’ She handed it to Kathy.

  ‘So it is. It’s very good. Betty showed me one just like this.’

  ‘This is it! I gave it to Betty as a present when I left, but Grandpa got it back for me.’ Tracey su
ddenly cocked her head. ‘What is that noise? Who are those people?’

  ‘They’re friends of mine. They want to have a look around the house while we all go for a car ride together. You’d better put your coat back on again, because it’s still cold outside.’

  Kathy looked out the window into the street. Across the way, Enid and several other neighbours were standing at their front doors watching the police vehicles arriving, and people in white plastic overalls making their way to the Nolans’ front door. Enid had a phone to her ear, alerting the neighbourhood.

  33

  By the following morning the physical evidence had become overwhelming. In Len Nolan’s workshop they had found a set of Japanese Iyoroi brand chisels with hollow ground backs. Upon laboratory examination one had been established beyond doubt as the implement which had caused the marks at the various crime scenes. It had traces of blood on the handle which matched Gabe Rudd’s, and his blood had also been found on a pair of gloves in a toolbox in the workshop. Len Nolan’s DNA had been found to match the unknown DNA on the bloodstained shoes found in the bin near Rudd’s house. This was the DNA which the lab had found, on Brock’s prompting, to belong to a close blood relative of Tracey Rudd.

  The Nolans responded to these damning facts with a strange mixture of self-justification and denial, Len full of bluster and Bev quietly insistent. Yes, they had hidden Tracey and lied to the police, but no, they were neither criminals nor murderers. Len Nolan freely admitted that the chisel was his, and even showed Brock the little mark which he had branded on the handle in case it was ever stolen. The gloves and shoes were also his, he conceded, and Bev could recall the shops where he’d bought them. Len also acknowledged that he had only one key for his workshop, the one on the key ring they had found in his pocket.

  But when it came to linking these things to the murders in Northcote Square, they protested their total innocence. They vehemently denied any involvement and could offer no explanation. When asked about Tracey’s self-portrait, removed presumably from Betty’s house at the time of her murder, Len could only say that he had found it on their doorstep one morning, wrapped in a plastic bag. They hadn’t told Tracey that Betty, or Stan, or her father were dead.

  The contrast between willing cooperation in some things, and total denial in others, began to worry Brock and made him wonder if the couple was suffering from some kind of psychological condition. A psychiatrist was brought in to examine them and spoke of obscure cases of dissociative fugue and multiple personality disorder in which couples had been involved, experiencing periods of shared amnesia.

  When shown the photograph of the Christmas party, Len agreed that he had been the photographer, and they found the space in their family album from which it had been removed. When they looked at the picture both Len and Bev became wistful. Prompted by Kathy, Bev volunteered that it was the last time they saw their daughter smile. Within a few weeks she would be dragged from the waters of the canal. Kathy pointed to the three people standing behind Jane and her baby, and Bev offered the opinion that all three of them, in their different ways, had contributed to Jane’s despair—Gabe by his neglect, Betty by her mad claims upon her child, and Stan by his morbid preoccupation with death.

  ‘So you’d say they were responsible for Jane’s death, would you, Bev?’ Kathy suggested, and Bev agreed that she would, apparently without any recognition that she was talking about three murder victims.

  ‘There’s a lot more work to be done,’ Brock said unhappily, sinking back into the armchair in Commander Sharpe’s office. ‘We’ll have to pick away at every detail to be sure we’ve got it right.’

  ‘But still,’ Sharpe said, stroking the cover of Brock’s report appreciatively,‘an excellent piece of detective work.’

  ‘I’ve spent hours locked up with those two over the past days, and I still can’t get inside their heads. I can’t . . .’ he groped for the word, ‘. . . see it.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Do you have children, Brock? I should know.’

  ‘A son. He’s in Canada now, I believe.We’ve lost touch.’

  ‘Well, I have a daughter. She’s intelligent, ambitious and beautiful, and holds down a responsible job in the City. She married a deadbeat who gets up at noon and spends his day between the pub and the betting shop. He hasn’t driven her to suicide yet, but even so there have been many times when I wanted to slit his damn throat. And let me tell you that a million parents and grandparents in the same situation would have paid for my defence. I’m not sure that I followed all the mumbo jumbo in the shrink’s report, but I can understand the Nolans perfectly, and let’s face it, the physical evidence is irrefutable. It’s a great result, Brock. Five murders solved, including Wylie for Aimee Prentice and Lee Hammond, and, best of all, Beaufort’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Brock sat upright.

  ‘The committee, not the man. As of midday today the Beaufort Committee was suspended, consigned to limbo, relegated to the outer darkness. Nobody wants to hear about it.’ He paused, clearing his throat in a way that made Brock look up. ‘Which means, unfortunately, that your promotion to super is best left in abeyance at this stage. Much as we appreciate the work of you and your excellent team, we mustn’t appear to be crowing, you understand?’

  ‘All right,’ Brock said, ‘but my sergeant, Kathy Kolla, is long overdue for a move up to inspector. She passed the exams ages ago. I’d like something to be done about that.’

  ‘Blockages in our personnel profile,’ Sharpe nodded, as if regretting a medical problem. ‘I’ll see what I can do. She’ll probably have to move to another unit, though.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Oh, very well. Leave it with me. There’s another matter. You probably know that at least one well-known reporter has got wind of you interviewing Beaufort at Shoreditch—somebody at the station probably tipped him off. They sniff scandal, Brock, and they’re going to be after you, very soon, and we’d like to avoid that. Sir Jack has had the good sense to go abroad. And I was recently reminded— no, reprimanded—by Human Resources, or whatever they call themselves this week, that I’ve allowed you to accumulate an intolerable amount of untaken leave.’ Sharpe aimed his most piercing look at Brock. ‘Time for a holiday,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Yes,’ Brock said. ‘I’ve been thinking that myself.’

  Sharpe, who had clearly been anticipating resistance, looked surprised. ‘Good. When?’

  ‘Tomorrow, actually.’

  ‘Better still! Somewhere far away, I hope?’

  ‘Australia.’

  Sharpe leapt to his feet and shook Brock’s hand as if to seal the matter before Brock could change his mind.

  34

  He drove down to Battle that evening and spent the night with Suzanne. The house seemed unnaturally still without the children, making Brock feel slightly self-conscious, as if they were starting a new relationship. He saw how much work Suzanne had put into preparing for the trip—new clothes, gifts for her family, the house readied, bags packed, documents assembled, arrangements for the stopover in Singapore, detailed instructions for her assistant on running the shop—while he had done nothing, barely having checked that his passport was current.

  The next morning they drove up to London to collect Brock’s things in preparation for their departure that evening. As they went through his house he realised how disorganised it was. Despite his protests, Suzanne helped with the piles of washing, ironing and clearing up, vetting his packing. ‘It’s spring there remember, David,’ she said, and somehow the words brought home to him what a step they were taking.

  They broke off for a last English pub lunch at The Bishop’s Mitre in the high street, and as he supped his pint he was aware of Suzanne scrutinising him gravely with her intelligent grey eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re still thinking about work, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re a bit like me, aren’t they, the Nolans?’ she said. ‘Stepping in to protect the
ir grandchildren.You’ve thought of that haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you’re still not absolutely sure that they did those murders.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could, if I had to.’

  He looked at her and smiled.‘No, not like that. And the point is, they didn’t have to.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she put her hand on his, ‘they’ll still be here when we get back, won’t they?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘It feels odd, the prospect of seeing Emily again,’ Suzanne said. ‘I mean, I’m very fond of her, and we were close when we were children, but she was the classic older sister, always in charge, always manipulating things to suit herself. It was a relief to get out from under her shadow.We’ll have to watch she doesn’t completely take over when we get there. She’s probably organised every minute.’

  When they got back to the house Suzanne decided to lie down for an hour while Brock finished clearing up. There was a pile of documents relating to the case that he planned to drop off at Shoreditch on the way to the airport, and as he gathered them up he came again upon the photograph of Tracey’s first birthday party. It was this that had really convinced him about the Nolans’ guilt. Here was everyone, all the victims, gathered together in a single moment captured by—who else but the murderer? There was a psychological aptness, a completeness about it that had seemed irresistible, crowned by the defiance of that final act of pinning it to the wall of Gabe’s studio.

  But what disturbed Brock was how poorly the Nolans had lived up to the vicious bravado of that gesture. Their defence had been naive and unprepared, without cunning or manipulation. That word reminded Brock of Suzanne’s description of her sister, pulling strings in the background. He put the photograph aside and saw another picture beneath it, a print of the Fuseli etching that Kathy had copied to him. In the background were the two figures hanging from the gibbet, and in the foreground the two philosophers, one riding on the back of crouching humanity. Visual clues, if you could only decipher them; the case had been full of them.