No trace

11

It was dark as they waited in Brock’s car for the team to assemble in the square, and a light rain began to fall. The large scarlet neon sign for The Pie Factory and the discreet little blue one for The Tait Gallery shimmered through the droplets on the windscreen. The radio crackled, a short burst of words, and they got out of the car and hurried towards the shelter of the building’s entrance. Around them they heard the click of car doors and the soft thud of boots.

‘Mr Tait here?’ Brock said to the young woman at the desk. She was on the point of leaving for the evening and had a bored look that disappeared as she took in the uniforms assembling outside the door.

‘I’ll give him a buzz.’

Fergus Tait appeared, sporting a pair of rainbowcoloured braces that matched his bow tie. His smile froze and the eyes behind the big glasses registered shock as he watched uniformed men crowding in behind Brock.

‘Sorry for the intrusion, Mr Tait,’ Brock said affably, as if they were a bunch of friends dropping in unannounced, ‘but I have a warrant to search these premises. We’ll be as quick as we can. I’ll give you a copy of this paperwork and then I’d be glad if you’d act as our guide. We’d like to start with the rooms you let out to tenants.’

The service yard of The Pie Factory, accessible from the street and jammed with rubbish bins full of scrap materials and kitchen waste, had been thoroughly searched in the initial sweep of Northcote Square on the first day of the hunt for Tracey, but the check of the buildings had been more cursory. Packed into a city block, they looked deceptively compact from the outside, but inside formed a rambling maze. An agglomeration of cottages in the early 1800s that had gradually been extended, rationalised, rebuilt and modified over the years as its businesses grew, the result now was a warren of rooms large and small, corridors and lofts, storerooms and cellars.

‘Maybe if you told me what you’re after,’ Tait protested as he led them towards a staircase at the end of a corridor running behind the main gallery.

‘We understand Tracey Rudd used to visit here. Were you aware of that?’

‘I’ve certainly seen her here with Poppy a number of times. And without her, too, now you come to mention it. I do recall speaking to someone-was it Poppy? I don’t remember-anyway, someone, about how a little girl like that shouldn’t be wandering around the workshops with those machines.’

The stair dog-legged upward towards a skylight, then reached a landing giving onto another corridor.

‘This way,’ he puffed. ‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with the fire authorities over the years, as you can imagine. Hence the emergency lights and fire doors and extinguishers and so on.’

‘And fire-escape stairs?’ Brock asked.

‘Oh my, yes, several new escape stairs.’

‘So there are plenty of ways for people to enter and leave the building unchecked?’

‘Well, there’s a measure of security, of course, but with the kitchen staff and the artists coming and going, and the whole place interconnected, it’s sometimes difficult to be sure just who is here at any one time. At night we lock up, and the residents have their own keys to their separate entrance.’

‘How many residents are there?’

‘There are five bed-sits, with shared kitchen and bathrooms, though only four are occupied at present. Our semipermanent artists in residence are Poppy and Stan, and we also have two young artists who graduated from college this year and have a twelve-month tenancy while we see how they develop. The fifth room I like to keep free for visiting artists. Last month we had a lovely German boy, a vinyl fetishist. He did marvellous work, it made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.’

‘Is that so.’

They turned into a broader corridor and Tait pointed out utility rooms and a row of numbered doors bearing Yale locks. With a show of reluctance he knocked on them in turn and, getting no reply, opened each for a pair of officers to move in.

‘There are only four doors here,’ Brock said.

‘Ah well, Stan’s room is the fifth. It’s up there.’ He pointed to a steep little stair that closed the end of the corridor, leading up to the door of an attic room. ‘He’s the oldest, and has the most stuff, and his room’s a bit bigger than the others. He has a lovely view from up there.’

‘Let’s take a look.’

Tait led the way up the stairs, knocked, cocked his head listening, then put his key in the lock. He swung the door open and reached inside for the light, then rocked back.

‘Phoo, bit foetid in here. He needs some ventilation. Shall I open the window?’

‘We’ll do it, thanks.’ Brock pulled on plastic gloves and crossed the room, opening the dormer window on the far side, while Kathy moved in behind him. The space was an irregular shape, jammed up into the pitch of the roof. Through one of the side walls they could hear the cooing of pigeons and the hiss of a water tank refilling. There was an open rack with clothes on hangers, books on the floor, and postcards and cuttings stuck haphazardly on every surface.

‘He does have a good view,’ Brock said, looking out over a panorama of the square.

Behind him, Kathy said,‘What are these?’

Brock turned and saw her standing beside a table pushed into the angle of the sloping ceiling. It was piled high with what looked like withered human limbs.

‘Oh, those!’Fergus Tait’s voice sounded unnaturally loud and jocular. He joined Kathy and picked up a leg. ‘These would be from his last exhibition, Body Parts. Caused quite a stir.’

Now Kathy was pointing at the pictures on the wall, colour prints of photographs from newspapers and books and the internet showing car crashes, bodies being dug out of mass graves, executions, crime scenes, autopsies, abattoirs and butchers’shops.‘The girls must love getting invited back to this place,’ Kathy said.

Tait gave a little giggle. ‘I don’t think he has any girlfriends right now, to tell the truth. He’s much too taken up with his work.’

There was an old bed sheet hung across one side of the room with drawing pins. All three seemed to focus on it at the same moment. Brock went over and carefully drew it back. Behind, there was a small alcove in which, suspended on a chain, was the figure of an old woman, naked, body wasted and hunched in a foetal curl. Brushed by the sheet, it slowly began to rotate.

‘Oh my,’ Tait said. ‘Now isn’t she something! I haven’t seen her before.’

‘We have,’ Brock said, and looked at Kathy, who was staring in shock at the figure. It was the old woman they’d found in the bed of Patrick Abbott’s flat.

‘These are not sculptures, are they?’ Brock asked Tait.

The gallery owner hesitated.‘Well, I think I would say that they are, but I take it you mean that they’re not carved or shaped in the normal way?’

Brock nodded.‘How does he make them?’

‘They’re made of bronzed plaster and fibreglass. From rubber moulds and casts.’

‘Of real corpses.’

‘Ye-es,’ Tait said carefully. ‘You’d have to ask him, you understand, but I think it would be fair to say that. It’s what gives them their extraordinary truthfulness, their power. You know immediately that this isn’t some prop from a movie or a waxworks show. This is the real thing, death, in all its terrible beauty.’

‘Beauty?’

‘Well, that’s my opinion. I’m not normally a fan of the macabre, Chief Inspector, but I am moved by Stan’s work. He faces unflinchingly what lies in wait for all of us.’

‘And where does he find his subject matter, his body parts?’

‘He has a source, so he tells me. Now he assures me, and I was insistent on this, that it isn’t illegal, what he does. I didn’t enquire too closely, but I gather he knows someone at a hospital with access to dead bodies. I’m sure Stan doesn’t tamper with them, or cut them up or anything like that. I suppose he may, well, arrange them or whatever, like models, but he puts them back the way they were after he takes his cast. No one’s the wiser-or sadder.’

Kathy was peering at some shelves on the wall behind the dangling figure in the alcove. On them there were hands, feet and a head. She reached out to touch one of the hands and felt a throb of revulsion. She touched another. ‘These aren’t plaster,’ she said.‘They’re soft.’

‘They’ll be rubber,’ Tait said.

‘I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure they’re not.’ She held one aged hand in hers, feeling the bones flex beneath the skin. She suppressed a surge of nausea as she picked up the same chemical smell that had been so strong in Abbott’s mother’s room.

Fergus Tait looked more closely, then gave a little sigh. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. This is very naughty. I had no idea, none at all.’

‘Where is he now, Mr Tait?’

‘I really don’t know. I haven’t seen him since Gabe’s show last night. But look, let me just say that, irregular as this may be, Stan is not a bad fellow. I want you to understand that. He’s the gentlest of people, soft-spoken, polite, never a harsh word, loves animals and

…’ He hesitated.

‘And children,’ Brock finished the sentence for him.

‘He’s just completely caught up in his work.’

‘Where does this obsession of his come from?’ Kathy said.‘This thing he has about death?’

‘Well, a lot of art is about death. Goya…’

‘No, it’s something personal, isn’t it?’

‘You may be right. I’m not altogether sure. He doesn’t talk about it-not to me, anyway. There was some story of him being brought up by an elderly relative who died when he was a boy, but I’m not sure if that’s the source of it.’

‘He had a breakdown a few years ago, I believe?’

‘About five years ago. He’d come down from the north, nobody knew him, and he produced this amazing stuff- dark, but very powerful. He did a very controversial sculpture of Margaret Thatcher and he was invited to exhibit in a group show with some other up-and-coming young artists. The work he exhibited was called Bye, Bye, Princess-you’ll have heard of it?’

Kathy shook her head.

‘You haven’t? Well, it was a very realistic sculpture, a head and shoulders, presumably of Princess Di. The hair was the same characteristic style, and the lips and nose and one eye-it was definitely her-but the rest of her face was eaten away, it was very realistic, with maggots crawling in and out of the flesh. I mean they were real maggots, alive, breeding on some meat he’d put inside the skull, and they were dropping onto the floor and people were stepping on them-oh yes, it was quite disgusting. And this was just the year after Princess Di was killed, so you can imagine the tremendous fuss. I’m surprised you don’t remember it. The press pursued him, but he wouldn’t speak to them and that just drove them into a bigger frenzy. I mean, most of his contemporaries would have died for that kind of publicity, but he genuinely didn’t want any of it.’

‘When was this?’

‘Let’s see… Princess Di died in the summer of ninety-seven, right? So the exhibition would have been late ninety-eight.’

‘Shortly after Jane Rudd died.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Anyway, he tried to hide from the reporters but they found him in his studio and there was this terrible scene. One of the reporters was hurt. Poor Stan, it was all too much. He was arrested, but the psychiatrists said he wasn’t fit and he was put away in a hospital. He did some marvellous work in there. When I saw it I offered to show it at The Pie Factory and give him a home here till he found his feet. That was a couple of years ago, and he’s been here ever since.’

‘You’re a saint, Fergus,’ Kathy said.

He looked serious. ‘I’m a businessman, Kathy, and I look after my artists, because believe me, they need looking after. I can recognise talent, but I know I have to go gently with Stan. No fuss, next to no publicity, just a growing circle of admiring collectors of his work.’

‘People buy these things?’ Brock looked at the objects on the table in disgust.

‘Oh indeed. Much sought after.’

‘And you take a percentage, do you?’

‘In the case of my artists in residence, I own the work they produce, and pay their board and a salary.’

‘So you keep all of the proceeds of their sales?’

‘At first. When they begin here it’s a good deal for them, because their sales won’t nearly cover my outgoings, but as they become better known the balance swings back, and eventually they become well enough established to fly the nest, as it were.’

‘You pay for their production expenses, do you? Materials and the like?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it’ll be your money he used to bribe his “source” in the hospital to give him, or lend him, his body parts.’

‘Oh now!’ Tait lifted his hands as if to show how clean they were.‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Have you ever had a full-scale audit from the Inland Revenue? Our fraud people can be even more intrusive than that, I’m afraid.’

Tait coloured. ‘That’s a bit rough, Chief Inspector, threatening me like that. I’m trying to be cooperative, you know. I do perhaps recall Stan asking me for cash advances from time to time, for which no receipts were forthcoming. I didn’t quibble. The amounts weren’t large. More recently, as his sales have grown, he’s been getting a share of the proceeds and is free to spend it as he pleases. As you see, he’s a frugal man, dedicated to his work. I really wouldn’t know what he spends his money on.’

Kathy, meanwhile, was looking around the room, thinking. There were no images of children, no sign that Tracey might have been there or had contact with Dodworth. But she imagined a small child visiting Poppy’s room nearby and being intrigued by the attic room at the end of the corridor, climbing the stairway, opening the door, drawing back the curtain… Could that be Tracey’s monster, the thing hanging in the alcove?

‘Do you have a picture of Stan Dodworth?’ Brock asked.

‘Yes, there’ll be one in the files in my office downstairs.’

‘And I’d like to see where he worked, and any storerooms he would have had access to.’

Tait shrugged.‘You’re the boss.’

As they turned to leave they heard a woman’s voice raised in the corridor below, and as they came down the stairs they saw an officer backing out of one of the rooms, an angry Poppy following him.

‘It’s all right there, Poppy! Easy now!’ Tait called out, as if trying to soothe a pony.

She turned and looked up at them, and her eyes narrowed as she saw Kathy. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

‘It’s all right, Poppy,’ Kathy said, hurrying forward.‘We have to do this. Let me explain.’ She took the woman’s arm and led her back into her room, followed by Brock.

The furniture in the small room was cheap, bare plywood wardrobe and shelves, utility bed, carpet squares on the floor. Across the end of the room, in front of a small window, a sheet of plywood formed a table covered with sketchbooks, sheets of paper, glass jars jammed with pencils, pens and brushes. The books on the shelves were all art books, tall volumes with names for titles, Oldenburg, de Kooning, Gilbert and George. On a cork pinboard there were postcards and sketches, one of them a pencil portrait of Tracey.

‘Have you ever seen this man?’ Kathy showed her the picture of Abbott.

She seemed about to refuse even to look, but then relented, frowned.‘Why?’

‘It’s important.’

Poppy pursed her lips, then said quietly, ‘Stan knows him. Why do you ask?’

‘We believe he may have been involved in the disappearance of the girls. What about this second man?’

Poppy didn’t recognise Wylie’s picture. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked, suspicious.‘Why didn’t you show me them before, when we talked downstairs?’

‘We’ve only just got the pictures. What do you know of him?’

‘I saw him here with Stan in the workshops a couple of times recently.’

‘Before or after Tracey disappeared?’

Poppy screwed her nose, thinking. ‘The first time was before, I think. It was a late afternoon, and it was sunny, so it couldn’t have been last week, could it? I think the week before. They were in a huddle in the corner. I said hello but Stan didn’t introduce him. That was like Stan, secretive. The second time was only a few days ago.’

‘Do you know what they were doing?’

‘Looking at the work, I assume. I thought he might have been a buyer. When I came in that first time they were at the bench where I’d been finishing off one of my figures. The bloke with Stan was laughing, like at a dirty joke. I thought he was touching my sculpture and I was going to say something, but they moved off to look at Stan’s castings.’

‘Was the figure modelled on Tracey?’

‘I think so.’

‘Naked?’

Poppy became very still, eyes unblinking.

‘Did Stan know that it was based on Tracey?’

‘I don’t know… Yeah, he might have.’

‘He knew Tracey, of course? He’s seen her here and at Gabe’s house?’

‘Oh yes.’

As they were leaving, Kathy stopped in the doorway and turned back. ‘I don’t get it, Poppy. Your exhibition catalogue talks about your feminist principles and how you aim to expose the way men misuse images of women, but here you are manufacturing the images for them.’

Poppy looked subdued but defiant.‘That’s what Cherubs was about; their nakedness, painted with the blood of murderers… I wanted men to ogle them, and then feel ashamed. I wanted to rub their noses in it.’

‘Well, you certainly did that.’