No trace

12

Brock and Kathy left the team searching The Pie Factory and returned to the car. On the way back to Shoreditch they took a detour by way of the Newman estate. There were still a couple of detectives at the flats interviewing residents and visitors as they arrived, and a uniformed man stood at the entrance to the lift lobby. He recognised Brock and saluted as they approached. ‘Evening,’ Brock said.‘Any dramas?’

‘Not really, sir. Quite a few rubbernecks, wondering what’s going on.’

‘Yes, it’s them I was interested in. How long have you been here?’

‘Since ten this morning, with a break early afternoon.’

‘Wouldn’t happen to have seen this bloke, would you?’ Brock handed him the picture of Stan Dodworth that Tait had provided.

‘Distinctive,’ the constable murmured, and he was right-the face that stared from the picture was gaunt, head shaved and oddly tilted, eyes unnaturally wide. To Brock it seemed as if Dodworth had begun to resemble the death masks he collected.

‘Yes, he was here. Late morning, perhaps eleven-thirty, standing out there in the car park near the taped area talking to some of the local kids. I’d begun asking the snoopers for their names, to discourage them apart from anything else, but he scarpered as soon as he saw me coming.’ He opened his notebook to a list.

‘Can I have a look?’ Brock scanned the names, then stopped at one and showed it to Kathy. ‘This one, Gabe Rudd. Remember him?’

‘Let’s see. Oh yes, the photographer with white hair.

I thought at first he might be the press, taking all those pictures, but then I recognised the name, and he told me he was the father of the other missing girl. Wanted to know what was going on, he said, and take pictures of everything. Funny how people react, isn’t it?’

Bren, working with the team checking on Wylie’s and Abbott’s backgrounds, had not yet visited the hospital where Abbott had been employed as a porter, but had made contact with the administration to obtain details of next of kin and had arranged a meeting with a staff manager later that evening. On the phone he gave Brock the name and number of the contact.

The woman met Brock and Kathy at the front desk and showed them to her office. ‘Your colleague said that Mr Abbott had a fatal accident last night,’ she said,‘but he didn’t elaborate.’

‘That’s right. We had been hoping to interview him in connection with the disappearance of the three missing children you may have read about.’

The woman’s face registered shock. ‘Mr Abbott? Oh dear.’ She stared at them for a moment, her mind elsewhere, working fast, then her eyes dropped to the file open on the desk in front of her. ‘He worked in the wing that houses geriatrics, as well as the pathology and mortuary departments. Not the children’s wing.’ A note of relief. Abbott had been employed there for over two years and there were no complaints or disciplinary actions recorded against him.

‘Was his mother, Mrs Eileen Abbott, ever a patient here by any chance?’

The woman was obviously puzzled by the question, but turned to her computer and began tapping. ‘We did have an Eileen Abbott here recently. Age seventy-six. Yes, same home address. She died here last July, the twenty-fifth.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Bronchial pneumonia. She was also suffering from advanced muscular dystrophy.’

‘Do you have a record of how her body was disposed of?’

The manager scrolled through the record on her screen. ‘It would have been prepared in the mortuary and then handed over to funeral directors of the next of kin’s choosing for burial or cremation. Yes, here we are, Gill Brothers, a reputable local firm. Why?’

‘We found Mrs Abbott’s body last night, in Patrick Abbott’s flat.’

The woman flinched. ‘Surely not?’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘I’m afraid so. Any idea how that could be possible?’

‘I can’t imagine. It says here that Gill Brothers collected Mrs Abbott on the morning of the twenty-seventh. We know them well. I can’t believe they could have lost her.’

‘Why don’t you give them a ring?’ Brock suggested.

A couple of minutes later the manager replaced her phone, her face very pale. ‘They checked their records. They say they never took her. There’s no mention of an order on their files. But that’s just impossible…’ Her mind was working.‘Unless…’

‘Yes?’ Brock prompted.

‘Unless he got into our computer and altered our records.’ Her hand strayed to her keyboard and touched it gently, as if comforting a dear friend who had been violated.‘There will have to be an inquiry.’

‘Of course. Meanwhile, do you have anything on a Stanley Dodworth? Did he ever work here, or check in as a patient?’

More tapping. ‘Umm, not in our staff records… We have a patient listed, appendectomy, middle of last year.’ She swung the monitor around to show Brock the details.

‘That’s him. I have his picture here. You wouldn’t recognise him, I suppose?’

She shook her head.‘But then I wouldn’t.’

‘It’s possible he came here more recently. I’d like to show it to people who worked in Patrick Abbott’s area, and circulate it to your security.’

‘Do you mind telling me why?’

‘He was a friend of Abbott’s, and we want to interview him, only he’s disappeared. We think he used to visit Abbott here at the hospital, and it’s just possible he might return here.’

‘I should alert Mrs Siddons. She manages the staff on main desk. There’s not much comes through our front doors that Mrs Siddons isn’t aware of.’

‘Would she be here now?’

She was. She came bustling into the office and immediately recognised the man in the photograph.‘That’s Stan, one of our porters.’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mrs Siddons. He’s not one of ours.’

‘He certainly is. I see him around a lot. With Pat Abbott usually.’

‘But he doesn’t work here.’

‘Well, he wears one of our passes. I’ve seen it.’

Brock interrupted.‘I’d very much appreciate it if you’d take a copy of this picture for your staff, Mrs Siddons, and tell them to ring security immediately if you see him again. It seems he’s been impersonating a hospital employee.’

When she left he turned to the manager and said, ‘I think I’d better tell you what we think they were up to, and then I’d like to take a look at Abbott’s work area, if you don’t mind.’

By accident or design, the geriatric wards were connected directly by large, ponderous lifts to the pathology and mortuary areas beneath them. They found a number of workers in the basement who recognised Dodworth’s photograph and who were convinced that he worked in some other department nearby. Sometimes he appeared in operating-theatre greens, they said, sometimes in overalls, sometimes in jeans and a T-shirt with a slogan, something about cherish the frail.

They were taken to Abbott’s locker, where Brock signed a release for its contents-a pair of sneakers, several fat Stephen King paperbacks, a pair of glasses, an aluminium walking stick like the one he had in his flat, and, of most interest, a small diary. They spent some time sitting together at a table with a desk light, poring through its pages. It seemed to be a work diary, a record of shifts, overtime and leave. In addition, there were many entries of sequences of numbers and letters. It didn’t take long to establish that the strings of digits were identification numbers for patients.

‘I think he was keeping a record of what he was lending Stan,’ Brock murmured.‘Probably didn’t trust him to return the bits.’

‘Like a lending library catalogue,’ Kathy said. ‘Maybe the letters refer to parts-‘H’ for head,‘RL’ right leg…’

Brock was turning to the entries for the days on which the girls had been taken, and shook his head with disappointment.‘Nothing. Not a thing. I suppose it wasn’t very likely.’ He snapped the book shut and pushed it into his pocket.‘Come on. Enough of this.’

They returned to The Pie Factory to check on the progress of the search. Nothing of significance had been discovered and there was still no sign of Stan Dodworth. As they left, Kathy glanced back at the building. At one end, to the left, a tableau of elegant waiters and diners shone through the large plate-glass windows of the restaurant, like a scene from a play dropped absurdly, nakedly into the dark damp square. Between that and the locked gallery entrance was a smaller window with a view into the main gallery space, also lit up. Gabe Rudd’s banners could just be glimpsed beyond a crew of people in there constructing some sort of structure behind the window. Banner number six, perhaps, Kathy thought. He certainly had plenty of material to work with.

‘Edward Hopper,’ Brock said. He, too, was looking at the diners mutely gossiping, laughing, raising glasses in a toast.‘Can I buy you dinner?’

‘What, in there?’ Kathy wondered if he’d checked the prices.

‘No.’ He chuckled. ‘I was thinking more in terms of a little Greek place I noticed around the corner, not far away.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘I’ll just call Bren and then we’ll walk over. Some fresh air will do us good.’

They were lucky to get in, the Saturday night crowd boisterous, and were squeezed into a tight little corner at the back, between a stair and the door to the kitchens.

Brock eased his back against the bentwood chair and gave a long sigh. ‘We’re finished for the night, Kathy. Let’s have a drink.’ He ordered two large Scotches while they scanned the menu. ‘It seems plain enough,’ he said, as if it were spelled out there in the flamboyant handwritten script.‘Dodworth met Abbott when he was a patient at the hospital last year, and persuaded him to obtain body parts for him to make casts from, culminating in the whole corpse of Abbott’s mother. I wonder if Dodworth met Wylie, and how much of Abbott’s and Wylie’s other activities he was aware of?’

‘You’d have to assume he knew something. He obviously knew where they lived, and it looks as if he’s trying to hide from us.’

‘So one day Abbott visits Dodworth at The Pie Factory and sees the sculpture of a pretty child, and Stan tells him who she is. He and Wylie are on the lookout for victim number three…’

A waiter lit the candle in the centre of the red-andwhite checked tablecloth and took their order.

‘So Abbott and Wylie did take Tracey.’

‘Looks very much that way, doesn’t it? She was part of the series after all. So now it’s down to legwork and manpower and luck, unless Wylie can be persuaded to tell us where she is.’

‘Six days. It’s too long. She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Lee survived three weeks. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do to speed the process, so tomorrow we’ll have a well-earned day of rest, you and I, putting our feet up and reading more scathing reviews of Mr Rudd’s masterpieces.’

‘Will you be seeing Suzanne and the kids?’ Kathy asked, feeling a squirm of guilt as she recalled the letter she’d partially read. She felt a sudden urge to scratch her nose.

Brock hesitated, and Kathy saw a frown pass over his face.‘Stewart and Miranda aren’t with Suzanne any more, Kathy. I meant to tell you. Their mother came back.’

‘What!’ This was extraordinary news, and extraordinary, too, that Brock hadn’t mentioned it. Now Kathy thought she understood the reference to choices in Suzanne’s letter. She had been looking after her two grandchildren for several years now, after her daughter had gone off with a new man who didn’t want to be encumbered by her children. Having been abandoned by their mother, the kids had become extremely possessive of Suzanne, and although Kathy had got on well with them, she knew that they’d seen Brock as a threat and had given him a hard time.

‘Permanently?’ Kathy asked. ‘Their mother’s back for good?’

‘Presumably.’

‘Well… that’s great, isn’t it?’ But Brock looked uneasy, and Kathy remembered her long-held suspicion that he actually found the arrangement convenient.

‘Yes. But it’ll take some adjustment for Suzanne.’

And for you, Kathy thought.

The waiter brought a mezze platter. Brock asked for another whisky, and poured a glass of wine for Kathy. She said,‘I must give Suzanne a ring. I haven’t spoken to her for ages. How is she?’

She waited a long time before he replied. ‘Fine. She’s fine.’

The subject seemed closed, so she said, ‘Can I have a look at that diary?’

He handed it to her, and she began to study the pages, working forward from the beginning.‘The codes are there right from the start of the year, so he was giving Stan stuff long before the business with the girls, before his mother died. When was that again?’

‘July twenty-fifth,’ Brock said absently, reaching for the dolmades.

She found the day, a Friday. Abbott had marked the place with a crude ballpoint outline of a cross. RIP was written across it. The diary was printed with little symbols to indicate the lunar phases, the twenty-fifth of July bearing the symbol of the new moon. Abbott had arranged his drawing on the page so that the arc of the new moon appeared at the top of the cross, like a symbol on a gravestone.

‘And they took Aimee on the twenty-second of August,’ Kathy said, turning to that date. As Brock had said, there was nothing to indicate its significance. But that day also carried the symbol of the new moon. She turned to the date of Lee’s abduction, the nineteenth of September, and there it was again. She felt a tremor of excitement and also of disgust, as if she’d had a sudden glimpse inside Abbott’s mind. Now Tracey’s abduction, the twelfth of October. But there was nothing, no moon sign. Kathy frowned.

‘Spot something?’ Brock looked up from contemplation of his whisky glass. He felt the spirit soaking through him like a warm bath.

‘I thought I’d found a pattern, but it doesn’t work for Tracey.’ She showed him the dates. ‘The next new moon wasn’t until the seventeenth of October, yesterday. Tracey was taken five days too soon.’

Brock shrugged, unconvinced.‘I wish I could think of something we could offer Wylie to get him to start talking.’

‘I wonder…’ Kathy began, then stopped.

‘What?’

‘I was just wondering if it’s possible Abbott killed his mother, too, in the hospital.’

Brock thought for a moment, then said, ‘I think we’re getting tired.’