No trace

13

The next morning Kathy walked down to the shops for some milk and the papers. It was cool but dry, a crisp breeze blowing leaves and wrappers down the empty street. When she got home she did as Brock had recom mended, making toast and coffee and lying down on the sofa to read the reviews. Was it unworthy to relish a savage review of someone else’s work, especially someone you knew? The reviewer in the first paper she opened seemed to think it was:

There are those in the art world who have been conducting a whispering campaign to the effect that, at thirty-three, Gabriel Rudd is burnt out and finished as a serious artist. Their schadenfreude was immensely piqued by the prospect of the critical failure of his new exhibition, No Trace, at The Pie Factory, and seemed confirmed by the first hurried review. Furtive cackling could be heard from certain Shoreditch studios as the champagne was uncorked. But they were wrong; the exhibition is a stunning success, the work breathtaking, and Rudd’s reputation reaffirmed in spades.

His subject is the recent abduction of his daughter Tracey (Trace), which has been so widely publicised in the past week. Rudd has transformed this tragic event into an immensely moving record of the anguish of a father’s loss. Real-life tragedy seems to inspire him to heights of expression far beyond so much contemporary work, which merely apes human suffering with hollow gestures. Twice-bereft, he made a similarly evocative journey five years ago, after the loss of his young wife, in his celebrated exhibition The Night-Mare. No Trace is even better, more mature, more deeply felt.

The work comprises a series of ethereal hangings, each recording the events of a single day of Tracey’s absence-the shock of discovery, the police hunt, the agony of waiting, the struggle to articulate pain. The ghostly quality of these tormented records is exquisite, like vapour trails of memory, elegant in their minimalism. We stare, we hold our breath, we say, here is Rothko at the dark midnight of the soul.

Rudd has promised to continue producing these works until Tracey is recovered, and while of course we fervently hope that this will soon occur, we cannot help but yearn for a gallery filled with such poignant expressions of the kind of contemporary tragedy that haunts us all.

‘Well, well,’ Kathy thought. She poured herself another cup, opened the second paper, and discovered an even more ecstatic review.

At his desk in Shoreditch police station, Brock put aside the same newspaper and thought about a more difficult problem. He hadn’t yet answered Suzanne’s letter, and the longer he left it the harder it became. The very idea of writing a letter seemed stiff and old-fashioned, as if they were living in an age before the telephone, when manners were more formal and correct. He wondered if that was her point, that setting things down on paper somehow made them more contractual and irrevocable. Not that there was anything unreasonable in what she had to say. Her life had arrived at a point which she hadn’t expected; she was suddenly free of ties she’d assumed to be permanent and now she needed to reassess things. Everything.

He picked up the phone, and as he dialled a siren wailed outside like a premonition of winter. She answered on the first ring and he pictured her sitting in her bay window overlooking the high street. As soon as he heard her voice he felt the familiar tug.

‘David! I’ve just been reading about Gabriel Rudd. He sounds outrageous.’

‘How are you?’

‘Missing you. You got my letter?’

‘Yes. I’ve been thinking a lot about it.’

‘I’m sorry, it must have been the last thing you needed with your new case starting at the same time. I know how busy you’ve been. I did ring you during the week, but you were in a meeting. I was put through to someone in Shoreditch and they said they’d give you the message. Did you get it?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘It just helped me to put everything down in black and white. I feel I have to sort things out.’

‘I understand.’

‘And it’s not as if we haven’t talked about it before. You remember, when you got beaten up in the street?’

‘I wasn’t beaten up, exactly.’

‘You were attacked while you were making that arrest, and we agreed it was time you reassessed what you were doing, so that you weren’t put in that kind of situation any more.’

He couldn’t remember agreeing to any such thing, but he didn’t argue.

‘Anyway, I just think this has come at the right time,’ she went on firmly.‘It’s time to start again, for both of us.’

Brock couldn’t decide whether it sounded more like an invitation or an order. He felt frustrated by the phone, unable to gauge the expression on her face, the set of her body. He sensed that she’d already moved on from the doubts expressed in her letter, and had already arrived at certain conclusions.

‘You know things are impossible for us like this, David, hardly ever seeing each other, fitting our lives in around your job and my grandchildren. We put up with it because we had to, but we don’t any more.’

‘We need to talk these things through, Suzanne. We should make time, get away for a while, take a holiday,’ he improvised soothingly.‘Soon, after this case is over.’

‘Exactly!’ Her enthusiasm caught him by surprise. ‘You know who rang me the other night? Doug in Sydney-you remember? My sister Emily’s husband. They’re planning for her sixtieth birthday next month, and he thought how fantastic it would be if I turned up at the party, as a surprise. I haven’t seen her for ten years. It seemed like a sign, coming out of the blue like that. I want us both to go, David.’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ he said cautiously. ‘When is this?’

‘In about three weeks. I thought we might make a proper trip of it, see the outback, take four or five weeks.’

‘In three weeks? Oh.’

‘Come on, David. Surely that gives you enough time to organise things at work so you can get away?’

‘This is a major inquiry, Suzanne. A big one.’ He knew he was sounding stubborn and obstructive, but he couldn’t help it.

‘They’re always big ones.’ Her voice was cool now.‘You work for a big organisation. They can handle it. I want us to do this, David. I think it’s important, for both of us.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll have a look, see if it’s possible.’

‘Please. But don’t take too long. The flights are heavily booked. I checked.’

Kathy felt edgy, unsettled, and went to a movie that afternoon, returning home at dusk. The phone was ringing as she opened the front door. She was surprised to hear the voice of Bren’s wife, Deanne.

‘Hi, Kathy.’

‘Hi. Is everything all right?’

‘Yes. Bren’s gone back to work, but there was something I thought you might be interested in. You probably already know. Do you lot monitor Gabriel Rudd’s website?’

‘I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it.’

‘Well, you might find it interesting, and all the other sites about him and his work-there are hundreds of them. They’ve been going crazy lately, of course. But you should check out his official site, www.gaberudd.co. He’s just updated it with a bulletin about his exhibition and his thoughts about everything. The thing I thought you should know is that he’s claiming the police have treated him shamefully, like a criminal instead of a victim, and he’s decided to refuse all further cooperation with them. He’s going into retreat, apparently.’

‘Retreat?’

‘Yes, into his art. He says he needs to focus on that. And physically, he’s retreating into a glass cube he’s had built inside the main gallery of The Pie Factory, alongside his hangings. He’s there now-there are pictures on his site of people looking in at him through the gallery window, and through the glass wall of the restaurant. He’s the only one with a key and he’s got a camp bed in there, and some kind of toilet, and electricity to run a fan and his computers. He says he’ll only communicate through his computer. He’s currently designing the next banner, and sending the images to his team. Oh…’ Deanne hesitated,‘… and he’s got a badger in there with him, too.’

‘Did you say badger?’

‘Yes, a live badger. He’s called Dave, and he’s currently hiding under a blanket. You know a brock is another word for a badger, don’t you?’

Kathy groaned.‘Yes.’

‘It’s Joseph Beuys again, like he did to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘One of Beuys’s art “actions” consisted in locking himself in a loft in New York with a live coyote. Rudd’s quoting again.’

Kathy gave a sigh.‘Well, at least we know where he is. We can always go in there and pull him out.’

‘Oh no, you couldn’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, Kathy… This is sort of what my masters is about: relative values. In fact, I might use this as a case study. Society operates on a hierarchy of value systems, right? Religion was once at the top, but now it’s way down, with royalty, say. Wealth is high up, and celebrity, and heritage and ethnicity, but at the very top is art. Art trumps everything else. You can blaspheme on TV, make jokes about the Queen, be obscene and poke fun at the rich and famous, but you can’t afford to be seen as a philistine. You can’t trash art, not really, not unless you’re an artist yourself, in which case your trashing of art becomes art itself, which is okay. Gabriel Rudd in his glass box in the gallery is a work of art-he’s said so. He’s now part of the No Trace work. You can’t possibly desecrate it. The whole world is watching.’

‘So you’re saying that the only way to get him out is to recruit an even bigger artist than him-this Beuys character, for example-into the Met and put him in uniform and give him an artistic sledgehammer.’

Deanne chuckled.‘He’s dead, unfortunately. But I don’t see it happening, do you?’

‘No. Brock’ll love this.’

‘I know.’

‘What about justice? Where does that come on your scale of values? I mean, Stan Dodworth has been stealing corpses to make artworks out of them.’

‘Oh, they all poked around in corpses, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Stubbs. That’s all right. Body snatching wouldn’t come close.’

‘What about child murder? Suppose Dodworth has killed Tracey so as to make a sculpture out of her? What then?’

Deanne thought for a while. ‘Mmm. Of course he’d have to face justice, but even then… I think the artistic recognition might outweigh the moral revulsion. Yes, it’d be a close call, but I think it would.’

‘That’s sick.’

‘It’s what you’re up against. Is it possible that Dodworth did take Tracey?’

‘It’s possible, Deanne. Right now, anything’s possible.’

The following morning Kathy went to see the performance in Northcote Square. Many others had had the same idea, lured by reports in the news. Office workers on their way to the City, parents dropping children at school, truck drivers unable to make deliveries to the building site because of the crowd blocking the corner of Lazarus Street and West Terrace, all strained for a glimpse through the window at the artist and, hopefully, his famous badger. In response to all this, the gallery was opening its doors early as Kathy arrived, and the good-humoured crush of spectators was syphoning inside to get a close-up view and maybe a quick photo to take back to friends.

Kathy joined the group outside the gallery window. She noticed a closed-circuit television camera mounted on the wall overhead, which she was sure hadn’t been there before, and attached to it a small microphone. It seemed they were recording the reactions of the spectators.

‘His hair really is very white, isn’t it?’ one young woman said, fingering her own blonde curls.

‘But this isn’t original, is it?’ her friend said, and clutched the collar of her coat impatiently against the cold wind.

‘What, his hair?’

‘Him locking himself in the glass box. There was that other bloke.’

‘Two others,’ the first woman corrected.

‘Well, what’s the point then? If it’s not original, what’s the point?’

‘I suppose the badger’s original.’

‘Yes, but you can’t even see it, hiding under the blanket. Maybe there isn’t a badger at all. Maybe they’re just saying there’s a badger.’

‘Do you think he’s going to go to the lavatory in front of everyone?’

‘That I don’t want to see. Come on, we’re late.’

As they hurried away Kathy noticed a fresh graffiti message on the pavement, written in the same looping letters as the one on the wall further along. It read,‘this is art’.

She joined the queue filing into the gallery. The girl at the desk had already run out of handouts for the exhibition and said more were on the way. She looked harassed, her face pink and slightly puffy, as if she’d woken up in the middle of a wild party. Her discomfort wasn’t helped by a man claiming to be from the RSPCA, demanding to speak to someone in charge about the badger, asking where they’d got it and how it was being treated.

‘I believe there is a vet on standby,’ she fretted, but he wasn’t to be put off.

‘Get me the boss,’ the man insisted stolidly.‘I can have this place shut down.’

‘Oh, I don’t think you can.’

Kathy passed through into the crowded gallery. The area around the glass cube was jammed, and she moved to a quieter corner where tables had been set up for three young female computer operators, all dressed identically in white caps and T-shirts with Gabe’s Team written on the back. One of them looked up and gave Kathy a brief smile.

‘Can I ask what you’re doing?’ Kathy asked.

‘We’re handling Gabe’s website emails, all the messages coming in from around the world, thousands of them. We select interesting ones and publish them hourly.’

‘Ah. I thought maybe you were part of the artwork.’

‘Oh, but we are!’ the girl said cheerfully.‘Gabe said so.’

‘You’ve spoken to him?’

‘Not verbally; he’s refusing to speak to anyone. We report to him on our computers.’

Kathy turned back to the crowd around the glass cube and took advantage of a gap to work her way to the front. There was Gabe, white hair awry, crouched over a keyboard, ignoring the faces staring in at him all around. For a moment the whole scene was motionless, like a very realistic but improbable sculpture, then something caused a stir to one side, a hand pointed to the crumpled blanket at the artist’s feet and someone said,‘I think it moved.’

On her way out Kathy saw that a new banner had been added. It was titled He fell from a ledge on the thirteenth floor, and showed a spreadeagled figure, wide-eyed with horror like a character from a cartoon strip, superimposed on a grainy photographic image of the block of flats at the Newman estate.

She hurried up West Terrace on her way to the morning briefing at Shoreditch station but was stopped short by a sharp little cry,‘Here!’. She turned and saw Betty Zielinski’s face peering up at her through the railings in front of her house. The woman was standing halfway down the steps leading to her basement door, and was clutching the cast-iron railings as if they were the bars of a cage, her face at pavement level.

‘Hello, Betty. How are you?’

Betty pushed a crooked finger through the bars and wiggled it at Kathy to come closer. Feeling slightly ridiculous, Kathy approached and knelt.

‘Have you caught him yet?’

‘We caught two men, Betty. But we haven’t found Tracey yet.’

‘You haven’t arrested him, though, have you?’

‘Who?’

‘The monster that took her.’

Kathy leaned closer to the bars.‘Why do you call him that?’

‘That’s what Tracey called him. I saw him that night, shiny black, like a lizard. After the scream.’ She peered fearfully along the footpath to right and left.

‘You saw him?’

Betty lifted her eyes to Kathy, the white globes wild and moist with tears. ‘I watch him, you know, I know his secrets. It’s not the first time he’s taken a child.’

‘I know, Betty. There were the other two girls. But what exactly did you see?’

‘No! Not them. Another child taken here in the square.’ Her voice was quavering, on the edge of hysteria.

‘Here? What do you mean?’

Kathy’s lack of understanding seemed to confuse and upset Betty more. She began to speak again.‘I know where she is!’ she sobbed, ‘Tra

…’ but then the words died abruptly in her throat. Staring past Kathy, a look of terror transformed her face.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kathy said, then looked back over her shoulder to see Poppy and Yasher standing together, gazing at them from the other side of the street as if they’d just emerged through the gate in the garden railings. Yasher turned on his heel and started to stride away but Poppy remained, frowning.

Kathy turned back to speak again to Betty, only to find her gone. She caught a glimpse of her cloak in the dark opening of the basement door, and called out,‘Betty, hang on, let’s talk.’ But all she got in return was a frightened squawk and the slam of the door.

‘What did she say?’

Kathy straightened to find Poppy at her back.‘I’m not sure. She was trying to tell me something…’ She noticed a bruise on Poppy’s cheek, a raw graze on the cheekbone.

‘You don’t want to take any notice of what she says. You think you’re getting somewhere and then she flies off at a tangent. Everything gets mixed up in her head. She remembers someone from long ago and then’s convinced she’s just seen them. For a time she thought I was her daughter.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ Kathy looked at the dark figure marching down the street.‘Yasher doesn’t look happy.’

‘He’s mad because your lot interviewed him yesterday and practically accused him of being a Turkish drug baron. He thinks someone in the square has been making trouble for him with the cops. I was trying to convince him it wasn’t me.’

‘Did he do that to your face?’

‘I bumped into something in the workshop.’ She paused, staring at the crowd milling outside the gallery, and her mouth turned down with distaste.

‘It’s quite a circus, isn’t it?’ Kathy said.

‘Yeah. You were right, Gabe’s got a talent for it.’

Kathy got the impression that the tribute wasn’t altogether a compliment. Then Poppy abruptly said,‘Gotta go,’ and hurried away.

Kathy checked her watch. She was running late for the briefing, but she had to find out what Betty had meant. It had sounded as if she was saying she knew where Tracey was. Kathy climbed the steps to her front door and called through the letterbox. ‘Betty? It’s me. The others have gone. Please come and talk to me.’

She listened but heard nothing and called out again. Still nothing.

She was on the point of giving up when the door opened suddenly in front of her. Betty stood there, wild-eyed, hair everywhere. ‘There!’ she said, and thrust something into Kathy’s face. Kathy took a step back and reached for it. It was a small canvas on a wooden stretcher, unframed. The oil paint was thick and crudely applied, and Kathy felt it still slightly soft beneath her thumb. It was a rudimentary portrait of a human face, pink, with yellow hair and bright blue eyes.

‘You see?’ Betty laughed.‘She’s still here with me.’

‘Did she do this, Betty?’ Kathy asked, but Betty only lifted an index finger to her lips.

‘Sh! Secrets!’ she whispered. She snatched back the picture and slammed the door shut.