No trace

Barry Maitland
1

He sighed and his attention strayed to the second item on the table, a letter, neat blue words on cream paper. He set the senior management report aside, picked up the letter and began to read it once again.

Dear David,

I have to put this in writing, because I haven’t been able to find the words to say aloud…

He reached the end and sat lost in thought, feeling the drag of sadness inside him, the weight of time and loss. As if to emphasise this, his eyes moved to a small framed picture on the wall in front of him, a shabby little thing, a gift from a murderer. He remembered his first glimpse of it, long ago, above the mantelpiece of a house in Stepney as he kneeled on the floor with the body of Emily Crab, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood from her throat. Emily had ruined his suit but established his reputation on his first big murder case. Later, interviewing her husband, he had asked about the little picture, saying that it had looked to him like the work of the German artist Kurt Schwitters, whom he greatly admired. Walter Crab had been surprised and gratified by this recognition. He told Brock that during the war his mother had taken in a refugee, a man who had been hunted by the Gestapo from Germany to Norway, before escaping to London. The man was penniless, and Walter’s mother had accepted the picture in lieu of a month’s rent and board. When her friends saw it-an old bus ticket, a scrap of a newspaper headline and other fragments glued to a piece of cardboard-they laughed and told her she’d been had, and Walter had been mortified on his mother’s account. Brock was the first person who had ever admired it, and yes, on the back was the signature K. Schwitters, and the title, Merz 598a, London, 1943. Then Walter confessed to Brock that he had murdered Emily and that the alibi provided by his sister was false. On the day that Crab was sentenced, Brock received a brown-paper parcel in the mail containing the Schwitters and a carefully written note from Walter, gifting him the picture in compensation for Brock’s ruined suit. Ever since, Brock had regarded the little collage as an icon, a condensed statement of his own calling, gathering the discarded residue of people’s lives and making out of it some kind of pattern and sense.

Brock folded the letter and tucked it into the management report to mark the place he’d reached, then turned his attention to the third document on the table, every page of which he’d memorised over the weekend. It was a file marked Metropolitan Police, Case File Summary: Abductions of Aimee Jennifer Prentice and Lee Celine Hammond. He turned to the pictures of the missing girls, although they were already imprinted in his mind; Aimee with a cheeky lopsided grin and Lee, dreamy and pensive, as if she could sense the onset of puberty inside her slight body.

Pinned to the cover of the report was the memo confirming the formation of a Major Enquiry Team, headed by Detective Chief Inspector David Brock, which would take control of the case as from 0800 hours on Monday October 13. Brock checked his watch. Two hours. Time to go. athy drove slowly down the clogged artery of Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, part of the stream of sullen Monday morning traffic splashing cold puddles over the legs of huddled bus queues. She could hear the howl of a police siren somewhere up ahead, and on the radio she picked up the first news reports of another missing girl, the third child abducted from her home in east London in recent weeks.

She made a turn into Lazarus Street and found herself hemmed between the dark brick walls of warehouses under conversion to offices, studio flats and uncertain investment opportunities. Two small girls burst out of a side alley, school bags bouncing on their shoulders, black faces bright with glee, and Kathy stopped to let them pass.

She was impatient. The call had come half an hour before, cancelling the first scheduled meeting of the new Major Enquiry Team and diverting personnel to Shoreditch, and she felt the anticipation itching inside her at the beginning of a new case. She checked the mirror to make sure the girls were clear of the back of the car and caught her own reflection. Serious eyes, official eyes. This is how you get to look in your thirties when you take your job too seriously, she thought. Her hair, very pale in the gloom of the dark street, fell almost to her eyes, and she remembered that she’d booked for a cut that afternoon. She’d have to cancel.

As she moved on she passed the end of a narrow service lane and saw two uniformed police examining a row of dustbins. Ahead she spotted a pulsing blue light at the point where the street opened into a square. The patrol car was parked outside a sandwich shop, Mahmed’s Cafe, with two cops stooped talking to the driver, leaning against the car roof to ease the weight of their protective vests and loaded belts.

Kathy slowed and called across to them.‘Hi, DS Kolla, SO1. Northcote Square?’

‘This is it.’ The man, registering the initials of the Serious Crime Group unit, peered across at her. ‘Better park down here, Sarge. The north end’s chocker.’

As she rolled forward she saw what he meant, a jam of vehicles blocking the far end of the square. She hadn’t been here before, and she had the impression of a rather forbidding place hidden away among the tangle of streets. The square was surrounded by buildings of mixed age and use, mostly in dark red brick, all severe and square-profiled against the grey sky. Theyoverlookedathicklytreed central garden fenced by iron railings. Kathy pulled up beneath a no stopping sign and placed her Metropolitan Police Emergency notice on the dash. One of the uniforms came over to her.

‘That’s the house,’ he said, pointing to a building at the other end of the square behind the densest crush of vehicles and people. Originally two storeys high and rather squat and plain, a further two floors of milky white glass had been added.‘Press have just arrived.’

‘Thanks.’

She saw other uniformed men and women door-knocking and talking to staff arriving for work at offices on the east side of the square. Here on the south side, Lazarus Street, was an old industrial building with a sawtooth roof. Like most of the other older buildings in the area it showed signs of conversion. A large section of ground-floor brick wall had been replaced by frameless glass, through which Kathy could make out white linen on restaurant tables. Red neon letters attached to the parapet announced ‘The Pie Factory’. Someone had sprayed a graffiti message in looping black letters on the brick wall beside the restaurant window: ‘same old shit’.

Kathy crossed to the pavement that snaked around the central gardens, her feet squelching on wet leaves dropped by the brooding trees. Bolted to the railings was a police notice, warning motorists that thieves were active in the area and giving the Crimestoppers’ 0800 number. A logo identified Hackney Borough Police, the operational command unit for this area of the city. There was scaffolding up on part of West Terrace, which formed this side of the square, and some builders had stopped work to see what was going on. A man with a hard hat was leaning out of a windowless hole on the top floor of one of the buildings under reconstruction, passing observations down to his mates on the pavement below. Spotting Kathy, he paused in his commentary and the others turned to check out the blonde. One gave a desultory whistle and another called, ‘Give us a smile, darling,’ but the morning was too dull and their hearts weren’t in it.

There was something of a melee at the top end of West Terrace, where traffic coming to the corner of the square was trying to work its way around stationary vehicles. She saw several cops trying to move people on, and when she reached the place Kathy realised that the problem was a school playground on the other side of the crossing, where small children were arriving with adults, all demanding to know what the police vehicles and press cameras were doing there.

Kathy turned along the north side, Urma Street, past a corner pub called The Daughters of Albion, and worked her way through the crowd standing outside number fifty-three. She showed her ID to a constable with a clipboard at the front door and he recorded her name.

‘Scene of crime are working on this floor, Sarge. If you take the stairs, I think you’ll find the others on the next level.’

The front door closed behind her. She was in an entrance hall leading to a corridor of open doors. Ahead, a man wearing white nylon overalls was backing out of a room with a video camera held to his eye. To her left, a flight of open-tread timber stairs rose towards the sound of voices. Kathy climbed the stairs and emerged into a large room that took up the whole floor, well lit with windows to both back and front. The building had been gutted, exposing bare brick walls and the underside of timber floor beams overhead from which industrial lamps were suspended. Kathy caught sight of very large grainy images hanging on the walls, of horses’ heads with huge bulging eyes, like dramatic advertisements for a horror movie.

Kathy had never seen such a response to a crime scene. The place was crowded with police, as if half the Met had been called out. She spotted Brock’s cropped white hair and beard among a cluster of large men in dark coats. She went over and he introduced her to a superintendent, Head of Operations, and a DCI, Head of Crime Investigations, both from the Borough Police. Then he drew her aside and said rapidly, ‘I have a few things to sort out here, Kathy, then I want to speak to the father, Gabriel Rudd, over there.’ He nodded towards a man sitting alone at a circular dining table, staring at a small TV on the table in front of him.‘Why not go and introduce yourself? I’ll be with you in a minute. See if you can find somewhere quiet for us to talk to him.’

Kathy paused, struck by the man at the table, a solitary, motionless figure among all the bustle and noise filling the room. He had a startling mop of stark white curls and was wearing a black pinstriped suit without shirt or socks or shoes. The cut of the suit looked expensive. As she drew closer Kathy was surprised to see splashes of colour on its legs. His attention was completely focused on the screen, where a man with an Irish accent, red hair and large round glasses was being interviewed. ‘… A lovely fellow, and amazingly talented. And devoted to his little girl. He must be devastated…’

‘Hello, Mr Rudd? I’m Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla.’

He glanced up at her and said softly, ‘Yes, saw you arrive.’ He nodded back at the screen, which was now showing a view of the square outside and the crush of people at his front door. His face was lean and intelligent, Kathy thought, though very pale and drawn, with dark hollows around the eyes.

‘I’m very sorry about your daughter.’

‘Tracey,’ he said.‘Her name’s Tracey.’

‘Right. I’m with the Major Enquiry Team led by DCI Brock…’

‘Brock? Oh yes…’ He looked vaguely in Brock’s direction, then focused again on the small screen, which now showed a reporter talking into a microphone. ‘… Turner Prize, and in the following year represented Britain at the Venice Biennale…’ A news summary was tracking across the bottom of the screen: Rapid police response to third child abduction in London borough.

‘Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?’

‘What? Oh, right. I’ll just record this on the other set.’

He stood up, very tall, easing himself through the gap between two bulky cops to get to a large flat-screen TV against the wall, and began working a remote. Brock arrived at Kathy’s side.

‘How are we doing?’

‘He’s just recording the TV coverage,’ Kathy said. ‘What’s that on his legs, do you think?’

‘He says it’s paint. That’s what he does. He’s an artist, he paints.’

‘In his best suit?’

Brock shrugged.‘Tracey Rudd, six years old, apparently taken from her bedroom at the back of the ground floor during the night. Mr Rudd rang triple nine an hour and a half ago, shortly after seven. You know about the other two cases of course. We’ll have to postpone the briefing on them until we get on top of this one. Hackney Operational Command Unit are giving us facilities at Shoreditch police station and I’ve got Bren working with their search teams.’

He gave her several names and phone numbers which she wrote down in her notebook as Gabriel Rudd returned.

‘We can go up to the studio, if you like,’ he said. He sounded distant, detached, as if all this wasn’t really happening. They followed the slap of his bare feet on the timber steps up to a landing on the next floor. At the top, he opened a door and led them into his studio, suddenly empty and silent after the activity below. Kathy realised that this was the extension above the original building which she had seen from across the square, its white translucent end wall and ceiling producing a stunning luminous effect. The space was tall, with a ladder up to a gallery that stretched across one end. The lower sections of the walls were lined with white pinboard, and there were racks and trestles and pieces of equipment around the room, but not the easels and canvases that Kathy would have expected in an artist’s studio, and as far as she could see no works in progress. The place looked like a cross between a mechanic’s workshop and an art gallery, and there was a faint smell of acetate and paint thinner in the air.

They sat at a plywood table on stools like chrome tractor seats. A Macintosh computer and printer stood at the far end of the table, and Brock reached for an image that lay beside the machines and handed it to Kathy. It was of a pretty little girl with curly blonde hair, clutching a furry teddy bear.

‘Mr Rudd had pictures of Tracey ready for us when we arrived, Kathy. When’s her birthday, Mr Rudd?’

‘Gabe, everyone calls me Gabe. She turned six in August, the tenth.’

‘And you live here on your own, just the two of you?’

‘That’s right.’ He blinked and rubbed his eyes, giving a little groan. It was the first sign of emotion that Kathy had seen, as if the TV downstairs had held reality in check.

‘You said Tracey’s mother’s passed away. How long ago was that?’

‘Jane died five years ago, when Trace was one.’

‘That must have been difficult for you, bringing up a little girl on your own.’

He shrugged, dropped his eyes, sighed.‘Yeah, but well, you just have to cope, don’t you?’

‘What about close relatives, grandparents?’

‘Yeah, Jane’s parents, they… try to help.’

‘I believe you said that Tracey stayed with them over the weekend, and they brought her back home yesterday about five in the afternoon, is that right?’

He nodded. Kathy thought she sensed some reserve at the mention of the grandparents.

‘Have you called them this morning, Gabe?’ she asked.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Maybe I should do that now, before they see it on TV. Can you give me their names and a number?’

He wrote on a pad.

‘Anyone else? What about your parents?’

He shook his head.‘We don’t keep in touch.’

Kathy moved away to the area beneath the gallery, where there was a sink and a microwave. She used her mobile phone to ring the number Rudd had given her. A man’s voice, elderly and gruff, answered.

‘Yes?’

‘I’d like to speak to Mr Nolan, please.’

‘This is Len Nolan speaking. Who’s that?’

Kathy explained who she was and where she was calling from.

‘What’s happened?’ The voice had hardened immediately, ready for the worst.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your granddaughter Tracey is missing, Mr Nolan. We’re doing everything possible to locate her, and at this stage…’

‘Where’s her father?’the voice barked.‘Where’s Gabriel?’

‘He’s here, Mr Nolan, helping us find her. He wanted you informed.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘It appears she went missing some time during the night. You haven’t heard from her, have you?’

‘We dropped her there yesterday afternoon, just before five. We haven’t heard anything since…’ Kathy heard a woman’s voice in the background, then a muffled conversation.‘We’re on our way,’Len Nolan said.

‘It might be better if you waited at home for now, where we can reach you.’

‘We’re coming,’he said firmly.‘I’ll give you our mobile number so you can call us if there’s any news.’

When Kathy returned to the table she found Gabriel Rudd explaining something technical about his picture of Tracey.‘… to enhance the blue of the eyes, you see.’

‘But they are that colour?’ Brock asked.

Rudd considered.‘Pretty much, but I wanted to get the right balance with the flesh tones.’

He held the picture at arm’s length, squinting at it. His mood had shifted, and again Kathy had the impression that a screen had been thrown up between him and the reality of what was happening.

Brock raised an eyebrow at her and she said, ‘They haven’t heard from Tracey. They insist on coming over here.’

Rudd winced.‘Oh no. I couldn’t face them, not now.’

They lived in the outer western suburbs, apparently. Brock checked his watch and said,‘All right, we’ll look after them when they arrive. Let’s go over last night again, Gabe, step by step.’

Rudd ran a hand through his white hair, trying to collect his thoughts. ‘There’s not a lot to tell. Trace was tired when she got home. They always get her overexcited and give her too much to eat when she goes over there, and when she gets home she flakes out. She watched some TV and I gave her a bowl of cereal later, and afterwards she went to bed. I turned her light off about eight.’

‘Apart from being tired, how did she seem?’

‘Fine… normal. They’d taken her to the park near where they live, and she’d got her dress a bit muddy. She wanted me to put it in the wash.’

‘Think back over your conversation. Did she mention anything that might help us? A stranger in the park?’

They worked slowly through everything Rudd could recall about his last hours with his daughter.

‘So when did you last see her, exactly?’

‘I put her light out at eight.’

‘But after that, did you look in?’

‘Oh… yes, of course. About ten, when I went to bed.’

‘And are you certain she was there then?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Your bedroom’s on the ground floor too, isn’t it, but at the front, facing the square. You heard nothing during the night?’

‘Nothing, not a thing. I woke up just before seven, got up to wake Trace for school, and found she wasn’t in her room. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find her. Her bedroom window was open. So then I phoned nine-ninenine. I mean, with those two other cases…’

‘Had you discussed those cases with Tracey?’

Rudd screwed his nose in thought.‘Don’t think so.’

‘Do you think she knew about them?’

‘No idea.’

‘Do you normally sleep soundly, Gabe?’

‘No, not always.’

‘Did you have much to drink last night?’

He looked vague. ‘Yes, a bit. That might be why… Look, couldn’t I be doing something? I mean, talking to the press, or something? Making an appeal for information?’

‘Not yet. Where does Tracey go to school?’

‘Right here in the square, Pitzhanger Primary.’

‘Is she happy there?’

‘Seems okay.’

‘So there was nothing she was worried about happening today, a test or something?’

He shook his head.‘I don’t think they have tests.’

The questions went on, without much result, Kathy felt, except a growing sense that the man didn’t seem very knowledgeable about or interested in the details of his daughter’s life. Rudd himself was becoming monosyllabic, and finally Brock snapped his notebook shut and straightened his back with a grunt. Kathy recognised the moment. Rudd looked up, thinking the interview over, but she knew better.

‘I know your name of course, Gabe. You’re famous,’ Brock said.

Rudd shrugged carelessly.

‘One of my colleagues downstairs was telling me that there are more artists to the square mile in this neighbourhood than anywhere else in Europe, and you’re one of the stars. I think I’ve seen you on TV,“Parkinson”, wasn’t it?’

‘Sure.’

‘And you’ve exhibited at Tate Modern, yes?’

Rudd nodded.‘Couple of times.’

‘And the Saatchi?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He sounded bored and mildly irritated by Brock’s interest.

‘I thought so. I recognised the horses’ heads downstairs. That’s one of your favourite themes, isn’t it?’

‘It used to be. I’ve moved on.’

‘Dead Puppies, that was you, wasn’t it?’

‘Sure.’

‘Of course, that was the thing on TV. Have you got an exhibition coming up?’

‘I’m planning a show at The Pie Factory, the gallery across the square.’

Brock gazed idly round the room at the blank walls. ‘Now that’s famous too, isn’t it, The Pie Factory? What’s the name of the man who runs it?’

‘Fergus Tait. He’s my dealer.’

‘Tait, yes of course. And he has a restaurant, too doesn’t he?’

Rudd said,‘The Tait Gallery.’

Brock chuckled. ‘The restaurant is called The Tait Gallery, and the art gallery is called The Pie Factory. He’s a bit of a comedian, Mr Tait, eh?’

‘He likes a laugh.’

‘But sharp as a tack, no doubt. That was him on the TV downstairs just now, wasn’t it? Talking to the media about Tracey. He was quick off the mark, wasn’t he? How did that come about?’

Rudd’s pale face coloured a little, his expression becoming stubborn. ‘Fergus is more than just my dealer. He’s a close personal friend, and I phoned him as soon as I’d called the police. I needed to talk to someone.’

‘I suppose he handles your publicity and promotion, does he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, from now on, Gabe, you let us handle it as far as Tracey’s concerned. All right?’

Rudd shrugged.‘Sure.’

‘And please make sure that Mr Tait understands that too, will you? Tracey’s life may depend upon it. Understood?’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Good. Now is it possible that Tracey’s disappearance could have something to do with your career or reputation? Have you had any unusual correspondence recently? Any odd phone calls or visitors?’

‘No more than usual. Weird messages are often sent to the gallery or my website.’

‘We’ll need to check all those. There’s also the possibility that Tracey’s been taken for money, a ransom.’

‘Is that what happened with the other girls?’

‘No, but it’s always possible that this is different. Just to be sure, we’ll set up some special equipment on your phone, and I’ll ask you to stay close to it for the next twenty-four hours. There’ll be a police officer on the premises for all that time. Well, I think we can go back downstairs now.’

The horde on the floor below had vanished. Rudd went to the kitchen area to put on some coffee. ‘I don’t understand why they had to search the house,’ he grumbled as he spooned out the powder.

‘We always do, in cases like this,’ Kathy said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of times a missing child has turned up asleep in a closet or beneath the stairs where they’d gone to play a game with their dolls.’ Or bundled up in the freezer, or beneath the floorboards, Kathy thought. There’s no place like home.

‘I just feel so helpless,’ Rudd said. ‘I should be doing something.’

‘Waiting is the worst of it,’ Brock replied.‘But the best thing you can do is stay here with DS Kolla.’

At that moment there was a commotion from the floor below, a man calling out in protest, a woman’s scream drowning him out, then footsteps crashing up the wooden stairs. A woman’s head and shoulders burst into view, thick black hair streaked with grey, a black cloak flapping from her shoulders.

‘The chief inspector!’ she cried, looking wildly about. ‘I must see him!’

Brock stepped forward, waving back the copper who had followed her.

‘The scream!’ she gasped.‘I heard the scream!’

Brock tried to calm her, but this only made her more agitated.

‘You must listen!’ she cried. ‘I heard her, the missing child, last night!’

Then she noticed Gabriel Rudd for the first time and flew at him. He flinched, standing rigid as she grasped him, babbling,‘Poor boy! Poor boy! But I understand, you know I understand. My little girl, my own darling.’

Seeing the look of disgust on Rudd’s face, Kathy stepped forward and, putting a firm arm around the woman’s shoulders, drew her away.‘Let’s sit down,’she said,‘and tell me everything. First your name.’

‘Betty Zielinski, and I have vital information.’

She was a neighbour, she said, a long-time resident of Northcote Square, living at 14 West Terrace. She leaped to her feet and made them follow her to the window, where she showed them her place, a narrow brick-fronted terrace house almost at this end of the block and barely fifty yards away. They could see the builders working on the roofs of the buildings beyond. The jam of people and vehicles hadn’t cleared from the square below, and faces turned up to look at them as they stood at the window.

‘At five minutes past two last night I was woken by a scream,’ the woman went on, her voice now dropping to a dramatic hush.‘A piercing scream. The scream of a female child.’

‘I see. Where’s your bedroom, Ms Zielinski?’

‘At the back, on the first floor.’

‘At the back?’ Brock sounded doubtful.

‘Yes… don’t you see? He must have taken her away down the lane that runs behind our terrace. That way he wouldn’t be seen in the square.’

‘Are you quite certain about the time?’

‘Yes, yes. I checked the alarm clock beside my bed. Five minutes past two.’

Kathy steered her back to a seat and asked her if she lived alone.

‘I live with my family.’

‘Did they hear anything?’

‘I’m sure they must have.’

‘What are their names?’

Betty Zielinski looked doubtfully at Kathy’s hand poised over her notebook.‘You want all of their names?’

‘How many are there?’

‘Oh, hundreds and hundreds.’

Kathy looked into the big, wondering eyes and said, ‘Maybe it would be best if I call and talk to them myself.’

‘That would be a very good idea.’

They thanked her and she seemed satisfied as Kathy led her back towards the stairs. At the top she turned back to Gabriel Rudd and said, ‘She knew, my dear. She told me. She was so brave.’

Rudd looked incredulous.‘Eh?’

‘What did she tell you?’ Brock said.

The woman turned her wild eyes to him. ‘Secrets. Special children have the second sight, you know. And Tracey was a very special child.’ Then she took to the stairs, her cloak flapping in her wake.

‘Batty Betty,’Rudd said, shaking his head. He slumped in a chair, seeming unnerved by the visit.‘That’s what they call her in the square. What she told you was rubbish. She has no family, she lives alone. The school kids in the playground call names after her and she complains to the teachers. Mad as a hatter.’

Kathy could imagine it, the children squealing with excitement at the mad lady in the black cloak, looking like a bat.

‘You don’t believe she heard something?’ Brock asked.

‘She probably dreamed it,’ he said dismissively, and Brock, remembering his own awakening that morning, was inclined to agree. All the same, he had noticed how closely Rudd had listened to the woman, especially when she mentioned the scream.

‘Did Tracey ever visit Ms Zielinski’s house?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘You didn’t mention that before. You said she goes to the cafe on the corner, but you didn’t mention Zielinski. I think we’ll check her house, just to be on the safe side.’

As Brock pulled out his phone Rudd got to his feet and wandered over to the window overlooking the square. He gazed down, then took something from his pocket and, opening the window latch, leaned out-too far out. Alarmed, Kathy hurried across to him. ‘What are you doing?’

He stepped back and closed the window again. In his hand he held a small silver camera, and he was smiling. ‘Taking pictures of them taking pictures of me taking pictures of them… Don’t worry, I wasn’t doing an Yves Klein.’

‘Who?’

‘The artist of the void,’ Rudd said carelessly, and strolled away. he window wasn’t locked.’ Brock and Kathy had left Rudd to drink his coffee and watch TV while they went downstairs to check the progress of the SOCO team in Tracey’s room. The crime scene manager, a middle-aged woman with a cheerful smile, gave them a verbal report. As with the other two abductions, there were signs of forced entry to the girl’s bedroom window. However, in this case, unlike the other two where force had been quite crudely applied, these traces were minimal. Scratches on the window latch suggested a tool with a sharp edge had been used to unfasten it from the outside, but a separate security lock was untouched, and appeared not to have been engaged.

‘Not locked?’ Brock said.

‘That’s right. It was latched but not locked.’

She’d noticed other differences between this and the earlier cases. With them, the girls’ bedrooms had been visible from adjoining streets and there was some evidence that the abductor, having targeted his victim, had watched her house to identify her room. In this case, though, the window looked onto a back courtyard which was screened from the rear laneway by a garage and wall, so it would have been much more difficult for the intruder to have observed the window. The woman also pointed out that the other two cases were much closer to each other than to Northcote Square, and the girls were both older than Tracey by several years.

‘So he’s spreading his territory and becoming more organised,’ Brock suggested. She conceded this possibility, but obviously remained unconvinced.

‘Your profiler will have his own ideas,’ she said. ‘But I attended both the previous scenes and this one is noticeably neater and free of visible traces. There’s no sign of disturbance in the room and no marks on the window surrounds.’

‘How about the rest of the house?’ Brock asked.

‘Clean, very clean. Mr Rudd said he has a cleaner who comes on Friday mornings, and it doesn’t look as if the place has had much use since then. You’re aware that he put the washing machine on before we arrived?’

‘What was in it? A dress of Tracey’s? He mentioned her dress being muddy.’

‘Yes, a red and yellow dress of hers, and her socks and pants. Also a complete set of his clothes-jeans, shirt, underwear, sweater and jacket.’

‘A jacket?’

‘Like a windcheater, washable.’

Clean seemed to be the operative word, Kathy thought, looking round Tracey’s bedroom. It was as neat and Spartan as a motel room. There were no pictures on the wall, no toys on display, and the fabrics were plain and unpatterned.

‘Anything else?’ Brock asked the crime scene manager.

‘No controlled drugs, but lots of medication-antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, beta-blockers, sleeping pills, vitamins. We haven’t touched his computers at this stage. He has four of them in the house. Are you going to access his emails?’

‘Yes, though I imagine Tracey was a bit young to be talking to predators on the web.’

‘Don’t be too sure. Oh, one little thing. His alarm clock was set for six-fifteen, yet he didn’t ring us till seven-ohsix.’

‘Could have gone back to sleep.’

‘Yes, or done a bit of cleaning before we arrived.’

‘You’ll take that suit he’s wearing, will you? Check what those stains are on the legs.’

Kathy had one question.‘Does he dye his hair?’

The woman laughed.‘I asked him that. He said it went white almost overnight when his wife died.’

‘How did she die, do we know?’

‘He told me-suicide.’

‘That’s right,’ Brock said. ‘Those drawings of horses’ heads on the wall, they’re studies for an artwork he did after it happened. The Night-Mare, it was called, inspired by his wife’s suicide. I remember it won a big prize a few years ago and got a lot of press coverage.’

‘What about Dead Puppies?’ Kathy asked.

Brock shook his head.‘You’d better ask him to explain that one himself.’

The SOCO said, ‘Oh, was that him? Did he do Dead Puppies?’

There was a call from an officer at the back door.‘Sir? DCI Brock? Someone to see you, sir.’

The visitor was dressed like a young businessman, neat tie, smart suit, but even before he offered identification Brock had caught something in the way he looked around him at the crime-scene activity, familiar but detached, that had him pegged for a cop, and probably not regular CID.

‘Special Branch?’ Brock read his card, wondering what this could be about.‘What can I do for you?’

‘A quiet word, sir?’

Brock took him upstairs to the living area and led him to the front window, at the far end from Gabriel Rudd, who was now joined by Kathy.

‘I’m on protection duties, sir,’ the Special Branch inspector said quietly to Brock. ‘We-my charge and I- have been coming here to Northcote Square regularly now for eight months. We were following the news reports of your case on the radio on the way over. When we arrived and saw the crowds I thought I should let you know.’

‘Really?’ Brock was mystified. ‘Can I ask who it is you’re minding?’

The inspector leaned close to Brock and lowered his voice further.‘Sir Jack Beaufort, sir.’

‘The judge? Why does he come here?’

The other man allowed himself a little smile. ‘He’s having his portrait painted. The artist’s name is Gilbey, Reg Gilbey. Have you come across him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, he’s apparently held in very high regard. The only problem is that he’s bloody slow. Some days he works away there for a couple of hours and at the end of it I can’t see any difference at all.’

‘Where’s his studio?’

‘Number fifteen West Terrace.’ The inspector pointed. ‘The one on the corner, with the bay window.’

It was the end house on West Terrace, Brock saw, at the corner of the square opposite the playground of the primary school and next door to the house of Betty Zielinski. The bay window was a distinctive feature, projecting out from the first floor on the corner like an observation post, and crowned by a slate-roofed turret.

‘That’s where he paints, the room with the bay.’

‘Why the protection?’

‘The judge has had death threats.’

Brock could believe it. He knew Beaufort’s reputation for tough sentencing and had seen him in action in the criminal courts, imperious and acerbic. ‘Do you come at the same time each week?’

‘No, we try to vary it. At first it was once a week, but more recently it’s twice or three times, often first thing in the morning to keep his day clear.’

‘Well, thanks for the advice. Of course, we’ll be talking to Mr Gilbey.’

‘The door-knockers have already been. He had nothing to tell them.’

‘All the same…’ Brock was thinking of Betty Zielinski’s scream.

The inspector looked thoughtful.‘Did the little girl go to the school on the corner, by any chance?’

‘Yes, she did. Why?’

‘Only that I know he watches them in the playground from his bay window.’

‘Gilbey? You’ve seen him?’

‘Yes, you get a good all-round view from up there.’

‘What’s he like, this Gilbey?’

‘In his seventies, I’d guess, dresses like a tramp, says very little.’ He shrugged and checked his watch. ‘Never know, he may have seen someone watching the place. Anyway, I should be getting back.’

They shook hands and Brock said,‘You’d better give me a number I can reach you on. My sergeant, DS Kolla, will be staying around here for a while. I’ll give you her number.’

After the man had gone, Brock stood at the window for a moment contemplating the square. He felt as if he were on the stage at a public spectacle, with the mob down below and a judge in the royal box, observing his moves. He turned to speak to Kathy.

‘I’m going over to Shoreditch station,’ he said, and saw that Rudd was dressed now in sweater and jeans. The man blew his nose noisily with a large red handkerchief and Brock noticed moisture glistening around his eyes.‘Everything all right?’

Kathy nodded. Everyone was different, she thought; it was important to remember that. You barged into someone’s home and bombarded them with questions, and expected certain reactions. If they didn’t come, you began to make suppositions. But everyone was different. It had taken Rudd all this time to show real feeling about his daughter’s disappearance. Kathy’s question about the unlocked window had started the tears, quite suddenly. It was all his fault, he had blurted, not checking to see that the window was secure. And then his shoulders had shuddered and he’d folded his arms over his head and begun to sob. She had caught some words: ‘… couldn’t live with it, not again…’

She had assumed he was referring to the death of his wife, and for the first time she felt a real surge of pity for him. His stunt at the window, his careless manner and eccentric appearance, which had appeared silly and pretentious, now seemed only vulnerable and sad, and when he had finally pulled himself together and made some weak joke about something in his eye, his early behaviour seemed brave even, a show of defiance against fate.

Brock’s voice, detached and sceptical, interrupted her thoughts. ‘Stay close to him for a while, Kathy. Get him talking,’ he said.‘Something doesn’t feel right here. He says he’s preparing for an exhibition but there’s no sign of any work. The place is empty. Then there’s the medication. Maybe he’s suffering from depression.’

When Brock had gone Gabe started telling Kathy about Tracey, what a happy and loving little thing she was, so sensible and responsible. Already, at six years old, she was looking after her own clothes, keeping her room so neat, always ready ahead of time-unlike her father, who left everything to the last minute.

‘She gets that from her mother,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.‘Jane was always organised, until…’

‘That must’ve been terrible for you both, when she died.’

‘Trace was only one. She doesn’t remember. I’m not sure if she knows even now what actually happened. I’ve never told her. She accepts that her mother’s gone to heaven, but she’s never asked how she got there.’

‘How did it happen?’

Gabe lifted his eyes to watch her reaction as he told her.‘She jumped off a bridge into the Regent’s Canal, not half a mile from here.’

Kathy fell silent. She decided it probably wasn’t a good time to ask him about Dead Puppies.‘I suppose your work would be a comfort.’

He raised his eyebrows as if the idea was bizarre. ‘A comfort? You make it sound like a nice cup of tea. Is your work a comfort?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is for most people, isn’t it? Something outside of your personal life to concentrate on.’ She had a sudden image of her flat, empty and cold since Leon had left.

‘Why, isn’t it going well, your personal life?’

Kathy blinked, as if he’d caught her out. ‘What about yours?’

‘I asked first,’ he said, and narrowed his eyes, looking at her as if at something to draw. ‘Let me guess, you split up with your boyfriend recently?’

He caught the flicker of surprise on Kathy’s face and added, ‘Doesn’t take a genius.’ His eyes travelled over her head and she felt even more annoyed to sense a blush in her cheek and an almost irresistible urge to run her hand through her hair.

‘That’s good,’ he said, his voice soft and almost seductive. ‘It’ll make you sharp. That’s what pain does. Those other cops who were here earlier didn’t look as if they ever feel anything. I think if anyone’ll find Trace, it’ll be you.’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ Kathy asked evenly.

‘I do have a friend actually, yes.’ He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

‘Have you spoken to her this morning?’

‘Yeah. She’ll probably be over later.’

The crowd in the street had dispersed, Kathy saw. Lights were on in all the windows of the office buildings on the east side of the square, and all the parking spaces along the kerbs around the central gardens were occupied. A small green Ford moved slowly along Urma Street and turned down East Terrace, obviously searching for a spot, and when a parked van ahead signalled it was leaving the Ford quickly manoeuvred into its space. A grey-haired couple emerged from the car and began striding purposefully towards Gabriel Rudd’s front door. Kathy took the stairs down to the entrance hall and reached it just as the officer on duty there got up to answer the doorbell.

‘Len and Bev Nolan,’ the man said to the constable. ‘We’re the missing girl’s grandparents. I spoke to someone on the phone…’

‘That was me,’ Kathy said, and introduced herself.

‘Have there been any developments?’ They both spoke together.

‘I’m afraid not. Let’s go upstairs where we can talk.’

When they reached the first floor Kathy found that Rudd had vanished, presumably upstairs to his studio.

‘Where’s Gabriel then?’ Bev Nolan said, peering keenly around as if she expected to catch him hiding somewhere behind the furniture. Both she and her husband had lean features and trim figures. Their gestures were quick, and somehow communicated the impression of them being used to exercise and hard work. Recently retired, Kathy thought, perhaps still playing a sport.

‘He must have gone upstairs,’ Kathy said, ‘but I’d like the chance to talk to you both, anyway.’

‘I want to hear this from him,’ Len Nolan said, threateningly.

‘Please sit down,’ Kathy insisted, and reluctantly they did. They sat silently, listening intently, as she told them what was known so far.

When she had finished, Len Nolan asked,‘But how did they get in without making a noise? That’s what I can’t understand. Tracey’s bed is right next to the window. She’d have heard someone forcing the lock, surely, and cried out.’

‘It appears that, unfortunately, the window wasn’t locked.’

A growl of fury erupted from Len, and from his wife came a disbelieving cry,‘No!’

‘That useless bastard!’ Len fumed. He leaped to his feet and began pacing, unable to keep still. ‘We warned them, didn’t we, Bev? We said something like this would happen.’

‘That’s right, Len.’

‘But would they listen? Would they?’

‘No, Len.’

‘Warned who?’ Kathy broke in.

‘The Social Services. We told ’em that he’s irresponsible, unfit to be a parent. And that stupid woman told us that so were most fathers, but she couldn’t do anything about it. By God, I’ll have her bloody job for this.’

Len Nolan’s face had become deep red by this stage, and Bev said anxiously, ‘Yes, Len, but let’s hear what Sergeant Kolla has to say. Come and sit down, love, please.’

‘We even took legal advice.’

‘About what?’ Kathy said.

‘About getting custody of Tracey, that’s what!’ Len snapped angrily.‘And she told us we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on without evidence of abuse or neglect. I told her how he forgets to feed her, and lost her in the supermarket that day, and how he and his mates take drugs, and all she could say was…’ and he put on a pathetic, whining voice, ‘…“Get some evidence, Mr Nolan. Get something a court will listen to.” Yes, well, we’ve got that now, haven’t we, but it’s too bloody late!’

‘Mr Nolan… Len,’ Kathy said soothingly, ‘please sit down and take me through this a step at a time. I need to know anything that might be relevant to Tracey’s disappearance.’

‘Yes, Len,’ Bev said, patting the seat of his chair. ‘Sit down, love, and tell the sergeant.’

‘Oh Lord,’he said, rolling his eyes to heaven.‘Where to begin?’

But he did sit down again, and they told Kathy why they believed Gabriel Rudd to be a degenerate worm, as Len put it. No, they weren’t saying he interfered with his daughter, or was deliberately cruel to her, although sometimes they almost wished he were, because then they could have made people act. What they were saying was that he was irresponsible, negligent and completely absorbed in himself.

‘She has a nice home,’Kathy objected,‘clothes, food in the fridge. You should see the way some children live…’

‘Yes, yes, but he simply doesn’t care about her. It’s mental cruelty, neglect. He doesn’t speak to her for days on end. She’s a poor little soul.’

As they talked, pouring out an endless list of niggling complaints about their son-in-law’s inadequacies, Kathy sensed the big grievance that lurked unspoken in the background, and that had transformed disapproval of their son-in-law into outright hatred. Finally she put it to them.

‘Do you blame him for your daughter’s death?’

That brought them up short. They glanced at each other, uncertain how to answer the direct question. Then Bev Nolan said softly, ‘Yes, I do,’ and her husband, speechless for once, put his hand on hers and squeezed.

‘Jane was never really well after Tracey was born. Postpartum depression, the doctors said. They gave her drugs and told Gabe he had to look after her, but he didn’t. Quite the opposite in fact…’

‘Totally,’ Len jerked a nod of agreement.

‘… left her to herself, went out with his friends, didn’t help with the baby, in the night, and her so short of sleep…’

‘We did what we could, of course, but he didn’t like us coming round, made that plain as day. We had some rows, I can tell you.’

‘He drove her to it,’ Bev said decisively, ‘as surely as if he’d pushed her into the canal himself.’

‘And then he set about exploiting her death any way he could,’ Len added. ‘That was the sickest thing, the unforgivable thing, playing the tragic widower. He turned Jane’s death into a public spectacle.’

‘He sued the doctors-there was some question about the drugs they’d prescribed, and in the end they settled, though Gabriel wouldn’t tell us how much for. And then he did that dreadful exhibition about her.’

‘The Night-Mare. It won him that big prize. That’s where this all came from…’ Len waved a hand to indicate the house,‘…from the court settlement and the art prize. He had nothing before that. Always broke when Jane was alive.’

As they lapsed into silence Kathy said quietly, ‘But he does give you access to Tracey now?’

‘She pesters him,’ Bev said, ‘until he lets her stay with us. Her room at our house has all the things she loves. Len has made her special furniture, and a dolls’ house, and a farmyard.’

‘But I suppose she has friends around here? At school?’

‘No.’ Len Nolan shook his head. ‘She’s not settled at that school. Oh, it’s very convenient.’ He made the word sound like an obscenity. ‘Only a couple of doors away. Doesn’t even have to collect her in the afternoon. But they give her a hard time. They know, you see.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The other kids, they know about her dad. Dead Puppies!’ He turned away in disgust.

Kathy hesitated.‘What exactly is Dead Puppies?’

Bev said, ‘Don’t ask, Sergeant, please. Len’s very fond of dogs.’

‘Have they gone?’ Gabe peered down the staircase from his studio.

‘Yes,’ Kathy said.‘You can come on down.’

‘Hell,’ he said, creeping down and slumping into a pink plastic sofa.‘I could do with a drink.’

As if to order, the doorbell rang. The duty policeman’s head appeared over the rim of the floor. ‘Two people, Sarge. Say they’re friends of Mr Rudd. A Mr Tait and a Ms Wilkes.’

‘Oh, thank Christ,’ Gabe said, sitting upright.

‘All right, let them up,’ Kathy said, and immediately the couple burst into view.

‘Gabe, Gabe,’ the man cried.‘You poor old feller.’

‘Oh, Jesus, Ferg,’ Gabe sighed, jumping to his feet. ‘You’ve no idea.’

Kathy recognised the newcomer as the man she’d seen on TV with the Irish accent. Though much shorter than Rudd, he caught him in a clinch and rocked him back and forward in his arms as his companion, a stocky dark-haired girl, put the bags she was carrying on the coffee table and turned to Kathy.

‘You’re with the police, are you? Are you looking after him?’

‘Yes. DS Kathy Kolla.’

The woman scrutinised Kathy critically, as if wondering whether she was up to the job.‘I’m Poppy Wilkes, and that’s Fergus Tait, Gabe’s dealer. We saw the in-laws leaving and we thought he might need some moral support.’

‘I kept out of their way,’ Gabe said. ‘They spoke to Kathy. I suppose they said it was all my fault.’

‘Well, that’s only to be expected.’ Fergus Tait patted his shoulder. For a small man, he had a big presence. He wore a perfectly tailored black suit, dazzling white shirt and a large, green satin tie. His red hair was expertly layered, and his big round glasses gave his eyes a hypnotic stare. ‘But we’ve brought you the antidote, old chum.’ He reached into one of the plastic bags and drew out a bottle of vodka.‘Glasses, my love,’ he said to Poppy, who seemed to know where to look. She returned with four tumblers and some plates.

‘Ah…’ Kathy began to object, but Fergus ignored her, pouring four drinks and picking one up. The other two followed suit. Fergus winked at Kathy. ‘Won’t you have a little drink with us, Sergeant? To the success of your hunt for little Tracey? We shan’t tell on you.’

‘I’d like Gabe to keep a clear head,’ Kathy said.

‘I can assure you that Gabe’s head gets clearer with every one of these that he puts away, is that not right, boy?’ He tipped the glass and swallowed in one gulp. The other two did the same, then Rudd sank back against the cushions and drew his long legs up to his chest.

‘Oh Jesus,’ he sighed. Poppy went to sit beside him and put her arms around him.

‘They’ll find her, Gabe,’ she said, and from the way she looked at him Kathy guessed that this must be his ‘friend’.

‘You’re feeling bad, of course you are.’ Tait poured another drink.‘How else could you feel?’

‘Helpless. I feel helpless.’

‘You need something to eat,’ Poppy Wilkes said briskly. ‘We brought you some lunch from Mahmed’s. Oh, Stan sends his love too, of course. He’d have come himself, but you know how he is with the pigs.’ She shot a mischievous grin at Kathy.‘Come on, Gabe, have some food.’

‘No, no, I couldn’t.’

Poppy ignored his protests, unpacking Turkish bread and dips and cold meats and salads onto the plates. They looked good and Kathy suddenly felt hungry. Then she caught Tait watching her. He winked.‘Tuck in, Sergeant. There’s plenty here.’

‘Thanks. Maybe later.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ Gabe asked, reaching forward to tear off a chunk of bread.

‘They’re searching the building site,’ Poppy said. ‘The builders have had to leave and they’re really annoyed at the delay. So is Mahmed.’

‘Why Mahmed?’ Kathy asked.

‘He owns the building. And most of the builders are his relatives.’

‘Batty Betty barged in here. She claimed she heard a scream in the night.’ Gabe was speaking with his mouth full, and Kathy noticed he was watching Poppy’s reaction.

‘Maybe that’s why they’re looking at the building site next door to her.’

‘What time was that?’ Poppy was making a sandwich.

‘Five past two. She was very precise.’

Poppy shrugged.‘She probably saw little green men, too.’

The drink had brought some colour to Gabe’s face, and when he spoke again he was a little more voluble, his voice fluid. ‘It’s like a horrible dream, Trace disappearing like that, you’ve no idea. I still can’t take it in, you know? I feel sick thinking about her out there somewhere…’

‘What you need, old son, is something to occupy your mind while this is going on,’ Fergus Tait said decisively. ‘Work, that’s what you need! Get down to some work.’

Gabe shook his head in protest. ‘No way. I couldn’t. Not while Trace…’

‘That’s exactly the right time. Do it for her. Better than sitting around chewing your nails.’

‘I think he’s right, Gabe,’ Poppy said cautiously, as if she half-expected Gabe to round on her. But he just looked thoughtful.

‘You’ve been promising me something for ages now,’ Tait went on.‘So get off your backside and do it, will you? Art is pain, Gabriel, you know that.“Real pain for my real friends, champagne for my sham friends”-you know the old line. So show us your real pain. Remember Night-Mare, eh? Pure pain it was, and you can do it again.’

This seemed to be a common theme, Kathy thought, watching Gabe’s bowed head as he took this in. Tait’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Kathy noticed Gabe’s right index finger begin to tap the side of his leg.

‘I suppose I could try… maybe once they’ve found Trace…’

‘No, no. Right now, boy, this very minute. I’ll tell you what, I’ll make things easy for you, I’ll give you a deadline. I’ll send out the invitations this very day to the opening of Gabriel Rudd’s new one-man show at The Pie Factory on this Friday coming.’

‘Friday!’ Gabe looked incredulous ‘Don’t be daft, Ferg, that’s only four days away.’

‘Well, you’d better get moving then, hadn’t you?’

‘It’s totally impossible, Ferg… Maybe in six months, a year …’

‘No, Friday,’ Tait insisted. ‘I’m serious, deadly serious. The eyes of the world are on you, Gabe. Strike while the iron is steaming hot.’

Poppy, seeing that he really was in earnest, said,‘But my exhibition, Fergus. It’s still got two weeks to run. Why don’t we wait till then?’

‘Sorry, love, I’ll make it up to you. This has to happen now.’

Gabe stared at him. ‘You’re crazy.’ But his mind was working and it seemed to Kathy that there was a spark of excitement in his eyes. She wondered if it was Poppy’s objection that had persuaded him.

‘What’ll we call the show?’ Fergus asked. ‘How about Scream, in honour of Batty Betty? And Munch of course- we can put an image of his painting on the invitations.’

‘Too corny,’ Gabe said immediately. ‘How about, No Trace?’

‘Brilliant! That’s it!’ Fergus cried. ‘I’ll get the designer working on the invitations and posters right away.’

‘But Poppy’s right,’ Gabe protested, though without much conviction, Kathy thought. ‘Let’s make it a month, three weeks at least. We’ll know then…’ he stopped, before adding in a whisper,‘… about Trace.’

‘That’s exactly the point, Gabe, don’t you see? We have to do this now, while it’s front page news. And it can only help the police, with the publicity and all.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’Kathy said.‘You’d better hold off any firm plans until I’ve got clearance.’

‘You go ahead, Sergeant,’ Fergus waved airily as he got to his feet. ‘I have to go. Have you been to The Pie Fac tory yet?’

Kathy said no.

‘Well, you must come over and see us. Poppy here has a fabulous show on at the moment, The Loss of Many Little Things-you’ll love it. Are you coming, my dear?’

Poppy said she’d stay with Gabe for a while.

‘Good idea,’ Fergus said, heading for the stairs. ‘Get a few ideas flowing for No Trace.’

Kathy started to protest, but he was already gone.

Poppy moved closer to Gabe and began talking to him in a low, insistent monotone. It was to do with his work, Kathy realised, picking up phrases, ‘… a narrative of pain… absence and loss

…’ but the tone was private, almost intimate, like a trainer psyching up a fighter for the ring. Gabe listened, stuffing food into his mouth. Kathy left them to it and went over to the window to ring Brock.

Brock was in the control centre that the borough operational command unit had established in the Shoreditch police station, the focus of a storm of activity. He listened to Kathy’s report of Tait’s plans to exploit, as she saw it, Tracey’s disappearance.

‘Publicity can only help at this stage,’ he told her, and said he’d get the media unit to agree on some guidelines with the art dealer. ‘Get over here for a team briefing at four, will you, Kathy? I’ll send someone to sit with Rudd.’ He sounded preoccupied.

All over London the mobilisation was in full swing, detectives tracking down previous offenders, uniforms knocking on doors, volunteers searching parks and wasteland, new technology cranked into action. Brock stared at the large plastic-covered street map of east London on the wall, on which coloured marks were constantly being added and erased to track progress on the ground. To one side, as if to encourage the searchers, were pinned the pictures of the three missing girls, Aimee, Lee and Tracey. They depended on him now. The machine was in his hands. He was filled with a sudden overwhelming sense of inadequacy.

One of the computer operators said something and the supervising inspector replied, then turned to Brock as if expecting his comment.

‘Sorry,’ he said.‘What did you say?’

‘Oh, just about the new data, sir-so much of it.’

They were all looking at him now, expectant, waiting for some word of insight or inspiration from the boss, and he felt at a loss, for he had nothing for them, not yet.‘This is how it goes,’ he said, making his voice steady, confident. ‘Until we get a finger on the pulse. We’ll know when that happens.’

They seemed satisfied, nodding and turning back to their screens. The metaphor was wrong though, he thought, too gentle. He searched for something more visceral; until I have something to get my teeth into. His instinct was that the place to find it wasn’t here, for all the Mission Control paraphernalia of computer screens and headsets and data charts; it was out there, on the street. He fought to suppress his frustration, picking up the latest copy of the log and forcing himself to read.

Gabriel Rudd was pacing up and down in agitation, muttering to himself. Having worked him up to this state, Poppy had left.

‘You okay?’ Kathy asked.

He stopped in his tracks and blinked at her.‘What? Oh, yeah.’He took a deep breath, trying to calm down.‘This is how it goes,’ he said, flapping his hands in despair. ‘Until something comes. An idea, something to get my teeth into.’

‘Maybe this really isn’t the best time, while you’re worrying about Tracey.’

He frowned, as if he couldn’t for the moment follow what she meant.‘Oh, Trace, yeah. No, Ferg’s right. This is exactly the time to do it, while the pain’s fresh.’

‘Is it? I didn’t really understand what he was saying about pain. Isn’t art about, I don’t know, beauty and making people feel good?’

He shook his head impatiently, as if he didn’t want to get into some kind of childish debate.‘Science reassures, art is meant to disturb,’ he muttered distractedly.‘A painter said that-Braque. I’m going upstairs to the studio, okay?’

Kathy went back to the window, wishing she’d been given something else to do. She didn’t believe that there would be a ransom phone call, and she didn’t think anyone else did either. Rudd needed a nursemaid rather than a detective in his house. Discounting their anger, Kathy suspected that the Nolans had pretty much summed Gabriel Rudd up-self-absorbed and neglectful. She checked her watch. The ‘golden hour’, that first chaotic period when the most important information was likely to be gathered, was long past. She felt a deceptive calm enveloping the house and the square, as if nothing had really happened. Maybe there would be news at the briefing. he local Head of Operations called the meeting to order. The room was packed, people squeezing into corners against filing cabinets and computer workstations. He gave a brisk history of the Critical Incident Procedures that had been followed since the disappearance of Aimee Prentice on the twenty-second of August, followed by that of Lee Hammond on the nineteenth of September, and now Tracey Rudd on the night of the twelfth of October. Then he introduced DCI Brock as head of the Major Enquiry Team that had assumed overall control. Brock thanked him and called for briefings from the leaders of the various teams.

The first was a uniformed inspector who had been coordinating the search teams. On a grid map he outlined the areas that had been covered by ground searches and house-to-house enquiries for each of the three abductions. In the case of Tracey Rudd, a number of premises in and around Northcote Square had been searched, including the house of Betty Zielinski, the neighbouring building site, and the grounds of both Pitzhanger Primary School and the complex of old buildings known as The Pie Factory. From there the search had expanded out towards the Regent’s Canal to the north and Liverpool Street rail station to the south. Two detectives had also been out to the home of Tracey’s grandparents in west London.

There had been some promising finds, but so far these had led nowhere. A plastic bag of children’s clothing had been discovered beneath a hedge just two streets away from Northcote Square, but didn’t match the description of clothes missing from Tracey’s wardrobe. There were several reports of a young girl seen walking hand in hand with a man late on Sunday night, but before the time when Rudd had last checked on Tracey in her bedroom.

The next report came from the Rainbow Coordinator. When Kathy had first heard this term she’d imagined some benign social services program, but of course it was nothing of the kind. Operation Rainbow was the vast network of public and private security cameras that covered the city and were monitored by the Met. The local Rainbow Coordinator and her team had been searching this source for weeks, looking for vehicles and faces that might have been common to both of the first two crime scenes. Now they had a third area to trawl. So far they had come up with only one lead in the Northcote Square vicinity, a tantalising two-second clip of a pale child’s face pressed against the front passenger window of a car crossing an intersection on Kingsland Road at two twenty-five a.m. The car resembled an early model Volvo saloon, possibly red or brown, its number indecipherable, and the team was searching for it now in the earlier tapes. The Rainbow team had also been working closely with SO5, the Child Protection unit, with their data on known offenders and their vehicles, and one of their officers reported next.

As Kathy listened to these reports, so professional and impersonal, she thought how remote they seemed from the plight of the three fragile faces pinned to the wall. Yet she knew that this was their best chance, the huge ponderous machine which most likely already had the name of the perpetrator somewhere in its maw, grinding away until it was revealed at last. But how long would that take? The voices were all so calm, Brock’s most of all, whereas the sight of those three faces caused panic to flutter inside Kathy’s chest.

Seeing the images together like that, their similarities- white, fair-haired, pretty-seemed compelling, and despite the reservations of the crime scene manager the indications remained overwhelming that the three cases formed a single series. They were discussing this now, and Brock called on the forensic psychologist assigned as profiler to the team to comment. Kathy hadn’t seen him before, but she knew he’d had some impressive results recently. He noted the differences of age, location and MO between the new case and its predecessors, but pointed out how much publicity there had been after the second abduction, with information released about the means of entry through bedroom windows which had caused panic-buying of window locks and bars in the area. He speculated on the impact this would have had on the intruder, probably pushing him further afield, then turned to a map on which were marked numbered spots indicating home, school and other destinations for the first two girls, red for Aimee and yellow for Lee. A black circle had been inscribed around these spots.

‘This is the magic circle,’ the profiler said, with some deliberate dramatic effect. ‘This is the abductor’s zone of comfort. His base is somewhere inside that circle, I’m certain of it.’ Then he pointed to a single green spot on Northcote Square, about half a mile outside the circle. ‘He’s been pushed out of his comfort zone.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his hand across the map, spiralling out from the circle like the arm of a hurricane.‘We should look at possible linkages between the circle and the new location-bus and train links, routes to work, family connections…’

Brock nodded as if he’d already reached the same conclusion, and announced that one of his colleagues from SO1 would be taking charge of that line of inquiry. Kathy felt a stir of excitement. That was more like it, a real job at the heart of the case, from which she’d have access to anything she wanted. Then she heard Brock introduce DI Bren Gurney, and the big Cornishman stood forward so that they’d know his face. Stung with disappointment, Kathy heard Brock mention her name too, almost in passing, saying that she would remain close to Gabriel Rudd and make follow-up enquiries in Northcote Square.

It made sense, Kathy eventually conceded to herself, after she’d buried her disappointment. Bren was senior in rank and had already spent the day working with the other teams on this problem. But when she looked again at the photographs of the girls they seemed to be accusing her: ‘Is this the best you can do for us?’Wherever they and their abductor were, it certainly wasn’t Northcote Square.

Later, as the briefing drew to an end with questions, she made an effort to take her role seriously. She put up her hand and said, ‘I wonder if we should look again at the circumstances of the death of Tracey’s mother, Jane Rudd, five years ago.’

There was a moment’s silence, and Kathy could see the puzzlement on faces trying to figure out the possible relevance. Then an older man across the room growled, ‘I was the investigating officer at the time.’

‘Fine,’ Brock said quickly. ‘Will you give DS Kolla a briefing after we’ve finished?’

The man nodded, watching Kathy through narrowed eyes. As the meeting broke up he came over to her and offered his hand.‘Bill Scott. Coffee?’

They found a quiet corner in the canteen and Scott said,‘Why are you interested in Jane Rudd’s death?’

His manner was terse and not, Kathy sensed, sympathetic. She wondered if he’d felt threatened by her question in that gathering of his colleagues. ‘It was only that several people have suggested a parallel between these two tragedies in Gabriel Rudd’s life. I thought I should be aware of what happened.’

Scott screwed up his nose and sniffed suspiciously at his coffee cup before sipping.‘Don’t see any parallel.’

‘No, probably not,’ Kathy said, and waited.

After a long silence Scott said,‘D’you think he’s going to try to make money out of it again?’

‘Rudd? Yes, probably. His dealer’s encouraging him in that direction. Fergus Tait?’

‘Don’t know him. They mentioned Betty Zielinski. She’s still around?’

‘Yes. She knew Jane Rudd?’

Scott nodded.‘Neighbour. Off her trolley. Tried to take the kid after Jane died. Claimed it was hers. Completely nuts.’

‘She tried to take Tracey?’

‘Mmm.’ Scott examined the look on Kathy’s face.‘She didn’t push Jane into the canal, if that’s what you’re thinking. Her movements were accounted for.’

‘Right. What happened when she tried to take Tracey?’

‘Got herself worked up. Quite hysterical. The grandparents had to step in. They took Tracey to live with them for a while till things settled down.’

‘Was Tracey’s father happy with that arrangement?’

‘As far as I could tell. My impression was that he wasn’t much bothered. More interested in his work, if you can call it that.’

‘How did he react to his wife’s suicide?’

Scott shrugged. ‘He drank a lot. How do you know what’s really going on inside someone’s head?’ He looked pointedly at his watch.‘Anything else?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Thanks, Bill.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Scott got to his feet, then added, ‘I liked her, you know, Betty-mad as she was,’ and marched off before Kathy could change her mind.

‘Chief? The car’s here for your evening prayers.’

Brock looked up at Bren who’d tapped on his door. He checked his watch and swore under his breath. He hadn’t noticed the time and realised he was going to be late. He shoved a handful of papers into his briefcase and hurried out. The last thing he needed was a senior management meeting-dubbed morning or evening prayers, depending on the time of day-and especially this one, called specifically to discuss the report he hadn’t read.

By the time he reached the conference room at the Yard the meeting was well advanced. Commander Sharpe scowled darkly at him as he took the empty seat next to Superintendent Dick Chivers.‘Cheery’ Chivers, ever dour, was looking glummer than usual. Brock’s heart sank as he looked around the table and saw that everyone else’s copies of the report were decorated with dozens of place markers and stick-on notes of many colours, signifying the depth of their study. His own copy, entirely free of such embellishments, looked hideously naked apart from the letter tucked in at the end of chapter one. He made a mental note to get Dot to stick lots of things in for the future, and wondered where they all found the time. As he listened to them droning on he told himself that it was good to suffer these things from time to time, to remind himself just why he’d always refused promotion above detective chief inspector. He suffered less of this than any of them, and some no doubt spent their whole working lives in such meetings, pale termites in the ant heap of number ten Broadway.

By listening quietly, Brock was able to pick up much more from the exchanges around the table than he had from the impenetrable document. It seemed that some sort of power struggle was going on, though whether entirely within the police service or involving also the security services was not clear. The battlefield on this occasion was the ongoing allocation of responsibilities and resources between the centre-Scotland Yard-and the periphery- the thirty-three borough operational command units. The focus of this debate was Special Operations, and in particular the Major Enquiry Teams of SO1, to which they all belonged. In essence, it was the opinion of Sharpe- always, in Brock’s view, susceptible to conspiracy theories where his place in the organisation was concerned-that the Beaufort Committee would recommend that SO1 be shafted, sacrificed on some spurious altar of management theory.

‘Did he say Beaufort?’ Brock whispered to Chivers.

Cheery gave him a baleful look to see if he was joking, then reached to Brock’s copy of the report and turned to the introduction. Listed were the names of the committee of inquiry headed by its chair, Sir John Beaufort.‘Jugular Jack,’ Chivers snorted.

‘Something, Brock?’ Sharpe was leaning forward over his papers, beaming his piercing stare down the length of the conference table.

‘Just that I happened to come across Beaufort today. He’s got Special Branch protection, you know. He’s been getting death threats.’

‘Well, let’s hope they come to something,’ Sharpe said acidly.‘I suppose we can always consider that as a last resort. Murder is one thing we should be able to do reasonably well. No, Lillian, that’s not to be minuted.’ He allowed time for appreciative chortles around the table before moving to the next item on his long agenda. n the following days the initial turbulent activity settled into a pattern. New faces became familiar, actions became routine and the hope of quick results faded into a dull frustration. The weather settled too, into the soggy monochrome of autumn; leaves fell in earnest from the trees and people reached automatically for warm coats as if summer had never been.

Kathy continued to visit Northcote Square each day, although no one seriously expected Gabriel Rudd to hear from his daughter’s kidnapper. She became part of the background at 53 Urma Street, saying little but watching and listening in the hope of catching some reference that might be useful in the hunt for Tracey. She found that the enigma of Gabriel Rudd became no clearer to her. She attended a number of impassioned interviews he gave to radio, TV and press reporters in his house, in which he spoke agonisingly of his loss and pleaded with heart-wrenching conviction for his daughter’s safe return. She also observed the careful way in which he positioned his interviewers and their photographers so that his studies for The Night-Mare always appeared to good effect in the background. She noticed that he encouraged certain styles of photograph of himself, in close close-up, or in apparent conversation with his work, and she was struck by his change of mood when the interviewers left, becoming brisk and focused on his preparations for the exhibition at The Pie Factory, which seemed to absorb all his attention. It was as if she were watching two quite separate movies spliced together, one of a shocking family tragedy and the other of the artist at work.

Kathy also learned a good deal about Rudd’s creative process, which she found surprising. She had assumed that artists worked pretty much in isolation, applying their individual skills and inspiration to the material at hand, but it turned out that Rudd’s work was fabricated by other people, a whole army of collaborators or subcontractors acting under his instructions. Some of them worked elsewhere, but many of them moved into 53 Urma Street and could be found in busy groups in the studio, or sprawled at meal breaks in the living room, or asleep in the bedrooms on the ground floor. When Kathy asked Rudd about this (‘You mean you don’t actually make your own works of art?’) he laughed and gave her a rambling explanation of his fundamental challenge to the whole meaning of artistic authentication, which she didn’t follow.‘I suppose you think this is dead easy, eh?’ he challenged her. ‘Wanking around dreaming up crazy ideas.’

‘I was wondering how you know when you’ve got a good one, how you can tell a good idea from a less good one.’

‘Interesting question. I just do. That’s why I’m here, doing this. Sometimes it scares me rigid.’

His mood swung from garrulous to glum, and she was pretty sure that Poppy was bringing him drugs of some kind.

She liked the crew of assistants, who seemed a more light-hearted version of the police teams, industrious and painstaking and concerned with practical matters of obtaining things and making them work. They joked about Rudd’s conceptual pretensions behind his back and ignored his tantrums when things weren’t to his satisfaction, and it was from them that Kathy began to glean an idea of what he was preparing for the exhibition. It seemed to be a play on the word ‘trace’-the missing girl Trace, lost without a trace, and the artwork itself in the form of tracings. These would be images and words transferred by various processes onto sheets of plastic tracing film used in draughting offices, with a pale milky texture which would give a shimmering, ghostly effect under certain kinds of light.

Each day at eleven a.m. Kathy got a phone call from Len Nolan, polite but firm, wanting to know of any progress. She imagined the two grandparents sitting together over their morning coffee, ticking off the points on a list, determined not to be ignored by the authorities. Kathy also did follow-up interviews around the square, and came to recognise the ebb and flow of the people who moved through it, and put faces and characters to some of the names on the list of residents. The first she visited was Betty Zielinski, who was a common sight in the central gardens, feeding the birds with bread scraps she collected from Mahmed’s Cafe. At Kathy’s suggestion, she was taken into Betty’s home on West Terrace to meet her family, which turned out to be a fat black cat and a large collection of dolls, dozens in every room, each known by name and dressed eccentrically in clothes made by Betty on an old treadle sewing machine. Her sewing room was a chaotic jumble of home-made paper patterns and scraps of cloth. As she talked, Kathy tried to fathom her madness, if that’s what it was; a strange mixture of what seemed like normal memory and sensible observations with disconcerting interpretations, as if Betty stubbornly refused to see the world the same way as everybody else. There was an element of deliberate calculation in some of this, Kathy thought, and one or two of the disjunctions bothered her.

‘Tracey liked it here, with my little babies, in their mummy’s house. She helped me choose materials for their dresses. She loved coming to her mummy’s house.’

‘Her mummy’s house?’ Kathy queried, wondering if she’d misheard. Betty gave a startled little laugh, absurdly girlish and playful for a sixty-two year old.

‘We pretended that this was her mother’s house,’ Betty simpered, and Kathy remembered how she’d talked the previous day to Gabe about ‘my own little girl, my own darling’.

‘You knew Tracey’s mother, didn’t you?’

‘Of course. I’ve lived here for almost forty years, longer than anyone else. Longer even than…’ she cocked her head and whispered, ‘… the monster. Poor Jane. Such lovely long blonde hair. I was so jealous of her long blonde hair.’

‘What monster, Betty?’

‘Shhh! The children will hear you! They’re terrified of him. The one next door, of course.’ She nodded towards the wall to number fifteen, the portrait painter’s house. ‘Stolen!’ she wailed suddenly.‘So many stolen children!’

‘Reg Gilbey steals children?’

Again a look of surprise came over Betty’s face, as if some unexpected shift had occurred inside her head. ‘Oh dear me, no. My family took such a long time to get to sleep last night after all the excitement with the visitors. They simply wouldn’t settle.’

‘Which visitors were those?’

‘Why, the policemen and women, looking for Tracey. They searched in every room, but I told them they’d never find her here.’ Her eyes twinkled as if at the memory of a particularly exciting game of hide-and-seek. ‘Thomas became so excited he wet his pants, and Geraldine was sick all over her brand-new dress.’

Kathy could imagine what the lads from Shoreditch had made of that.

From Betty’s she went next door to see Reg Gilbey. She heard his old carpet slippers shuffling on the other side of the door before it opened. He peered at her through thick-framed glasses, sparse grey hair sticking in odd tufts from his head, and said,‘Yes?’

‘I’m DS Kathy Kolla from the police, Mr Gilbey…’

‘Not interested,’ he said grumpily and made to close the door again.

She put out a hand and said, ‘It won’t take long. I can come back later, if you’re busy.’

‘I had two lots of coppers here yesterday.’ He breathed whisky, and a musty smell leaked from the house.‘Can’t tell you anything.’

‘I was wondering if you might have noticed anything from that bay window of yours. You must get a good view of the school playground from there. Perhaps you saw…’

‘If you’re suggesting I spend my time watching the kiddies, you can clear off.’

He moved to slam the door in her face, and she quickly said,‘No, no. Look, I’m just doing my job. We all want to find her, don’t we?’

He relented a little. ‘Have a look if you want,’ he said, then added gruffly,‘Won’t do you any good.’

He closed the door behind her and led the way down the corridor and up the stairs, dropping the cat on the way. At the landing he showed her into the big front room with its corner bay window, and the smells changed from musty damp to a rich soup of ripe linseed oil and sharp turpentine. Paintings were stacked several deep all around the walls, mainly portraits and figures, some nude.

‘Your work isn’t like the artists of The Pie Factory, then,’ Kathy said, making conversation as she went to the bay and checked the sightlines.

‘That rubbish!’ Gilbey scoffed. ‘Those people can’t draw and haven’t got one original thought between them.’

‘I suppose they do have original imaginations,’ she suggested, noticing a canvas in the corner depicting the figures of children running in the playground below. So he did spend time watching them, she thought.

‘No, no. That’s all froth and show. What they do is steal an image from some famous artist-Goya, Munch, Van Gogh, Bacon, whoever-and recycle it in execrable workmanship and look clever, as if they’re making some profound reference. They’re just scavengers on the body of a great tradition, that’s all they are.’ He’d obviously made this speech many times before, but it still got him heated.

‘Who does Gabriel Rudd steal from?’ she asked.

‘Henry Fuseli-now he was a painter. Others, too, I suppose.’

‘And you’ve never noticed anyone hanging around the corner down there, watching the kids?’

He shook his head, and after a few more poisonous remarks about the decline of artistic standards he led her downstairs and showed her out.

The school was next. The headmistress of Pitzhanger Primary School was a confident, brisk woman of definite opinions. She had known a very different Tracey from the happy child Gabriel Rudd had described.

‘We were concerned about her. She was withdrawn, found it hard to concentrate and didn’t make friends. Sometimes she would hide rather than join the other children at play or in classes. She had a favourite place in the service yard, an old coal bunker, where we’d usually find her. I spoke to her father about it and he insisted it was our fault, that the other children were bullying her, but that wasn’t so. It’s true that they’d heard about Dead Puppies- their parents told them-and that led to some teasing, but we soon put a stop to that. I believe there was some other problem. She seemed frightened.’

‘Did her grandparents speak to you?’

‘Yes, several times. They made it plain that they had a quarrel with Mr Rudd about his parenting, but I couldn’t support any suspicions of abuse or mistreatment. She just seemed very insecure and uncommunicative. Her teacher was concerned about some drawings she did of so-called monsters, but Tracey said they were her dreams.’

‘Do you still have the drawings?’ Kathy asked, but the woman shook her head.

‘I believe we gave them to her father.’

‘I suppose the other officers asked you if you’d noticed anything unusual lately.’

‘Yes. There’s been nothing really-no break-ins or obvious strangers hanging around. I had words with the landlord of The Daughters of Albion across the street when he put chairs and tables out on the footpath at lunchtime in the fine weather, and some of his customers started calling out to the children in the playground. Builders from West Terrace, mainly.’

‘I see. What about other locals? Reg Gilbey on the corner?’

‘Oh, we see him up there quite often, staring down at us, waiting for inspiration I suppose. He’s all right. He gave us one of his paintings for our fundraising auction day. Quite extraordinarily generous of him, actually. It was just a little oil sketch of our chimneys…’ She pointed up at the elaborate brick chimneys above the slate roof.‘It raised over five thousand.’

‘Gosh. And Betty Zielinski?’

‘Yes, she is a character. The children make up silly stories about her and call after her. We discourage it, of course, but they are fascinated and a little frightened by her.’

‘She told me that Tracey was a particular friend of hers, and used to visit her house.’

‘I’m surprised. I’ve seen her run from Betty when she’s approached her on her way home from school. I’d say Betty was a rather unreliable witness. She does tend to fantasise.’

The Fikrets, the Turkish Cypriots who ran Mahmed’s Cafe, were clearly a formidable clan, led by Mahmed Fikret and his wife Sonia. Mahmed and his son Yasher were usually to be found drinking coffee at one of the little tables in the shop, reading the Economist or the Financial Times, while the diminutive Sonia worked behind the counter, serving customers and yelling orders back to the kitchen in a piercing voice. The family had connections in several parts of the square, with a grandchild at the primary school, several nephews working on the building site, which, as Poppy had told Kathy, Mahmed owned, and a cousin working as a chef in Fergus Tait’s upmarket restaurant, The Tait Gallery.‘We’re art lovers too, you know,’Sonia told Kathy, pointing to a lurid print of a belly dancer on the wall.‘Yasher bought that one. He’s got a good eye.’

On the fourth day of Tracey’s disappearance, Thursday the sixteenth of October, Kathy bought a pitta-bread sandwich and tea in a polystyrene cup from Mahmed’s and took them to the central gardens for her lunch. She found a seat and watched the activity around her. A steady trickle of people passed in front of 53 Urma Street, pausing and pointing to Tracey’s home. Through the rapidly thinning canopy of leaves she caught a glimpse of Reg Gilbey in his corner turret, peering down at four builders walking along West Terrace towards the pub on the corner of Urma Street, followed soon after by a flock of girls from the typing pool of one of the offices on East Terrace, a man with a walking stick, two women with small dogs. Tourists of all ages, from teenage German backpackers to elderly Americans, passed by, drawn to the red neon letters above the gallery at The Pie Factory. She had resisted visiting it so far because she felt she should have more urgent things to do, but now she was at a loose end, marooned in this square while the real work was being done elsewhere. She would definitely speak to Brock about it. She finished her lunch, scattering crumbs for the sparrows, and made her way towards the gallery entrance.

Inside, in a pale grey foyer, she took a catalogue for Poppy Wilkes’s exhibition, which described the artist as ‘a ferociously gifted young British artist, one of the second wave of yBas following the pioneering generation of such international stars as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin’. The first part of the exhibition was a video installation called Dad’s Car and Other Remote Sightings of Distant Kin, and Kathy went into a square room, onto the ceiling and four walls of which black-and-white video films were being projected. When she reached the centre of the space, rotating to try to follow the different images, Kathy picked up a soft background soundtrack of sighs and moans and mysterious clicks. The films appeared unsynchronised and were difficult to follow, sometimes running in slow motion or frozen in a still or going suddenly blank, but there seemed to be certain recurring images: of an old car, a Jaguar perhaps, viewed from a low angle, door open; of various pieces of women’s underwear in close-up draped across leather upholstery; of a woman’s foot sticking out of a car window, jerking violently; of a cigarette burning in a car’s ashtray. Kathy didn’t stay long.

She moved on to another room containing a number of Poppy’s highly naturalistic sculptures, dominated by half a dozen giant cherubs suspended from the ceiling. These winged figures had the extremely realistic features of a pretty child, disturbingly like Tracey Rudd, but magnified to larger than adult size, and of an unhealthy-looking mottled brown colour. The catalogue explained that the colouring had been made from blood donated by convicted murderers, after whom each cherub was named, as in Cherub Maxwell, Cherub Henry and so on. Another of the sculptures was called Virgin Birth, and the infant, again larger than life and very realistic, lay on the lap of the conventionalised drapery of a Madonna from which the figure itself had mysteriously vanished, leaving a void where the face should have been.

In one corner of the room were a few pieces by another sculptor, Stan Dodworth-presumably, Kathy thought, the Stan whom Poppy Wilkes had mentioned as having a problem with the pigs. According to the catalogue, Stan was a working class lad from the north of England who had burst onto the London scene with his scandalous sculpture ‘Fag Thatcher’, a bust of the former Prime Minister made entirely from urine-stained cigarette butts retrieved from public toilets in northern mining towns. After the storm of controversy this and other similar pieces had provoked, Stan suffered a nervous breakdown and had only recently recovered sufficiently to expose his talent to public view in the exhibition Body Parts, from which these works had been taken. They comprised a series of withered limbs, like burnt driftwood, set up on plinths. Kathy resisted the temptation to spend twelve thousand pounds on a blackened hand.

One wall of the large exhibition area was glass, on the other side of which were the tables of The Tait Gallery restaurant, so that the diners could take in the exhibitions as they ate, while they in turn would appear as living sculptures, part of the show. Kathy could see the last lunch diners finishing their meals, and she and they smiled at each other through the glass.

‘Look pleased with themselves, don’t they?’ a voice murmured in her ear.

She turned to find Poppy Wilkes.

‘You didn’t stay long in my video room,’ Poppy said. ‘Didn’t you like my work?’

‘I found it unsettling,’ Kathy said, and then, seeing the scepticism in Poppy’s eyes, added,‘My dad died in a car crash.’

‘Really? Oh, wow.’

‘He had a big old car like that-a Bentley. He drove it into a motorway bridge support.’

‘Hell. An accident?’

‘Probably not. He’d just gone bankrupt.’

Kathy had no idea why she was making this confession. She hadn’t intended to, and she felt it to be completely out of character. And Poppy wasn’t exactly the sort of person she’d want to confide in. It was almost as if the atmosphere of exhibitionism in this place had infected her.

‘What about you? Was that your dad and his women?’

Poppy smiled. ‘No. I’d like to say I had a tragic childhood but it was just ordinary.’

‘Is that what drives you to do this-to avoid being ordinary?’

‘Ooh, that’s a sharp one. What about you? What happened after your dad died?’

‘Mum died, and I got on with my life.’ Kathy was aware of Poppy appraising her, eyes half closed as if composing a camera shot. She decided she didn’t want to be the subject of one of Poppy’s artworks.‘You live here, don’t you?’

‘In this building, yes,’Poppy replied.‘Behind here there are workshops and a few small flats-bed-sits, really. When Fergus takes you on he gives you a room and workshop facilities and materials and exposure, and in return he owns your work. You get a percentage of anything he sells over an agreed amount. It’s a way of getting started after art school. He’s launched some good talent that way.’

‘How about Stan?’ Kathy nodded at the withered limbs.‘He’s a bit older, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he lives here too, trying to get back into the game. Fergus is helping him out. Actually he’s over there, pretending to look at my Virgin Birth, but really he’s watching us.’

Kathy saw a tough-looking character with shaved head and faded T-shirt and jeans in the far corner of the room.

‘I’ll introduce you, provided you don’t let on you’re a cop.’

‘Why not?’

‘He had a breakdown a few years back. He was a bit violent with someone who was harassing him and got himself arrested. The cops beat him up and put him into an asylum.’

If only it was that easy, Kathy thought, and followed Poppy.

‘Hi, Stan. This is Kathy. She’s interested in your stuff.’

Stan eyed her suspiciously.

‘Yes,’ Kathy lied. ‘I was wondering how you get all those effects, of the veins and tendons and everything.’

Stan looked at his feet and grunted.

‘He uses sandblasting and stuff, don’t you, Stan?’ Poppy prompted, but Stan remained silent.

‘Where do you get your inspiration?’ Kathy tried.

He slowly looked up to meet her eyes and said,‘Death,’ then turned and walked away.

‘He doesn’t have Gabe’s gift for self-promotion, does he?’ Kathy said, and immediately felt a chill in Poppy’s look, as if any criticism of Gabriel Rudd wasn’t allowed.

‘Stan’s all right,’ Poppy said.‘He’s very serious about his work. It’s very truthful. That’s what we’re all about, truthfulness.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes. Stan, Gabe, me, we’re all after the same thing, the truth, even when it hurts-especially when it hurts. You’ll see it tomorrow in Gabe’s show. You are coming, aren’t you? We’re setting it up in the morning.’

‘Okay, yes. Although I feel I should learn a bit more about all of this.’

‘There’s lots of books. Fergus commissioned one on us. It’s available at the desk outside.’

‘Fine. Incidentally, is it just a coincidence that those faces on your cherubs look like Tracey?’

‘No, she modelled for me. She has such an innocent face, just what I was after.’

Kathy picked up a copy of Art of The Pie Factory on her way out.

Later that evening, on her way back to Shoreditch station, Kathy noticed posters stuck on walls and taped to lamp posts calling for information about the missing Tracey Rudd, and at the same time advertising the No Trace exhibition. There was an image of Tracey on the posters, a poignant little sketch by her father, and each poster had been individually signed and numbered by Rudd.

Inside the police station the mood was flat, exhausted, and she mentally compared it to the buzz she’d left at Rudd’s studio. Everyone here seemed drained, one officer actually asleep on folded arms on his desk. She asked if Brock was around and was told that he was in a meeting and should be back shortly. Anxious not to miss him, she went to wait in the corner where he had set up his work space. His desk was piled with reports, maps, memos and notes, his computer plastered with handwritten messages stuck to the screen so that he wouldn’t miss them. As she sat down to wait, Kathy noticed a thick report lying next to her elbow. What attracted her attention was the end of a letter stuck between the pages. She recognised Suzanne Chambers’ handwriting. Brock’s friend Suzanne had taken care of her once when Kathy had been recovering from the violent end to a particularly harrowing case, and for this she would always be grateful. Suzanne lived with her two grandchildren fifty miles away in Battle, near the Sussex coast, but Kathy assumed she and Brock spoke regularly on the phone, and she wondered why Suzanne should need to write. Perhaps they’ve gone away somewhere, she thought. She leaned forward and twisted her head to read the address, but saw that it was that of the antique shop Suzanne owned on the high street.

Kathy looked back over her shoulder around the office. There was no sign of Brock and no one was paying any attention to her. She reached over and tugged the letter an inch further out of the report, and read:

Dear David,

I have to put this in writing, because I haven’t been able to find the words…

A chill grew inside her as she re-read the line. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured. ‘They’re splitting up.’ She checked the room again, then tugged the bottom corner of the letter free of the report so that the final line on the page was revealed: my future and ours. Before I had no choices, but now

Kathy took a deep breath, still not understanding. She decided there was nothing for it, and was reaching forward again when she heard Brock’s voice behind her.‘That’s not soon enough. Tell them to try harder,’ he was calling to someone in the corridor. She slipped the letter back into the report and turned to face him.‘Hi,’ she said and he gave a weary smile in return.

He listened to her patiently as she asked for a more active role in the investigation, then scratched at his beard before replying. ‘I know how you feel, Kathy. This is a frustrating time for all of us. The reason I’ve kept you there is that the other two crime scenes are cold, but Northcote Square is different. It’s in the news every day-Rudd’s making sure of that. I’m hoping there may still be something to be got from it.’

He saw Kathy’s puzzled look and went on. ‘The man we’re looking for is watching those broadcasts too. Have you thought that he may be tempted to pay another visit? Enjoy the circus he’s created?’

She hadn’t thought of that, although she realised she should have.

‘We’re monitoring the square with cameras, but that’s not the same as a good pair of eyes on the ground. You may spot something. Stick it out till the end of the week, okay? Then we’ll see. And in the meantime, talk to Bren. See if he’s come up with anything that strikes a chord with you.’

She nodded, chastened, and he added,‘Missing children are the worst thing, Kathy. I know. We mustn’t let it get to us.’ They were silent for a moment, he thinking of the pictures of the girls that Kathy had pinned beside her desk both here at Shoreditch and in her regular office at Queen Anne’s Gate, and she wondering if he was making false assumptions about her vulnerability.

‘I’ll talk to Bren,’ she said, and turned away.

She found him, shoulders bowed, poring over a printed list, highlighting names with a green marker. A steady man, quietly spoken, he usually exuded confidence but now looked defeated.

‘Hi, Bren.’

He lifted his head. ‘Hi, Kathy. Got any goodies for us? We could do with something.’

‘No progress?’

‘Nothing to speak of.’He passed a hand over his eyes and yawned. He had three girls of his own, Kathy knew, and he had thrown himself into this case as if it were a personal quest.‘This is driving me crazy, Kathy. It really is.’He handed her an envelope with her name on it.‘We’ve all had one,’ he said as she unsealed it to find an invitation to the opening of No Trace.‘Load of rubbish.’

‘Brock suggested I sit down with you sometime and go through what you’ve turned up.’

‘Good idea, I could do with a fresh brain. Tomorrow morning? Eightish?’

‘I’ll be here.’

She thought about Brock as she sat in the bright capsule of the underground train on the way back to Finchley Central, and about Gabriel Rudd, both running their teams, keeping them fed with ideas, dogged by the possibility of failure. She reached her station and tramped through the dark streets to her block of flats, where she took the lift to the twelfth floor. She was thankful now for the silence and peace of her flat, although at other times she dreaded the first sense of emptiness, of Leon gone. She microwaved a meal and sat by the window, the curtains open, looking out over the city. Brock’s dilemma was a bit like Gabe’s, she thought, a visual or conceptual one. How to recognise a good idea when a less good one might deflect the whole project and soak up crucial time and resources?

She took the book she’d bought at the gallery out of its paper bag. The cover was perfectly white, with the title spelled out in letters cut from newspapers, as in a ransom note. Inside, Fergus Tait’s introduction to his vision of The Pie Factory read like an overenthusiastic advertisement for a new cosmetic, Kathy thought, but at least it was intelligible. When she reached the main text, written by a professor of media arts, she floundered. The first sentence ran:

In the high art lite world in which the barely mediated procedures of Post-Minimalist convention reprise Modernist discourse in terms of docusoap myth, and what passes for British culture privileges a new ontological realm of narrative trite, the artistic production of The Pie Factory, the latest Britart powerhouse of London’s Shoreditch/Hoxton (ShoHo) district, offers a stunning new avatar of the memorialising tendencies of the avant-garde.

She tried it again, a word at a time, but that didn’t help, so she just looked at the pictures and resolved to try the web. s she walked from the tube to the police station the next morning, Kathy noticed that the posters she’d seen everywhere the previous night had disappeared. She mentioned this to the desk sergeant who said, didn’t she know that those things were valuable? Apparently they were changing hands in the local pubs and market and on the internet for as much as two hundred pounds, some said, especially to foreigners. ‘Well, they’re works of art, aren’t they? Signed original Gabriel Rudds.’

Bren looked as if he’d had little sleep the previous night. His breathing was shallow, his gaze bleary. Kathy had found him in the control room, in front of the big map. Two women working on their computers ignored them as Kathy and Bren sat together with mugs of coffee. The mugs came from a small tea-making alcove outside, and were stained and chipped from continuous use.

‘I’ve been over this ground so often it’s becoming a blur. We haven’t been able to come up with any convincing connection between the profiler’s magic circle and the site of the third abduction, Northcote Square. There’s one little thing I keep coming back to, Kathy,’Bren said wearily.‘But I can’t think straight any more, so maybe you can tell me if I’m just getting fixated or what.’

‘Go on.’

Bren pointed to the red and yellow spots and the black circle. ‘We’ve interviewed every single person inside that circle, some several times. Nothing. Now Aimee and Lee went to school by bus, on different routes, from different stops. Their mums go to different shops and as far as we’ve been able to tell their paths may never have crossed… except there.’ He rose and pressed a fingernail to a small cross.‘This is where Aimee caught her bus, and sometimes, not regularly, if Lee and her friends missed their usual bus home, they would take a different route that comes to this same stop. There’s a row of shops there with a newsagent, where both girls have bought sweets. It’s possible that they even stood together in the same queue at the counter.’ He turned to Kathy with a look almost of appeal. ‘That’s the only place we’ve been able to find where their paths actually crossed.’

‘Sounds significant.’

‘But is it? I thought it might be, but we’ve turned up nothing.’

He looked ashen under the glare of the fluorescent lights. She said,‘Why don’t we go there and you can show me.’

It was at the other end of the borough, and they decided to take a car.

The place was a nondescript section of street, busy with traffic and indistinguishable from any other. The abductor might have been passing, Bren thought, in a car perhaps or on foot, and first spotted the two girls here. At that moment, a red double-decker pulled up at the stop opposite the newsagent and Kathy looked up at several faces on the top deck gazing down at them.

‘Or he might live around here.’Bren gestured to the row of houses across the street, and the windows of flats over the shops. ‘But we’ve checked everyone in the immediate vicinity and found nothing. The shopkeepers haven’t been able to help.’

The bus moved off and they crossed the street. Pictures of Aimee and Lee stared out at them from the window of the newsagent. When they reached the doorway they turned and looked back. Above the roofs of the houses opposite, the top two floors of a tall block of flats several streets away were now visible.

‘What about them?’ Kathy pointed.

Bren frowned. The fresh air had revived him a little.

‘No, I don’t think we’ve been up there.’ He checked the map he’d brought.‘It’s outside the magic circle.’

‘Shall we take a look?’

Kathy directed Bren from the map, and they drew in at the base of a tall building on the Newman housing estate. They got into the lift and pressed the button for the topmost level. It was a graffiti-coated aluminium box, and Kathy made a comment about how Fergus Tait could probably sell it as an artwork. Bren didn’t get it, and she said,‘Come to the gallery tonight. You’ll see what I mean.’

‘It’s cut-up sheep and stuff like that, isn’t it?’

‘That sort of thing. Gabriel Rudd’s famous.’

‘Oh yes, I’d heard of him. He’s the Dead Puppies guy, right? My girls saw him on TV and had nightmares for a week.’

The lift ground to a halt at level three and a woman got in. The lumpy shapes of curlers bulged beneath her headscarf. She looked them over.

‘So what is Dead Puppies?’ Kathy asked when the doors finally slid shut.

The woman spoke before Bren had a chance. ‘Dead Puppies? I can tell you that, love. I saw it on TV. This smartarse cooked up some puppies and put them in tins, with labels and everything, and called them works of art. Some art gallery paid millions of taxpayers’ money for just one.’

‘Yuck,’ Kathy said.

‘Oh, it was much worse than that, love,’ the woman continued, clearly relishing Kathy’s reaction. ‘He brought one of the tins with him on TV, and he had a tin-opener and a fork…’

‘Oh no!’

‘Oh yes. Tucked into it, he did. I was having my dinner at the time, but I couldn’t finish it, I felt so ill.’

‘It’s true,’ Bren confirmed.

‘That’s what they call art these days. Sick, if you ask me. You’re coppers, aren’t you?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Yes, love, it is.’

They reached the top level and the woman got out ahead of them. They followed her around a corner and came out onto the access deck. A dozen residents were outside along its length, some chatting, others smoking or reading the paper in the afternoon sun.

‘It’s the Bill,’ the woman called out so that everyone could hear, and they all immediately disappeared, front doors slamming.

‘So much for the element of surprise,’ Bren muttered.

The first door they tried was opened by a suspicious elderly man in shirtsleeves. His forearms looked strong and brown, with a tattoo of an anchor on each. Bren asked him his name, and how many people lived in his flat (‘Just me’) and the names and numbers of people living in the adjoining flats, then showed him pictures of the missing girls. As the man examined them they looked over his shoulder into the living room. Against the far window was a telescope.

‘No, never seen ’em,’ he said and made to close the door.

‘That’s a pretty powerful telescope, isn’t it, sir?’ Bren asked.‘Mind if I have a look?’ He walked straight past the man, who took a moment to recover from his surprise.

‘Oi!’ he protested, and Kathy said quickly, ‘He’s a keen amateur astronomer. What do you look at?’

The man gave her an unpleasant glare.‘Birds.’

Bren looked into the eyepiece without touching the body of the telescope, then strolled slowly back, looking over the room and through the open bedroom door.

‘Come on, get out,’ the old man complained. ‘While you’re ’ere you should check out them next door. Dodgy, they are.’

‘In what way?’

‘All them strange kids.’

As they moved to the next front door, Bren said under his breath,‘That telescope was trained straight down on the bus stop outside the newsagents. I could see the girls’ pictures in the shop window.’

The next door was opened a couple of inches by a young woman with a thin, pale face, whose eyes widened at the word ‘police’. This time Kathy went through the routine, and at first the woman tried to respond, although her grasp of English obviously wasn’t strong. As she examined the pictures a second woman called to her in a language Kathy didn’t recognise, then a child gave a shriek and began crying.

‘Where are you ladies from, miss?’ Bren asked.

The question seemed to agitate the woman, who was suddenly unable to speak any English at all. More children were howling now.

‘How many children do you have?’ Kathy asked, trying to see past the woman. She caught a brief glimpse of the second woman with a small child under each arm.

‘Babysitters!’ the woman at the door suddenly burst out.‘Babysitters!’ she repeated, and slammed the door shut.

‘Well,’ Kathy said,‘I reckon we’re going to get enough leads up here to keep Shoreditch busy for weeks.’

There was no response to their knocks at the third door or the fourth. The fifth was opened by a young man in need of a shave. An odd smell, rather like that of a hospital, seeped out. Mr Abbott looked at the pictures and nodded.

‘Yeah, I seen these on the telly. Can’t help you though.’ He spoke softly, as if not wanting to be overheard.

‘You live alone, sir?’

‘No, with me mum.’

‘Perhaps she could help us.’

He shook his head. ‘She’s sick in bed. Has been for months. I have to look after her.’

‘These two girls used the bus stop you can see from your window,’ Kathy said.‘Do you mind if we come in and check how much of that street is visible from up here?’ The man seemed keen to help and led them inside and over to the window, walking with a slight limp. He stood with his right leg braced stiff while Kathy and Bren made a show of examining the view. The bedroom was to one side, its curtains closed, the room in darkness. The chemical smell was stronger here.

‘Your mother?’ Kathy asked, whispering now, moving towards the door.

‘Yeah, she’s very poorly.’ He followed and Kathy had a glimpse of grey hair against a pillow before he gently closed the door.

They moved on, flat after flat, each a glimpse of a moment in a life, a collection of short stories. At the end of it they returned to the ground.

‘I’ll put someone onto checking these,’ Bren said, looking at his notes.‘Then I’ll go home and get some kip. I’m all in. Thanks, Kathy.’

It would come to nothing, Kathy thought, but she agreed to look through the photo album of local suspects they’d put together in case she recognised anyone visiting Northcote Square, and Bren looked happier.‘Don’t forget about tonight,’ Kathy said.‘Why don’t you bring Deanne? She would be interested. It’s what she’s studying, isn’t it?’

Later that day, the report of Bren and Kathy’s visit to the flats, together with the follow-up checks, reached Brock’s desk. Of the residents on the top two floors, five had previous convictions-car theft, break and enter, assault. Brock noted further action against their names. There were also several discrepancies between the names that Bren and Kathy had gathered and those on the council rental roll. The flat with the pale-skinned ‘babysitters’ was rented to a Nigerian family, and another, occupied by four students, was in the name of an elderly grandmother. Such was the nature of intelligence. Brock initialled the cover sheet and moved on to the next file. ren’s wife Deanne was very interested in attending the opening of No Trace, as it happened. She had been an art student herself for a while before marrying Bren, and was currently doing a part-time master’s degree in art history. She was also a big fan of Gabriel Rudd. She arranged for her mother to look after the girls and arrived at Northcote Square with her husband just as Kathy joined the crowd converging on the entrance to The Pie Factory. It was a clear, dry night, and there was a party atmosphere in the square. Women in expensive Italian suede rubbed shoulders with young, arty girls in bright colours like parrots, men in suits and celebrity couples.

‘That’s what’s-his-name and his girlfriend, isn’t it?’ Deanne whispered, pointing at faces familiar from the movies. ‘God, I wish I’d got something more exciting to wear.’

‘But how can you like Dead Puppies?’ Kathy asked her.

‘Oh, that was just about our hypocrisy towards animals-you know, eating some and idolising others as pets. He was just winding everybody up.’

‘You mean it wasn’t really puppy meat?’

‘Oh, I think it would have to have been, don’t you? For the point to work, I mean, and knowing Gabriel Rudd. And it was also about labelling and packaging, and about the idiocy of the art market. It was a pastiche of other famous art icons, of course-Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, and Manzoni’s excrement.’

‘Pardon?’ Kathy thought she’d misheard.

‘In the sixties, this Italian artist made up cans of his own faeces, each one containing thirty grams, labelled and numbered. Of course we can’t be sure that they do actually contain that, because they’re far too valuable to open- they’re worth tens of thousands each now.’

‘So they made him rich?’

‘Well, not really. He died soon after, at thirty, of cirrhosis.’

‘That’s ironic.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? But Gabriel Rudd certainly did all right out of his cans of puppy meat-after his TV appearance they were worth a bomb.’

They were almost at the door now, and Kathy pointed at the looping letters of the graffiti on the wall, ‘same old shit’.‘Appropriate.’

‘Very,’ Bren said heavily. Despite some sleep and a shower, he still seemed very ragged.

‘It’s a quote,’Deanne said.‘A New York artist from the eighties, Jean-Michel Basquiat, started out as a graffiti artist and signed his work “Samo”, short for “same old shit”.’

‘So this is intentional, is it?’ Kathy asked. ‘You think Fergus Tait had it done?’

‘Wouldn’t be surprised. Basquiat died young too, at twenty-eight, of a drug overdose.’

‘You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?’

Deanne smiled ruefully.‘Takes my mind off nappies.’

‘We should hire you as a consultant. I’m lost.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ Bren murmured.

They had reached the entrance desk, and exchanged their invitations for catalogues of No Trace. Inside they found that the main gallery had been cleared of Poppy’s cherubs and the other work, and was now the setting for five pearly-grey banners, each about a yard wide, the full height from ceiling to floor. The subdued lighting was supplemented by ultraviolet lamps, making the banners shimmer like ghosts, and the images and text covering them appear at first like spiders’ webs or wrinkles in ancient skin. The catalogue explained that each banner represented one day since the artist’s daughter Tracey had disappeared, and there would be a new banner every day until she was found, even if it meant filling the whole gallery. The dominant image on banner number one was that used on the posters, Gabe’s pencil sketch of Tracey’s face, and looking around Kathy recognised other images, too-the upturned faces of the press in the square photographed by Rudd leaning out of his window, chains of uniformed police searching a piece of waste ground, the face of a TV newscaster reading the evening news. The images seemed mainly to be derived from photographs, but processed and simplified to become grainy, abstract clouds of dots, so that they had to be stared at for some time before their meaning emerged.

‘Rudd has a thing about Henry Fuseli, an eighteenth-century English painter,’ Deanne said. ‘His prize-winning picture The Night-Mare was based on a Fuseli painting of the same name. I think some of these scenes may be modelled on Fuseli’s work too.’ She pointed to a figure of Rudd himself crouching on the floor, like some kind of beast, and to an image on the first banner of a dark figure leading a small child by the hand into a dark tunnel.

‘This is sick,’ Bren said. He was looking around in disgust at the people chatting, drinking, idly studying the works.‘Hundreds of coppers are out there tonight busting a gut trying to find Tracey, and her father is in here supping champagne, exploiting the whole bloody thing, trying to make cash out of it.’

‘Yes,’ Kathy said.‘I think you’re right.’

Deanne looked at Bren’s face, tense, angry, and said gently, ‘I know what you mean. It looks like that, but it’s the business he’s in. He’s a celebrity. It wouldn’t matter what he did, the papers would be full of him and Tracey. He’s dealing with it in his own way, trying to make sense of it through his art.’

Kathy noticed that some of the other people in the gallery were looking pointedly at her and smiling and whispering to each other. She was about to ask Deanne what was wrong when she stopped short and stared in shock at the banner in front of her, number four. On it she saw her own face, staring back at her.‘Oh no.’

In the picture Gabriel Rudd was standing beside her, with an arm around her shoulder. She remembered the scene from the previous day in his studio, when she’d asked him something about his work, but she didn’t remember anyone taking photographs. She was filled with embarrassment and then dismay, that her image should have been stolen and used in this way without her knowledge.

Bren and Deanne had seen it now, and were equally startled. Bren moved closer and read the title underneath; Explaining Paintings to a Dead Cop, it said.

‘What!’He sounded incensed.‘What the bloody hell…!’

‘It’s a quote, Bren,’ his wife said quickly.‘Joseph Beuys, Explaining Paintings to a Dead Hare…’

Her explanation didn’t pacify him.

‘I feel like an idiot,’ Kathy said.

‘I feel bloody angry,’Bren replied.‘Where is this creep?’ He glared around, and people nearby shrank away. Usually calm, almost placid in his manner, he looked formidable now, all the frustration of the past five days concentrated in this outrage. They spotted Gabriel Rudd across the room, looking pale and tragic, wearing a suit that appeared as if it had been tailored from the same polymer material as the banners. He was talking to Fergus Tait and a circle of admirers, his white hair luminous beneath the lights.

Deanne said,‘I think you should leave it, Bren.’

‘You two stay here,’ he growled, and strode off across the room, the crowd parting before him. They watched him approach the group, saw Rudd’s face turn in surprise as he broke in, then Tait was gesturing, Bren said something in reply, and Tait was abruptly still.

After several minutes, Gabriel Rudd turned and walked towards Kathy and Deanne, ignoring the congratulations of the people he passed, Bren at his shoulder.

‘Kathy,’ he said,‘your colleague here has explained how offended you are by my use of your image. I want to apologise, I meant no offence.’ He was standing stiff and formal, his face even paler than usual. ‘Artists are terrible magpies of other people’s images, and I didn’t think you’d mind. I know that you and your people are doing everything possible to find Trace, and the last thing I want to do is upset you, okay?’

Kathy had expected arrogance or defensiveness, but this almost painfully polite apology was disarming.‘Well, I wish you’d asked me.’

He nodded humbly.‘I’ll fix it,’he said. Reaching into a pocket, he drew out a folding knife. People nearby strained to see what he was doing, then gasped in alarm as he raised the knife to the banner. With a smooth sweep of his arm he brought the blade scraping down across its surface, erasing part of the printed image. Then he did it again, and again, until Kathy’s face was removed, leaving only a ghostly smudge. He shrugged at Kathy with a weak little smile and walked away. A buzz of excited conversation followed him.

Bren, Deanne and Kathy left soon after. They paused outside in the sudden cool of the square. A silvery fog had descended, blurring the streetlamps. Bren said, ‘I overreacted, didn’t I?’

‘No, I’m grateful,’ Kathy said.

Deanne slipped her arm through his and said,‘You blew Kathy’s chances of immortality, darling. Now she knows how Mona Lisa felt, or all those nude models down the ages. At least she had her clothes on.’ She shivered and looked at the skeletons of the trees in the central garden silhouetted against the mist, and said,‘This is a rather sinister place, isn’t it? Not a very cheerful spot for a little girl to grow up.’

A man was locking the gates of the garden, walking slowly around the railings, limping on a stick, and the sight of him brought a memory into Kathy’s mind. ‘You remember the bloke we spoke to at the flats this morning, Bren? The one with the sick mother? He had a limp, didn’t he. Did you see if he had a walking stick in the flat?’

Brenthought.‘Yes, I sawoneon thefloorbesidethearmchair. An aluminium job, adjustable, with an elbow brace.’

Kathy visualised it, trying to tickle a memory into life. ‘I’m sure I saw someone with a stick like that, here, in the last couple of days. A young man with a limp, but I didn’t get a good look at him.’

‘Well, those sticks aren’t that uncommon. I think hospitals lend them out. Which leg had the limp?’

Kathy stared into the darkness of the gardens, remembering.‘The stick was in his right hand, so I suppose that was the bad leg.’

‘Like the bloke this morning.’ Bren pondered this, then said, ‘Just a coincidence, I expect.’ All the same, luck often did play its part in these cases-a comment overheard in a pub, a car pulled over for speeding with something suspicious in the back, perhaps a chance sighting of a limping man.

Then something else occurred to Bren. ‘The bedroom window of the second girl, Lee, was fairly narrow. Forensics found threads of fabric from a pair of jeans snagged on the side of the frame, as if the man had knocked his knee or hip against it, climbing in.’

‘The man’s name was Abbott, wasn’t it? Why don’t we check if they’ve found out anything about him?’

Bren called in and was put through to the Data Manager.

‘Abbott? Yes, I’ve got it. He’s not known to us, Bren.’

Bren made a face, then the voice in his ear added,‘You got a bit mixed up with that one. You know how you said his mother was sick? Well, she’s a lot worse than that.’

Kathy caught Bren’s look as he rung off.‘What’s wrong?’

He stared at Kathy.‘You remember Abbott’s mother?’

‘Yes?’

‘Apparently she died three months ago.’

‘But I saw her…’ Kathy replayed the brief glimpse she’d had of pale hair on a pillow in dim light.‘Oh my God.’

Deanne, who hadn’t been listening, was staring enviously through the windows at the diners in The Tait Gallery.‘I’m hungry,’ she broke in.‘Where are we going to eat?’ Then she saw her husband’s face. ‘Something’s happened?’ she said with practised resignation. He explained.

‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘they were bringing in finger food when we left. I’ll go back in and wait for you. Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to Gabriel Rudd.’ She kissed Bren on the cheek.‘Good luck. Be careful.’

‘Be careful yourself,’ Bren said. ‘You might end up on one of his banners.’

As they approached the block of flats, Kathy looked up and counted the illuminated windows on the top floor.‘I think his light’s on,’ she said.

The lift seemed to take forever, and they were itching with impatience when they finally arrived. They hurried around the corner onto the access deck and stopped short; there ahead of them, backing out of his open doorway as if about to leave, was Abbott, juggling his walking stick and keys. He turned his head and for a frozen moment they stared at him and he stared back. Then, as they moved forward, he jumped with a strange lopsided skip back through his door and slammed it shut. As they ran towards it they heard the rattle of a chain. Bren hammered on the door, then stooped to the letterbox slot and bellowed,‘Open up, please, Mr Abbott. We have to talk to you.’ There was no reply. Bren peered in and said,‘I can’t see, the lights are off.’

‘We have to get inside, Bren,’ Kathy said, and pulled out her mobile.

While she called Shoreditch station, Bren moved back to the other side of the walkway and charged the door with a lowered shoulder. Kathy winced at the crash, but the door held. Bren backed off to try again. He had played for the Metropolitan Police rugby team, and he had the look on his face of someone charging an oncoming pack of forwards. The door burst open, then held on the chain. Bren used his boot to kick it clear.

As he went in, Kathy heard him cry, ‘The window’s open! He’s gone out the bloody window!’ She entered the darkened flat, feeling for the light switch. Ahead she saw the dark shape of Bren standing at an open window. She found the switch and the place flooded with light. At the same moment she became aware again of that hospital smell.

She ran to Bren’s side, past the discarded stick on the floor.‘He jumped?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Bren was leaning out, peering down into the darkness.‘I reckon that’s him down there.’ He was pointing to a dark shadow one floor beneath them and two bays along.

The facade of the building had projecting ledges and ribs of concrete, and Kathy could see how it would be possible to climb across it, if you had the nerve. Through the pounding in her own ears, she heard the murmur of traffic from fourteen floors below, and then something else-a grunt, a muffled curse.

Abbott had the nerve, perhaps, but he also had an injured leg. As her eyes adjusted, Kathy made out an arm reaching from the shadowy blob across a panel of pale concrete. Then the blob moved after it, slowly shifting towards the next bay of the wall.

‘Abbott, there’s no point to this,’ Bren was shouting. ‘Stay where you are.’

The warning seemed to galvanise the dark shape, which suddenly scrambled across its narrow ledge like a huge spider, reaching the next column, then crouching as if to lower itself down to the level below. There was another muffled snort, a cry, and suddenly the figure’s legs seemed to fly out from beneath him and he was toppling, limbs flailing, out into the void. It took several seconds for him to scream, as if he couldn’t quite take in what was happening to him. Then they heard a distant, piercing shriek, cut abruptly short.

Bren and Kathy were still for a moment, then he gasped,‘Ambulance,’and started working his phone. Kathy turned away, feeling giddy and sick. She wanted just to sit down, but there was something she had to do. She went inside the bedroom and opened the door. Gagging at the sour chemical smell that billowed out, she switched on the light.

There was the grey hair spread over the pillow, the motionless form of a small body beneath the blankets. Kathy stepped towards the bed, gently lifted the bedclothes away from the form. She saw a floral cotton nightdress, pink roses. She reached to the grey hair and stroked it away from the face, feeling cold, hard, wrinkled skin. The features were those of an old woman, sunken eye sockets, flesh shrivelled by illness and death.

Kathy forced herself to turn and walk steadily out, away from the smell, out onto the access deck, where she filled her lungs with the cold foggy air.

Brock arrived with the first patrol car. He met Bren in the car park at the foot of the block, where Abbott’s body lay smashed on the ground. The ambulance arrived as they were searching him, and the driver baulked for a moment at the sight of them, two men like vultures in their black coats crouching over a scarlet mess. They found a wallet with a picture of his mother in the plastic window. Then they peeled off their gloves and took the lift up to level fourteen, where Kathy had remained to secure the scene, standing outside Abbott’s door, talking to agitated neighbours.

The three of them entered the flat, and Bren and Kathy related to Brock exactly what had happened. Then they went through to the bedroom, and compared the face of the figure on the bed with that in Abbott’s wallet.

‘I think it is her, don’t you?’ Brock said, very calm, which Kathy found a comfort, for she was still feeling quite shaky. She watched him stroke the leathery old skin, then examine his fingertips.‘Make-up.’

‘I thought it might have been one of the girls,’ she said.

‘Natural assumption,’ he replied, yet she thought she heard a note of reserve. Was it a natural assumption, or had she just wanted to believe it too much? ‘Three months dead…’Brock murmured.‘I wonder how he managed it.’ He straightened up.‘So, why did he panic?’

‘He had this startled, guilty look, as if he realised we knew something really bad,’ Kathy said.

‘This?’ Brock nodded at the cadaver. ‘Or something else? Let’s take a look.’

They began searching the flat, Brock in the bedroom, the other two thankful to move out to the other rooms. Bren took the opportunity to ring Deanne’s mobile. When she answered he could hear the shrieks of excited conversation in the background.

‘I’m fine,’ Deanne said, and sounded it. ‘I’ve had lots of champagne and bits to eat, and I’ve been talking to these fascinating people. How are you?’

He told her what had happened.

‘Oh that’s terrible.’ The playfulness evaporated from her voice.‘No sign of the girls?’

‘No.’

‘Darling, you can’t carry all this by yourself.’

‘Brock’s here, and Kathy, and the others are on their way. Look, I think you’re going to have to get yourself home. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine. Come as soon as you can. I love you.’

Bren ended the call, thinking how very fortunate he was that that was true. hey found nothing in Abbott’s flat before others moved in to take over the search. Now Kathy and Bren became the property of the duty inspector at Shoreditch as the first stage began of an official investigation into a death in connection with a police operation. Under questioning in separate rooms, their assumption of a link between Abbott and the missing girls began to seem increasingly doubtful. Kathy saw it in the sceptical gaze of her interrogators and heard it in her own voice, protesting too much. A man with a limp and a view of a bus stop. So what? She couldn’t honestly say that she’d seen his face in the square.

Towards midnight there was a lull. Kathy sat drinking a cup of weak tea, expecting the worst. Her mind kept going back to that moment when they had turned the corner onto the access deck and confronted Abbott. Again and again the questioners had returned to that moment, and she had tried to recall and describe it so many times now that she no longer trusted her memory of it. She remembered the rush of excitement, and imagined that her body and face must have shown this, and that it would have been apparent to Abbott. But had he shown guilt before or after reading that signal? And was it really guilt or simply panic at seeing two psyched-up coppers bearing down on him? And what had then possessed him to climb out of his window? After that, her memory became bathed in an unreal light, spiderman toppling, arms windmilling, and the shrivelled little body in the bed. The whole sequence seemed so bizarre, so outlandish, that the steps that had led them there now seemed equally improbable.

She heard voices outside the door and assumed that new investigators had arrived, more senior and intimidating no doubt, and she braced herself. But when the door opened it was Brock who walked in, looking serious, an envelope in his hand.

‘Some news, Kathy.’ He sat opposite her, seeing the strain etched around her eyes.‘How are you?’

She gave him a tight smile. ‘Okay. Did they find anything in his flat? Something about the girls?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Clean as a whistle-apart from the little matter of dear old dead Mum.’ Kathy felt nausea rise in her throat. ‘However,’ he opened the envelope and drew out some sheets of paper, ‘we did find a memory card in his wallet, one of those little things they use in digital cameras. These are prints of the pictures it contained.’

She flicked through a series of street scenes-nothing incriminating, surely. She looked more carefully at the first, a pavement viewed from above, the space flattened by a zoom lens, and suddenly realised what it was. ‘That’s the bus stop, isn’t it? And the newsagent. There are no posters of the girls in the window, so this must have been taken before…’ There were children in the doorway, and she looked closer, trying to identify them. ‘Could that be Aimee?’

Brock nodded. He reached forward and pointed to the second page.‘And that’s Lee, we’re almost certain.’

Almost certain. Kathy drew in a long breath. ‘I could still be right then.’ Relief began to trickle through her like some marvellous opiate.‘I could be right.’

‘Yes. We’ve checked the angles and there’s no doubt that they were taken from Abbott’s window. But there’s no camera in his flat. It’s only a beginning, of course. But there’s something there, I’m sure of it.’

Kathy thought of all that must follow; retracing Abbott’s movements, tracking down his friends and acquaintances, searching for his hiding places. It would take time, and meanwhile the girls, if any of them were still alive, would be in a desperate state.

‘I want to help,’ she said.

‘Not tonight. You’re all in, and so is Bren. Get some sleep, then we’ll see.’

‘You look exhausted yourself.’

‘Oh, I just plod on. One other thing may help you sleep better. One of Abbott’s neighbours remembers him saying that he used to do wall-climbing as a sport, so his attempt to escape out the window wasn’t quite as mad or panic-stricken as it seemed. He may even have tried it before.’

They got to their feet and Kathy went out to the lobby, where Bren was waiting for her. Before they went their separate ways he said,‘We were lucky, Kathy. Bloody lucky. If he hadn’t had that thing in his wallet, they’d have made mincemeat of us.’

‘I know,’ she said, and pushed at the front door. Glancing back over her shoulder she saw Brock talking to two senior uniformed officers. They both nodded their heads and one of them glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was five past one in the morning. Kathy turned to ask Bren if he knew what was going on, but he was already striding away down the street. She looked back into the building but Brock and the others had gone, so she stepped out onto the pavement, pulling the collar of her coat up against the cold night air, and with the gust of chill wind she remembered the very first thing that had come into her head when she’d spotted Abbott. He had been on the point of locking his front door, on his way out, yet his clothing had seemed too light for the cold evening, and she’d thought he couldn’t be going far. It had been the briefest of thoughts, barely formed, because then their eyes had locked and adrenaline had taken over. Kathy stopped dead, then turned and ran back into the station.

She found Brock in a corridor at the back, pulling on his coat, heading for the door to the rear car park. He looked surprised to see her.

‘I thought you’d gone, Kathy.’

‘I remembered something. I don’t know why it escaped me. He wasn’t dressed to go far. Suppose he was going to visit another flat in the same building? Suppose he climbed out the window to get to that other flat?’

Brock beamed at her and she realised that he’d got there ahead of her. He pulled open the door and she saw a car waiting outside, engine idling.‘Want to come?’he asked. She squeezed into the back seat beside two uniformed men who were both talking on their phones. Brock got in the front and the driver put the car into gear.

No one spoke until they reached the cordon below the block of flats, then Brock exchanged a few words with the two men before leading Kathy past the barrier towards an unmarked white van. She saw the police tapes nearby, marking the place where Abbott had landed. There were no obvious signs of activity or alarm, but Kathy noticed groups of dark figures clustered in areas of shadow, some carrying weapons.

‘Let’s say,’ Brock said, gazing up at the face of the building, breath misting,‘that the second flat is below the line of sight of the bus stop, so level twelve or lower. Abbott was heading down and to your right, looking from above, to our left from down here.’ He pointed to an area of the facade.‘So they’re starting there and working outwards. You and I just stay here and wait.’ He tapped a knuckle on the back door of the van and after a moment it opened and they climbed in. A light came on and Kathy saw two people inside and the apparatus of a mobile command unit. A woman was crouched over a grid diagram on a table, marking names on the squares.

‘Everyone’s in position, sir,’ a man with headphones said quietly to Brock.

‘Then let’s begin.’

The man spoke a few words into his mike and they sat back to wait. After four minutes the first report came in, and the woman put a cross through one of the grid squares. Two minutes later she marked a second cross, then a third. It made Kathy think of a game the boys used to play at school, Battleships, except now it was for real. She wondered if Gabriel Rudd could use it for his next banner. Would it become a work of art simply because Rudd, rather than an anonymous police officer, drew it? Kathy rubbed her face with both hands, feeling tired and slightly dizzy. Who cares, she thought, just let them find the girls.

After fifteen minutes the man with the headphones looked up.‘Something on level nine, sir. Flat 903. IC1 male refusing entry.’

The woman tapped a grid square. ‘Flat in the name of Mrs Pamela Wylie.’

Brock and Kathy listened in silence to the low monotone of the reports. ‘Entry gained… Occupant restrained… No sign of other occupants.’ Then a pause and the man raised his eyes to meet Brock’s.‘They’ve found something, sir,’ he said, and Brock was out of the van and running towards the lifts, Kathy at his heels.

The body was stuffed into the back of a closet, hidden behind a suitcase and covered in a pile of old clothes. They recognised the pinched features of Lee, the second of the girls to disappear, and so pale and slack and still that they assumed she was dead until someone found a faint pulse and began CPR.

The occupant of the flat, Robert John Wylie according to the driver’s licence in his wallet, was a large, fleshy man with quivering chins, a toad to Abbott’s spider. He refused to say a word, and the detectives had to draw their own conclusions from what they could see. There was no sign of Mrs Wylie having lived there, and the flat looked as if it had become a den in which Wylie and Abbott could live out their obsessions. Unlike Abbott’s flat, which had been neat and clean, this place was a mess of half-consumed tins, cartons, magazines and clothes, and the atmosphere was clammy and claustrophobic, tainted with a smell of burnt plastic that turned the stomach. There was a computer and its printer, still branded with the name of the school from which they had been stolen, and a digital camera. And there were pictures, hundreds of them.

A detective emerged from the kitchenette, calling for Brock. He was holding a small box in his gloved hand, and the smell of burnt plastic was stronger.

‘What’s that?’ Brock asked.

‘Found it in the microwave, sir. I think it’s a computer hard drive. Looks like it’s been cooked.’

The ambulance man laying Lee on the stretcher saw Kathy watching. He paused a moment and drew the blanket off the girl’s left leg to show her. It was black, and Kathy gasped,‘What is it?’

‘I’ve seen it before,’ he said. ‘With addicts. They use a butterfly syringe to draw the drug from soft capsules, then inject it. It causes blood clots but they keep doing it anyway and gangrene sets in. She’ll lose the leg. At least.’

At that moment Wylie was being taken out of the flat. As he passed the unconscious girl on the stretcher he stopped and stared down at her, and at the same moment, as if there were some telepathic connection between them, her eyelids flickered open. She stared up, then her face convulsed in fear for a second before she lost consciousness again.

‘Get him out of here,’ Kathy snapped. athy didn’t wake until noon the following day. As she surfaced slowly from a deep sleep she became aware of sunlight filtering through the blinds, and immediately her mind began spinning with memories of the previous night: a body falling into the void; the smell of burning plastic; Wylie’s malignant stare; a blackened, gangrenous leg. She sat up abruptly and forced the images away. She might go for a swim, she thought, get her hair done, buy a pair of shoes, get in some food.

She noticed the trail of her discarded clothes on the floor. She still felt exhausted. The phone rang; she picked it up and heard Brock’s voice.

‘Didn’t wake you, did I?’

‘Mmm…’ her mouth felt numb, not yet ready for speech.‘Not quite.’

‘Sorry. Just wondered if you fancied brunch.’

Still slightly disoriented, Kathy wondered what kind of invitation this was.

‘I’m meeting Bren in an hour,’ he went on, ‘at The Bride.’

‘This is work?’

‘Afraid so. Can you make it?’

‘Of course.’

She rang off and got out of bed, opened the blinds, stretched and yawned at the window. It was a beautiful sunny day, white clouds scudding across a pale blue sky, a complete contrast with the drab grey days of the working week behind them. What did Brock want? Surely it was all but over now. Was it the questioning of Wylie? Or-her heart sank-breaking the news to relatives. Yes, that would be it. She should have realised he’d be needing help with that. She wondered how much sleep he’d had. It had been after three when he’d sent her home, but he’d still been working with the others through the material in the flat.

The Bride of Denmark was a myth, one of those unlikely accumulations that sometimes occur in the basements of old buildings in old cities. It didn’t exist in the inventories of the assets of the Metropolitan Police because the occupants of the Queen Anne’s Gate annex did their best to hide its existence, and because those few civil servants who had come across it considered it too difficult to deal with and had designated it ‘miscellaneous’. In the years after the Second World War the former occupants of the building, architectural publishers, had gone about the ruined city like magpies, collecting fragments of old bombed-out pubs and reconstructing them in their basement as the eccentric Bride. The small rooms were crammed with salvaged fittings-the polished bar, the back-to-back pew seats, the mahogany shelving-and encrusted with rows of ancient cobwebby bottles, pewter mugs, porcelain spirit kegs, mirrors and animal trophies. A salmon gawped at an antelope’s head, and the antlers of a moose met the unblinking gaze of a stuffed lion, or at least the front half of a lion, crouching among savannah grass in his glass case. The Bride was a refuge hidden beneath the annex, without phones, computers or office machines, a place where Brock retired to think.

Bren was already there when Kathy arrived, perched on a cane seat at the bar peeling plastic film from a plate of sandwiches. Brock, on the other side, was pouring coffee from a tall pot, and offered her a cup.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and sank onto a worn leather seat beneath the lion.‘Just what I need.’

‘So as soon as I turn my back you two go and wrap the thing up,’ Bren grunted, sounding peeved.

‘I thought of something and went back…’ Kathy began to explain, feeling awkward, but Bren waved a big hand.‘Brock explained. Well done, anyway.’He picked up a sandwich and took a bite, handed her the plate.

Brock came through the flap of the bar with a mug of coffee in his hand and sat beside Kathy. He smelled fresh from a shower and was wearing jeans and a thick knit pullover.‘Yes and no,’ he said.

They both looked at him.

‘The pictures they took tell it all as far as Aimee and Lee are concerned.’ His voice was weary, as if the terrible images were a crushing burden. ‘It’s all there, even a photo of the place they buried Aimee when they’d finished with her. But there’s nothing, not a thing, about Tracey. It doesn’t look as if she was ever there.’

‘What does Wylie have to say?’ Bren asked.

‘Not a word. Not a single word. He’s been charged and he called a lawyer this morning, but he refuses to open his mouth to us.’

Kathy said,‘Do we know him?’

‘Three convictions for possession and publication of indecent photographs, one involving children. Two fines and a two-month prison term. We’re digging for more background.’

‘The flat was rented in his wife’s name,’ Kathy said.

‘Yes. We don’t know where she is. Neighbours say they haven’t seen her in months.’

He paused to let this sink in, then continued,‘The point is that we have Lee in intensive care and we know that Aimee is dead, but we have no more idea where Tracey is than we did last Monday morning. On the face of it, we have nothing to connect either Abbott or Wylie to her disappearance. And if that’s the case, we’re going to have to start all over again as far as she’s concerned. Right from the beginning.’ He took a deep breath, sat back against the padded seat and closed his eyes.‘So what are the alternatives?’

‘But I saw Abbott in Northcote Square,’ Kathy objected.

‘You think you saw him. All you can really be sure of is that you remember a limping man.’

‘You’re suggesting it’s no more than a coincidence?’ Bren protested.‘That last night was a fluke?’

‘I’m saying we should look at all the options.’

‘A copycat?’Kathy said. There was silence for a moment, then she went on,‘The Tracey kidnapping is different from the other two in that her father is a celebrity. Maybe it’s aimed at him.’

‘Perhaps, but there’s been no ransom, no threat. And why make it look like the other two cases?’

‘To distract us from the obvious suspect,’ Bren said.

‘Who is?’

‘Tracey’s father,’Bren said immediately.‘Gabriel Rudd.’

Brock gave him a quizzical look.‘You’ve met him?’

‘Last night. Kathy and Deanne and I went to the opening of his exhibition. He and I nearly came to blows.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, one of his so-called artworks had a picture of Kathy and a caption that said she was dead.’

‘What?’

‘We persuaded him to remove it.’

Brock’s eyebrows rose further. ‘Rudd removed one of the artworks from his exhibition because you didn’t like it?’

‘Not exactly. He scraped Kathy’s picture out.’

Brock stared at them both in astonishment.‘Has Rudd been giving you trouble, Kathy?’

‘No. He apologised. He probably thought I’d be flattered. Perhaps I should have been.’

‘Anyway,’Bren went on,‘what really got to me was that he was exploiting Tracey’s disappearance for his own purposes. The whole thing has been turned into a circus for his benefit. It’s been like that all week, his picture in every paper, every news report.’

‘You’re suggesting Rudd arranged his daughter’s abduction to further his own career?’

Bren hesitated. ‘It’s not impossible, Brock. There are precedents.’

Brock shook his head. ‘Some form of Munchausen by proxy, you mean? You know what a can of worms that is.’

‘At least we should find out if he’s ever done anything like this before.’

‘We know he has,’ Kathy said quietly, and Brock nodded and said,‘The Night-Mare.’

Bren looked puzzled and Kathy explained, ‘After his wife Jane committed suicide, five years ago, he held an exhibition called The Night-Mare, inspired by her death. The main work won a big prize and he made a lot of money. Jane’s parents, the Nolans, were incensed by it. When I talked to the case officer who looked into the suicide, DS Bill Scott, it sounded like a prequel to what’s happening now, with the same cast of characters-Rudd, Tracey, the Nolans, Betty Zielinski.’

‘There you are then,’ Bren said.

‘I’ve been wondering about it all week. Right from the start his reaction to Tracey’s disappearance seemed ambiguous, and he has gone out of his way to make a public spectacle of it. I’ve also got the impression that his reputation has been fading recently, and he needed a boost like this. But on the other hand, I’ve found him weeping over a pair of Tracey’s shoes when there was no one around to impress.

‘There’s also the fact that the publicity has really been generated by his dealer, Fergus Tait, and it was Tait who pushed Rudd into doing this exhibition. If you were to look at who’s benefiting from all this, you’d logically have to consider Tait, too.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Well, there’s the grandparents, Len and Bev Nolan. They say they’ve been worried for some time about Tracey’s life with her father, and they explored trying to get custody, without success. They might have decided to take matters into their own hands.’

‘We’ve been to their house in West Drayton, Kathy,’ Brock said, ‘and checked their story with the social services. They seem genuine.’

Bren shook his head doubtfully. ‘And they told you about the custody business, did they? They didn’t try to hide it?’

‘That’s true. I’m not saying you’re wrong to have suspicions about Rudd, but maybe there’s more to it. If Tracey’s kidnapper wasn’t the same as Aimee’s and Lee’s, then making it look as if it was would distract our attention away from Northcote Square, and I wonder if there are other secrets hidden there. For instance, both the grandparents and the headmistress of her school said that Tracey had become withdrawn and depressed in the past year. There may have been something going on in her life that we don’t know about, that was leading up to her abduction.’

‘An abuser?’ Brock asked. ‘Are there any other candidates in the square?’

‘Too many. There’s the painter Gilbey up in his turret, spying on the kids in the playground below; there are the builders who drink in the pub across the way and tease the kids; there’s the mad woman, Betty, who’s obsessed with stolen children; and there’s the artist in Tait’s stable who has a record of mental instability and violent behaviour and makes sculptures of body parts, and another who makes giant cherubs with Tracey’s face and stains them with the blood of murderers.’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ Bren groaned.

Brock sat up and stretched. ‘We’ll run more checks on them all,’ he said, ‘and meanwhile we’ll get to work on Gabriel Rudd. So, where do we begin?’ He took a bite of a sandwich and opened his notebook.

‘Find out what he really did the night Tracey disappeared,’ Kathy suggested. ‘Watching TV alone all evening and going to bed at ten after tucking his daughter up never really struck me as likely. I’ll bet someone knows.’

‘The grandparents say he takes drugs. Have you noticed anything?’

‘Apart from the booze? Yes. When he gets really down, which happens several times a day, he gives Poppy a ring. She comes over and in no time he’s buzzing with energy and optimism. I don’t think it’s because of her sunny personality. Maybe I should talk to her again.’

‘Good,’Brock said.‘These aren’t too bad.’He reached for a pile of sandwiches as if suddenly realising that he hadn’t eaten for days, which was pretty much the case.

Kathy’s mobile rang. She recognised Len Nolan’s urgent voice and grimaced at the other two. ‘We’ve just heard on the news,’ he said.‘What’s happening? Have you found her?’

Kathy took a deep breath and began to explain.