No trace

26

Detective Inspector Tom Reeves delivered Sir Jack Beaufort to the door of the Shoreditch police station precisely on time. The judge had said little on the journey, sitting rigidly upright, face as impassive as a Roman bust, hands crossed on the attache case on his knees. He marched through the front door with the air of an inspecting general and was shown to the interview room with more careful deference than any of his predecessors along that route had ever received. Conscious of his own reputation as one of the country’s sharpest legal brains, he had thought it superfluous to bring a legal representative.

Standing stiffly in the small room, Brock introduced himself and Bren as if they were all complete strangers, then recited the caution. They took their seats and all three of them, Brock, Bren and Sir Jack, drew small black notebooks out of their pockets at the same moment. Sir Jack unscrewed the cap of a Mont Blanc pen and began writing.

Brock said, ‘I’m sorry to bring you here, sir, but there are a few things we need to clarify.’

If it was intended to be conciliatory it wasn’t received as such. Beaufort raised cold eyes to Brock and said,‘I heard the news-the shocking news-this morning about Gabriel Rudd. Are you quite sure that this is the best use of your time and resources?’

Brock sensed the anger beneath the sarcasm, and saw it as his best hope. He replied with studied patience. ‘As I said, I believe you can help us clarify one or two things.’

‘I have two conditions. One, I want a copy of the recording of this interview.’

Brock said,‘Agreed.’

‘Two,’Beaufort’s tone became harsher,‘I want to know if you’ve cleared this with your superiors, and if so, what their names are.’

‘Commander Sharpe has authorised this interview,’ Brock replied, unperturbed.‘That’s Sharpe with an “e”.’

‘I see.’ Beaufort wrote in his notebook. ‘Very well, go on.’ He had automatically assumed the role of presiding authority.

‘I’d like you to tell us about each and every occasion on which you met or saw the missing girl, Tracey Rudd. I have a photograph of her here to help you.’ Brock took an enlargement of Tracey’s picture from his file and placed it on the table. For a moment the judge stared down at the bright blue eyes, the curly blonde hair, the shy smile, then he looked up.

‘I saw her on the afternoon of the first of October, at the house of the painter Reg Gilbey, in Northcote Square. I believe Gilbey has already explained the circumstances to you, and I mentioned it again to one of your officers, Sergeant Kolla, yesterday. Do you want me to repeat it?’

‘Yes please.’

Beaufort described the events just as Gilbey had done, emphasising the innocence of Gilbey’s behaviour and the inappropriate intervention by Betty Zielinski. ‘She really was very confused, you know,’he said.‘She seemed to have it in her mind that the girl was her child-she referred to her as “mine”.’

‘That was the first time you met Tracey? Did you see her again?’

‘Yes, a couple of days later. According to my diary I had another sitting with Gilbey on the Friday, the third, so it was probably then. It was a pleasant sunny afternoon, and I took a stroll in the square after my sitting. The little girl was coming home from the school in the corner of the square there, and I said hello. We exchanged a few words.’

‘Like what?’

‘I really can’t remember. Nothing of any substance. Just hello.’

‘Anything else?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did anything else happen while you were talking to her?’

‘I can’t remember anything, no.’

‘Take your time to think.’

‘I don’t need time to think,’ Beaufort snapped, and for the first time he sounded defensive. He realised it, too, and when Brock didn’t say anything to fill the awkward silence that followed, he added, calm returning to his voice,‘There was nothing else I can recall.’

‘All right, so that was the second time you met Tracey. And the third?’

‘There was no third time.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

Beaufort hesitated. ‘I believe I may have glimpsed her once in the gallery, when I was with Fergus Tait.’

‘Glimpsed? Did you speak to her?’

‘No. I’m not even sure it was her.’

‘Very well, now I’d like you to tell us about each of your meetings with Betty Zielinski.’

Beaufort gave an exasperated click of his tongue, a well-practised signal to dilatory counsel. ‘Is that really necessary?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘To what end, Chief Inspector?’ Beaufort demanded acidly, but Brock refused to be ruffled. ‘We’ll get to that,’ he said, and the judge saw that he would have to comply. He had seen her twice, to his recollection, once in Gilbey’s studio and once in the street, when she was being pursued by school children. Once again, Brock didn’t challenge the judge’s account, but asked him to go through the same process with Stan Dodworth, whom he remembered meeting a couple of times, in Fergus Tait’s company, at The Pie Factory, when Tait had shown him Dodworth’s work. ‘But I wasn’t interested. I haven’t yet got to the point of regarding authentic art and bad taste as synonymous. After that appalling effort of his with the Princess Di sculpture, I was surprised that Tait bothered with him. He was obviously sick.’

‘What about Gabriel Rudd?’ Brock asked.

‘I knew him by reputation, of course, after he won the Turner, and I have to say that of all Tait’s stable Rudd is probably the only one I’d regard as having any talent. Tait tried to interest me in buying something of his, too, but I thought him far too expensive-although in view of what’s happened that was probably a mistake; I dare say his value has doubled overnight. Tait introduced him to me once, when I was having dinner with friends at the restaurant. Rudd was very drunk, and made a fool of himself.’ Beaufort pointedly looked at his watch.‘Is that it?’

But Brock still had other names, other connections, which he wanted to explore. He showed Beaufort a photograph of Patrick Abbott. The judge stared at it without blinking.‘The face seems familiar, but I can’t recall…’

‘His name’s Patrick Abbott.’

‘Ah, the man who fell from that building. No, I don’t believe he ever appeared in my court.’

‘But you visited the place where he lived, didn’t you?’

Beaufort looked startled.‘How…?’He recovered himself and his eyes narrowed, gazing more thoughtfully at Brock.‘I did drive past there after he fell, out of curiosity.’

‘Were you ever there before?’

‘No, I certainly was not. You’re fishing, Chief Inspector, without a hook. I can’t see the point.’

Brock produced another photograph.

‘Ah.’ The judge gave a grim smile.‘We finally get to the point. Robert John Wylie.’

‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘I’m sure you know more about him than I do. You’ve had him in custody for over a week now, haven’t you? What has he been saying about me?’

‘I’d like to hear your version.’

‘He appeared before me five or six years ago with three other men on a variety of charges. Unfortunately the crown case against him was weak and I was forced to dismiss it.’

‘Had you ever met him before then?’

Beaufort and Brock stared at each other in silence for a moment. Then the judge said,‘He’s told you so, has he? Yes, I see that he has. Very well.’He cleared his throat with the air of a boxer easing a muscle before the next round.‘Two years before he appeared in my court, I had occasion to do some business with Mr Wylie. I bought something from him.’

‘What was it?’

‘That’s not relevant.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ Brock said softly. ‘You know it is. How much did you pay?’

Beaufort’s chin rose a little.‘Eight hundred pounds.’

‘Wylie has made a statement that you bought obscene pictures of children.’

Beaufort flinched. The effort required to contain his anger was apparent in the taut muscles of his mouth.‘That is not true.’

‘Maybe not, but the fact that Wylie places himself at risk of prosecution by making the statement lends it a certain credibility, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Robert Wylie is a devious and evil man who would say anything that suited his purposes. About a week ago, just after he was arrested, a solicitor by the name of Russell Clifford made an appointment to see me on what he described as a private matter. When he arrived he told me that he was acting for Wylie who, he said, had been arrested on serious charges, of which he was innocent. He told me that Wylie believed that, because of our past association, as he put it, I might be willing to exert my influence to put a stop to this miscarriage of justice. To help me in this, Wylie had asked him to give me an envelope. He claimed he didn’t know what it contained. Inside were two photocopies, one of a photograph of me in Wylie’s shop and the other of the credit card slip I’d signed that day…’

Beaufort paused as Brock placed the two copies in front of him.

‘Yes, that’s them. I returned the envelope to Clifford and told him that there was nothing I could or would do for his client, and that if he attempted to contact me again I would inform the police.’

Brock said,‘You’d seen these before, hadn’t you?’

Beaufort looked stonily at him. ‘Yes. The day before Wylie’s trial began, five years ago, I received copies anonymously. It made absolutely no difference to my conduct of the trial, although Wylie may have believed otherwise.’

‘You’re saying that Wylie twice tried to blackmail you with these and that twice you failed to report it?’

‘Yes. An error of judgement, perhaps, but not a crime.’

‘An astonishing error of judgement for someone in your position,’Brock goaded gently.‘Almost beyond belief.’

‘Don’t presume to lecture me about judgement, sir!’ Beaufort’s anger finally burst into the open. ‘I had very good reasons for my decision.’

‘You were protecting a friend.’

The judge stiffened as if he’d been kicked. ‘How… how did you know that?’

‘Because I’ve heard it so often before. So have you. It’s not very original.’

‘But it’s true. You don’t believe me?’

‘Go on.’

‘A dear friend, who drank too much and behaved unwisely. Some embarrassing pictures fell into Wylie’s hands. I got them back. That’s what I paid him for.’

‘And the name of this friend?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Of course not. And the pictures have now been destroyed, and all we’re left with is an image of you and Wylie conferring over a copy of

…’ Brock peered at the photograph,‘… Tiny Tots.’

‘He pushed that into my hands…’ Beaufort stopped abruptly and straightened in his seat as if he’d suddenly realised that he’d been betrayed. Brock could almost see the thoughts crystallising, some aphorism of the Iron Duke, perhaps, whom Beaufort increasingly resembled; Never apologise, never explain.‘I have nothing further to say,’ he said stiffly.‘I am leaving now.’

‘Well, that’s up to you, but Mr Wylie has given us other material, much more graphic and incriminating. In fairness, I’d like to give you the chance to give us your point of view. Are you sure you don’t want to call a solicitor?’

Beaufort looked shocked.‘What other material?’

In the same year that Henry Fuseli painted Death Steals the Child at Midnight, another star of eighteenth-century London culture, Sir John Soane, Architect to the Bank of England, began the demolition and reconstruction of his terrace house at number twelve Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This project, which was to continue for the rest of Soane’s life and to expand into numbers thirteen and fourteen next door, involved the creation of a private treasure house to display his extraordinary collection of architectural fragments, antique objects, plaster casts, books and paintings. Near the end of his life he bequeathed the house to the nation by a private Act of Parliament which stipulated that its arrangements should be kept intact as at the time of his death.

Kathy arrived in the early afternoon, still feeling fragile, with a dull ache throbbing at the back of her head. Lincoln’s Inn Fields was a grander version of Northcote Square, with the Fields forming a sizeable park in the centre, in one corner of which four lawyers from Lincoln’s Inn were gamely thumping a ball around a tennis court. She found the museum in the centre of the north side and took the steps up to the front door of number thirteen. She was met in the hallway by a small, silver-haired woman who explained that entry was free but she might care to buy a guidebook. Kathy agreed, and said that she was looking for a particular painting in the collection.

‘The best place to start would be the Picture Room,’ the woman said. ‘The guide there will help you. If it isn’t there, he’ll know where it is.’ She pointed out the route on the map in the guidebook, and Kathy went through a door into the dining room and library, with its cunning mirrors set above the bookcases and behind objects to create an illusion of space. From there she passed through two small rooms, tall and narrow like the architect Soane himself, to reach the special chambers at the back of the house.

She found herself in what might have been an ancient vaulted crypt, crammed with urns and sculptures, and with fragments of classical buildings covering the walls. The light was ethereal, filtering down from above through yellow glass, and she felt as if she might have been transported back in time to Pompeii, perhaps, or ancient Rome. She heard a voice from an adjoining room, a cry of surprise, and made her way towards the sound. An elderly, impish man was pointing out features to a pair of visitors in a tall room filled with paintings. Kathy recognised some of the pictures from Hogarth’s series, The Rake’s Progress. Having finished his story, the man tugged at the wall panel, folding it back to reveal more paintings behind. This trick was duly met with cries of delight, and was repeated again and again as more ingenious folding panels were demonstrated.

When the other visitors finally drifted away, Kathy spoke to the guide.

‘Ah, Fuseli, yes. Soane was a great admirer of the artists of the terrible sublime-John Martin, James Barry, Henry Fuseli, they’re all here. Fuseli’s The Italian Count is over there on the west wall. Now, let me see…’ He went to a corner of the room and folded back a screen, then another, to reveal a dark painting of a man brooding over the body of a dead or sleeping woman.‘Recognise this one?’he asked.

Kathy said,‘It looks a little like The Night-Mare, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes indeed. That came two years later. This one is called Ezzelin and Meduna. Now…’ He eased that screen away and there, on the final layer of the wall, was what Kathy was looking for.

‘Death Steals the Child at Midnight. A gloomy little thing, hidden away at the back here. There seems to be a revival of interest in Fuseli. I’ve never had anyone ask after this until this month, and now you’re the second. Are you an artist too?’

‘No, but I think that may have been someone I knew,’ Kathy said.

‘Ah, that would explain it.’

‘Can you remember when that was?’

‘Not long ago. I had last week and the week before off, so it would have been the week before that.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Of course. I went down to Devon to stay with my sister.’ He pulled a small diary from his pocket and turned the pages. ‘I finished here on Friday the tenth, so your friend would have been here earlier that week. Why, is it important?’

‘Actually it is. You see, he’s dead now.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ The little man looked puzzled. ‘But you said “he”. The person who came here was a woman.’

‘A woman? Can you remember what she looked like?’

‘Rather stocky, dark hair, cropped short. She was wearing trousers, but I’m sure it was a woman. I know sometimes these days it’s hard to tell. Oh dear, am I mistaken?’

‘No, I know now who you mean. She’s a friend of the man I meant. Can you remember anything she said?’

The man pondered. ‘Yes, I do… She said she was doing research. She was interested in portrayals of a lost child. She said she’d seen a reference to the Fuseli but not found an illustration, and she asked if she might take a photograph for her records.’ His look became anxious.‘My goodness, I wondered if it might be hers, but it’s not yours, is it? The lost child?’

‘Not mine, no. I’m with the police. We’re trying to trace the movements of the man who died, and we thought he might have come here. And you’re quite positive about the date she came? It couldn’t have been yesterday or Monday of this week?’

‘No, it was definitely before I went away. I’m absolutely certain of that.’

Kathy thanked him, took a note of his name and made her way back out into the square. The lawyers had abandoned their tennis on the Fields, returned to work perhaps behind the Tudor archway of Lincoln’s Inn, or in the Royal Courts of Justice a couple of blocks to the south, beyond the little pub where Brock had met the CPS solicitor. Kathy wondered if Jugular Jack had ever practised here, thrashing his opponents in both law and tennis courts. She forced her mind back to what she had just learned, and took out her own diary, checking the dates again. The guide in the Picture Room had been a credible witness. If what he’d told her was true, Poppy Wilkes had been researching the theme of the missing child at least three days before Tracey disappeared.

Sir Jack Beaufort sat immobile, staring at the four photographs on the table. The anger had gone, leaving him seized by a terrible stillness.

‘It’s an awful thing,’he murmured at last,‘to become an unreliable witness. It renders you… infantile.’ He made an effort and roused himself. ‘Was he stalking me or her, do you suppose?’

Brock didn’t answer, and Beaufort went on. ‘This first one is as I told you. I met the girl by chance in the square, we recognised each other and said hello.’

‘You appear to be giving her something.’

‘I believe she showed me her watch and told me the time. I’d forgotten that.’

‘Did Betty Zielinski see you?’

The judge stared into the distance. ‘Yes, you’re right. Unreliable again. She was there, feeding her birds. She shouted something at us, I don’t know what exactly, and the girl took fright and ran off home.’

‘Home? You knew where she lived?’

‘Yes. Reg Gilbey had told me. As I said, I’d heard of her father.’

‘What about the second picture?’

‘In the gallery. I had lunch in the restaurant there one day after a sitting with Gilbey. I can tell you the date…’ He took his time assembling a double-hinged pair of spectacles on his nose and peered at his diary.‘Thursday the ninth of this month.’

‘Three days before Tracey disappeared.’

‘If you say so. Tait sent over a complimentary bottle of wine, which I accepted. He wanted something, of course- to show me some new pieces in the gallery and hopefully persuade me to invest in them. So I let him take me around, and we met Dodworth, who just glared and looked suitably tortured. Tait saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he suggested I’d be interested in something another of his artists was completing in the workshops. We went through and there was no one there, just this extraordinarily lifelike sculpture of a naked child-Tracey Rudd. The artist was a woman-Wilkes, I think, is her name. We were examining it when Tait’s secretary came in and said he had a call from New York or somewhere, and he asked me to take a seat and wait for him to return. I continued to look at the sculpture. It was quite uncanny, extremely disturbing in its realism, and, alone in that room, I found it impossible to resist touching it. There was a soft down of blonde hair on the skin of the arms, I recall. God knows how she did it. Anyway, that’s what I’m doing in that photograph there, the naked child kneeling on the table. It’s a statue, not the real thing, though you couldn’t tell.’

‘Poppy Wilkes’s statues are always at the wrong scale,’ Brock objected,‘very large or very small.’

‘Not this one. That’s what made it so unnerving. It was the little girl, exactly true to life. Tait jokingly called it “pornographic realism”, and he was right. You felt intrusive, even unclean, just looking at it, so I left the damn thing alone and went and sat down as Tait had suggested. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. The child herself appeared in the doorway. I found I had to look back at the statue just to make sure it was still there. The girl was wearing a sort of dressing gown, as you see there, and she was hesitant, as if she had to do something and felt awkward about it. I said hello, and she suddenly rushed forward, hopped on my knee and planted a kiss on my cheek. I was dumbfounded. Then she jumped down again and rushed away. I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was all about. I never understood it until now. Wylie must have put her up to it somehow.’

Brock let the silence hang for a moment, remembering Sundeep Mehta’s joke about the man who met a frog in the street. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before when I asked you?’

Beaufort sighed.‘Embarrassed, I suppose. How could I explain it, without sounding guilty? Impossible not to say either too much or too little. I opted for too little.’

‘As you say, Sir Jack-an unreliable witness. So what about this last photograph?’

The judge screwed his nose in disgust at the image of the man and the child on the bed.‘I have no idea how he did that, but it certainly isn’t me. That’s all I can tell you.’ He gave a sudden start, then a shiver.

‘Are you cold?’ Brock asked, although the room was quite warm.

‘No… I just had that feeling, you know, of someone walking over my grave. I’ve been rather naive, haven’t I? I assumed just now that Wylie was behind all this, but perhaps he wasn’t, at least, not on his own.’

‘Abbott, do you mean?’

‘No, I was thinking of someone else-Fergus Tait. Perhaps it was he who persuaded that child to come in to see me after he left for his alleged phone call.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know-to persuade me to buy his damned artworks, I suppose. I’ve heard his business is in financial trouble. Perhaps Wylie suggested that I might be interested in the girl.’

Brock looked sceptical. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’

‘No, I can’t think of anything else. You don’t believe me, do you? Am I a suspect?’

‘I’d like you to provide a DNA sample and fingerprints,’ Brock said, and switched off the tape. Then he leaned forward and said softly,‘Give me the name of your friend, Sir Jack. The one you paid eight hundred pounds to protect. I need corroboration, otherwise I’ll have no choice but to go on with this.’

‘Sorry.’ The judge looked bleak. ‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid.’