The Art of Murder

Chapter 37

Essex, Tuesday 27 January, early evening Pendragon and Turner barely exchanged a word as they left Braintree and headed back to London. Turner drove and Pendragon reported in to the station as they pulled away from Macintyre's rundown council house. Hughes was in a meeting, but Rob Grant took down as many of the details as Pendragon was willing to offer over the phone.

It was overcast and snow had started falling again, melting to nothing as it hit the tarmac of the southbound dual carriageway. Each man was lost in his own thoughts, mulling over unanswerable questions, each trying in his own way to untangle the knotted threads of what they had learned today, a day that, by five o'clock, had started to feel interminable.

The ringtone of the car phone startled them. 'Pendragon,' the DCI said, after stabbing the green 'Incoming' button below the dash.

Expecting Hughes, he and Turner were surprised to hear Sergeant Roz Mackleby's voice. 'Sir,' she said, 'how near the station are you?'

Pendragon paused a moment. 'About twenty minutes, traffic permitting. Why?'

'I'm with Inspector Towers,' Mackleby replied. 'The Super's in a car behind us. We're on Johnson Road. We've got another murder.' On any other day, the apartment on Johnson Road, Stepney, would have been considered beautiful, a place straight from the pages of a lifestyle magazine, but today it resembled a chamber from the depths of Hell.

A uniform stood at the front door leading from the marble-tiled hallway into the apartment itself. The door was listing slightly from where it had been knocked in. The lock was shattered. The PC nodded to Pendragon and Turner and continued to stare at the far wall as they followed the sound of voices coming down a wide passage from the living-room. Hughes saw Pendragon and paced over to intercept them. She took the DCI to one side.

'Jack.' She seemed relieved to see him. 'This is really not nice.'

He frowned. 'It never is. So, what do we have?'

'Definitely a fourth. Same MO. The vic is Chrissy Chapman. Quite a well-known artist, I believe.'

Pendragon looked stunned. 'Yes, she is. Very well-known.'

'But get this… Francis Arcade called it in. When we got here, he was sitting opposite her body, just staring at her. Hardly seemed to notice us when we forced the front door.'

'Arcade? Where is he now?'

'In the bedroom, under guard. He's out of it. In an almost trancelike state.'

Pendragon tilted his head and pulled a face. 'This just gets more ridiculous,' he said, starting along the hall.

Hughes took his arm gently. 'And, Jack,' she said, searching his face, 'Arcade's prints are all over her.'

A photographer was moving around one of two sumptuous sofas trying to get the best angles, and a forensics officer in plastic overalls was dusting for prints around a low walnut coffee table nearby. The victim, Chrissy Chapman, was propped up on the sofa. It was a pristine white. The woman's skin was just as pale as the sofa. She was dressed in a dark top, a scarf draped casually around her neck. Her dark fringe had been recently trimmed; some curls of hair lay on the scarf and scattered across the sofa. The face beneath had been hideously contorted, the flesh split under the hairline, the fine facial bones shattered, but the skin was still intact, heavily rouged around the cheeks and temples. Her features had been wrenched to one side, both her eyes were on one side of her face, her nose had been left behind, her mouth coated thickly with lipstick.

Pendragon felt a cold chill run down his spine. Turner had just appeared at his side and the DCI could feel a tremor run through the sergeant as the shock of what he was seeing hit him. 'Holy fucking Christ,' he said slowly and glanced at his boss, his mouth open.

Pendragon ignored him and took a couple of steps towards the obscene tableau of Picasso's painting of his wife Olga Khokhlova. It seemed so incredibly bizarre it was hard to believe the scene was real. But the girl sitting there had recently been a living, breathing human being; one who had been mutilated, violated with such malicious intent it was barely conceivable. It was one thing to take a life, Pendragon found himself thinking. This was act of an entirely different order.

He turned away and saw movement through the doorway into the bedroom. Inspector Ken Towers emerged. 'Sir,' he said. He looked tired and unusually jumpy. 'This fella Arcade… We have him in the bedroom. But he hasn't said a word.'

'Thanks.' Pendragon clicked his fingers in front of Turner's face and the sergeant snapped back to attention. 'I want you to go straight to Arcade's flat.'

'But it was searched, sir.'

'I know that, Turner. But I want it searched again. Take someone with you. Go over the place with a fine-toothed comb. Anything suspicious, anything at all, I want to know about it. Come straight to me after you get back to the station.'

Turner nodded and walked towards the front door.

The bedroom was large and brightly lit by a rash of powerful ceiling halogens. The blinds had been pulled down over a large window that took up most of one wall parallel to the bed. The decor was stark: white walls, white bedding, white rug over a polished concrete floor. On the wall opposite the bed hung an ornate French antique mirror, the only suggestion of anything other than straight lines and white in the room. Francis Arcade was sitting in a chair in the far corner. Uniformed policemen stood to either side of him. Pendragon flicked his head to indicate the constables should leave. They looked uncertainly at each other.

'It's all right, PC Flint,' the DCI said firmly. 'The Super's returned to the station. I'm back in charge, so skedaddle.' He closed the door behind them and walked back to face Arcade. The young artist simply stared into space, unblinking, hands held palms upwards and limp in his lap. He smelled unwashed. Pendragon lowered himself on to the corner of the bed a few feet from Arcade and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

'Francis, do you want to tell me what happened?'

The expressionless mask of Arcade's face did not change. Pendragon waited patiently for two silent minutes. 'You might feel better if you talk to me.' Still not a flicker.

The DCI studied the boy's face. He looked even more Goth than normal. He had not shaved for days and had dark patches under his eyes. His hair hung shapeless and greasy. There was something not quite right about all this, Pendragon thought to himself. Arcade had definitely not killed Berrick or Thursk. He was seen by scores of people during the timeframe for each murder. And he certainly had not killed the priest, Michael O'Leary, because at the time of that murder he had been in police custody. So why would he have killed this woman? A copy-cat murder? Another of the kid's cries for attention? That was hard to believe.

'Why did you kill her?' Pendragon said, completely without expression.

For the first time, Arcade stirred. He lifted his head and fixed the policeman with a look of complete clarity. 'I did not kill Chrissy,' he spat. 'I loved her.'

Pendragon felt startled for a moment but covered it well. 'Just because you loved her, that doesn't mean you didn't kill her.'

'I did not kill her,' Arcade yelled, and knocked his chair away as he sprang up.

The door burst open and one of the uniforms was there brandishing a truncheon. Pendragon glared at Arcade and the young man returned to his seat to stare down at the floor. The DCI raised a hand towards the police officer and flicked a look at the door. 'It's okay,' he said, and watched the door close again. He rubbed a palm over his forehead, suddenly feeling incredibly tired.

'Okay, Francis. Shall we start from the beginning?'

The boy looked up. A tear trickled down his left cheek. 'He killed her.'

'Who?'

'That bastard Hickle.'

'Hickle?'

'Chrissy's boyfriend Geoff Hickle. Dr Geoff Hickle. He killed her and disfigured her.'

'Wait a minute, Francis. Just slow down. What makes you think this Dr Hickle killed Ms Chapman?'

'Jealous. Jealous of me and her.'

'What evidence…?'

'I just know,' Arcade hissed, staring straight into Pendragon's eyes.

'All right. Let's go back a few stages. What were you doing here?'

'Why shouldn't I be here? I love… loved Chrissy. She loved me. The doctor was out at work at the Royal London, saving lives. I came round to see her.'

'Had she called you?'

'No, that was the point, Inspector. She was supposed to ring me last night, but didn't. I was worried, but I didn't want to seem uncool. And besides, I could only show when Dr Doolittle was away. It got to about four o'clock, though, and I couldn't bear it any more. Chrissy wasn't answering her mobile. The phone here just rang and rang. I did a quick check at the hospital and Hickle was there. He'd been in since eight this morning… apparently. So I came over.'

'You have a key.'

'Yeah. Don't tell Dr House, though.' And he pulled back his lips into a dark caricature of a smile.

'And you found Ms Chapman?'

Arcade looked away, fixing his gaze on the far wall over the bed. 'Yes.'

'What did you do? Your prints have been found on the body.'

He turned away from the wall and stared into Pendragon's eyes. 'I could not…' Another tear emerged from his eye. 'I still can't believe…' He swallowed hard. 'I sat beside her. I touched her face. It was cold. Then I sat on the sofa opposite and just stared at her. I must have called you lot. I don't remember doing it.'

'How long have you known Ms Chapman?'

Arcade seemed not to hear the DCI at first, or else he did not understand the question. Then he appeared to come round. 'Er… about two years. She was always saying she would leave Hickle, but he seemed to have some sort of hold over her. Every time I thought I was getting close to prising her away from him, she would flip back.'

Pendragon nodded, staring at the young artist and wondering if the frustration the kid felt could have been strong enough to push him to murder. He had seen crimes of passion before, triggered by messy love triangles and thwarted obsession, crushes that had spiralled into violence and mayhem. Could this relationship have been a delusion on Arcade's part? Perhaps the kid had slid into insanity, been tipped over the edge by rejection and a growing fury towards the world.

There was a crashing sound from outside and several raised voices. Arcade did not move, but Pendragon jumped up and dashed for the door. It swung open on to the living-room and Pendragon saw a tall woman in a faux-fur coat standing staring at the macabre murder scene. It was Gemma Locke, her face white as chalk. Her hands flew to her face and she seemed to stumble before regaining her balance. She lowered herself into a chair, a low moan emerging from between her gloved hands.