‘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.’