‘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.’