There was silence for a long moment, then Brock said, ‘Let’s get back to facts, shall we? I’m interested in the time in the early hours of Monday when you returned to your house. You said you were very intoxicated and can’t be sure exactly how you got home.’
‘Yeah, I was plastered.’
‘You say you think Stan Dodworth or Yasher Fikret helped you home, or possibly both, but you can’t remember. Have they both been in your home before?’
‘Sure. They’re friends.’
‘Does either of them have a key?’
‘No, they must have used mine.’
‘Describe them to me, these friends.’
‘Well, Stan is very quiet, very serious-too serious really. We tell him he should lighten up, but he’s totally dedicated to his work.’
Kathy said, ‘The Pie Factory website describes him as being obsessed with death.’
‘In his work, yeah. It’s his theme-in his work.’
‘But you were telling us just now that there’s no distinction between work and life for you people. What about Mr Fikret?’
‘He’s completely different from us, a practical sort of guy, no bullshit-a breath of fresh air, really.’
‘Not that fresh, surely? He’s a drug dealer, isn’t he?’
‘I never said that. Look, he knows people. Sometimes he can get hold of a little bit of something for us. As a favour for friends, that’s all.’
‘So,’ Brock placed his hands flat on the table and stared at Rudd,‘At some time around three o’clock last Monday morning, you were taken home and dumped on your bed, paralytic, by one or both of a drug dealer and a man who has an obsession with death. And in the next room Tracey was possibly lying asleep. That’s about the sum of it?’
Rudd’s eyes slipped away from Brock’s and an odd little expression, a grimace perhaps, touched his lips. ‘Yasher Fikret is not interested in little girls, you can trust me on that. His tastes run somewhere else entirely.’
‘What about Stan?’
Rudd took a little while to reply.‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what gets Stan’s hormones buzzing. But you’ve got to understand, he’s a very gentle guy. I know his interest-his aesthetic interest-might seem a bit morbid, but I’m sure…’ he looked from one detective to the other,‘… no, I’m positive he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. Really.’
11
It was dark as they waited in Brock’s car for the team to assemble in the square, and a light rain began to fall. The large scarlet neon sign for The Pie Factory and the discreet little blue one for The Tait Gallery shimmered through the droplets on the windscreen. The radio crackled, a short burst of words, and they got out of the car and hurried towards the shelter of the building’s entrance. Around them they heard the click of car doors and the soft thud of boots.
‘Mr Tait here?’ Brock said to the young woman at the desk. She was on the point of leaving for the evening and had a bored look that disappeared as she took in the uniforms assembling outside the door.
‘I’ll give him a buzz.’
Fergus Tait appeared, sporting a pair of rainbowcoloured braces that matched his bow tie. His smile froze and the eyes behind the big glasses registered shock as he watched uniformed men crowding in behind Brock.
‘Sorry for the intrusion, Mr Tait,’ Brock said affably, as if they were a bunch of friends dropping in unannounced, ‘but I have a warrant to search these premises. We’ll be as quick as we can. I’ll give you a copy of this paperwork and then I’d be glad if you’d act as our guide. We’d like to start with the rooms you let out to tenants.’
The service yard of The Pie Factory, accessible from the street and jammed with rubbish bins full of scrap materials and kitchen waste, had been thoroughly searched in the initial sweep of Northcote Square on the first day of the hunt for Tracey, but the check of the buildings had been more cursory. Packed into a city block, they looked deceptively compact from the outside, but inside formed a rambling maze. An agglomeration of cottages in the early 1800s that had gradually been extended, rationalised, rebuilt and modified over the years as its businesses grew, the result now was a warren of rooms large and small, corridors and lofts, storerooms and cellars.
‘Maybe if you told me what you’re after,’ Tait protested as he led them towards a staircase at the end of a corridor running behind the main gallery.
‘We understand Tracey Rudd used to visit here. Were you aware of that?’
‘I’ve certainly seen her here with Poppy a number of times. And without her, too, now you come to mention it. I do recall speaking to someone-was it Poppy? I don’t remember-anyway, someone, about how a little girl like that shouldn’t be wandering around the workshops with those machines.’
The stair dog-legged upward towards a skylight, then reached a landing giving onto another corridor.
‘This way,’ he puffed. ‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with the fire authorities over the years, as you can imagine. Hence the emergency lights and fire doors and extinguishers and so on.’
‘And fire-escape stairs?’ Brock asked.
‘Oh my, yes, several new escape stairs.’
‘So there are plenty of ways for people to enter and leave the building unchecked?’
‘Well, there’s a measure of security, of course, but with the kitchen staff and the artists coming and going, and the whole place interconnected, it’s sometimes difficult to be sure just who is here at any one time. At night we lock up, and the residents have their own keys to their separate entrance.’
‘How many residents are there?’
‘There are five bed-sits, with shared kitchen and bathrooms, though only four are occupied at present. Our semipermanent artists in residence are Poppy and Stan, and we also have two young artists who graduated from college this year and have a twelve-month tenancy while we see how they develop. The fifth room I like to keep free for visiting artists. Last month we had a lovely German boy, a vinyl fetishist. He did marvellous work, it made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.’
‘Is that so.’
They turned into a broader corridor and Tait pointed out utility rooms and a row of numbered doors bearing Yale locks. With a show of reluctance he knocked on them in turn and, getting no reply, opened each for a pair of officers to move in.
‘There are only four doors here,’ Brock said.
‘Ah well, Stan’s room is the fifth. It’s up there.’ He pointed to a steep little stair that closed the end of the corridor, leading up to the door of an attic room. ‘He’s the oldest, and has the most stuff, and his room’s a bit bigger than the others. He has a lovely view from up there.’
‘Let’s take a look.’
Tait led the way up the stairs, knocked, cocked his head listening, then put his key in the lock. He swung the door open and reached inside for the light, then rocked back.
‘Phoo, bit foetid in here. He needs some ventilation. Shall I open the window?’
‘We’ll do it, thanks.’ Brock pulled on plastic gloves and crossed the room, opening the dormer window on the far side, while Kathy moved in behind him. The space was an irregular shape, jammed up into the pitch of the roof. Through one of the side walls they could hear the cooing of pigeons and the hiss of a water tank refilling. There was an open rack with clothes on hangers, books on the floor, and postcards and cuttings stuck haphazardly on every surface.
‘He does have a good view,’ Brock said, looking out over a panorama of the square.
Behind him, Kathy said,‘What are these?’
Brock turned and saw her standing beside a table pushed into the angle of the sloping ceiling. It was piled high with what looked like withered human limbs.
‘Oh, those!’Fergus Tait’s voice sounded unnaturally loud and jocular. He joined Kathy and picked up a leg. ‘These would be from his last exhibition, Body Parts. Caused quite a stir.’