After a few minutes she saw the Nolans with their shopping bags turn into the street. She waited until they were near before getting out of the car. They looked surprised, but Kathy had an odd feeling that they were expecting her.
‘Is there news?’ Bev asked.
‘Nothing new, I’m afraid. I’d just like a few words, if you’ve got the time,’ Kathy said.
‘Of course,’ Len said. ‘As long as you’re not hoping to catch us out, find Tracey hidden in the attic.’
‘Len!’ his wife scolded.
‘Should I be looking there?’ Kathy smiled.
‘You wouldn’t have much luck, but I thought our sonin-law might have put some such idea in your head. He’s the one with the remarkable imagination after all, if the Sunday papers are to be believed.’
‘Take no notice, Kathy,’Bev said.‘Is it all right to call you Kathy? Sergeant is so, well, military. Come inside and have a cup of coffee and tell us about any progress.’ She stopped suddenly and sighed. ‘Oh Len, we forgot the stamps from the post office.’
‘Always forgetting something. Anyway,’ Len said, getting in a last jab, ‘there was no chance you’d catch us unawares. Enid across the street spotted you straight away and phoned us on the mobile to warn us there was a young woman waiting for us outside our house, and was it a relative or one of my mistresses? Nosy old bitch.’
The interior of the house was as immaculate as the exterior. Len took their coats and Bev showed Kathy through to a small sitting room overlooking the back garden. Through the French windows Kathy saw that the yard had been divided precisely down the middle, a vegetable garden on the left, flower beds on the right. A neat herringbone brick path formed the centre line, a frontier between utility and ornament.
While Bev made coffee, Kathy studied the framed photos on the mantelpiece-Tracey, Len and Bev, and a young woman, presumably their dead daughter, Jane. No Gabe.
‘She looks like her mum, don’t you reckon?’ Len said from behind her. Kathy wasn’t sure if he meant Jane or Tracey, but in fact it was true of them both. The particular twinkle in the eyes, the wide mouth, the fine blonde hair, were carried through the three generations, from Bev to Jane to Tracey, becoming, if anything, clearer and more pronounced.
‘Yes.’ Kathy had noticed framed drawings in both the hall and here in the lounge, pastel figure studies of ballet dancers. The signature, a discreet flourish, was Jane Nolan.
‘She did those when she was still at school,’ Len said, seeing her looking at them.‘Brilliant at drawing.’
‘She got her talent from Len,’ Bev said, coming in with a tray.
He took it from her and set it down.‘Rubbish. There’s nothing artistic about me.’
‘You know what I mean. He might show you his work later, if he’s in the mood,’ Bev said to Kathy.‘Sit down, dear.’
‘You could say that art, or what passes for art these days, has been a curse on our family,’ Len persisted, offering Kathy some home-made shortbread. ‘Try a piece. There’s more artistry in Bev’s shortbread than you’ll find in the whole of Tate Modern. Yes, Jane did some lovely things at school. But then she got a place in that art school, and they soon put a stop to that. You’ve got to be conceptual there, and ugly as you can make it. She tried to join in, but her heart wasn’t in it.’
‘Oh now, be fair, Len. She did well at first.’ Bev was like a rudder, Kathy thought, making continual corrections to the wilder swings of Len’s opinions. And because he knew he could rely on this, the two of them bound together, Len probably allowed his opinions to veer about more freely than if he were on his own.
‘She wanted to fit in,’he said.‘If the teacher said,“Throw paint in the face of the bourgeois art-loving public!” she’d do it, just to fit in. But she knew there’s got to be more to art than that.’
‘Well, she couldn’t very well forget, with you carrying on every time she came home.’
‘I’m entitled to my opinions. Anyway, then she met Gabriel Rudd, hero of the Sunday supplements, and that was that. But that’s not what you came about, is it, Kathy? I don’t know why I’m rabbiting on. You’ve come about those men on the Newman estate, is that it?’
Kathy told them what more she could about Abbott’s death and Wylie’s arrest.‘But there’s still no sign of Tracey, I’m afraid. We’re following every lead we can, and we’re going back over old ground just to make sure we haven’t missed anything. That’s why I’m here. I don’t suppose Tracey ever mentioned those men’s names to you, did she? Pat Abbott and Robert-maybe Rob-Wylie? These are their pictures.’
They passed them between them, Bev having to force herself to meet the men’s eyes, even in reproduction. They shook their heads.
‘There’s an artist called Stan Dodworth who lives in The Pie Factory in Northcote Square. This is his picture.’
‘Yes, we know him,’ Len said. ‘He’s a friend of Gabe’s. Why, is he mixed up in this?’
‘We’re not sure. Apparently he did know Abbott.’
The Nolans looked startled. ‘Well! That’s got to be more than a coincidence, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does he have to say for himself then?’
‘Unfortunately he’s disappeared, and we can’t find him. His picture is going out to the media this morning.’
‘You think he might know where Tracey is?’ They both eased forward to the edge of their seats.
‘It’s a possibility that he may know something. That’s why we’re making every effort to find him. It’s possible that Tracey may have visited his workshop in The Pie Factory. Did she ever speak about that?’
They shook their heads.
‘Dodworth makes sculptures that are rather macabre, of bodies and body parts. Did Tracey mention having seen anything like that, a dead body or a monster?’
Bev pondered.‘I do remember something she said about a monster. I thought it was something she’d seen on TV.’
‘Or a video,’ Len declared. ‘Some of the stuff Gabe let her watch would give anyone nightmares.’
There were moments in this conversation, Kathy felt, when she thought she saw glimmers of recognition or memory in their eyes, but it came to nothing. After another ten minutes of talk she finished her coffee and asked if she could see Tracey’s room.
The bedroom was upstairs at the back of the house. From the window she could look out over the fenced backyards and the houses that ringed them tightly around the block. She was reminded of wagons protecting an encampment. There was little colour in the neat little gardens at present, but in the spring they would come alive with plum and apple and cherry blossom, and every new release of annuals that the gardening magazines and TV shows would be plugging.
Tracey’s room couldn’t have been more different from the one in her father’s house. This one was full of colours and patterns, a perfect little girl’s bedroom from Good Housekeeping, that made the other seem like some kind of experimental laboratory. In a corner was the farmyard Len had made, with flocks of little animals, and above it shelves were filled with dolls and books and frothy ornaments. Kathy could imagine Gabe Rudd’s scorn.
There seemed nothing here to help Kathy. The childish drawings pinned to the wall showed a girl on a pony, a Christmas tree with a star, a house with a red pitched roof, but no monsters.