‘Fergus Tait?’
‘Fergus Tait! Fergus Tat, more like. Certainly not, I wouldn’t deal with that cowboy. My bloke’s in Cork Street, in the West End.’
Gilbey was looking uneasily at Betty’s bed, stripped of its sheets and pillowcases for laboratory analysis. He seemed very pale, and Kathy saw his eyelids flutter, his body begin to sway.
‘Sit down, Reg,’ she said, and quickly grabbed a chair into which he almost toppled.
‘It’s been a shock,’ he whispered.‘I still can’t believe it. Hanged, you say?’
‘I think you need a doctor.’
‘No, no. I need a drink. Take me home.’
Kathy looked at the colour returning to his cheeks and nodded. Then she said, ‘What was the painting in this room?’ She pointed at the empty hook on the wall beside the bed.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in here before.’ He caught her watching him.‘And that’s the honest truth.’
She took him back to his kitchen and got the name of his dealer in the West End, just in case. Then her phone rang, Brock on the line.
17
Kathy joined Brock and Bren for their first formal interview regarding the murder of Betty Zielinski at Shoreditch, beginning with Yasher Fikret, as representative of the family companies that both owned the house in which Betty’s body had been found and were carrying out the building renovations.
‘What can I say,’Yasher said, making an expansive gesture with his hands, heavy gold rings glinting.‘I’m devastated, as a neighbour, as a friend, as a local businessman. My whole family is devastated. I speak for them all. When’s the funeral, incidentally? We will want to show our respect with floral tributes etcetera etcetera. My mother is offering to cater, no charge.’
Yasher was smartly turned out in dark suit and thick silk tie, but his gestures and way of speaking suggested that the style of businessman he modelled himself on owed less to the Financial Times than to Hollywood, The Godfather, perhaps. But the suggestion of menace beneath the swagger was real enough, Kathy thought. She eyed the big gold rings and wondered if one of them had torn Poppy’s cheek.
‘That’s very generous, I’m sure,’ Bren said dryly. ‘At present we’re still trying to trace Ms Zielinski’s next of kin. Do you know if she had a solicitor?’
‘No idea.’
‘You didn’t have dealings with her, as an adjoining owner to your development?’
‘Our lawyers may know. You want me to check?’
‘Please.’ Bren pushed the phone across the table, but Yasher ignored it, slipping an impressive little silver machine out of an inside pocket, unfolding it and pressing a few buttons.
‘Allo, Tony?’Yasher drawled.‘You remember the owner of number fourteen West Terrace, next to the end of our block, Betty Zielinski?
… Yeah, well she’s been done in, mate, last night… I’m not kidding. I’m with the cops now. Listen…’
Bren and Brock waited impassively while the exchange continued. Yasher finally folded away his phone and said, ‘Sorry, no. Never dealt with a solicitor, just Betty in person.’ A slight pause, then,‘So you don’t know the next of kin?’
‘Not yet.’
Yasher looked thoughtful.‘Bad business.’
‘Where were you last night, Mr Fikret?’
‘Me? I was at home with my wife and little boy. After dinner I watched football on the sports channel till eleven, then I went to bed. My wife will confirm that.’
‘How many people know about that cellar room in your property, where the men play cards?’
‘Well… all the regular building gang, of course, plus most of the subcontractors-plumbers, electricians…’
‘We’d like all their names. Anyone else?’
‘You know about me taking some friends there, the night poor little Tracey disappeared. My artist friends.’ He smiled as at a private joke.
‘To sell them drugs, yes.’
Yasher held up his hands in protest. ‘If you’re going down that road, Mr Gurney, I’m saying nothing. I’m here to help…’
‘The point is that whoever took Ms Zielinski down there knew it very well. They knew exactly what was down there-a live power supply, for instance.’
‘They broke in; they didn’t have a key,’ Yasher said defensively.
‘That doesn’t necessarily follow. They knew how easy it was to break in with just a screwdriver through the hasp. No alarms, no guard dogs. Very poor security for a building site in that area, Mr Fikret.’
‘That’s the site manager’s business, not mine.’
‘The site manager tells us that you had your own arrangements for a dog and a security guard right up until last week.’
Yasher scowled truculently. ‘As it happens, I’m in dispute with that company over a commercial matter. And I completely deny your allegations about drugs. If there were any there they had nothing to do with me. I resent your insulting…’ He began to rise.
Brock broke in, voice mild,‘Please sit down, Mr Fikret. Tell us about your relationship with these artist friends. If it wasn’t to sell them drugs, why did you go there the night Tracey disappeared?’
‘It was their idea. They wanted to see what we were doing to the old building. I thought Gabe might be thinking of buying one of the flats for an investment. They’re just neighbours, people I meet in the square. I don’t pretend to understand what they’re on about all the time, but I like their company, okay? That’s the nice thing about living in this part of London-the culture you brush up against every day.’ He gave a broad grin.
‘But you’re a bit of a collector yourself, aren’t you?’ Kathy said.
‘Me?’Yasher looked astonished.
‘That painting in the shop, your mother said you bought it.’
‘Ah, that! Yes, I bought it down the market. That’s real skill, that is. That’s my taste, all right.’
‘What do you think of your friends’ work, Gabe and Stan and Poppy?’
‘You want an honest answer? Don’t tell them, please, but I can sum it up in two well-chosen words-total crap.’ He saw the little smile cross Bren’s face. ‘Aha! You agree with me, Mr Gurney! Am I right?’
‘When was the last time you saw Stan Dodworth?’
‘Stan? That would be the night we went to the cellar that I told you about. Not since then. Why?’
‘He’s missing, Mr Fikret. Any idea where he might be?’
‘No. I really don’t know him that well.’
‘And when was the last time you were in that basement?’
‘Oh, I don’t know… a couple of days ago. I seem to remember calling down there for some reason.’ He gave another big toothy grin.‘Mr Brock, sir, let’s be frank. If I was going to bump off the old lady, do you think I’d have left her for you to find on my own premises? The idea’s crazy. If this has anything to do with me at all, it’d have to be someone wanting to embarrass me and my family, right?’
After he’d gone, Bren said reluctantly, ‘He’s right, Brock. He’s not that stupid.’
‘Actually, I think he’s devious enough to do it this way just to put us off. But I don’t think he’s got the artistic talent.’
‘Artistic talent?’
‘Yes. The thing was staged, Bren. Artificial and composed, as if it was a commentary on something. I just wish I knew what.’
Listening to this, Kathy recalled Reg Gilbey’s sneer that the young artists in the square didn’t have an original thought between them, that everything was a reference to something else, and she wondered if Betty’s killer might have been deliberately using some recognisable artistic image of death or suffering. The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. What had been done to Betty surely had meaning, a message of some kind. If they could find the reference, perhaps they could find the killer. What images might inspire Stan Dodworth, for instance?
Bren looked sceptically at his boss. ‘You don’t think you’ve been seeing too much of this contemporary art lately, chief? It can get to you after a while.’