‘Very true, Bren. And I’ve got a feeling there’ll be more.’
Fergus Tait sat in the interview room at Shoreditch station, full of apologies.‘I feel mortified, Chief Inspector, but what can I do? I’ve pleaded with him, told him it’s in his own best interests, but he’ll have none of it. He simply refuses to come out of the cube.’
‘It’s his privilege to refuse to talk to us, Mr Tait, but it could compromise his position in the future. I do think he should be persuaded to get legal advice, at least.’
‘Oh, he’s had that all right.’ Tait gave a coy smile.‘Advice from my lawyers is one of the services I provide my little stable of artists. Gabe spoke to them before he went into his retreat, and he was in touch with them by email again this morning. I believe he’s quite clear about his situation, but if you wish, the lawyer will speak to you. And indeed, it’s not as if Gabe’s refusing to answer any questions you may have. It’s just that he’ll only do it by email. Can I also just say on his behalf that he has absolutely no information about this terrible event. He was in his cube all night, of course, and he saw and heard nothing. He’s devastated, absolutely devastated, as we all are. I’m going to offer the gallery as a venue for the wake for the poor, dear soul. That way Gabe can be there, too. But of course it’ll depend on her family. Do you know who they are?’
‘We haven’t been able to trace them yet.’
‘No trace, eh? Well, I’d be obliged if you’d let me know when you do. I seem to recall that the lady had one or two pictures I might be able to help them dispose of.’
‘Just for the record, Mr Tait, is there any way we can verify that Mr Rudd remained in his cube all night? He’s on camera, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right. The eyes of the world were on him all night long. He’s broadcast live on the internet.’
‘What about you? What were your movements last night?’
‘I ate with friends in our restaurant. My goodness, what a spectacle that was in the square. Did you see it? All those people. Anyway, I was there till we closed down, towards midnight. Then I went to bed in my flat at the back of The Pie Factory. I was there till eight this morning, but I’m afraid there were no cameras to back that up!’ He chuckled.
‘What about Stan Dodworth? Have you heard from him?’
‘I’m afraid not. I did promise to let you know if I did, but there’s been no word.’
Brock looked hard at him. ‘I find that hard to believe. You were the one who rescued him from that institution, who brought him back down to London and gave him shelter and security, who protects him from unwanted publicity. Of course he’d get in touch with you.’
‘Well, I assure you…’
Brock reached across to some papers that Bren had placed in front of him.‘At nine-oh-three p.m. on Saturday last you had a call to your private number in your flat. It lasted three seconds. It came from a public phone in a pub in Islington. Over the next ten minutes it was repeated five times, all for just a second or two. That would have been to your answering machine, I take it, no message left. Then at eleven-seventeen p.m. on the same night you got another call from a public phone, this time at St Pancras rail station. It lasted six minutes.’
Tait sat back as if he’d been slapped. ‘You have my phone records?’
‘This is a serious case. Anyone who obstructs our inquiries is going to find themselves in very deep water. Well?’
A faint glisten of sweat had appeared on Tait’s forehead. ‘It could have been anyone making that call.’
‘Really?’ Brock and Tait stared at each other for a moment, then Tait looked away.
‘I get a lot of calls…’
‘There are cameras in the concourse at St Pancras, Mr Tait.’
‘Oh…’ Tait swallowed, wiped his forehead.‘All right, I did speak to him, yes, that one time. That’s all, I swear. It was that same evening you went through his room. He was agitated. He was telling me that he thought he would go away for a while, see his folks up north. I tried to persuade him to come back to the Factory, to have a talk with me first. He didn’t seem to be listening, so I made a mistake… I told him you’d been into his room, and found the cast of the old lady and the other stuff. That really made him panic. He became hysterical, abusing me for letting you in. I begged him to calm down and come back, but he just hung up. I haven’t heard from him since. I swear that’s the truth.’
‘Why did you lie to me?’ Brock said softly.
‘Like you said, Chief Inspector, I was trying to protect him. He’s not a bad fellow, I’m sure of it. He couldn’t have done this thing to Betty. I think he must have taken a train up north.’
‘The camera shows him leaving the station. We don’t think he ever caught that train.’
At that moment Tait’s mobile phone sounded in his pocket, a cheerful rendering of ‘Danny Boy’, and for a second Tait seemed uncertain what to do. Then he snatched it out.‘Hello?… Not now, Trudy, I’m… What?’ He listened in silence for a while, a look of consternation growing on his face, then he said,‘Hold on,’and looked up at Brock.‘That’s one of the girls on Gabe’s support team at the gallery. She says they’ve been going through his messages for the past twenty-four hours and there’s one they want me to look at. It seems it contains pictures… terrible pictures, she says… of an old woman, naked, hanging by the neck, being tortured…’
One of the people inside the gallery unlocked the glass door as their car drew up and let them in. They had the impression of suspended animation, as if everyone there had been waiting motionless for them to arrive. Gabriel Rudd was standing against the wall of his cube, hands pressed to the glass, face as white as his hair. He still wasn’t coming out, and there was something both bizarre and pathetic about his figure as he watched what was going on around him. People began to move, indicating the monitor that had opened up the attachments on the email message. The three police and Tait crowded behind the operator’s chair as she clicked in the instructions. The screen went blank, then burst into motion, a movie clip lasting just a few lurid seconds, showing a figure wearing a full-length black cape, the face obscured, and holding an electric cable against the thigh of Betty’s hanging figure, as she jerked violently on the end of the rope like a helpless puppet. There was no sound.
‘Oh, dear God…’ Fergus Tait breathed.
Three more brief clips followed, in each case with the exposed wires of the cable applied to a different part of the body.
Silence.
‘That’s the lot?’ Brock asked.
The girl, pale, nodded.
‘What about the email it was attached to?’
She showed him. A sender address, LSterne@kwikmail. co, no message, received at four-oh-three a.m.
‘Who’s L. Sterne?’ Brock asked.
‘We don’t know who it is. We haven’t had a message from that address before.’
Bren pulled out his phone and began to make a call while Brock turned to Tait.‘Where can we talk?’
He led Brock and Kathy through a doorway into the small gallery office, the walls lined with shelves of catalogues and books.
‘This isn’t very roomy…’ Tait muttered, closing the door, looking distracted.
‘Never mind,’Brock growled.‘Sit down. Now, what do you have to say?’
‘It’s him, isn’t it? Stan.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well… she looks like the figure in his room, suspended from the chain.’
‘Anything else?’
Tait blinked rapidly.‘I… I don’t know.’
‘What does it mean, Fergus?’ Brock insisted, leaning over the desk and glaring at him as if he wanted to tear the answer out of his throat. ‘The hanging, the electrocution, what does it signify?’
‘Perhaps… to make the body convulse, distort, like his sculptures.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Christ, I don’t know.’
Brock stared at him, pondering, then came to a decision. From his pocket he took a photograph of the scene they had found in the basement, and handed it to Tait.‘When we found her this morning she was wearing a blindfold. What does that mean?’