Kathy yawned as she read this and took another sip of the coffee she’d made. She was in her office at Queen Anne’s Gate, where she came when she wasn’t required at Shoreditch or elsewhere. Since that Monday morning two weeks ago when the case had begun she’d barely had a day off. It didn’t seem right with Tracey still missing. She looked again at the girl’s picture pinned to the screen behind her desk. Today she had been searching Gabriel Rudd’s web site for some clue as to the connections or references that Brock had suggested must lie in the style of Betty’s murder. The trouble was that the material in the site really was as extensive as the teacher had said, and there were endless references to the work of other artists, from Giotto to Koons.
She needed help. She picked up the phone and rang Bren’s home number. Deanne answered, the sound of children’s voices in the background.
‘Hi, Deanne, it’s Kathy. Is this a bad time?’
‘No, it’s fine, Kathy. How are you? I’ll get Bren.’
‘It’s you I wanted to speak to, if you’ve got five minutes.’ She explained her problem.
‘How about Fuseli?’ Deanne said.
‘Yes, you mentioned him before, but I can’t find any references to him in connection with the work Gabe’s doing at the moment. What made you suggest him? Didn’t you say that the image of the little girl being led off by a stranger was his? Because there’s no reference to that on the website.’
‘Well…’ Deanne hesitated. ‘I just assumed it was Fuseli, because of the melodramatic style. I mentioned him because he inspired Rudd’s last really successful show, The Night-Mare, and because he seemed to consciously model himself on Fuseli-brooding, eccentric, a bit violent and wild.’
‘I heard someone mention that Fuseli’s hair turned prematurely white, like Rudd’s.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that. Well, there you are.’
‘But I don’t know that this has anything to do with Rudd’s sources. It might be Stan Dodworth’s that I should be looking at.’
‘Oh… I’d have to think about that. Goya? Maybe Giacometti.. .’
‘Oh dear.’ Kathy groaned, feeling the ground sliding out from under her again.
‘Tell you what,’ Deanne said. ‘I have to go to the university library this afternoon. Why don’t I get some books for you to look at? That might give you some ideas. Are you free tonight? Come and have dinner with us and we can talk about it.’
After another fruitless day, the idea of spending the evening soaking in the warm tub of the Gurneys’ domesticity seemed quite appealing, although Kathy almost changed her mind as she heard the sounds of squealing children through the front door. They were overtired and ready for bed, and after greeting the older two and handing over the colouring books she’d brought, Kathy kissed them goodnight and Bren coaxed them away. He was immensely patient and gentle with them, so huge and protective alongside their little figures that Kathy was touched with a sense of sadness and loss that she couldn’t quite pin down.
Deanne was in the living room, about to feed the youngest girl, Rachel. At six months, Rachel was just beginning to appreciate her mother’s fine art books, one of which she was trying to get into her mouth. Deanne whisked it away, wiped it with a kitchen towel and substituted her breast.
‘Sorry, Kathy. You know how it is. There’s a bottle of wine on the sideboard next to the books I got you. You can set the table if you feel like it. The stuff ’s on the tray. Dinner’s nearly ready. How was your day?’
‘Useless. I achieved nothing.’ She began laying out the knives and forks.
‘Oh dear. Mine was much the same.’
‘Well, at least at the end of it you can say you filled a small stomach.’
Deanne gave her a curious look.‘Not envious, are you? Take her, she’s yours. Let me have her back in a year or two.’ She shifted the baby across to the other breast. ‘I’ve been trying to think about your problem, but I couldn’t come up with anything brilliant. I’m not sure I really understand what you’re looking for.’
‘Me neither. It’s just that there were some odd things about the way the body of the murdered woman in the basement was treated.’
‘Yes, I talked to Bren about that-the electric torture. It’s disgusting. The only artistic allusions I could come up with were Andy Warhol’s images of the electric chair, and a man called Leon Golub did some creepy paintings in the eighties of people being interrogated and burned with cigarette ends. Dodworth went to art school, didn’t he? I suppose he’d have come across those. Was he a smoker?’
‘I don’t know.’ Kathy thought back to the foetid atmosphere in his room, but couldn’t recall the smell of tobacco smoke.‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, maybe he substituted electric burns for cigarette burns.’
‘There was the blindfold as well, that was put on after she was dead.’
‘Yes, that is weird. That didn’t ring any bells at all.’
Kathy finished setting the table and, picking up her glass of wine, came and sat opposite the mother and child.
‘I’m sorry I never got in touch with you when you broke up with Leon,’ Deanne said.‘I wanted to, but I didn’t know what to say. I suppose I’ve forgotten what it’s like. You were together for quite a while, weren’t you?’
‘He lived with me for six months.’
‘I think that’s a good way of putting it. More independent than saying you were living with him, or you were living together… So you’ve got over it?’
‘Mm,’ Kathy replied vaguely. Deanne was talking about it as if it were the subject of one of her master’s assignments, something remote and academic that happened to other people. Seeing her there with her baby, her third baby, so pinkly fecund, Kathy hoped she would never have to make the sympathy call to her; You’ve lost him, he’s gone.
‘Well, try the books, anyway. You never know, something may strike a chord. It happens to me sometimes when I’m stuck for ideas-the pictures get my imagination going again. Maybe, when this case is over, you should take a holiday. You’re looking tired.’
‘Me? Not me. Hell, look at you and Bren. I don’t have babies crying through the night.’
They both laughed.
Later, lying alone in her bed, Kathy thought about their conversation. They were about the same age, she and Deanne, and had known each other, through Bren, for some years, but tonight they had felt like strangers. She didn’t mind being alone, she told herself, tucked up in a warm bed with a good book. Well, the book wasn’t very gripping, as it happened-a thick biography of Henry Fuseli-and she was struggling to stay awake. She decided to focus on the illustrations, but didn’t find them very inspiring either, scenes of posturing characters from mythology and Shakespeare… Feeling herself dozing, she sighed and turned to switch out the light, barely noticing the illustration in front of her as she closed the book, Justice and Liberty Hanged, while Voltaire Rides Monster Humanity and Jean-Jacques Rousseau Takes his Measure. It showed two eccentric eighteenth-century gentlemen, one sitting on the back of a crouching man and, in the background, not one but two figures hanging from a gallows, hands tied behind their backs, one of them blindfolded.
20
Gabriel Rudd took three sleeping pills that Sunday night, then switched off the lights inside his glass cube and lay down on the camp bed, wrapping the black duvet around him. The rest of the gallery lights had long been extinguished, and the last curious faces had disappeared from the gallery window. After a while, the tartan blanket on the floor began to stir and a nose emerged, sniffing the air. A head followed, white with two strong black stripes running back over the eyes to the ears, then finally, the coast being clear, the full yard-length of Dave the badger appeared. Following the clever nose, he made his way to the corner of the cube where two dishes had been set out for him, one containing Perrier water and the other an artfully arranged confection of egg, rabbit and fresh vegetables prepared by the Tait’s second chef, another cousin of the Fikret family. Dave made short work of his meal, left a compensating deposit beside the empty plates and set off to explore his prison. Dave would have been able to see through the glass walls that another banner had been added since the previous night, making fourteen now in all, like ghosts suspended in the light seeping in through the window from the street. The latest one featured two huge mug shots, Abbott and Wylie. Gabriel Rudd heard Dave’s snuffling progress, the soft scrape of his claws on the polished timber floor, just before sleep came.