The artist slept very soundly that night, on account of the pills. When he awoke, he blinked his eyes open briefly and was aware of the pale grey of dawn in the sky in the upper part of the gallery window, though the street lights were still on. He closed his eyes and pulled the duvet over his head again and, as he always did, examined whatever was in his brain for clues to his work for the day, a fragment of a dream, a pungent smell of animal droppings, a memory of getting up on winter mornings to go to school-any of these might spark a thought about the colour, texture or theme for the next banner. They were going well, he knew it in his gut, but he was conscious that as time went on people’s interest might begin to fade, the number of hits on his website might begin to drop off. How long could he keep it going? What for number fifteen? Something vertical, something dark, something harsh, shocking. He opened his eyes and peered out at the phalanx of pale ghosts beyond the glass. One…two…three… They work, he thought, they bloody well work!… seven… eight… nine.. . Nothing quite like this has ever been done before… thirteen.. . fourteen… fifteen. He blinked and stared, for there it was, at the end of the line, number fifteen materialised-vertical, dark, and most definitely shocking. A suspended figure, motionless on the rope by which it was hanged from the roof truss. He thought they seemed familiar; the shaved head, the black T-shirt and jeans, the big clumsy feet.
At least, that was the way Gabriel Rudd later described it to the police. The shock of discovering Stan Dodworth hanging there in the gallery had driven him out of his glass cube for the first time in eight days. After checking that the body was real, he’d rushed out to the corridor that led to Fergus Tait’s elegant apartment at the back of the building and hammered on the door, rousing Tait from his bed. The two of them had returned to the gallery, where Tait had rung triple-nine.
Brock was crouching beneath the dangling feet, carefully examining the floor and the chair standing nearby, when Kathy arrived. She took in the limp figure, the thoughtful expression frozen on the sallow face as if surprised that death wasn’t quite what he’d expected, and she felt a sudden jolt of recognition-two hanged figures, one blindfolded, both with hands tied behind their backs, in this case with a loose cord.
Brock looked up, shook his head.‘I’d have said suicide this time, if it weren’t for the tied wrists.’ He spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard by the others moving around nearby-the photographers setting up, and beyond them two men erecting a screen against the gallery window, across which a new graffiti message had appeared during the night,‘this too’.
He straightened upright with a grunt and pointed at the man’s throat. ‘Nice clean rope burn, livid edge. Ah…’ Brock’s voice returned to normal volume as he saw the medical examiner arrive with a scene of crime team. He went over to brief them while Kathy remained with Stan’s body, studying the fingernails, the shoes, the knot that had been used to secure the free end of the rope to the leg of a nearby table loaded with computer equipment. Out of the corner of her eye she saw two men sitting together by the open door of the glass cube. Fergus Tait, in a green dressing-gown and leather slippers, looked bemused; the other man, Gabriel Rudd, wore a long overcoat, feet bare, and was drawing in a sketchpad on his lap. They both looked up as Brock approached with one of the SOCO team, and again Kathy was startled to see how gaunt and hollow-eyed Rudd had become. They appeared surprised as Brock explained something to them and the officer began examining their clothing. Theatrically, Rudd placed his sketchbook on the floor and raised his hands to be checked and have fingernail scrapings taken. As Kathy went over to hear what they had to say she saw that the drawing he’d been making was of Stan.
‘Did either of you touch the body?’ Brock asked.
‘I did,’Rudd said.‘I gave him a pinch just to make sure he wasn’t one of his own sculptures. Funny, he seemed less real than they do. He was stone cold.’
‘I touched him, too,’ Tait said. ‘I thought I’d better try to find out if he was actually dead. I mean, there seemed little doubt, but I tried to find a pulse anyway, in the wrist, and then,’ he gave a grimace, ‘in the throat. Nothing. If I hadn’t been so sure he was gone, I’d have cut him down, but I thought I’d better not. I mean, it’s not a situation I’m used to dealing with.’
He sounded shaken, unlike Rudd, who had shifted his attention back to the corpse, narrowing his eyes, leaning his head from side to side as if mentally composing the image on a banner.
‘How did you reach up to the throat?’ Brock asked Tait.
‘I stood on the chair. It was lying on its side beside his feet. I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have touched it, but…’
‘That’s all right. Did either of you disturb anything else?’
They shook their heads.
‘What about the cord around his wrists?’
‘I don’t think I touched it,’ Rudd said, and Tait said, ‘Oh, I probably did when I was looking for a pulse. That’s what really shook me up-I mean, it couldn’t have been suicide, could it?’
‘And you have absolutely no recollection of any noise during the night?’
They shook their heads.
‘One other thing before I let you get dressed,’ Brock said.‘Who’s spraying these messages on your building?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Tait said. ‘But he’s a bloody pest. It’s not just this building, several others in the square have been done over the past three or four months. “Property is theft” on the building site, adolescent stuff like that.’
Suddenly Rudd exclaimed and made a move towards the cube, but the SOCO put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Where’s Dave?’ Rudd said, and pointed at the tartan blanket lying flat on the floor.‘Where’s my badger?’
Brock nodded to the officer to have a look. He made a quick search and shook his head. Dave, it seemed, had done a bunk.
Soon the photographers were finished and Dr Mehta arrived. The body was lowered onto a plastic sheet on the ground and the doctors conferred on body and air temperatures and the state of rigor. Mehta finally offered Brock a preliminary estimate of time of death-between two and five in the morning. ‘I won’t be sure until I get him on the table,’ he added, ‘but there’s something odd about that cord on his wrists. It’s quite loosely tied and I can’t see any bruising underneath. It almost looks as if it was applied post-mortem.’
‘Like Betty Zielinski’s blindfold,’Brock said.‘And make sure they take care with his clothing and shoes, Sundeep. I’m very interested in where he’s been for the past week.’
The body was removed along with everyone else except the SOCO team, which continued its painstaking search of the gallery and hallway outside. Elsewhere in The Pie Factory detectives were working from room to room, establishing who was present, and taking statements and swabs for aerosol paint traces on hands and clothes.
On the way back to the station, Kathy mentioned the engraving in the book Deanne had given her. ‘I barely noticed it just before I fell asleep, but I registered the two hanging figures. Then I arrive here this morning and find a second hanging. It made me think.’
‘Fuseli, you say?’
‘Yes. You remember he was Rudd’s inspiration for The Night-Mare after Rudd’s wife died.’