“He’s just a kid, looks about twelve years old, part of the class drawing in the gallery.”
“Okay. Let’s do the teacher first.” Longbright made her way over to a young man in jeans and white shirt patrolling around the seated boys. “Mr Elliot Mason? You’re in charge of these boys?”
Mason rose. With his knitted Kangol cap, soul patch, and low-slung jeans, he appeared little older than his charges. He gave the sergeant a limp handshake. “I handle the outings for this group; the Science Museum, the V and A, the British Library, stuff like that. Their regular master, Mr Kingsmere, was going to take today’s class, but he’s off with food poisoning. A faulty prawn apparently, but I remain unconvinced. I could have done without any trouble today.”
“Isn’t this exhibition a bit too adult for children?” wondered Longbright.
“It’s a progressive school. It favours the creative arts over competitive sports, but I think that’s because they don’t have their own playing field. And they’re city kids – there’s very little they haven’t been exposed to. They get taken to most of the important plays and films. They’re pretty adept at handling sophisticated themes.”
“Some of these boys look very young.”
“I think the youngest is thirteen, but he’s exceptionally mature. Most are fifteen and sixteen. What happened in there? It’s nothing to do with us, is it?” Mason’s eyes held the faraway look of a dreamer whose ideals had yet to be compromised.
“There’s been an incident, and we need to find out if anyone saw it happen. So, your class – it’s a mix of different years, isn’t that unusual?”
“The field trips are graded according to the children’s capacity for appreciation, not by their form levels.”
“Perhaps you could run me through your movements this morning, starting from your arrival?”
Mason looked around, checking the whereabouts of his charges. “We got here at ten A.M. The entrance was pre-arranged by the school, but it took a few minutes to sort out the groups because there was a press conference ending at the same time. I ran a head count and made them turn their mobiles off, and we took a walk through the gallery. I let the kids choose the installations they liked most, then set them drawing. They’re keen artists. Sit them on the floor with a box of pencils and you usually have to drag them away.”
“So they were spread throughout the gallery in different rooms? How could you watch over them?”
“They’re easier to keep an eye on when they’re engrossed in an activity.”
“You spend the same amount of time with each group?”
“I try to, but you inevitably spend more with some than others.”
“I’m told one of the boys saw something.”
“Yes – Luke Tripp, over there. He was one of four or five kids in the main chamber. They were actually sketching the giant head, but he’d gone across to the tank and had started drawing that instead.”
“Do you mind if I talk to the group?”
“No, but try not to upset them. I could lose my job.”
“Don’t worry, Mr Mason, I’m not going to provide them with any more information than I have to.” Longbright walked over and introduced herself to the row of boys dressed in blue-and-gold blazers. “I’m Detective Sergeant Longbright, but call me Janice. What are your names?”
A thin, moody-looking sixteen-year-old raised a tentative hand. “I’m Nicholas Gosling.”
“Daniel Parfitt,” said the small-boned boy with the bad complexion next to him. “What happened? Somebody’s died, haven’t they?”
“Who are you two?” she asked the pair seated beside them, one slim and dark, with deep-set eyes, the other red-blotched and still carrying puppy fat.
“Jezzard and Billings, miss.”
“When did you first know something unusual was going on?”
“We heard a splash and got up to see.” They would have had to come around the corner to view the tank clearly.
“So all of you were in the alcove drawing the giant head?”
“Yes, miss. Except Luke, who was drawing the tank.” Jezzard pointed down at one she had missed. Janice knelt beside the youngest boy, bringing herself into his sight line. “Hey, there.” She checked Bimsley’s notes. “Luke Tripp, that’s you?”
The child nodded faintly. He was small for his age, a pale bulbous head balanced on a pipe-thin neck, eyes staring intently at the drawing in his lap. Longbright turned the page around and examined it.
“That’s pretty good. Do you like art?”
Another mute nod.
“How come you decided to draw the big green tank instead of the giant head?”
“The babies looked easier to draw.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“It’s a pretty big tank. Hard to get it all into one picture. I used to like drawing, but if something moved I could never catch it on paper. While you were drawing, did something move?”
Luke looked up at her with an innocence that would have been termed theatrical in anyone older. “The lady came and talked to me,” he explained. “She asked me what I thought of the babies. She said she designed them.”
“You mean she was the artist?”
“She got someone else to build them, but it was her idea. Conceptual artists never build their own installations; everyone knows that.”
“Oh.” Longbright felt as though she had just been put in her place. “Then what happened?”
“She said people were annoyed with her because they didn’t understand what she was trying to say. Then the man came up to her.”
“Which man?”
“I don’t know.” The boy closed his drawing pad, but continued to stare at it.
“Luke, I need to get this right so I can picture it in my head. The other boys were on the far side of the chamber – you couldn’t see them from where you were?”
“No, the tank is around the corner.”
“We were over there, miss,” said Gosling, indicating the space below the giant head.
“Okay. You were drawing alone, Luke. The lady came up and talked to you – did the man come in with her?”
“No, he came in afterwards, from behind the tank.”
“What did he look like?”
Luke smoothed the cover of the drawing pad. “He was very big, like a painting. He lifted up the lady very gently and put her in the tank.”
That’s ridiculous, thought Longbright. He would have to have been eight feet tall.
“You mean he just lifted her off the ground and lowered her in?”
“Yes.”
“Did she make a splash? Did she try to get out?” Longbright knew that the liquid in the tank had only spilled on two sides, suggesting the victim had barely struggled.
“No.”
“Which direction did the man come from?”
“The door, I suppose.”
Longbright glanced back. Anyone coming in through the door would have been spotted by everyone in the chamber, if they’d been facing the right way. But the boys had been lying on the floor, concentrating on their drawings, on the far side of the large sculpture.
“Do you think you could sketch this man for me? Exactly as you saw him?”
“I already did, miss.”
“Can I see?”
Luke Tripp raised the cover of his pad and twisted the portrait towards her.
He had drawn a cape-clad highwayman in a tricorn hat, crimson ruff-collar, leather tunic, and thigh boots, riding a great black stallion.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
7
The Price of Notoriety
“Whenever the English build something enormous, the first thing they always do is have dinner inside it,” said Arthur Bryant. “Throughout history, our councillors have dined in unlikely places like Constitution Arch and the Thames Tunnel, even inside the mastodon at the Crystal Palace prehistoric park, so you can imagine how many celebratory meals they must have had in here. I fancy it still smells of institutional cooking.” He sniffed disapprovingly. “There’s definitely an undertone of cabbage.”