No Trace (14 page)

‘They’re made of bronzed plaster and fibreglass. From rubber moulds and casts.’

‘Of real corpses.’

‘Ye-es,’ Tait said carefully. ‘You’d have to ask him, you understand, but I think it would be fair to say that. It’s what gives them their extraordinary truthfulness, their power.You know immediately that this isn’t some prop from a movie or a waxworks show. This is the real thing, death, in all its terrible beauty.’

‘Beauty?’

‘Well, that’s my opinion. I’m not normally a fan of the macabre, Chief Inspector, but I am moved by Stan’s work. He faces unflinchingly what lies in wait for all of us.’

‘And where does he find his subject matter, his body parts?’

‘He has a source, so he tells me. Now he assures me, and I was insistent on this,that it isn’t illegal,what he does.I didn’t enquire too closely, but I gather he knows someone at a hospital with access to dead bodies. I’m sure Stan doesn’t tamper with them, or cut them up or anything like that. I suppose he may, well, arrange them or whatever, like models, but he puts them back the way they were after he takes his cast. No one’s the wiser—or sadder.’

Kathy was peering at some shelves on the wall behind the dangling figure in the alcove. On them there were hands, feet and a head. She reached out to touch one of the hands and felt a throb of revulsion. She touched another. ‘These aren’t plaster,’ she said. ‘They’re soft.’

‘They’ll be rubber,’ Tait said.

‘I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure they’re not.’ She held one aged hand in hers, feeling the bones flex beneath the skin. She suppressed a surge of nausea as she picked up the same chemical smell that had been so strong in Abbott’s mother’s room.

Fergus Tait looked more closely, then gave a little sigh. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. This is very naughty. I had no idea, none at all.’

‘Where is he now, Mr Tait?’

‘I really don’t know. I haven’t seen him since Gabe’s show last night. But look, let me just say that, irregular as this may be, Stan is not a bad fellow. I want you to understand that. He’s the gentlest of people, soft-spoken, polite, never a harsh word, loves animals and . . .’ He hesitated.

‘And children,’ Brock finished the sentence for him.

‘He’s just completely caught up in his work.’

‘Where does this obsession of his come from?’ Kathy said. ‘This thing he has about death?’

‘Well, a lot of art is about death. Goya . . .’

‘No, it’s something personal, isn’t it?’

‘You may be right. I’m not altogether sure. He doesn’t talk about it—not to me, anyway. There was some story of him being brought up by an elderly relative who died when he was a boy, but I’m not sure if that’s the source of it.’

‘He had a breakdown a few years ago, I believe?’

‘About five years ago. He’d come down from the north, nobody knew him, and he produced this amazing stuff— dark, but very powerful. He did a very controversial sculpture of Margaret Thatcher and he was invited to exhibit in a group show with some other up-and-coming young artists. The work he exhibited was called
Bye, Bye, Princess
—you’ll have heard of it?’

Kathy shook her head.

‘You haven’t? Well, it was a very realistic sculpture, a head and shoulders, presumably of Princess Di. The hair was the same characteristic style, and the lips and nose and one eye—it was definitely her—but the rest of her face was eaten away, it was very realistic, with maggots crawling in and out of the flesh. I mean they were
real
maggots, alive, breeding on some meat he’d put inside the skull, and they were dropping onto the floor and people were stepping on them—oh yes, it was quite disgusting. And this was just the year after Princess Di was killed, so you can imagine the tremendous fuss. I’m surprised you don’t remember it. The press pursued him, but he wouldn’t speak to them and that just drove them into a bigger frenzy. I mean, most of his contemporaries would have died for that kind of publicity, but he genuinely didn’t want any of it.’

‘When was this?’

‘Let’s see . . . Princess Di died in the summer of ninety-seven, right? So the exhibition would have been late ninety-eight.’

‘Shortly after Jane Rudd died.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Anyway, he tried to hide from the reporters but they found him in his studio and there was this terrible scene. One of the reporters was hurt. Poor Stan, it was all too much. He was arrested, but the psychiatrists said he wasn’t fit and he was put away in a hospital. He did some marvellous work in there.When I saw it I offered to show it at The Pie Factory and give him a home here till he found his feet. That was a couple of years ago, and he’s been here ever since.’

‘You’re a saint, Fergus,’ Kathy said.

He looked serious. ‘I’m a businessman, Kathy, and I look after my artists, because believe me, they need looking after. I can recognise talent, but I know I have to go gently with Stan. No fuss, next to no publicity, just a growing circle of admiring collectors of his work.’

‘People buy these things?’ Brock looked at the objects on the table in disgust.

‘Oh indeed. Much sought after.’

‘And you take a percentage, do you?’

‘In the case of my artists in residence, I own the work they produce, and pay their board and a salary.’

‘So you keep all of the proceeds of their sales?’

‘At first. When they begin here it’s a good deal for them, because their sales won’t nearly cover my outgoings, but as they become better known the balance swings back, and eventually they become well enough established to fly the nest, as it were.’

‘You pay for their production expenses, do you? Materials and the like?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it’ll be your money he used to bribe his “source” in the hospital to give him, or lend him, his body parts.’

‘Oh now!’ Tait lifted his hands as if to show how clean they were. ‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Have you ever had a full-scale audit from the Inland Revenue? Our fraud people can be even more intrusive than that, I’m afraid.’

Tait coloured. ‘That’s a bit rough, Chief Inspector, threatening me like that. I’m trying to be cooperative, you know. I do perhaps recall Stan asking me for cash advances from time to time, for which no receipts were forthcoming. I didn’t quibble. The amounts weren’t large. More recently, as his sales have grown, he’s been getting a share of the proceeds and is free to spend it as he pleases. As you see, he’s a frugal man, dedicated to his work. I really wouldn’t know what he spends his money on.’

Kathy, meanwhile, was looking around the room, thinking. There were no images of children, no sign that Tracey might have been there or had contact with Dodworth. But she imagined a small child visiting Poppy’s room nearby and being intrigued by the attic room at the end of the corridor, climbing the stairway, opening the door, drawing back the curtain . . . Could that be Tracey’s monster, the thing hanging in the alcove?

‘Do you have a picture of Stan Dodworth?’ Brock asked.

‘Yes, there’ll be one in the files in my office downstairs.’

‘And I’d like to see where he worked, and any storerooms he would have had access to.’

Tait shrugged. ‘You’re the boss.’

As they turned to leave they heard a woman’s voice raised in the corridor below, and as they came down the stairs they saw an officer backing out of one of the rooms, an angry Poppy following him.

‘It’s all right there, Poppy! Easy now!’ Tait called out, as if trying to soothe a pony.

She turned and looked up at them, and her eyes narrowed as she saw Kathy. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

‘It’s all right, Poppy,’ Kathy said, hurrying forward. ‘We have to do this. Let me explain.’ She took the woman’s arm and led her back into her room, followed by Brock.

The furniture in the small room was cheap, bare plywood wardrobe and shelves, utility bed, carpet squares on the floor. Across the end of the room, in front of a small window, a sheet of plywood formed a table covered with sketchbooks, sheets of paper, glass jars jammed with pencils, pens and brushes. The books on the shelves were all art books, tall volumes with names for titles,
Oldenburg, de Kooning, Gilbert and George
. On a cork pinboard there were postcards and sketches, one of them a pencil portrait of Tracey.

‘Have you ever seen this man?’ Kathy showed her the picture of Abbott.

She seemed about to refuse even to look, but then relented, frowned. ‘Why?’

‘It’s important.’

Poppy pursed her lips, then said quietly, ‘Stan knows him.Why do you ask?’

‘We believe he may have been involved in the disappearance of the girls.What about this second man?’

Poppy didn’t recognise Wylie’s picture. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked, suspicious.‘Why didn’t you show me them before, when we talked downstairs?’

‘We’ve only just got the pictures. What do you know of him?’

‘I saw him here with Stan in the workshops a couple of times recently.’

‘Before or after Tracey disappeared?’

Poppy screwed her nose, thinking. ‘The first time was before, I think. It was a late afternoon, and it was sunny, so it couldn’t have been last week, could it? I think the week before. They were in a huddle in the corner. I said hello but Stan didn’t introduce him. That was like Stan, secretive. The second time was only a few days ago.’

‘Do you know what they were doing?’

‘Looking at the work, I assume. I thought he might have been a buyer. When I came in that first time they were at the bench where I’d been finishing off one of my figures.The bloke with Stan was laughing, like at a dirty joke. I thought he was touching my sculpture and I was going to say something, but they moved off to look at Stan’s castings.’

‘Was the figure modelled on Tracey?’

‘I think so.’

‘Naked?’

Poppy became very still, eyes unblinking.

‘Did Stan know that it was based on Tracey?’

‘I don’t know . . . Yeah, he might have.’

‘He knew Tracey, of course? He’s seen her here and at Gabe’s house?’

‘Oh yes.’

As they were leaving, Kathy stopped in the doorway and turned back. ‘I don’t get it, Poppy. Your exhibition catalogue talks about your feminist principles and how you aim to expose the way men misuse images of women, but here you are manufacturing the images for them.’

Poppy looked subdued but defiant.‘That’s what
Cherubs
was about; their nakedness, painted with the blood of murderers . . . I wanted men to ogle them, and then feel ashamed. I wanted to rub their noses in it.’

‘Well, you certainly did that.’

12

B
rock and Kathy left the team searching The Pie Factory and returned to the car. On the way back to Shoreditch they took a detour by way of the Newman estate. There were still a couple of detectives at the flats interviewing residents and visitors as they arrived, and a uniformed man stood at the entrance to the lift lobby. He recognised Brock and saluted as they approached.

‘Evening,’ Brock said. ‘Any dramas?’

‘Not really, sir. Quite a few rubbernecks, wondering what’s going on.’

‘Yes, it’s them I was interested in. How long have you been here?’

‘Since ten this morning, with a break early afternoon.’

‘Wouldn’t happen to have seen this bloke, would you?’ Brock handed him the picture of Stan Dodworth that Tait had provided.

‘Distinctive,’ the constable murmured, and he was right—the face that stared from the picture was gaunt, head shaved and oddly tilted, eyes unnaturally wide. To Brock it seemed as if Dodworth had begun to resemble the death masks he collected.

‘Yes, he was here. Late morning, perhaps eleven-thirty, standing out there in the car park near the taped area talking to some of the local kids. I’d begun asking the snoopers for their names, to discourage them apart from anything else, but he scarpered as soon as he saw me coming.’ He opened his notebook to a list.

‘Can I have a look?’ Brock scanned the names, then stopped at one and showed it to Kathy. ‘This one, Gabe Rudd. Remember him?’

‘Let’s see. Oh yes, the photographer with white hair. I thought at first he might be the press, taking all those pictures, but then I recognised the name, and he told me he was the father of the other missing girl.Wanted to know what was going on, he said, and take pictures of everything. Funny how people react, isn’t it?’

Bren, working with the team checking on Wylie’s and Abbott’s backgrounds, had not yet visited the hospital where Abbott had been employed as a porter, but had made contact with the administration to obtain details of next of kin and had arranged a meeting with a staff manager later that evening. On the phone he gave Brock the name and number of the contact.

The woman met Brock and Kathy at the front desk and showed them to her office. ‘Your colleague said that Mr Abbott had a fatal accident last night,’ she said,‘but he didn’t elaborate.’

‘That’s right.We had been hoping to interview him in connection with the disappearance of the three missing children you may have read about.’

The woman’s face registered shock. ‘Mr Abbott? Oh dear.’ She stared at them for a moment, her mind elsewhere, working fast, then her eyes dropped to the file open on the desk in front of her. ‘He worked in the wing that houses geriatrics, as well as the pathology and mortuary departments. Not the children’s wing.’ A note of relief. Abbott had been employed there for over two years and there were no complaints or disciplinary actions recorded against him.

‘Was his mother, Mrs Eileen Abbott, ever a patient here by any chance?’

The woman was obviously puzzled by the question, but turned to her computer and began tapping. ‘We did have an Eileen Abbott here recently. Age seventy-six.Yes, same home address. She died here last July, the twenty-fifth.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Bronchial pneumonia. She was also suffering from advanced muscular dystrophy.’

‘Do you have a record of how her body was disposed of?’

The manager scrolled through the record on her screen. ‘It would have been prepared in the mortuary and then handed over to funeral directors of the next of kin’s choosing for burial or cremation. Yes, here we are, Gill Brothers, a reputable local firm.Why?’