The work comprises a series of ethereal hangings, each recording the events of a single day of Tracey’s absence-the shock of discovery, the police hunt, the agony of waiting, the struggle to articulate pain. The ghostly quality of these tormented records is exquisite, like vapour trails of memory, elegant in their minimalism. We stare, we hold our breath, we say, here is Rothko at the dark midnight of the soul.
Rudd has promised to continue producing these works until Tracey is recovered, and while of course we fervently hope that this will soon occur, we cannot help but yearn for a gallery filled with such poignant expressions of the kind of contemporary tragedy that haunts us all.
‘Well, well,’ Kathy thought. She poured herself another cup, opened the second paper, and discovered an even more ecstatic review.
At his desk in Shoreditch police station, Brock put aside the same newspaper and thought about a more difficult problem. He hadn’t yet answered Suzanne’s letter, and the longer he left it the harder it became. The very idea of writing a letter seemed stiff and old-fashioned, as if they were living in an age before the telephone, when manners were more formal and correct. He wondered if that was her point, that setting things down on paper somehow made them more contractual and irrevocable. Not that there was anything unreasonable in what she had to say. Her life had arrived at a point which she hadn’t expected; she was suddenly free of ties she’d assumed to be permanent and now she needed to reassess things. Everything.
He picked up the phone, and as he dialled a siren wailed outside like a premonition of winter. She answered on the first ring and he pictured her sitting in her bay window overlooking the high street. As soon as he heard her voice he felt the familiar tug.
‘David! I’ve just been reading about Gabriel Rudd. He sounds outrageous.’
‘How are you?’
‘Missing you. You got my letter?’
‘Yes. I’ve been thinking a lot about it.’
‘I’m sorry, it must have been the last thing you needed with your new case starting at the same time. I know how busy you’ve been. I did ring you during the week, but you were in a meeting. I was put through to someone in Shoreditch and they said they’d give you the message. Did you get it?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘It just helped me to put everything down in black and white. I feel I have to sort things out.’
‘I understand.’
‘And it’s not as if we haven’t talked about it before. You remember, when you got beaten up in the street?’
‘I wasn’t beaten up, exactly.’
‘You were attacked while you were making that arrest, and we agreed it was time you reassessed what you were doing, so that you weren’t put in that kind of situation any more.’
He couldn’t remember agreeing to any such thing, but he didn’t argue.
‘Anyway, I just think this has come at the right time,’ she went on firmly.‘It’s time to start again, for both of us.’
Brock couldn’t decide whether it sounded more like an invitation or an order. He felt frustrated by the phone, unable to gauge the expression on her face, the set of her body. He sensed that she’d already moved on from the doubts expressed in her letter, and had already arrived at certain conclusions.
‘You know things are impossible for us like this, David, hardly ever seeing each other, fitting our lives in around your job and my grandchildren. We put up with it because we had to, but we don’t any more.’
‘We need to talk these things through, Suzanne. We should make time, get away for a while, take a holiday,’ he improvised soothingly.‘Soon, after this case is over.’
‘Exactly!’ Her enthusiasm caught him by surprise. ‘You know who rang me the other night? Doug in Sydney- you remember? My sister Emily’s husband. They’re planning for her sixtieth birthday next month, and he thought how fantastic it would be if I turned up at the party, as a surprise. I haven’t seen her for ten years. It seemed like a sign, coming out of the blue like that. I want us both to go, David.’
‘That sounds wonderful,’ he said cautiously. ‘When is this?’
‘In about three weeks. I thought we might make a proper trip of it, see the outback, take four or five weeks.’
‘In three weeks? Oh.’
‘Come on, David. Surely that gives you enough time to organise things at work so you can get away?’
‘This is a major inquiry, Suzanne. A big one.’ He knew he was sounding stubborn and obstructive, but he couldn’t help it.
‘They’re always big ones.’ Her voice was cool now.‘You work for a big organisation. They can handle it. I want us to do this, David. I think it’s important, for both of us.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll have a look, see if it’s possible.’
‘Please. But don’t take too long. The flights are heavily booked. I checked.’
Kathy felt edgy, unsettled, and went to a movie that afternoon, returning home at dusk. The phone was ringing as she opened the front door. She was surprised to hear the voice of Bren’s wife, Deanne.
‘Hi, Kathy.’
‘Hi. Is everything all right?’
‘Yes. Bren’s gone back to work, but there was something I thought you might be interested in. You probably already know. Do you lot monitor Gabriel Rudd’s website?’
‘I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it.’
‘Well, you might find it interesting, and all the other sites about him and his work-there are hundreds of them. They’ve been going crazy lately, of course. But you should check out his official site, www.gaberudd.co. He’s just updated it with a bulletin about his exhibition and his thoughts about everything. The thing I thought you should know is that he’s claiming the police have treated him shamefully, like a criminal instead of a victim, and he’s decided to refuse all further cooperation with them. He’s going into retreat, apparently.’
‘Retreat?’
‘Yes, into his art. He says he needs to focus on that. And physically, he’s retreating into a glass cube he’s had built inside the main gallery of The Pie Factory, alongside his hangings. He’s there now-there are pictures on his site of people looking in at him through the gallery window, and through the glass wall of the restaurant. He’s the only one with a key and he’s got a camp bed in there, and some kind of toilet, and electricity to run a fan and his computers. He says he’ll only communicate through his computer. He’s currently designing the next banner, and sending the images to his team. Oh…’ Deanne hesitated,‘… and he’s got a badger in there with him, too.’
‘Did you say badger?’
‘Yes, a live badger. He’s called Dave, and he’s currently hiding under a blanket. You know a brock is another word for a badger, don’t you?’
Kathy groaned.‘Yes.’
‘It’s Joseph Beuys again, like he did to you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘One of Beuys’s art “actions” consisted in locking himself in a loft in New York with a live coyote. Rudd’s quoting again.’
Kathy gave a sigh.‘Well, at least we know where he is. We can always go in there and pull him out.’
‘Oh no, you couldn’t do that!’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, Kathy… This is sort of what my masters is about: relative values. In fact, I might use this as a case study. Society operates on a hierarchy of value systems, right? Religion was once at the top, but now it’s way down, with royalty, say. Wealth is high up, and celebrity, and heritage and ethnicity, but at the very top is art. Art trumps everything else. You can blaspheme on TV, make jokes about the Queen, be obscene and poke fun at the rich and famous, but you can’t afford to be seen as a philistine. You can’t trash art, not really, not unless you’re an artist yourself, in which case your trashing of art becomes art itself, which is okay. Gabriel Rudd in his glass box in the gallery is a work of art-he’s said so. He’s now part of the No Trace work. You can’t possibly desecrate it. The whole world is watching.’
‘So you’re saying that the only way to get him out is to recruit an even bigger artist than him-this Beuys character, for example-into the Met and put him in uniform and give him an artistic sledgehammer.’
