One of the people inside the gallery unlocked the glass door as their car drew up and let them in. They had the impression of suspended animation, as if everyone there had been waiting motionless for them to arrive. Gabriel Rudd was standing against the wall of his cube, hands pressed to the glass, face as white as his hair. He still wasn’t coming out, and there was something both bizarre and pathetic about his figure as he watched what was going on around him. People began to move, indicating the monitor that had opened up the attachments on the email message. The three police and Tait crowded behind the operator’s chair as she clicked in the instructions. The screen went blank, then burst into motion, a movie clip lasting just a few lurid seconds, showing a figure wearing a full-length black cape, the face obscured, and holding an electric cable against the thigh of Betty’s hanging figure, as she jerked violently on the end of the rope like a helpless puppet. There was no sound.
‘Oh, dear God…’ Fergus Tait breathed.
Three more brief clips followed, in each case with the exposed wires of the cable applied to a different part of the body.
Silence.
‘That’s the lot?’ Brock asked.
The girl, pale, nodded.
‘What about the email it was attached to?’
She showed him. A sender address, LSterne@kwikmail. co, no message, received at four-oh-three a.m.
‘Who’s L. Sterne?’ Brock asked.
‘We don’t know who it is. We haven’t had a message from that address before.’
Bren pulled out his phone and began to make a call while Brock turned to Tait.‘Where can we talk?’
He led Brock and Kathy through a doorway into the small gallery office, the walls lined with shelves of catalogues and books.
‘This isn’t very roomy…’ Tait muttered, closing the door, looking distracted.
‘Never mind,’Brock growled.‘Sit down. Now, what do you have to say?’
‘It’s him, isn’t it? Stan.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well… she looks like the figure in his room, suspended from the chain.’
‘Anything else?’
Tait blinked rapidly.‘I… I don’t know.’
‘What does it mean, Fergus?’ Brock insisted, leaning over the desk and glaring at him as if he wanted to tear the answer out of his throat. ‘The hanging, the electrocution, what does it signify?’
‘Perhaps… to make the body convulse, distort, like his sculptures.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Christ, I don’t know.’
Brock stared at him, pondering, then came to a decision. From his pocket he took a photograph of the scene they had found in the basement, and handed it to Tait.‘When we found her this morning she was wearing a blindfold. What does that mean?’
‘But there was no blindfold in the film.’
‘Exactly. When he was finished he posed her for us to find, with a blindfold. Why? What does a blindfold mean to you?’
‘I don’t know, blind man’s bluff, three blind mice, blind justice, love is blind, blind leading the blind…’
‘What about in the world of art? Can you recall a blindfolded figure?’
‘No… no, I can’t.’
Brock straightened, his mouth tight with frustration. ‘And you’ve no idea where he might be now?’
‘None at all.’
Out in the gallery, Bren confirmed that a search was under way for the source of the email.‘And they’ve got the other artist, Poppy Wilkes, waiting for us at the station.’
Brock nodded.‘You finish up here, Bren. Kathy and I’ll talk to her.’
Poppy said she hadn’t heard the news about Betty. She had woken late after a restless, dream-filled night, seen the drizzle falling outside her window and stayed in her room, trying to work up an idea for a new version of the cherub sculpture. Then a woman police officer came knocking on her door, asking if she’d attend another interview, and she’d been taken directly to Shoreditch police station, where she’d been provided with a cup of tea while she waited. She seemed to sense their subdued mood as soon as Brock and Kathy walked in.
‘Is it bad news?’ she said, clutching her cardigan tightly at the front.‘You’ve found Tracey, haven’t you?’
‘No,’ Kathy said, taking the lead while Brock sat off to one side.‘It’s not Tracey, Poppy. Can you tell us when you last saw Betty?’
‘Betty? I saw her in the square yesterday afternoon, I think. Yes. She seemed okay. Why, is something wrong?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Betty was found dead this morning. We believe she was murdered some time during the night.’
Both Yasher and Tait had described themselves as being ‘devastated’, meaning sympathetically upset, but in Poppy’s case it didn’t seem like an exaggeration. Her eyes, wide with shock, stared down unseeing at the table in front of her, and she seemed to withdraw into a state of paralysis.
‘Poppy? Poppy?’
She finally registered Kathy’s voice. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.‘Tell me what happened.’
As Kathy told her everything, little shocks registered in her eyes with each new dreadful detail; the basement room, the hanging, the abuse of the body.
‘Oh,’ she said finally, then closed her eyes, gave a little gasp as if she herself were giving up the last breath in her lungs, and seemed about to pass out.
Kathy reached forward and touched her hand.‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, taking a sip of water. ‘I haven’t been eating lately.’
That seemed true, Kathy thought. Even in the few days since she’d last seen her in the square, Poppy seemed to have lost weight and taken on an anaemic pallor. ‘Would you like something now? I could get food sent up, a sandwich, or something hot…’
But Poppy shook her head, the thought of food making her gag.‘Do you know who did it?’ she gasped.
‘We’re not certain. I’d like to show you a picture, Poppy. It’s disturbing, so maybe we should wait for a bit.’
‘It’s all right. Show me.’
Kathy passed her the picture of Betty hanging in the basement room. She regarded it unblinking, for a full minute, then said flatly,‘You think Stan did it, don’t you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
Then an odd change came over Poppy. She suddenly seemed to notice the recording machine on the side table, its red light glowing, and then the eye of the camera suspended in the far corner of the room. She became agitated.
‘Why do you say that?’ Kathy asked.
‘What? I don’t know, maybe he did. I don’t know anything.’ She wiped the cold sweat on her face. ‘I don’t feel good. I want to go now. I think I may be sick.’
‘I’ll take you to the loo.’ Kathy got to her feet and took hold of Poppy’s arm, while Brock spoke to the machine again, halting the interview.
The toilets were empty, and Kathy was intrigued to see that Poppy checked this before she went to a washbasin and splashed water over her face.
Kathy moved close to her shoulder and spoke quietly. ‘You had a reason for saying that Stan didn’t do it, Poppy. What was it?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to talk to you. I want someone else to see me out.’
‘I want to help you, Poppy. You believe that, don’t you?’
‘But what if you can’t?’ She saw the disbelief on Kathy’s face and blurted out, ‘Betty knew something. Stan told me… the people who took Tracey, he told me, they have a friend, in the square. Someone who looks after them.’ Then her body froze as the door to the toilets swung open and a uniformed woman came in. Poppy rushed
