‘It was sent from a twenty-four-hour internet cafe a few hundred yards away from the square. Nobody there has any recollection of the sender.’
Sharpe groaned.‘This murder couldn’t have come at a worse time for us.’
‘For us?’ Brock queried.
‘Of course. Northcote Square is turning into the biggest public entertainment since “Coronation Street”, and this murder will make it bigger still. What the hell is going on? The place seems to be attracting homicidal maniacs like flies to a cow’s arse. This Dodworth character, where the hell is he? And why the hell can’t we get Wylie to talk?’
‘I’m going to see him again as soon as we’ve finished.’
‘Are you? Good. Look, I’m not blaming you, Brock. I know you’re doing everything you can. But we’re not looking good at precisely the moment when we need to look our best. I’ve just heard that the release of the Beaufort Committee recommendations is being brought forward. It certainly doesn’t help that the man himself is on the spot, watching the whole mess unfold at first hand.’
Brock said nothing. Sharpe sat back, suddenly deflated. ‘Strictly between us, Brock, I think the game’s up. By the year’s end you and I and the rest will have been put out to grass. I won’t be saying so at our meeting, but that’s what it amounts to. I want you to know that I’m going to recommend you for immediate promotion to Super. It would have happened long ago if you hadn’t been so bloody precious about staying on the streets. At least you can step down on an enhanced pension.’
‘Thank you,’ Brock said without warmth. ‘I appreciate the thought.’
The chill of the gaol, psychological rather than physical, gripped Brock as soon as he clipped on the pass and went through the barred internal security gates. He sat on the offered seat and waited while they brought out the prisoner. They had managed to fill in a little more of his background. Robert Wylie had lurked in the down-market end of the sex industry for years, the sometime proprietor of several adult bookshops with a special line in the back room, the publisher of cheap porn magazines using pirated images, the co-owner of a seedy brothel that had been closed down four times by the police in four different locations, and more recently an internet provider of suspect services. Over the years he had been the subject of numerous police inquiries, and a few successful prosecutions. Apparently he had learned from this the virtue of silence, and it seemed he wasn’t about to change now. He sat down in front of Brock and regarded him with face blank while his solicitor drew a chair to his side.
Brock stared back for a while without speaking. The man looked out of place in prison clothes, not at all the hardened criminal, but soft and pasty-faced from too little exposure to the sun. He seemed to have some kind of impediment in his nose, so that he breathed with a slight wheeze through open mouth.
Brock began.‘We’d like to contact your wife. Can you tell me where she is?’
Wylie glanced sideways at his lawyer, who looked preoccupied and worried. Neither spoke.
‘You’re in an interesting position, Wylie,’ Brock went on. ‘I hope you appreciate it. This case is big. Have you been watching the TV coverage today? Do they give you access to the web?’
Brock gazed at Wylie’s pudgy white fingers clasped loosely on the table, and tried not to think of the girls.
‘I can understand how that might appeal, your moment of fame, but it’s a dangerous game.’ Brock caught a flicker in Wylie’s eyes at the word dangerous. He wondered if he’d been getting trouble from the other inmates, and made a mental note to check. ‘A clever lawyer might be able to persuade a court that Abbott led you astray-he certainly must have been strange. But that will count for nothing if you don’t give us any help. That’s the only leverage you’ve got. And with so much public attention on the case, it’s only a matter of time before we discover everything for ourselves. Have you any idea of the number of people working on this? When we find Tracey, that’s one less thing you have to trade; when we find Stan Dodworth, that’s another. The information you’ve got has a very short shelf life, Wylie. Use it while you can.’
Brock sat back, realising it hadn’t worked. The spark ignited by dangerous had faded. He waited in silence while Wylie’s lawyer took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and began to strip off the cellophane. Brock shrugged and made to get up from his seat. Then Wylie spoke for the first time. ‘No smoking please, Russell,’ he admonished the solicitor with a wheeze. Then he leaned forward to Brock and muttered,‘What happened to the mad woman?’
‘Did you know her?’
Wylie looked annoyed at this, but answered,‘I saw her around. Well?’
‘We think Stan Dodworth killed her.’
Wylie pursed his fat lips as if in doubt, and Brock decided to tell him what had not been released to the press.‘Her body was mutilated. Electric shocks.’
Wylie drew back, startled.
Brock went on, ‘You’ll be judged by the people you mixed with, Wylie. And there’s a rumour that you and Abbott had another friend in the square, apart from Dodworth.’
Wylie looked scornful but didn’t reply.
‘Where’s Stan Dodworth?’
‘No idea.’
‘Where’s Tracey Rudd?’
Wylie’s eyes narrowed as if in calculation. Finally he muttered,‘Why don’t you ask the judge?’
Brock was hardly sure he’d heard correctly, but before he could say anything more Wylie was on his feet, turning to the door behind him and slapping it with his pudgy fist.
Kathy was shown into Fergus Tait’s office, but no sooner had she sat down in front of his desk than his phone rang.
‘Oh, excuse me, they’re going mad, I’d better take it,’ he said, and launched into an animated conversation with someone about the latest developments.‘Your spies are quite right,’ he said.‘The No Trace project will be entered for the Turner, and believe me, nothing else will come near it. Have you heard about today’s banner? You must see it, a knockout, an absolute stunner. Every day it’s becoming more spectacular…’
While he talked, Kathy examined the artworks on the walls-a large abstract painting, some blurry photographs which might have been stills from a video and, in pride of place on the wall behind Tait’s director’s chair, a small pyramid of cans bearing labels of frolicking puppies, mounted in a glass case.
Tait finally hung up.‘Sorry, Kathy, Channel Four. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m just trying to establish if there’s anything missing from Mrs Zielinski’s house, and in particular her paintings. I understand you may have bought some things from her, and I wondered if you could tell me what they were, for the purposes of elimination.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, that’s easy. There was only the one, a small study by Francis Bacon. I can find the receipt, if you like. As a matter of fact, I sold it not long ago, to someone you know.’
‘Really?’ Kathy thought he must have made a mistake.
‘Yes, Sir Jack Beaufort, old Reg’s sitter.’
‘But… how did you know that I’ve met him?’
Tait chuckled, pleased at her confusion. ‘Because he told me so, just the other night. He’s a regular here at the restaurant. We always have a chat.’
‘Ah, I see. Did he know that the painting came from Betty?’
Tait thought about that. ‘I’m not sure. She certainly knew who I sold it to-I told her.’
The phone began to ring again and Kathy got to her feet. On her way out she looked in to the gallery, where four of Rudd’s team were hanging the eleventh banner. They were watched closely by the hollow-eyed artist in his cube, like a Grand Prix champion watching his pit-stop crew in action. The new addition featured a twice life-size crimson image of Betty’s corpse taken from the email attachment, the stark figure shocking in its contorted death pose, like a Gothic crucifixion. A cluster of press photographers was standing in front of it, mouths open.
Looking at the whole sequence of eleven hangings, Kathy could see elements tying them together that she hadn’t recognised before. There was a thin meandering line, for instance, which began, unnoticed, in the top of the first banner, and then was continued in the next, gradually working its way across all eleven like the random trail of a worm or a spider. And there was also a sense of progression in the colour which she hadn’t noticed. The first one had been entirely colourless, formed in shades of grey and black. Then the next had had a hint of blue, and after that, with each successive day, the colours had become stronger, as if the banners were coming alive.
Looking at the artist, an opposite process seemed to have been taking place, with the colour and substance
