‘You know damn well who it is! Your mobile was switched off too.’
‘Yes, sorry, sir.’ Commander Sharpe audibly controlled his irritation with a hissing intake of breath.‘Well, mine wasn’t, and I’ve just had the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Special Operations, on the phone. His wasn’t either, and he’d just had the Assistant Commissioner on his phone, who’d just had a call from the Deputy Commissioner on his. Tell me there’s been some terrible misunderstanding, Brock. Tell me you didn’t go to the home of Sir Jack Beaufort this evening.’
‘I did.’
Silence, then a wondering voice. ‘Why? Whatever possessed you?’
‘We’ve been interviewing everyone who bought paintings from Betty Zielinski. He was one among several.’
‘You behaved in a threatening manner.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘His wife was extremely upset.’
‘Rubbish. Did he say that?’
‘Just listen. If it weren’t that he insisted otherwise, you’d have been suspended from this inquiry faster than a duck’s fart. Dear God, I always thought you were reasonably intelligent! What on earth did you hope to achieve? Were you so desperate to retire? You have just done more than any single individual to end our chances of survival. Congratulations.’
The line clicked dead.
Almost immediately it began to ring again. This time it was Suzanne’s voice. ‘David? Thank goodness, I haven’t been able to get through.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. I’m at the travel agent. Look, there are two seats left on a flight leaving two weeks tomorrow-the evening of Friday the seventh. They may be the last available.’
‘Take them,’ he said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, we’re going.’
19
The first school parties arrived at The Pie Factory the following morning, Friday the twenty-fourth of October. As she came through the square after the morning briefing, Kathy saw the three coaches parked on West Terrace and the children in uniform forming queues at the entrance to the gallery. What surprised her were the distances they had come; judging by the company addresses on the coaches, they were from Birmingham, Bristol and Leicester. Curious, she followed one of the lines into the gallery. These were senior students, she saw, in wellorganised study groups, with notebooks, cameras and sketchpads. The teachers were handing out study notes and question-and-answer sheets, and were carrying files of reference material. As they reached the gallery foyer, Kathy saw that Fergus Tait had set an entrance fee, which was new, and had lavish catalogues for sale, as well as No Trace and ‘Gabriel’ T-shirts that were selling fast.
The cluster of girls in front of Kathy were clearly excited by their first glimpse of the artist through the front window, and were talking about him in pop-star terms, text-messaging their friends with the news. When they got inside the girls hurried over to join the ranks of teenagers around the glass cube gawping in at Rudd, who ignored them, head down over his computer screen. Some of the girls were flirtatiously trying to attract his attention, while the boys hung back, smirking and muttering comments. One was on his knees, tapping the glass and calling, ‘Dave, Dave.’ Then teachers appeared, briskly separating the mob into manageable groups and leading them away.
Kathy went first to speak to the computer operators, who confirmed that there had been no further messages from LSterne and that they hadn’t been able to find any earlier references to the name.
‘This is quite a circus, isn’t it?’ Kathy said.
‘Oh yes, and it’s going to get worse. There are art societies and tourist groups booked in for the weekend, and more schools next week. It’s becoming difficult to work, but that’s all part of the deal, apparently. We are the artwork.’The woman laughed and returned to her keyboard.
Kathy moved over to the banners, curious to hear what was being said about them. A fierce grey-haired woman was challenging her group to interpret the images on the tenth banner. ‘The badger, here at the bottom, what could that represent?’
Silence, a snigger from a gangling boy.
‘Martin? What do you know about badgers?’
‘They’re extinct,’ he offered.
‘No they’re not, they are endangered, which is relevant. What else?’
‘They like the dark,’ someone said.
‘Fierce.’
‘Secretive.’
‘Vegetarian.’
‘No,’the teacher corrected again.‘They do eat mice and young rabbits actually, as well as eggs and roots. They are in fact omnivorous, which could also be relevant. So we have endangered, nocturnal, fierce, secretive and omnivorous. So what could it be a symbol of?’
A willowy girl said,‘The spirit of the artist.’
‘Excellent, Angela! The spirit of the artist!’
‘She got that off the web,’ someone muttered sourly.
‘And also,’ the willowy girl continued confidently, ‘the badger’s head is basically white, well, with black stripes. But white really, like…’ she lowered her voice to a reverent hush, as if the artist on the other side of the room might be listening,‘Gabriel Rudd.’
‘Ye-es,’ the teacher said uncertainly.
‘Which is a sign of shock and terror and loss… loss of life, loss of colour.’
‘Ah yes.’ Like many of her colleagues, the teacher was carrying a large loose-leaf file, Kathy noticed, subdivided into sections by coloured sheets. She thumbed through this for a moment, then said,‘Perhaps you should explain that, Angela.’
‘Gabriel Rudd lost the colour in his hair after the tragic suicide of his wife, five years ago.’
‘My dad says that’s impossible,’ someone objected, and Kathy had a sudden glimpse of the case being discussed over dinner tables and pub counters all over the country.
‘But there was a precedent, wasn’t there? Who remembers what I told you in class last week? Someone other than Angela.’
Silence, then a voice,‘The Night-Mare, miss.’
‘Which was…?’
‘The picture he won the Turner Prize with.’
‘Yes, but which was also…?’
‘Based on a painting by someone else.’
‘Called…?’
Silence.
‘Henry…?’
Nobody remembered, and she was forced to complete the name herself. ‘Fuseli, whose hair turned white as a result of a fever he caught in Rome, remember?’
‘What about the murder, miss?’ someone urged, and there was a general muttering of enthusiasm. The teacher relented, and they moved on to banner eleven.
‘This has got everything, hasn’t it?’ a woman at Kathy’s elbow said.‘Are you from Leicester?’
‘No, London.’
‘Ah. I’m from Bristol.’
‘You must have had an early start this morning.’
