considered adding it to a bronze sculpture of
“No, sir, Mr Burroughs wouldn’t allow them in.”
“Mr Burroughs is the new gallery owner, I take it.”
“That’s right. He didn’t want television crews because of the documentary.”
“Ah, yes – I can understand his point.” A week earlier, Channel 4 had broadcast an inflammatory programme about the new owner of the former Saatchi gallery, implying that he was merely a showman and self-publicist, attempting to ape his predecessor by commissioning outrageous works of art at inflated fees.
“The press conference finished at ten, but a few guests were still inside when we opened the doors to the public at that time, and – ”
“I’m sure you’ll give the others a full report,” said Bryant dismissively, heading back towards the tank. He cupped his hands over the glass and peered through the eerie green fluid, where six curled pink babies hung on wires, suspended like sea-horses beneath the murky sun-shafted verdure of a pond. The corpse floating facedown above them was clearly that of a female, her hands splayed beneath her torso, her long brown hair spread wide and held in still suspension by the viscosity of the liquid, magnified by thick glass as in an aquarium; a modern Ophelia, distracted and driven into harsh chemical waters. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted in an attitude of surprising calm. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she disrupted the symmetry of the installation, she might almost have been a part of the piece. A single slender brown strand of blood curled around her head and chest like drifting pipe smoke. Distorted by the green tank and surrounded by infant corpses, her body had taken on the timeless density of a painting; a damned soul fallen from the raft of the Medusa, left to drift in Gericault’s icy green ocean…
“He’s getting his prints all over the evidence.” Meera rubbed a hand across her face. “He must know he’s contaminating the site. Why does he always have to do that?”
“He’s getting a feel for it,” replied Bimsley from the side of his mouth. “He’s using his instincts.”
“Couldn’t he use gloves as well?”
“The press conference – was Saralla White one of the three artists interviewed? Was she articulate? Angry? Rude? Distracted? Did she seem upset about anything?” Bryant fired questions as if they were medicine balls; you had to damn well make sure you could catch them.
“Yes, she was interviewed,” answered the attendant. “I watched the whole performance. She sounded very confident, her usual self. If she was upset, she didn’t show it. She had smart answers to every question they asked. There was a lot of interest in her.”
“And there’ll be a lot more,” Bryant promised. “Now that she’s become a part of her own sculpture.”
? Ten Second Staircase ?
6
Orchestrating Outrage
The new owner of the County Hall Gallery, Calvin Burroughs, was producing a prodigious amount of sweat; it broke into rivulets on his broad forehead, dripped from beneath his limpid Turnbull & Asser cuffs, and bloomed darkly across his blue striped shirtfront, lending him the air of a tropical pilot. His floppy, boyish hair and expense-account gut suggested an earlier career in the wine trade, or possibly an auction house. “How did you know it was her?” he asked, exasperated and distracted by the police officers precariously suspended above the
“I watched the top half of the documentary on my landlady’s television,” replied Bryant. “Her tube is going. The brown fluid in front of Miss White’s face obscured her features and confused me for a minute. I don’t know how vitriolic that stuff is, but it probably gave her a nosebleed.”
John May appeared from the gallery’s cafeteria, where he had been helping Longbright set up a system to take witness statements. Everyone in the unit was used to helping out with each other’s workloads. Only April had been refused permission to leave the Mornington Crescent base, as May feared that the scene of the death would prove too distressing for her. “You know who it is in the tank?” he asked, surprised. “They haven’t fished her out yet.”
“I remembered seeing Saralla White’s distinctive red-and-blue tattoo. She has a Russian gang symbol just below her navel; they’re currently fashionable in a disreputable way, appropriate for a Hoxton artist like Miss White. I could distinguish the markings on her exposed midriff.” Bryant discounted his knowledge of popular criminal tattoos as the kind of cultural awareness May chided him for ignoring. He had always been interested in tribal scarification, and owned a number of disturbing books on the subject.
“We’re ready to raise her out now, sir,” called one of the officers. “Put something under her,” Bryant called back, “and take it slowly. Giles hasn’t finished measuring the tank splashes.”
“Thank you, Mr Bryant.” Giles looked up from his prone position on the gallery floor, where he was finishing his grid calculations.
“Taking into account the high room temperature, which has thinned the viscosity of the liquid compound – it’s not pure formalin, by the way, which is a health hazard – the spread of the fluid outside the tank would be consistent with the body falling in from above. She weighs about sixty-three point five kilos. At a guess I’d say she fell in from half a metre above the surface of the tank.”
“I do wish you’d use pounds and feet,” complained Bryant, sticking his finger into the pool of green liquid and sniffing it. “That’s impossible,” Meera pointed out. “How could she have got up so high? There’s no ladder, no furniture to climb on.”
“We don’t like to keep anything else in the gallery chambers other than the exhibits themselves,” Burroughs explained, padding a paper tissue around his soaked neck. “It would detract from the art, and I don’t want to leave potential weapons lying around in the general public’s way; we’d never get insured.”
“Yet you’ve gone out of your way to orchestrate public outrage.”
Watching Burroughs leaking sweat made Bryant feel cold. He found his eye straying to the body being raised from the tank behind them, and tugged his moth-eaten scarf tighter around his neck. “I’m not going to get into an argument with you about the legitimacy of modern art,” snapped Burroughs impatiently. “You’re a public servant, you’re meant to be finding out what the hell happened here.”
“Fine,” Bryant snapped back. “At this point I would normally ask you if the victim had any enemies, but in this case the question is redundant. Who were the other two artists Miss White appeared with this morning, and where are they now?”
“We had Sharinda Van Souten here, and McZee.”
“He has no other name?”
“His life is his art, Mr Bryant. I assume they both left after reading out their statements to the press.”
“So there was no Q and A?”
“Sharinda and McZee chose to declare their manifestos without facing press questions. Saralla White was a more accomplished speaker, and wanted to confront her critics. The event had been arranged in answer to charges levelled in the documentary. I assume you saw the picket line of anti-abortionists when you entered the building. They’ve been here for almost a week, ever since the programme aired. Orchestrating public outrage, as you put it, might raise our profile in the art world, but in this case it’s been detrimental to ticket sales. Sensationalism is becoming old hat; the public taste is turning back to more conservative fare.” It was tempting for Bryant to embroil himself in an argument about the value of art, but he resisted for once, restraining himself in order to concentrate on the immediate problem. “Rather appropriate, though,” Bryant couldn’t resist. “Someone recently described as ‘The Most Hated Woman in England’ is found drowned in her own installation. Just think of the headlines you’ll get. There should be queues around the block after this.”
“I don’t care for your implication,” snapped Burroughs. “This is a gallery, not a circus. I’m not interested in providing cheap thrills.” Behind them, the folded, dripping body of Saralla White was winched from her own tank, and six foetuses turned slowly in the swirling fluid, as if silently signalling farewell to their creator.
“We have a witness.” Bimsley hiked a thumb back at the figure squatting in the corner of the cafe bench. “I think he saw what happened, but he ain’t saying much. Too shaken up.”
“Leave him to me,” suggested Longbright. Coaxing accounts from distraught members of the public was her speciality. Anyone disturbed by the sudden upsets of crime could find comfort in the maternal sexiness of her tightly
