The Art of Murder

vertical line of scar tissue leading downward. It was clearly the faint remnants of a tattoo removed by laser.

‘That’s the best I can …’ Turner froze and then slowly looked round at Pendragon. ‘Fucking hell!’ he said.

Chapter 53

‘Are you absolutely sure?’ Superintendent Hughes asked, staring at the monitor in the Media Room.

‘One hundred and ten per cent,’ Pendragon replied, and told her about how Gemma Locke had lied to him about Eberswalde.

Hughes still looked doubtful for a second. She stared at the floor, concentrating, then suddenly snapped into action mode. ‘Right. I’ll get an armed squad mobilised immediately.’

Pendragon was nodding. ‘As back-up, ma’am. Let me go in first. She knows me. And she won’t be expecting us.’

‘Inspector! The woman is insane and extremely dangerous.’

‘I know. Turner and I will go together … armed. You can have the SWAT team ten seconds away.’

‘Why, Jack?’

‘I honestly couldn’t tell you,’ he replied, holding the Super’s steady gaze.

‘Very well. And you know where she is?’

‘Oh yes,’ Pendragon replied, recalling the Bermondsey address Sammy Samson had dug up. He suddenly had a clear image of Gemma Locke standing in her apartment the previous day, her face straight out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, an image tarnished only by the thick swathe of bandage around her head. ‘I have a studio in Bermondsey,’ she had said.

Freezing rain was hammering against the road, coming down so heavily it was almost impossible to see the buildings only a few yards beyond the windscreen. Twenty-two units had been fabricated out of a vast complex of Victorian grain stores that backed on to the river near Tate Modern. Gemma Locke’s stood at the end of a row, number eleven. It was a two-storey cube with at least two hundred square metres of floor space.

All the occupants of the other offices and units had been surreptitiously moved to safety. Pendragon and Turner donned Kevlar jackets and duty belts, each with a holster for the standard police issue Glock 17 pistol, a baton and a small tear-gas canister. They crossed from the car towards the rear of the units as nine highly trained officers from the Specialist Firearms Command, known as CO19, dressed in full body armour and armed with Heckler amp; Koch MP5 machine-guns as well as Glock pistols, took up position around unit number eleven.

Pendragon went ahead. Crouching low, he traversed the tarmac and pulled up against the back wall. The brickwork was sodden and had turned a dozen shades darker than normal. A gutter overhead had slipped from its bracket and freezing water in a sheet a metre wide cascaded down from the roof. As Turner reached the wall, Pendragon moved off towards the rear door. He tried the handle. It was unlocked and opened inwards.

Out of the rain it was suddenly eerily quiet with just the steady beating of water on the roof to dispel the stillness. Pendragon looked around. They were in a small lobby about eight feet square. A door in the far wall stood ajar. A strong smell, a blend of chemical cleaner, paint and linseed oil, pervaded the place. Jack leaned against the doorframe and pushed the door slowly inwards.

It opened on to a large space, considerably bigger then the ground floor of most suburban houses. The walls had been painted a creamy white, and the floor was of highly polished dark oak parquet. Two large windows set in one wall had been blacked out so there was no natural light coming into the room. Around the three other walls ran a balconied mezzanine level. A large chandelier holding dozens of lit candles hung from the centre of the vaulted ceiling and cast a surprisingly strong light over the room. But it was a strangely hollow light, a sickly orange hue. The chemical smell was stronger in here.

It took a moment for the two police officers to see the figure seated in the chair at the far end of the room. Pendragon walked carefully across the wooden floor, crouching and turning as he had been trained to do. He had the Glock gripped in both hands and was scanning the shadows in the far corners of the room, expecting the unexpected. Turner was a couple of paces behind him.

Dr Geoff Hickle was strapped to the chair, unconscious. He was dressed in a heavy green coat and a Russian-style fur hat. Pendragon had seen that hat before. His body was strapped so he was sitting back in the chair, but his head was slumped forward. His splendid teeth had been smashed and a pipe stuck into his ruined mouth. His right ear had been removed and placed in his lap. The wound had been wrapped in a bloodstained bandage pressed against the side of his head with a strip of adhesive gauze.

‘Holy shit!’ Turner exclaimed, coming up beside Pendragon.

Shocked, Jack leaned forward and felt for a pulse. There was one, but it was weak.

‘So, what do you think of my Van Gogh?’

Pendragon and Turner spun round, their guns tracking the source of the voice.

‘Oh, boys, put the guns down.’

Gemma Locke’s face appeared over the rail of the balcony ten feet above their heads. ‘I’m coming down now. I’m unarmed.’

She ducked out of sight. The policemen kept their weapons trained, listening, following the sound of the woman’s shoes as she descended a set of spiral stairs they could just make out in the corner of the room. She reappeared a few seconds later. She was wearing a diaphanous white dress, her long bob swinging around her face and neck. She reached the bottom of the stairs and started to cross the floor towards them.

‘Stop there,’ Pendragon commanded.

‘Oh, Jack, please. Put the silly guns down. I’m not going to hurt anyone. It’s not in my nature.’ She produced a shrill laugh that only succeeded in making both Pendragon and Turner tighten their grip on the weapons. ‘Okay,’ Gemma Locke went on, suddenly serious. ‘Maybe I have been a little harsh with some of them. But …’ and she screwed up her face … ‘they were so … nasty to me, Jack. They were soooo nasty.’

‘We need to get Dr Hickle to hospital, Gemma. The game’s over.’

‘Nearly over. I’m just putting the finishing touches to my masterpiece. Then the whole world will know what a great artist I am.’ She took a couple of steps forward. Pendragon cocked the pistol. Gemma stopped and lowered her head. ‘Okay, I see I’m going to have to explain.’ Then she looked up quickly, a faint smile playing on her lips. ‘It’ll be a good rehearsal for the tabloids and the global networks who will be clamouring to hear my story. But where do I start?’

‘Gemma, please. Stop this now. We need to get …’

‘Shut up. Just shut up and listen!’ Gemma Locke’s eyes blazed in the oppressive gloom. Then she swallowed and seemed to compose herself. ‘Yes, you can call me Gemma. I prefer it now. But as you have of course worked out, I was once Juliette Kinnear. Poor little Juliette.’ Then she glanced at Dr Hickle. ‘I made him my last victim because he broke my heart.’ She turned back to the two policemen, an expression of contempt on her face. ‘But you do understand, don’t you? Revenge was simply an added bonus.’

‘Why did you kill those people?’ Turner asked, keeping his gun trained on her.

‘I’m an artist. This is my masterpiece.’

‘What?’

‘Ms Locke believes that she has created art out of a series of murders,’ Pendragon explained, his face rigid.

‘The way you say it, Jack! Good God, show some respect! You have to admit, it is damn impressive.’ She waved one hand in the air. ‘Juliette started it. Well, actually, no, my father started it. He was something of a bibliophile. Had a wonderful library, he was really proud of it. He was away a lot on business — selling biscuits! Mother died when I was fourteen. So, when I wasn’t painting, or in London — with him …’ and she flicked a glance at Hickle … ‘I spent many hours on my own in the library. And then one day, I must have been seventeen … Yes, it was then, because I had just had a review of my first little exhibition in Chelmsford — a bad review from a young writer called Gary Townsend …’

‘Townsend?’

Gemma Locke shrugged. ‘Yes, I was annoyed when that one went wrong.’ She sighed and looked down at the parquet floor for a moment before meeting Pendragon’s eye. ‘I had it all so carefully planned too. You’ve probably