No Trace Read online

  ‘That’s different, a pattern of shapes, light and shade.’

  ‘That’s probably what Renoir said.’

  ‘Maybe he did, I wouldn’t know. But if you’re trying to suggest I’m a pervert, you’re wrong.’

  ‘Did she ever come to your house?’

  Kathy caught a flicker of perturbation in Reg’s eye that would never have registered on the monitor. He hesitated, and to Kathy’s mind it seemed as if he was calculating the odds of getting away with something.

  ‘Betty brought her up to my studio once. She wanted to show the girl that portrait I did of her as a young woman.’

  ‘Did she stay long?’

  ‘A while . . . She liked the smell and the feel of the oil paint I was using. Her father and those other so-called artist friends of his don’t use oil paint any more. I gave her a brush and a small canvas to muck about on. A self-portrait, looking in the mirror, all blonde hair and blue eyes.’

  Of course, Kathy thought, the little painting Betty had shown her. And now it occurred to her that she hadn’t noticed it in Betty’s house after her death.

  ‘Did she come again?’

  ‘Em, yes . . . she came one other time. That’s all.’

  ‘And was Betty there?’

  Reg held Kathy’s eye so steadily that she was certain he was about to lie. ‘Yes.’

  Kathy reached for her mug of tea, letting Reg study the puzzled look on her face. ‘You couldn’t be getting mixed up about that, could you, Reg? About Betty being there?’

  ‘She was there,’ he insisted, pressing his thumb nail so hard into a finger that the flesh went white.

  Lying but also telling the truth, Kathy thought. ‘For part of the time,’ she prompted.

  He looked startled. ‘Ah . . . you may be right. I’m not sure.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A couple of months ago. Look, you’re barking up the wrong tree. It was all perfectly straightforward and innocent.’

  ‘Then there’s no need to be secretive, is there? I need to know all about that visit, Reg.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can remember.’ He was speaking more slowly, trying to give himself time.

  ‘Yes you can,’ Kathy said briskly. ‘It was a weekday?’

  ‘Um . . . yes.’

  ‘Afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, come on, there was a knock at the door . . .’

  Reg was staring at Kathy as if she must be reading his mind. ‘She was standing on the doorstep.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Yes. She wanted to finish her self-portrait.’

  ‘So you took her upstairs . . .’

  ‘To the studio, yes. She sat down in front of the mirror and got on with her painting. It was a warm afternoon. The window was open, sun shining on the trees of the gardens . . .’

  ‘She’d want your advice,’ Kathy cut in gently. ‘She’d want you to hold her hand, show her how to put the paint on.’

  ‘No! She was quite confident, didn’t need my help. I got on with my own work.We hardly exchanged a word.’ Gilbey came to a stop.

  ‘Go on, what happened then?’

  ‘There was another ring at the front door. It was Sir Jack, for a sitting. His driver had dropped him off and gone to find a parking space. I took him upstairs and introduced him to Tracey, and he admired her painting.’

  ‘What did he say, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t really remember. I think he said it was very lifelike.’

  ‘Was she pleased at being praised?’

  ‘Yes, of course. She was proud of it.’

  ‘So she smiled and flashed her big blue eyes.’

  ‘You make it sound indecent.’

  ‘I’m just trying to get the picture. What happened then?’

  ‘Em . . . the doorbell rang again. I thought it was Sir Jack’s bodyguard, but it was Betty. She . . .’ Reg hesitated, frowned.

  ‘Come on, Reg.’

  ‘Well, you know what she was like, flying off the handle for no reason. She’d been in the gardens, feeding her birds, and she’d seen Tracey up in my window. She blew her top, thought I’d kidnapped her or something. She marched in screaming blue murder and charged up the stairs.’

  ‘So while this was going on, Sir Jack was upstairs alone with Tracey.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Betty flew into the studio and grabbed Tracey.When I got there she had her arms around the girl, abusing Sir Jack. It took Tracey to calm her down. She told Betty she was fine, and showed her the painting she’d done, then she and Betty left. Tracey never came to my house again.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this before, Reg?’

  ‘Why would I? It wouldn’t help you find Tracey and it was just embarrassing for me.You were bound to put the worst construction on it, just as he said.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Sir Jack.When we heard about Tracey being abducted, he suggested I’d be wise not to mention being alone in the house with her that day. He said he knew how the police mind works, and he was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Let me get this straight; Sir Jack Beaufort suggested that you lie to us.’

  ‘Not lie, no! Just not mention Tracey’s visit that day. I mean, it wasn’t significant. But I didn’t lie, and now you’ve asked me point-blank, well, I’ve told the truth, haven’t I?’

  ‘I hope so, Reg. You see, the way the police mind works, if a witness misleads you once, they’re never really trustworthy again. Now, you and Sir Jack might keep quiet about being alone with Tracey, but what about Betty? Weren’t you worried that she’d tell people?’

  ‘I made it up to her, took her some flowers, and Tracey had reassured her.’

  ‘All the same, she was a loose cannon, wasn’t she? She used to call you “the monster next door”.’

  ‘People didn’t take her seriously.’

  ‘No, that’s right. That was your salvation, wasn’t it? All right, let’s talk about Stan Dodworth.’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t shelter him. I didn’t see him.’ There was an edge of panic in his voice now as he realised that Kathy was leading him from one victim to the next.

  ‘But you were good mates, weren’t you? Drinking buddies.’

  ‘No! You’re wrong. We had nothing in common. I couldn’t stand the man.’

  ‘That’s not what I hear, Reg. I hear you used to buy him drinks, have long conversations.’

  ‘Look, I may have bought him the odd drink. He looked so bloody pathetic sitting there in The Daughters, talking to nobody, muttering to himself. When I’ve had a few I tend to be magnanimous—ask anybody.’

  ‘So you met Stan regularly in the pub.’

  ‘Not regularly, no. Frankly, there was no point. We had nothing in common. I hated his work and he had no conversation.’

  ‘He must have talked about something. Didn’t he tell you about his work, his methods?’

  ‘Not really. I wasn’t interested. Too grotesque for my taste.’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you where he got his models from?’

  ‘Models?’

  ‘For his sculptures.’

  ‘No, can’t say he did.Why, where did they come from?’

  ‘From a mortuary.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Gilbey made a face of disgust.

  ‘Rembrandt did that too, didn’t he?’

  ‘Rembrandt wasn’t obsessed by death.’

  ‘So Stan talked about death, did he?’

  ‘A bit.’ Then something struck Gilbey. He stared off into space, thinking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I just remembered the last time I saw Stan. It was in The Daughters, a couple of nights after Tracey disappeared. He was particularly gloomy, even by his own low standards. He asked me if I thought children felt death more keenly, being newer to life.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘I told him to bugger off. Look, I don’t think I can take any more of this. I
’m not feeling well. I want to stop now.’

  ‘All right, Reg. If you think of anything else we might want to hear about, you’ll let us know, won’t you? Incidentally, what happened to Tracey’s self-portrait?’

  ‘Eh?’ He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Betty took it with her when she and Tracey left. She told me later that Tracey gave it to her as a present.’

  ‘Well, it’s not in Betty’s house now.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know where it is.’

  Afterwards Brock looked pleased. ‘Well done, Kathy. You did well.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she smiled back but felt uneasy.‘What he said about the judge advising him to keep quiet . . . well, it doesn’t really mean anything, does it? It’s the sort of advice you might give a friend.’

  ‘Yes, but it had the effect of protecting him as much as Reg, didn’t it?’

  When Brock had gone, Kathy said to Bren,‘He seems to have it in for the judge, doesn’t he? I hope he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Judge or not, he’s as accountable as everyone else.’

  ‘Yes and no. You know this new review of Special Operations that’s under way?’

  Bren rolled his eyes. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Yes, and Sir Jack is the chair of the review committee.’

  ‘Really? Brock never mentioned that to me.’

  ‘No.We’re not supposed to know. Senior management only.’

  ‘And Brock knows?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘So . . . it’s like the judge is investigating us while we’re investigating him.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Tricky.’

  Kathy was working late that evening when the call came from Nicole Palmer. She listened carefully, taking notes, then thanked her and rang off. She thought for a moment, then tapped out Brock’s home number.

  ‘You owe someone some theatre tickets,’ she said.

  ‘Ah.Where are you?’

  ‘Shoreditch.’

  ‘Still? Can you talk?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Have you eaten? I’ve got a nice steak here, if you’re interested. Or I could come to you.’

  ‘Steak sounds fine.’

  It took her the best part of an hour by the time she’d caught the tube across the river, then waited for a connection on the surface electric rail at Elephant and Castle to continue south. She walked down the high street, almost deserted in the cold night, and turned into the arched entrance to a cobbled courtyard. A big old horse chestnut tree stood in the far corner, brown conker shells scattered on the ground beneath its branches, and beyond it the beginning of a lane, with a hedge on one side and a row of old brick houses on the other. Kathy rang the bell and after a moment Brock opened the door and ushered her in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Brock said when they reached the living room on the next floor, taking her coat, ‘I should have come back up to town, or waited till tomorrow.’

  ‘No, it’s better done tonight, away from everybody. Unless your house is bugged.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Are you sure? He’s got Special Branch protecting him, remember.’

  Brock looked to see if she was serious, and saw she was. ‘Well, that is a nasty thought.’

  He watched her reach into her shoulder bag and pull out a folded sheet of paper, which she handed to him without a word. It read, ‘Robert John Wylie appeared before Justice John Beaufort in May 1996 in the company of three other defendants on a variety of charges under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and the Indecency with Children Act 1960. The judge dismissed the case against Wylie. The other defendants went on to trial, were found guilty and received sentences of between three and six years. They are known to us as business associates of Wylie.’

  Brock looked up with a grim smile. ‘Well done, Kathy. Now, let’s do something about that steak, shall we?’

  22

  Brock watched several rooks burst cawing from the copse on the hilltop as three men appeared over the rise. They made their way steadily down the slope, towing their equipment behind them, untroubled by the fine rain. Coming to a stop, the leading figure, wearing a red tartan peaked cap, drew a weapon from his bag. It flashed through the air and for a moment all three men stared motionless at the sky. Then a white ball landed with a plop on the green in front of where Brock was sheltering, and came rapidly to a stop on the wet grass, barely a yard from the pin with its soggy red flag. A muted cheer went up from the distant group.

  They noticed Brock watching them, of course, as they converged on the green, for they were all observant men, and when he moved out from beneath the eaves of the clubhouse to intercept them on the path they each gripped the handles of their clubs a little tighter, out of habit.

  ‘Roy?’ Brock asked, and the one with the red tartan cap peered at him more closely before exclaiming, ‘Brock? Why yes, it’s young David Brock!’

  They all shook hands and proceeded together to the clubhouse door. Later, showered, changed and seated around a table in the bar, the three retired police officers seemed keen to hear about Brock’s current case, but when he began to describe how it had turned into one of those difficult ones, a sticker, he sensed their interest fade to polite indifference.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know how I ever had the time to work,’ one said, and the others nodded sagely. ‘I’m so busy, I just don’t know where the time goes, the days, the months, the years . . . I’ve got six grandchildren now. Do you want to see their photos?’

  ‘Roy,’ another remonstrated, ‘he hasn’t got time for that; the man’s working. Although I can’t imagine why. You’ll be entitled to your two-thirds pension aren’t you, Brock? Why do you bother? There’s another life out there.’

  ‘Actually, I came about one of your cases, Roy,’ Brock managed to get in.

  ‘Course you did. Robert Wylie, right? You’ve finally got him for a big one. Knew it would happen eventually. Slippery customer. I almost had him in ninety-six.’

  ‘That’s the case I’m interested in. Before Justice Beaufort.’

  ‘Old Jugular, that’s right. He threw it out. I got the other three bastards though.’

  ‘Was he right to throw it out?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think so, of course, but the CPS had warned me. They really didn’t want to proceed against him on the basis of what we had, but I was so revved up to get that slimy bastard—too keen, in retrospect.’

  ‘So Beaufort acted fairly?’

  The three golfers stared at Brock. ‘That’s an interesting question,’ Roy said. ‘Are you after Jugular Jack now?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing specific, but Beaufort’s appeared on the sidelines in this case—not really involved, you understand, but it did seem a coincidence, remembering your experience.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory,’ Roy said, with a quizzical smile at Brock, ‘because that case wouldn’t be on Wylie’s record, would it, what with him having got off scot-free?’

  ‘I was hoping your memory would be pretty good too, Roy.’

  ‘Well now . . . I do recall something one of my snouts said to me after that case. He said that he’d heard Wylie bragging that he’d had influence with the judge. I didn’t believe it, and still don’t. Not Jugular Jack, the scourge of scum like Wylie.’

  ‘He didn’t say what kind of influence?’

  ‘No, nothing specific. One thing I will say, though—if you’re after old Jugular, you might be well advised to check out your pension entitlements.’

  ‘Thanks, Roy. Now, let me buy you gentlemen another shandy.’

  Kathy had seen Brock like this before—secretive, unwilling to share what he was thinking or planning concerning the ex-judge. And because she had seen it before, she thought she knew the reason. It was protection, not for himself but for the rest of them, in case things went wrong. It was a measure of how risky he knew the enterprise to be, like a bomb-disposal expert ordering his colleagues out of range of t
he volatile thing he was probing. But it was a dangerous manoeuvre, separating himself from the support of the team, keeping them in the dark. She felt instinctively that it was wrong and wanted to circumvent it, which of course was precisely why Brock felt obliged to act the way he did. That morning, for example, with the press office clamouring on one phone and Commander Sharpe’s office on the other, no one seemed to know where he’d gone, off on some mysterious trail apparent only to himself.

  All she could do was try to find grist for his private mill—facts, observations, or failing that rumour and gossip. So she had come back to the source once again, Northcote Square, where everyone was connected to everyone else by invisible threads of history or loss, business or desire. On the north side, on Urma Street, she could see the light shining through the glass wall of Gabe’s studio on the top floor, where he and Poppy had spent the night together in the fold-out bed. She knew this because the duty sergeant had told her that their police bodyguard had said as much in his morning report. It must have been a great relief for them both after Gabe’s idiotic vigil in the glass cube, Kathy thought with a touch of envy. If she turned one hundred and eighty degrees she could see the cube illuminated through the gallery window, with its untidy workstation and crumpled bed still as they were when abandoned twenty-four hours before, like a shrine for pilgrims, to judge by the queue waiting along the footpath outside.

  But she planned to begin elsewhere, at Betty’s house on West Terrace, for which she had signed out the keys. She started in the attic at the top of the house and worked carefully down through each room, each closet, each cupboard and drawer. She was looking for Tracey’s self-portrait, and it took her two hours to work her way down to the basement floor. Along the way she had uncovered glimpses of Betty’s life—a photograph of her husband Harry in army officer’s uniform, an ancient West End theatre program for Irma La Douce, a snapshot of ‘Helga’s children at Broadstairs, 1963’-but no sign of what she was looking for.

  She stepped out into the tiny sunken courtyard beneath the footpath on West Terrace, remembering that she hadn’t searched the kitchen on the floor above, and climbed the stairs back up to the front door. As she opened it she glanced up at the projecting bay window beneath the turret on Reg Gilbey’s house next door and saw a figure staring down at her. With a sense of apprehension she recognised the judge. She walked quickly into Betty’s hall and closed the door behind her, wondering what excuse she could use to bump into DI Reeves again, who was no doubt sitting on the other side of the wall in Gilbey’s kitchen at that moment, reading one of his books. She turned this over in her mind as she began searching the kitchen cupboards. Then the phone on the little mahogany table in Betty’s hall began to ring, and when she picked it up she was startled to hear his voice.