‘Did he actually admit this to you?’
Poppy shook her head. ‘I didn’t dare ask him, but I didn’t have to. It was written all over his face. He
knew
what had happened. He’d known all along. He’d planned it and carried it out. I didn’t want to believe it, especially about Betty.Why did he have to do that to Betty?’
She blinked and looked up suddenly, as if thinking she’d said too much and wanted to retract, but Kathy said, ‘It’s okay, Poppy, we worked it out for ourselves. He staged his own death, too, didn’t he?’
‘I found the sword in a drawer. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what it was for. I think I half-believed it was for me, but I still stayed with him. I wouldn’t be telling you now except that I believe he wanted people to know. All his heroes killed themselves—Van Gogh, Mishima, Pollock. Art validated by death, death validated by art. He said
No Trace
was the biggest thing in his life, and I suppose he thought this would make it even bigger.Well, it has, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Kathy said. ‘It has.’ She watched Poppy reach for another cigarette, hand shaking. The air was blue, but no one dared break Poppy’s concentration by moving to open a window or switch on the fan. ‘Tell me about Tracey.’
‘I’ve dreaded you asking me that. I don’t know what happened to her. That’s the truth.’
‘But Gabe did, didn’t he?’
Poppy hesitated, then gave a little nod. ‘He didn’t say so, but he had this calm about him when I asked him. He said I didn’t need to worry, he was sure she was happy wherever she was.’
‘When was this?’
‘When we saw that man’s picture in the papers, the one who fell from the building, and they said the police had wanted to talk to him about the other missing girls. I knew he was a friend of Stan’s, and when I asked Stan about it he told me he’d warned Gabe about the man being interested in Trace. I told Gabe we should tell the police but he said to wait, and Stan was worried that he’d get in trouble if it came out he knew the man, because he was using him to get into the mortuary at the hospital.’
‘What was the monster that frightened Tracey?’
‘I think it was the cast of the old woman that Stan had in his room. Trace was scared of Stan’s room, but fascinated, too. I’d catch them whispering together sometimes, and he’d say they were telling about secrets. Of course he’d known her since she was a baby, and she looked up to him as a kind of uncle. He could get her to do things she wouldn’t do for anybody else, like recite a poem in public, stuff like that.’
‘What about kiss a strange man on the cheek?’ Kathy told her of the episode that Beaufort had described, and Poppy looked shocked.
‘Yeah, I think he could have got her to do that. I remember she was modelling for me one day and she disappeared for a while. She was wearing that dressing gown. But why would Stan make her do it?’
‘As a favour to his friend Abbott?’
‘Maybe.’ She gave a shiver.
‘But you’d been doing research into pictures of missing children before Trace disappeared, hadn’t you, Poppy? At the Soane Museum?’
Poppy was startled. ‘Yes . . . how did you know that? Gabe asked me to do it and get a photo if I could. We’d been reading reports about the hunt for the first two girls and he thought it might be a subject for a work.’
‘Why didn’t he go himself?’
‘He said people would recognise him, with his white hair.’
‘And this would have been after Stan had warned him about his friend Abbott taking an interest in Tracey?’
‘Maybe, yes, I suppose so. But . . . I’m sure Gabe would never have been involved in Tracey’s disappearance. She was . . .’ for a moment Poppy seemed lost for an appropriate word, ‘. . . important to him.’
‘But not as important as
No Trace
, the first masterpiece of the twenty-first century.’
‘Oh God.’ Poppy lowered her face onto her arms and began to weep silently.
Kathy got up and opened the window, wondering what it was that Gabe had said about her that was so right.
As they waited for the experts to arrive that afternoon, Bren, who’d been going over the tape of Poppy’s interview again, said to Kathy, ‘I’ve got to hand it to you. I thought your theory was barmy, but Morris and the Wilkes woman have shown you were spot on. Rudd must have been off his head.’
‘Obsessed, I suppose,’ Kathy replied. She still felt numb after the session with Poppy. Her question, ‘Why did he have to do that to Betty?’ kept coming back to her. And then there was the question of Tracey. She replayed mental images of Gabe—drunk, sober, gleeful, morose—and wondered how he had been able to hide so thoroughly the cruelty that must have lain inside.
This time, the laboratory reporting officer came accompanied by reinforcements—two scientific officers, and a technician who connected their laptop to a projector and set up a screen. Brock began by summarising what they had now learned, and the lab team listened impassively. Then the RO spoke.
‘What we’ve tried to do is track the blood particles backward in time, from the last spot to the first, then reverse the sequence to get a picture of what happened.’ The technician switched on the equipment and the screen was filled by the image of a framework representing Rudd’s studio, with outlines of furniture and his figure placed inside it. A sequence of images followed, like stills from a cartoon film, with red arcing lines projecting from Rudd’s figure as it gradually changed position, turning and falling, and an irregular pattern of red spots spread outward on the floor around.
‘It would need more work if we had to take this to court,’ the RO said, ‘but we’re confident that the basic sequence is right.’
He paused, then nodded to the technician who pressed more buttons. The sequence began again from the beginning, but this time there was a second outline figure in the room, and as it moved towards Rudd and then away again, they saw how the figure blocked and interfered with the spray of red blood tracks. The reason for the irregular pattern on the floor now became clear. ‘There was someone else in that room,’ the RO said. ‘It just doesn’t work without them.’
There was total silence, and then Brock opened his file and drew out the copy of the birthday party photograph they’d found pinned on the studio wall. He stared at it for a long moment, then said, as if musing to himself, ‘The unmatched DNA on the shoes we found in the bin outside . . . Did you try to match it with Tracey’s?’
‘Tracey?’ They stared at him in surprise, and then Kathy realised what he meant, and something occurred to her, something she’d been trying to recall.
‘The dolls’ house,’ she said, and then, her mind racing, ‘I should have checked the phone calls.’ Finally she asked, ‘Have you got anything on the chisel, apart from its width?’
The RO checked his papers. ‘Yes, it seems it’s an unusual type, hollow ground on the underside of the blade. Japanese probably.’
K
athy got up early the next morning, hours before sunrise, and drove into Shoreditch to join the others. There she exchanged her car in the police station compound for an unmarked observation van and headed west. She found a parking spot in the silent suburban street as dawn broke, and slipped into the back of the van to wait. After a while the smells of a suburb stirring awake on a cold Sunday morning began to percolate into her hiding place—coffee, frying bacon, the exhaust of a car. Later she watched an old orange Volvo turn out of the side road and she got behind the wheel to follow it and a trail of other cars heading for church.
When she finally arrived at the Nolans’ house they were still reading the Sunday papers over the remains of their breakfast. They seemed embarrassed to be caught out in this state, and Bev started clearing dishes.
‘I’d like to speak to you both together, if that’s all right,’ Kathy said, and led the way to the sitting room overlooking the back garden, the Nolans following reluctantly. Through the French windows they could see a thrush with a snail in its beak, trying to crack its shell on the brick path.
‘It’s about Gabe, of course?’ Bev said, still flustered. ‘We weren’t sure whether to ring you again. What a shocking thing.’
‘Have you caught someone?’ Len asked, still not inviting Kathy to sit.
‘I think we’re getting close.’
‘Really? Well, thank goodness. A maniac, I suppose? A stalker?’ Len put an arm around his wife’s shoulder as if to protect her from this, but she pulled away, glancing uneasily out at the garden. ‘Look,’ Len continued, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Kathy, but this isn’t a very convenient moment for us.You really should have phoned. Could we do this another time?’
‘Sorry,’ Kathy said. ‘Do you mind if we sit down?’
‘Of course. Where are our manners? I’m forgetting myself,’ Bev said. Her voice sounded strained. ‘I think we could all do with a nice cup of coffee, don’t you?’
As she bustled out, Len said, ‘She’s still in shock, Kathy. We both are. Let’s hope you do clear this up soon. But we really didn’t expect to see you on a Sunday morning.’
‘I understand, Len,’ Kathy said getting up and moving to the door.
‘No, don’t worry . . .’ Len called after her, but Kathy was already out of the room. She found Bev in the kitchen, pressing the buttons on a phone. She stopped and looked up guiltily when she saw Kathy, who came to her side and gently lifted the phone to see the number on the display.
‘Yes, they’re probably back from church now. Come on, Bev, it’s time to talk.’ Bev seemed to have shrunk a little as Kathy led her back into the sitting room.
‘That’s the Lovells’ house over there, isn’t it?’ Kathy nodded at the back of another house directly behind their garden, identical to the Nolans’ and all the others surrounding the block. ‘They must be good neighbours. You phoned them the last time I came here. It was the first thing you did as soon as Enid across the street rang you on your mobile to tell you I was waiting for you. And then you rang them again as soon as I left.’
‘You’ve been tapping our phones?’ Len said, aghast.
‘I checked last night, after I remembered something.’
‘What was that?’
‘When we first met you told me you’d made Tracey a dolls’ house and a farmyard. I saw the farm upstairs in her old room, but where’s the dolls’ house?’
They looked stunned. ‘Did we tell you that?’ Len said. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘So where is it?’
Len’s face flushed red. ‘You tap our phones and come here on a Sunday morning to ask us about dolls’ houses? What’s got into you people?’
‘I see you’ve put a gate in your back fence since I was here last, so you don’t even have to go out onto the street to visit the Lovells. That’s handy. Oh . . .’
They followed her gaze, staring through the window at a small hand reaching over the top of the gate and fumbling with the latch. Bev took a sharp breath as if she were about to cry out. The gate swung open and a small girl dressed in Sunday best, with a smart tan coat and polished shoes, stepped into the Nolans’ garden. She had dark brown hair, cut short, but Kathy recognised the features straight away. She’d been staring at them across her desk for the past three weeks. She felt a sudden sense of lightness, as if a dull weight had been lifted from her heart.
‘How long have you known?’ Len said.
‘Not long.’
They watched the small figure come down the path between the vegetable and flower gardens, under the clothes line, to the kitchen door, then heard the voice, ‘Grandma! Grandpa!’
Len roused himself. ‘In here, cherub.’
Kathy looked at him, but there was no sign of irony. They seemed unaware of the reference. In fact, they both looked grey and defeated, barely aware of anything, and the little girl sensed it as soon as she came into the room.
‘Are you all right, Grandma?’ she said. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Yes, dear. This is . . . a friend of ours.’
‘Oh.’ The little girl looked frankly at Kathy. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kathy. What’s yours?’
‘Tra . . . Lucy,’ she corrected herself. ‘Lucy Lovell. I live at thirty-six Nightingale Crescent with my great-aunt and uncle.’
‘Do you like that?’
‘Oh yes.When I’m seven I’m going to join the junior school orchestra.’
‘I see. And where do you keep the dolls’ house that your grandpa made for you?’
‘In my other bedroom, of course. Grandpa’s going to build an extension for it, aren’t you, Grandpa, for my Christmas?’
‘Yes, cherub,’ Len said faintly.
‘If you’re busy with Kathy, can I watch cartoons on TV?’
‘Of course.’
They watched her leave, and Kathy said, ‘She seems happy.’
‘Yes,’ Bev said, an edge of resistance entering her voice. ‘She’s changed, even in three weeks. She’s so much happier.’
‘Took to it like a duck to water,’ Len said.
‘What have you told the school?’
‘That the Lovells have taken in the daughter of their nephew, whose marriage has broken down. It’s a common story, our generation having to step in to pick up the pieces. The school sees it all the time, didn’t doubt us for a minute.We provided some paperwork.’
‘And the Lovells were happy to go along with this?’
‘They understood.We’d have done the same for them. It was only to be until you stopped looking for Tracey, then she’d have moved back in with us.’
‘What about Gabe?’
‘What about him? It was his idea.’
‘
His
idea?’
‘That’s right.We’d been fighting with him over Tracey for years, and finally he came up with this. He admitted she was at risk staying with him—there were some dodgy characters in the square, apparently, and those other little girls had gone missing. So he said we could have her.’
‘But why didn’t he just transfer guardianship to you? Why the secrecy?’
‘This was the only way he would do it. It was this or nothing.We had no choice,’ Bev said, a note of desperation in her voice.
Len said, ‘The question is, what are you going to do now?’
‘There are lots of questions to be answered,’ she said, and their attention was suddenly diverted to another movement in the garden. Brock was coming through the gate, and at the same moment the front doorbell chimed. ‘Why don’t you let those people in while I go and fetch Tracey?’