Barry Maitland: No trace

Kathy turned along the north side, Urma Street, past a corner pub called The Daughters of Albion, and worked her way through the crowd standing outside number fifty-three. She showed her ID to a constable with a clipboard at the front door and he recorded her name.

‘Scene of crime are working on this floor, Sarge. If you take the stairs, I think you’ll find the others on the next level.’

The front door closed behind her. She was in an entrance hall leading to a corridor of open doors. Ahead, a man wearing white nylon overalls was backing out of a room with a video camera held to his eye. To her left, a flight of open-tread timber stairs rose towards the sound of voices. Kathy climbed the stairs and emerged into a large room that took up the whole floor, well lit with windows to both back and front. The building had been gutted, exposing bare brick walls and the underside of timber floor beams overhead from which industrial lamps were suspended. Kathy caught sight of very large grainy images hanging on the walls, of horses’ heads with huge bulging eyes, like dramatic advertisements for a horror movie.

Kathy had never seen such a response to a crime scene. The place was crowded with police, as if half the Met had been called out. She spotted Brock’s cropped white hair and beard among a cluster of large men in dark coats. She went over and he introduced her to a superintendent, Head of Operations, and a DCI, Head of Crime Investigations, both from the Borough Police. Then he drew her aside and said rapidly, ‘I have a few things to sort out here, Kathy, then I want to speak to the father, Gabriel Rudd, over there.’ He nodded towards a man sitting alone at a circular dining table, staring at a small TV on the table in front of him.‘Why not go and introduce yourself? I’ll be with you in a minute. See if you can find somewhere quiet for us to talk to him.’

Kathy paused, struck by the man at the table, a solitary, motionless figure among all the bustle and noise filling the room. He had a startling mop of stark white curls and was wearing a black pinstriped suit without shirt or socks or shoes. The cut of the suit looked expensive. As she drew closer Kathy was surprised to see splashes of colour on its legs. His attention was completely focused on the screen, where a man with an Irish accent, red hair and large round glasses was being interviewed. ‘… A lovely fellow, and amazingly talented. And devoted to his little girl. He must be devastated…’

‘Hello, Mr Rudd? I’m Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla.’

He glanced up at her and said softly, ‘Yes, saw you arrive.’ He nodded back at the screen, which was now showing a view of the square outside and the crush of people at his front door. His face was lean and intelligent, Kathy thought, though very pale and drawn, with dark hollows around the eyes.

‘I’m very sorry about your daughter.’

‘Tracey,’ he said.‘Her name’s Tracey.’

‘Right. I’m with the Major Enquiry Team led by DCI Brock…’

‘Brock? Oh yes…’ He looked vaguely in Brock’s direction, then focused again on the small screen, which now showed a reporter talking into a microphone. ‘… Turner Prize, and in the following year represented Britain at the Venice Biennale…’ A news summary was tracking across the bottom of the screen: Rapid police response to third child abduction in London borough.

‘Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?’

‘What? Oh, right. I’ll just record this on the other set.’

He stood up, very tall, easing himself through the gap between two bulky cops to get to a large flat-screen TV against the wall, and began working a remote. Brock arrived at Kathy’s side.

‘How are we doing?’

‘He’s just recording the TV coverage,’ Kathy said. ‘What’s that on his legs, do you think?’

‘He says it’s paint. That’s what he does. He’s an artist, he paints.’

‘In his best suit?’

Brock shrugged.‘Tracey Rudd, six years old, apparently taken from her bedroom at the back of the ground floor during the night. Mr Rudd rang triple nine an hour and a half ago, shortly after seven. You know about the other two cases of course. We’ll have to postpone the briefing on them until we get on top of this one. Hackney Operational Command Unit are giving us facilities at Shoreditch police station and I’ve got Bren working with their search teams.’

He gave her several names and phone numbers which she wrote down in her notebook as Gabriel Rudd returned.

‘We can go up to the studio, if you like,’ he said. He sounded distant, detached, as if all this wasn’t really happening. They followed the slap of his bare feet on the timber steps up to a landing on the next floor. At the top, he opened a door and led them into his studio, suddenly empty and silent after the activity below. Kathy realised that this was the extension above the original building which she had seen from across the square, its white translucent end wall and ceiling producing a stunning luminous effect. The space was tall, with a ladder up to a gallery that stretched across one end. The lower sections of the walls were lined with white pinboard, and there were racks and trestles and pieces of equipment around the room, but not the easels and canvases that Kathy would have expected in an artist’s studio, and as far as she could see no works in progress. The place looked like a cross between a mechanic’s workshop and an art gallery, and there was a faint smell of acetate and paint thinner in the air.

They sat at a plywood table on stools like chrome tractor seats. A Macintosh computer and printer stood at the far end of the table, and Brock reached for an image that lay beside the machines and handed it to Kathy. It was of a pretty little girl with curly blonde hair, clutching a furry teddy bear.

‘Mr Rudd had pictures of Tracey ready for us when we arrived, Kathy. When’s her birthday, Mr Rudd?’

‘Gabe, everyone calls me Gabe. She turned six in August, the tenth.’

‘And you live here on your own, just the two of you?’

‘That’s right.’ He blinked and rubbed his eyes, giving a little groan. It was the first sign of emotion that Kathy had seen, as if the TV downstairs had held reality in check.

‘You said Tracey’s mother’s passed away. How long ago was that?’

‘Jane died five years ago, when Trace was one.’

‘That must have been difficult for you, bringing up a little girl on your own.’

He shrugged, dropped his eyes, sighed.‘Yeah, but well, you just have to cope, don’t you?’

‘What about close relatives, grandparents?’

‘Yeah, Jane’s parents, they… try to help.’

‘I believe you said that Tracey stayed with them over the weekend, and they brought her back home yesterday about five in the afternoon, is that right?’

He nodded. Kathy thought she sensed some reserve at the mention of the grandparents.

‘Have you called them this morning, Gabe?’ she asked.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Maybe I should do that now, before they see it on TV. Can you give me their names and a number?’

He wrote on a pad.

‘Anyone else? What about your parents?’

He shook his head.‘We don’t keep in touch.’

Kathy moved away to the area beneath the gallery, where there was a sink and a microwave. She used her mobile phone to ring the number Rudd had given her. A man’s voice, elderly and gruff, answered.

‘Yes?’

‘I’d like to speak to Mr Nolan, please.’

‘This is Len Nolan speaking. Who’s that?’

Kathy explained who she was and where she was calling from.

‘What’s happened?’ The voice had hardened immediately, ready for the worst.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your granddaughter Tracey is missing, Mr Nolan. We’re doing everything possible to locate her, and at this stage…’