Barry Maitland: No trace

Later, at the weekend, Stan told her that Gabe had been visiting him again at night. Stan was lively now, almost too lively, and Poppy was worried that he might do something stupid like go out into the street. He’d been making little clay maquettes for sculptures in Gabe’s studio, and he said he felt inspired to do something really awesome. That night he died.

The next day she was very upset when she heard the news. She couldn’t believe Stan had committed suicide, and when she eventually got Gabe alone in his house again she told him how he couldn’t have killed himself when he was planning to do a really special work. Then Gabe said something weird. He said, didn’t she realise that’s exactly what he had done?

‘He wouldn’t explain what that was supposed to mean.’ Poppy was oblivious to them now, telling the story as if arguing with herself, trying to make sense of it. Her fingers flew between the cigarette packet, her mouth and the ashtray, flicking, tapping, scratching.‘He changed the subject. Didn’t I ever get fed up, pushing the same tired old rubbish, spouting the same pretentious garbage, playing at being an artist, showing off like a kid with a drum? I told him I took it seriously, what I did, and he laughed. He said we were just playing with other people’s second-hand toys, that we made these gestures about life and death and violence and stuff, like we were really angry and profound, but nobody believed us and nobody gave a toss. People just wanted a bit of a laugh. We hadlessmeaningthantheadsonTV. Far, farlessthansome demented madman who strapped a bomb under his coat and got on a bus.’

Poppy paused as the constable came in with her tea. ‘He really meant it. He scared me. I said that wasn’t so, that people really were interested in his work, that No Trace was pulling bigger crowds than Manchester United. He said that was because people realised it was true, it was real. It wasn’t just another artist wanker pulling down his pants to shock the bourgeoisie. Trace really had gone, Betty really was dead, so was Stan, and so… He didn’t finish the sentence, and that was when I first realised that he was behind the whole thing. The idea was so terrible that I couldn’t really take it in. Betty and Stan had died for Gabe’s artwork. He’d killed them so that he and his work would be more famous. He’d used them like disposable models.’

‘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.