by William Shaw
‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ He looked up. ‘Why is Miller that interested?’
‘Exactly,’ she said, digging out car keys and standing.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The sky was darkening by the time she arrived in Margate.
Ross Clough was at home. He opened the door, looking surprised. ‘You sure you want to come in?’ he said.
‘I want another look at your room,’ she said.
‘Finally. A fan,’ he said archly. ‘It means so much to me. Where’s your delicious companion?’
‘She has other work.’
‘Shame.’
Pulling her phone from her pocket she swiped the screen until she reached a photo of a page from Ross Clough’s notebook. ‘Who is this a drawing of?’
‘That’s my notebook.’
‘Correct.’
‘You photographed that without my permission.’
‘Who is it?’
Ross squinted at the screen. ‘You know who it is. Abir Stein.’
‘But you told us you had never met him.’
‘It’s a drawing.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘I could have copied it from a photograph.’
‘Did you?’
‘What do you think?’
Without being asked, she sat down on an armchair. ‘Astrid Miller said she saw nothing in your work apart from a desperation to be adored.’
Ross Clough flinched. It was as if her words had been solid and had struck him in the face. ‘She clearly knows nothing at all about real art.’
‘She said your work was all ego and no substance.’
‘She said that?’ He looked stung.
‘Did you meet Abir Stein?’
‘The art establishment closes ranks. If you’re on the outside you’re never going to get in by the usual means. You have to find other ways to make it. I’ve figured it out now. You need powerful people on your side. No. I never met Abir Stein. He wouldn’t meet me. Doubtless Astrid Miller had poisoned my reputation already.’
‘You never told us you’d been to the Millers’ estate before.’
‘Yes. It didn’t go as well as I hoped, obviously.’
‘But you went back for more.’
‘Because this is my big break. This time I’m really getting somewhere. I’ve figured out how to do it, to get people on your side. I’m making an exhibition. I was thinking of calling it “Abir Stein’s Right Arm”. It is the right arm, isn’t it?’
The path lab results had only arrived this morning. It hadn’t been made public yet.
‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘I figured that out ages ago. I even told you about it. He hasn’t been seen for weeks.’
She said, ‘Your notebooks are interesting.’
He looked surprised. ‘Really?’
‘You’ve been following the case, haven’t you?’
‘This is the one that’s going to make them notice, finally. Nobody’s ever done an artwork like this.’
‘You’ve been recording it all. That’s why you went to Long Hill. You were just teasing us. You wouldn’t have minded if we had arrested you at all, would you? It might even add a bit of notoriety to your artwork.’
‘All publicity is good publicity.’
‘I want to look at everything you’ve done.’
He looked at her for a while. ‘If I help you, will you help me?’
‘That’s not really how it works, Ross.’
When she stepped into the small room, Astrid was still there, one-armed.
‘You like to see her mutilated, like that?’
‘She’s one of these super-rich people who run the art world,’ he said as she looked at the sculpture. ‘They have great power. Their taste dominates everywhere. Everybody sucks up to them. We need to see a total revolution in the art world.’
‘Because she didn’t like your work?’
‘Very funny. She didn’t understand it. How could she? She lives in her nice, pretty little world where everything is perfect. Or so she thinks.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh. Her and her perfect relationship with her perfect millionaire husband. It’s not exactly perfect, is it?’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh please,’ he said. ‘That’s obvious too, isn’t it?’
‘You said you were confident that this time you were getting somewhere. Why’s that?’
‘Because this is good art.’
‘But you said that wasn’t enough. You needed powerful people on your side. Which powerful people?’
He smiled. ‘I just have a hunch, that’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘That powerful people are going to be a little more interested in investing in me.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s not really how it works, is it, Sergeant?’ he mocked.
‘Do you mind if I take photographs?’
‘You’re actually asking this time?’ He waved his arms around the room. ‘Go ahead. Document. Document.’
Cupidi stared hard at the walls. What was it Astrid Miller had said? You have to take time to let the work speak to you.
The number of biro notes and sketches had increased since she had last looked. He had added a drawing of the Millers’ house, made when he had been trespassing there, presumably. There was a naked woman too, crudely drawn. There was something lecherous about the lines, like the kind of masturbatory sketch you would find on the wall of a men’s toilet. The drawings verged on the fantastical. And there was another of Abir Stein, this time the full body, naked, one-armed. Clough had drawn red blood flowing from the stump.
She photographed the room carefully. He didn’t seem to mind.
‘Why don’t you stay for a drink? My landlord has sherry. He thinks I don’t know where it is.’
‘No thanks.’
He had also taken pins and red wool and made lines linking items to each other, as if in a kind of imitation of the fake murder boards they always had in TV crime shows. A track of the wool ended at the new sketch of Abir Stein.
He had put two sheets from a calendar on the wall. From various dates, lines of red wool ran, heading towards more drawings or newspaper clippings.
She followed each one. One led to a fuzzy drawing. She peered at it. There was something familiar about it, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Two dark outlines, hunched.
She moved closer, photographed it.
And then the penny dropped. The two boys who had been present at the attempted murder of Frank Khan. The picture was of the CCTV photograph from the Co-op that Moon had shown them in the incident room: the obscure outline of two hoodies. Her skin prickled. It had nothing to do with her investigation, or his, surely?
She held her phone up to the drawing, pressed the red button.
‘This one. Why is it here?’ she asked.
‘You tell me,’ he said, smirking.
‘If you know something that you’re not telling me . . .’
‘It’s there because it is. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘What?’
‘The connection.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘What connection?’
‘The dates. That was the day we discovered the arm. Two boys rob a supermarket. The guard tries to catch them and gets killed in a road accident.’
She stared, trying to understand. ‘But there’s no link between the two incidents.’
‘On one level, obviously not. But for me, there is a connection. My job as an artist is to see what it is.’
She looked around and the penny dropped. Everything was here. Like some fanatical religious convert who saw significance everywhere, for Ross, everything was connected. That was what this artwork was all about. How he saw himself as the centre of everything that had happened. By treating him as a suspect, they fed that ego.
He must have been trawling the local papers ever since the discovery of the arm.
‘This one, see. I went there last we
ek and drew that.’
Another biro drawing of what looked like piles of junk.
‘I don’t understand,’ Cupidi said. ‘You went where?’
‘Where that drug dealer was shot,’ said Ross. ‘It was in the news. It’s an amazing place. Old crap everywhere. Bits of cars piled up. It’s like Armageddon.’
‘You went there because . . .’
He waved his arms. ‘Because it’s all part of this.’
‘And why do you think that is linked?’
‘Because that man was shot on the Friday. The day before we found the arm.’
‘Right. Because it happened the day before?’
‘Yes,’ he said, missing the scepticism in her voice.
Signal and noise; it was always her job to distinguish between the two. Ross seemed incapable of knowing what was signal and what was noise. To him, they were twins, impossible to tell apart. What was that quote? On Margate Sands. I can connect nothing with nothing. Ross Clough connected everything with everything . . .
She took another photograph and turned, smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
A red herring. Just random incidences.
‘You’re quite good-looking too. You know that?’
Cupidi didn’t answer.
‘For someone your age.’
Get out of this place, she told herself. She had wasted too much time here already. She was going to be late and she had promised to be at the wine bar. Two boys. Runaways, but what were they running away from? Go and have a drink with your colleagues. Friday night. Forget the trouble of the world.
*
The wine bar on Hythe Road was loud with the hubbub of chatter and music. However bad the local pubs were, Cupidi preferred them to the wine bars whose attempts to achieve cosmopolitanism seemed desperate.
Cupidi squeezed her way through to the table Ferriter was on and eventually found a free stool to sit on next to her. The constable had returned home and changed. She was wearing a short dress and a little lopsided smile. ‘Where were you? You were supposed to be here to stop me getting drunk?’
‘I missed that window of opportunity.’
‘Long gone. Champagne?’ she said, lifting a bottle from a bucket on the table in front of her.
‘Get you.’
‘People keep buying it.’
‘Peter Moon got you one?’
‘I made him fetch the most expensive. Fuck them all.’
Cupidi looked across the room. Moon was standing, leaning over one of the civilian staff, one arm against the wall that she was pinned against. A young data analyst whose name Cupidi didn’t remember.
‘You and Moon have any luck finding that lad?’
‘By the time we got there he was long gone.’
‘Well done, though. You did it. You worked alongside him.’
‘Look at him, will you,’ Ferriter said darkly. ‘Cock.’
‘Leave it alone for tonight, Jill. It’s your birthday.’
‘How was Clough?’
‘He was . . . harmless. That’s what he is. Harmless. I’m pretty sure we can cross him off our list.’
Ferriter made a face. ‘Don’t give me that.’ She was looking at Peter Moon as she said the words. ‘Go on. Have a glass.’
‘I’m driving. And looking after you.’
‘Oh go on. Catch a taxi back. Being sober in this lot is like being the only fully dressed person in a nudist camp.’
‘I’m here to make sure you don’t do anything you’re going to regret.’
‘I’m going to do nothing I regret.’ Ferriter shot Cupidi a fierce look, then stood up abruptly and shouted, ‘I bloody love this tune,’ and began singing along to Justin Timberlake, pumping her arms out.
Another woman constable stood, too, and started to dance. A few people whooped and cheered.
‘Go, birthday girl.’
‘She’s on a mission,’ said a woman.
‘She drink much before I got here?’
‘We started back in the office.’
Arms raised, Jill Ferriter tossed her head from side to side, flicking hair across her face. Nobody danced in wine bars, but it was Ferriter’s day, so they let her, and the staff had to put up with it because most of the crowd were police.
‘You all right, Alex?’ DI McAdam had the end of a pint of bitter in his hand. He would only be drinking to make the other officers feel comfortable. ‘Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. EastArt. Somebody will let you in. There will be a forensics officer there. I took the opportunity to apologise to Evert Miller but assured him that you weren’t trying to spy on his private life. He seemed to accept that. I also warned him that trying to spy on operational details of a case was not legal.’
‘Thank you, sir. Appreciated.’
A power ballad came on and still Ferriter gyrated, even if there was not much rhythm to the tune. The other woman who’d been dancing with her drifted away and people turned their backs, leaving Ferriter on her own.
Wiping her mouth with a tissue, Cupidi picked up her untouched wine glass and walked over to Peter Moon. She asked, ‘How’s it going with the Michael Dillman murder?’
He looked round. ‘What made you think of that?’
‘Just something I’d seen.’
The young woman he’d been explaining something to took her chance. ‘Just going to the loo,’ she said.
‘Well?’ Cupidi said.
‘Nothing. We’ve interviewed everyone with gang connections. All of them swear blind they know nothing about it. But they would, wouldn’t they?’
‘You think they do know something about it?’
‘You would have thought, wouldn’t you? He was a little scumbag who stepped on someone’s toes. We may never find out whose. That’s what happens, in these parts.’
He was looking past her, already scanning the room for someone else to talk to.
‘What about the two boys?’
‘Drove around for an hour this afternoon. They’ve gone to ground again. Know how many kids around that age are in contact with social services in this area?’
She turned her back to watch Ferriter, who was swinging her hips from side to side now, head back, laughing. ‘Turn the music up. It’s my birthday.’ As she spoke the words, Ferriter careered into a table, spilling drinks. ‘Oops.’
She would give her five more minutes, then take her home.
Cupidi stepped outside onto the street. It was a cool evening. A group of people from Ashford nick were there, holding cigarettes. Cupidi stood close and breathed in the loose smoke.
‘Any of you work with a man called Allan Mulligan?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘See anything of him these days?’
‘He’s around. Comes out for a drink sometimes. Likes to talk about the old days.’
‘He ever ask about what you’re up to now?’
‘Course. Can’t be a copper all those years and not be interested.’
Through the glass, they all watched Ferriter dancing.
‘She’s a good girl,’ said one of the older coppers. ‘Nothing wrong with letting go, time to time. I used to know her mum.’
There were a few tuts.
‘Didn’t we all?’ said another.
‘Jill’s mother?’ Cupidi asked.
The coppers nodded. ‘Don’t say you heard it from us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Her mum was all right,’ said one of the older men. ‘Not like the young ones today. Just used to like a drink a bit.’
‘And that.’
‘She died, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. Few years back now. She just keeled over on the street.’
‘’Mazing really when you think of it, having a daughter like that.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Jill Ferriter,’ said Cupidi, defensively.
The man forced a cigarette into the outdoor ashtray to put it out. ‘That’s what I mean. Considering we all knew her mother.’
‘Jill said her mother
was an expert in criminal behaviour,’ Cupidi said.
Everybody laughed hard at that. ‘She’s not wrong.’ One of the coppers was crying, wiping tears from his eyes, he found it so funny.
‘She wasn’t in the police, then?’
Everybody still finding everything she said hilarious. ‘Known to police, not in them.’
Two years on, she could still feel an outsider here. Cupidi looked back inside at the young policewoman, dancing. Even drunk she looked cool, so very sure of herself.
One of the older coppers, a constable, leaned closer to her. ‘Her mother was a sex worker. Young Jill was in and out of care, everything. You didn’t hear it from us, though. She got through a lot.’
Cupidi peered through the closed folding glass doors at her colleague. ‘She always seems so perfect.’
‘Yep. She is. Everyone’s got a lot of respect for young Jill.’
The girl growing up, wanting to be Astrid Theroux; the woman disgusted at herself for having drunken sex with a policeman.
‘She joined the police despite knowing that you all knew . . .’
‘Yep.’
Cupidi had joined the police because both of her parents had been coppers; Ferriter had joined in spite of hers. How come she had never figured that out?
And then there was a cake with sparklers being walked across the room by one of the waitresses. ‘We better go inside,’ said Cupidi. Hesitantly at first, people were blundering into the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’ in several keys, gradually coming together as one by the time they sang Jill’s name.
Ferriter leaned forward and puffed ineffectually at the candles. ‘I’m so fucking old,’ she said.
‘And we got a card. Where’s the card? Alex? Didn’t you have the card?’
Shit. She had left it on her desk. ‘One minute. I’ll be back. Make sure she doesn’t do anything daft.’
It was only five minutes to the nick and back. What could go wrong in that time?
*
She picked up a pen and wrote, ‘Jill Ferriter. You are crazy cool xx’ then put the card in the envelope and walked into the darkness.
She could see the blue lights reflected in the shop windows before she even turned the corner.