I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  Once again, Flood’s godforsaken video art runs through my head: me naked on the bed, and my mismatched underwear on the girl with the fox-head mask.

  Stop it. He’s dead. That’s the end of it. But I knew it wasn’t as simple as that and really I was annoyed at myself. How naïve to think his death would provide the full stop I needed.

  Marcus Hedley’s expression softened. “I understand you’re reluctant, but I do believe the public should be given the chance to judge for themselves. You’re an artist yourself, yes?” I nodded. “Well then, you’ll understand.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “What does artistic freedom mean to you?”

  “It’s important,” I said, aware that I was being backed into a corner.

  “I’d say it’s fundamental,” Amanda said.

  And it was at that point I lost it, struggling to blink back tears.

  Amanda touched my arm. “How about we view the work together?”

  There it was again running through my head: me spread-eagled naked.

  “No. I was there, remember.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “Who owns it anyway?” I asked.

  “Nicholas Drake.”

  That short, bald sleazeball. Couldn’t he see what Flood had done?

  “Look, Mia, the last thing we want to do is upset you,” Marcus said.

  “It’s just about money to you, isn’t it?”

  “Art is everything to me,” Marcus said. “I live and breathe art. It’s my life.”

  “This is too difficult. I need to go.”

  “Mia, please,” Amanda said. “Don’t make a decision yet.”

  Marcus retrieved something from a side table. “I have a copy of the Flood Video Diaries. If you can bear to watch them they may change your mind.”

  I looked down at the DVD in his hand – a bestseller, hurriedly released a few months after Flood’s death. It was like the Warhol Diaries – only grittier, dirtier, nastier, according to reviews.

  “Why would I watch that?”

  “It’ll help, trust me,” Amanda said.

  “Amanda’s right,” Marcus said. “It will help.” I let Marcus place the DVD in my hand. “Thank you for that,” he said. “I genuinely believe exhibiting this work is the right thing to do, so please take your time, have a think, that’s all I ask.”

  I walked out then, without shaking hands.

  “Can you sign out, please,” Ponytail called after me.

  “Fuck off,” I said under my breath, as I stepped over the stupid step with its stupid inscription, relieved to walk away and turn onto Brick Lane with its jumble of Bangladeshi restaurants, shops and supermarkets. I slipped the DVD into my bag; secretly pleased I’d acquired a copy for free. Since its overhyped release I had felt a need to view its content but couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

  I don’t give a toss about Flood’s so-called ‘seminal’ work of art. Stuff him, stuff Marcus Hedley and stuff his artistic freedom. I only care about that when it relates to my work. And stuff Amanda bloody Darling too.

  Forty-four

  The flat was empty. Tamzin was out. I could put the disc on uninterrupted. Only, there were so many things I couldn’t watch these days. I mean, Crimewatch had always been a problem but now I found myself switching over during cop shows, soap operas and even costume dramas. Reminders were everywhere. That is how it is when something happens to you.

  Distracted, I looked out the window but nothing was going on, only a pair of pinstriped trousers with a black laptop case marching past.

  I retrieved the DVD from my bag, studied the cover shot of a pale woman’s naked torso with Celtic-style lettering round her navel that read ‘The More I Search the Less I Find’. I used my Stanley knife to slice off the cellophane and returned to the living room where I knelt in front of the TV, inserted the disc and pressed ‘play’.

  The blue-blank screen turned black and then the words: ‘The More I Search the Less I Find’ – ‘The Jack Flood Video Diaries’. And in the bottom right-hand corner, the date and place: ‘Thursday 26 May 2005, the Merchant’s House Hotel, Nottingham’.

  And there he was, Flood: his pale face filling the screen, as he looks to the side. He is backlit, his dark-dyed hair framing his intense inscrutable face. He’s dressed in a black shirt, open to the navel. He’s fashionably thin and seems uncomfortably close.

  “My name is Jack Flood and I am an artist,” he pauses, slowly turning his head to look directly to camera.

  Fast forward: Flood in his luxury hotel suite.

  Fast forward: Nottingham’s city streets and the Tesco cashier.

  Fast forward: Flood in the white cab waiting.

  Fast forward: Flood with his cleaner.

  Fast forward: Flood in a cheaper hotel. Jenny – missing – is on the news.

  Flood returns to his studio. Dora is dead.

  Flood films the ketchup-coated chips.

  Fast forward: Flood in his studio with Gecko Girl.

  Fast-forward: another girl goes missing.

  Flood gives the lecture and shows his new work, Aftermath.

  Flood picks up Sadie Sunshine.

  Flood receives an embarrassing package.

  Flood visits the private view for my end of degree show.

  Fast-forward: Flood outside Thames Magistrates Court.

  Fast-forward: Flood in his prison cell.

  Beyond the snippets of his short prison life, there is only a still of Flood lying, bone-thin and wasted, under a white sheet, his face shrunken with thin, papery skin stretched across his cheekbones like one of the ancient mummified corpses on display in the haunted catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.

  The screen turns black. White typescript appears:

  ‘Jack Flood died from heart failure after a protracted hunger strike. He professed his innocence to the end. He died in the name of art.’

  Film cuts to Flood’s studio: there is no longer any rubbish on the floor and the paint pots have gone. There are, however, many canvases wrapped in bubble-wrap and brown paper by the far wall.

  The credits roll:

  Drake Gallery Productions would like to thank:

  Tatiana Polokov – is that the Russian prostitute?

  Carmen Billings – the Tesco cashier?

  Sadie Campbell – Girl-with-braids?

  Samantha Clark – that’s Gecko Girl.

  Marcus Hedley – tosser.

  Amanda Darling – bitch.

  Nicholas Drake – slimeball.

  Rita Karpati – the cleaner that got upset about the cat?

  Anna Wacek – the other cleaner?

  I don’t get it. Were they all in on it? And if so, why was it different for me?

  Forty-five

  I didn’t know what to make of Flood’s DVD. I watched some of it again, trying to piece together his take on events with my own. And I even got Tamzin to watch, keen to hear her opinion.

  “He’s weird,” she said, “and he gets weirder as the film goes on but, even so, it’s hard to believe he’s a murderer.”

  I bit my lip. “Yeah, but he did have a tape of Jenny and two other women who were found murdered. He kept locks of their hair. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  Tamzin frowned, and asked the question, the one I’d been asking myself. “How come you got away? And the other women in the credits – they must be fine? It doesn’t make sense.”

  I went back to Nottingham to see Jan (DC Wilson) in ‘The Sanctuary’ at the police station. I hadn’t seen her since early in the trial as once my evidence was effectively thrown out I’d gone home, unwilling to listen to any more. Jan had phoned me with the verdict, and I was grateful for that.

  “Are you sure about this?” she said, before clicking on the file.

  I had asked to watch Flood’s film, the one that had my name on it. And I’m glad I did because it soon became apparent that it was not as bad as I had imagined.

  I did appear to be drugged, as he stripped me, filmed
and photographed me in a number of compromising, awkward positions. Then he sketched me and laid odd pieces of fabric over me and other found garments.

  “It’s all a bit Mr Bean does porn,” I said. “He’s just pathetic – a seedy pervert.”

  Jan helped herself to a chocolate digestive. “Did I tell you what we found?”

  “No.” I sat up in the chair.

  “He had all this stuff for impotency: leaflets, books and pills. Pathetic little man couldn’t get it up.”

  I felt myself flush. I had to take off my jumper.

  “You see the defence tried to make out he was impotent and that his impotency rendered him incapable of rape. They even got his doctor to testify that he had been diagnosed with impotency but had been refused medication because it did not relate to a specific medical condition. As I understand it, the NHS only provide prescriptions for impotency treatments if you have a condition like Parkinson’s for instance. And that’s where we got him.” Jan nodded. “You see the defence made out he had drug-abuse-related impotency that remained untreated, rendering him incapable of rape, and yet we found all sorts of treatments at his studio. He had Viagra and herbal remedies and you wouldn’t believe the amount of leaflets he had collected. He kept them all in a wastepaper bin – very cunning.”

  “Oh.” My throat felt tight. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “I sent him those Viagra pills,” I said.

  Jan looked bemused. “You what?”

  “The pills, even the herbal ones and the leaflets – I sent all of them. I’m surprised he kept them.”

  Jan shook her head. “You’ve lost me; why would you send things like that?”

  “He didn’t rape anyone, did he?”

  “Mia, you’re really confusing me right now.” Jan slurped from her mug of tea.

  “The evidence – was it all circumstantial?” I asked.

  Jan narrowed her eyes. “Rape cases are often one person’s word against another, but if you can prove that someone is capable of lying, well then sometimes, only sometimes, you can get the jury on side.”

  “What about Jenny, Connie and Loretta – Flood obviously killed them but was there any DNA evidence of rape?”

  Jan tilted her head to one side and spoke softly. “Of course we can’t be sure of much regarding your friend Jenny – her body had seriously deteriorated due to being submerged in water for a prolonged period of time. But both Loretta Peters and Connie Vickers were raped. There were traces of the lubricant you find in condoms and they both sustained heavy bruising and the kind of internal damage consistent with brutal rape.”

  “But no DNA evidence?”

  “No.”

  “Then it could have been someone else that was responsible?”

  Jan put down her cup of tea and folded her arms.

  “Had any of the packets of Viagra actually been opened?” I asked.

  “Mia, you’ve got to let this go. Flood was certainly guilty of indecent assault seventeen times over, if nothing else – we’ve got that on film.”

  “But what if he didn’t commit the murders? There could be someone else still out there.”

  “There’s always someone out there. You can be sure of that.”

  Forty-six

  Both Marcus Hedley and Amanda Darling phoned a few times before they finally got through to me, desperate to know whether or not I’d grant permission for the inclusion of Aftermath in the Jack Flood retrospective due to be held at Drake Gallery later in the year. I didn’t phone back but they were persistent and eventually managed to catch me in one afternoon before I left for my shift at Chihuahua’s.

  “Hello, can I speak to Mia Jackson, please?” I knew it was Amanda Darling. I had come to recognise her clipped vowels and authoritative tone.

  “It is Mia.”

  “Have you been away? I’ve called several times and left numerous messages.”

  “No.”

  Obviously put out, her voice lowered. “I wanted to touch base with you. Have you managed to watch the DVD?”

  “I have.”

  “What do you think?” she whispered, like she was fearful of my response.

  “He was a sad, dirty pervert – pathetic really.”

  “You know even bad people can make great art.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean some people believe Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper and I don’t know about that, but he’s certainly a great artist.”

  “Where does that leave us regarding the exhibition?” Amanda asked.

  “I couldn’t care less.”

  “I’m sorry you feel like that.”

  “I couldn’t care less about his art.”

  “Right, does that mean we can or can’t show Aftermath?”

  “Show it, I don’t care – who am I to censor anyone?”

  “I applaud your broadmindedness. Awesome, absolutely awesome – Marcus will be so pleased. We will of course send you invites for the private view.”

  “I do have one caveat.”

  “Oh?” The pitch of Amanda’s voice dropped even lower.

  “I want you to look at my portfolio.”

  “Your portfolio?”

  “You know I’m an artist, right? I did tell you that.”

  “Oh yeah, sure,” she said, as if she had no recall.

  “Well, I think it’ll be in your interest to see my latest work. Things have really moved on for me recently.”

  “Is that because of Flood’s death and his diaries?”

  “Yeah, well, more my association with him. It inspired me in a way, and surely there has to be a marketing angle in that, especially with such a big retrospective on its way?”

  Amanda agreed and said she’d be happy to take a look, but could I email her some photos as JPEGs of my latest work in the first instance.

  Fine, but I won’t be signing anything relating to Aftermath until she and Marcus have taken a proper look at my work.

  I’ve moved into photography and film. Strange though it may seem in some ways I’m carrying on where Flood left off. Temple, I think, is a natural progression from the urban embroidery works I showed for my degree show.

  I took a large-format camera and walked all of two steps outside my front door. I set it up to peek through the metal railings straight across the road to the sauna/massage parlour opposite. I used only ambient light and an exposure of ten minutes. People passing could have spoilt it but bizarrely no one was around and no one either entered or left the building.

  The image has an otherworldly golden glow, the word ‘Sauna’ the brightest part, while the window’s frosted glass offers a more subdued light. It is typically rundown and seedy and yet the light suggests a heavenly place where dreams could come true – or not, as the case may be.

  Temple was my latest favourite piece, but apart from that I’d taken to walking round my new neighbourhood in Hammersmith, looking for things that seemed out of place: a lost shoe, an abandoned laptop case (probably dumped after the computer was stolen), a splurge of pink vomit left over from the night before, a fat businessman in a cashmere camel coat slugging vodka from a bottle, and a pin-thin anorexic with a backpack walking, walking all day long.

  Into the Woods was me filming in the city, looking up at the towering corporate offices – very much on the outside, like the newspaper seller on the corner with his T-shirt-covered paunch and red bulbous nose.

  The possibilities are endless.

  There’s been another murder. This time in London: the body of a woman called Janine Jones was found in an alley in Acton. And then there was another, as yet unnamed, three days ago in Ealing. Police said both women have been known to work as prostitutes.

  Press reports claim the murders are linked and also bear striking, but unconfirmed similarities to the Nottingham murders. Police have so far failed to comment.

  Meanwhile, CCTV footage has been released of Janine Jones’ last known movements. In a grainy, ten-second film of a lamp-lit London street, a dark-haired woman of average
build, dressed in a short, pale skirt and knee-length boots approaches a white family saloon. She talks for a moment at the window then walks round to the passenger door and climbs in. The car drives off, its registration number barely legible.

  Police release a statement saying they are keen to trace the driver of this vehicle and are appealing for help from the public. “Calls will be treated in the strictest confidence.”

  “What do you make of that?” Tamzin said, as we sat watching the news in our rented basement flat.

  I shrugged, as my gaze rested on my red shoes that I’d slung across the green carpet. “There’s always some evil bastard out there,” I said, remembering what DC Jan Wilson had said, and then I thought of the night I went back to Flood’s hotel, confused as to why we needed a cab. It was a white car, a family saloon – similar to the car shown in the clip on the news?

  I went down the corridor to my room, found my college sketchbooks and looked back at the fast spontaneous mark-making that showed: half a car here, half a car there, a woman leaning in to negotiate and the odd number or letter that made up several partially recorded number-plates.

  Online, I called up BBC News and watched the grainy CCTV footage repeatedly, straining to see if the car was in any way similar to my sketches. And could there even be a bejewelled blue elephant hanging from the rear-view mirror?

  Acknowledgements

  The genesis of this novel has been somewhat protracted, and various people have helped along the way. I’d like to say a big thank you to my editor and friend Monica Byles for her sterling work, and to Natalia Jefferson for being so generous with her time and brain power.

  Fellow writers and Southbank friends: David Bausor, Christabel Cooper, Kyo Choi, Dominique Jackson, EJ Swift and Colin Tucker have provided ongoing advice and support. And I’d also like to thank Susanna Jones and Jo Shapcott at Royal Holloway, University of London, and my fellow MA students for their help and encouragement.