The Death Pictures

by Simon Hall

  ‘It’s that Fathers for Families who put you lot on to me, isn’t it?’ Suzanne said nothing. ‘Well I’ve had a guts full of them,’ Godley went on. ‘Them and their pathetic pantomime dressing up and waving banners. It’ll take a lot more than that to change the system.’

  She couldn’t help herself. ‘A revolution?’

  ‘Yeah, something like that.’ For the first time, Godley looked surprised. He got up from the desk to stub his cigarette out and throw it in the bin. ‘Two sons I’ve got. Or had, I should say. I’m lucky to see them twice a year now.’

  He stared out of the window at the stooping cranes, swinging supplies and stores to a sleek grey frigate, F98 stencilled black on her bow.

  ‘The court gave me weekends, once a fortnight,’ Godley spat. ‘The standard shit. Once a bloody fortnight! But even then, every time she’s got some excuse. Some sickness, some emergency, something from work comes up that means it can’t happen. Sometimes they’re just not in when I call round. And when I get so pissed off I go back to court, you know what happens?’

  He turned to stare at her, his eyes wide, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  ‘The judge calls her in and tells her she must make sure I can see the boys. That’s it. And then I get to see them the next week, and after that, it’s back to the same thing again. Pathetic.’

  She had to get back to the point, didn’t have time to debate the workings of the family courts. Suzanne knew them anyway. Adrian and his battles to see his young daughter, an ex wife lonely and jealous that he was happy in a new relationship, Tasmin the only remaining weapon she had to hurt him. Yes, she knew what could happen. She’d seen the frustration, even despair in Adrian. The courts never punished mothers because it could harm the children. Yes, she could understand what made men so embittered. But this wasn’t the time to talk about it. Three rapes so far. Three witch’s hats from a pack of six. Three more rapes planned. DCI Breen on the phone every hour.

  Suzanne tried again. ‘Mr Godley, I appreciate it must be difficult…’

  His fist slamming into the wall silenced her. ‘Difficult!!’ Godley’s voice was hoarse with rage. ‘Have you got kids?’ She shook her head. ‘Then don’t tell me it’s difficult.’

  His voice fell, quieter now, but each word spat out. ‘It’s not difficult. It’s impossible. It’s torture. Those boys are growing up strangers to me. My sons!! And you know what she’s telling them? She’s telling them I hate them and don’t want to see them. She’s telling them I hate her and used to beat her. I’m an evil man. God knows what she’s telling them.’

  His knuckles were clenched white, his breathing loud. ‘So… please… don’t... come in here… and tell me… it’s… difficult.’

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Godley, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Suzanne said, as soothingly as she could. ‘But we have an investigation to conduct and it would help if we could rule you out. If you wouldn’t mind giving us a sample of your hair or saliva for a DNA test, that would be the easiest way.’ He stared at her, shaking his head a little now, as if in pity. ‘And if you could tell me where you were when...?’

  ‘No,’ he interrupted, the word quiet but emphatic. ‘I can’t remember where I was whenever it was and I’m not giving you any sample of anything. No one from the so-called authorities helps me. I’m not helping them.’

  What would Adam Breen have made of it, she wondered? He would have treated Godley in his usual calm but clever way, spotted any little evasions or signs that he was lying. Or would he have been so calm? Wasn’t something about this case getting to him? What about that brief conversation they’d had earlier?

  ‘How’s it going Suzanne?’

  ‘OK, sir. We’ve got some leads and we’ve eliminated quite a few people, so we’re making progress. Did you want a briefing?’

  He’d smiled then, but not with any humour. ‘No Suzanne, you handle it. You’re a fine detective, you’ll get him. Just make sure you do. The High Honchos are all over me with the McCluskey case. I think they’re worried about the media coverage and they want it settled. Well, that’s their priority. But it’s basically a murder inquiry about a dying man. Whereas what you’re doing…’

  She’d thought he was going to say something else then, and wondered what it was. He’d turned away, tapped a hand on the felt boards and pictures of the victims. ‘Well, I’m fully behind you and any help or resources you need, I’ll make sure you get them.’

  That gave her an idea how she’d handle Godley. If he wanted to be awkward, fine. They could be awkward too. Time for a little pressure. Some very obvious surveillance, so in his face as to be bordering on harassment.

  Plymouth’s finest fancy dress shop is on Ebrington Street, just outside the centre of the city. Silver racks of clothes of all materials, colours and periods of history fill its walls, hats and helmets hang from the ceiling, shoes and boots scattered on the floor. It feels like the debris from an explosion triggered by the impossible collision of so many countless eras and lifestyles. That Monday afternoon, Dirty El picked his way carefully through to the counter, only once tripping over a thigh length fisherman’s wader that snaked out from under some boxes.

  Under his breath, he hummed a tune and ad-libbed a limerick.

  ‘A snapper can need lots of faces,

  As he goes through his paces,

  So he dons a disguise,

  To avoid watching eyes,

  And fills up the tabloids’ blank spaces!’

  They knew El well here. He was a frequent and loyal customer and they even had a couple of cuttings he’d inspired on the wall. The manager’s favourite was the one about the black suit and tie he’d borrowed. It was designed to be part of a Blues Brothers outfit. El had used it to dress as an undertaker, hired a black estate car and talked his way past a gullible constable on sentry duty to get access to the scene of a double murder in Cornwall.

  The pictures he took had made most of the national papers and paid for a fine holiday in America. The grateful photographer had sent them the articles. One was gruesome, from the Gazette, it had a series of El’s pictures and a story about the killing. The next was from the Western Daily News, about the police investigation into how the photographer got to the scene.

  ‘How can we help you, El?’ asked the manager, shaking his hand warmly. ‘A doctor’s white coat and stethoscope too if we’ve got one, eh? Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem. They’re popular with stag parties and we’ve got a few in. Yes, I think they’re pretty convincing. Do you want a fake name badge as well? How long will you need it for?’

  Dan lay on his great blue sofa that night, Rutherford at his feet, a glass of rye whisky on ice on the table in front of him. He didn’t often drink spirits, but after that panic to get the arrest story on air his nerves needed calming and he didn’t think beer would be strong enough to do the job. Plus whisky always sent him to sleep and he could do with a good night’s rest. Tomorrow would be busy. He was joining Adam on the McCluskey investigation.

  The Death Pictures surrounded him. Some were spread out on the coffee table, some on the sofa, some on the floor by Rutherford. He’d had a chance earlier to check the grid references, any possible PIN numbers or harbour quays, but hadn’t come up with anything. The idea about the Bible being the key to a book code hadn’t worked either.

  There’d been no time to research the streets with missing houses, so that was the next job. In the meantime, another look at the pictures could always prompt some new ideas. None came. Dan knew he wasn’t concentrating. He was staring at the pictures, but thinking about McCluskey and whether he could have been murdered. Why kill a dying man was Lizzie’s question, and as ever she’d hit the target in one. Why?

  Dan checked through the briefing notes on Kid and the stories he’d printed off from the News Library. One thing was sure. The man didn’t look like a killer. Far
from it. But then, as Adam always said, you never knew.

  The first mentions of him were brief, as a pupil of McCluskey’s with a ‘budding talent’ according to one article on an exhibition he’d contributed to in Exeter. It didn’t sound too promising for the start of a career. Given a journalist’s tendency to hype anything they covered to try to get readers interested, it was more like damned with almost imperceptible praise.

  There were a couple more articles in which he won a few lines about works being shown at various galleries, nothing of real interest. Then a turn of the page and a surprise.

  ‘Plymouth Artist Arrested in Dirty Water Protest,’ ran the headline in the cutting from the Standard. Kid had led a group of anti-poverty protesters to daub the government offices in the city with a delightful mix of their own urine and excrement. Then they’d waited around to be arrested. They were pictured with banners, sitting outside the once pristine office.

  “This is to remind our government that millions of people in this world have to drink water which is horribly polluted,” Kid was quoted as saying. “So we thought we’d give our beloved government some specially polluted water of our own.”

  Interesting Dan thought, putting down the papers and lying back, stretching out his neck. So the man had a criminal past. But it wasn’t exactly anything violent, was it? Nothing that would suggest he could become a killer.

  He rubbed Rutherford’s ear and was rewarded with an appreciative whine and yawn. Dan picked up the notes again. There were a couple more Standard cuttings, smaller stories this time, both on poverty protests featuring Kid. In one they’d poured maize into the fuel tanks of some cars in the dockyard, apparently to make the point that a handful of grain was all many people had to live on. Another had been an egg-throwing incident at some visiting government minister, a protest so unoriginal it only merited a few lines of copy.

  Then came the big story. Dan had to read it, then re-read it, then put it down and read it again, so extraordinary was the headline.

  “US President Attacks Plymouth Artist”

  A journalist on a local paper doesn’t get to write that very often he thought, as he wandered out to the kitchen to refill his glass. It was one of those perfect headlines that meant you just had to read the story underneath. Settling back on the sofa, savouring the golden whisky, he read the report. It was the story of how Kid became famous.

  An economic summit of the world’s most powerful leaders was being held in London and the government had launched a competition for artists to produce a work to mark the occasion. Nice idea, but they had, thought Dan, made one very obvious error. Instead of getting some tame and reliable civil servant to choose a winner, they’d left it to a popular vote. And Kid had won.

  There was a picture of what he’d come up with. Dan stared, then laughed out loud, swallowed some whisky and had to run choking to the bathroom, holding onto the sink, still laughing and trying not to be sick while his throat burned. Rutherford padded after him, watched in what he was sure was a concerned way. ‘I’m OK, mate, really I am,’ he reassured the dog breathlessly, patting his sleek head.

  Dan sat back down on the sofa and looked again at the picture. He couldn’t stop chuckling. It was full colour, a good quality image, but what it couldn’t convey would have been the smell.

  Kid had created a ten feet high replica of the Statue of Liberty, but made it from cheeseburgers. The story explained how they were held together by metal rods running through the sculpture, but that it was designed to rot. The picture made very clear it was doing just that. Red sauce congealed as though frozen, some still dripped, stringy lettuce dangled brown and bread greened at its edges, like organic verdigris. The one part that hadn’t rotted was the statue’s arm, gold-sprayed metal, aloft. But instead of holding a torch of freedom, there were two insulting fingers.

  “I wouldn’t go too much into what it means. I think you can work that out for yourself,” Kid said in an interview to celebrate his success. “But look at it this way. At a time when America is spreading its so-called culture everywhere and using up as much of the planet’s scarce resources as it wants without any consideration of what it might be doing in the way of climate change, somebody needs to point that out.”

  A great story in itself, but here was the snow on the summit. The US President is asked about the sculpture in a press conference. He calls it ‘an irrelevant and pathetic attempt by a nobody artist to smear the reputation of a proud country.’ My, he must have been in a bad mood, thought Dan. From that moment on, Kid’s fame was assured.

  After that there were many more mentions, but no more arrests. He spoke at rallies, led marches, donated money to good causes, but seemed to be devoting his efforts to peaceful protest. Kid continued painting and his fame made the works desirable and his profession lucrative. But he stayed in Plymouth – the old ‘close to his roots, won’t let it change me story’ – and continued campaigning against poverty.

  Dan sat back again and closed his eyes, tried to imagine what could have turned someone like that into a killer. What was the feud between him and McCluskey, and what could have happened in the house to make Kid kill him? That question again, the one that had no answer. Why murder a dying man?

  Adam seemed certain Kid was the killer and he’d know soon enough now. The detective had called earlier, sounded jaded.

  ‘Did you get it on air?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Yes, just about. Thanks for the tip.’ Dan didn’t mention he’d only just started to relax again. ‘What are you up to now?’

  ‘I’m going home. There’s not much point questioning Kid tonight. I’d prefer a decent, uninterrupted session with him tomorrow. I’m going to leave him in the cells to sleep on it and have a nice think about things. It might soften him up a little.’

  ‘When you say home, that’s…?’

  ‘The flat.’

  ‘So no...?’

  ‘No. Not yet anyway. We had some good time together at the weekend, but it was difficult with this rape case going on. I think Annie could sense I wasn’t quite there with her. So I’m going to stay in the flat for now and we’ll see how it goes.’

  A pause, then a comical moment. ‘I was wondering...’ both said at the same time.

  ‘Go ahead,’ continued Adam.

  Dan was tempted to say ‘no, you,’ but thought it would sound like a teenage romantic.

  ‘You know you said I could come and join the inquiry again? How does tomorrow suit you?’ he asked.

  ‘Funny, I was going to say the same thing myself. The Assistant Chief Constable asked me unsubtly about our ‘media strategy’ earlier. I think they’re desperate for some good publicity. So you’re in. Charles Cross at nine tomorrow? It’ll be good to have you back along. I’ll be interested to see what you make of Kid. I’m not sure I understand you creative types. You might give us a way in to the man.’

  Chapter Ten

  Dan drove in to the entrance to the police station at just before nine the next morning. He stared up at the familiar five-storey grey block and remembered the first time he’d been here, on the Bray case and how nervous he’d felt. Now it was very different. He couldn’t suppress a growing excitement and anticipation at joining another investigation. The metal-rung gate ground up and he was about to park the car when he was surprised to see Adam come striding out to meet him. The detective opened the passenger door and climbed in.

  ‘Let’s go,’ was all he said.

  ‘What? Where?’ asked Dan. ‘I thought we were interviewing Kid?’

  ‘Later. We’ve got to see Abi McCluskey first. She had another attempted break-in at the house last night and she’s got something she wants to tell us. She wouldn’t say any more on the phone. She said it had to be in person. I want to get this one wrapped up and sorted. I had a nightmare that bloody rapist attacked Annie last night. I can feel him out there,
waiting to strike again.’

  Dan turned the car round and headed past the ruined church, up the hill and out of the city centre. They drove through Mutley Plain and on to Royal Gardens. The traffic was slow and lethargic coming in to the city, but thin the way they were going. Adam stared sightlessly ahead, his fingers drumming on the dashboard.

  ‘Any more you can tell me?’ Dan asked hopefully.

  ‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘We were called to her place in the early hours. She reported a downstairs window had been smashed. She went to investigate and says she saw a figure running away across the lawn. We sent a car straight round. It looks like the window was hit with a jemmy or metal bar of some kind. We didn’t find any prints again.’

  ‘The rapist?’ asked Dan. ‘Or something to do with McCluskey’s death? Or connected with that other attempted break-in?’

  ‘Or all three,’ said Adam, checking through a pile of notes on his lap. ‘Whatever, something odd’s going on. Let’s go find out.’

  A young police family liaison officer opened the door. He had one of those thin, comical moustaches that young men grow to try to give themselves more authority. ‘She’s in the lounge, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘In quite a state.’

  ‘Thanks, Mike,’ said Adam. ‘Would you mind getting us some tea and coffee?’ The man nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, taking off the cap he’d donned in anticipation of the arrival of a senior officer.

  Abi McCluskey had curled herself up into a ball in the corner of her sofa. Her legs were tucked under her, her arms folded and she was leaning forwards on them. The room was full of ‘With Sympathy’ cards, or deepest or most sincere sympathy, as though trying to outbid each other in their grief. A series of McCluskey’s paintings hung on the walls. Dan nodded as he looked around. He’d made a bet with himself the artist wouldn’t have other painters’ works here.