The Art of Murder jp-3 Read online

  ‘Inspector,’ Pendragon said. Grant turned and, seeing his boss’s expression, let the man pass. The DCI took a step towards the tall black man. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon. You’re the gallery owner?’

  The man stood rigid before Pendragon, searching his face intently. ‘Jackson Price,’ he said. ‘I’m co-owner with Kingsley Berrick. What the hell’s going on here?’

  ‘Would you like to take a seat, sir?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s some rather bad …’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Price moved forward and, before Pendragon could stop him, passed under the arch and into the gallery.

  ‘Sir. If you would …’ Price was now three steps into the room and staring at the horrific sight close to the far wall. Then he simply sank to his knees, buried his head in his hands and started to rock to and fro.

  Chapter 5

  Five minutes later, Jackson Price was installed on one of the leather sofas in reception, nursing a mug of steaming peppermint tea. He hadn’t said a word since entering the main room and was now staring fixedly into space. Pendragon was seated at the other end of the long sofa. He studied Price in profile. He was a handsome man: entirely bald, head smoothed to a shine; taut ebony skin; facial bones prominent but elegantly proportioned; eyelashes long. He had the air of an actor or an impresario. The two of them were alone in the reception area but nothing could be done about the occasional sounds coming from the gallery as Jones worked on the corpse.

  ‘I realise this is extremely difficult,’ Pendragon began. ‘But … do you know the dead man?’

  Price turned to him, his face fixed in a blank expression, as though still processing what Pendragon had asked. ‘It’s Kingsley Berrick,’ he said at length, his voice a monotone. ‘My business partner. He has a distinctive scar on his chin, just here.’ He pointed to a region just below his lower lip, then looked away towards the huge canvases on the far wall.

  Pendragon nodded. ‘When did you last see him alive?’

  Price turned back and seemed to unwind a little. He took a deep breath and then a sip of the hot tea. ‘Last night, at the private view.’

  ‘Can you talk me through it?’

  ‘It was a Luke Martin retrospective — these big canvases?’ And he nodded across the room to a wall-sized expanse of turquoise. ‘Some of the crasser journalists call him the “English Mark Rothko”. Absurd, of course.’ He sniffed and took another sip of peppermint tea. ‘Anyway, it was a great success. The hacks claimed they loved it. We even had a couple of young royals here — admittedly from the wrong branch of the tree,’ he added with a wave of his hand. ‘A sprinkling of rock stars, old and young, and Casper Hammond popped in, en route to his hotel, straight off the plane from Hollywood … apparently. Best of all, everything was sold by nine o’clock.’

  ‘And Mr Berrick?’

  Jackson Price looked back at his tea, suddenly quiet. For a few moments it had seemed as though he had slipped into an alternate reality, one in which nothing terrible had happened. Now he was back confronting the grim truth. ‘Oh, Kingsley was in a fabulous mood,’ Price said quietly. ‘He was terribly nervous earlier in the evening. But he always was a worrier. If I told him once, I told him a thousand times that worrying would be the death …’

  ‘Mr Price, did Kingsley Berrick have any enemies?’

  ‘Enemies?’ Price shook his head. ‘The very idea is simply preposterous, Chief Inspector. Everyone loved Kingsley.’

  Pendragon decided to change tack. ‘Did you see him leave last night?’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. It was late … must have been oh, let me see … one o’clock? There were only a few of us still here. He left with Norman.’

  ‘Norman?’

  ‘Norman Hedridge, Kingsley’s partner. Well, ex-partner. They’re still friends, but no longer an item.’

  ‘I see. And did Mr Berrick say where they were going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘And who remained behind with you?’

  Price looked down at his cup again and took another sip before answering, ‘Chester and Selina. Yes, that’s it. Just the three of us.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Well, we stayed and chatted for a bit. Selina left before Chester. I set the alarm and went home.’

  ‘Can anyone verify your movements after you left?’

  Price looked startled for a moment. ‘My mother was still up. I live with her.’

  ‘She stayed up that late?’

  ‘She’s a worrier too.’

  Pendragon paused for a beat. ‘So how did the cleaner get in?’

  ‘The cleaner?’

  ‘The East European woman.’ Pendragon paused for a second to recall her name. ‘Helena Lutsenko.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Price took a sip of tea. ‘A couple of students live over the gallery. We pay them to let the cleaner in and out twice a week. I don’t normally surface till at least ten.’ He smiled for the first time, a big white slash across his face. ‘Surely you don’t think the cleaner …?’

  Pendragon ignored this. ‘I’m grateful. It must be a terrible shock for you. We will need to have a much more in-depth talk later … you understand?’

  Price stared at him with his blank expression again. It looked as if he were about to say something, but then thought better of it. Opting to nod instead, he turned back to his tea.

  Chapter 6

  Pendragon walked into the corridor and headed for the gallery’s kitchen. Mackleby and Grant were there with Tom Seymour and Helena Lutsenko. ‘We’ll need you both to come to the station to give a detailed report,’ Pendragon said to the witnesses. Helena looked alarmed, but Tom Seymour simply nodded.

  ‘I’ve called into work to tell them I’ll not be in this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Inspector Grant and Sergeant Mackleby here will escort you to the station …’

  ‘But, sir, I do nothing!’ Helena Lutsenko exclaimed, her eyes wide and dark with worry.

  Pendragon found a brief smile from somewhere. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not accusing you of anything.’

  ‘But …’ she looked panic-stricken ‘… my job … have to finish …’

  Before Pendragon could say anything more, Roz Mackleby stepped in and placed her hand gently on Helena’s elbow.

  ‘Really … we won’t bite,’ Sergeant Mackleby insisted.

  Pendragon spun round as Sergeant Turner appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Lane’s closed off, guv,’ he said. ‘And Forensics just called to say they’re a few minutes away.’

  ‘Good. Sergeant, I need you to get a complete list of who was here last night from Mr Price, and take a detailed statement from him. I want a full background on the event plus names … who showed, who didn’t. Find out if anything unusual happened — everything you can get him to cough up. I’ll meet you back at the station.’

  ‘You’re walking?’

  ‘Need to clear my head.’

  Before leaving, Pendragon turned back into the reception area, walked past Jackson Price and nodded to a uniformed officer posted at the archway to the main room. A police photographer was setting up a tripod and a digital camera a few feet from the murder victim. Jones was kneeling down in front of the dead man, peering into the gruesome void in his head and studying the apple.

  ‘First impressions?’ Pendragon asked.

  There was an electronic whir from behind as the photographer ran off a couple of test shots.

  Jones stood up. ‘Well, it’s a Granny Smith, Inspector.’

  ‘Dr Jones …’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Jones had his hands up. ‘What can I say? Male, early to mid-fifties, average height, bit on the plump side. It’s impossible even to guess at the cause of death before I get the body to the lab. I’d say he’s been dead eight to ten hours, no more. The body’s stiff from rigor mortis. No need for the truss. But obviously the body was put here when it was still relatively pliable.’
<
br />   ‘All right. Forensics are on their way. I’ll have the body released to you ASAP.’

  *

  Pendragon stepped out on to Durrell Place as Dr Colette Newman, Head of the Metropolitan Police Forensics Unit, emerged from a white van parked behind Mackleby and Grant’s squad car. She strode towards him carrying a big plastic box similar to Jones’s.

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ she said in her clipped, old-fashioned accent. Pendragon had first met Dr Newman the previous summer when they had worked together on a series of mysterious poisonings that had turned out to be the work of a crazed serial killer. She had been instrumental in piecing together some of the clues that had helped solve the crimes. A pretty blonde in her mid-thirties, Pendragon knew her to possess a keen intellect and a sharp wit. He had a lot of respect for her, and he liked her as well. ‘Dr Newman,’ he said. ‘Sorry to drag you from your warm lab, but, well …’ And he nodded back over his shoulder towards the gallery. ‘This one should certainly pique your professional interest.’

  ‘Oh, goody,’ she said with a smile, and hurried past him towards the gallery door.

  Pendragon had been only partially honest with Turner when he’d said he needed to clear his head. He needed to clear it of the horror, but he also needed to assimilate what he had just witnessed, to gather together his thoughts and begin to make some sense of it all.

  It never got easier, he knew that. He had seen dead kids being dragged from lakes and old people sliced up on the swirly-patterned carpets of their tiny flats. No, it never got easier. Somehow, though, he had learned to deal with it; to ‘compartmentalise’ as American psychotherapists would have it. But fancy words meant nothing unless he really could compartmentalise, and sometimes he could only just manage to keep it together in front of his junior officers.

  In his twenty-five years of police service, Kingsley Berrick’s was definitely the strangest murder Pendragon had seen. The body was what he had once heard described as a ‘statement corpse’. Someone had not simply killed the man, they had wanted to present him as something else. He had seen immediately that the murder tableau was an imitation of Rene Magritte’s famous painting The Son of Man, the classic Surrealist image of a bowler-hatted figure in a suit with an apple hovering directly in front of his face. But why had the murderer done it? And how? Answers to those questions would take a while to formulate, Pendragon knew that much.

  The snow had stopped falling, but the recently swept pavements were now covered in a thin fresh coating that was starting to blacken and turn to slush. At the end of the narrow lane lay Vallance Road, usually a busy thoroughfare which today was almost empty.

  At the junction with Mile End Road, Pendragon stopped at the lights. There were more pedestrians than normal, their cars left at home. The monolithic Victorian sprawl of the Royal London Hospital stood at the far side of the street. Snow had settled on the window ledges and the tops of archways leading through into its maze of interlinked buildings. But the white covering did nothing to soften the harsh lines of the place.

  He turned right and merged with the other pedestrians, wrapped up in Puffa jackets and anoraks, imitation Russian fur hats and Doctor Who scarves. He saw Grant and Mackleby’s squad car turn out of Vallance Road and carefully negotiate the lights before slowly accelerating west, back towards Brick Lane less than a quarter of a mile away. He could just make out the backs of two heads in the rear seats, the unlikely pairing of Helena Lutsenko and Tom Seymour.

  Chapter 7

  Kingsley Berrick’s ex, Norman Hedridge, proved extremely difficult to track down. Jackson Price had given Turner a phone number, but had warned him it wouldn’t be easy to get the man to the station for questioning. It was only after Turner had called the number and been put through to a secretary that he discovered the stumbling block.

  ‘Hedridge is an MEP,’ he declared, walking into Pendragon’s office. ‘And he’s in Brussels. Left on the early bird this morning.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to get him on to the first train back, won’t we, Sergeant?’

  ‘What’s the problem? I heard the letters MEP.’ Superintendent Jill Hughes was leaning on the doorframe, peering in at Pendragon and Turner. The DCI was at his computer, Turner had perched himself on the corner of the desk.

  ‘Morning, ma’am,’ Pendragon responded. ‘Someone we need to question straight away. Maybe the last person to see the murdered man alive.’

  Hughes had been brought up to speed when Mackleby and Grant had arrived back at the station half an hour earlier. ‘You’re talking about Norman Hedridge, I take it?’ She held Pendragon’s eyes with a steady gaze. She was a tough station commander, and, at thirty-three, one of the youngest Supers in the country. Guarded and occasionally aloof, she was nevertheless experienced enough to have nurtured a loyal and solid team at Brick Lane.

  Pendragon nodded.

  ‘I’ve already been on to the Commissioner about him.’

  ‘You have?’ Pendragon looked at Hughes and then at Jez. ‘Get off my desk,’ he snapped. Turning back to the Super, he said calmly, ‘Well, that’s good … isn’t it?’

  ‘Up to a point. Mr Hedridge is a friend of Commissioner Rampton, and …’

  ‘Funny how they always are friends of someone, these VIPs,’ Pendragon interrupted, and Turner gave a brief laugh.

  Hughes glared back at them both and Turner altered his expression immediately. ‘That’s as may be, Chief Inspector,’ she continued. ‘All I’m saying is, tread carefully … please.’ And she straightened up and walked away along the corridor.

  Pendragon shook his head. ‘The old boy network … never fails. Okay, Turner, so you got the guest list from Price?’

  ‘I did. Over two hundred people attended. Old Kingsley Berrick was bloody well connected.’

  ‘I’m sure he was. Two hundred guests? Well, we obviously can’t interview everyone who was there last night, but Berrick must have had a close-knit group of intimates.’

  ‘The gay art network?’

  ‘For want of a better expression, Sergeant, yes.’

  ‘And the starting point would be Norman Hedridge?’

  ‘Indeed it would.’

  It took until 3.30 for MEP Norman Hedridge to make it to Brick Lane Police Station. His driver dropped him and his lawyer at the stairs to the main doors where they were met by a constable and led along the corridor to Interview Room 2. Pendragon stood up as they walked in. Hedridge was an inch or so over six foot, big-framed, tanned, white hair cut into a fashionable, tousled style. He was wearing a Barbour jacket over a pin-stripe suit. The lawyer introduced himself as Maurice Strinner of Faversham, Strinner amp; Wrench. Pendragon knew the firm, the three partners’ names were often featured in the news, famous for acting as solicitors to what had once been called ‘the Establishment’. Strinner was a short man of forty-something. He had a bulbous, drinker’s nose, watery blue eyes, a weak mouth. The lawyer turned to his client and introduced him as Norman Hedridge MEP. Pendragon shook hands with the two men and they all sat down. Turner came in then and pulled up a chair beside the DCI.

  The atmosphere in the room was tense. Pendragon looked at Hedridge as the man stared fixedly at the wall between the two policemen, and it was at that moment he first put the face and the name together. Norman Hedridge … of course, he thought. The MEP had been a contemporary of his at Oxford. Pendragon had known Hedridge then, or at least known of him. Hedridge had remained totally unaware of Pendragon’s existence, for theirs had been very different Oxfords. Pendragon had gone up on a scholarship, which meant he had been at the bottom of the social pecking order, even in the early eighties when student life at the university was supposed to be cosily egalitarian.

  The DCI had been born within half a mile of this station and had spent the first eighteen years of his life kicking around the local streets. When he had been noticed at school as exceptionally able academically, his headmaster at Stepney High had convinced Jack’s parents to let him take the Oxbridge entrance exam. Hed
ridge, Pendragon knew, came from one of the wealthiest families in the country. His father owned vast tracts of land in Devon and Cornwall, and the Hedridges could trace their heritage back to a thirteenth-century baron who had stood beside King Henry III’s son, Prince Edward, at the Battle of Evesham. Young Norman had been famous at Oxford for hosting flamboyant parties; leader of the in-crowd to which all the lesser aristos aspired to belong. Legend had it that after a summer ball at Christ Church, Norman had been found naked and unconscious in an inflatable dinghy circling the statue of Mercury, the centrepiece of the ornamental pond in Tom Quad. When one of the college Bulldogs, the university ‘police’, brought him round, they had fined him?50 on the spot. Apparently, his retort had been: ‘I’ll pay a hundred, my good man. It was worth every penny!’ The Norman Hedridge now sitting before Pendragon was in nothing like so good a mood.

  ‘DCI Jack Pendragon accompanied by Sergeant Jez Turner. Three-forty-two, Wednesday the twenty-first of January,’ Pendragon intoned for the benefit of the digital recorder at the end of the table. ‘Norman Hedridge MEP has volunteered his time to answer questions concerning the recent death of Kingsley Berrick. He is accompanied by his lawyer, Mr Maurice Strinner.’ He paused for a moment, waiting for Hedridge to engage with him. After a long pause, the man looked away from the imaginary spot on the wall and turned an imperious gaze upon him.

  ‘Mr Hedridge,’ Pendragon began slowly, ‘you knew the deceased?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘How would you describe your relationship?’

  ‘We were friends,’ Hedridge replied, giving the DCI a hard look.

  ‘Friends? As in intimate friends?’