Ten Second Staircase (6 page)

Poor County Hall, ignored when it should have been admired, then reviled for the plan Prime Minister Thatcher unveiled to turn it into a Japanese hotel. When this future also disintegrated it became an aquarium, sleek grey sharks gliding through waters where earnest councillors had once fought to divide the boroughs of London between themselves.

Here also were housed Salvador Dalí's melting clocks and arid landscapes in permanent exhibition; his great elephant sculpture is placed on the embankment, teetering on attenuated giraffe legs, where it appears to stride over Parliament itself, surely a vision that would once have brought a charge of treason. In the front of the building (for the river faces its back) the former Charles Saatchi collection of modern British art, now the County Hall Gallery, awaits visitors, who balk and complain at the idea of paying to see ideas made flesh, especially when there's nothing traditional on display.

A home for artistic visions, then (for perhaps we can include its cool blue panoramas of drifting iridescent angelfish), and also a suitable place for a murder, a great wood-panelled beehive of tunnels and passages. Through the shadowed oak corridors, across the sepia parquet blocks, into the main domed chamber like an immense wooden
hammam,
where half a dozen gargantuan artworks stand in white plaster alcoves, their purpose to stimulate and disturb; an immense angry head, its glaring silver eyes staring down accusingly, office furniture submerged in a water-filled white box, a bizarre steel machine knotted with ropes and leather straps, perhaps designed to torture some alien species, and six foetuses tethered in a twelve-foot tank, their arrangement guaranteed to horrify and infuriate those more used to gentler forms of art.

But something was wrong here; the liquid in the tank had overflowed, slopping onto the surrounding floor, and the foetuses had been joined by a larger form.

'It was only unveiled last Monday, now it's buggered.' The young guard was uniformed but uncapped. He absently touched his bristled ginger hair, wondering if he would somehow be made to take the blame. DCs Colin Bimsley and Meera Mangeshkar had cordoned off the area and were taking rudimentary notes, but could do little until the specialists arrived.

'You're not the regular police, then,' asked the guard, eyeing the slim silver panels on their black padded jackets. 'PCU—what does that stand for?'

'No, we're not . . . Simon.' Bimsley checked the guard's badge and ignored his question. 'How long have you been on this morning?'

'Since nine A.M.'

'Everything was normal at that time. Otherwise you'd have noticed, wouldn't you?' Bimsley stabbed his ballpoint in the direction of the tank. 'Body floating facedown in there, water everywhere, it stands to reason.'

'Not water, mate. Formaldehyde. You know, to preserve the babies. That's what the smell is.'

'I read about this artwork. It's been causing quite a fuss.' Mangeshkar approached the tank. 'Isn't the liquid supposed to be clearer than this?'

Simon the guard turned around to see. 'Something must have gone wrong. It started turning cloudy at the end of last week. The gallery chiefs are supposed to be meeting to discuss the problem.'

'It's eleven A.M. now. The call was logged in twenty minutes ago—'

'No, longer ago than that. I rang the police as soon as I saw it.'

The Met checked it out before passing the case to us,
thought Bimsley. 'How many rounds do you make during a day? What times?'

Simon thought for a moment. 'It's not like a normal gallery with an attendant in each room, because some of the art needs more attention than others. The underwater room, especially—'

'Which is what?'

'It's an optical illusion, a huge mirror of mercury that horizontally divides a council chamber in half. You walk inside and it looks like you're wading through water. That one needs a full-time attendant because only one person is allowed to enter the room at a time. The mercury has to stay completely undisturbed, otherwise the illusion is broken, so we keep a careful watch on the visitors. Some of the other stuff doesn't need looking after at all, but there are no rope barriers around the exhibits—they spoil the placement of the art—so I just have to stop kids from leaving their pawprints. I don't have to do that with
Eternal Destiny.
'

'That's the title of the piece?' asked Mangeshkar. 'The top of the tank isn't sealed.'

'No, that would cause condensation, but the glass sides of the tank are seven feet high, so no-one can reach up and put their hands in.'

'If nobody can even reach the top, how on earth could somebody manage to fall in?' asked Bimsley.

'I don't think she fell in, Colin, do you?' Mangeshkar shot her partner a dry look. Bimsley looked back at the diminutive Asian officer with unrequited love in his eyes. She was still refusing to go out with him. Was she completely mad?

'Ah, there you are. I've been looking all over for you.' Arthur Bryant was stumping towards them in a brown suede overcoat several sizes too big for him, his boots squealing unpleasantly on the polished floor, the nailed steel Blakies on his soles scraping neat crescents into the wood. He was licking the sides of a suppurating sardine and tomato sandwich, trying to prevent bits of fish from falling on the floor.

'—Sir, your boots—' began the attendant.

'Sorry about this, I missed breakfast. All these corridors seem to turn back on themselves. I've never seen so many commemorative plaques. They've left the old GLC fittings up, all those councillors' names like Wiggins and Trusspot and Higginbottom, how they loved congratulating themselves on their civic duties, you can smell the self-importance.'

All the attendant could smell was sardines. '—Sir, your boots are damaging—'

'And how appropriate that it should become an art gallery, and continue enraging the public. Hullo, what have we here?' Bryant waggled his sandwich at the clouded green-tinged tank, scattering pieces of tomato everywhere.

'One more body in the formaldehyde than is meant to be there, sir.' Mangeshkar thumbed at the glass.

Bryant's face fairly lit up. When the creases vanished, he held the delight of a naughty child in his features. '
Eternal Destiny
. So this is what all the fuss is about; got a couple of horrified leaders in the
Daily Mail
last week, didn't it? "Why This Sick Art Must Be Banned," the usual outraged rent-a-quotes from the porcine adenoidal baconheads who act as our moral guardians.'

'They're human foetuses, sir; it's hardly surprising people are upset,' Bimsley pointed out.

'Oh, pish-tush,' said the detective, with a mouthful of sardine. 'Some middle-class artist is trying to shock the masses and the tabloids are putting the wind up their readers as usual. So this notorious piece just became even more infamous. Well, well. Do we know who's bobbing about in there?'

'Not yet, sir. The photographer hasn't arrived, and we're waiting for Giles Kershaw to come back. He's getting some lads with a block and tackle.' Kershaw had been promised that he could head the unit's new forensic team, before discovering that he
was
the team, apart from their ancient part-time pathologist, Oswald Finch.

'I wouldn't go walking about near the—' began Meera, but it was too late; Bryant's boots were already trailing spilled formaldehyde across the floor.

'Oh, very cunning,' Bryant was muttering, studying the glass case from every angle. 'A very slick piece of showmanship, sadly ruined now, of course.'

'What's he saying?' asked Bimsley, mouthing the words at Meera, who shrugged back.

'I have a new battery in my hearing aid, so I advise you to be circumspect,' warned Bryant without turning around. 'Did you do everything I asked?'

'Yes, sir,' replied Meera. 'The entrance doors have been sealed. You should have seen some officers posted there when you came through.'

Bryant grunted. 'A couple of single-cell constables from Lambeth, hardly a watertight cordon. I suppose the Met are too busy sorting out motoring fines.' When the PCU had been separated from London's Metropolitan Police Force and placed under Home Office control, the move had ostensibly been made to provide the unit with new powers. The truth, however, was a little more complex. Home Office officials wanted to keep a closer watch on the PCU's spending, and prevent further antagonism between Bryant and the Met officers who wanted him disciplined for continually breaking their rules.

'There's only one way into the gallery apart from the emergency exit, and that's now locked,' said Dan Banbury, snapping on a fresh pair of plastic gloves with unnecessary theatricality. 'The outside of the building is also being monitored.'

'You're confident that whoever did this is still inside here, then.'

'Don't see how he could have got out, sir,' said Bimsley with inspiring conviction. 'The guard shut the doors the moment he found the body.'

'What about the visitors, where are they?'

'They're all in the café, sir. Sergeant Longbright is taking their details. Somebody must have seen something.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Well, there were people in just about every room,' Bimsley explained.

'You there, how often do you make your rounds through the gallery rooms?' Bryant tapped the redheaded attendant on the arm with his walking stick.

'They were asking me that and I was trying to explain—'

'It's not their job to ask you, it's mine. Try not to waffle. How often?'

'It varies, but at a rough guess—'

'I don't want a rough guess. I want accuracy.'

'It's hard to say, but—'

'Is there something wrong with you that requires all answers to be preceded by a conditional clause?' Bryant turned his full attention to the attendant. 'A straightforward answer, is that too much to ask?'

'Every fifteen minutes,' replied the attendant, swallowing.

'When was the last time you came through the room and found everything fine?'

'Er, I think it might have been—' Simon caught his inquisitor's eye and began again. 'Ten-thirty A.M.'

'And you returned at ten forty-five A.M. to find the body in the tank.'

'No, sir.'

'What, then?'

'I heard a noise and started walking back. I hadn't got much further through the gallery; it must have been about five minutes after I'd left the main chamber.'

'What kind of noise was it that required you to walk but not run?'

'That was it, you see, just a sort of shout, but then a crash, like someone hitting glass but not breaking it.'

'What did it sound like to you?'

'Like someone messing with an exhibit. There had been a bit of commotion in here since we opened, because of the press conference.'

'You had a press conference this morning?'

'Yes, sir. Three of the most controversial artists, a chance for them to answer their critics. We had most of the national press here.'

'No television crews?' Bryant looked for a place to throw the rest of his sandwich and momentarily considered adding it to a bronze sculpture of
objets trouvés
.

'No, sir, Mr Burroughs wouldn't allow them in.'

'Mr Burroughs is the new gallery owner, I take it.'

'That's right. He didn't want television crews because of the doc umentary.'

'Ah, yes—I can understand his point.' A week earlier, Channel 4 had broadcast an inflammatory programme about the new owner of the former Saatchi gallery, implying that he was merely a showman and self-publicist, attempting to ape his predecessor by commissioning outrageous works of art at inflated fees.

'The press conference finished at ten, but a few guests were still inside when we opened the doors to the public at that time, and—'

'I'm sure you'll give the others a full report,' said Bryant dismissively, heading back towards the tank. He cupped his hands over the glass and peered through the eerie green fluid, where six curled pink babies hung on wires, suspended like seahorses beneath the murky sun-shafted verdure of a pond. The corpse floating facedown above them was clearly that of a female, her hands splayed beneath her torso, her long brown hair spread wide and held in still suspension by the viscosity of the liquid, magnified by thick glass as in an aquarium; a modern Ophelia, distracted and driven into harsh chemical waters. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted in an attitude of surprising calm. If it hadn't been for the fact that she disrupted the symmetry of the installation, she might almost have been a part of the piece. A single slender brown strand of blood curled around her head and chest like drifting pipe smoke. Distorted by the green tank and surrounded by infant corpses, her body had taken on the timeless density of a painting; a damned soul fallen from the raft of the Medusa, left to drift in Géricault's icy green ocean . . .

'He's getting his prints all over the evidence.' Meera rubbed a hand across her face. 'He must know he's contaminating the site. Why does he always have to do that?'

'He's getting a feel for it,' replied Bimsley from the side of his mouth. 'He's using his instincts.'

'Couldn't he use gloves as well?'

'The press conference—was Saralla White one of the three artists interviewed? Was she articulate? Angry? Rude? Distracted? Did she seem upset about anything?' Bryant fired questions as if they were medicine balls; you had to damn well make sure you could catch them.

'Yes, she was interviewed,' answered the attendant. 'I watched the whole performance. She sounded very confident, her usual self. If she was upset, she didn't show it. She had smart answers to every question they asked. There was a lot of interest in her.'

'And there'll be a lot more,' Bryant promised. 'Now that she's become a part of her own sculpture.'

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