The Shroud Maker (26 page)

Rachel had phoned Kassia Graylem’s grandmother to see how she was. It was unusual for somebody of Kassia’s age to have so few relatives, she said to Wesley. Unusual and desperately sad. With her parents, two surviving grandparents, three brothers and their partners and any number of cousins, she found it hard to imagine being so alone in the world. Wesley agreed. Family was important.

As Rachel was about to return to her paperwork, Wesley perched himself on the edge of her desk. ‘I’d like to have another word with Miles Carthage,’ he said. ‘Butcher says he saw him talking to Kassia Graylem. It might be a smokescreen to deflect attention from himself but when I interviewed Carthage before, I felt there was something he wasn’t telling us.’

She raised her eyes. He could see tiny clumps of mascara on her lashes. ‘I agree. He was odd if you ask me.’

‘Want to come with me?’

After Manchester he knew it would be wise to keep his distance and he suddenly wondered whether he should have chosen her for the job. But it was too late to pick someone else now. She grabbed her coat and followed him out, looking as eager as a new recruit heading for her first interview, and his instinct told him he’d have to tread carefully.

As they made their way to Miles Carthage’s flat, the early drizzle that had formed a fine mist over the hills across the river had stopped and the sun was doing its best to poke through the clouds.

When they arrived at North Lodge, Wesley was surprised to find the street door slightly ajar, as though the latch hadn’t quite caught when it had been pushed shut. As they stepped over the threshold he heard noises coming from upstairs. Carthage was in.

He climbed the stairs with Rachel following and when he reached the first floor he rapped on the artist’s door. It was answered promptly, almost as though he was expecting their visit, and the man stood in the doorway, outwardly calm, although Wesley had seen an unmistakable flash of panic in his eyes. When he asked if they could come in, Carthage said that he was working and it wasn’t convenient.

‘We can either talk here or down to the police station,’ Wesley said reasonably.

At this Carthage shut the door in his face.

Gerry had put Tom from Scientific Support on to tracing Palkinson, the alleged provider of much of the Shipworld material.

Today there was a new instalment that featured a traveller who’d stumbled on the Shroud Maker’s lair and so had to die. He was drowned in the Pool of Oblivion where the Shroud Maker disposed of the curious. And the Pool of Oblivion was an artificial azure blue – the blue of the outdoor swimming pool at Newlands Holiday Park. However, the papers had been full of the suspicious death in the pool, so it wouldn’t have required first-hand knowledge to imagine the scene.

Tom had sat beside Gerry trawling through the website, both men reading in silence. When they reached the end, Gerry asked a question.

‘Is there much of this sort of stuff on the internet?’

‘Oh yes. It’s very popular. Can be big business.’

‘It is for Chris Butcher. He owns the website along with a fancy yacht and he’s doing up a house on the waterfront.’

‘Nice one,’ said Tom with a hint of envy.

‘He claims he doesn’t do the day-to-day work on the site. Says most of it comes from this Palkinson you’re looking for and the rest is sent in by fans. Any way of telling who’s been writing the stuff that resembles the murders?’

‘I’m working on it. Give me time.’

‘Any chance Palkinson could be Butcher himself?’

Tom nodded. ‘That’s always a possibility.’

Wesley regretted that he hadn’t been quick enough to put his foot in the door like an unwanted salesman. He could hear sounds coming from within the flat of footsteps and cupboards opening.

‘Think we should get a search warrant?’ Rachel whispered.

Wesley knew she was probably right. On the other hand, Carthage could be taking advantage of the delay to destroy evidence. They needed to get inside the flat before he had the chance.

When Wesley hammered on the door the noises ceased and after a few moments the door opened a crack. This time he was swift to step forward and Carthage backed away, eyes lowered, like a repentant child standing before the headmaster’s desk.

‘I’m sorry. You took me by surprise. I had some work to finish and I didn’t want…’

‘I don’t think that applies to us,’ said Rachel, striding into the flat behind Wesley and shutting the door behind her.

‘What do you want?’ Carthage sounded frightened, like a man who knows he’s facing defeat.

‘We want to talk to you about the murder of Kassia Graylem. Last time we interviewed you, you said you’d never spoken to her. We now have a witness who says you were lying.’

‘What witness?’

‘Chris Butcher.’

Wesley wasn’t absolutely certain whether Chris Butcher had been telling the truth and he suddenly felt he was taking a gamble. ‘Did you speak to Kassia Graylem or not?’ He took Kassia’s photograph from his pocket and pushed it towards Carthage who picked it up and stared at it, his face clouding as if he was reliving bad memories.

‘You told us she was just some woman you saw in the street and sketched. That was a lie, wasn’t it? Can we take a look around?’

Carthage sank down on to the tattered velvet sofa and put his head in his hands. Wesley had rarely seen such despair in an innocent man. But he’d often seen it in the guilty. He gave Rachel a nod and she left the room. Wesley followed her and they conducted a quick search of the studio where the sketch of Kassia had been found. There were more studies of people and the cog, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The bedroom was Spartan with a single bed covered with a pristine white bedspread. Here more cases filled with dead butterflies hung on every wall. The last thing Carthage saw before he went to sleep each night were his beautiful captives imprisoned around him. Did their tiny souls cry out in his dreams, Wesley wondered before telling himself he was letting his imagination run away with him.

As he left the bedroom he noticed an old screen in the passageway, browned with old varnish and decorated with Victorian scraps. He was about to pass it but something made him stop and shift it a little to peep behind. To his surprise he saw a door. He pushed the screen out of the way and tried the handle. It was locked.

He returned to the living room where Carthage still sat motionless, as though he hadn’t moved a muscle in his absence.

‘Do you have the key to that door behind the screen?’

Wesley saw Carthage’s eyes widen in panic. He perched on the edge of his seat as though he was about to leap up and flee out of the door. But he’d have had to get past Wesley first. ‘I can always call in some officers to break it down if necessary.’

The hinted threat at damage to his property did the trick. Carthage rummaged in the pocket of his trousers and drew out a large key. Wesley took it before calling Rachel back to the living room to keep an eye on him.

When he reached the door he almost dropped the key in his eagerness to see what was behind it. The lock clicked open smoothly as if it had been oiled recently and Wesley pushed the door open. The darkness beyond was relieved only by a chink of light where the heavy curtains covering the window on the far wall didn’t quite meet. He reached in and felt for a light switch.

The light came on to reveal a spacious room painted a uniform white. A chandelier hung from an elaborate plaster ceiling rose and piles of stacked canvases leaned against the walls. Some were huge creations depicting epic subjects: battles and sacrifices; tragic lovers and dying heroes. The style was similar to that of the illustrations he’d already seen but these images were grander. And while the subject matter might have been dated, something, maybe the artist’s skill, made them vibrant and alive.

One figure featured in every picture: a beautiful young woman who took the role of bare-breasted female warrior; of a human sacrifice on the receiving end of a druid’s knife; of a weeping beauty cradling her dying lover in her arms. Kassia Graylem had played many parts in Miles Carthage’s painted fantasies.

Wesley walked round the room slowly, examining each canvas. He knew what he was looking for. Somewhere amongst all these fantastic images of Kassia Graylem there might just be a depiction of her death.

But it wasn’t there. Maybe Carthage had hidden it, or perhaps he was still working on it, his greatest masterpiece. He had lied about knowing her. What if he had killed her and posed her lifeless body in the dinghy? The ultimate sacrifice for art: the model drawn in death.

He switched off the light, locked the door and returned to the living room. Carthage was still perched on the sofa, Rachel seated opposite him on a hard dining chair stained with old paint. She looked up as Wesley came in and gave a small shake of her head. Carthage had said nothing in his absence.

‘I’ve seen the pictures,’ he said quietly.

Carthage looked up. ‘I want to tell you everything. Please.’

Wesley knew he ought to do things by the book and take him back to the station to be interviewed with the tape running but he decided to let him carry on rather than take the risk that the short journey to the interview room would break the spell.

‘Kassia was my model. My muse. When I painted her I produced my best work. I make a good living from illustrations but sometimes I need to push the boundaries without being constrained by other people’s ideas.’ He looked at Wesley, desperate to make him understand. ‘I keep the pictures of Kassia separate from my commercial work because they’re special. Sacred.’

Wesley was tempted to point out that the very act of concealment made him look suspicious but he let the man carry on.

‘As soon as I saw Kassia I recognised her.’

‘You’d known her before?’ Rachel asked.

Wesley gave her a critical look. Let him finish. She gave a moue of irritation and bowed her head.

‘No, but I felt I’d known her for years. Like we’d met in some other life.’

‘Tell us about her,’ said Wesley gently.

‘She was beautiful, inside and out. She didn’t care about the conventions.’ He swallowed. ‘But I sensed she’d had her spirit crushed out of her by someone or something. I asked her what it was but she wouldn’t say. She was so talented. A wonderful musician. She could have taken the world by storm.’

‘Why didn’t she?’

‘She’d experienced a lot of pain in her life. She’d lost her entire family. Then she trusted someone who’d used her.’

‘Was that Chris Butcher?’

His mouth fell open.

‘We’ve spoken to Chris. He’s told us all about his relationship with Kassia. It must have made you angry. He’d defiled your muse. Were you angry with him, Miles?’

‘No.’

‘Or were you angry with Kassia? Is that why you killed her?’

‘I didn’t kill her. I swear. I didn’t want her to come to any harm.’

‘You drew the picture of her lying dead in the boat.’

‘That wasn’t Kassia. That was Alicia.’

‘And the one of her body in the grave?’

Miles looked exasperated. ‘That wasn’t her either. I was illustrating the story. They aren’t my ideas.’

Wesley decided to try another approach. ‘What did Kassia tell you about her family?’

‘She said they were killed in a boating accident when she was fifteen. She never got over it.’

‘Was your relationship sexual?’

Carthage shook his head.

‘But you wished it was?’ said Rachel.

‘You don’t understand. It would have ruined everything if we had sunk to the level of rutting farmyard animals.’

It was Wesley who asked the next question. ‘You must have talked a lot while she was posing for you. What did she say about her affair with Chris?’

‘She knew better than to chatter. It would have ruined my concentration. I needed her to stay completely still. I couldn’t risk losing the moment I was trying to capture.’

Wesley didn’t know why he should be surprised at the single-minded selfishness of the artist who claimed a woman was special to him and yet took so little interest in her life – if he was telling the truth.

‘Did you send her notes?’ He took out his notebook and read. ‘“I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow. Don’t be late. I need you. Palkin needs you. You must not betray him. Please don’t let me down. If you do, I’ll come and find you.”’

Carthage nodded. ‘She said she might not be able to come but I had to paint her. You do understand?’ he said, a note of desperation in his voice.

‘Was it you she was talking to in the porch of St Leonard’s Church?’

Carthage looked puzzled. ‘No.’

‘Did you see her on the morning she died? Were you out early sketching?’

Carthage didn’t answer. His eyes flickered around the room, as if he was seeking an escape route and Wesley knew the answer to the last question without him having to say it.

Suddenly Carthage began to speak, the words emerging in a rush. ‘I didn’t plan to follow her. I was out sketching the
Maudelayne
but then I saw her leaving Chris’s boat. She was carrying her viol, you see, and it seemed strange.’

‘She’d just spent the night with Chris Butcher,’ said Rachel. To Wesley the statement seemed a little brutal.

Carthage looked away.