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“That Eddy, the police officer,” Tom said, “suggested that he might have some kind of claim on your person. I wondered if I’d got this wrong, but I don’t think I have.”
“You haven’t,” Charlie said. “I’ve no interest in Eddy, except as a colleague …” Charlie shrugged, and then winced as a spasm of heat and pain gripped his ribs. “Fuck.”
Tom held his good hand until the spasm passed. Charlie was suddenly too cold.
“Can we go back?” he said, and Tom held his hand all the way back down to the car. Charlie didn’t want to think about how much he liked Tom, because Tom was now a college principal, and he was a copper with his name all over the internet. So he thought about Vitruvious and where he might have left his sketches.
“Did you get chance to think?” Charlie asked when Tom switched the engine on and revealed the heated seats.
“I mostly thought about you,” Tom said, “and I’ll be coming back to that issue later. But I’ve also been thinking about V’s sketches. If we’re right and he was drawing Rico and Kaylan over several days, those sketches are going to be incriminating. But they’re also going to be precious. He ought to get rid of them, but he won’t. I don’t think I’ve ever got rid of a single one of my sketchbooks. The easiest place to hide sketches is with other sketches, so they’re most likely in his studio at the college.”
“Not wherever he kept Kaylan and Rico? Or at his house?
“One of the advantages of working at the college is we get to use the facilities. He has a studio near his office. He would want the sketches with him so he could keep working on them.”
“OK. His studio then. Ideally before he gets bail.”
Tom put the car into gear, then paused. “You want me to come with you?”
“Of course. You think I’d recognise what I’m looking at?”
“Actually, I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help.”
They were only a few miles from Llanfair, and Tom concentrated on his driving. When they reached the college, he parked in the space marked Principal and helped Charlie out of the car.
“Sir John drove a vintage something-or-other, and I’m sure people expect me to upgrade now I’ve got the big job. But my humble Renault is fine for me.” Tom smiled. “Let me get a Campus Services Officer to unlock the door for us.”
Vitruvious’s studio was exactly what Charlie had imagined an artist’s studio would look like, only more so. One wall was almost entirely glass—a window looking out on to the courtyard, from a different angle to Tom’s office, but no less lovely. Canvases with pictures more or less completed stood on easels, hung on the high, white-painted walls, or were stacked against every vertical surface. On the wall at the far end, away from the door, were shelves filled with sketchbooks, and rolls of grubby-looking paper, plus a plan chest, with its big flat drawers and a filing cabinet. There was a stained sink, the draining board scattered with used cups and empty glass jars. The middle of the room was filled by a huge table covered with more glass jars, cans stuffed with paintbrushes and dozens and dozens of tubes of paint. There were plates and saucers that appeared to have been used to mix colours, piles of rags, a big can of something called ‘gesso’ and a mixture of the kind of junk Charlie had seen in Violet’s workshop. Around the table were three decidedly vintage stools, and by the window, a couch, with a set of overalls hanging over one end. Everything from the door handle to the sofa cushions was covered in blobs and smears of paint. Charlie couldn’t help running his finger over the table, feeling the textures of dried paint which must have taken years to build up, layer upon layer, blob upon blob.
The smell of paint filled the air.
Charlie took in the few finished paintings. All were of the sea, some with boats, some with the shadowy figures like the one Tom had showed him in the library. He walked closer to a picture of a small boat being tossed about on huge waves.
“I’ve seen one of these before. Part of a series?” Then he laughed. Tom looked puzzled.
“IV,” Charlie said. “The night I met you I slept in my car. In the morning, a kind man took me in and gave me some breakfast. He told me to stay with Dilys, rang her up. Anyway, he had a painting very like this, and he said it was number four in a series… which he knew because it had the Roman numerals IV on the back. IV. Inigo Vitruvious.”
Tom nodded. “That’s what he paints. You can see. He does portraits as well, but mostly seascapes.”
Charlie realised that he didn’t have any gloves, or evidence bags, or any of the things he usually had stuffed in his pockets. If the sketches were here, he needed to make this a legal search. “Wait,” he said, found his phone and called Ravensbourne. “I think we can find evidence that Vitruvious was complicit in Rico’s death,” he told her, and explained about the studio in the college. “Tom, as college principal, has let us in.”
“Do it,” Ravensbourne said.
“If we find anything, touch it as little as possible and put it on the table. I’ll clear a space.” Charlie said. “I don’t know what we’re looking for exactly, though I guess I’d recognise Kaylan if not Rico.”
“It’s mostly going to be seascapes,” Tom said. “We could pull out all the possibles and go through them together. You do the plan chest, and I’ll start on the shelves.”
The plan chest was a bust. Hundreds of sheets of paper of different weights, textures and colours filled the lower drawers. The top drawers held Vitruvious’s work: a vast range of still life, the nude model he had seen in the life drawing class, drawings of boats of all shapes and sizes, and studies of the sea and the coast. But nothing even approaching pictures of Kaylan or Rico.
Tom was systematically opening sketchbook after sketchbook, flipping through the pages and replacing them on the shelves. Charlie had little knowledge of what Vitruvious used to draw with; charcoal? pencil? pen? Whatever it was it was transferring itself to Tom’s hands, face and clothes as an all-over black dust. As Tom seemed to have a system, Charlie decided to start on the filing cabinet. That was a bust, too. Despite the mess of paint blobs and dust, Vitruvious kept his work in good order. The cabinet held files of newspaper articles, printouts from the internet, leaflets, government reports, exhibition catalogues, and pages and pages of handwritten notes. All of it was meticulously labelled: refugees-Libya, refugees-Mediterranean-rescue boats, refugees-English Channel-UK Govt policy, and so on. The files held what it said on the labels.
“Nothing,” Charlie said. His side ached, and he was ignoring the feeling of blood seeping underneath the bandages. He’d been working one-handed, and now his uninjured hand and arm ached in sympathy. He was dirty and sweaty and he had a headache from the smell of paint. He sat very gently down on the couch by the window and wished someone would bring a cup of coffee and a sticky bun. Five minutes later, Tom joined him, looking equally dishevelled and dispirited.
“He must have them at home,” Tom said.
“I’ll need to get a warrant,” Charlie said. “We’ll get one, but probably not until after he’s moved them somewhere else.”
“It was worth a try,” Tom said. “Though part of me hopes your theory is wrong. He’s a hell of an artist. Those sketchbooks are fantastic.”
