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“Hold that thought for when the papers get hold of the cash-for-places story,” Charlie said, and slid down on the sofa to rest his head on Tom’s shoulder.
From which angle he could see the large cardboard folder taped to the underside of the table.
29
Found
Thursday 1pm
Tom crawled under the table, photographed everything and unstuck the folder—no more than two sheets of card tied together with string, encasing a series of drawings. They cleared a space on the table and opened the folder. The drawings began with portraits of Kaylan and Rico. Charlie hadn’t seen Rico in life, but he had seen a lot of Kaylan, and Vitruvious had captured him perfectly. As well as portraying Kaylan’s appearance, Charlie saw Kaylan’s sense of entitlement and his disdainful arrogance. Charlie stared at one image in particular. It showed the Kaylan he had seen yesterday, the man who could hold a gun steady, and who could threaten to use it so believably. Vitruvious had seen that in Kaylan and had the talent to put it on paper. By contrast Rico had a gentle face. Vitruvious had drawn him as sweet and innocent, quiet and thoughtful. From these pictures, it wasn’t hard to see why their fellow students preferred Rico to Kaylan.
“I want to photograph each one,” Charlie said, and they moved things off the table so Charlie could get a reasonable picture on his phone.
Charlie and Tom turned the pages. More portraits of the two students. As the series progressed, their clothes became creased and dirty. Their hair lost its style, and stubble showed on their faces. Lack of sleep showed as dark rings beneath the eyes.
Halfway through the pile of drawings things changed still further, and not for the better.
“They’re suffering,” Tom said, looking at the two faces with horror. “They’re ill. He must have stopped giving them anything to drink. I looked it up. You can go weeks without food, but you have to keep drinking.”
“If it’s hot, dehydration kills in a couple of days,” Charlie said. He knew what was coming. Rico was going to die, and Vitruvious’s meticulous drawings would record his death, and the decay of his body.
They stood with the pile of drawings in front of them on the table, staring at an image of Kaylan, with sunken, haunted eyes and chapped lips. Everything about him looked dry, almost desiccated.
“We did lock the door?” Charlie asked and Tom nodded. “I’m going to ring Ravensbourne, and then I want you to go and sit down while I photograph the rest. It’s my job. You shouldn’t be here at all.” Charlie knew he should send Tom out of the studio, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He needed to know there was a sane, kind, living person in the room with him. Which didn’t mean he was going to let him see those drawings. Tom was having enough nightmares already.
Ravensbourne listened for thirty seconds and said, “I’ll ring you back. Don’t leave.” Charlie carried on turning the pages and taking photographs. Tom didn’t move from his side, despite what Charlie had said, and Charlie was glad of it. As the series continued, Rico was pictured naked but for his shirt. Tom ran a finger over the gentle face, sometimes shown with closed eyes, and sometimes with his hands held out in supplication and his face crying out for relief. The drawings shrieked of despair and the knowledge of impending death. Charlie tried not to look as Rico’s life dimmed and then ended. With horror, Charlie saw that Rico’s dead body had been posed as it lay to suggest that it was hanging over the side of a boat. In another image, a background of water and a pebbled beach were sketched in around limbs stiffened and swollen. In yet another, Kaylan was posed as if leaning over something, or someone. Tom put one picture above the other and Charlie could see that together, there would be a drawing of one man tending to the dead body of his friend. The drawings were brilliant, and perhaps that was the worst part of all.
As Charlie photographed, he focussed on a single line or two, letting the rest blur as he clicked. His tears, and Tom’s, fell freely, their hands wiping them away to keep the pages clean. By the time he’d finished, Ravensbourne still hadn’t called back. He left the drawings, all now face down, on the table, and went to sit with Tom on the sofa.
There was nothing to say. His throat held a stone blocking him from speaking, a stone that would burst into a flood of howling despair if he tried to utter a word. He sent all the pictures to Ravensbourne, with a warning, and they waited, holding onto each other as a barrier against the evil in the room. Tom said, “Vitruvious would never have been able to show these. Even he must have known that.”
Charlie shook his head, as he struggled to get the words past the obstruction in his chest. “You’re wrong. I’m sorry, Tom, but you’re wrong. There are people out there who would pay for these images and pay well.”
Tom nodded slowly. “Kaylan was part of it, he had to be,” he said. “They both let Rico die. You can see that Kaylan looks dreadful, but he doesn’t get any worse. He must have felt like shit, but he drank enough to stay alive.”
Inigo Vitruvious and Kaylan Sully: two people who should never have met.
The noise of Charlie’s phone shattered the silence.
“They were letting him go, on bail,” Ravensbourne said without introduction. “But he’s back in his cell, and I told his solicitor to fuck off and come back when we called. Forensics are coming to you, and uniforms to keep the place secure. I’ve sent the pictures to Hector Powell for his ideas. We need to know where those boys were kept and where Rico died. If they were kept in the college, it’ll have to close while we search it. All of it.”
“They weren’t held here, boss,” Charlie said.
“We’ll talk about it when I get there,” she said and ended the call.
“Please, boss, just look. Close this block if you must, but not the whole college.” Charlie didn’t know when he’d become an advocate for Llanfair College of Art, only that he had. Without it the town would die like so many others, the young people leaving for Cardiff or England as the work dried up. The boost provided by the few hundred students wasn’t much, but it was more than some other small towns had. He didn’t want to see the beautiful building turned into flats, or more likely, left to rot, while councils, the Welsh Government and the National Lottery argued about what to do with it. Tom’s tenure as college principal would end in scandal and failure. More to the point, he was sure Kaylan and Rico hadn’t been kept there.
“Kaylan turned up at Brocklehurst Police Station,” he said. “A few miles from where Vitruvious’s father lives. Hayden James said the previous owner of his flat, who had a Vitruvious painting, moved to somewhere near Manchester to be near family. We should find out, at least. Vitruvious has one connection in the area, maybe more. No one would think to look for them near Brocklehurst, whereas people are coming and going here all the time.”
Ravensbourne wasn’t buying it; he could see that. “It had to be somewhere he could keep them locked up, where they couldn’t shout for help.” Charlie was pleading now. “They would have been heard if they were here, and the Campus Services Officers have keys to every room.”
“If you were me, Charlie,” Ravensbourne said, “you would want every room in this place searched. Kaylan was found in Brocklehurst, but Rico was found here.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’ll get someone to talk to your Hayden, see if he knows any more about where this woman went, and we’ll have a good look at Vitruvious’s father, and his own house. But we’re doing a proper search here, too.”
In the end, it was Tom who provided the solution. “Next week is half term,” he said. “We’ll close early. Give everyone an extra couple of days off. Go through this place with a fine-tooth comb, Detective Chief Inspector. There will be no more cover-ups here.”
Ravensbourne told Charlie to leave, and he went, though only on the promise of being included in the evening briefing.
Tom walked with him back to Dilys’s. Their steps were slow, weariness dragging at their feet. The house was empty and quiet, with only the hum of the fridge to disturb the peace. Tom helped him up the steep stairs without asking, and then followed Charlie into the bedroom and closed the door. Dilys had made the bed and folded the dragon pyjamas on top of the duvet, waiting for Charlie’s return. Except he wasn’t the same person who had left the room this morning, and after what he had seen, he wasn’t sure he ever would be.
