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.So I let him take me around, and we met Dodworth, who just glared and looked suitably tortured.Tait saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he suggested I’d be interested in something another of his artists was completing in the workshops.We went through and there was no one there, just this extraordinarily lifelike sculpture of a naked child—Tracey Rudd.The artist was a woman—Wilkes, I think, is her name.We were examining it when Tait’s secretary came in and said he had a call from New York or somewhere, and he asked me to take a seat and wait for him to return.I continued to look at the sculpture.It was quite uncanny, extremely disturbing in its realism, and, alone in that room, I found it impossible to resist touching it.There was a soft down of blonde hair on the skin of the arms, I recall.God knows how she did it.Anyway, that’s what I’m doing in that photograph there, the naked child kneeling on the table.It’s a statue, not the real thing, though you couldn’t tell.’‘Poppy Wilkes’s statues are always at the wrong scale,’ Brock objected, ‘very large or very small.’‘Not this one.That’s what made it so unnerving.It was the little girl, exactly true to life.Tait jokingly called it “pornographic realism”, and he was right.You felt intrusive, even unclean, just looking at it, so I left the damn thing alone and went and sat down as Tait had suggested.Then the most extraordinary thing happened.The child herself appeared in the doorway.I found I had to look back at the statue just to make sure it was still there.The girl was wearing a sort of dressing gown, as you see there, and she was hesitant, as if she had to do something and felt awkward about it.I said hello, and she suddenly rushed forward, hopped on my knee and planted a kiss on my cheek.I was dumbfounded.Then she jumped down again and rushed away.I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was all about.I never understood it until now.Wylie must have put her up to it somehow.’Brock let the silence hang for a moment, remembering Sundeep Mehta’s joke about the man who met a frog in the street.‘Why didn’t you mention this before when I asked you?’Beaufort sighed.‘Embarrassed, I suppose.How could I explain it, without sounding guilty? Impossible not to say either too much or too little.I opted for too little.’‘As you say, Sir Jack—an unreliable witness.So what about this last photograph?’The judge screwed his nose in disgust at the image of the man and the child on the bed.‘I have no idea how he did that, but it certainly isn’t me.That’s all I can tell you.’ He gave a sudden start, then a shiver.‘Are you cold?’ Brock asked, although the room was quite warm.‘No.I just had that feeling, you know, of someone walking over my grave.I’ve been rather naive, haven’t I? I assumed just now that Wylie was behind all this, but perhaps he wasn’t, at least, not on his own.’‘Abbott, do you mean?’‘No, I was thinking of someone else—Fergus Tait.Perhaps it was he who persuaded that child to come in to see me after he left for his alleged phone call.’‘Why would he do that?’‘I don’t know—to persuade me to buy his damned artworks, I suppose.I’ve heard his business is in financial trouble.Perhaps Wylie suggested that I might be interested in the girl.’Brock looked sceptical.‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’‘No, I can’t think of anything else.You don’t believe me, do you? Am I a suspect?’‘I’d like you to provide a DNA sample and fingerprints,’ Brock said, and switched off the tape.Then he leaned forward and said softly, ‘Give me the name of your friend, Sir Jack.The one you paid eight hundred pounds to protect.I need corroboration, otherwise I’ll have no choice but to go on with this.’‘Sorry.’ The judge looked bleak.‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]