I Came to Find a Girl (26 page)

I couldn’t concentrate on anything apart from that short newspaper story announcing Flood’s death. I wanted to know more. There wasn’t enough detail and I wished they had a picture. I’d like to see him as a cold, grey cadaver on a metal bed. I wanted proof.

From the train window I watched the city give way to the suburbs, and smiled.
He’s dead. Call Kelly. Call Tamzin. Tell everyone the good news
.

Back at my flat I flicked between news channels, watching them repeat the same information, reiterating what I already knew.
Tell me more
.

The following morning I bought several newspapers.
Will there be obituaries?
I tried to remember whether other notorious criminals made the obituaries column. Well, whatever, Flood certainly did. There he was towards the back of
The Guardian
. His life filled half a page, along with a photo of the day he left Thames Magistrates Court, convicted of possession of Class A drugs, together with a still from
Aftermath
: me naked, face down on the bed.

Jack Flood: Convicted Murderer, Sex Offender and Controversial Artist

Jack Flood, convicted serial killer, rapist, ex-partner of pop star Pax, and one of the most talked-about artists of his generation, has died in prison aged 33 from heart failure after a prolonged hunger strike.
 

“Jack Flood has died for his art,” his art dealer and friend Marcus Hedley said in a statement read outside HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, west London, following the announcement of Flood’s death. “After a protracted hunger strike ‘in the name of art’ Jack Flood has died. Jack felt his treatment in prison, which ultimately curtailed his work, was inhumane and left him no choice but to protest through the rejection of all sustenance.

“Jack wanted it to be known that he was innocent of all charges. He was a great artist and friend, and I hope to soon be able to show his final work,
The More I Search the Less I Find
– a piece raising serious discussion about celebrity and the role of artists today.”

Jack Flood was born in Colchester, Essex, to a Forces family. His father William rose to the level of sergeant while his Portuguese mother Adriana stayed at home to care for their only child. Flood’s young life was rocked by his mother’s numerous affairs. When Flood was four she temporarily left the marital home, moving in with a neighbour, only to later return after the relationship faltered. Two years later his parents divorced but this time Adriana took Jack with her and they moved to London.

A self-absorbed child, Flood later said he found an escape from childhood loneliness through art and went on to study at Goldsmith’s College, London, before going on to complete a Masters at the Royal College of Art. His postgraduate show looking at the key issue of abandonment was hailed a triumph, leading to its inclusion in the infamous
Young Guns
exhibition at Visionary in 1999.

It was there that he met dealer Marcus Hedley who championed Flood’s use of mixed media and edgy subject matter. With his backing, Flood set up a studio with fellow artists, Matt Piper and Dean Randall and exhibited regularly at East Sound Gallery where he gained a loyal following.

In 2004 Flood was shortlisted for the Prospect Prize and was given the opportunity to exhibit in his first one-man show
Now That You’ve Gone Were You Ever There?
at the Future Factory in Nottingham. Again it looked at abandonment, loss and rejection, and resulted in Flood being nominated for that year’s Turner Prize, which was eventually won by Simon Starling.

Despite this disappointment, Flood was chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale where his new work,
She Had Her Whole Life Ahead of Her
, was first shown. Flood had moved towards video art and his exploration of urban degradation, alienation and loss proved controversial with some critics saying he’d crossed the line and the work was unsuitable for public display. This didn’t deter his greatest admirer, the collector and gallerist Nicholas Drake, who later exhibited the work in its entirety at the opening of Drake Gallery, London.

Flood exhibited globally, and as his chosen subject matter grew darker, questions of decency were raised. Were his videos too close to the mark? And even though he insisted all his models or ‘muses’ gave consent – should there be parameters of taste and decency placed on how the female body is used and represented in art?

His private life also came under scrutiny after the suicide of his ex-girlfriend Angela Fields, a model and actress, who died from a drug overdose on the eve of his first solo show. Their relationship had ended two months beforehand and Flood later admitted that they had briefly met earlier that day and that Angela had hoped it could be rekindled.
 

“Models and muses tend to have a limited life-span,” he said, in an interview with Art Today that was later used in court as evidence against him.
 

In early 2006 Flood was accused of rape. A woman claimed personal items used in the video piece
The Last Haunting
belonged to her and were taken without her prior knowledge or consent after she was drugged and assaulted. Police immediately followed up the complaint and Flood’s studio was searched and his computer seized. Seventeen suspect films were found encrypted on the hard disc. Flood was charged and later convicted of three counts of murder and seventeen counts of rape and indecent assault.

Flood, maintaining his innocence to the end, claimed it was pure coincidence that three women who had been found murdered had worked for him as models, and that they were all part of the long tradition of the artist and his muse and the sometimes questionable line between work and play.

Flood felt so strongly that he had been wrongly accused that he went on hunger strike, demanding his case be reassessed and that full artistic human rights be given to all prisoners. He went without food for thirty days and water for five before dying from heart failure.

His father William died in 1990. His mother Adriana survives him.

I shoved the newspaper across the carpet towards Tamzin. “Heart failure?” I said. “He had heart failure from the word go.”

Tamzin took a bite of toast, as she read
the paper. “Pretty young for a heart attack – suppose the hunger strike caused it,” she said.

“I don’t believe in the death penalty but if some murdering bastard wants to do away with himself, let him,” I said. “It’s probably the best thing he’s ever done.”

It took me all of forty-eight hours to realise Flood’s death was not a good thing, as he rose from the dead like some evil Jesus as the acres of newsprint about him began to multiply out of control. After the obituaries, there were endless features disseminating Flood’s every moment as writers attempted to place his life, work and death in context. He was important, he had to be, they said so, and more famous than ever, famous for all the wrong reasons, but famous all the same. I had to face it, the man whose name I could hardly bear to say was not going to go away, but at least as a victim I remained anonymous, my identity protected. Or was it?

There were legs outside our barred window.

“Don’t answer it,” I told Tam, when the doorbell went. I’d already told two journalists where to go.

Tam went to the door and shouted, “
Fuck off!
” through the letterbox.

“Miss Jackson,” a man’s face was at the barred window. “Can you tell me your thoughts on Flood’s death? Just a few words, then I’ll disappear.”

“Close the curtains.” I backed myself up against the far wall by the kitchenette.

Tam pulled at the curtain cord, drawing together the four sections of limp beige fabric. “There – that made him disappear.”

I could emigrate. It was my only option, or so I joked. Move elsewhere, somewhere, anywhere where Flood wasn’t known – but where exactly? And what would I do? There’s not much demand for unsuccessful artists.

Block it out, it’s the only way – avoid newspapers, magazines and certain TV programmes. Keep your head down, work hard, do the waitress thing as much as necessary and hope for the break you so obviously need and deserve.

Twelve months on I thought, or rather I allowed myself to think, that my luck was about to change, when I arrived back from a particularly bad night at Chihuahua’s to find a letter on my mat, inside my front door, the name DRAKE stamped across the envelope.

I knew they represented Flood’s estate and it could mean only one thing but still I let myself fantasise it was otherwise.

They want to see me – they must like my work.

Forty-three

I filmed as much as I could the day I went to Drake Gallery. Starting as I left my flat, I saw two skinny women holding Starbucks coffee cups enter the sauna/massage parlour with blacked-out windows across the road. I shot the back of them; heads bowed below the neon sign flashing ‘Sauna’.

At Old Street, I passed three cars turning left, their indicators flashing in a pattern crying out to be set to music. I stopped to film a short sequence, before turning onto Brick Lane where I photographed a discarded leopard-print umbrella sheath lying among leaves.

There was so much of interest en route; it was almost a shame to arrive. I paused to take in the building, an old brown-brick warehouse, cleaned up and repointed with shiny steel letters spelling out DRAKE across the side, and a doorstep inscribed ‘Seeing is Believing’.

“Mind your back, sweetheart.” Two men carrying an oversized wrapped canvas waited for me to vacate the doorway. Then two more arrived with a crate on wheels.

I was in the way and felt like I should go and forget all about it.
But I’ve come all that way
, I reasoned.
I may as well go in and see what it’s all about
.

“Drake, London, is a leading commercial gallery representing both international names and younger innovative artists.” I read the blurb and then the entire leaflet from the Perspex box on the countertop as I waited for Little Miss Ponytail to put her copy of
Heat
aside and get off the phone.

“Anyway, it’s all good; gotta go, Gracie – text me – bye.” Ponytail looked my way, past the display of blood-orange flowers. “Can I help you?”

I told her my name and who I was there to see.

“You have an appointment?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t just turn up.”

“You’d be surprised.” She checked her book. “Mia Jackson?” I nodded. “Can you sign in, and take a seat upstairs on the mezzanine level.” She pointed to a flight of concrete steps.

The mezzanine was a brutalist concrete overhang furnished with one immaculate, white leather, Florence Knoll button-backed sofa – a design classic, I thought, but I didn’t want to sit down. I’d made an effort, worn a black jacket with a nipped-in waist, smart trousers, a pin-tuck blouse and my red wedge shoes, but I didn’t feel comfortable.

Going to the edge of the balcony, I looked down on a large white room, where a brunette in a sleeveless black dress was staring at four wall-mounted plasma TV screens. “What’s going on?” she shouted. “It’s supposed to be continuous.”

The screens were blank. The woman folded her arms and tapped her right foot. She turned to leave, her toned upper thigh momentarily visible.

Meanwhile the top left-hand screen fired up behind her with the profile of a beautiful young blonde – perfectly still, apart from the occasional blink. A female voiceover began: “I never go out with any money.” The words were out of synch with the blonde’s slowly parting lips, the voice educated but regionally nondescript.

The brunette in the black dress turned back to watch, and the voiceover continued: “None of us carry money. Well, I might take a fiver but never more than that, there’s no need.”

The screen diagonally below came to high-definition life with an image of a naked woman; face down on a satin bedspread. The featured room is dark, the shade of the naked woman’s hair unclear.
But I know it’s me. It’s that hotel, that night I was drugged.

Screen two at the top lit up with the same blonde – again in profile – but this time facing the other way as if she were talking to herself.

“My mate Natalie never buys a drink,” head two said.

Head one laughed. “She’s a right slag.”

The heads froze as the final screen filled with an image of discarded underwear.

“I never go out with any money,” the voiceover repeated itself.

The film had started again – the continuous loop successfully reinstated.

“We’re back in business,” the brunette said.

Marcus Hedley in his signature horn-rimmed glasses and a purple shirt entered the gallery. He strode across the polished concrete floor and whispered in the brunette’s ear. They both turned and looked up at me, standing at the railing above on the mezzanine floor.

“Cut the video,” the brunette shouted.

“I thought you wanted it on all day,” a back-room voice replied.

“Just cut the video, Oscar.” She looked back at me. “You must be Mia Jackson? I’ll be right with you.” She joined me on the mezzanine floor. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She smiled, without crinkling her eyes. “Amanda Darling.” She offered her manicured hand – her handshake weak, like an empty glove. “Let’s go somewhere more private.” She led the way through a side door to a larger space with massive windows and several huge sofas in citrus colours. I stared at the blank walls.

“Where’s the art?” I said.

“We’re between shows. We sell everything – in fact, Jack used to call Marcus the Alchemist.”

She said the wrong thing.

“Jack James, the performance artist, that is,” she said. “You know the one?”

I knew who she meant all right.

“We’re so pleased you could come.” Amanda changed the subject. “We all think it’s so important.” She was being nice, or trying to be. “Ah, here he is,” she said, as Marcus Hedley joined us. We shook hands.
 

“Stunning shoes.” He peered down through his horn-rimmed glasses at my round-toed red wedges. “Girls get to wear such wonderful footwear.”

When I no longer recognised my feet, I finally realised something was wrong. My boots in that hotel room
–
and I am lost all over again. Not now, I can’t think about that now.