She’d told him she was heading straight back to Oxford but since then she’d had a better idea. Instead of joining the traffic crawling towards the North Circular, she pulled over and got the A–Z out of the glove box. A couple of minutes later, she swung the car round and headed east.
In her final year at the Slade, Marianne had rented studio space in Bethnal Green with a woman called Emma Hammond. Rowan had never been entirely sure whether Emma was at the Slade, too, or if she was just part of the artistic network that Marianne had plugged into when she came to London. She was a couple of years older, anyway, and made what she called ‘cloth sculptures’, bizarrely shaped fabric-covered frames that looked like tents erected in high winds by particularly dyspraxic people.
The studio had been just off Hackney Road. By the time Rowan got there, it was dark but the huge gas storage cylinders lit up against the sky told her she was getting close. She slowed down and the car behind overtook in an angry roar of acceleration.
After a couple of false starts, she found the street, recognising the 24-hour corner shop and the curry-house next door where they’d eaten together two or three times. There was a parking space outside.
The studio was a single-storey cube originally built as a garage, and its car-sized mechanised door was layered with graffiti. Emma had once made a joke about local Basquiats. On the street side, a filthy metal grille covered the single window but at the back, large glass doors opened onto a south-facing yard.
Next to the garage door was a standard-size steel one. The handwritten names in the display panel were bleached beyond legibility but Rowan pressed the buzzer and waited. A passing bus sent a tremor through a petrol-streaked puddle at the kerb. It was ten years since Marianne left – no, eleven – so Emma was highly unlikely still to be here. Could she really sell enough to pay for studio space anywhere, let alone Bethnal Green these days?
It was still worth a try. Turk had always been protective of Marianne but if there were any rumours doing the rounds, Emma would be delighted to share them. They had been friends in the beginning but the longer Emma had been around Marianne, the harder she’d found it. While she’d been stapling cloth to her wonky frames, Mazz had painted the still lifes that made up Blood Sports. The final straw came when Artforum mentioned her in the same breath as Sam Taylor-Wood. That night, fuelled by half a bottle of peach schnapps, of all things, Emma had let rip, telling Marianne she was a spoiled bitch who only got attention because her parents were famous and men wanted to fuck her.
Rowan pressed the buzzer again. It was working, at least; she could hear it. A car went by and when the blast of hip-hop faded, she heard a bolt being drawn. The door opened four inches to reveal a vertical slice of an Indian woman in pink dungarees.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Rowan said. ‘I’m trying to track down Emma Hammond.’
‘She’s not here any more, sorry.’ Her accent was pure Birmingham.
‘That’s okay; it was a long shot. I’m a friend of Marianne Glass – she and Emma used to share . . .’
The door opened several more inches. ‘I know,’ the woman said. ‘I love it that Marianne used to work here. She left some really good vibes – this is such a productive place. Look, I don’t know where Emma’s studio is these days – she had somewhere in Stepney, the last I heard – but she still works at the Speakeasy at weekends. Saturday night – you should catch her.’
‘Where is that?’
‘Just round the corner, three streets that way.’ She pointed to the main road and hooked her thumb left. ‘About halfway down. It’s not marked – hence the name – but you’ll see it. There’s a skinny window at eye height – if you look in, you’ll see the bar.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem. I’m so sorry about Marianne, by the way. I never met her but I really loved her work.’
The entrance to the Speakeasy was down a pungent alleyway at the side of the building. Going in, Rowan found a room lit entirely by candles with a long bar backed by glinting bottles. The tables were half barrels, the chairs all old and wooden with the chipped paint of which hipsters seemed so fond. At the nearest barrel, two men with beards and plaid shirts were drinking beer out of Mason jars.