I Came to Find a Girl by Jaq Hazell

camera. “Here’s a woman’s face in ecstasy, this one has a wanton lolling tongue, while she’s asleep with legs akimbo – racy stuff. And paint on the floor, turps by the sink – who lives in a house like this?
    “In fact, it’s not a house; it’s a loft, a lateral conversion of an old wire factory – my studio, a live/work space. Eleven years I’ve been here, watching Spitalfields change from button-makers, hat shops and general decay to a hipster theme park, but at least there’s decent coffee to be had.
    “I’ve been working away – just got back, and Dora Maar isn’t talking to me, are you, my sweet?” He lifts a dark brown cat from the calico-covered chair. “She’s named after one of Picasso’s mistresses – the one he only ever portrayed in tears. She adopted me.” He holds the cat out in front of him, face-to-face. “She couldn’t resist my indifference – it’s a girl thing. Look at her, what a beauty, the colour of bitter chocolate.” Dora Maar wriggles out of his arms. “Very well, have it your way.”
    He selects a sketchbook and sits down to flip through the pages. “There she is, that’s Angela.” His finger traces her jawline and he holds the page up to camera. The drawing is fine, the expression sad, lonely and vulnerable. He snaps the sketchbook shut and tosses it to the floor. Moving up close, he rubs his eyes and looks into the lens. “I have to sleep. It’s been a week.” He does look rough .
    He shuts his eyes and holds his head as if in pain. And he goes to a laptop open on a desk and keys something in. “Lab rats deprived of sleep die after a matter of only weeks instead of their usual two years or so. That’s what it says. Ten days is the record without sleep, or 260 hours – but that’s without drugs or torture.”
    He walks down the corridor towards what must be his bedroom.

    Interior, Flood’s studio: the light pours in from skylights in the roof and the large warehouse windows. Two police officers are seated on paint-splattered wooden chairs. One is young and slim, the other old, fat and nearly bald, like a handsome son next to the disappointing older man he’ll become.
    “Would you like tea or coffee, gentlemen?” Flood is dressed in a fraying T-shirt and jogging bottoms.
    “Coffee, two sugars, please,” the bald policeman says.
    Flood turns towards a dark-haired young woman busy tidying piles of paper. “Rita, do the honours, there’s a love.”
    “We’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” the younger policeman says.
    “I’ve been away.”
    “Where have you been?” the bald one asks.
    “I have a show in Nottingham at the moment.”
    “You know why we’re here?”
    Flood shrugs. “It’s to do with Angela?”
    “What can you tell us about Angela Fields?” the bald officer asks.
    Flood looks away. “She was special.”
    “Go on,” the bald one says.
    “It wasn’t supposed to end like that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She had talent. But it was getting harder for her out there.”
    “She was a model?” the younger one says.
    “A model, actress, whatever, you know how it goes. She was good, though she didn’t get the breaks, not the big ones anyway – came close a couple of times, missed out in LA. It wasn’t to be and she was all washed up. Back here in London at the age of thirty-five, she thought it was all over for her. Her beauty was fading.”
    Flood goes to a chest of drawers and retrieves a slim portfolio. He passes them a series of line drawings. “This is Angela.”  
    The policemen rotate the sketches, trying to work out what it is they are looking at. “They’re very modern,” the older one says.
    “Do you have any recent photographs?”
    Flood shakes his head. “I never filmed Angela.”
    “You normally film your models?” the older officer asks.
    “I record what’s around me, whether I’m filming, sketching or taking photographs.”
    “Did you think Angela was depressed in any