The Victoria Vanishes Part 6

'What are you talking about?'

'If we imagine for a moment that there really is someone out there who has struck at two innocent women in crowded public places without anyone else even noticing their deaths, we have a real problem on our hands.' May knew that one of the less-frequently invoked remits of the PCU was to 'ensure the maintenance of public comfort and confidence in the free and open areas of the city.' In other words, if someone dangerous was running loose in any building or public s.p.a.ce to which the residents of London enjoyed open access, it could undermine their faith in the police, and ultimately, the state, creating scenes of public disorder. It had happened many times before in London's past.

'You think the Home Office would come down on us?' asked Land, suddenly uncomfortable.

'Like a ton of bricks,' confirmed May. 'Leslie Faraday and his sinister boss Kasavian are still angry about us leaping their last hurdle.' The HO had booked a royal visit to the unit, hoping that the detectives would make fools of themselves by incurring the disapproval of a member of the monarchy. Instead, the detectives had seen off their common enemy and resoundingly silenced their critics.

'I'll make the recommendation.' Land sighed. 'You'd better brief the others so we can hit the ground running.'

'Whatever you think best, sir.' May left the room with an inward smile, thankful that Land had failed to effect a transfer from the unit.

'What do you mean, it's not here?' said Bryant with indignation. 'Where's it gone?'

'It was on the bar all evening, but I don't remember seeing it when we closed up,' said the barmaid of the Devereux.

'Good G.o.d, woman, it contained the poor man's corporeal remnants. It was a cremation urn.'

'Oh. We thought you'd won it at bingo. Well, one of your lot must have taken it.'

'You opened the bar to the general public at ten, didn't you? It could have been anyone.'

A roomful of police officers,' the barmaid sniffed. 'Not much of an advert, is it? Rather calls your observational skills into question.'

'Don't you start.' He threw her a card. 'You'd better call me if you hear anything.'

Back on the streets of Holborn, he reread his notes on Naomi Curtis and wondered if there was really much likelihood of the two cases being connected. The only reason he had filed a note on Curtis was because she had died in the wrong place. It was inconceivable to imagine what had brought her from a vicarage in Sevenoaks to a smoky Holborn pub at the age of fifty-four, unless she was in some kind of trouble and had arranged to meet someone inside.

Similarly, Carol Wynley had been heading home to take care of her housebound partner when she had chosen to deviate from her route. Perhaps he had muddled the streets, and she had gone into a different puba"the Skinner's Arms on Judd Street was also on a corner and he must have pa.s.sed ita" but nevertheless she had placed herself in a situation that led to a skull fracture.

A phone call to the Swedenborg Society confirmed both women's employment records. Carol Wynley had taken up her predecessor's position, but they had overlapped by a month. Bryant made a notea"in his regular spindly handwriting this timea"for Kershaw to check whether traces of sedative had also been found in Naomi Curtis's body, and for Longbright to check past Dead Diaries for any other cases with similar circ.u.mstances.

Most murders were committed without the involvement of logical reasoning. In one of his notebooks, Bryant had jotted down a quote from Gary Gilmore, the first man to be executed after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, who stated that 'murder is just a thing of itselfa"a ragea"and rage is not reason.' In his experience, Bryant had found most murders to have been committed in states of rage, but the PCU had been created to investigate those cases which fell be-yond the normal parameters of violent death.

A vague idea began to form in his brain, one requiring proof that Carol Wynley had entered The Victoria Cross public house alone on the night she met her death. He felt sure that May would be able to get an investigation launched, but had no clear idea of how to proceed, not while a question mark remained over his ability to recall events clearly. He needed to be positive that his deductive capability was not diminished.

The third thud dislodged a framed photograph of Colin Bimsley's father, sending it to the floor in a tinkle of gla.s.s. Bimsley reached down and gingerly removed shards from the monochrome portrait. The grim-faced young man who peered out of the picture between chin strap and helmet peak seemed to belong to another era, possibly early Victorian. In fact, the photograph had been taken in 1958. The old police uniforms were c.u.mbersome belted tunics with steel b.u.t.tons and metal identification numbers on the epaulettes. The outfit commanded authority from the criminal fraternity because it linked directly to the past, reminding one of Sir Robert Peel, of guards and dragoons and even a knight's armour, but my G.o.d, it must have been uncomfortable to wear.

'What on earth is he doing in there?' Bimsley asked.

'Putting up shelves,' said Meera, 'to house his collection of law enforcement rule books. Renfield is planning to report all infringements the unit commits, no matter how minor.'

'Janice hates the idea of sharing her office with him. I think she's convinced he's got his own private agenda.' Bimsley carefully wrapped the broken gla.s.s with tape before placing it in the bin, but still managed to nick himself.

'I don't see why everyone's so down on Renfield,' said Meera hotly. 'He's trying to bring a bit of old-school discipline to the unit.'

'I might have known you'd support him. Renfield hasn't the faintest understanding of how this place works. All he'll do is spy and sabotage and screw things up.'

The hammering recommenced. Bimsley peered over the top of a charge sheet at Mangeshkar. For months now he had made a fool of himself over her, and just as they were starting to find common ground, a fresh source of disagreement had sprouted between them. When he thought of all the time he had wasted trying to win her over, he could have kicked himself.

Let her side with Renfield, he thought. What the h.e.l.l do I care? Why did I ever think she was even remotely interested? Since the day she swaggered in here ordering me about, I've gone out of my way to be as nice as possible. I've been barking up the wrong tree. There are plenty of decent women I could date. I'm all right, me. Turning to the evening paper, his eye was taken by an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a speed-dating club, meeting tomorrow night. He threw her an angry glance and jotted down the details.

April looked at the picture she had drawn from Bryant's careful description. It showed a public house with cream tiles and a wrought-iron lantern over the only entrance, and a hanging sign with a depiction of a medal on it. The chipped brown paintwork of the double doors had been covered with bra.s.s hand-plates. The bar beyond the windows was shallow and high, with a large clock at the centre adorned with Roman numerals.

She glanced across at the image Bryant had found in his book of public houses. The building was identical, down to the smallest detail, except that the original sign featuring a side portrait of Queen Victoria had been replaced.

What bothered her most, though, was the clock. She could read a single word on its face: Newgate. The hands were set at a quarter past seven, the same time Bryant had given her from his memory of the night. After searching architectural Web sites, she had located several other maps and sketches, all from different angles, showing the saloon and public bars with different interiors, in different stages of its history, but not one of them showed the clock. The photograph in Bryant's possession was the only one to feature it, which suggested that he had previously noted the picture in the book and subconsciously copied it. April's grandfather John May had taught her to always trust his partner, even when Bryant's theories seemed maddeningly obscure, but for the first time doubt was starting to creep into her mind.

'Do you remember where you put your socks, Mr Bryant?' asked Alma Sorrowbridge. The Antiguan former landlady stood before him blocking the way, her meaty hands placed on broad hips.

Bryant eyed her warily over the top of his reading gla.s.ses. In matters of the home, a woman in a pinafore was not to be tri-fled with. 'I imagine they're in the laundry basket, where I place them at the end of each evening,' he answered with some care, knowing this could be a trick question.

'I ask because they were not, in fact, in the laundry basket. They were inside my oven, and I am seized with the urge to ponder what they might be doing there.'

Bryant thought for a moment. Are you sure?'

'On the top shelf above my cornbread, three navy blue pairs.'

'I think I must have washed them, and wanted to dry them quickly.'

'So you grilled them. You've been getting very forgetful lately. You didn't tell me my sister called last night.'

'That's because I don't like her,' said Bryant. 'If I tell you she rings, you'll call and invite her over, and then I'd have to hide in my room for hours while you two bake and sing hymns. Do you really think I've been more forgetful lately?'

Alma detected a note of concern in her old tenant's voice. 'You've had a lot on your mind. And you're always stuffing your head with history from those old books you read. There's only so much room in a person's brain.'

'I saw a murder victim in a place that doesn't even exist anymore,' he admitted miserably. And I lost our coroner's ashes. I was entrusted with looking after them, but forgot to take them home with me at the end of the wake.'

'You run a unit full of detectives,' said Alma. 'John's granddaughter, she's a clever one. Give her the job of finding them.'

Bryant smiled. 'What would I do without you?' he asked.

'You'd be getting evicted by Camden's health and safety officers, and run out of this house by neighbours with burning torches, for all the experiments you've kept them awake with and the disgusting smells you've made,' Alma told him. 'Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and start solving something.'

'It's all very well for you,' Bryant wheedled, 'you remember every single thing that ever happened to you, particularly if it was my fault. You do it so you can bear the grudge forever. But my brain cells aren't like yours; they're like footprints on wet sand. They only last for the length of a single tide. I need to improve my memory.'

Alma pushed past the overstuffed armchairs and pulled a card from behind her ebony troll letter rack. 'Try calling this number,' she said. 'Mrs Mandeville is an old friend of mine from the church. She cured the late Mr Sorrowbridge's smoking habit, and replaced the springs in his ottoman.'

Bryant read the card: KISKAYA MANDEVILLE.

Herbal Remedies Organic Therapies Hypnotism Sofas Repaired 'She sounds like my kind of woman,' he said, brightening up and reaching for the phone.

14.

DISPOSAL.

Just after ten o'clock on Tuesday evening, a chill drenching rain began to fall on Fleet Street. Once, the pavements would still have been crowded with couriers, journalists, printers, picture editors, typesetters, artists and accountants, and the lights of the buildings would have formed unbroken ribbons of luminescence from the Strand to St Paul's, but now the thoroughfare was almost deserted. The great rolls of paper that had been brought by barge up to the presses of Tudor Street had been moved to the eastern hinterland of the city.

Mrs Jocelyn Roquesby tilted the address she had printed out and tried to read it without her gla.s.ses. By doing so, she walked straight past her destination, and was forced to back up before the black-framed windows of the little Georgian house that housed the Old Bell tavern. The pub's rear door opened out into the courtyard of St Bride's Church. The cramped corners and angled nooks of its interior had barely changed in centuries. Mrs Roquesby's fingers itched to punch out a number on her cell phone, at least to tell her daughter where she was going, but she had promised not to call anyone.

She scanned the front bar, then moved to the rear of the pub, wondering if she had somehow managed to miss her con-tact. She had been surprised to receive the text message, and would normally have suggested a morning coffee in the local Starbucks, especially now that she was trying to give up alcohol. However, a tone of anxiety in its phrasing had struck a chord, and she had replied with an agreement to meet in one of their former haunts.

She looked around the pub with a growing sense of disappointment. This place used to be packed, she thought. Now there were just a few lone drinkers at the bar, a couple of elderly tourists studying maps, a pair of snogging teenagers. She was a few minutes early, so she pulled up a bar stool in the corner and without thinking, ordered herself a vodka and tonic.

Arthur Bryant stood on the corner of Whidbourne Street and studied the supermarket opposite, kicking at the kerb with a scuffed Oxford toe cap. The Victoria Cross had stood here for the best part of a hundred years, casting its welcoming saffron light onto the paving stones, its revellers wavering home to their wives at elevena"fewer women, and certainly no single ones of decent repute, would have been out drinking in the early yearsa"or perhaps there had been a lock-in, with the heavy velvet drapes drawn tight to eliminate all light on the street. There the drinkers would have remaineda"so easy to forget the world outsidea"until the landlord decided they'd all had enough. Ain't you got no 'omes to go to?' he would call jocularly. 'You're going to cop a right earful from your missus when you fall through the front door, Alf.'

Bryant remembered having to pull his father out of virtually every pub in the East End, Bow, Whitechapel, Wapping and Canning Town. It had surprised no-one when he died young. Probably a blessing, his mother had said when the old man pa.s.sed on, your father was never a happy man. But she had stood by him, despite the pleas from her side of the family to leave and take her son away. Parents rode out the most h.e.l.lish storms for the sake of their children in those days.

He looked back at the corner, and the image of the public house shimmered into points of light that faded to reveal the blank bright windows of the Pricecutter Food & Wine Store, its Indian proprietor staring dully at the sports pages of The Sun. Rain pattered against the gla.s.s, plastered with faded advertis.e.m.e.nts for Nivea moisturising cream, Ernest & Julio Gallo wine, Thomson Holidays, Zippo's Circus. The past had realigned itself into the present, and nothing was in its rightful place.

The girl behind the bar had just called last orders. Mrs Roquesby leaned back and listened to the song that was softly playing on the pub's CD deck. The Everly Brothers, wasn't it? All I Have to Do Is Dream.'

She wanted to sleep, but not dream. Dreams too easily turned into nightmares. Tired, she rested her head against the wall and listened to the lyrics. She had been stood up, but had at least found herself a drinking companion, although now he seemed to have disappeared, and she just wanted to let the night slide away into warm, wood-dark oblivion. A bee-sting, she thought, scratching at the back of her neck, or an insect bite, odd that they should be around so early in the year...

When Mrs Roquesby began to slide majestically from her stool, Lenska, the barmaid, thought she would snap awake, but she kept going all the way to the carpet, landing hard on her knees. Running around from behind the counter, Lenska pulled at the lady, but was unable to wake her. Mrs Roquesby's head fell back and her wig slid off, revealing the spa.r.s.e, wispy grey hair of a head that had undergone cancer therapy.

Lenska loosened the collar of her blouse and tried to find a heartbeat. She looked around for help, but the bar had cleared since she had rung last orders. A thick yellow froth was leaking from the mouth of the woman in her arms. Lenska knew a little about first aid, but this was beyond her, so she laid the woman down and ran to call for an ambulance.

Dan Banbury saw the world from a different perspective, usually starting at floor level. Gravity required everything to fall. Dust and skin flakes, hairs and sweat drops, everything sifted down through the atmosphere to land on the ground. Any movement stirred up the air, shifting molecules in swirls and eddies that resembled hurricane patterns on weather charts, and tumbling particles cascaded from one resting place to the next. You could track them if you were able to define the direction of the air current. Sometimes particle movement would lead you back towards the source of a disturbance; it was like hunting in reverse.

Banbury's long-suffering wife was all too aware of his enthusiasm for exploring the detritus of death, as it took the form of ruined trousers and jacket sleeves, and since her hus-band hated buying new clothes, she was forever racing to the dry cleaners during her lunch break. At that very moment, he was sprawled on the carpet of the Old Bell public house, pushing strips of sticky tape along the underside of the counter, which appeared not to have been cleaned since Boswell propped up the bar.

'I'm glad you managed to keep Bryant away for once,' he muttered through clenched teeth, for he was holding a pencil torch in his mouth. 'It's a mystery how he always manages to make a mess of any crime scene.'

'He's gone to see someone about improving his memory,' John May explained. 'He forgot the urn containing Finch's ashes, and now he's feeling guilty. He got a crack on the noggin and lost his memory a while back. I'm wondering if he's suffered some kind of a relapse. Are you getting anything down there?'

'Far too much, that's the problem. It'll take chromatography to sort out the tangle of dead cells that have drifted down here. Forensically speaking, this sort of place is my worst nightmare. Dog hairs, crisps, meat pies, beer, mud flecks, skin, mites, a few mouse droppings, it's like Piccadilly Circus.'

'You're sure she was alone?' May asked the barmaid.

'She ordered a drink and sat in the corner,' said Lenska. 'I can show you the receipt.'

'So she was here by herself for about forty minutes. Look like she was waiting for someone, did she?'

'Maybe, I don't know. I think I saw her check her watch a couple of times.'

'And she didn't speak to anyone else.'

'She was reading a copy of the Metroa"actually, there was someone else. Some guy talked to her. He ordered two drinks, so I guess he bought her one.'

'What was he like?'

'I wasn't really paying attention, early thirties maybe, I didn't really pay attention.'

'You wouldn't be able to recognise him again?'

'G.o.d, no. I didn't register his face at alla"he was just one of those blokes you always get in a pub like this, sort of invisible.'

'You didn't see him leave?'

'No. I had to go downstairs to change barrels. When I came back up he'd gone, and she was alone. Right after that she fell off her stool. I thought she was drunk.'

'If it's the same MO, Kershaw reckons he'll find traces of benzodiazepine again,' said May. 'She had a red mark at the base of her skull like a sting, possibly from a needle. Whoever did this has found an effective method of disposal, and is probably planning to stick with it.'

'Interesting choice of phrase there,' said Banbury. 'Disposal. That's what it feels like, doesn't it? He can't be getting s.e.xual gratification, and presumably he's not gaining anything financially from his victims, so why is he doing it? Plus, he's picked the worst possible place to get away with murder, acting inside a roomful of strangers. I'm no psychologist, but you don't think that's it, do you?'

'An act of exhibitionism, taking a risk in front of the punters? Possible, I suppose. Murder is an intensely revealing act, best performed in privacy. Seems a bit perverse to stage it as some kind of public performance. Besides, do people pay much attention to each other in pubs? You tend to concentrate on the friends you've come out with. I'm sure if Bryant was here he'd regale us with a potted history of public murder. She's roughly the same age as the other two. Is the killer looking to take revenge on a mother subst.i.tute? What were they doing drinking alone?'

'You always get one or two by themselves in London pubs. That's the difference between a pub and a bar,' Banbury explained. 'Pubs are about conviviality and community, meeting mates. Bars are for being alone in, or for meeting a stranger. So why would he pick his victims in the former? It doesn't add up.'

'Perhaps the killer has a mother or an older sister who was a drunk,' Kershaw suggested. 'If he's in his early thirties, she'd probably be in her fifties. Are the victims all similar physical types?'

'Not at all. This one was Jocelyn Roquesby, fifty-six, a former copy typist and human resources officer, divorced, one daughter, no current partner, lived alone in a flat in Holloway. She had just finished a bout of treatment for breast cancer. According to the daughter she liked a drink, but never went into a pub alone unless she was meeting someone. Also, the chemotherapy made her sick if she drank. So who was she here to meet?'

Meanwhile, April had gone to the Devereux on the mission of locating Oswald Finch's remains.

'You were working behind the bar on the night of Mr Finch's wake, weren't you?' she reminded the barmaid in the upper bar. 'If you cashed up the till, you must have also cleared the counter, so you'd remember if there was something as odd as a funeral urn left behind on it.'

'I told your boss, there was nothing left behind,' declared the girl, who regarded all men over thirty with narrow eyes and a cold heart. 'People leave their briefcases, umbrellas and hand-bags here all the time, but I'd have remembered an urn.'

'So someone took it with them.'

And it had to be one of your lot, because you had the room to yourselves for most of the evening. Your Peculiar Crimes Unit have a reputation for being a bunch of practical jokers, you know. The manageress warned me. Your unit has had parties here before. Somebody left an inflatable sheep in the ladies' toilet last time, frightened the life out of the cleaner.'

'Not much of a practical joke, is it?' said April. 'Swiping the ashes of a dead colleague.'

'Depends on what they're going to do with them,' said the barmaid, with a disapproving sniff.

15.

VISIBLE EVIL.

R.

aymond Land tipped his armchair forward, cleared a steamed-up arc of gla.s.s and peered down into the street. Was there anything in the world more miserable, he wondered, than a wet Wednesday morning in Mornington Crescent? Especially when you felt you were no longer the captain of your destiny, more a third mate dragged in the under-tow of someone else's foundering vessel?

'You and your partner like to work in a pincer movement, don't you?' he complained. 'First John creeps up on me with dire warnings, and now you. Three dead, at the very least! If the Home Office get wind that the proles think it's not safe to venture into a public house without risking death, our entire national fabric will collapse. The idea of a Britain without any-one in the boozers is unimaginable.'