The Victoria Vanishes Part 9

The interior had been given a peculiar timeless ambience of plaster busts, aspidistra pots and reproduced sepia photos that fit in well enough with Belgian beers and steak menus. A nar-row staircase led to an over-lit upper room, but she could not gain access to it because a table covered in books and pamphlets had been placed across the entrance.

'Can I help you?' asked a sallow-faced man with deep-set eyes and tentacles of oily hair plastered across his bald head. 'I'm here for the Conspirators' Club,' said Longbright.

'Well, of course, you would say that, wouldn't you? You could have read that on our Web site. Anyone could have read that, found out the address and just come in here off the street, and we have no way of knowing if they're friend or foe. Do you know the pa.s.sword?'

'Oh, give over, Stanley, how can she know the pa.s.sword when you keep changing it?' asked a pleasant-faced woman in her mid-forties. 'Last week it was Inkerman, this week it's Bisto, how are we supposed to keep track? Just let the lady come in, for heaven's sake.'

'Entrance fee still costs two pounds, the money goes toward our fighting fund,' said Stanley, tapping a relabelled tissue box.

'It goes toward his beer money. He's a nuisance but he keeps out undesirables. I'm Lulu,' said Lulu. 'Come on in.'

'Do you get many nutters here?' Longbright could not resist asking.

'Mainly on anniversaries of a.s.sa.s.sinations, although our last meeting on St Valentine's night was tricky. A group of war-game strategists turned up and attempted to provide new theories about the fall of the Maginot Line using beer bottles and baguettes. Our members tend to be intense and easily persuaded, especially the single ones. Have you been before?'

'No, but a friend of mine has. Jocelyn Roquesby, perhaps you know her?'

'My goodness, you poor love, you're in the right place, because we've been proposing theories about her. It's not the sort of thing we usually talk about, mostly it's stuff like this.'

Lulu indicated the books and brochures on the table. Several t.i.tles caught Longbright's eye. Jim Morrison Lives on in Indian Spirit, The Bavarian Illuminati, Lockerbie and the CIA, Christ's Blood and the Crown of Thorns, The UK Biochemical Cover-Up, The Search for Princess Diana, 1968 Moon Landing Props Found in Vegas, Floridagate, Death in the Persian Gulf, Where Anna Nicole Smith Is Now.

'They're not all as barking as they may at first look,' Lulu told her. 'People think it's all about coming up with outlandish reasons for the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sinationa"America invented all the juiciest conspiracy theories, after alla"but these days most of our debates concern the limitations of world media and the way in which information is controlled. Many of these books expound surprisingly even-handed ideas, although I wouldn't believe the one about Kurt Cobain being reincarnated as the king of the lizard aliens. Would you like a drink?'

'Thanks,' said Longbright, immediately breaking Bryant's rule. 'I'll have a gin and French. You know, with vermouth.'

'Good choice,' said Lulu. 'Perhaps we can introduce you to some interesting people tonight. I'll try to keep you away from the cryptozoologists. Get them onto Loch Ness and you'll be stuck here until closing time.'

'What usually happens at these meetings?' asked Longbright.

'Sometimes there's a book launch, or a talk or a debate. It's a lot more rational than you'd expect. We discuss theories about recent news stories and share ideas. It's an alternative to only getting your data from the mainstream media, which is partisan, conservative and mainly concerned with scaring the living daylights out of Middle England.'

'I think I know that woman.' Longbright pointed to an elegant redhead in her early forties, dressed in a black sweater and jeans.

'She's a new recruit. Came here by mistake, thinking it was an art appreciation cla.s.s, but enjoyed herself so much that she ended up coming back. Let me introduce you.'

'Hi,' said the redhead, holding out her hand. 'I'm Monica Greenwood. You're a policewoman, aren't you?'

Longbright was taken aback. 'Is it my feet?' she asked. 'They've always been big. I shouldn't draw attention to them.' Admittedly, she was wearing Joe Tan crimson peep-toed pumps with ankle bows.

'No.' Monica smiled. 'I've met you before, with John May. I'm afraid I'm the one with whom he was having the affair. Paul Greenwood's wife.'

'Sorry, I knew I'd seen you before.' Longbright was taken aback by the other woman's forthrightness. She recalled the scandal of the academic's wife who had become involved with her superior during the investigation of a murder.

'I'm the one who should be sorry,' Monica replied. 'I made things pretty tricky for your boss, didn't I?'

'Only for a while. I was sorry to hear about your husband.'

'I stayed by him while he was sick, but now that he's fully re-covered and can take care of himself, we're finally getting a divorce. I should have done it years ago. What brings you here? Oh, my G.o.d, you're not working, are you?'

Janice had never been a convincing liar. 'My attendance is connected to a case,' she admitted. 'A woman called Jocelyn Roquesby died near here in a pub called the Old Bell tavern.'

'We were just talking about her. She was quite a regular. Naturally, there are some people here who take their conspiracies rather too seriously,' she indicated a group of barrel-stomached men in cable-knit sweaters gathered in the corner, 'and they think she was murdered.'

'I'm afraid in this instance they might be right,' said Longbright. 'Is there any specific reason for them thinking that?'

'One of the main reasons she used to attend was because she had quite a few conspiracy theories of her own. Phillip, her ex-husband, was in some senior government post and she was supposedly well-known on the Westminster dinner party circuit. Reading between the lines, I'd say Jocelyn became a bit of an embarra.s.sment for hima"you know, a few too many indiscreet remarks made over the liqueursa"and he filed for divorce. Some of her stories sounded very plausible, though. There were plenty of people here who were prepared to listen to her ideas, and I daresay quite a few more will turn up now that she's dead.'

Longbright began to see how conspiracy theories developed. If Roquesby had just been a housewife and her husband had worked in the local post office, no-one outside of those directly involved would have questioned the circ.u.mstances of her death. You had to be in a position of some power before the seeds of suspicion could be sown, and your demise could invite the status of conspiracy. How easy would it be to become tangled in the skein of half-truths and hearsay that encrusted themselves around the circ.u.mstances of a high-profile death?

'Did she make any good friends here? Or bring anyone else along?'

'She was ever so sweet, and rather lonely. Undergoing radio-therapy for cancer, I believe. She didn't say much during the general debates, but really enjoyed meeting new people.'

'What kind of stories did she used to tell?'

'You have to understand that she was very bitter about Phillip. Jocelyn said he dumped her because she knew things about the government, but in fact I hear he left her for a younger woman with a bigger bust and a smaller mind, as they all do. Then one day she wouldn't talk about it anymore. Said it was a private matter, but I think she was warned off by the gleam in the eyes of our conspirators. I imagine coming here was a way of forgetting her personal troubles. The last thing she'd have wanted to do was to have them dragged out in public. Our meetings can get extremely personal. Conspiracy theorists have little respect for privacy; everything is regarded as fair game. And conspiracies breed in the face of opposing truths. As a student, I created some crop circles with a friend down on Box Hill, taking step-by-step photographs of how we did it with a plank and some ropes. A couple of months later, I posted the pictures to the local paper. When the article appeared I received hate mail from people telling me I was deliberately trying to discredit the "Box Hill Circles." I became a victim in my own conspiracy.'

'Do you think if someone had gone up to Mrs Roquesby in a pub and started making polite conversation, she would have responded, encouraged him?'

'Not very likely. She seemed shy. I think it took a fair amount of courage just to come here. She told me she had no close personal friends at all, and hardly any family apart from her daughter.'

Which suggested that Jocelyn Roquesby had not known her attacker, and he struck at random. It was the worst possible news Sergeant Longbright could have wished for, and the last thing she wanted to report back to Bryant and May.

Jack Renfield had been seated in the Old Bell tavern for over an hour, and had switched from orange juice to lager because he was bored and angry. He eyed the rowdy office workers over the top of his gla.s.s, and longed to wipe the grins off their faces by nicking them for infringing by-laws, just because they were enjoying themselves. That one, he thought, smug git trying to impress some bird from the office, he's probably got c.o.ke in his pocket. I'd love to bust him and see the look on his face. Several of the git's mates were on the pavement, impeding the pa.s.sage of pa.s.sers-by. That was enough to get them arrested.

Renfield always felt like arresting someone when he was lonely.

How, he wondered, had he allowed himself to be manoeuvred into the PCU, where everyone hated him? He felt sure Bryant and May were laughing at him behind his back, ordering him to spend the evening sitting in a pub by himself, in the absurd hope that he might pick up some kind of information about the killer. Why weren't they hammering the fear of the law into relatives and colleagues, chasing down the recent contacts of the deceased and demanding answers? A nutcase wanders around the city's public houses armed with a syringe and n.o.body sees hima"how the h.e.l.l was that possible? And in-stead of trying to discover his ident.i.ty, the most obvious way of working, Bryant announces that they must first understand his motive. Crimes that produced no leads in forty-eight hours were virtually dead. No wonder the Home Office tried shutting the unit down every five minutes; the place was an anachronistic embarra.s.sment, a division that fancied itself more at home in the pages of the Strand magazine than on the mean streets of Camden Town.

And yet...

He found himself staring at a man who was behaving most strangely. He had taken off his shoes and donned a pair of red plaid carpet slippers, and had sat back to read the top volume of several magazines, just as if he were at home. But he was, in fact, a.s.sessing the young women who pa.s.sed his table, surrept.i.tiously studying their legs, their b.u.t.tocks, until they had moved from sight.

The longer he watched the behaviour of strangers in the Old Bell, the more Jack Renfield began to think that there was something to the PCU's methodology after all.

20.

IRRATIONALITY.

A.

dmit to being afraid,' said a thin ginger-headed man at the podium. 'It's the first step to acknowledging that you have a problem.' He pointed a plastic ruler at the top page of the board behind him, upon which a variety of phobias were spelled out. 'These are the fears of our current and past members. If yours is not listed here, I'd like you to step up here now and add it to the list.'

April looked for her agoraphobia among more obscure irrationalities. Aichmophobia, the fear of needles; Ailurophobia, fear of cats; Alektorophobia, fear of chickens; Alliumphobia, fear of garlic; Anthrophobia, fear of flowers; Antlophobia, fear of floodsa"and those were just the A's. Presumably the young man's easel held twenty-six pages of terrors.

The group was seated upstairs at the Ship & Shovell pub behind the Strand, which Naomi Curtis, the second victim, had visited in an attempt to cure her claustrophobia. It was the only pub in London that existed in two separate halves, each piece a red-painted mirror image of the other, set on either side of a sloping pa.s.sageway that led down to the Thames.

'Shovell' was spelled with a double L because it had been the original owner's name.

For a bunch of people who lived in irrational fear of ordinary thingsa"computers, snow, being toucheda"they seemed remarkably chatty and cheerful. The ginger man's talk lasted half an hour, after which there were questions, then everyone went to the bar except one woman, who was apparently perturbed by the sight of spilled beer.

'You're new, aren't you?' asked the speaker. 'I haven't seen you before. You didn't come up to the board.'

'I was agoraphobic, but it seems to be retreating now,' April explained. 'I've had various other phobias in the past. I was bothered by dirt and untidiness. I have a bit of a neatness fetish.'

'I suppose your doctor said you were spending too much time indoors, and developed other fears because you were looking to reduce your world still further. It's quite common. I'm Alex, by the way.'

'April.'

She held out her hand, but he shook his head. 'Can't do it, I'm afraid. Germs. Sadly, recognising one's phobias doesn't necessarily lead to their cure.'

'And yet we're in an old pub where there are probably a couple of hundred years' worth of microbes festering in the carpets.'

'You know as well as I do that a phobia has no respect for reason.' They took their drinks to a corner of the room.

'I'm here on a mission,' April finally admitted. 'Did you ever meet a woman called Naomi Curtis?'

'Don't know. Hang on.' Alex fetched a diary from the table by the door and checked it. 'Some only come to the society once or twice. We try to keep a record of names, but it's rather hit or miss. Claustrophobic, wasn't she? She attended a few times. We usually meet outside. It was a little too cramped for her at the bar.'

'I can understand that. Did she have many friends here?'

'I think she came with another woman, someone from work. People don't like to visit by themselves. They think they're going to get roped into some kind of sales pitch, but we're just a self-funding help group. Once they understand that, they relax more.'

'Do you ever cure anyone?'

'Sometimes. But fears have a habit of mutating. They'll vanish only to reappear in a different form. We've managed to keep the group going for six years now, even though we have to keep changing pubs.'

'Why's that?'

'The landlords don't like primal scream therapy. And once I accidentally released ants all over the saloon floor, and we had a tarantula go missing behind the bar. Never did find it. We had a disastrous meeting in the Queen's Head and Artichoke last year, when three old ladies got locked in the lavatory. They went in as autophobicsa"afraid of being alonea"and came out as claustrophobics. Why did you ask about Mrs Curtis, do you know her?'

'No. I'm helping to investigate her murder.'

'My G.o.d, I had no idea.'

'She was in a pub.'

'Not this one?'

'The Seven Stars in Carey Street, just down the road from here. She probably went there to meet a friend.'

'And you think it might have been someone she met here?'

'It's a long shot.' April had already told him more than she'd intended to.

'Maybe not so long,' said Alex. 'She did meet someone the last time she came, a bloke in his early thirties, funny haircut, black leather overcoat. I remember thinking there was some-thing really creepy about him. It sticks in my mind because they sat in the corner talking intensely for quite a long time, then she left very suddenly, as if they'd had a row. Mind you, she was incredibly drunk.'

'Would you recognise him again?'

'Possibly. I think he had something wrong with his face, some kind of purple birthmark.'

'Do you mean it was the birth defect that made him appear creepy?'

'No, G.o.d, I hope I'm not that shallow. You know the way some people don't behave how they should in company? He was hunched over his beer, openly staring at other women. We're used to autistic behaviour but this was different. I'm sorry, it's not much to go on, is it?'

'You'd be surprised,' said April. It looked as if Curtis's attacker had hit on her before. Perhaps he had even tried to hurt her, only to have his plans thwarted. All nine members of the PCU were out searching public houses tonight. If any of them turned up a similar description, they would finally have a suspect.

Dan Banbury found himself wedged against a wall in the claustrophobic Seven Stars pub, which was located behind Lincoln's Inn Fields and packed to the gills with boisterous, merry legal workers. Normally he would have enjoyed himself in such an environment, but his conversation with the bar staff had been turned into a shouting match by the deafening combination of courtroom rhetoric and cheap beer.

The barmaid who had served Naomi Curtis on the night of her death could think of no other details, and was too busy to concentrate on the subject for long. Banbury jammed himself further into the corner with his pint and wondered. What kind of man would she have allowed close? In his experience women preferred c.o.c.ktail bars to pubs, especially ones this intimate and rowdy. He felt sure that she could only have come in here to meet a man. This kind of pub was the choice of a male.

With difficulty, he unfolded the spreadsheet April had sup-plied and checked the notes she had printed. The same injected sedative, giving symptoms that had been mistaken for heatstroke. A swift, virtually painless method of killing, putting someone to sleep so easily and quietly that their death could pa.s.s unnoticed in a crowded bar. Curtis wasn't rich, had no unusual beneficiaries, no-one who might excessively profit from her demise. It seemed unlikely to be anyone she knew, which meant that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This place was a crime scene manager's worst nightmare, trampled flat day in and out, vacuumed and disinfected, scoured by the scrum of bodies, sloshed with centuries of beer. In a way, the man they were looking for had hit upon the perfect location to commit murder. Every night in every pub there would be petty feuds, heated arguments, friendships forged, s.e.xual liaisons proposed and enemies made, the threats of tears and laughter. Alcohol heightened the emotions. Providing he did not draw attention to himself, a killer could easily hide inside such a world. Bryant was right; coming here had started to give him a different perspective on the problem. He studied the room again, screening out un-likely candidates. The loudmouths and drunks, the shrieking office girls and their stentorian workmates vanished one by one.

Banbury found himself left with a handful of introspective loners, any one of whom might be nursing an uncapped syringe in his jacket pocket.

21.

DATING & DANCING.

Raymond Land indignantly refused to follow his own detective's orders to return to the Albion in Barnsbury, so Colin Bimsley and Meera Mangeshkar took on a double shift, first travelling to where Jazmina Sherwin had been found dead. After spending half the evening here, they planned to split up and tackle two further public houses.

For months, Bimsley had fantasised about being in a pub with Meera, a combination of pleasures that made him heart-sick with delight. In previous investigations he had been happy enough to spend the night rummaging through suspects' dustbins with her, searching for pieces of food-stained evidence, but just when his wish had been fulfilled, he found that his changing att.i.tude to the diminutive DC had robbed him of happiness.

In short, he had gone off her.

After putting up with her sulks, her tantrums, her cynicism, her sarcasm, her ability to start small bin fires with her pre-menstrual temper, the scales had finally fallen from his eyes, and he fancied he could see her as the woman she had become; bitter, bad-tempered, happy to keep him dangling on the promise of a date which would never be arranged.

As a consequence, the mood between them was polite but arctic. Seated side by side in the Albion, they stared into their soft drinks and allowed the silence to stretch between them.

Finally, Meera spoke. 'This girl, Sherwin, she was supposed to be young and streetwise. She wouldn't have let some creep just come up and touch her. We're not going to find anything here.'

'Well, that's a positive att.i.tude. You're just saying that be-cause you don't believe in Bryant's methods.'

'Colin, look around you. The place is virtually empty. What are we looking for? The barman who served her isn't even here, so he can't point out anyone he saw.'