The Victoria Vanishes (11 page)

'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 ma
ke fools of themselves by incur
ring the disapproval of a member of the monarchy. Instead, the detectives had seen off
their common enemy and resound
ingly 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 in
ward smile, thankful that Land had failed to effect a transfer from the unit.

'What do you mean, it's not
here?' said Bryant with indigna
tion.
'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 God, 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 likeli
hood 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 sh
e had chosen to devi
ate from her route. Perhaps he had muddled the streets, and she had gone into a different pub—the Skinner's Arms on Judd Street was also on a corner and he must have passed it— 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 note—in his regular spindly handwriting this time—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 a
ny other cases with similar cir
cumstances.

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 itself—a rage—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 procee
d, not while a question mark re
mained 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 glass. 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 cumbersome belted tunics with steel buttons and metal identification numbers on
the epaulettes. The outfit com
manded 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 God, 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 ow
n private agenda.' Bimsley care
fully wrapped the broken glass 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 him
self.

Let her side with Renfield,
he thought.
What the hell 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 advertisement 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 care
ful 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 brass hand-plates. The bar beyond the windows was shallow and high, with a large clock at t
he centre adorned with Roman nu
merals.

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 dif
ferent interiors, in different stages of its history, but not one of them showed the clock. Th
e photograph in Bryant's posses
sion was the only one to feature it, which suggested that he had previously noted the
picture in the book and subcon
sciously 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 glasses. 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 h
ealth and safety offi
cers, 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 smok
ing 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

J
ust 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 rib
bons 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 glasses. 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 alco
hol. 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 eleven—fewer women, and certainly no single ones of decent repute, would have been out drinking in the early years—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 remained—so easy to forget the world outside—until the landlord decided they'd all had enough.
Ain't you got no 'om
es to go to?' he would call joc
ularly. '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 passed 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 hellish 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 glass, plastered with faded advertisements 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
...