The Victoria Vanishes (14 page)

Dr Harold Masters knew far more about the dead than the living. Human beings were too emotional and messy. He had only been able to tolerate Jane, his wife, because she shared his arcane interests, and now she was gone. The awful truth was that her death allowed him to spend more time concentrating on his studies. He missed her, in the distant way that a man misses the regular arrival of di
nner and fresh laundry, but rel
ished the extra time he now had to spend among his research documents. Understanding the past was far more interesting than understanding people, especially women.

'Mine is a professional perspective, of course,' Masters snorted cheerfully.
'Take a look at this place. It looks quite unremarkable from the outside, yes? But it was built from the ruins of the Great Fire.'

'Surely not. This bare-wood-and-ironwork-lamps look is 1930s, with a touch of last year chucked in.'

'The present-day building, perhaps, but it's been a tavern for centuries. In fact, it's constructed over Roman ruins that still survive some five metres below us. And it was once the official residence of the Mayor of London. William and Mary liked the place so much that they provided it with the iron gates outside. A gentleman called Robert Williamson turned it into a proper public house in 1739. And it has a ghost.'

All London pubs say they have a ghost—it gets the tourists in.'

'Ah, but this one has something else,' Masters enthused. 'The heart of London. The bar is supposed to contain an ancient stone that marks the dead centre of the old City. The parade of historical characters through here has gone unrecorded and barely remarked upon. Why? Because the pubs of
London are taken almost completely for granted by those who drink in them.' The doctor stabbed a long pale finger at the air. 'Every single one has a unique and extraordinary history.'

'That's true,' Bryant agreed with enthusiasm.
'Did you know that the basement of the Viaduct Tavern in Holborn contains cells from Newgate Gaol? Its walls have absorbed the tortured cries of a thousand poor imp
risoned souls. These places sur
vived because of geography. The Tipperary in Fleet Street used to be called The Boar's Head. It was built in 1605 with stones taken from the Whitef
riars Monastery, stones that al
lowed it to survive unharmed in the raging inferno of the Great Fire of London. And the Devereux, where we held Oswald's wake, is named after Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower and beheaded. The point Harold is trying to make is that these places hold the key to our past, and therefore th
e present. They're an unappreci
ated indication of who we are, and a sign of all we've lost and remember fondly, in which bracket I would include nurses' hats, single railway carriage compartments, quality umbrellas, the concept of public embarrassment, correct pronunciation and the ability to tell a child off in the street without risking a stab-wound.'

'Pubs are just shops that sell booze, Arthur. What's more, they're dying at a rate of sixty-five a year in London because of property developers. You're over-egging the pudding as usual.'

'Not at all,' said Masters, jumping in eagerly. 'Walk the streets of London, and the only time you'll speak to strangers is when you apologise for stepping in their path. Public houses act, as their name implies, as homes for the general populace where opposites can meet and confront each other without prejudice, on neutral territory.
This is why the landlord is re
ferred to as the host, and why rooms in pubs were always used to hold local inquests, so that the deceased could be sure of a fair and impartial verdict on his death.'

'I think you'll find that the desire for alcohol also plays a part in their popularity,' said May.

'Obviously, but there's something more fundamental at the root of it. Walking into a pub alone is for many young people their first act of real independence. Such places have had a profound effect on our society throughout history, acting as every kind of salon and meeting place, from coffeehouse pamphleteers to the cruelties of the gin palace. And of course, they reinvent themselves endlessly.
Once, where political and philo
sophical meetings were held, there are now karaoke and Jenga evenings, book readings and sexual-fantasy nights. And they come with an amazingly complex set of social codes, of course.'

'True, I suppose,' May admitted.
'There's nothing more embarrassing than finding that your pint-to-toilet cycle has become synchronised with that of a total stranger.'

'Why, public houses have even influenced our language. Drinkers used to share the same mug, in which the level of
ale was marked with a wooden peg, hence the expression "to take someone down a peg." The masons who built our churches were housed at inns, hence the Masonic connections of
certain pubs, and of course, the Knights Templar had their own inns at Clerkenwell. When the polluted waters of London proved unpotable, everyone drank at alehouses. Pub names provide markers for all the historical events of England. Red Lion, White Hart, Crown and Anchor, Royal Oak, Coach and Horses, each has its own convoluted meaning. We even find our way around by the location of public houses like the Green Man and the Sun in the Sands.'

'Think about it, John,' said Bryant. A couple of weeks ago, you and I had a drink at The Anchor, where others had sat drinking before us for half a millennium, seeing the same view.'

'Do you realise that in the late Victorian era there was a pub for every hundred people in the country?' asked the academic. 'We talk about the inner-city schools where pupils speak dozens of languages, but what about the melting pots that ex-ist on almost every street corner?'

'And the history they hold, true or false as the case may be,' mused Bryant, drifting off the point, as he was wont to do. 'The Sherlock Holme
s in Northumberland Avenue, pre
sented as if Holmes was a real detective, and The Old Bank of England, a bar on Fleet Street, touted by guides as the site of Sweeney Todd's shop, if you please. What complete and utter nonsense.'

'Whereas the pub in which I am usually to be found most evenings, in Smithfield, was o
nce called the Path of Hope, be
cause it stood on the route of condemned prisoners, like the Old King Lud at Ludgate Circus,' said Masters. 'Although it was always associated with St Bartholemew's Fair, the pub sign depicts a pair of stranded sailors. In Victorian times one often finds the idea of hope attached to the sea, hope of finding land or another ship. A popular maritime motto was "We anchor in hope," but by depicting sailors the sign-maker has misunderstood the meaning of
the pub's name. You see? By de
coding the tangled symbols of the past, we get close to the truths that history books miss.'

'What we're trying to say is that perhaps these places,' Bryant gestured around the bar,
'are as germane to the solution of a case like this as the identity of the victims. What if these unfortunate women met their deaths not just because of who they were, but
where
they were?'

'That's ridiculous,' said May hotly.
'It would mean they were selected from the population at random, and we have too many correlating factors to believe that.'

'Then imagine a man who, for reasons we cannot yet fathom, strikes only in public houses, and does so because of what they represent. By killing these women he is unstringing the very fabric of England.'

'It's true,' exclaimed Masters. 'If you wished to undermine everything we stand for as a people, you could do no better than damage the institution of the pub. You'd be striking at the heart of the city.'

17

ASLEEP IN THE TREES

Sergeant Renfield was looming behind her, trying to read over her shoulder

'Anything I can help you with, Jack?' asked Longbright pointedly.

All a bit mundane, isn't it?' said Renfield with a disdaining sniff. 'People die in or outside pubs all the time, it just never gets reported. A little beneath you, this sort of thing. I thought the PCU was about tracking down lunatics in highwayman outfits and solving murders committed in ridiculous places.'

'When deaths occur outside pubs, the victims are never middle-aged career women who've been drinking alone,' Longbright replied.'They're teenaged and in groups, drunk or stoned, and have been in fights with their peers over girls and loyalty and the mysteriousl
y coded world of respect and hu
miliation. Come on, Jack, you know that.'

'I ask because I'm trying to understand how this place works. You've got that girl April, who has no qualifications, trawling through cold cases looking for links to these dead women, and that's not logical. Procedure requires—'

'This unit doesn't operate according to the laws of logic,' said Longbright.'Colin and Meera are searching for witnesses and conducting interviews as procedure requires, leaving us free to detect larger trends.'

'You mean there's no proper system at work here. It's like you've forgotten that you're working against the clock. Lives are at stake. Don't your bosses understand that others will die if they don't stop fannying around?'

'The system doesn't work within the normal structure of criminal investigation departments.'

'So what happens when a case comes in?'

'Raymond Land has to approve our involvement, but he gets overruled by Mr Bryant, who chooses the cases he thinks we're best suited to. John usually backs him up. Then Land has to go cap in hand to the Home Office.'

'So what interests Bryant?'

'He's concerned with deaths that occur in circumstances too troubling for the Met to deal with. The detectives write up their notes—more themes and ideas, really. Then we spend the next few days hiding what we've discovered from anyone who might stop us.' Longbright was enjoying the look of creeping unease on Renfield's face.

'And where is everybody else this morning? I ask because I have to keep notes on you lot.'

'John and Mr Bryant are in a pub somewhere in Holborn consulting an expert in London mythology. April is calling the surviving relatives of Joanne Kellerman, and after work I'm getting my roots touched up before attending a society for conspiracy theorists. Raymond Land is probably in the Nun and Broken Compass playing darts with former officers from Bow Street station and slagging you off something rotten. Giles Kershaw will b
e running more tests on Jocelyn
Roquesby, and Dan Banbury is probably going over the crime scenes of the earlier victims. Happy?'

And out of this farrago you expect to find a murderer?' Renfield was staggered. He h
ad expected an element of disor
ganisation, but nothing on this scale. It would have been easier to predict the movement of cats.

'I don't know about that,' Longbright told him.
'Things have to get stranger first, or else Mr Bryant will lose interest.'

'And when do you suppose that might happen?' asked Renfield, fighting to keep hi
s natural temperament under con
trol.

'Oh, right around now,' replied Longbright with a malignant smile. 'Come on, Jack, lighten up on us a bit. Our clearance rate is more than double that of any other specialist unit. Find something positive to say.'

Renfield eyed her thoughtfully.'You've got some lovely legs on you, Janice,' he said at last.

Jazmina Sherwin checked her watch again.
She had been wait
ing for her so-called boyfriend to turn up for nearly half an hour, but his cell phone was turned off. She pulled her sheep-skin coat more tightly around her, and looked out at the empty roadway. It was already starting to get dark. The trunks of the plane trees opposite were lost in shadows. Their uppermost leaves stood out black against the dying sky. Nobody else was sitting on the benches in the front garden of the Albion, but Jazmina hated overheated rooms, and the saloon bar was un-bearably warm.

The Barnsbury pub appeared to have been dropped down in the heart of the English countryside. Graceful Edwardian houses filled the backstreets
between Liverpool Road and the
Caledonia Road. It was hard to imagine that the chaos of King's Cross was just a fifteen-minute walk from this spot.

A pair of crows sniped in the branches above her. A breeze rose, the shiver rippling along the street in a wave that caused the tops of the branches to gossip.

She knew she should never have agreed to meet him again, not after he had let her down
the week before. What, she won
dered, was the attraction of careless men? A car drifted past al-most in silence, the driver insolently staring at her.

She looked over her shoulder, through the window of the pub. The barman had gone somewhere. The bar appeared to be deserted now, except for a small group of noisy fat men playing darts in the rear saloon, but she was sure someone had been standing close by her when she ordered her orange juice. She had seen him from the corner of her eye, just a dark shape really, but she'd had the sense of a heavy overcoat, a pale eye turned in her direction. Normally she was entirely at ease in pubs, but this one didn't feel as if it was even in the city.