The Victoria Vanishes (18 page)

The tiny round tables in the rear of the room had been arranged to accommodate the couples who were about to tackle their abridged liaisons. Bimsley was assigned a number by the evening's hostess, a pleasant-faced, overweight girl who reminded him of a character from a Pieter Brueghel painting. Her name tag proclaimed her to be Andrea from the Two of Hearts Club. She spoke with the singsong condescension of
a suburban Kentish housewife, and probably had a heart of
gold until it came to gays and immigrants. 'First time? Lovely! You're a nice big fellow, we shouldn't have too much trouble pairing you up. Pop your badge on and we'll get you settled in. What's your name, lovey?' 'Bimsley,' said Bimsley.

'I think it would be nicer to be on first-name terms with the ladies, don't you?' 'Colin.'

'Oh, we haven't had one of those for a while. There.' She patted a sticky yellow square onto his lapel. Bimsley looked around the saloon. There were several presentable, even sexy, women but the quality of the males was abysmal: a couple of boney-faced accountant types with VDU pallor, a leaker with lank hair stuck to his forehead and sweat rolling down his cheeks, a middle-aged man dressed as a giant toddler in a sleeveless T-shirt and three-quarter-length trousers, an ageing media type in club gear who was probably not as interesting as his haircut, a very old gentlema
n cruising for an heir or possi
bly an enjoyable way of having a heart attack. In Russia there were ten million more women than men, so at least the males had an excuse for not bothering to look their best.

His speed dates were allocated just three minutes each, at the end of which time he was requir
ed to give his women a rat
ing of between one and three points. Bimsley's decision to ask questions about a murder victim instead of enquiring about hobbies, favourite films or dining out brought him looks of in-comprehension, confusion and outright hostility until Andrea took him to one side and gave him some advice.

'I think you need to lighten up, darling,' she informed him. 'Whatever you're asking these lovely ladies seems to be having a negative effect on their opinion of you.'

After achieving a rating score two points lower than the leaker, Bimsley decided to sit out the next batch of rounds and talk to the barmaid instead. This time he found himself
onto a winner.

'I worked the same shift as Jazmina most nights,' said the pixie-faced Polish girl with earnest blue eyes, whose name was Izabella, and whose jet hair framed her face like Louise Brooks's in
Pandora's Box.
'She was very nice, but I did not like her boyfriend.'

'Why not?' asked Bimsley, succumbing to a pint of lager.

'He was not interested in her. He had other girlfriends.'

'Did she ever come in here and drink on her nights off? Maybe with someone other than her boyfriend?'

'Oh, no. She hated this place.'

'Why?'

'Because she had a what-you-call-it, a stalker. You get men in every pub who try and talk to you on quiet nights, but this one came in all the time.'

'Did you ever see him? What was he like?'

'Too old for her, probably in his early thirties. Brown hair, tall, with a red mark on his face. I was here one night when he started on her.'

'Can you remember anything he said?'

Izabella thought carefully. 'I think he'd been fired from his job, he was a bar manager. North London somewhere. We laughed about him after he left.'

'This is really important,' said Bimsley.
'I need you to make a note of everything you remember about this man.'

'Wait until I finish work tonight,' said Izabella with an impish smile.
'I will tell you anything you want.'

Meera Mangeshkar was at The Apple Tree in Mount Pleasant, which Carol Wynley had sometimes visited with her work colleagues, but asking questions of the staff and customers proved difficult because there was a country-and-western line dancing night in progress.

This had been a postman's pub for many years due to its proximity to the sorting office, but had now been refurbished for the benefit of tourists visiting from nearby hotels. As Dolly Parton warbled through 'Heartbreaker' on the speakers and couples in checked shirts and fringed cowboy jackets stamped their stitched boots on the ancient Axminster carpet, Mangeshkar was forced into stupefied silence on a nearby counter bar stool. The combination of beery British boozer and traditional Texas toe-tap made her uncomfortable, partly because she was the only Indian girl in the room, and felt as if she might get shot. The well-drilled lines of dancers did not whoop and yell like their more
liberated U.S. cousins, but con
centrated on their footwork, determined to master exercises more culturally alien to the London mind-set than Morris dancing.

She became annoyed that, once again, she had been given an assignment that would yield nothing useful or practical, and was thinking about calling it a night when one of the men grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the dance floor for 'My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.'

For the next twenty minutes, Meera forgot her frustration and regret about moving to the Peculiar Crimes Unit as, much to her surprise, she discovered the joys of line dancing to the strains of Willie Nelson.

22

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

I

n the film
The Ladykillers,
what was the screen name of the old lady Alec Guinness and
his cronies were trying to mur
der? We're talking about the original British version here, not the remake.'

May looked around at the hunched shoulders and lowered heads. The room in The Old Dr Butler's Head, London Wall, where Joanne Kellerman had been found dead, was silent but for the scratching of 2H pencils. As he wrote 'Mrs Wilberforce' on the sheet before him, May accidentally caught the eye of the woman at the next table. She snatched her sheet aside, suspecting him of trying to cheat.
They want to be back at school,
he thought,
each of them vying to be top of the class once more.

'Last question in our film round: Give me the name of the ancient kingdom discovered in
Passport to Pimlico.'

May wrote 'Burgundy' and turned over his paper, ready for collection. He looked around the room a
t the assembled play
ers, trying to see if any were alone.
We always assume killers operate singly,
he caught himself thinking.
But what if there are two of them, perhaps even a man and a woman?
Suddenly the

conspiring, whispering pairs in the room appear
ed more sinis
ter. None of the victims had told their partners, relatives or friends where they were going. Was that in itself significant? If the attacks were completely random and their killer moved to a fresh venue every time, catching him became a matter of luck.
There are nearly six thousand pubs in London,
he thought.
What are we expected to do, close them all down? Suppose he switches to another crowded public place, inside the tube, on rush-hour buses or crowded city pavements?

The case had resonance with a number of ot
her, more ex
traordinary killings that had occurred in London over recent years. A Bulgarian disside
nt, Georgi Markov, had been poi
soned on Waterloo Bridge
with the sharpened tip of an um
brella. Roberto Calvi, the Vatican banker, had been found hanged in a convincingly staged suicide underneath Blackfriars Bridge. And former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was fa-tally dosed with radioactive thallium in a busy sushi bar. In all three cases there had been no guns, no knives, just the careful and quiet determination to end a life.

It was difficult to shake off a sense of impending failure.

May was inclined to disagree with his partner, who felt that the attacks were based on opportunity and location as much as on the women themselves, but the fact remained that they had uncovered no common denominators other than the link be-tween their cell phones. None of the calls had been under surveillance, so there was no way of tracing what had been said.

And there was another problem: Jazmina Sherwin's cell phone had been found on her body, so the killer wasn't using a consistent MO.
If it can be proved that they all knew each other,
May thought,
it might be possible to discover the identities of other women in danger.
He handed in his quiz form and sipped at his pint, watching the quizmaster at work.
That's who I need to talk to,
he decided.
He'll remember everyone who's ever come here to play.
The kind of men who compile quizzes always do
.

The Grand Order of London Immortals were, in their own words, primarily interested
in London's most infamous char
acters: political brigands, celebrity criminals, unapprehended murderers and anyone else who had been stencilled into the city's collective memory by doing something notorious and getting away with it.

Dr Harold Masters knew
that the order shared some mem
bers with his own Insomnia Squad, and had recommended it to Bryant as a group who might unwittingly shine a light on the path to uncovering a murderer. This month they were meeting in the Yorkshire Grey, Langham Place, a small green-painted Victorian establish
ment with hanging baskets, exte
rior tables and memorabilia from the nearby BBC on its walls. Workers from the garment district frequented the bar, but tonight the Immortals, a gr
andiose term for what was essen
tially a band of disgruntled scholars, were holding loudly forth in the rear of the saloon.

Bryant recognised a number of old friends who had helped him in the past, including St
anhope Beaufort, a bombastic ar
chitectural expert who volunteered advice on London's ancient monuments, and Raymond Kirkpatrick, a verbose English-language professor who had been banned from lecturing at Oxford because of his habit of playing deafening heavy-metal music while he researched. The Immortals attracted their own groupies, not as glamorous perhaps as those who lurked back-stage at rock concerts, but every bit as tenacious. Among these was Jackie Quinten, the maternal widow who had tried to tempt Bryant back to her larder with the offer of a steaming kidney casserole when they had met in the course of the PCU's investigation into the so-called 'Water Room.' He had turned her down, not because he disliked her cuisine but be-cause she seemed to view him as potential husband material, which could only lead to tears.

He had spotted her sitting in a corner reading, and was careful to skirt the edge of the room in order to avoid her. Unfortunately, as he was creeping past with his head drawn down into the folds of his scarf, he caught his foot in some-body's handbag strap and lurched forward, precipitating half
a pint of Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout straight into her lap.

There was a detonation of yelping chaos followed by a commotion of mopping and sponging, during which time Bryant stood helplessly by, caught between profuse apologies and the desire to sprint for the exit.

'Really, Arthur,'
Jackie Quinten cried in exasperation as she wrung out her skirt, which was woollen and perfectly designed for absorption,
'there must be
better ways of announcing your
self.'

'I'm most dreadfully sorry, Jackie, I didn't see you sitting there. You're rather invisible in that corner.'

'Thanks, you always kn
ow how to make a woman feel spe
cial.' When she saw the look of mortification on his face, she relented. 'Come and sit down for a minute, at least.' Bryant squeezed in beside her, breat
hing in the yeasty scent of fer
mented hops.

'I suppose you're here on business.'

After a fashion. I'm trying to stop a most unusual murderer.' 'You always are, Arthur. That's what you do, isn't it?' 'Yes, but this one is particularly slippery. He corners middle-aged women in public houses and puts them to sleep.' 'I know an awful lot of men
like that.' Mrs Quinten did not
appear in the least surprised. If anything, she looked as if her worst fears had been confirmed. Perhaps, thought Bryant, the widow had considered herself to be in London's last safe place, only to find its status suddenly removed.
'I presume they die in the process;
otherwise, you wouldn't be involved. Why would he want to do that?' she asked.

'Because he probably hears voices and is appeasing a desire, attempting to restore an equilibrium only he understands. Who knows? Ask why men kill and you open the door to one of life's most paradoxical mysteries.'

'So what are you doing here?'