Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Her partner was just a couple of miles away, home alone watching TV – no witnesses, says he had several phone calls, but all on his mobile, none to their flat.’

  ‘So they’re traceable but don’t prove he was there. Then we should bring him in,’ said May.

  ‘There’s a problem with that,’ April told her grandfather. ‘He’s in a wheelchair after suffering a stroke some while back, can’t do much for himself at all.’

  ‘She was a legal PA,’ said Bryant, looking up from one of the books Renfield had tried to throw out, Religious Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century. ‘At the Swedenborg Society, no less. Swedenborg was a Swedish philosopher famed throughout Europe for his contributions to science, technology and religion. When he got older, he supposedly experienced visions of the spirit world. Reckoned he visited both heaven and hell, where he held conversations with angels and devils. Upon his return, he wrote something called the Apocalypsis Revelata, or Apocalypse Revealed. He claimed he’d been directed by Christ himself to reveal the details of the second coming. Understandably, everyone thought he’d gone round the twist. Died in Clerkenwell in 1772. His home in Bloomsbury still houses the Swedenborg Society.’

  ‘Your point being?’ May wondered.

  ‘What? Oh, nothing . . . it’s just odd, that’s all.’ Bryant poked about in his jacket and produced the walnut bowl of his pipe. He peered into it wistfully. ‘I don’t suppose I might be allowed to—’

  ‘No,’ said May and his granddaughter in unison.

  ‘It’s just that the Swedenborg Society lost another of their legal secretaries at the beginning of the month,’ he explained, screwing the pieces of his pipe together. ‘I believe she was found dead in a London pub, the Seven Stars, just behind Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’

  ‘Why on earth would you remember that?’ asked May, intrigued.

  ‘Because it reminded me of the nun found unconscious in the Scots Flyer,’ said Bryant, not really managing to answer the question.

  ‘Wait, explain the part about the nun first,’ April demanded.

  ‘The Scots Flyer is one of the most disgustingly awful pubs in London,’ said Bryant, ‘a grubby little sewer of a King’s Cross strip-joint, crammed for many years with the most unsavoury characters imaginable. But the lady in the wimple who passed out inside it was no ecdysiast, disrobing for a handful of coins collected in a beer mug. When I saw the incident report, I naturally wondered what she was doing in such a place.’

  ‘Ecdysiast?’ April raised an eyebrow.

  ‘She wasn’t a stripper,’ Bryant explained. ‘I followed the case and made notes on it. I have them somewhere.’

  He withdrew a drawer from his desk, removing a handful of pipe-cleaners, a Chairman Mao alarm clock, a collection of plastic snowstorms and a bottle of absinthe, before finally unearthing a small black book.

  ‘Here, in my Letts Schoolboy Diary.’ He held open a page filled with tiny drawings of flags. ‘A full report of the case. Well, by the look of it I appear to have written up the salient facts in a code of Edwardian Naval signals, but you get the idea. Sister Geraldine Flannery from Our Lady of Eternal Suffering said she was in the pub to collect for charity and was overcome by the pressure of the crowd, but it turned out her robes had been specially constructed to hold wallets and handbags. She wasn’t a nun at all but a dip, and not a very good one, obviously, otherwise she wouldn’t have chosen to pickpocket some of the poorest punters in London. The point is – ’ Bryant’s raised index finger wavered in the air. ‘I’ve forgotten the point.’

  ‘The legal secretary from the Swedenborg Society,’ April prompted. The old man really seemed to be losing it. ‘The Seven Stars.’

  ‘Ah yes. This time the face on the bar-room floor belonged to a respectable middle-aged lady named Naomi Curtis, the daughter of a clergyman. What had she been doing by herself in a pub?’ Bryant popped the empty pipe into his mouth. ‘Most people don’t stray far from their natural habitat, and according to her father, Miss Curtis was a creature of habit. She liked a tipple, and had been drinking more heavily in the last couple of years, but rarely went to a pub without arranging to meet someone. Suddenly she turns up dead one night in a Holborn boozer. I kept notes on her, too.’

  The others looked at him blankly.

  ‘Don’t you see? When something’s out of whack, when people don’t match their locations, a little bell goes off inside my head. There was something else. One of the punters remembered Curtis checking her mobile at the bar, but by the time the ambulance arrived she had no phone on her. Land wouldn’t allow me to investigate at the time, but he will now. Two women, two public houses, and an investigation involving drink, drugs, death and Swedish philosophy.’

  ‘I assume this means you want to handle the case,’ said May drily.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I will whether I’m allowed to or not. I’m far too old to start obeying the rules now.’ Bryant made a hideous draining noise through his pipe stem. ‘If anyone needs me, I shall be in the pub, conducting a little research.’

  13

  * * *

  FORGETTING

  ‘We can’t take it on,’ said Raymond Land. ‘A case doesn’t come under PCU jurisdiction just because you two have a funny feeling about it.’

  ‘Giles and Dan agree with us,’ said May. ‘They think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to link the two cases. The Naomi Curtis death was given an open verdict, although the coroner told relatives that she probably suffered heart failure following heat-stroke.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Land, wiggling a finger in his ear and examining it. ‘All you’ve got is the fact that they both worked for the same organization as legal secretaries.’

  ‘Which meant that they probably knew each other. And they also died in a similar manner, in or near public houses,’ May added.

  ‘But they didn’t, did they?’ Land pointed out. ‘This Wynley woman wasn’t in a pub, unless Bryant somehow managed to cause a rift in the bloody space-time continuum and plunge himself back to Victorian England. He’s gone to Bloomsbury for another look, hasn’t he? It’s not like him to miss coming in here and having a go at me.’

  ‘He doesn’t believe he could have made such a mistake.’

  ‘Look, it was late, he was a bit plastered, the road was dark and, knowing Bryant, he was probably thinking about the history of the area. He’d read about the pub or seen a picture of it in one of his weird old books, and superimposed it over the scene. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s been wrong. He’s not infallible, you know.’

  May had an image of the retirement letter in Land’s pocket. He would have transferred it to his desk by now, perhaps even left it at home. He suddenly saw a way to protect his partner. If they were given the case, Bryant would be presented with an opportunity to come up with a solution. It was the type of investigation at which he excelled. His confidence would be restored, the letter would be withdrawn and Land would be satisfied that his senior detectives were still on the ball. ‘There’s also the issue of undermining safety in public areas,’ he added.

  ‘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 space 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.

  ‘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 h
ad 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 God, woman, it contained the poor man’s corporeal remains. 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 her 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 pub – the Skinner’s Arms on Judd Street was also on a corner and he must have passed it – but 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 notes – 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 any other cases with shared circumstances.

  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 US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, who said that ‘murder is just a thing of itself, a rage, and rage is not reason’. In his experience, he had found most murders to have been committed in states of rage, but the PCU had been created to investigate those cases which fell beyond 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 hung 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 chinstrap 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 commanded authority from the criminal fraternity because it linked directly to the past, reminding one of Sir Robert Peel, 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 rulebooks. 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 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 only 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 was appearing 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 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 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 brass 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 he 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 two minutes past eleven, the same time Bryant had given her from his memory of the night. After searching architectural websites, 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 life, 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 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. His Antiguan former landlady stood before him, blocking the way, her meaty hands placed on her 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 trifled 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’ll 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 any more,’ he admitted miserably. ‘And I lost our pathologist’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 for ever. 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 in their lounge and pulled a card from behind her Tyrolean 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.’