‘That includes you,’ said May.
‘Bitter isn’t alcohol, it’s beer,’ said Bryant. ‘We will start to find a way of catching this man by the end of tonight, I promise you.’ He checked his watch, more from habit than any useful purpose, as the little hand had fallen off in the blast that destroyed the PCU’s old offices, and he had not got around to having it mended.
‘You don’t suppose you’re still suffering the after-effects from losing your memory last time around, do you?’ asked May. ‘Remember when you blew up the unit and banged your head?’
‘That was ages ago,’ said Bryant. ‘I’ve never suffered any recurrence since then. Besides, Mrs Mandeville says I’ll start remembering all sorts of things any day now, if my internal organs can withstand the vigour of her root-vegetable diet. Right, I must be off. Call me later.’
‘Do you have your mobile on you?’
‘Actually I do. This is one of the first things Mrs Mandeville taught me to remember.’
‘Good. Is it on?’
‘We haven’t got that far yet. I shall put it on now.’ Bryant made an unnecessary pantomime of operating the device before setting off.
From his window, May watched his partner negotiating the shuffling drunks of Camden High Street. It was difficult not to worry about Arthur’s safety these days, but Bryant seemed quite unconcerned. He waved his walking stick at a passing taxi, and glanced up briefly at the unit’s windows as he climbed in.
Two minutes later, May received a text that read:
Stop Fretting Im Fine Have Fully Mastered Predictive Tghx Will Call If I Need Ghzb
If he didn’t keep finding ways of saving lives, he’d be the death of me, thought May.
19
* * *
CONSPIRATORS
Bryant’s idea seemed sound enough, until you considered that nobody knew who this man was or what he looked like. Sergeant Janice Longbright studied the scrap of paper she had been handed and searched the street. The great shuttered block of Smithfield meat market dominated an area now replenished with upscale eateries and thumping nightclubs, but here was a pub like an ancient lithograph, with a grand lead-glass bay window, polished oak doors and sienna paintwork, the sign of the Sutton Arms picked out in gold glass on an umber background.
The interior had been given a peculiar timeless ambience of plaster busts, aspidistra pots and sepia photos that fitted in well enough with Belgian beers and the steak menu. A narrow staircase led to an overlit upper room, but Longbright 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 website. Anyone could have read that, found out the address and just come in here off the street, and we’d have no way of knowing if they’re friend or foe. Do you know the password?’
‘Oh, give over, Stanley, how can she know the password 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 is still two pounds – the money goes towards our fighting fund,’ said Stanley, tapping a relabelled Kleenex box.
‘It goes towards 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 assassinations, 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.’
She indicated the books and brochures on the table. Several titles 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,’ said Lulu. ‘People think it’s all about coming up with outlandish reasons for the Kennedy assassination – America invented all the juiciest conspiracy theories, after all – 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 on to 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 class, 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 her 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. 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 recovered 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 God, 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 jumpers 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 atten
d 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 she became a bit of an embarrassment for him, a few too many indiscreet remarks made over the liqueurs, 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 other than those directly involved would have questioned the circumstances 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 circumstances 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 chemotherapy 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. She 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 firmer bust and a smaller mind, as they all do. Then one day she wouldn’t talk about it any more. Said it was a private matter, but I think she was warned off by the gleam in the eyes of our conspirators. I imagine that 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. These events can get very 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 that he struck at random. It was the worst possible news she could have wished for, and the last thing she wanted to report back to Arthur and John.
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 glass, 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 a wrap of coke in his pocket. I’d love to pull him up and see the look on his face. Several of his mates were on the pavement, impeding the passage of passers-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 nobody sees him – how the hell was that possible? And instead of trying to discover his identity, 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 to shut the unit down every five minutes; the place was an anachronistic embarrassment, 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 tartan carpet slippers, and had sat back to read the top volume of a pile of magazines, just as if he were at home. But he was, in fact, assessing the young women who passed his table, surreptitiously studying their legs and buttocks until they moved out of sight.
The longer he watched the behaviour of strangers in the Old Bell, the more Jack Renfield began to think that there might be something to the PCU’s methodology after all.
20
* * *
IRRATIONALITY
‘Own up 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 on 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 now and add it to the list.’
April looked for agoraphobia among more obscure irrationalities: aichmophobia, fear of pointed objects; ailurophobia, fear of cats; alektorophobia, fear of chickens; alliumphobia, fear of garlic; anthrophobia, fear of flowers; antlophobia, fear of floods – and those were just the As. Presumably the young man’s easel held twenty-six pages of terrors.
The group was seated upstairs at the Ship and 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 passageway 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 things – computers, snow, being touched – 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, recognizing 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 and miss. Claustrophobic, wasn’t she? She attended a few times. We usually met 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 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 autophobics – afraid of being alone – and came out as claustrophobics. Why did you ask about Miss Curtis – do you know her?’
‘No. I’m helping to investigate her murder.’
‘My God, 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 something 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.’
Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes Page 12
