Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  One of the other barmen was standing in front of the door, blocking it, suddenly aware of fast movement. A stool rose above heads, wavered and was pitched, smashing the largest window in the saloon.

  He saw Pellew’s back and shoulders rising above the assembly as he climbed up on to a table, heard the crunch of glass as he vaulted out into the street. The others were arriving now, and all hell was kicking up, the crowd startled into action, the barman getting shoved aside, the main door slamming back, and then they were out on the road running after him.

  Bryant could not keep up, and leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath as Bimsley shouted for their suspect to stop.

  Meera had been on her way down the stairs when Pellew made his move. Now she too was outside, sprinting after him as he hammered around the corner into Westerdale Road, not realizing that he had blundered into a cul-de-sac created by the motorway ahead.

  As she closed in fast behind him, she thought, Where can he go? Into one of the houses? She was drawing neck and neck with Bimsley when Pellew threw himself at the pebbledashed concrete slabs of the motorway wall. She knew that if he managed to cross the six lanes to its far side, he would be home free.

  ‘Colin, no,’ she called as the DC showed no signs of slowing down. ‘You’ll get killed.’

  She knew he could hear her but would not stop, and watched in horror as he too jumped at the wall, curling his broad hands over the edge, swinging his legs to one side and hauling himself to the top before vanishing over the other side.

  Colin found himself facing the Friday-night rush-hour traffic – three lanes of sunset headlamps and three beyond that of tail-lights, racing into the city dusk. Ahead, one lane in, Pellew had lurched to a stop amid honking horns, teetering on the broken line, waiting to run again. If he managed to vault the wall on the far side he’d hit the railway embankment, which branched and ran for miles in a multitude of directions.

  Having been diagnosed with the hereditary syndrome that caused diminished spatial awareness, Bimsley was the wrong man to be dodging speeding cars. The ground always seemed further away from him than it was, and when he walked down a passage he had to concentrate on not blundering into the walls. Now he needed to judge the relative speeds of six lanes of vehicles, and allow enough time to run across the tarmac between them.

  Pellew, on the other hand, was a natural. He avoided launching himself into the paths of trucks, knowing that they would try to brake slowly to avoid shifting their loads. Instead he concentrated on the mid-sized family roadsters that sold themselves on safety features, anti-skid devices and superior braking power. He reached the central reservation with ease and hopped the steel barrier to do the same on the other side.

  As Meera watched with her heart in her mouth, Bimsley windmilled his arms and threw himself across two lanes at once, causing vehicles to swerve around him. He had decided that his only way of making it through alive would be to reduce his peripheral vision, so, with his eyes now partially shut, he lumbered towards the central divide and tried not to listen to the sound of squealing brakes.

  Pellew was on the move again, pausing, darting, timing his bursts of energy, nimbly bypassing a Sainsbury’s truck as Bimsley reached the central barrier.

  Only one more lane. Pellew drew breath and lurched forward once more. This time, he failed to spot the car that the truck had just overtaken. As he glanced back at Bimsley, who was making a dash directly at him, he was hit full-on by a new silver Mercedes saloon.

  Pellew’s body rose and smashed against the windscreen before bouncing away into the path of cars in the slow lane, where he was hit a second and third time.

  One of the swerving vehicles winged Bimsley, flipping him around and hurling him back on to the central reservation.

  He landed hard against the corrugated steel barrier, but this time he had the good sense to stay until the other officers arrived.

  32

  * * *

  PIGMENTATION

  These days, Arthur Bryant seemed to be spending more and more time in hospital, less for himself than to visit others. So many of his friends had reached the age where their ailments required overnight stays rather than a mere course of tablets. This evening, he had Bimsley in one ward getting his ribs bandaged and his left tarsals strapped into a sprain-anklet, Longbright sleeping off the effects of her poisoning in a nearby bed and Anthony Pellew downstairs in the morgue. Their suspect’s legs had been shattered by the first impact, but his skull had been crushed by the second, and he had died in seconds. Although the traffic had been moving at a fairly swift pace, none of the drivers had ended up joining them in the wards.

  Bryant shambled through the ward looking for Bimsley, pulling back curtains and frightening patients. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘The shop was out of grapes so I brought you a hat.’ He tossed a baseball cap that read WORLD’S BEST MUM on bimsley’s bed and plonked himself down beside it. ‘Oh, and something for you to read.’ He fished out his dog-eared paperback of An informal history of the black death. ‘You’ll be up on your feet – or at least, foot – in a day or two. You were bloody lucky.’

  ‘If you call getting hit by the wing mirror of a Ford Mondeo lucky,’ Bimsley complained. ‘It couldn’t have been a Ferrari, could it?’

  ‘If it had been, you might not be here. What’s the damage?’

  ‘My hip’s pretty bashed up, some torn ligaments, one broken rib, left ankle sprained, some surface cuts.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about, then,’ said Bryant. ‘Pellew’s legs are facing the wrong way and his head looks like a dropped meringue.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m on the correct side of the law, sir.’

  ‘Righteousness does not protect you from injury. I know you meant well, going after him like that, but you might have panicked him into the traffic. Pellew was a former mental patient, after all. Renfield’s furious with you, but I’ve persuaded him not to make a fuss about what happened.’

  ‘Pellew had been released, sir, even though he was still dangerous.’

  ‘Well, we’ve still to get to the bottom of that. It’s looking like he deliberately targeted his victims after all. April discovered that three of the five victims falsified their CVs. It would seem they didn’t even tell their partners or families the truth about their jobs, just trotted off to work every day and came home in the evening as if everything was normal.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bimsley. ‘What does that mean? Where were they going?’

  ‘Where indeed?’ Bryant narrowed his eyes. ‘To a place where they might have come into contact with Anthony Pellew, perhaps.’

  ‘The Broadhampton.’

  ‘No – we’ve already checked the clinic’s employment records. Somewhere else. Have a think while you’re lying there, old sausage, it’ll give you something to do.’

  ‘Do me a favour and open that, sir.’ Bimsley pointed to his locker. ‘There should be a piece of paper inside.’

  Bryant pulled out the single mud-stained sheet and gingerly flattened it.

  ‘I found it on the floor of one of the rooms in the Angerstein. It’s not much, but it might have come from him.’

  Bryant found himself looking at a scribbled doodle. It appeared to be of a bird sitting atop a tree stump. ‘Thanks. No idea what this might be but I’ll check it out.’ He rose to leave, then stopped. ‘By the way, young Meera wanted to come and see you, but I had to send her to interview Carol Wynley’s partner.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she could be bothered to leave me a message.’

  ‘Would it raise your spirits and aid your recovery if I told you she did?’

  Bimsley attempted to affect an air of disinterest. ‘It might do.’

  Bryant thought for a moment. ‘Fine, she said to get well soon and hurry back . . . No, I’m joking, she didn’t say anything at all. Sorry.’

  ‘What the bloody hell were you doing there by yourself?’ asked Renfield, who was attempting to keep
his voice down on the women’s ward. ‘You’re not supposed to conduct a search like that unaccompanied.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ asked Longbright, trying to focus on the sclerotic sergeant perched on the edge of her visitor’s chair.

  ‘Just for a while. I’ve been watching you sleep,’ Renfield admitted.

  ‘I didn’t need you to come with me.’ Longbright pushed at her pillows, trying not to disturb the saline drip attached to her wrist. ‘Arthur said that Pellew wanted to be stopped. I’ve done this sort of thing plenty of times before.’

  ‘And that’s exactly why you had your guard down,’ said Renfield. ‘You’d be in a body-bag downstairs if he hadn’t misjudged your size. Pellew didn’t turn himself in, so part of him must have wanted to remain at large, and that made him dangerous. Your boss had it wrong.’

  ‘Have they said how long I have to stay in here?’

  ‘They’ve got to finish flushing out your system. You’ll be allowed home tomorrow.’ He fought down a smile.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I’ve never seen you without make-up.’

  My God, thought Longbright, I don’t think anyone has ever seen me without make-up. ‘I’ll stay until the doctor has been. Give me something to do until then, Jack. Get me the case notes.’

  ‘You’re supposed to rest.’ Renfield looked about the ward. Two constables were walking a shouting, handcuffed drunk woman past the beds.

  ‘All right, Steve? Joey?’ Renfield called. They nodded curtly to him, but carried on without stopping to speak.

  She watched the officers pass. ‘You must be missing your mates in the Met.’

  ‘Well, they don’t bloody miss me,’ said Renfield, looking back. ‘They won’t even say hello to me now.’

  ‘So you finally know how the rest of us feel. Look at the state of your fingernails. It’s stress.’ Longbright lowered her head back to the pillow. ‘Being on the unit takes over your life until there’s nothing else left. From the day I joined the PCU even the duty officers at Bayham Street stopped talking to me. They thought I was waving two fingers at them, getting out to move on to a cushy number. They didn’t know I took a drop in pay and position just to work where my mother once worked. I slogged away in the Met in order to build up respect and credibility, and lost it all on the day I moved across to join John and Arthur. My partner left me, my civilian friends went away, I have nothing left but the unit. The same thing will happen to you.’

  ‘It already did.’ Renfield looked down at his toecaps. ‘Four years ago last month. My girlfriend died in Manchester, on duty.’

  ‘I never heard about that.’

  ‘I didn’t tell many people. She’d been working up on Moss Side, liaising with immigration officers for a couple of years. One Saturday night in the middle of winter some bloke had a go at her outside a rough-as-guts nightclub – just a punch in the neck, but she’d had a couple of rums before she went on duty. She went down heavily, bruised herself, suffered a bit of shock. Went home not feeling well and died in bed that night. Those two drinks meant the difference between burial with full honours and dismissal with nothing at all. You wonder why I prefer to stick to the rulebook. So when you say you have nothing left, you know how I feel.’

  ‘I think I preferred you when you were being unpleasant to everyone,’ she sighed.

  ‘You know I don’t approve of the way the PCU goes about things, but I’m trying to learn, understood?’

  Longbright gave a small smile and held out her unfettered hand. ‘Understood.’

  Giles Kershaw was below the pavement of the Euston Road, in the UCH morgue, talking to Alex Reynolds, the admitting surgeon. The remains of Anthony Pellew lay in the tray before them, being cleaned, opened and weighed.

  ‘No birthmark on his face,’ noted Kershaw, holding back his hair as he leaned over the body.

  ‘You were expecting one?’ asked Reynolds. ‘You should be wearing a cap, or don’t they bother with them at the PCU morgue?’

  ‘Actually, we’re skilled enough to sort out our own fibres from those of our suspects at the PCU, thanks,’ said Kershaw coolly. ‘We’ve got this man down with nevus flammeus.’

  Reynolds could not recall the term. ‘Remind me.’

  ‘Port-wine facial markings. They’re formed at birth.’

  ‘Then you’ve got the wrong man, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we have. I need to get a tissue sample.’ Kershaw took a closer look. Pellew had not been taking care of himself. His nails were split, the cuticles bitten and torn. A cracked front tooth, bad skin due to a poor diet, worn-out underclothes, worn-over trainers. And deep in his hairline, minuscule red specks.

  Kershaw withdrew tweezers and lifted the dots into a small plastic pouch, but he could already identify the substance by its odour: lipstick. Pellew had applied the so-called birthmark with artificial colouring. Why? Was it due to some mental aberration, a form of tribal disguise, part of the ritual of killing? Or could there be a stranger reason that added method to his madness?

  This case isn’t over, he thought. It looks like the real work is only just beginning.

  33

  * * *

  CONSPIRACY

  They met on the bridge, always on Waterloo Bridge, because the light was sharper here, because the sky was high and wide, because for them it gave the greatest view of London.

  In all the years they had been meeting above the river, the northern horizon had never changed as quickly as it was changing now. Instead of the barges and blackened warehouses, the working cranes and silhouetted derricks, glass balconies protruded from blank pastel walls like boxes at the theatre. The Thames itself had been transformed from a pulsing aquatic artery to an empty scenic backdrop provided for the amusement of shore-dwellers, a cosmetic alteration that in Arthur Bryant’s opinion mainly benefited the rich in their penthouse flats. What else would be provided for them, he wondered, the kind of gaudy floating pageants that had been staged in the presence of le roi soleil? Fireworks and hot-air balloons? But of course the mayor, following in the great tradition of London mayors, was already providing them with such distractions. To be the Lord Mayor of London was to accept the city’s poisoned chalice, and always be hated by at least half the capital’s residents.

  In his younger days, Bryant had passionately supported marches, rallies and protests through the capital, even though as a public servant he was required to be non-partisan. His partner had managed to avoid taking sides, simply because he felt that the science of investigation should be considered away from distracting influences, and he regarded himself as an impartial technician. However, this stance had lately been eroded by the continued efforts of the Home Office, whose attempts to close the unit had become tiresome and predictable, just another obstacle to factor into any protracted investigation.

  Bryant leaned against the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge and looked across at the graceful glass span connecting St Paul’s to the Tate Modern. The new bridge had drawn attention away from mere stone river-crossings like Waterloo.

  ‘I hate small-mindedness,’ he suddenly announced after several minutes of contemplative silence. ‘The notices everywhere warning us not to trip over or turn left or take our dogs off leads. That annoying recorded voice in the post office telling you which counter is free. I bought some peas in the supermarket last week and do you know what it said on the packet? “Does not contain nuts.” I hate the endless admonishments of a nanny state that lives in fear of its lawyers. While colonies of dim-witted traffic wardens swarm about looking for minor parking infringements, nobody seems to notice that our very social fabric is falling apart.’

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ asked May, puzzled. ‘Have you got another court summons over your car?’

  ‘Several, in fact, but that’s not the point.’ Bryant poked his pipe between his lips and lit up. ‘Once our children played on bombsites and collected unexploded shells. Now they’re driven to school by paranoid
parents in armoured cars. The determination of dullards can always be counted upon to challenge the merits of innovators.’ He noisily sucked on his pipe until the bowl’s embers sparkled against the cloud-grey waters. ‘To be popular in this city you have to be average. Our unorthodox approach to the attainment of excellence won’t allow us to survive.’

  ‘No one else can handle something like this,’ said May. ‘We’ll be here so long as there are such crimes.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Have a chocolate banana.’ Bryant pulled the pocket fluff from a sweet and passed it over. He felt guilty having a smoke without giving May a sweet. ‘I bet Raymond can’t wait to slam the lid on the Pellew investigation. He’ll be able to let Faraday know that there’s no more danger lurking in the capital’s public places.’

  ‘Kershaw reckons he’s got a couple of skin flakes from two of the women, but I suppose it’ll take a while to see if there’s a DNA match with Pellew’s tissue samples. We don’t rank very highly in the queue for equipment use these days. You’re not in any doubt about him, are you?’

  ‘Me?’ asked Bryant. ‘Didn’t you hear? Kershaw’s also got a complete thumb-print from one of the emptied plastic ampoules Pellew left in his room at the Clock House. A straight match. We just need to complete the link by making sure that the residue inside it has the same chemical composition as the drug we found in his victims’ bloodstreams.’ He tightened his collar against the early evening mist. ‘No, it’s not his identity that bothers me now, there’s no question of that, it’s his motive I find troubling. I went over April’s background notes again. There’s a very peculiar disparity I find myself unable to account for.’

  ‘Perhaps I can help.’

  Bryant raised his head to look May in the eye. ‘What do we now know about Anthony Pellew? That he was a disturbed and lonely child, brought up in pubs by an alcoholic, unfaithful father and a mother who turned tricks when they were short of cash. As a kid I imagine he was probably left hanging about in the beery haze of the bar room while the girls flirted around his old man. Upon his father’s death, he and his mother settled into the Angerstein, and later, after she’d been kicked out for soliciting, they moved to the Clock House. Anthony hit adolescence only to find himself ignored and unable to talk to the opposite sex in any place other than the pub.’