Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Someone who featured in all of their lives. Someone who was important to each one of them.’

  ‘Someone you haven’t found.’

  ‘We’ve made detailed examinations of their recent movements,’ sighed Bryant. ‘There’s a dark patch on the X-ray, so to speak, a period when they all just – went missing.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Dame Maud, who had been so sensible up until this point. ‘Alien abduction.’

  ‘No, dear, he thinks they worked together,’ Maggie explained, ‘doing something they couldn’t tell their relatives about.’

  ‘Oh, ladies of the night? Jezebels, is it? Painted harlots?’

  ‘No, in an office,’ said Bryant, giving Dame Maud a wary look. ‘Legal secretaries.’

  ‘I’m confused. Why would they lie about working in an office?’

  ‘That’s rather the question,’ Bryant admitted.

  ‘ATM machines,’ said Dame Maud, perking up suddenly. ‘They’ll have needed lunches, won’t they? Find out where they drew their money from. Women have to eat in the morning, it’s a metabolism thing. Read their journey details from their Oyster cards, then check the coffee bars nearest to the stations from which they all alighted.’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t worked with the police before?’ asked Bryant. ‘You have a criminal turn of mind.’

  ‘No, dear, I haven’t worked with the police.’ Her moon-eyes swam innocently behind aquarium glass.

  ‘You’ve been in trouble with them a few times,’ Maggie pointed out.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault that last time, it was your Maureen and her familiar, pulling my skirt off like that.’

  ‘You were in the Trafalgar Square fountains swearing like a navvy.’

  ‘I was in a state of advanced transcendentalism.’

  ‘You were in a state of advanced inebriation, dear.’

  As Bryant left the witches arguing in the little terraced house, he found himself wondering what a handful of kindly, maternal legal secretaries could have done to place themselves on the death-list of a deranged killer.

  37

  * * *

  OPEN AND SHUT

  ‘What do you mean, the case isn’t shut?’

  Raymond Land looked like someone had just thrown a bucket of iced water over him. Bryant had never seen him looking so tired. There were bags like holdalls under his eyes, and for once he hadn’t tried to plaster his remaining strands of hair across his head.

  ‘I’ve just told you, we think there may be at least two more victims, people we haven’t considered. They could have been kidnapped by Pellew before he made a run for it. There’s something else. Pellew was being monitored by a community warden called Lorraine Bonner. When he skipped his apartment, she notified his probation officer. The authorities knew he’d broken the terms of his release, but it looks like they did nothing about it. Why?’

  ‘I can’t go back to Faraday and tell him the case is still open, he’ll have kittens.’

  ‘I don’t care about upsetting Faraday’s little world when there may be human lives at stake.’

  ‘And anyway – I suppose I’d better tell you – there’s another problem.’ Land’s sigh was like air leaking from an old accordion. ‘Kasavian’s closed the unit.’

  ‘Again? My dear Raymond, every time we take on a case he closes the unit. It’s getting so that people come here half-expecting to find us shut at odd hours. We’re a crime division, not a French patisserie.’

  ‘Listen to me, Arthur, this time it’s for good. They’ve removed our lease on the building with immediate effect. We’re required to vacate the premises.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Bryant scoffed, before suddenly losing confidence. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘As a heart attack. They’ve sold the property. There’s another department moving in on Monday at noon.’

  ‘How long are we supposed to vacate for? Where are we to go?’

  ‘Kasavian says we’ll be re-housed eventually, but I don’t believe it for a second. It really is the end of the line.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve said that before. We’ll continue on, we always do. I haven’t finished my biography yet.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Bryant, be realistic for once in your life,’ Land shouted, startling them both. ‘We have no funding, no offices, nowhere to work, no support, nothing, you understand? It’s all gone. Everything you worked for all these years, it’s finished, over.’ He dropped his head into his hands, surreptitiously eyeing the aspirin bottle on his desk. ‘Go home, I can’t talk to you any more.’

  ‘Well, I’m very disappointed that you won’t go to bat for us,’ said Bryant. ‘It can’t end here, you know. So long as we can prevent a single death, there’s cause to go on.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure you’re not doing this for yourself, because you know that without the unit you have absolutely nothing left?’

  ‘That was cruel, Raymond.’ Bryant did his best to look hurt. ‘You’ve been hanging around with people from the Home Office for too long. It’s made you hard. There was a time when you cared about doing the right thing.’

  ‘I have to be practical about this. I looked inside the envelope you put in my jacket at Oswald’s wake, Arthur. I know I wasn’t supposed to, but curiosity got the better of me. You’d reached the decision to resign, and I know how you feel. Out of step with the present day. Heaven knows I’ve felt that often enough. I have no idea what people are thinking any more, all I know is that I don’t like anyone very much. Some evenings I walk to the station and it seems as though every Londoner under forty is completely drunk. I’m getting to the point where I hate everyone. No wonder people shut themselves away. So you see, I understand your position. That’s why I have to accept your resignation.’

  ‘But I don’t want to resign now. I have a reason for not doing so.’

  ‘The case is closed.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘You identified the murderer.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘You caught him red-handed.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And now you’re saying he didn’t do it after all.’

  ‘No, I’m saying he did.’

  ‘Then how in God’s name can someone else have done it?’

  ‘I. Don’t. Know.’ Bryant realized they were shouting at each other, and turned his hearing aid down a fraction. ‘But. I. Am. Going. To. Find. Out.’

  He saw Land turning red and shouting something back, but had no idea what he was saying. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad that’s settled. I’ll get back to work.’

  Land’s next sentence was more creatively constructed than anything he had said in the last five years, mainly because it was spectacularly obscene, but Bryant heard nothing at all as he left the room.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ April told her grandfather, commandeering his laptop and flipping open a file before him. ‘You’ll love this, it’s technology gone mad. In November 2005, Jocelyn Roquesby caught a flight to Ancona in Italy, returning from Rome five days later. Giles found a torn piece of the ticket stub in the bottom of her handbag. He gave it to Dan Banbury, who used the information to locate her British Airways frequent-flyer number. By buying an online ticket in her name, he was able to access the rest of her personal data.’

  ‘You can do that?’ asked John May in surprise.

  ‘We’re simply stealing the tricks of the identity thieves,’ said April. ‘From that tiny row of digits Dan was able to get her passport number, her nationality and her date of birth. But better still, they led us to Roquesby’s home address, her academic qualifications, profession and current-account details. We can tell you what car she drives, how much she bought her house for – and where she was working. Dan reckons most machine-readable ID documents carry flaws that make them pretty easy to crack. Although the new RFID-chipped passports demanded by the US have military-standard data-encryption technology, they’re unlocked by supposedly “secret” keys that
use readily available information. There are identity thieves who just work the airports, reading documents over travellers’ shoulders and entering data into mobile phones.’

  ‘So who was Jocelyn Roquesby working for?’

  ‘A company called Theseus Research, based in King’s Cross but registered out of Brussels. Dan cross-checked their employment records and came up with a total of seven names in the same London department, employed over roughly the same dates. Guess who they were?’

  ‘Roquesby, Joanne Kellerman, Naomi Curtis, Carol Wynley and Jasmina Sherwin.’

  ‘Close. You’re right about the first four. But it looks like Uncle Arthur was correct about Sherwin not being part of the canonical selection of victims, though, because we have new names in fifth, sixth and seventh places.’

  ‘The ones we haven’t found.’ May leaned forward and read down the screen. ‘My God, I recognize one of them.’

  ‘You do?’

  May found himself looking at three further female names: Mary Sinclair, Jennifer Winslow and Jackie Quinten.

  ‘Mrs Quinten has helped the unit out in the past. She’s the lady who keeps trying to get Arthur to come over for dinner. Have you tried calling them all?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Jennifer Winslow – she’s currently working at Ohio State University, and we can therefore assume her to be out of danger, at least until she returns next week. Mary Sinclair is at home in London, and we’re providing her with immediate police protection, although from what or whom I have absolutely no idea. Right now, Jackie Quinten is the problem. There’s no answer from her landline or her mobile. Meera is on her way to Mrs Quinten’s house in Kentish Town to see what’s happened.’

  ‘Poor Arthur,’ said May. ‘I think he has a bit of a soft spot for her. He knocked a drink over her at the Yorkshire Grey and had a moan about her harassing him for a dinner date, but I know he secretly loves being pampered. He’ll never forgive himself if something has happened to her.’

  38

  * * *

  DISAPPEARANCE

  Meera Mangeshkar peered in through the kitchen window and saw rows of polished copper pots, steel utensils, framed maps, memorabilia collected from canal barges, Victorian vases and jugs filled with dried flowers. But of Mrs Quinten, there was no sign.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ said a gap-toothed pensioner who was unnecessarily clipping the front hedge next door. ‘She’s gone out.’

  ‘Do you know where?’ asked Mangeshkar.

  ‘She’s got a sister in Hemel Hempsted, but I don’t know if that’s where she is. The lights have been off since this morning.’

  ‘She could still be inside. She might have had an accident. Is there a side door?’

  ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

  Meera bristled. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘We don’t get many coppers round here any more. You can come over my garden wall, it’s an easy climb. She always leaves the back window ajar. She knows it’s safe because I never go out, so I don’t miss anything. But you’re wasting your time, because I saw her go out over an hour ago.’

  ‘Did she seem all right to you?’

  ‘Fine, dressed for the shops, coat and boots, not like she was having a funny turn, if that’s what you’re implying.’

  ‘Anything unusual about her?’

  ‘I remember thinking she looked a bit worried.’

  ‘You didn’t ask her what about?’

  ‘Oh no, I mind my own business.’

  ‘And you’re sure she didn’t come back?’

  ‘Positive, because I was watching at the front window.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Meera, ‘I think I will hop over your fence and take a look around.’

  Her arms were slender enough to fit through the gap in the window and unclip the latch. Climbing through, her boots touched down in the darkened lounge. Once inside, she opened the curtains. Hundreds of neatly rolled maps were stacked against the walls almost to the ceiling, but apart from that, everything appeared as it should be: magazines folded, cups washed, an ashtray emptied. A single wooden hanger lay on the bed, left when Mrs Quinten had donned her overcoat.

  It appeared that she, like the others, had set off to meet someone.

  Meera checked the cluttered noticeboard in the kitchen and searched the rooms for an appointment diary, but found nothing. A call to her mobile from someone masquerading as a friend, a work colleague, a dead woman?

  As a child, Meera had blocked out the sounds of the estate by reading detective stories from the library. It has the ingredients of an Agatha Christie without the logic, she thought. If this was Christie, the killer would be a dead woman who’d turn out not to have died. According to Mr Bryant, Mrs Quinten knew about his case. She understood that middle-aged women were at risk, so why would she be so trusting? Because she knows the killer. She looked around the cosy room, praying that its occupant would live to see it again.

  When Meera returned to the unit, she sought out Bryant and asked him about the conversation he’d had with Mrs Quinten in the upstairs bar of the Yorkshire Grey.

  ‘I don’t think she had any inkling of what had happened to her colleagues,’ he said, concentrating on the recollection of events, ‘because she expressed no concern to me. If anything, she complained of being bored recently. I didn’t give her any names, so how could she have realized that she knew them? Although there was a moment at the end of our conversation . . .’ He beetled his brow, trying to recall what was said. ‘She was always inviting me over, but I got the feeling she wanted to consult me about something on a professional basis.’

  ‘She didn’t say what?’

  ‘I don’t think she felt comfortable about talking to me in public, said it was a private matter. She said we. So if she knew the other victims, perhaps they wanted to consult me as a group.’

  ‘For all you know, she could have wanted to talk to you about her historical maps,’ said May, overhearing.

  ‘I’d forgotten about those. She collects them, doesn’t she? Meera, did you see any at her house?’

  ‘You couldn’t miss them. They were everywhere, stacked against all the walls.’

  ‘Where do we start looking for her?’ asked May.

  ‘Get April to track down the sister in Hemel Hempsted and find the addresses of any other relatives she might have wanted to visit, starting with the nearest.’

  ‘She was meeting someone she felt comfortable with,’ said Meera suddenly.

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘I questioned the next-door neighbour, who said she was “dressed for the shops”. Warmly clothed, not dressed up.’

  ‘She thought she was meeting the others, or at least one of them. That’s what they all thought when they went out to their deaths, that they were going to meet each other.’

  ‘If she’d known that any of them had been killed, she wouldn’t have gone, would she?’

  ‘Not unless it was very important.’

  ‘A meeting so urgent that you have to risk your life?’

  ‘It’s someone she trusts,’ said Meera. ‘A former boss, someone in authority. Someone we haven’t reached yet.’ She looked around the room and realized that a pair of workmen were packing computers and files into boxes. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re being shut down again,’ Bryant explained. ‘Take no notice. I never do.’ He tossed the end of his scarf around his neck.

  ‘Wait, with all this going on, where do you think you’re going?’ May asked.

  ‘If one of them lied about working for Theseus Research, they probably all did,’ replied Bryant. ‘I’m heading for King’s Cross.’

  39

  * * *

  SECURITY

  Arthur Bryant had once shepherded bemused tourists on guided tours around King’s Cross, and had perversely grown to love the area.

  It had always been in a state of turbulence, of sickness and health, pleasure and vice, cruelty and grace. In its
way, it was the most quintessential and paradoxical part of the entire city. The railway station was constructed on the site of the London Smallpox Hospital, and yet there had once been in its vicinity a pair of iron-rich spa springs and public pump rooms, near to which Eleanor Gwynne, the favourite of Charles II, had passed her summers in an idle procession of concerts and breakfasts.

  In 1779, the Bagnigge Wells, as it was then called, had been described as a place where ‘unfledged Templars first as fops parade, and new-made ensigns sport their first cockade’. Its banqueting hall boasted a distorting mirror and an organ, tea arbours draped with honeysuckle, swan fountains and fish ponds, bowling greens and skittle alleys, gardens and grottoes. But this most fashionable of resorts could not remain so for long. In 1827 it was written, ‘The cits to Bagnigge Wells repair, to swallow dust and call it air.’ Highwaymen and whores moved in for the rich pickings, the upper classes sneered at their new lowly companions and quickly moved on.

  Just along the rain-polished road from where Bryant now found himself, the Fleet river broadened into a ford at Battle Bridge, a spot still filled with barges. The brickwork ashes that had accumulated on the grounds had been sold to Russia, to help rebuild Moscow after Napoleon’s invasion, but who now could separate fact from fiction? Certainly, the immense octagonal monument to George IV that once sprawled across the road junctions had provided King’s Cross with its name. Here sprang up some of London’s roughest pubs, the Fox at Bay and the Pindar of Wakefield, the smoky homes of gamblers, drunkards and resurrectionists. Here, too, was the hellish Coldbath Fields prison, infamous for the severity of its punishments.

  After the Second World War, the elegant terraced houses were carved into bed-and-breakfast lodgings for the dispossessed. And just as the railway terminus had once brought about the desecration of King’s Cross, the wheel had turned and it was now the area’s saviour, for the rail link to Europe arrived, a new town growing in its wake. The whores and dealers, modern versions of the nightflyers and pleasuremongers who had always flitted around the crossroads, had been scooped from their pitches and dumped elsewhere as chain stores moved in to attract new money.