White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

  In minutes, the pair had zipped themselves into ungainly but practical outfits, although they had been forced to roll up the legs and stuff spare socks into the toes of the boots. They clambered from the truck like spacemen, and stopped to examine the road. Snow was still falling, but now the flurries were light and manageable. The exact number of stranded vehicles was hard to determine, but the jewelled spine of traffic snaked around the next bend in the valley like the bones of a great dinosaur.

  ‘Let’s start with the cars nearest the spot where we found the dead Bentick’s driver,’ said May, hauling his floundering partner out of a deep drift. They reached the abandoned truck, but were unable to open the frozen door. Scraping ice from the window, May saw that the body had frozen solid. ‘At least the temperature will preserve it until we can get it to a morgue,’ he said. ‘I think our murderer must have gone back. I haven’t seen anyone pass us. No sign of the witness either, and we’ll need his statement. Let’s start with the cars behind.’

  They approached a blue Nissan and scraped at the window. ‘Empty,’ said Bryant. ‘Next one.’

  A black BMW and a red Fiat were both abandoned, but in a silver Mercedes saloon they found a young couple fast asleep, warm and safe beneath all-weather jackets. A straggle-haired businessman still dressed in a tightly knotted tie mouthed at them through the window of his Vauxhall Signum, indicating that he could not open the door. May ran the edge of his penknife around the edges, but it made no difference. Ice had frozen the wet seals as firmly as if they had been welded shut.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked May, trying to read the driver’s lips.

  ‘He’s from Kettering,’ said Bryant.

  ‘I’m in catering,’ said the driver, opening the window an inch before it stuck. ‘I’ve got plenty of food to last, so don’t worry about me. The same thing happened two years ago. To be honest, it made a nice break from the wife. You might take an Eccles cake back to the lady behind me. It’s all I can pass through the window.’ He slid the cake through the gap. ‘She looks very upset.’

  The detectives trudged farther back. A grey-faced woman in a green Barbour jacket watched them anxiously. The door of her Volvo saloon was iced shut, but she could open one of the rear passenger windows. ‘We’re police officers,’ Bryant explained, tapping the glass. ‘Don’t open this to anyone else. Have an Eccles cake. Do you need anything else?’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘I’ve been listening to the radio. There are people much worse off than me. I manage a farm outside Holbeton. My husband knows I’m here. There was a man outside a while ago, just after dawn. He tried to get in, but couldn’t open the door.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it was dark and snowing, I really didn’t see.’

  ‘At least the ice is preventing him from entering other cars,’ said Bryant as they made slow progress up the hill.

  ‘He’ll be able to get into trucks, though. Their cabins are built to withstand extreme weather.’

  ‘If this fellow knows there was a witness, that Chinese chap will be at risk. I wish he’d stayed with us. Any one of these stranded motorists could be the person we’re looking for.’

  ‘Given the circumstances, he’ll be hiding in plain sight. My concern is over our situation here. There’s no backup, no threat of legal retribution we can invoke. The man we seek will probably be younger and fitter than us.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ said Bryant, ‘everyone is younger and fitter than us. What have we got on our side? Decrepitude, mid-afternoon narcoleptic attacks and ill-timed lapses of memory. Although being the oldest, I am of course less afraid of dying and therefore liable to do anything, no matter how uncalled-for and dangerous.’

  May eyed him warily. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘Now, we need to enlist some aid and organise a search. There are plenty of others trapped out here. It’s no use just waiting for the authorities to turn up. Let’s do what we’ve always done at the PCU, and get some civilians to help us.’

  A quarter of a mile from the detectives, in the half-buried Vauxhall van, Madeline’s thoughts were also turning to her nemesis. He took me to the huntsman’s villa in the hills, she remembered, standing watch over Ryan while he peed circular traces in the snowdrift beside the car. He knew its owner was lying dead on the floor. Why would he have taken such a risk? ‘Finished?’ she asked aloud. ‘Let’s get back inside.’

  ‘Can’t I play for a while?’ Ryan peered up at her over the folds of his scarf.

  ‘No, it’s not safe. In you go.’

  ‘All this snow and I can’t build a snowman—what else is it good for, anyway?’

  It keeps us trapped here, she thought. He’s from a village in the mountains; he knows how to get around in weather like this.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Ryan. ‘How much longer are we going to be here?’

  ‘It won’t be long now.’ The van and its engine were frozen into a single solid, but their combined body heat, together with the warmth from an extra blanket they had discovered under the rear passenger seat, had guaranteed their survival. There were patches of brilliant blue in the sky, and although the wind still seemed high it felt milder than the previous day. She could hear trees creaking and dripping. Perhaps Johann had decided to leave them alone, and had struck out in the direction of the nearest town. Perhaps the worst was over.

  The envelope with the passport and the photographs lay on the floor of the van, behind her legs. This time, she knew, she would do the right thing, and have him stopped before he could hurt anyone else. She laid her head back against the seat rest and closed her eyes, just for a moment, not meaning to fall asleep.

  Johann’s leg still hurt, and the icy wind bit deeply into his chest and thighs, numbing them further. He had slept the night in an abandoned carpenter’s van which had, at least, supplied him with some useful tools, but he needed to find weatherproof clothes. This, he felt, was to be his greatest test, a battle fought with the demons that had pursued him all his life, the same demons that pursue all lonely men. If I can’t convince her to see the truth, I have nothing left, he thought. I know no-one else in this terrible country. She has to be here somewhere. All these cars look the same now. She even has nature working on her side.

  He could see drivers hunched across their seats, vague organic shapes huddled down in positions of protection, barely recognisable as human beings. They had been reduced to rudimentary life-forms with the most basic requirements: shelter, food, warmth. The adverse conditions could work in his favour, he decided. He was free to rise above them, to prove his fitness and strength, against them all.

  He knew that Madeline would never come back to him; that was no longer the issue. Part of her had retreated too far to be reached. He had behaved stupidly, impulsively, and saw nothing but uncomprehending hatred and the madness of maternal protection in her eyes. He would make her understand, then take back the packet and go on his way, lose himself in the empty coastal towns, never returning to the fierce light of Southern France, where he would be forced to exist as a failure beneath God’s ever-watchful gaze.

  He seated the carpenter’s tools more firmly in his back pocket and trudged on, searching each of the vehicles in turn. He felt he was close; the corridor of snow had locked them in at either end of the stretch of road. He could escape across the moor, hoping that the break in the weather held. In the mountains of his childhood, storms could arrive within seconds, trapping unwary climbers. He had watched clouds roll over the cliffs like the fallout from some great explosion. Was it the same here, in these deceptive woodlands? And the people; he had always considered the residents of the Alpes-Maritimes to be a suspicious, private people, but they were nothing compared to these faceless shapes sealed in their cars. What would it take to prise Madeline from her hiding place?

  31

  LOST CHILD

  The roads surrounding Camden Market had been severed by its network of sepia railway lines and canals, but al
so by the bombs that had removed so many Edwardian yellow brick houses, allowing them to be replaced by sixties buildings distinguished only by their paucity of imagination. In the high street, the area’s boom-and-bust arc was most pronounced. Ground floors had been converted into shops selling household items, then art deco antiques, then shoes and thrash metal T-shirts and finally magic mushrooms, drug paraphernalia and tattoos. It was into this last parlour that Banbury and Kershaw now stepped.

  The store was called Tribe, and had proven popular with the gentle, literate Goth set. With a Chelsea haircut, cable-knit sweater and corduroy trousers marking him as a member of the upper middle classes, the medical examiner looked hopelessly out of place, but with their superiors still stranded in the West Country and all leave cancelled at the unit, he had little choice but to help out wherever he was needed.

  ‘I can’t believe anyone in England would allow themselves to be tattooed with that,’ he told Banbury, pointing to a design of a flaming skeleton riding a Harley. ‘Don’t they consider how bad it will look when they’re sixty?’

  ‘No-one looks their best at sixty,’ said Banbury absently. ‘Check these out.’ He pointed to a series of photographs tacked on the wall. A fat bare back adorned with a gigantic red spider, wide chrome studs pinning a spine from neck to sternum, a horned devil with hands like crab legs spread across a woman’s back. A centipede wrapped around a man’s pale chest, its claw-feet ending in hooks that actually pierced the skin. Beyond the examples of the tattooist’s work were photographs of more extreme scarification, multiple bolts through cheeks, steel horns inserted into foreheads, rivets through scrotal sacs…Banbury looked like he’d accidentally stepped on a three-pin plug in his socks.

  ‘Anyone home?’

  A scrawny, sallow man who resembled an old-time carnival barker stepped out from behind curtains adorned with tarot symbols. Above his shaved eyebrows the word SATAN was spelled out in naked women. ‘Help you?’

  ‘Police officers,’ said Banbury. ‘Do you know this girl?’ He showed the tattooist the image he had taken on his mobile. ‘She would have asked for a tattoo on her left arm about eight months ago.’

  ‘I’m registered,’ said the tattooist. ‘Everyone’s kept on file with proof of their age and details of what they want done. I don’t work on anyone underage. I can’t tell from this picture.’ He handed back the phone.

  ‘She would have come back to you more recently to try and get the thing removed, but she was refused.’

  ‘That narrows it down. Give me a minute.’ He checked the ancient Dell computer on his counter, refining his search. ‘I remember this one. She wanted it taken off, had a real go at me because I wouldn’t do it. I’m not licenced for laser removal.’

  ‘Recall anything else about the day she came back?’

  ‘Let me think. I’ve a pretty good memory for the difficult ones.’ He scratched absently at a demon in a flaming hot rod. ‘We did the original tattoo in two sessions, and both times she was alone. When she returned for its removal she was with a little black dude, the new boyfriend I guess. They were holding hands. Don’t often see that these days.’

  ‘After she left you, she went ahead and carved the tattoo from her arm with a penknife.’

  ‘That’s not my responsibility. Be easier to find more details if you had an ID.’

  ‘Lilith Starr, but that’s unlikely to be her real name. Try Bronwin.’

  ‘No, she’s here under Starr, and it was a real traditional job, red-and-blue heart with an unfurled name panel.’

  ‘Do you have a picture of the design?’

  ‘Sure. I always take a picture once it’s complete. Sometimes they get the design altered somewhere else, then come back to me for a repair job, so I have to keep the original as reference.’ He turned the screen around. Lilith had pulled up her slash-neck T-shirt sleeve to reveal the tattoo. Her round face and snub nose were instantly recognisable, but her beautiful red hair had been raggedly cropped. Her small, freckled breasts appeared barely more than pubescent. She appeared ill at ease before the camera, frowning into the flash with discomfort.

  Beneath her photograph was a copy of the design: a plump red heart with a banner wrapped around it, upon which was written a single word. The tattoo was almost as wide as her arm.

  ‘ “Samuel,” ’ said Banbury. ‘She must have been pretty serious about him to get that done, yet she wanted to erase his memory very soon after meeting Owen Mills.’

  ‘Happens a lot,’ said the tattooist. ‘They fall for someone else and try to get the name changed, but she just wanted it taken off.’

  ‘Maybe Owen told her to get rid of it,’ replied Kershaw, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘You think that’s why he came with her to get the thing removed? To make sure she did it? He doesn’t look the dangerous type.’

  ‘Difficult to know,’ said Kershaw. ‘Women see something in men that we hardly see in ourselves. We don’t find him threatening, but she might have been terrified of him.’

  ‘Or terrified of Samuel,’ said Banbury, thinking of the tattoo’s ragged remains.

  DS Janice Longbright was not good at handling women like Felicity Bronwin. The author was a well-preserved woman in her mid-forties with all the assurance of someone who was used to being right, and clearly expected others to agree with her opinions. Her apartment was on the third floor of a polished-brick mansion block that provided a graceful lacuna within the arbitrary imperial architecture of Knightsbridge. Its décor was county-woman-in-London: traditional, floral, cluttered, and cold.

  Felicity sat before the sergeant in a brown woollen skirt, legs neatly crossed at thick ankles, and exuded impatience, despite having just been informed that her daughter was dead. Her husband was little more than a ghostly presence in the room, grey in mustache and suit, washed-out, silent, keen to be among trees once more. He sat in the chair behind her, watching his wife intently, as if waiting to edit or censor her words.

  The detective sergeant had asked if she could take something belonging to Mrs Bronwin’s daughter. With reluctance, Felicity had handed over a pink furry diary Lilith had left behind on her last visit.

  Janice carefully leafed through the pages. ‘Your daughter—’

  ‘I have no daughter.’ Mrs Bronwin’s voice was toneless, disinterested. ‘What I have is a misfit who sought only to hurt me at every possible turn, and who died some while ago, as far as I or my husband is concerned.’

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ Longbright ventured.

  ‘I’ve been expecting it for some time now. That’s what drug addicts do, isn’t it, repeatedly let you down before killing themselves?’

  ‘When did you last see Lilith?’

  Mrs Bronwin winced, as if the very mention of her child’s name was objectionable. ‘Last Christmas, at our home in Somerset. Not a good idea to walk into the village pub with pink hair and torn tights. The place was full of our land-workers, and it makes them lose respect. Turned up here with a young man in tow, obviously on drugs.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We argued and they left.’ She sighed. ‘The endless rebellions, the pleas for attention, it’s all so drearily predictable of the young these days. The rules and traditions of country life are too boring for them, I suppose.’ For a woman who writes about understanding the female mind-set, thought Longbright, she doesn’t seem interested in understanding her own daughter.

  ‘Do you remember the boyfriend’s name? Did he look like this?’ Longbright showed her Owen Mills’s photograph.

  ‘God no, he wasn’t black.’ She tried, but failed, to hide her distaste. ‘Fair, possibly ginger, with shaved eyebrows. But definitely not a—not black.’

  ‘You don’t remember his name?’

  ‘Luke,’ said Mr Bronwin, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Matthew,’ said Felicity, glaring at him.

  ‘Did you ever hear of your daughter going out with someone called Samuel?’

  They excha
nged glances. ‘No,’ they agreed, rather too quickly.

  ‘She never said anything about dating him? We have reason to believe they were seriously involved with each other for a time, up until she met Owen Mills.’

  Mr Bronwin appeared about to speak, but changed his mind.

  ‘You show me a picture of a withered, bleached corpse,’ said Felicity Bronwin, ‘and I’m supposed to unfold our family history before you, just so that you can file away a report? I’m sorry to disappoint you. This pitiful creature you found frozen to death in a shop doorway bears no resemblance to my beautiful child anymore. Why should I feel any pain now, when I said good-bye so long ago?’

  ‘Because the death of a child is always a tragedy,’ said the sergeant hotly. She had met women like Mrs Bronwin too many times before. ‘Perhaps you don’t believe someone can still be a child at seventeen. But your daughter suffered a pauper’s death in the middle of one of the world’s richest cities, and I’m afraid you must bear some of the responsibility for that.’ Furious with the parents, but even more annoyed with herself for losing her impartiality, Longbright rose to her feet. ‘I’d like a recent photograph of Lilith, if you can spare one.’

  ‘I’m not sure we have any,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Yes, we do. I’ll get it for you.’ Mr Bronwin shot his wife an angry look and left the freezing room. He returned with a photograph showing the pale, scowling redhead standing in a corner of the Bronwins’ lounge, beside a gigantic Christmas tree. She was dressed for midsummer, in the standard Goth outfit of a black sleeveless top decorated with skulls, skin-tight black leggings and studded boots.

  Who are you? thought Longbright, studying the picture. You were the last case Oswald ever handled. What did he discover about your life that was worth dying for?

  32

  SUBZERO

  ‘They spoke about something serious and personal shortly before she died, I’m sure of it,’ Longbright told him.