White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Bryant, holding the mobile tightly to his frozen right ear.

  ‘Because I’ve been talking to Owen Mills again, and I’m sure he’s hiding something about their conversation that night. He’s more astute than I first thought, but he’s still holding back. Lilith had broken up badly with her former boyfriend, even going so far as to cut his name from her arm with a penknife, possibly at Owen’s request. Her drug-taking stems from around the time she took Samuel home to meet her parents.’

  ‘They admitted meeting this chap?’

  ‘As good as—I think they were trying to disguise his name but couldn’t agree on a new one for him. Matthew or Luke. What I don’t understand is, if she was so in love that she had him tattooed on her arm, why did she end up hating him so badly that she would put herself through agony? And why did Owen Mills let her?’

  ‘It sounds to me as if there were three of them in the relationship,’ said Bryant. ‘You know about the lives of two of the participants, Mills and the girl, but you won’t get any answers until you have more information on the third.’

  ‘Do you think I’m tackling this the wrong way?’ the sergeant asked, despondent. ‘It’s such an indirect approach. Perhaps I should be thinking more about Oswald rather than the boy who came to see him.’

  ‘You said yourself that Owen Mills was Finch’s only visitor. I don’t suppose John would agree with me, but in the absence of any other leads, it’s what I’d go after. The girl is dead, Oswald is dead, the ex-partner remains a blank, so you have to take aim at the last person to see Finch alive: Mills. Use everybody in the unit if you have to, but you must also keep an eye on Kershaw. He makes mistakes when he feels threatened, and I imagine he’s feeling pretty threatened right now.’

  He was about to ring off, but came close to the mobile again. ‘I’m afraid I have to go. We’ve a murderer of our own to track down here.’ He shut the phone before Longbright had a chance to ask him what on earth was going on.

  The detectives had reached a dogleg in the road, and could see across the valley onto the darkening moors beyond. ‘It looks like there’s another volley of snow coming in,’ said May. ‘We should get back to the van.’

  ‘Let’s check out a few more, just another hundred yards. I’m fine, I assure you.’ Bryant made his way up to the next vehicle.

  This time, a young man opened the door of his Rover to meet them halfway. ‘You should stay inside your vehicles,’ he told them. ‘It’s not safe outside.’ He explained that he was a staff nurse at Exeter General Hospital, and had been further along the road calling on those still trapped in their vehicles.

  ‘I’m Jez Morris, pleased to meet you.’ He shook their hands with grave formality. ‘You’re really police officers?’

  ‘We’re attached to a special unit in London,’ said Bryant, explaining without revealing anything. He knew he might be facing the man who had murdered their truck driver. ‘How many more are back there?’

  ‘Thirteen by my count, including a couple of kids. I treated an elderly couple for early symptoms of hypothermic shock, but surprisingly there’s been nothing too serious. People in these parts are pretty tough. They know they’re taking a chance if they go against a blizzard warning. How many in your direction?’

  ‘We counted eleven,’ said May. And one no longer alive, he thought uncomfortably. They left Morris with a promise to check in on him within the hour. Behind the nurse’s car, a snow-weighted beech tree had collapsed across the road, and a narrow pantechnicon had been thrown on its side. The cabin was empty, but as May called out, the lower rear door was pushed up and a young black man in a store uniform looked out.

  ‘Hey, no sign of the rescue workers yet?’ he asked. His accent placed him from South London. ‘Are you stuck here, too?’

  May explained. ‘What happened here?’ he asked.

  ‘I came around the bend and saw the cars across the road. Braked too hard to avoid the tree and my load shifted. Over she went.’ The driver introduced himself as Louis. ‘I’m supposed to deliver to Derry and Co in Plymouth by nightfall. Won’t make much difference when I get there now; the stock’s pretty messed up.’

  ‘Are you warm enough in there?’ May asked.

  ‘I’m carrying bed linen as well as crockery, so that’s not a problem,’ said Louis. ‘But some of the geezers behind me aren’t doing so well. I opened a few of the boxes and gave blankets out to the cars. My manager will go crazy, but I’ll tell him it’s good publicity for the store. I don’t want to lose my job, but I couldn’t just leave people freezing while I’ve got all this stuff, you know? Do you know what’s happening? My battery’s flat, so I’ve got no radio.’

  May was about to answer when the bulky chop of helicopter blades displaced the air above them. Everyone looked up.

  ‘Is he attempting to land?’ asked Bryant.

  The red air ambulance was trying to set itself down on the narrow ridge above the road, but great gusts of wind caught at its blades and threatened to flip it. After searching for other spots to land, it hovered beside the road and a crew member threw out supplies sealed in Day-Glo orange plastic packs that tumbled down the hillside trailing plumes of snow. The helicopter swung away in the direction of Plymouth.

  ‘Some good people out here,’ said May, watching the chopper depart. ‘They can keep an eye on the other drivers, but we can’t tell them who to watch out for. We haven’t seen this fellow clearly ourselves. What we need to do—’

  His mobile rang. He checked the number and saw that Longbright was calling.

  One of the orange supply packs lay in deep snow on the other side of the sallows and sycamores that lined the road, no more than a hundred metres from the Vauxhall in which Madeline and Ryan were sheltering.

  Madeline scraped at the window and tried to locate it through the trees. Their padded jackets afforded protection against the subzero temperature, but neither of them had eaten more than a few squares of chocolate since the previous day. Ryan’s teeth were chattering; he needed something to restore his body’s energy. ‘It must be easy to open,’ she said, searching for a gap in the branches. ‘People can’t be expected to carry penknives on them.’

  ‘We’ve got a Swiss Army knife,’ Ryan remembered.

  ‘I left it in France, in your Spider-Man bag.’

  An hour had passed without her catching sight of Johann. Heavy snow clouds were reappearing above the trees. It would take longer to bring supplies back in another blizzard, and harder to spot him if he decided to attack. ‘I’m going outside for a few minutes,’ she told Ryan. ‘I want you to lock the door as soon as I’ve gone, and don’t unlock it for anyone except me.’

  She picked up the envelope containing the evidence and slipped it inside her jacket, then climbed out of the van. Their rented Toyota was five cars ahead. Keeping low, she moved quickly between the vehicles until she reached it, then dropped to her knees behind the car. The picture packet wedged easily under the wheel arch, and could not be seen from any angle. Satisfied that no-one else would know it was there, she set off towards the supply carton.

  It proved trickier than she’d expected getting through the icy thicket above the roadway. The branches sprang up as stalactites broke from them, scratching her face, but she pushed ahead until she found herself standing in a field of flawless white with graceful bargellos of wind-sculpted snow crossing its edges.

  The case had come to rest in the ditch that ran beside the trees. She tried to right it, but it was too heavy to shift. A nylon cord ran the length of the pack, beneath a perforated section of the plastic, and tore the wrapper open when she pulled it. Inside were meals that heated themselves in aluminium cans, blankets, a flexible-frame tent, light sticks and an array of tools. She wrapped the ready meals and hot drink packets in a blanket, and retraced her steps back to the thicket. Snow had started to fall once more.

  A dark figure was standing in the shadows on the other side.

  She stopped, her br
eath growing shallow. Pushing back through the branches would instantly reveal her whereabouts. She could see Ryan inside the van on the other side of the trees. The only answer was to go around to the first space between the low hawthorn bushes that surrounded the tree trunks. She moved as quickly and quietly as she was able, but the crust of the snow kept breaking, sinking her into the ditches and furrows of the field.

  She reached the gap and ventured a backward glance. He had not moved. He had no need to; she would have to come back up the road and pass near him to reach the van. She stayed on the far side of the vehicles, taking care not to slip in the frozen tyre tracks. When she looked back up, he had disappeared.

  He came for her when she was not expecting it, seizing her left hand, pleading in a low voice, causing her to drop the blanket, which opened, spilling its contents across the road. Johann’s face betrayed no emotion. He seemed hardly aware of his actions, as if he had decided it wasn’t worth bargaining with her any more.

  Her hand slipped free of its glove, and she used the moment of surprise to run, back to the driver’s side of the van. She threw herself inside and punched down the door lock as Ryan screamed. ‘It’s all right,’ she told the frightened boy, ‘he can’t get in.’

  Johann’s fist slammed a tattoo of frustration on the side window, but the glass held. He lowered himself to look inside, and gestured with an open palm. Give it back to me. She shook her head, shrinking from the window. He ran at the van, and seemed about to try and kick his way in when he suddenly froze and turned away.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘Stay over here.’ She pulled the boy closer.

  ‘You dropped the food.’

  ‘I know, baby, I know.’ They looked out at the red blanket, which had splayed across the snow like a bloodstain, the cans and packets lying there beyond reach, and Johann, crouched beneath the overhanging branches, vulpine, waiting for them to emerge.

  33

  RENFIELD

  ‘We’ve rather got our hands full here, Janice,’ said John May impatiently. ‘What can we do for you now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, John, it’s just that I’ve never had a problem like this, and I couldn’t phone Arthur again. I know you wanted us to sort out the investigation without your help, but if we don’t find a solution to Oswald’s death before the Home Office descends on us with their royal patron, we’re finished. I thought it would help if I could talk to you.’

  ‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’

  ‘Deportment,’ said Longbright. ‘Lilith Starr was taking a course in it. She put the appointments in her diary.’

  ‘Deportment? I presume you don’t mean getting thrown out of the country?’

  ‘No, I mean walking around with a book on your head, carrying yourself well, learning how to sit. It’s a very old-fashioned approach to being finished. Girls in the sixties were packed off to Swiss schools to learn social skills befitting the highborn. Essentially, they learned how to make themselves attractive to men and serve them well.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would a doped-up girl living in a Camden squat want to do that?’ asked May. ‘You don’t think she was entertaining some fantasy about becoming a high-priced call girl?’

  ‘That’s just what I wondered,’ replied Longbright. ‘She would have to have been introduced into an organisation—the ones in Mayfair and the Edgeware Road that provide girls for hotels and wealthy clients are very tightly run these days. Mills wouldn’t have the right connections.’

  ‘Which leaves the former boyfriend, Sam. You think he pimped for her, was maybe grooming her? It might go some way towards explaining why she fell out with him.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better pay her “finishing school” a quick visit.’

  ‘If I can arrange it in time,’ Longbright agreed. ‘That’s the one thing I don’t have. Arthur thinks that Owen Mills is the key to all this, but we’ve got no further with him.’

  May thought for a moment. ‘Are Giles and Dan absolutely sure that Oswald Finch was murdered?’

  ‘They’re unshakable. It means he was killed about an hour and a half after Mills left.’

  ‘What if Mills is lying? He lied about his girlfriend, didn’t he? He could have come to the morgue and picked a fight with Finch, giving him a couple of smacks in the neck and chest, bringing on the thrombotic trauma.’

  ‘He’s sullen, but I can’t see him slapping anyone about,’ said Longbright.

  ‘All right, even if he didn’t kill Finch, what if he found him already dead, and closed the door behind him as he left, leaving the room sealed?’

  ‘Again the timing is wrong, and besides, there’s no reason why he would do that. Arthur always says there’s a rational motive at the root of everything.’

  ‘Not since the Highwayman case, he doesn’t. The outcome of that investigation shook him up badly. He says he no longer understands the young, so he certainly wouldn’t know what to make of Mills.’

  ‘All right, using another criterion of Arthur’s, I’d say it just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think the boy lies, so much as he simply omits the truth.’

  ‘Mills has to be the link, Janice. Without him you have nothing. What about the dead girl? Renfield brought her in; have you spoken to him yet?’

  ‘Renfield.’ Longbright shuddered.

  Sergeant Renfield had no interest in what anyone thought of him, which was just as well, because nobody thought much of him at all. Bitterness is an unattractive trait in a middle-aged man, and his stemmed from the fact that he had been passed over for promotion with such consistency that he could only imagine there was a conspiracy against him. There was not, as it happened; only vague dislike for a misanthropic, charmless desk sergeant who believed in guilt without proof and punishment without conditions. He performed his duties with a certain solid thoroughness, but seemed so lacking in human understanding that it was a mystery why he had decided on a career in the police. Renfield suspected everyone of breaking the law, especially the innocent, but was prepared to look favorably on his own men whenever they behaved badly. This moral blindness bestowed upon him a small team of loyal acolytes, but had also earned him an unsavoury reputation. His redeeming feature, a loyalty to the letter of the law, was the same quality that held him back. He was particularly disliked by women, who sensed that his leering eye would probably be accompanied by a roving hand if he thought he could get away with it. Renfield was considered by the PCU to be a throwback, low, wide and hairy-shouldered, too set in his ways and too stubborn to learn better behaviour, and yet perversely, there was a broad streak of decency buried within him.

  ‘I wonder what you’re here for, Longbright,’ he mused without looking up at her. He had a cold, and was surrounded by wet balls of tissue. ‘I hear your bosses are stuck in a snowdrift. You lot must be running about like headless chickens without someone to tell you what to do.’

  ‘I was just passing, and thought I’d check on that girl you took around to Mr Finch on Tuesday morning.’ As far as she knew, the unit had successfully hushed up news of Oswald’s demise, but someone was bound to notice that something was wrong when they found the doors to the Bayham Street Morgue locked.

  ‘I thought Finch would be on the blower with some kind of report by now.’ Renfield blasted another tissue apart and set it aside. ‘Poor old sod shouldn’t still be working at his age. He’ll peg out on the job one day, wait and see.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to report to you, Renfield.’ Longbright wondered, Has he heard something?

  ‘No, but he never misses a chance to give my lads a hard time. I told him she was just another Camden junkie, but he started arguing with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He reckoned she didn’t show the classic signs, or fit the mould or something. You know how he goes on, you stop listening after a while. Told us we should have been more thorough. It’s all right for him, with one weirdo to deal with each week; he should try
keeping up with our quotas—’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Longbright. ‘Thorough about what?’

  ‘He wanted us to go back to the scene and check for proof of an overdose, but by the time we got there the street cleaners had been along.’

  ‘You didn’t cordon off the site?’

  ‘Don’t you bloody start,’ Renfield complained as he miserably dragged another tissue from the box. ‘We did everything by the book. It’s all laid down in black and white so that my lads don’t have to keep stopping and working things out for themselves.’

  That’s exactly the problem, thought Longbright as she left Camden Town Police Station. Good officers were like good doctors, relying on their innate morality to clear a path through restricting rules. The PCU took that approach to some kind of ne plus ultra. Well, it’s time to raise the stakes, she thought, flipping her collar against the falling sleet. I’d rather break the law than see the unit taken away from us now.

  34

  IMPEDIMENT

  ‘Where on earth is everybody?’ Raymond Land asked April when he arrived on Thursday morning. ‘I thought they were supposed to be working through the night.’

  Outside the PCU, the overnight snowfall was turning to tobacco-coloured slush as the temperature rose above zero. Wet boots were lined up by the hall radiator, and Crippen was guiltily wolfing the lardy remains of Bimsley’s breakfast burger because Bryant wasn’t there to feed him.

  ‘They have been working, sir,’ said April. ‘Mr Banbury and Mr Kershaw are running some further tests at Bayham Street. PCs Bimsley and Mangeshkar went to talk to Owen Mills’s neighbours. Detective Sergeant Longbright has gone back to Camden Town nick—’ She checked the hurried notes she had made half an hour ago. Lie to Raymond if you have to, but hold him off and keep him calm, Longbright had told her. And Arthur wants to know if you can do anything to get today’s ridiculous royal visit cancelled.