White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Meanwhile, my star detectives are building bloody snowmen somewhere near the English Riviera,’ Land snapped. ‘What am I supposed to say to the Princess? “I’m sorry, your Royal Highness, we’re not quite ready for your visit, seeing as one of our best men has been murdered, possibly by another member of staff, and as they’re all under house arrest we haven’t had time to nip out and purchase your bouquet.” What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m holding the fort,’ said April, feeling useless.

  ‘Then you’ll have to meet up with the Princess’s social secretary at noon,’ warned Land. ‘This Armstrong woman wants to go through protocol to make sure everyone knows exactly how to greet Her Magnificence and what to say if she deigns to speak to them. You’ll have to nip up to the Esso garage and buy flowers and refreshments. And get this place looking decent. And hide anything unsavoury from the royal view. You might start with Mr Bryant’s office.’ Here, Land was thinking specifically of the marijuana plant Bryant kept beneath his desk ‘for his rheumatism,’ the reeking Tibetan skull on his shelf, and some of the more outré and explicit books with which he surrounded himself.

  ‘Sir?’ April raised a timid hand. ‘Mr Bryant asked me to warn you about the petri dishes he keeps in his cupboard. He’s been growing some virulent bacillus cultures, some experiment he’s conducting into plague transmission in the Middle Ages. I accidentally knocked over one of them yesterday. I don’t want to worry you, but do you think it’s wise to expose the Princess to a possibly dangerous virus? Perhaps we should cancel her visit.’

  ‘Don’t try to bamboozle me, girl,’ snapped Land. ‘Bryant’s had those pots and dishes for donkey’s years. He made us all as sick as dogs in ’85 after using one to serve cocktail sausages in at the Christmas party, but they’re inert now. I even saw Crippen eating from one of them. We have to do something about that cat. He smells quite indescribable when he’s wet. Bryant’s just attempting to get the visit postponed, but it won’t work.’

  ‘There’s another problem,’ April blurted. ‘The network cabling. The carpenters have had to tear the floorboards up, and they can’t guarantee they’ll be able to put everything back in time. Surely you don’t want the Princess falling through our floor.’

  ‘Then I’ll put a rocket up them, you watch,’ snapped Land. ‘They’ll finish the job by lunchtime if I threaten to withdraw their pay.’ He stamped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  You can’t say I didn’t try, Uncle Arthur, she thought. Checking her watch, she saw that it was nine-fifteen A.M. They had less than eight hours to solve the mystery of Oswald’s death before Oskar Kasavian presented the unit for public ridicule and closure.

  35

  AMELIORATION

  Janice had marked the page in Lilith’s diary with a Post-it note. Straphanging in the tube on her way through the Piccadilly line, she reread the entries, virtually the only ones Lilith had bothered to make: a series of appointments over the last three months at a Knightsbridge beauty salon, including several training sessions in deportment. The entries had immediately struck her as being incongruous. Here was a girl who had mutilated her arm to please her new boyfriend, who was taking drugs and behaving irrationally. Why would she attend the kind of expensive salon usually frequented by wealthy middle-aged women? Everyone has their dreams, she thought, no matter how disillusioning they may turn out to be.

  As she ventured in through the doors of The Temple, at least three pairs of women studied her before turning their heads and whispering to one another. Longbright realised it was because she was wearing a standard-issue black padded police jacket and what appeared to be men’s boots, the continuing inclement weather having finally forced her to abandon her usual array of exotic outfits.

  As Longbright passed through, she had the all-too-familiar feeling of being looked down upon, because she was a woman in a man’s job, because she had a job at all, because she was large and unusual. It took extra effort to hold her head up and march through these pampered, supine women who were more like pets than adults.

  The Temple was a hip take on the ladies’ salons of the 1950s, but now the red flock wallpaper patterns were finished in shocking retro pinks and crimsons, and for the price of a full day’s body treatment you could once have bought a car in Knightsbridge. On the salon’s faux-marbled wall was a photograph of a man in sunglasses with a bouffant hair stack, a sharkskin suit and a narrow black tie. Beneath it ran a caption: Monsieur Alphonse attending the Cannes Film Festival 2006. She understood now; it was a postmodern joke, the kitsch fifties setup that aped a dozen British films from the period, usually starring Peter Sellers or Norman Wisdom—the archetypal gangster-turned-hairdresser, all phony French accent and camp mannerisms. How knowing, how droll, his customers would think as they handed over their gold cards.

  ‘I would like an appointment with Monsieur Alphonse,’ she told the receptionist, a lacquered raptor who had been exfoliated and plucked to a life-threatening degree. She flicked through her suede-edged address book with a crimson claw, avoiding Longbright’s gaze. ‘Let’s see, we could fit you in at the beginning of March. Are you here for our extreme skincare rehabilitation program?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Longbright, affronted. ‘I always wear a heavy foundation. I’d like to see Monsieur Alphonse right now.’

  The receptionist performed a double-take that nearly dislodged her from her perch. ‘Monsieur Alphonse can’t possibly take short-notice appointments. I’m afraid such a request is completely out of the question.’

  Longbright flicked her badge onto the counter and gave her a hard smile. ‘Oh, it’s not a request.’

  Monsieur Alphonse was, to her surprise, not a South London wide boy with a dodgy Parisian accent, but a Chelsea footballer from the mid-nineties called Darren Spender who had stumbled upon a way of extending his brief claim to fame. According to the tabloids, running The Temple was his way of making a fortune while searching for his next ex-wife, although Longbright could tell from his patronising attitude to women that, like so many men of rudimentary maturity, he had bypassed monogamy in favour of indefinitely sustained states of sexual tension. Unlike his customers, he preferred nothing to be cut-and-dried. As a consequence, he had been photographed leaving bars with a wide variety of pneumatically enhanced exotic dancers in the back pages of Heat magazine, as well as padding out On-the-Town features in brick-thick monthly glossies written by and for the brick-thick. None of this celebrity exposure cut the mustard with Longbright, who regarded him as one would a spider in the bath.

  ‘It’s not good for business having the police come in here,’ said Spender, inviting her to sit and twinkling moodily at her. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Longbright, ‘at least, not since that rubbish penalty you took against Aston Villa. Know this girl?’

  If Spender was surprised by Lilith’s picture, he betrayed no sign of it. ‘I wouldn’t have any idea,’ he said. ‘We have a high turnover of clients, as you can imagine. I don’t deal with them all personally, you know. This is a business.’

  ‘Your name is in her diary for three of the five appointments, so I assumed you were acquainted.’

  ‘There’s a sliding scale for my second-, third- and fourth-level assistants.’

  ‘Her name was Lilith Starr, and I’m using the past tense because she’s dead.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ He didn’t miss a beat. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘One of the things we have to do in a situation like this is establish her movements during her final days. She came to see you forty-eight hours before she died, hence my need for this visit. Lilith lived in a squat in Camden Town. What does it cost to cut someone’s hair?’

  ‘It depends on which stylist the client books. Let me call someone.’ Using an old-fashioned desk intercom, he rang his outside office. ‘Can you get Sonya in here?’

  A tall blonde in her mid-thirties, dressed in an iridescent pi
nk trouser suit and heels, entered and seated herself beside Spender. Longbright passed her the photograph and waited for a response.

  ‘How much do you charge for a consultation, Mr Spender?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘My personal rate starts at five hundred pounds an hour.’

  ‘I remember this girl,’ said Sonya, tapping the picture.

  Longbright turned her attention to the Barbie woman. ‘How much did Lilith pay for your services?’

  Sonya attempted to show that she was analysing the question, but the effect merely looked guarded and secretive. ‘I believe we gave her a very healthy discount rate,’ she said finally.

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that? You’re a beautician, not a philanthropist.’

  Sonya gave a quick, insincere smile. ‘She was getting a full makeover. Skin care, dietary control, hair, manicure, body-wrapping, makeup, deportment, speech therapy, one of our best tailored lifestyle packages. She wanted to shed her origins. I remember when she first came in with one of our New Talent flyers. One glance at her told me she couldn’t afford us, but it also told me that she had the look.’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘Lilith had almost everything it takes to be a great model except height, and that’s only important if you’re doing catwalk work. Anyone can be pretty these days. She had something more elusive and mysterious, a quality that set her apart. A touch of the street. You invest money in girls like these and they repay you when they start to get press coverage. We make the money back in sponsorship contra-deals alone.’

  ‘We’re about to launch a talent agency and our own line of cosmetics,’ Spender explained. ‘This is the period when we need to make a lot of friends, some of whom already have high profiles, others who are just starting out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t normally have picked someone quite so raw,’ said Sonya, ‘but sometimes you have to take chances.’

  In the brief silence that followed, Longbright decided to ask an indelicate question. ‘Was your relationship with her more than just professional, Mr Spender? Were you sleeping with her?’

  ‘No, that would have been a violation of our customer-relationship policy,’ said Spender without a flinch.

  Oddly, the sergeant believed him. But you were planning to, she thought, once you’d finished making her over into the image of your ideal sexual partner.

  ‘She was your type, though. I’ve seen the similar look of the girls on your arm who are always in Heat. I mean the magazine,’ she added hastily. ‘Why did she come here? There must be plenty of less expensive places.’

  Sonya took over, glancing at her boss. ‘I think she realised that the first step towards becoming a successful photographic model was looking and behaving like one. That’s why she wanted the deportment and elocution lessons. We agreed to bankroll her at the salon for three months, at the end of which time we would assess her and decide whether to sign her with our agency.’

  ‘Did either of you know that she had a drug habit?’

  ‘No, of course not. Although I noticed that she had some problems with her skin.’

  ‘So you never saw the state of her arms?’

  Sonya looked blankly at her, a pose she had perfected. ‘I don’t think so. She told me she was from a good part of Fulham. She spoke nicely. I thought she was probably from a decent middle-class background. Goths often are.’

  ‘And of course that would be important.’

  ‘This isn’t some shitty little Hackney hairdresser’s,’ said Spender sharply. ‘We have high standards to maintain. Our ladies come here for lifestyle amelioration.’ Longbright felt he had learned the phrase especially for this use.

  As she took her leave, she walked back through the salon and stopped beside the receptionist’s counter. ‘I like your hair,’ Longbright told one of the passing stylists. ‘What colour is that?’

  ‘Amaretto Latte,’ the girl told her, touching the ends lightly. She was used to compliments. ‘I’m planning Cappuccino highlights with a biscuit finish.’

  ‘Sounds fattening.’ Longbright looked about. ‘Pretty exclusive place. They don’t just cut hair here, do they?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the girl, whose badge proclaimed her as Lavinia. ‘We do diet and exercise, spa treatments, stress management, life training—’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘Some of the ladies—’ she lowered her voice in confidence, ‘—have recurring issues with portion control, so they get enrolled in Mr Spender’s club, Circe. I can get you a brochure if you want.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  Lavinia returned with a copy and slipped it to Longbright. ‘Only I’m not really supposed to give them out to casual visitors,’ she confided. ‘But seeing as you had a private meeting with Mr Spender, I’m sure it’s all right.’

  As Longbright walked back past Harrods towards the tube station, flicking through the brochure, she decided to call Kershaw. ‘Giles, is it legal to employ a private doctor to offer advice to your customers?’ she asked.

  ‘Bit of a grey area,’ the forensic man told her. ‘Pharmacies allow their shop assistants to recommend products. The government’s more relaxed about it than they used to be.’

  ‘This guy’s offering lifestyle courses to women “under the expert guidance of trained physicians,” it says here. I can’t help thinking that our dead girl is the key somehow, and I need a key to her.’

  ‘Got any names for me from that brochure?’

  ‘Hang on.’ She scanned the page. ‘Dr R. Martino MD BMA, Dr P. Ranswar MD BSA.’

  ‘Give me about ten minutes. I’ll get back to you.’ He rang off.

  Longbright loitered outside a coffee shop. Aproned waitresses were hunched in its marbled doorway, sheltering from the sleet and guiltily dragging on cigarettes as if half expecting to be charged with armed robbery. Her phone rang.

  ‘No record of them on the BMA register,’ said Kershaw. ‘Neither is licenced to practise in the UK.’

  ‘You mean they’ve been struck off?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘No, it could mean they were originally licenced in non-Commonwealth areas, or that they qualified with quasi-medical diplomas, possibly in homeopathic sciences, and are calling themselves doctors. It wouldn’t necessarily stop them from offering advice, but they wouldn’t be able to issue prescriptions.’

  ‘I want to go in there, Giles. There’s a session starting at noon.’

  ‘If you think it’s a lead…’ Kershaw began.

  ‘The problem is, I’d have to go in undercover because they’ve seen me at The Temple, and the Circe Club wants three hundred and fifty pounds for the first session. Can we afford it?’

  Kershaw had taken to organising the unit’s finances because no-one else wanted the job. ‘Absolutely not. You’ll have to find another way of getting in if you think it’s that important.’

  Lately, Longbright had come to accept her role as the unit’s undercover mistress of disguises on the condition that it came with a decent clothing allowance. For the visit to Circe, she called in a favour from the manager of Typhoon, for whom she had once unravelled a massive credit card fraud. She had reasoned that more might be achieved if she showed sensitivity to the salon’s wealthy clientele, and besides, she had been longing to dress glamorously this winter, but her threadbare social life had been such that an opportunity had not presented itself.

  Fifteen minutes later, she exited the store in a fakeleopardskin coat with a red woollen two-piece suit, artificial pearls and patent-leather heels. If Catherine Deneuve ever makes a wildlife documentary, this is what she’d wear, thought Janice. Not good for Mornington Crescent but appropriate for Knightsbridge.

  The club was discreetly tucked away in a Victorian terrace, above and behind the main salon. Why am I doing this? she wondered, waiting for the door to be opened. Because Arthur would have me follow the same lead if he was here.

  The steel lattice swung slowly back before her, admitting her to the club�
��s inner sanctum. Bryant believed that when a case offered no likely scenarios, it was necessary to plunge from the beaten track of police investigation. The difference this time was that Longbright had just six hours left before their grace time expired forever.

  36

  THE CORRIDORS

  Johann had disappeared in the night.

  Numb and aching, Madeline uprighted herself. She could see the remains of his footprints trailing off into the briars above the bank. Ryan peered up at the clearing dawn sky. ‘It’s stopped snowing,’ he told her. ‘Can we go outside and get the food now?’

  ‘No, Ryan, stay in the car.’

  ‘But we’re going to starve to death if we stay here.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate.’

  ‘I’m cold and I’m thirsty. I want my Game Boy. And I need to go to the toilet again.’

  ‘You went a little while ago; what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘It’s the cold weather.’ Ryan had heard his father say it.

  Despite her fears, she couldn’t help smiling. ‘I’ll have to see if the coast is clear. Take a look out of the back.’

  Ryan scrambled over the seat and cleared the window. ‘I can be really quick. I won’t even stop to get a snowball.’

  ‘No, I’ll go.’ She thought of Ryan left alone in the car. Perhaps that was what Johann was waiting for. ‘Maybe we should go together.’

  She reached down to the door handle and pulled it out. The door needed a shoulder to unstick it, and opened with a pop. Taking her son’s hand, she stepped gingerly onto the ice-crusted road, pulling him with her. The sky had returned to a fierce cyan, but the respite felt temporary, as if they were in the eye of a hurricane. He had run while the storm had abated, she told herself. He had reached the decision to leave them alone and make his escape, just as he had engineered his first meeting with her. He had probably moved her handbag that day in order to make her thank him for finding it.

  ‘Don’t try to take everything,’ she told Ryan, ‘just some water and snacks. We’ll be on our way soon.’ The boy had reached the blanket and was already loading packets into his coat. ‘Come on, Ryan.’ She pulled at his sleeve. ‘Leave it.’