White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

  She looked up to see April dashing past with a bowl of wilted nasturtiums. ‘What are you doing?’ she called.

  ‘The Princess is going to be here with half of the Home Office in two hours, and we’ve fulfilled none of the requirements on Rosemary Armstrong’s list.’ April looked as if she could do with some help.

  ‘A few crummy old garage flowers aren’t going to make any difference to our future now,’ said Longbright despondently.

  ‘No, but until I can come up with something better they will have to do,’ April replied, not pleased at having to shoulder the responsibility alone.

  ‘April, what did you do with that photograph of Lilith Starr? The one her father gave me?’

  ‘It’s on your desk in the file. Want me to get it?’

  ‘Please.’ Longbright placed herself in Bryant’s seat, spreading her hands on his desk, amid the perfumed aroma of exotic rolling tobacco and the weird aftershave he favoured that no-one had sold for forty years. April returned with the photograph and handed it to her.

  She examined Lilith’s face, her clothes. Her arms. Digging into the desk drawers, she found Bryant’s horn-handled magnifying glass and passed it over the print. Lilith still had the tattoo when the picture had been taken. Samuel. It was clearly visible on her left arm.

  Hidden in plain sight. She looked back at the volume of Poe, and thought of The Purloined Letter, with its clue hidden right under the noses of the police. ‘She must have removed it soon after this photograph was taken.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why she got rid of it,’ said April, peering over her shoulder. ‘The tattooist spelled her boyfriend’s name wrong.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Look again. That’s an a, not a u.’

  Longbright stared at the bare arm once more. Samael. ‘Maybe it’s right. Kids spell their names in a lot of crazy ways these days. Check with the tattoo parlour and see if he remembers.’ She rose and collected her jacket.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked April.

  ‘To get the truth out of Owen Mills, even if I have to throttle it out of him,’ said Longbright. ‘He’s the only one who’s left alive to tell us what might have happened. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for our royal visit.’

  Kershaw took Banbury with him to Bayham Street, hoping that the crime scene manager might spot something he had missed. He looked around the room in which he had spent so much time expecting to become the unit’s next medical examiner. Part of him was perversely pleased that Finch had failed to recommend him. If he couldn’t understand what had happened here, he would not consider himself worthy of holding the post. Today his career would live or die by the decisions he made.

  Finch, found dead in his own morgue. Why had the blade of an extractor fan been used as a weapon? Because it had fallen, because it was there. ‘If you meant to kill or at least wound someone, you wouldn’t strike them with a piece of lightweight aluminium, would you?’ he asked Dan. ‘I mean, a child could tell it’s no good as a weapon.’

  ‘When you’re desperate, anything will do,’ said Banbury, pulling his head out of Finch’s instrument cupboard. ‘I’ve heard of pens, stereo speakers, coat hangers, candles and laptops all being used as assault weapons. Everyone knows that if you attack a burglar with a torch you’re likely to get off, because it’s an item you’re likely to be carrying. You don’t think Renfield clouted him?’

  ‘I should imagine the good sergeant’s training in the Met would have taught him not to leave marks,’ said Kershaw. ‘The business with the empty bottle of naltrexone still bothers me. Finch didn’t use it on himself. There was nothing in his system.’

  Banbury rose slowly to his feet and stared steadily at his colleague. ‘My God, he used it on the corpse,’ he said, heading for the cabinets. ‘You heard Renfield. Oswald knew that the sergeant’s boy had got it wrong; he realised she wasn’t your usual Camden overdoser. He was trying to revive her when the sergeant reappeared. He must have been furious with him. He’d already had Owen Mills turning up in a state just after the body had been delivered, trying to understand why his girlfriend was lying on an autopsy tray, and it sowed doubt in his mind, so he pumped in the naltrexone and called Renfield back to have a go at him.’

  Kershaw was already helping him to slide open the drawer and ease out the body bag containing Lilith Starr’s cadaver. ‘This is my damned fault. I was so preoccupied with Finch putting the blocks on my career that I didn’t run the obvious checks. I’ll bet he had doubts about the cause of death from the moment he saw the body. He’d have found obvious signs of cocaine and heroin use, but would have known the levels weren’t enough to put her into a coma, so he tried to pull her out of it. When that didn’t work, he started searching for something else, probably testing for the most common causes of anaphylactic shock. And either before or after Renfield returned, he discovered something, stopping to write it down.’

  ‘Wait, that can’t be right,’ said Banbury. ‘Renfield insists he didn’t destroy the report, so Mills must have, but Mills arrived first, when Finch could only have just started working on it. So why would he have ripped it out?’

  ‘You have a point, old chap. You don’t think someone else was here?’

  Banbury looked up. ‘Who?’

  ‘There is only one other person left: our missing man, the former lover—Samuel, the man with no surname.’

  ‘Blimey, it seems like the morgue was busier than Camden Market on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘An appropriate blasphemy,’ said Kershaw excitedly. ‘Blimey is supposedly short for God blind me, something that’s been happening to all of us in this investigation. We’ve been blinded from the outset. Think, what else did you find here?’

  ‘I’ve got Finch’s handprints, Mills’s trainers and Renfield’s boot marks, but no fingerprints on your supposed weapon, the fan blade. Exactly where am I supposed to look for this invisible man?’

  Meanwhile, Longbright had found Owen Mills in the very first place she looked—Lilith Starr’s claustrophobic flat on the Crowndale Estate. The front door was ajar, and Lilith’s belongings stood stacked in cardboard boxes in the hall. Mills was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, sorting through a pile of drawings and photographs.

  ‘Owen?’ Longbright took a further step into the shadowed room. When he turned to her, she could see he had been crying, but he hastily wiped away the evidence with the tips of his fingers. ‘I’m not going to go away, you know,’ she told him, ‘not until I’ve heard the truth. You see, I’ve been wondering about your last night together.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘How was she? You spent the evening here, right? How did she seem to you?’

  Mills thought for a moment, caught by the question.

  ‘Owen, I’ll help you, I promise. I have the power to do that. If you care about her, you have to tell me how she was.’

  ‘All right, she was kind of weird. Vague, you know? Not all there. She kept saying she had a chest pain. But she’d said that before. I don’t want to talk about her.’

  ‘I’m not here to disrespect your relationship with Lilith,’ Longbright insisted. ‘I think you’ve been through enough in the last two days. I know how much you cared for her, but I want to rule out your involvement in the death at Bayham Street.’

  ‘Then talk to me about something else.’ Part of him seemed anxious to tell her more.

  ‘All right, let’s talk about you. How are you coping?’

  ‘Okay, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s your family arrangement?’

  ‘I got three other brothers, two sisters. I’m the oldest.’

  The detective sergeant seated herself on the floor beside him. ‘Get on okay with your parents?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess.’

  ‘Did they meet Lilith? What did they think of her? I mean, you were serious about her, right?’

  ‘She wanted me to marry her, I guess that’s serious.’<
br />
  ‘Did you introduce her to your mum and dad?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, they met her once. They thought she was nice.’

  ‘And to your brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They respect me. They look up to me.’

  ‘What, you didn’t think Lilith was respectable enough for them?’

  ‘Not that.’ The wall of evasion Mills used as protection had suddenly reappeared.

  ‘Owen, I’m going to need two answers from you about Lilith, then I’m out of your way. Can we make that a deal?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer anything.’

  ‘I know, but you must be as anxious as I am to put the subject to rest. I’m convinced you took Finch’s notes. Just tell me what you did with them.’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t take anything.’

  ‘They were there before you turned up, and gone immediately after. He didn’t tear them out himself, or we would have found them. If you’re only prepared to tell me one thing, make it this. I won’t ask anything more of you.’

  ‘I didn’t take them; he burned them. It was like, one page, okay? He did it for her.’ His voice was toneless.

  ‘You mean Oswald Finch burned his own notes? Why would he do that?’

  ‘You don’t need to know. It has nothing to do with your investigation.’

  ‘I understand why you asked him, to protect her,’ said Longbright. ‘I know that. You didn’t want her drug use to come out on the report that would be sent to her parents.’

  ‘She hated her parents, but she felt like she’d hurt them enough. She said there was no point in kicking them beyond the grave, asked me to clean up behind her if anything bad ever happened, like she was expecting it.’

  ‘Where can I find her former boyfriend?’

  ‘Why do you need to know?’ asked Owen wearily.

  ‘I have to eliminate him from the investigation.’

  ‘Well, you can do that, all right. He’s dead and buried, innit. Gone forever.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Eight months ago. That’s why she took his name off her arm.’

  ‘What happened? How did he die?’

  Owen gave her a crooked smile. ‘It was a knife wound.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Nobody you know.’

  Getting answers from the boy was like pulling teeth once more. In the peculiar manner of most of the kids living around this estate, he had answered her questions without explaining a single thing. Longbright checked her watch and saw that it was three-fifteen P.M., which left just one and three quarter hours before the slow-motion car crash of the unit’s destruction concluded. More frustrated than angry, she rose and left Mills to his grief and his photographs.

  Crossing the sleet-slick paths of the estate, she tried to shake the feeling that she had been tricked. Somehow, Mills had told her everything she needed to know while simultaneously hiding the truth in plain sight.

  44

  IN THE DRIFTS

  A grey veil of rain descended over the grime-crusted gas lamps of Old Montague Street, where the ‘light of heaven’ brought safety to the pavements Saucy Jack had walked only fifty years earlier.

  The rolling amber fogs that dripped down walls and slicked the cobbles were pierced with fiery mantles that burned until the break of dawn, when daylight dissipated the miasma. Another fifty years passed, and now the wrecking balls swung into row after row of mean terraced houses with a chink and clatter of brick and mortar, tearing down Durward Street, Buck’s Row, Hanbury Street, blasting so much brightness into the dark canyons that no shred of London’s shape-shifting history remained. Now there was only the roar and glare of the approaching future…

  Arthur Bryant awoke with a start, wondering where he was.

  In 1930, his father had photographed the spot where ‘Polly’ Nichols had fallen with her throat slit open from ear to ear. He had kept the little sepia print of the dingy kerbstone in his trouser pocket, using it to frighten young Arthur whenever he was bad. Reeking sourly of stout, his father had staggered from The Ten Bells in Commercial Street, the public house where Mary Kelly had ordered her final drink, and collapsed into the road, where he was found dead by his terrified son….

  Why had Bryant dreamed of such a thing now? Nothing in the past could truly be repaired. Remembrance of his father only came when the cold hand of his own mortality pressed upon him. Disoriented, he shivered and tightened the collar of his coat.

  He knew it was dangerous to fall asleep, but increasingly his body was defending itself by pulling the plug on his consciousness. A freezing draught was coming from somewhere behind him. Freshly fallen snow had darkened the windscreen of the van, cocooning the cabin. It was like being trapped inside an icy pillowcase.

  Bryant checked his watch and realised that his partner had been gone for over an hour. May had called to say he was returning…surely he should have arrived by now?

  He twisted in his seat and pulled back the curtain to see if Madeline was awake. The rear door had been opened; he could see snow drifting through the gap. There was no sign of mother or child, and several props had been overturned. The remains of a plaster vase lay smashed on the floor of the van, and a Hieronymus Bosch backdrop had split where it had fallen, imps and devils let loose to spread chaos in corners.

  No, he thought, you idiot old man! He tried ringing May but there was no answer. Checking his own mobile, he saw that there were three missed calls, one from May, two from Longbright.

  The clearing sky placed Madeline in danger. Johann could act without fear of guilt, for his corridor to the eyes of God would open again, and he would once more attempt to show defiance before his Maker. Bryant’s muscles protested as he opened the door of the cabin and eased himself out.

  The wind took his breath away. He bundled his scarf around his head and set off for the rear of the truck, but even this small distance proved hard going.

  The chaotic scuffle of footprints beneath the open rear door was difficult to read, but two clear shoe sizes indicated that mother and son were now outside and exposed. The tracks were fresh and deep; they could not have gone far, especially if they were being dragged unwillingly. Bryant returned to the cabin and pulled a page of his battered old map book from the dashboard. Their hunter would have to be taking them to the shelter of another vehicle, unless he was planning to leave them to die in the snow. Bryant punched Maggie Armitage’s number with a frozen digit, and found that his partner had already left her.

  Bryant glanced back through the stranded traffic and realised that a massive block of snow had cascaded across the road, just beyond the bend. No wonder May had not come back; he’d been buried beneath the fall, or at least had been stranded on the wrong side of the valley.

  ‘The silly old fool,’ he muttered beneath his breath. Pulling his coat tighter around him, Bryant started to follow the prints leading away from the van. They cut away from the road, through crystalline bushes that glittered like chandeliers, in the direction of the hill and the railway line where the other stranded travellers had headed at the start of the storm.

  He squinted at the page from the map book and tried to determine how closely the barred line of the railway twisted past the motorway, but it was difficult to read in the glare of the snow. If they reached the tracks, he would not be able to follow them further. With a sinking heart, he realised that the line ran across the steepest point of the hill. He knew he would not have the stamina needed to follow it for so long. At least the deep snow now kept him upright as he walked; in London he would have needed his stick.

  Reaching a sheltered hollow formed by some thorny gorse, he checked his mobile for a signal, then returned Longbright’s call with numb fingers.

  The DS sounded desperate. ‘I’m sorry, Arthur, I didn’t want to bother you again, but we’re no nearer to closing up the Finch investigation, and I’m almost out of time.’

  Bryant forced his m
ind to switch tracks, something he never had much trouble doing. ‘Have you found out anything from Mills since I last spoke to you?’

  ‘I talked to him again, but every time I got close he shut up on me. And we wanted to get DNA tests done on skin flakes found in Bayham Street, but there isn’t any time—’

  ‘I’m not talking about forensic evidence, but something you’ve missed. I told you, the answer lies with Mills. Did you remember to do what I asked? Did you talk to him about his family?’

  ‘It was as you said. He’s the oldest of six. I think the others look to him for guidance. The parents met Lilith, but his siblings didn’t. Why did you want to know?’

  ‘Omissions,’ said Bryant. ‘Of course he has no desire to bare his private life to anyone he perceives to be in a position of authority, and who can blame him? It will always be your job to fill in the gaps. I take it you didn’t find out anything more about the former boyfriend?’

  ‘According to Mills, he’s dead, killed by a knife.’

  ‘Yes, that fits.’

  ‘It’s so hard to get at the truth,’ said Longbright despairingly.

  ‘The only evidence you have that the boyfriend ever existed is in the photograph of Lilith’s tattoo, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, and even there his name is spelled wrong—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With an a instead of a u. Samael.’

  ‘And you just discovered this? Remind yourself about the health club Lilith joined—what was it called?’

  ‘Circe.’

  ‘The owner, this fellow Spender, wasn’t he involved in some kind of scandal about a year ago?’

  ‘That’s right, he got caught cheating on his wife and she left him.’

  ‘I remember now. Well, good heavens, woman, you’ve got the whole thing spelled out right in front of you, what more do you want? You can still close the investigation to everyone’s satisfaction, but I’m not going to do it for you. John and I won’t always be around to help.’