Bryant & May – England’s Finest

by Christopher Fowler

‘“Oh”? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, plastic surgery.’

  ‘You saw her, did she look like she’d been under the knife?’

  ‘No, but the lights were quite low.’

  ‘I had a good look, believe me. There wasn’t a mark or a stitch anywhere. Obviously there’s some surgery involved, but that’s only part of the process. They physically and mentally change you.’

  ‘How exactly?’ Gail found it impossible to hide her scepticism. ‘I don’t like the idea of being “changed” by people who don’t even know you. Do they have a website?’

  Lily leaned forward excitedly. ‘Introduction is strictly through others who have undergone the process. You have to write a letter to them. I mean, who writes letters any more?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking of doing it.’

  ‘I’ve already received a reply.’ She opened her bag and handed over a blue vellum envelope. ‘Read that.’

  Gail put on her glasses. ‘“You are invited to attend an introductory session at Younger Woman.” Younger Woman? Sounds a bit on the nose.’

  Lily took back the page. ‘I have to sign all this stuff before I even get to the stuff I have to sign.’

  ‘You mean they’re going to check out your bank balance before they shove you full of fillers and chemical cocktails, then come up with a list of incredibly expensive aftercare services for you. Lily, this is crazy. You don’t need this. So you got passed over for your promotion, big deal.’

  ‘And I’ll keep getting passed over. I have to start looking for a new job. I don’t have a partner. I’m not going to have children. I have money in the bank. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do it.’

  ‘At least ask some more detailed questions.’

  ‘I put it out to my Twitter followers and they all think it’s a great idea. I like these cushions.’

  Gail sat back with a sigh. ‘You’re a flibbertigibbet, you know that?’ She picked up one of the cushions and waved it before Lily. ‘This can be fixed if it loses a few threads. You can’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Lily. ‘You put yourself in the hands of a gynaecologist or a dentist or an optician without thinking twice because they’re skilled experts—’

  ‘Exactly. You don’t know if these people are experts.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll check them out thoroughly before I commit to anything. It could give me back my confidence.’

  ‘Nothing I say is going to make any difference, is it?’

  ‘Gail, I always listen to you but you’re a pessimist. I’m going to attend the interview. It’s in a place called Zwentendorf. I’ll be a new me.’

  ‘You’ll still be the same crabby old you inside.’

  Lily threw one cushion at Gail, then all of them.

  Seven weeks later, a coffin-shaped cage of shiny grey material was removed from beneath a train at London Bridge Station by two members of an ambulance team. Inside it were the smashed remains of Lily Marshall’s body.

  The CCTV showed Gail Barker deliberately pushing her in front of the 21.50 to Luton. In her first interview at the Peculiar Crimes Unit, she turned to Janice Longbright and said, ‘On my life, I swear to God I did not kill her. She was my best friend.’

  II. WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  ‘I know Gail Barker,’ said Janice Longbright. ‘I should be the one who interviews her.’

  ‘How well do you know her?’ asked John May, looking through the wired window of the interview room. The woman on the red plastic chair inside was pale, blonde and overweight. As she silently cried into her hands, her shoulders shook. ‘She looks in a bad way.’

  ‘She went to my school.’

  ‘Some time after you, I imagine,’ said May. Longbright told herself he didn’t mean it that way.

  ‘We met through a mutual friend and had a few drinks together. John, you know how you get an instinct for these things. She’s kind-hearted.’

  May shrugged. ‘She pushed her best friend under a train. Whatever she admits in mitigation won’t make any difference against the technical evidence. We have the footage from four different cameras. There was no one else around. She ran at the other woman with a look of hatred on her face.’

  ‘At least let me find out why,’ said Longbright. ‘There could be circumstances we don’t know about. I’ll record the whole thing.’

  ‘OK,’ May said, ‘but I can’t imagine there’s anything she can tell you that will make the slightest bit of difference to her case. It’s right there on film.’

  Janice gathered her notes and went into the interview room.

  ‘You can take as long as you want,’ she told Gail. ‘I’ll be jumping in with questions, but don’t let me put you off. If it gets too much and you want to stop, that’s fine, but remember anything you say may be used in evidence against you.’ She set a mug of tea before Gail and sat calmly waiting.

  Gail wiped her face with the tatters of a tissue and collected her thoughts. ‘It began with Patricia,’ she said.

  ‘Who is Patricia?’

  ‘Lily’s mother. I got a letter from her. She doesn’t use computers. She has Alzheimer’s. She’d never written to me before. She said she was being held prisoner in her own home.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By Lily. I have it here.’ She pulled the letter from her bag and handed it to Longbright.

  ‘Tell me a bit about Lily.’

  ‘She was ambitious. She was funny and fearless. She’d been my best friend since we met as teenagers. Her life suddenly changed. You know, when I got off the train on my way to see her mother, I saw this group of girls who all looked and sounded alike. Same teeth and noses, figures, blonde hair and designer clothes. They made me think of Lily. The new Lily, I mean.’

  ‘Can you explain?’ Longbright looked at what she had written down. ‘No, tell it your own way, in the order you want.’

  ‘Patricia lives in a mansion block in Highgate. When I arrived she was sitting in shadow with the lights out. The first thing she said was, “I’m afraid of her.”’

  ‘Afraid of who? Her daughter?’

  ‘Yes. When I put on the light I saw that her face was badly bruised. She wouldn’t say more because Lily was due home right about then. I noticed that all of the family photographs had been removed from the mantelpiece. Patricia told me Lily took them down and wouldn’t let her put them back up. She wasn’t being allowed to leave the house. I hadn’t seen Lily since the operation.’

  ‘What operation?’

  ‘She went away for a month to a clinic in Austria. They rejuvenate you. I guess it’s a mix of surgery and lifestyle changes. You’re meant to look and feel like a different person afterwards.’

  ‘So Lily Marshall underwent surgery?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t allowed any contact. They made her give up all social media, because the procedure is patented and lots of celebrities go there. I guess they don’t want lawsuits. I tried to find them online and it’s like they don’t exist. Afterwards Lily was sent away to recuperate, so I didn’t see her until that night at her mother’s flat. When she came in I just stared at her in astonishment.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d never seen her before in my life.’

  ‘You mean because she’d had so much work?’

  ‘No, I mean she was someone else.’

  Longbright tried to suppress a look of disbelief and failed.

  ‘Look, I know everything about Lily and this wasn’t her. I mean, she looked a lot like her and in some ways she was exactly like her, the movements mainly, but other things were all wrong. She was surprised that I’d turned up unannounced. I explained that I’d tried calling, and had come because her mother wrote for help. “Oh,” she said, “that explains everything.” She took me into the kitchen and told me that Patricia’s Alzheimer’s had worsened. She was having accidents all the time and made up outrageous stories to cover for them. She couldn’t go out or stay alone in the house for long.
She said she’d had to impose rules on her for her own safety. She’d removed the photographs because they upset her too much. But I knew she was an imposter and lying to me.’

  Longbright decided it would be best not to contradict the suspect at this point. ‘So where was the real Lily?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you come to us?’

  ‘What would I have said? I thought it would be better to stay for a couple of days and look after her mother while I tried to work out what had happened. I wanted to think it through logically. The first thing to do was get someone else to admit that she’d been replaced.’

  ‘You say she looked physically different,’ said Longbright. ‘How much different?’

  ‘I guess she had the same bone structure and height, but everything else … eyes, nose, voice, nothing was how I remembered.’

  ‘It had been quite a while since you last saw her, yes?’

  ‘Yes, but you do more than just recall the way a person looks. You know them from the inside. I tried talking to her. Lily told me she’d burned her old clothes and letters because the clinic encouraged her to make a completely fresh start. I tried to trip her up by talking about the past. A holiday we shared in Mallorca in our early twenties. When Lily made a mistake she just said I’d remembered it wrong. I asked her about how we met, taking photos of Monet’s Water Lilies, and the time she blacked out a wine bar, but she wriggled out of every question I threw at her. There were other details that convinced me she was an imposter. I think she changed her phone because it had a facial recognition system. I went through her iPad looking for old photographs but there weren’t any.’

  ‘Did you ask her mother?’

  ‘Patricia said she had some old physical photographs but she couldn’t remember where she’d put them. I wondered if I could force Lily to have a DNA test. I went to see her brother Charlie. He told me she’d suddenly become unfriendly towards him.’

  ‘But he didn’t think she looked different?’

  ‘He’s a junkie, he doesn’t know what he thinks about anything. Lily had stopped drinking and become a vegetarian. She was dumping her oldest friends to make new ones. I began to think it was me. Lily had been paranoid about losing her edge so she’d had some work done, so what? Then I had an idea. I decided to throw her a surprise party and invite some old friends. Most of them turned me down but I went ahead anyway. Lily handled it brilliantly. She’d told them about her surgery, so they expected her to look different. They were willing to accept an improved version of her without asking questions. Only her mother refused to believe her. “That creature is not my daughter,” she told me. She said after Lily came back from her treatment she threw out all her old shoes.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Because they didn’t fit her any more.’

  ‘People’s feet don’t suddenly change size.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. And just when I couldn’t be more suspicious, Patricia died.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She was found lying at the foot of the communal staircase in her building the night after the party. She was pronounced dead in the ambulance. The doctor blamed the fall on her frail, confused condition. But Patricia had told me she never felt safe on the staircase so why would she suddenly use it now, and at such a late hour?’

  ‘Did you talk to the latest boyfriend, Will? If anyone noticed the change in your friend it would be him.’

  ‘Of course I did. He came to the party. He said she had changed and he was delighted – their sex life was suddenly amazing. He told me I should mind my own business. Then I did a dumb thing. I accused Will and Lily of working together to try and fool everyone.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Longbright, checking her notes on Gail Barker’s history. ‘It wasn’t the first time you’d accused someone of—’

  ‘I made a mistake a few years ago and have regretted it ever since,’ Gail explained. ‘This was different.’

  ‘How did they respond to the accusation?’

  ‘Will told me I should leave them alone for everyone’s sake. That was when I realized they all preferred her this way, as an upgraded version of the old difficult Lily. I was the odd one out, not her. I didn’t buy it.’

  ‘But if she was happy and everyone else was happy, why didn’t you just leave it there?’ Longbright asked, already sensing the answer.

  ‘Because I was sure she had killed my friend and taken her place, and pushed her mother down the stairs to shut her up.’ Gail dropped her head into her hands. ‘I know how that sounds. Crazy.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I figured the clinic was the only place where the switch could have happened, so I tried calling.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘I couldn’t get hold of anyone. I couldn’t even find the right number. But I had another theory.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘I think Lily died of complications during surgery and the clinic was somehow cleared. Lily sometimes – well, she sometimes used recreationals on weekends. If the autopsy found cocaine in her system maybe the clinic wasn’t liable. The new Lily didn’t want to speak to me, so I ambushed her on the way home at London Bridge Station. That was where I got her to admit who she really was.’

  ‘And who did she say she was?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘Someone who’d been following Lily on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn for years, someone who just wanted to be her.’

  ‘Wait, you mean a total stranger took her place? How would that work?’

  Gail shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. I think she followed her activities on a daily basis, maybe for years. There was all sorts of footage posted. I think maybe she found out that Lily had died in surgery and just turned up in her place. Lily’s mother didn’t believe it, but everyone knew that Patricia wasn’t well. Her brother Charlie was so wasted that he couldn’t even leave his flat. He was once robbed while he was sitting in the living room watching TV. I thought about it. Lily had dumped her old friends. She was between jobs. She stepped out of her old life. Will kept his mouth shut because he preferred the new version. It seemed like everyone was happy except me.’

  ‘So, yesterday evening on the platform. What did she say to you?’

  ‘She said she nearly messed up at the birthday party because she lost a coloured contact lens down the sink. She said, “You don’t know me because I’m nobody, just someone who admired your friend. I knew everything about her. There’s nothing you can do because no one will ever believe you.” That was when I lost my temper.’

  ‘You pushed her.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t mean her to fall under the train, I didn’t even realize it was coming in, I just saw this – liar standing before me.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a story,’ said Longbright, shaking her head in wonder.

  ‘I need you to prove it,’ said Gail.

  ‘There are a number of practical things we can do,’ Longbright said. She and John May were standing on the unit’s flat roof, virtually the only place in the building where they would not be interrupted. ‘Fingerprints, teeth, skin markings …’

  ‘Marshall was electrocuted as well as crushed. There’s nothing much left of her head or hands,’ said May. ‘DNA would only be useful if she’d been typed. Did you find the clinic?’

  ‘There’s nothing under “Younger Woman”. Her death would have been registered. I’m waiting for a callback on that. I tried getting hold of this TV presenter Gail talked about, but she’s not in the country.’

  ‘I’m sure you can put something together eventually but there’s no time,’ said May. ‘We’ll be charging her just before eleven p.m. Do you think her story is remotely plausible? That someone could just step in and take over a life like that?’

  ‘I want to believe her but I don’t see how it’s possible,’ said Longbright. ‘Some women do start to look alike after thirty. Hair dye, capped teeth, straightened noses, Botox. Surface impersonation is easy, but fooling a lov
er or relative would be impossible unless they were in some way impaired—’

  ‘Like the mother and the brother.’

  ‘—or were willing to go along with the subterfuge.’

  ‘A stalker can find out every last tiny detail about you, and Marshall’s life was all laid out online.’ May thought for a moment. ‘There are plenty of priors in that area. Remember that guy who was accepted back into his family after going missing, and nobody questioned the fact that he had different-coloured eyes and a French accent?’

  ‘Frédéric Bourdin,’ said Longbright, ‘known as “the Chameleon”. He had over five hundred different identities. Dan’s trying to access Marshall’s old online posts, but he says getting information out of Silicon Valley will take time and cost a fortune.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ May complained. ‘There must be some way of proving or disproving …’

  ‘I’m going with the most obvious solution,’ said Longbright finally.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Gail Barker was always jealous of her friend, then one day Marshall went in for an expensive surgical upgrade and started dumping her old social circle – including Barker – to improve her own career chances. Nobody wants to think they didn’t make the grade. Gail couldn’t handle it so she confronted her and pushed her under the train, then made up a cock-and-bull story for us. Maybe she created this fantasy and genuinely believes it. It’s the only way she can handle the rejection.’

  ‘At least she’s in custody,’ said May. ‘Arthur and I don’t have any time to spare you. We’re up to our necks in the Hampstead Heath murder. You’ll have to do it alone.’

  As Longbright headed back downstairs she began to have doubts about closing the case. An identity should be an easy thing to prove, she thought. What would Mr Bryant do?

  The answer came to her in a moment. He would not spend any longer in the interview room. He would start looking for an answer from the other end of the case.

  She called Patricia Marshall’s doctor. He confirmed that she had fallen down the stairs, and supported the verdict of accidental death. Banbury also tried to find a number for the clinic but had no luck. Gail Barker was taken downstairs to the PCU’s only holding cell. The clock was ticking.