Bryant & May 06; The Victoria Vanishes b&m-6

by Christopher Fowler

  Land’s next sentence was more creatively constructed than anything he had said in the last five years, mainly because it was spectacularly obscene, but Bryant heard nothing at all as he left the room.

  ♦

  “I’ve got something for you,” April told her grandfather, commandeering his laptop and flipping open a file before him. “You’ll love this; it’s technology gone mad. In November 2005 Jocelyn Roquesby caught a flight to Ancona in Italy. She returned from Rome five days later. Giles found a torn piece of the ticket stub in the bottom of her handbag. He gave it to Dan Banbury, who used the information to locate her British Airways frequent-flyer number. By buying an on-line ticket in her name, he was able to access the rest of her personal data.”

  “You can do that?” asked John May in surprise.

  “We’re simply stealing the tricks of the identity thieves,” said April. “From that tiny row of digits Dan was able to get her passport number, her nationality and her date of birth, but better still, they led us to Roquesby’s home address, academic qualifications, profession and current account details. We can tell you what car she drove, how much she bought her house for – and where she was working. Dan reckons most machine-readable ID documents carry flaws that make them pretty easy to crack. Although the new RFID-chipped passports demanded by the U.S. have military-standard data encryption technology, they’re unlocked by supposedly ‘secret’ keys that use readily available information. There are identity thieves who just work the airports, reading documents over travellers’ shoulders and entering data into cell phones.”

  “So who was Jocelyn Roquesby working for?”

  “A company called Theseus Research, based in King’s Cross but registered out of Brussels. Dan cross-checked their employment records and came up with a total of seven names in the same London department, employed over roughly the same dates. Guess who they were?”

  “Roquesby, Joanne Kellerman, Naomi Curtis, Carol Wynley and Jazmina Sherwin.”

  “Close. You’re right about the first four. But it looks like Uncle Arthur was correct about Sherwin not being part of the canonical selection of victims, though, because we have new names in fifth, sixth and seventh places.”

  “The ones we haven’t found.” May leaned forward and read down the screen. “My God, I recognise one of them.”

  “You do?”

  May found himself looking at three further female identities – Mary Sinclair, Jennifer Winslow and Jackie Quinten.

  “Mrs Quinten has helped the unit out in the past. She’s the lady who keeps trying to get Arthur to come over for dinner. Have you tried calling them all?”

  “I’ve spoken to Jennifer Winslow; she’s currently working at Ohio State University, and we can therefore assume her to be out of danger, at least until she returns next week. Mary Sinclair is at home in London, and we’re providing her with immediate police protection, although from what or whom I have absolutely no idea. Right now, Jackie Quinten is our problem. There’s no answer from her landline or her cell phone. Meera is on her way to Mrs Quinten’s house in Kentish Town to see what’s happened.”

  “Poor Arthur,” said May. “I think he has a bit of a soft spot for her. He knocked a drink over her at the Yorkshire Grey and had a moan about her harassing him for a dinner date, but I know he secretly loves being pampered. He’ll never forgive himself if something has happened to her.”

  ∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

  38

  Disappearance

  Meera Mangeshkar peered in through the kitchen window and saw rows of polished copper pots, steel utensils, framed maps, memorabilia collected from canal barges, Victorian vases and jugs filled with dried flowers. But of Mrs Quinten, there was no sign.

  “You’re wasting your time,” said a gap-toothed pensioner who was unnecessarily clipping the front hedge next door. “She’s gone out.”

  “Do you know where?” asked Mangeshkar.

  “She’s got a sister in Hemel Hempsted, but I don’t know if that’s where she is. The lights have been off since this morning.”

  “She could still be inside. She might have had an accident. Is there a side door?”

  “You’re a copper, aren’t you?”

  Meera bristled. “Is it that obvious?”

  “We don’t get many coppers round here anymore. You can come over my garden wall, it’s an easy climb. Jackie always leaves the back window ajar. She knows it’s safe because I never go out, so I don’t miss anything. But you’re wasting your time, because I saw her go out over an hour ago.”

  “Did she seem all right to you?”

  “Fine, dressed for the shops, coat and handbag, not like she was having a funny turn, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Anything unusual about her?”

  “I remember thinking she looked a bit worried.”

  “You didn’t ask her what about?”

  “Oh no, I keep to my own business.”

  “And you’re sure she didn’t come back?”

  “Positive, because I was watching at the front window.”

  “In that case,” said Meera, “I think I will hop over your fence and take a look around.”

  Her arms were slender enough to fit through the gap in the window and unclip the latch. Climbing through, her boots touched down into the darkened lounge. Once inside, she opened the curtains. Hundreds of neatly rolled maps were stacked against the walls almost to the ceiling, but apart from that, everything appeared as it should be, magazines folded, cups washed, an ashtray emptied. A single wooden hanger lay on the bed, left where Mrs Quinten had donned her overcoat.

  It appeared that she, like the others, had set off to meet someone.

  Meera checked the cluttered corkboard in the kitchen and searched the rooms for an appointment diary, but found nothing. A call to her cell phone from someone masquerading as a friend, a work colleague, a dead woman?

  As a child, Meera had blocked out the sounds of the housing estate by reading detective stories from the library. It has the ingredients of an Agatha Christie without the logic, she thought. If this was Christie, the killer would be a dead woman who’d turn out not to have died. According to Mr Bryant, Mrs Quinten knew about his investigation. She understood that middle-aged women were at risk, so why would she be so trusting? Because she knows the killer. She looked around the cosy room, praying that its occupant would live to see it again.

  When Meera returned to the unit, she sought out Bryant and asked him about the conversation he’d had with Mrs Quinten in the upstairs bar of the Yorkshire Grey.

  “I don’t think she had any inkling of what had happened to her colleagues,” he said, concentrating on the recollection of events, “because she expressed no concern to me. If anything, she complained of being bored recently. I didn’t give her any names, so how could she have realised that she knew them? Although there was a moment at the end of our conversation.” He beetled his brow, trying to recall the moment. “She was always inviting me over, but I got the feeling she wanted to consult me about something on a professional basis.”

  “She didn’t say what?”

  “I don’t think she felt comfortable about talking to me in public, said it was a private matter. She said we. So if she knew the other victims, perhaps they wanted to consult me as a group.”

  “For all you know, she could have wanted to talk to you about her historical maps,” said May, overhearing.

  “I’d forgotten about those. She collects them, doesn’t she? Meera, did you see any at her house?”

  “You couldn’t miss them. They were everywhere, stacked against all the walls.”

  “Where do we start looking for her?” asked May.

  “Get April to track down the sister in Hemel Hempsted and find the addresses of any other relatives she might want to visit, starting with the nearest.”

  “She was meeting someone she felt comfortable with,” said Meera suddenly.

  “How can you be sure of that?” asked Bryan
t.

  “I questioned the next-door neighbour about how she was dressed. Flat shoes, wool coat, warmly clothed, not smart.”

  “She thought she was meeting the others, one or more at least. That’s what they all thought when they went out to their deaths – that they were going to meet each other.”

  “If she’d known that any of them had been killed, she wouldn’t have gone, would she?”

  “Not unless it was very important.”

  “A meeting so urgent that you have to risk your life?”

  “It’s someone she trusts,” said Meera. “A former boss, someone in authority. Someone we haven’t reached yet.” She looked around the room and realised that a pair of workmen were packing computers and files into boxes. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re being shut down again,” Bryant explained. “Take no notice. I never do.” He tossed the end of his scarf around his neck.

  “Wait, with all this going on, where do you think you’re going?” May asked.

  “If one of these women lied about working for Theseus Research, they probably all did,” replied Bryant. “I’m heading for King’s Cross.”

  ∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

  39

  Security

  Arthur Bryant had once shepherded bemused travelers on guided tours around King’s Cross, and had perversely grown to love the area.

  It had always been in a state of turbulence, of sickness and health, pleasure and vice, cruelty and grace. In its way, it was the most quintessential and paradoxical part of the entire city. The railway station was constructed on the site of the London Smallpox Hospital, and yet there had once been in its vicinity a pair of iron-rich spa springs and public pump rooms, near to which Eleanor Gwynne, the favourite of Charles II, had passed her summers in an idle procession of concerts and breakfasts.

  In 1779, the Bagnigge Wells, as it was then called, had been described as a place where ‘unfledged Templars first as fops parade, and new-made ensigns sport their first cockade’. Its banqueting hall boasted a distorting mirror and an organ, tea arbours draped with honeysuckle, swan fountains and fish ponds, bowling greens and skittle alleys, gardens and grottos. But this most fashionable of resorts could not remain so for long. In 1827 it was written ‘The cits to Bagnigge Wells repair, to swallow dust and call it air’. Highwaymen and whores moved in for the rich pickings; the upper classes sneered at their new low companions and quickly moved on.

  Just along the rain-polished road from where Bryant now found himself, the Fleet River broadened into a ford at Battle Bridge, a spot still filled with barges. The brickwork ashes that accumulated on the grounds had been sold to Russia, to help rebuild Moscow after Napoleon’s invasion, but who now could separate fact from fiction? Certainly, the immense octagonal monument to George IV that once sprawled across the road junctions had provided King’s Cross with its name. Here sprang up some of London’s roughest pubs, The Fox at Bay and The Pindar of Wakefield, the smoky homes of gamblers, drunkards and resurrectionists. Here too was the hellish Coldbath Fields prison, infamous for the severity of its punishments.

  After the Second World War, the elegant terraced houses were carved into bed-and-breakfast lodgings for the dispossessed. And just as the railway terminus had once brought about the desecration of King’s Cross, the wheel had turned and it was now the area’s saviour, for the rail link to Europe arrived, a new town growing in its wake. The whores and dealers, modern versions of the night flyers and pleasure-mongers who had always flitted around the crossroads, had been scooped from their pitches and dumped elsewhere as chain stores moved in to attract new money.

  At the moment, though, the area was still a battlefield of water-filled ditches and workmen’s barriers, tourists clambering past one another with suitcases. Bryant loved towns in transition, and King’s Cross was a core-sample of London at its most tumultuous. The Victorian buildings that had housed laundries, pawnbrokers and watchmakers had been rehabilitated into stripped-back modern offices.

  It was here that he found the headquarters of Theseus Research.

  Black-painted iron gates sealed a courtyard, beyond which a glass wall separated a security guard from the cold. The desk behind which he sat was so large that Bryant could only see the top of his head. He pressed the entry buzzer and awaited admittance. Instead of the gate swinging open, the guard emerged from the building into the rain and approached him.

  “This building is not open to the public, sir,” he informed Bryant through the bars, keeping his distance.

  “Hullo there, I run the King’s Cross Rambling Club.” Bryant pressed his official London Tour Guide licence against the railings. “There’s a public right-of-way that runs through the middle of your building, and we want to include it on our tour.”

  The guard’s cold dead eyes reminded Bryant of a mackerel he had seen on a Sainsbury’s slab. “There’s no access here. You can’t come through here.”

  “Then I’d like to speak with your public relations officer.”

  “We don’t have one.”

  “Well, whoever deals with your general enquiries, then,” Bryant said, smiling and waiting with more patience than he could usually manage.

  “We don’t have general enquiries. It’s Saturday.”

  “I thought you did. My grandson works here, you see.”

  “Then maybe you should call your grandson and get him to let you in.”

  Bryant knew of a few certainties in life. One was that you should never rub your eyes after chopping chilli peppers, another was that you should be wary of using red telephone kiosks after drunks had been in them, and now to this list he could add the fact that the guard on this door was never, ever going to admit him to the building.

  “I’m an old-age pensioner,” he said forlornly, looking up at the guard with pathetic, watery blue eyes. “I’ve come from miles away to organise this walk. I thought my grandson would be here, but he’s not. Please, is there at least someone I can call?”

  “You could try the general switchboard.” The guard sounded more sympathetic, but none too hopeful. Bryant dug out his cell phone, flicked several liquorice allsorts from its casing and began to punch out a number.

  “Hey, you can’t do that from here,” warned the guard.

  “Why not?”

  “This is a secure area. You won’t get a signal anyway. This is official Ministry of Defence property.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Everyone who works here? They all have to sign the Official Secrets Act. Even the cleaners.”

  “But it’s not as if they’re making bombs or chemical weapons inside, is it? This is a built-up area. There are railway stations.”

  “No, but they make plans here. For terrorist attacks and stuff like that.”

  “Well, in that case, I shall tell our ramblers that they can’t have access. We mustn’t interfere with the government’s plans to protect us. Thank you – ” Bryant squinted at the guard’s nametag, “ – Mandume – you’ve been very helpful.”

  It was obvious now that he thought about it. There could never have been any other explanation. They were provided with cover stories because they were working for the Ministry of Defence, thought Bryant as he raised his umbrella and walked back into the rain.

  ∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

  40

  Recollection

  “I say, how do we get access to Ministry of Defence files?”

  Bryant asked the question casually as he caught up with a distraught Dan Banbury in the corridor of the PCU. The unit’s computers had been removed and packed up in boxes that all but blocked the main passage. Most of the rooms had already been emptied of files and personal belongings.

  Banbury released a snort of incredulous laughter. “We don’t,” he said. “When it comes to the MOD, the same restrictions apply to us as to everyone else. By the way, there’s a strange man in the evidence room putting everything in black plastic bags. There’s another one in the kitchen measuring thin
gs. He’s taken our kettle. I can’t find anything.”

  “Yes, but what if it involves possible breaches in the law of the land? Surely we have the power to act in the public interest if ordinary citizens are at risk? I’m afraid I’m a bit of a neophyte when it comes to the workings of the government. How do we stand on that sort of thing legally?”

  Banbury turned to look at him. “Who do you think has a bigger say in the running of this country, Mr Bryant? The police or the Ministry of Defence?”

  “Ah, I take your point. Then I’m not sure what to do. We’ve never had a situation like this before. Where we started at the beginning of the week isn’t where we seem to be heading now.”

  “With all due respect, where we’re heading now is outside onto the pavement,” said Banbury. “In case you haven’t noticed, they’re kicking us out of the building. How are we supposed to work?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think about it. Have a word with the others about accessing secure information, would you? I suppose we’ll have to get everyone to regroup at my place for a while. Alma won’t be pleased, but John’s poky little flat isn’t large enough to hold us all. Nobody’s told us to actually stop work; it’s just a matter of relocation as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Are we going to be working through the weekend, then? It wasn’t on the roster.”

  Bryant gave a theatrical sigh. “Yes, Dan, we are going to carry on until we get to the truth. Is there a problem?”

  “Only that I’m looking after my nipper for a couple of days. He’s at the age where he’s a right handful, but I’ll have to bring him with me.”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “With her new fella, a boiler fitter from Stevenage she met at one of her sister’s wine-tasting nights. She’s leaving me. I suppose she didn’t want me to feel left out.”

  “About what?”

  “Being the only person at the PCU in a satisfying relationship, sir. Thought I’d fit in better as an embittered workaholic loner.”