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

by Christopher Fowler

  “Sarcasm will be the ruin of you, lad. Go and fetch the others.”

  ♦

  “Mr Bryant wants everyone to meet him at his house in Chalk Farm,” said Longbright, leaning her formidable chest against the doorjamb. “Are you coming, Raymond?”

  “How would it look if I did that?” said Land. Whenever he was faced with conflicting emotions, he became static with indecision. “I can’t be seen to take sides, Janice.”

  “If we can get a conclusion on this over the weekend – ”

  “The case has already been closed, and I cannot reopen it without official approval. How are you going to continue investigating something that doesn’t officially exist?”

  “You’re technically in charge of the unit. Surely you can do it.”

  He didn’t like the way she said technically, or how she used his first name while according Bryant the dignity of a surname. “I can’t without producing quantifiable evidence for doing so.”

  “So you’re just going to walk away from us?”

  “Haven’t you noticed? They’re impounding our files, sealing everything for later examination. I can’t go along with you, Janice. Take whatever you need and leave, get out of here before they try to stop you. If anyone asks me, I didn’t see anything.”

  “Well, thanks a lot, Raymond, you really know how to put yourself on the line for us.” Longbright slammed the door behind her, only to reopen it. “And don’t forget to collect Crippen’s bowl and litter tray before you go. You’ll have to take him home with you. I’m not allowed pets in my flat.”

  ♦

  Alma Sorrowbridge was not thrilled with the idea of nine members of the PCU putting their boots all over her freshly vacuumed rugs. She made them tea and left warm yellow cornbread on the sideboard where they could help themselves, then beat a hasty retreat to the Evangelical church on the corner of Prince of Wales Road.

  As everyone arrived and settled in, John May laid down the files that the group deemed relevant to the proceedings by mutual consensus. Soon they had covered the floor of the lounge. May rocked back on his heels and glanced across the labelled autopsy photographs, the resumes, the personal-data files, the murder location photographs and the toxicology reports.

  “Well, we know that Pellew never worked with his victims,” he announced, “because he was in the secure wing of the Twelve Elms Cross Hospital during the period that our ladies worked at Theseus.”

  “The company has a Web site of sorts,” said April, turning her laptop around to show them, “but as you’d expect it’s not very forthcoming about their activities.” The screen revealed the anodyne silver logo of Theseus Research, together with a mission statement padded out with words like safety, protection and excellence, but not much else. “They’re clearly an outside resource for the MOD, with no familiar names on their masthead. There are several authors of articles mentioned by name, though.”

  “I don’t recognise any of those.” Kershaw read down the screen.

  “Wait, I know that one,” said Banbury. “Katherine Cairns Underhill – she was formerly attached to Porton Down as a virologist. She was one of the leading UK consultants during the sarin gas attacks in Japan. Keep going.”

  April continued to scroll through the site. “I know that one,” said Kershaw. “Iain Worthington, he’s a senior epidemiologist at the Royal Free Hospital.”

  “Skin diseases?” asked Bimsley.

  “Epidemics, pathogenic spread. It sounds to me like Theseus Research is involved in the prevention of chemical warfare.”

  “Arthur, where did they get their name? You must know all about the myths surrounding Theseus.”

  “I can remember bits and pieces,” said Bryant. “He was a founding hero of Greece, a great reformer. There was something about him recovering his father’s sword and sandals from beneath a gigantic rock. He slew the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne’s thread. He even survived a trip to Hades. I think the key part here is his trip through the labyrinth to locate the Minotaur. It’s analogous to the process of scientific discovery. But I don’t think we can piece much more together from a few incomplete scraps of information.”

  “We need to figure out where to look for Jackie Quinten,” said Meera. “Do you think she could be inside their building?”

  “Is there still nothing on the police reports about her?”

  “Her description has been issued,” said May, “but I don’t know how we’ll find out what’s going on from – forgive me, Arthur – a converted toothbrush factory in Chalk Farm. I do wish you’d kept your old Battersea flat with Alma.”

  “There are still a few people who owe me favours in the Met,” said Renfield. “I can call around.”

  ♦

  At a little before seven p.m. the clouds above the house split and rain thundered down the banks of the garden, beneath the back door. The hall quickly became flooded, and rivulets trickled as far as the lounge. By this time, the unit’s staff were sprawled out on armchairs and sofas throughout the building, like fractious members of a house party trapped indoors by the weather.

  “All those times Jackie spoke to you,” said May in some exasperation. “You’ve even been to her house. Don’t you remember her telling you anything about herself?”

  “I wasn’t really listening,” Bryant admitted. “You know what I’m like.”

  “I suppose you were multitasking.”

  “No, I was just thinking of something else.”

  “Now’s the time to use the memory-training techniques Mrs Mandeville taught you.”

  Bryant thought long and hard. “It’s no good,” he said finally. “I need to smoke a pipe.”

  “All the windows are closed,” said Meera. “Do you have to?”

  “It always helped Sherlock Holmes.”

  “He was a fictional character.”

  Bryant decided to light up anyway, and produced some matches. He squinted at the yellow label on the box, then donned his reading glasses. “I say, has anyone noticed this?” He held up the matchbox, studying the logo in amazement. “That’s us. ‘Bryant and May – England’s Glory.’ I don’t know why I never thought of that before.”

  After three pipes the room was filled with fragrant smoke.

  “Can we open a window now?” asked Meera. “It smells like burning tulips.” She didn’t explain to anyone how she knew. “Can you really remember nothing you discussed with her?” asked May.

  “All I’m sure of is that Jackie didn’t know about the deaths when I bumped into her at the Yorkshire Grey,” said Bryant, thinking the matter through. “And the time I saw her before that, we talked mainly about the first law of behavioural genetics; I have no idea why. We discussed map-making, too. She runs the local history society. Told me a lot about London’s geography.”

  “She might not have been meeting anyone,” said Longbright.

  “She might simply have become frightened and gone away until everything has blown over.”

  “No, she was definitely seeing a friend; she told me so herself.”

  Everyone looked dumbfounded. “What do you mean?” asked May.

  “When I saw her in the pub she said something about going out on Saturday to meet one of her gentleman academics.” It was typical of Bryant to leave out a piece of information anyone else would have felt compelled to pass on, but in this case he had only just remembered.

  “You might have told us earlier,” said Longbright. “You don’t suppose she killed them, do you? And somehow blamed Pellew?”

  “That makes no sense at all,” May told her.

  “The DNA matches were perfect on both blood and sweat,”

  Kershaw reminded them, “and the thumbprint matched Pellew’s. We know it was him. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

  “But he was the symptom, not the cause,” Bryant insisted.

  “The most dangerous element in this case was not Pellew at all, but the person who impelled his actions. I don’t think we have a way of dealing with the matter n
ow. We’re simply not equipped.”

  He needed to give the others some air. Clambering up and heading for the back door, he stepped outside, breathing deeply, standing beneath the eaves as rain fell in sheets before him. Pellew and Quinten, he thought. There’s really no connection between them. How could there be? Did Pellew really go to the Exmouth Arms, just to leave behind the clue in the photograph? He had never come across a case remotely like this. Nothing hung together, none of it was linked. Anthony Pellew. A research laboratory. A clinic for mental disorders. Five – no, seven – lonely, maternal women. The Ministry of Defence. If only my memory –

  And then he remembered, something small, no more than a single sentence. Thank God for Mrs Mandeville, he thought. I take it all back, your system works!

  He shot back to the lounge much lighter in his step. “Arthur, we’ve been talking this round in circles,” said Longbright, “and we’re convinced that you must be able to remember something more about Jackie Quinten. Do you have any idea who it was she went to see?”

  “Oh, I think I know now, I just don’t understand why, or what her connection is with him.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Arthur, spit it out!” cried May finally. Bryant widened his eyes. “She went to find Dr Harold Masters.”

  “Wait a minute, your old friend Masters, the lecturer, the one I met in that odd little tavern?”

  “I’m afraid so. Anyone will tell you that academics have a tendency toward sociopathic behaviour, and I think my old friend has finally overstepped the line.”

  “I don’t understand,” May admitted. “What has Masters got to do with Jackie Quinten?”

  “That I’m not sure of yet. But I think he’s got a lot to do with this,” Bryant told the others, dragging on his overcoat. “And I can guess where to find Mrs Quinten. There’s no time to waste. I’ve known Harold for years, if only in a sort of distant way, but I’m familiar with his habits. He’s likely to be in one of three places. Colin and Meera, I need you to go to his house in Spitalfields. John and I will try the pub he told us he frequents. Janice, I’d like you and Sergeant Renfield to head for his office at the British Museum. And be careful. By now he may well be ready to kill in order to protect his secret.”

  ∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

  41

  The Path of Hope

  “He told me himself where he spends his evenings.” Bryant hurried his partner through the fine soaking rain toward the car. “He’s a creature of habit, and he doesn’t know we’re looking for him.”

  May’s immaculate BMW wound its way down through the fading light toward Smithfields, and the welcoming lights of the Hope tavern in Cowcross Street. The roads around them were deserted. They would not come to life until the clubs started up later in the evening.

  “The pub usually opens early for the market’s meat porters, and apparently derived its name from the Path of Hope,” Bryant told him, “a section of the route taken by condemned prisoners from Newgate on their way to execution. The market didn’t appear until around 1855, but the pub’s curved-glass bay windows date it from an earlier time. Look at the etched windows, mythical birds surrounding twined T s and H s.”

  “This is no time for one of your guided tours, Arthur.”

  “Many years ago I took it upon myself to educate you, and I have not yet given up hope. Don’t feel bad; it’s been a reciprocal process. You showed me how to use my cell phone correctly. Those calls I was accidentally making to Kuala Lumpur were costing me a fortune. Why have you got a tennis ball in your glove compartment?”

  “Leave that alone,” warned May. “It’s there in case I lose my keys again.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Something Renfield taught me. You make a small hole in the ball, stick it over the lock and punch it. The air pressure pops the lock open.”

  “That man has a touch of the tea leaf about him,” said Bryant with a look of disapproval.

  “What do you expect? He was dealing with thieves on the street all day before he came to us. Anyway, you could learn a bit from him.” Like other members of the unit, May had begun to grudgingly reassess the sergeant.

  As they locked the vehicle and alighted, Bryant started examining the pub’s woodwork until May pulled him inside.

  “I think Jackie Quinten did discover that some of her colleagues were dead, and at that point she must have realised what connected them all,” Bryant declared, heading straight for the bar. “She needed to confide in someone, to visit a person in a position of trust. The Official Secrets Act remains in place after you leave a government establishment. She couldn’t unburden herself to an outsider. It had to be someone she had known through the company she had worked for.”

  “And you think she came here?”

  “I’m convinced of it. I tried a couple of Kiskaya Mandeville’s memory techniques and remembered something Masters said to me when I went to see him about Christ’s blood going missing in Clerkenwell.”

  “Christ’s blood?” repeated May, more confused than ever. Bryant irritably waved the thought aside. “He said something very odd, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Masters thinks aloud; it’s not always easy to follow what he’s on about. With people like that, you let a certain amount of what they say slip by you. He said, ‘I lecture on mythology these days, I’m not in haematology anymore, unless you count the Athenian.’ I knew he studied medicine, of course, he’s a doctor, but I had no idea of the branch he specialised in. Haematology, the study of blood, blood-producing tissues and more importantly in this case, sanguinary diseases. So why would he mention the Athenian? Well, to a lecturer in mythology there can only be one Athenian: the greatest king of Athens, Theseus. I think he was referring to the Theseus Research group euphemistically, one of those bright little remarks he can expect to toss out and have ignored by his acolytes.”

  “Except that you didn’t miss it,” said May, pleased. “Let’s search the place. You can explain the rest later.”

  “Alas, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to do that. We need to find Mrs Quinten before we get any further answers.”

  Asking the bar staff if any of them had noticed a tall, greyhaired academic in the saloon during the last few days merely started an argument between them about height, weight and hair colour, at which point the detectives realised they would not get any easy answers.

  “She needed to seek him out,” said Bryant, “but there’s no record of her calling him from her house phone or her cell, so she must have known where to go.”

  “Either that, or she’s somewhere else entirely.”

  “I can’t allow myself to think that, John. I need to be right about this. We’ve nothing else left.”

  ♦

  Colin Bimsley was too big for Jackie Quinten’s home. Owing to his difficulties with space and balance, he had grown up in a house where the only ornaments were unbreakable and usually cemented down. Now he edged his way through rooms cluttered with pottery jugs, dainty china bowls, display glassware, antique violins, rare maps and fragile Edwardian dolls’ furniture. “I don’t know where to begin looking with all this crap about,” he complained.

  “She’s a collector,” said Meera. “I’ve already been here once today; I didn’t need you to come back with me.”

  “Maybe you missed something.”

  Meera shot him a look that could have peeled wallpaper. “Go and do the kitchen. I’ll check the bedrooms. I don’t trust you on the stairs. Wait.”

  Bimsley’s eyes widened in alarm. “What?”

  “That girl who dropped you off – have you seen her again?”

  “Izabella? Not yet. I was going to give her a ring tonight, see if she was up for a beer and a curry, but now it looks like we’ll be working late. At least we’ll be together, eh?” Meera seemed to be immune to his smile, but he tried one hopefully.

  “Yeah, great.” It was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic.

  With a sigh, Bimsley headed for the kitchen an
d went through all the drawers, even looking inside the microwave. There was nothing here that he would not have expected to find. He leaned back on the draining board, looking around the tiny galley, and knocked a cup into the sink. He was trying to fit the handle back on when he noticed the empty cardboard boxes in the small backyard.

  The brand-new leaf incinerator seemed an odd thing to own, as there were no trees overhanging the property. Outside, he removed the steel lid and peered in at the charred remains of paperwork. He knew that burned pages could sometimes be deciphered if they were layered between sheets of cotton and sent to forensic-document experts, but the rain had worked its way into the metal container and had soaked the remains. Reaching in, he dug his shovel-like hands into the soggy mess. The downpour had put the fire out, and only the top sheets had been burnt. Underneath, entire folders were wet but intact. He began to lift them out.

  “Meera,” he called, “give me a hand.”

  Together they managed to bag half a dozen barely scorched folders of paper. “Let’s get this inside and read it,” he suggested.

  “We should take it back.”

  “No time for that, and no place to take it back to, remember? If there’s something here that can tell us where Quinten went, we need to know right now.”

  They started to sort through the documents. You chase thieves and murderers through the city streets, thought Bimsley with a sigh, but somehow you always end up doing paperwork. That’s how they caught Al Capone. That’s what always gets the convictions in the end.

  ∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

  42

  Blood Money

  Jackie Quinten had all but given up hope of finding Dr Harold Masters.

  She had tried his darkened house in Spitalfields before heading back to the lecture hall in the British Museum, where an assistant had traced him to a rear section of the basement. Jackie was presented with instructions for finding Room 2135, but the building was a labyrinth of identical corridors and office doors. This was the backstage area of the British Museum that the public never saw: institutional, drab, unchanged in decades.