The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  It was Dan's job to pass on any new cases which he felt required the attention of his seniors. Today, the very first one on the list caught his eye. Bryant always asked for printouts, claiming that the computer screen hurt his eyes, so Banbury made a hard copy, collected the document and headed across the hall. As he did so, he collided with Bryant, who was carrying a full bowl of porridge.

  'God, I'm sorry, sir.' Banbury brushed milk and oat flakes from his paperwork. 'I thought you'd want to see this.'

  'Come into my office.' Bryant set down the bowl, took the papers from him and dug out his reading glasses, waving Banbury to the cankerous crimson leather armchair he kept for visitors. 'Sit down before you do any more damage. What am I looking at? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question. The Dead Diary for Monday the twenty-sixth, a forty-six-year-old deceased woman named Carol Wynley, found at the corner of Whidbourne Street, Bloomsbury, died some time before mid-night. And this is of interest because...?'

  'It's just that John told me you cut across Bloomsbury on the way home, and I wondered if you'd—'

  '—Added random acts of slaughter to my already controversial repertoire of activities?' Bryant completed. 'Sorry to disap-point you, Banbury, but no. Around thirteen thousand out-bursts of violence occur outside pubs and clubs in the UK every week.' He threw the papers back. 'Wait, show me that again.' He snatched the printed photograph and re-examined it. 'Talk to Renfield. He'll know where they've taken her. If she's gone to Bayham Street, Kershaw will be about to get his first case.'

  'It probably won't come into our jurisdiction,' warned Banbury. 'Not unless there's something especially unusual about her death.'

  'It rather depends on what you regard as unusual,' said Bryant. 'It's certainly a coincidence. I think I saw this woman just minutes before she was found dead. Sexual assault?'

  'No mention of that in the report.'

  'If it's the same person, she was drunk when I spotted her. Let me have a word with our leader.' He turned and swung into Raymond Land's office without knocking. Land was cleaning pencil shavings out of the back of his desk drawer when Bryant made him jump, causing him to empty the drawer's contents over his trousers.

  'I do wish you'd learn to knock,' he muttered irritably, brushing down his seams.

  'Look here, Raymondo, why on earth are we stranding Kershaw over at the morgue? There's no point in having him hovering about in Oswald's old room with no-one to talk to. He's far more useful to the unit here.'

  'There's no room here,' Land snapped. 'Look how much space you take up, boxes of musty old books you never read—'

  'They're for reference.'

  'Smelly old suitcases full of outmoded laboratory instruments, endless unlabelled bottles of chemicals and I only have your word that they're safe—'

  'I think you'll find I never promised that.'

  'Half the stuff in the evidence room isn't ours, and I've no idea where you got it from—'

  'I can't remember why I borrowed safecracking equipment, if that's what you mean, or what I used it on, but I promise to return it when I do. There's plenty of room for us all here. So that's settled.' Bryant gave what he hoped was a pleasing grin, revealing his patently false teeth to an alarming degree, then exited.

  Land dug in his drawer for the miniature bottles of Glenfiddich he kept there and was about to down one when the door flew open again. 'Forgot to mention we've a suspicious death coming in, woman in her forties found in Bloomsbury last night. I say it's our case; what I mean is I want us to handle it because I saw her alive. We've nothing urgent pending at the moment, have we?'

  'You can't just decide to take the case anymore, Bryant, you need to talk to Renfield about it. What do you mean, you saw her alive?'

  'Haven't bumped into Renfield yet, running late on his first day, not a very impressive start, is it, John, and I will get off to the morgue then, you can tell Renfield for us, can't you? And if you're going to start drinking that stuff first thing in the morn-ing, I reserve the right to start smoking my Old Sailor's Full-Strength Rough-Cut Navy Shag in the office, just so you know. Pip pip.'

  The slam of the door was Land's cue to snap off the cap of his miniature and down it neat.

  'Well, well.' Sergeant Jack Renfield leaned against the jamb of the door, studying his opposite number. 'I never thought we'd end up working together, did you?'

  'It doesn't matter what I think,' said Janice Longbright.'The decision has been made elsewhere and I have to make the best of it.'

  'I don't suppose it's occurred to you that I'm not too happy about the situation, either? I enjoyed being at Albany Street nick. All my mates are there. Blokes I grew up with, some I even went to school with. I've never pretended to be an intellectual. The only college I ever attended was the police college in Hendon. I know you think I'm common. I sound common, I drop my aitches, I haven't got the grand education that you lot have got. And yet I've been brought in here, on an equal footing with you, so what am I doing right?'

  'You were useful to the boys upstairs, that's all.'

  'I'm a copper, not a politician or an academic. I've spent most of my working life dragging nonces off the street and locking them up until someone smarter tells me to let them go. But I know what the law stands for, where it begins and where it ends, and I make sure nobody on my shift oversteps the line. Raymond Land is like me; he came up the hard way. I'm not going to report to him behind your back, Longbright. I'm not out to grass anyone up, okay?'

  'Then what are you here for?'

  'I'm just planning to do my job and obey the rules, and make sure everyone else does it the same way. But if you or your bosses step out of line, that places you on the outside, with the criminals. You can think what you like about me, love, it isn't going to make any difference.'

  He pushed himself away from the door and sauntered out into the corridor. Longbright continued clearing her desk, but found herself shaking with anger. Renfield knew how to get under her skin.

  'Hi, Janice. You look like you lost a shilling and found six-pence. What's the matter?'

  Longbright looked up and found May leaning against the doorjamb. She was always pleased to see him. 'Oh, nothing, John, I'm fine.'

  'If you say so, but I heard what Renfield said.' May buttoned his jacket. 'Don't let the new boy get you down. If Land asks where I've gone, let him know that I'm checking out a possible murder victim, and no, I didn't get permission from Renfield first.'

  'He's already given me a warning about proper behaviour.'

  'He's not a bad sort, just a bit abrasive. He stopped me from getting beaten up by a street gang not so long ago. He's a good man to have on the ground.'

  'It's not just Renfield, it's—' She stopped and thought for a moment. 'Maybe I've been here too long. I have no life, John. I don't know who I am anymore. Perhaps I have to stop dressing like this, looking like this.' DS Longbright certainly had a style of her own, mostly modelled on movie stars of the past. She was a fulsomely sexy woman and the look suited her, although it was somewhat inappropriate for her job. 'You know, my makeup never gets any older, but underneath it I do. Sometimes I take it off at night, and have to stop and think if there's still somebody there. All I ever do is work. I don't exist outside the office. Does anyone even notice me?'

  May tapped the door frame with his ring finger. 'Can we talk about this later, Janice? I've just realised the time. Arthur's already on his way to the Bayham Street Morgue.' He thought for a moment. 'And check out something for me, will you? Carol Wynley had a cell phone, but it wasn't on her body or in her effects. See if you can track it down.'

  10

  THE VICTORIA VANISHES

  T

  hat's her.' Arthur Bryant peered more closely at the waxen face in the gun-grey zip bag before him. He could only recall the woman on the examination table of the Bayham Street Morgue because he had made such a deliberate effort to observe her. There was nothing remotely memorable in her appearance. If asked to sum her up in a single word, he
would have said, damningly, that she appeared 'respectable.'

  Are you absolutely sure?' asked May. 'It's just that it seems rather an odd coincidence, you being there.'

  'Not really. I bumped into my butcher at the Royal Albert Hall last month,' said Bryant. 'I always see people I know, even when they're trying to avoid me. This is definitely the woman I passed last night. What happened to her?'

  At first glance I'd say she slipped off the kerb and bashed her head,' said Giles Kershaw. 'There's a contusion at the base of the skull consistent with her falling onto her back, although I've not found any bruising at the base of her spine. Mind you, she was wearing a thick grey woollen skirt and a thick coat which would probably have protected her.'

  'Just a little cut, hardly seems anything.'

  'The contusion is small, but the surrounding area is soft to the touch, and if we push in you can just see that the dura is ruptured. I removed a small bone fragment, little more than a splinter. The fracture was enough to expose her brain, causing clotting. The pupil of her right eye is unusually enlarged, which suggests a clot on that side. Any impact can ripple through the entire head, right down to the spinal cord, caus-ing traumatic damage. The impact point showed up like a tiny black star on the X ray, and I could see some swelling in the rear right cranial hemisphere. I also found a few drops of cerebrospinal fluid leaked from her right ear, which suggests some form of basal skull fracture. There are so many things that can go wrong at the base of the skull. If she'd had immediate neurosurgical intervention I imagine she would have lived. There are more than a billion neurons in the human brain and we damage them all the time, but once the tissue starts swelling the damage rate rises exponentially unless intervention can halt it. She had quite a lot of alcohol in her blood, which exacerbated the effect of the injury. No recent food in her stomach.'

  'So you think she was plastered and missed the kerb?'

  'No, funnily enough I don't.' Kershaw swept a lick of blond hair behind his ear. Like Finch before him, he seemed deter-mined not to wear protective headgear in the morgue. He tipped his head, studying the dead woman's physiognomy, thinking. 'I think she fell all right. The impact point is consistent with a kerb-fall, a real jab of a blow.' He gestured with his knuckle. 'The sort of thing you'd get from tripping over some-thing sharp-cornered in the way of pavement furniture, but you'd have to fall very heavily. Something wrong about that, I think. You put your hands out when you fall, even if you're drunk. Her palms were completely clean. So no, not just plas-tered.'

  'Do you have the ID confirmed?'

  'She was reported missing by her partner at around two A.M., and a local officer was told to keep a lookout. Carol Wynley, forty-six, divorced, kept her married name, did part-time secretarial work in Holborn. She'd told her fella she was going for drinks with colleagues after work. She'd often done it before and they usually went on until nine or ten, birthday bashes and leaving parties, that sort of thing, so he hadn't been worried. They live in Spitalfields.'

  'So it wouldn't have taken her long to get home, even if she had trouble finding a cab.'

  'Do you have any idea what time it was when you saw her?'

  Bryant remembered the darkened dog-leg, London planes and copper beeches rustling dusty leaves above a battered brick wall. The black-painted traffic barriers, the rendered keystones, the wreath-shaped door-knocker, the ornamental wrought-iron balcony, the carved blind window. Pushing deeper into his recollections, he saw the figure of Carol Wynley weaving slightly as she moved toward him, almost stumbling on the edge of the kerb.

  How close had she come to falling at that moment? In his mind's eye he saw the frosted lower windows of the public house on the corner, the beery amber glow surrounding the gold lettering on the clear glass that read The Victory—no, The Victoria Cross. A date of establishment that he couldn't recall. He saw a few beer and spirit bottles on sparse shelves, the opening door as she pushed inside. He heard the rise of bar chatter, somebody laughing too loudly, the clink of glasses. A youthful figure appeared through the darkened doorway be-hind the bar, coming out to serve a customer. He could not bring to mind a face. The barman was ahead of her, already starting to take the order. As if he had been waiting for her to walk through the door.

  'I wasn't the last person to see her alive,' he said with finality.

  'You're quite sure this is where she was?' John May asked for the second time as they walked through the alleyway toward the top of Whidbourne Street.

  'Yes, but obviously I was coming from the other direction, heading up toward Euston Road,' said Bryant. 'Do you want half of my Mars bar?'

  'Bit mainstream for you, isn't it, a Mars bar? I thought you'd be breaking out aniseed balls, milk gums, sugar shrimps or some other brand of confectionary not seen since the last war.'

  'My supplier's been closed down,' said Bryant gloomily, sounding like a drug addict who had lost his connection. 'I suppose I could order them over the Internet but it wouldn't be the same. And I've a sweet tooth, as you know.'

  'Your teeth are false. Go on then, give me a bit.' May accepted a chunk and popped it in his mouth. He stopped at the corner of the pavement, removing the blue adhesive tape left for him by one of the Albany Street officers. 'Spot where she was found,' he said, poking a toe cap against the kerb. 'Nothing much to be seen here. No sharp corners except that low wall, which I suppose would do it.' He indicated an area of broken brickwork. 'Dan will have taken a sample. No scuff marks, no signs of violence.' He glanced up at Bryant, who had suddenly turned pale. 'What's the matter?'

  'No pub,' said Bryant in a small strangled voice.

  11

  MISTAKEN

  T

  he pair were standing at the dog-leg in what Bryant now saw was Whidbourne Street. They looked up at the corner, which was occupied by a Pricecutter Food & Wine store, its yellow and green livery coated with dust, the window plastered with stickers for the unlocking of cell phones and the arrangement of cheap calls to Ethiopian towns. It had clearly been there for a number of years.

  May shot his partner a glance. 'This couldn't have been the right corner.'

  'But it was, I'm positive,' said Bryant, although he didn't sound too sure. 'She went into an old boozer. Its name, The Victoria Cross, was in gold lettering over the window.'

  'Then you must have seen her on another street, before she reached this point.'

  'No, it was here, because I remember the way the light from the bar fell on the opposite wall and over the trees above it. The clock tower of St Pancras Station was exactly in that position. She stopped right there'—he pointed to the edge of the pavement—'then crossed the road and went inside.'

  'The streets around here look very similar to each other.' May was trying to be kind.

  'I'm not losing my mind, John. I remembered thinking that I didn't know this street. I thought I knew pretty much every route through central London, so I was surprised when I came across one I hadn't seen before. Have forensics been here?'

  'Kershaw and Banbury were ahead of us, but I don't yet know if they found anything out of the ordinary. If you're not imagining things, someone in the shop might be able to shed some light on this.'

  May led the way inside. An elderly Indian man was virtually invisible behind the counter, buried beneath racks of gum, mints and phone cards. May introduced himself as a police officer.

  'They found some old lady in the street last night,' the shopkeeper told them.'Dead, wasn't she?'

  'I'm afraid so. What time did you arrive this morning?'

  'I live in Enfield,' said the old man. 'This is my son-in-law's shop. We open at eight.'

  'And last night?'

  'Close at ten, same as always. It's nothing to do with us, what goes on over there.' 'What do you mean?'

  'The estate. Those boys hang around here at night causing trouble; we don't know what they get up to. That's why we've got steel shutters. I have to close them every night. I complain to the police but nothing happens. The police
never do any-thing.'

  'Mind if we take a look around?' May led his partner away by the arm. 'Is it just possible you made a mistake, Arthur?' he asked. 'It was late and we'd been drinking for hours.'

  'No,' Bryant insisted, but suddenly faltered, looking around at the shelves. 'Well, I don't think so. It occupied the same footprint as this building, with the door in the same place—but...'

  'That's understandable. Areas like this would have been planned by a single architect, so most of the streets have the same-sized building plots. Why don't we take a walk around the neighbourhood, retrace your steps and see if we can find your pub elsewhere?'

  Bryant allowed himself to be led between the racks of jumbo crisps and bottled drinks, but stopped by the front counter. 'Do you know a pub around here called The Victoria Cross?' he asked.

  The old Indian shook his head without even stopping to think. 'Not around here. There's the Skinner's Arms, The Boot, and Mabel's Tavern, but I don't drink so I wouldn't know. The pubs are all trouble, boys getting drunk and spray-painting their filth all over the shop.'

  Outside, May pointed at Number 6A, the single remaining terraced dwelling that stood at the end of the dog-leg, surveying the street like a sentinel. 'What about that house?' he asked. 'Maybe the owners saw something.'

  They approached the front door and rang a single bell, but there was no answer. May peered through the letter box and saw bills and flyers spread across the hall carpet. 'Looks like they've been away for some time.'

  'All the lights were off,' Bryant recalled.

  All right, forget the name of the pub,' May told his partner, 'you might have got that wrong. Just concentrate on finding a place that looks like the one Mrs Wynley entered.'

  The pair followed a rough ziggurat back along Bryant's route, passing half a dozen public houses on the way, but none of them seemed entirely right. It was as if parts of them had been incorporated into a single phantom composite.