'They met in a public house because it was secure,' said Bryant.
'What do you mean?'
'It's what Masters said, a pub is neutral territory. Why, the very word public suggests openness. They wanted somewhere safe and busy to meet, so that they could discuss something where they wouldn't be bugged, watched or monitored, some-thing common to all of them.'
'Or someone,' said Longbright. 'Jazmina was stalked.'
'The fundamental problem remains,' said Bryant. 'He's changed his MO and didn't take Sherwin's phone this time, so how do we predict whether he will strike again?'
'Start narrowing the search,' said Renfield. 'We put out a description to every pub in North and Central London. He's not going to leave his hunting ground. You said yourself that he feels comfortable there, Bryant. He's local to the area. We could have him locked away by this time tomorrow.'
'That would require extra manpower, which means involving the Met,' Bryant pointed out.
'What, you have a problem with that?' Renfield wanted to know.
'We don't but they do. They won't help us, or you, despite the fact that your mates are still there.'
'Bryant's right.' Land seemed suddenly alert. 'We'll have to do it ourselves. Let's start making the calls and getting people out of bed. Nobody goes home tonight.' A collective groan rose in the room. The staff clambered from their perches and started to disperse.
'It still doesn't feel right,' said Bryant, shaking his head as the office emptied. 'We're looking at the victims instead of the victimiser.'
'You're trying too hard, Arthur,' said May. 'You always do.'
'No, this time my gut instinct is valid. I think—' He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, as if searching for ideas in the dusty cornicing.'I think I need to be alone with my books for an hour.' He rose with a grimace and stumped off to his own room.
May knew it was pointless trying to control his partner. He could only follow and wait for revelations, no matter how wrongheaded they might be.
Dan Banbury had scanned in the photograph of Naomi Curtis, Jocelyn Roquesby and Joanne Kellerman drinking together, and section by section, expanded the background illuminated in the flash of the digital camera, a 3.5 megapixel by the look of it. There were plenty of cell phones offering that level of quality. The top left of the photograph showed the edge of a window. From its placement, he could tell that the pub was on a corner. The light suggested early evening. Through the window he could make out a swathe of green plastic, a canopy made of metal rods, rows of what appeared to be oranges and bananas: market stalls. Two small gold letters had been painted in reverse on the glass, E and X.
After that, it was simply a matter of running a search on all street markets in the central London area, and finding a corner pub with the letters E and X in its title. Only one fit the bill: the Exmouth Arms, in Clerkenwell's Exmouth Market.
Banbury checked his watch and punched the air. The entire process had taken him less than fifteen minutes. He had a feeling they were finally getting somewhere.
All right, come on, you've had your hour. What is it you're looking for?' May shut the door behind him as he returned to the office.
'I'm no good at understanding psychology,' said Bryant. 'I've always left that to you. But it seems to me that the taking of human life involves shame and regret as well as arrogance and cruelty.'
'I wouldn't say that was always true. Serial killers usually fail to produce normal emotional responses. What are you thinking?'
'That part of him wants to be caught. My problem is Jazmina Sherwin, the odd girl out. She's younger, more overtly attractive, different in every way from the others. She doesn't fit the pattern, and yet she's linked to the others by a description of the man who followed her. It doesn't add up, John. Then there are the locations, all grouped together in a tight circle. He's anxious to be stopped, and is trying to expose himself.'
'Then why wouldn't he just turn himself in?'
'Something is driving him on to these acts of violence. No, violence is the wrong word, because I don't think he hates women. The attacks are almost gentle, as if he just wants them to fall asleep in his arms.'
'All right.' May seated himself on the corner of the desk, thinking. 'If he was very lonely—if he felt that the birthmark on his face kept him from being attractive to the opposite sex—this might be his way of preserving a moment forever, of keeping women by his side in a place where he feels happy and comfortable.'
'Then why aren't all his victims like Jazmina? Look, do you remember when we were much younger, you tracked down a man who was attacking girls on Number Seventy-five buses— 1968, I think it was. The first thing he said when you took him into custody was "Why did you take so long to stop me?" I think this is something similar, and it makes me wonder if he's leaving me any more explicit clues.'
'You say leaving you clues. You don't think it's someone who knows you?'
'It has crossed what's left of my mind,' sighed Bryant.'If only my memory was sharper. I've another appointment with Mrs Mandeville first thing tomorrow morning. She hypnotised me the other day, you know.'
'Did it help to improve your memory?'
'I think so. When I woke up, I suddenly remembered who I'd lent my electric drill to in the summer of'86. It seems I accused the wrong person of stealing it. I should never have filled his garage with bees.' His mind changed track. 'You know there's one thing about all these pubs, don't you? We've been to them before, every single one of them.'
'Yes, but so have thousands of other Londoners. If you like public houses, you're bound to have tried a few on the list at some time in your life.'
'I daresay. But I've told you, I don't think this is just about the victims. It's about the locations. Give me a hand, would you?' Bryant wobbled onto the top of his chair and reached for a collection of tatty albums on the uppermost shelf. He passed them down to May, who caught some of the titles: Signs of the Times: A Guide to London Names, English Symbols, The Secret Language of Codes, Urban Semiotics.
'You don't honestly think these are going to help?' asked May.
'The others will be searching through employment records and contacting witnesses, tackling the prosaic tasks of criminal investigation,' Bryant reminded him, holding out a hand to descend. 'Leave me to potter in the past by myself; it's what I'm best at. I might surprise you yet.'
25
RITE OF PASSAGE
T
he atmosphere at the PCU had changed from a state of indecision to one of purpose. Like it or not, Longbright knew that this was partly down to Jack Renfield. There was a general feeling that the newcomer's pragmatic approach to policing was just what the PCU might need to survive.
The detective sergeant was forced to consider the idea that her bosses' old-school methods were reaching the end of their natural life span. Renfield came from a world that dealt in quantifiable results. Under Bryant and May, the PCU was like an old-time publishing house that nurtured talent and won out on aggregate, but its new accountability required it to operate on case-by-case wins. Longbright wondered if she was the only one to feel that something unique and precious was about to be lost.
She needed to be useful. There was no point in thinking about her passing life, her unpaid bills, her empty fridge and even emptier bed. Whipping out a mother-of-pearl compact made for Alma Cogan in 1958, she applied a fresh layer of makeup, then repainted her eyes. Within seconds she began to feel calmer. Right, she thought, cracking her knuckles, witness statements, let's close the net on this son of a bitch.
'You missed the debrief.' Meera Mangeshkar was not good at hiding her feelings. Right now she had a face like a half-sucked lemon. 'Everybody else managed to get here.'
'I got a lift,' Bimsley explained. 'Someone kindly dropped me off.'
'From what I heard, you had trouble getting out of the car.'
'What do you care? I thought I didn't exist in your world. The only time you stop ignoring me is when you've got some-thing horrible to say. S
top the press, a woman found me appealing.' He glared at her.
'Are you going to see her again?'
'What am I, stupid? No, don't answer that, I think I know where you stand on that question.'
'You were supposed to be working, not picking up girls.' The room temperature dropped another eleven degrees.
If Bimsley was even dimly aware of the reason for Meera's annoyance, he might have displayed a glimmer of understanding about female nature, but he was not, and so could not. Instead he blinked and stared and frowned and fidgeted, be-fore his confusion was replaced with the warm memory of Izabella's perfumed embrace, at which point he smiled with a scrunch of his freckled nose, only to recoil in surprise when Meera stormed past him and slammed out of the room, making the same kind of noise that the Concorde managed when it passed through the sound barrier.
On Friday morning it was decided to split-shift the unit so that a team would be working around the clock, and Renfield seemed happy to be put in charge of the organisation.
After grabbing a nap on his couch, Bryant headed off for the second of his hypnosis sessions with Mrs Mandeville.
Everyone was searching for a lead on their common suspect. In the meantime, April and Janice Longbright ducked out for a working breakfast on the terrace of Camden Town's Roundhouse, the site of the giant railway turntable that had been renovated as a concert venue.
Longbright patted the pockets of her blazer. 'You haven't any gaspers on you, I suppose?'
'Why would anyone smoke these days?' asked April, studying the menu.
Actually, I don't. It's affectation. Gesturing has more of a point with a snout in your hand. You're right though, I shouldn't. I've been a little wound up lately.'
'You have your own style,' said April approvingly. 'Your shoes, your Ruth Ellis haircut, the weird colours of lipstick you find, the way you grind out a fag-end in an ashtray when you're angry. You always manage to be so noticeable. I feel quite invisible beside you.'
'Listen, darling, I grew up in a household where the rent money was always spent by mid-week. After the war, my auntie Dot was employed as a theatrical costumer at the Duke of York's. When she died she left me her entire wardrobe, so I adopted it. I found her old ration book inside one jacket pocket. The smell of mothballs never bothered me. I tried the look and it stuck. I can't be doing with modern clothes. I'm too fleshy for most of them.' She looked out across the stables, early morning sunshine striping the roofs. 'You wouldn't have been able to sit out here a few weeks ago. Too much open space.'
'My agoraphobia seems to have subsided,' April agreed, 'but I can't help feeling it will resurface in some other form the next time I get stressed. It always does. I have a compulsive personality. My mother had me checked for autism.'
'Everyone has some damage. You learn to work around it. And at least it's put to practical use at the unit.'
April barely heard her. She pushed her newspaper across the table. 'My God, check this out. They're running a front-page article about the dangers of women drinking alone in pubs.'
'This is going to be a godsend for the tabloids,' said Longbright. 'They'll be able to attack any number of targets from promiscuity to the collapse of the family unit before pleading for higher security and more police on the streets.'
April scanned the subheads. 'The breach of the last male stronghold: Why no woman can now feel safe. How they'd love to explain the dangers of independence to us. I hope we can expect plenty of rebuttals from women journalists.'
Sensing a juicy public debate, the talk shows had already begun to line up their guests. It was all as Bryant had predicted; the tense issue of safety in public areas was set to re-turn to a level last seen in London during the IRA pub bombings of the 1970s, but this time around, no-one knew what they were looking for. Everyone was suddenly a suspect. In the rush to apportion blame, it seemed that only the victims were ignored.
'These were the kind of crimes our unit was created to prevent,' said Longbright.'How difficult can it be to put a name to this guy?'
'The problem is in the nature of the pubs themselves. They're warm, intimate places full of total strangers. You can have an argument about politics, fashion or football with someone for an entire evening, and leave without any clue to their identity. People seem to drop into an amnesiac state in pubs. They emerge without any knowledge of what's occurred in the course of the evening.'
'Which reminds me, have you had any luck locating Oswald's urn?'
'Not really,' April admitted. 'It seems certain that somebody removed it from the bar during the wake, but the barmaid didn't see who it was. I'm afraid I wouldn't make a very good detective.'
'Rubbish, you've got exactly the right attitude. You quietly watch and see how everything fits together, and keep us sup-plied with all the information we need. We never had someone who could do that before John brought you in.'
'I'm sure the others think I got the job because I'm his granddaughter.'
'That might have been true at first, but you've earned your place with us.' Longbright smiled over the coffee nested be-tween cherry-glossed fingertips. 'Your grandfather and Mr Bryant still have what it takes, you know. They're a wonderful team. The place wouldn't survive if anything happened to either one of them. Did you know they sent me flowers on Monday, for my birthday?'
'That was Uncle Arthur's doing,' said April. 'I know because he asked me on Friday night to remind him of your address.'
'But even I had forgotten the date. I never celebrate it. How did he remember something like that when he's supposed to be suffering from memory loss?'
'Well, if there's nothing wrong with his mind, that would mean he really did walk into the past after Oswald's wake.'
'Or someone wanted him to think he had,' said Longbright. A thoughtful silence fell between them. Longbright's coffee cup was marked with a fluorescent arc of lipstick. 'Listen, we'd better get back before they miss us.' She rose and pushed in her chair.
'I think Meera's going to leave the unit. She seems really unhappy about something.'
'She's very angry with herself.' 'Why?'
'Because she had a chance to be much happier than she is right now, and she blew it.' 'She has a lot to prove to herself.'
The DS shook out a melancholy smile. On her left hand there was still a pale line where her engagement ring had once been. 'Look, we've all made tough choices. It's a rite of passage for just about everyone who's ever worked at the PCU. Lost friends, missed love, wasted opportunities. Maybe it's some-thing we share in common with the women who've been preyed upon in pubs.'
'What do you mean?' asked April.
'We're the ones who got left behind, and to someone out there, maybe it's as noticeable as a birthmark.'
26
NOMENCLATURE
If the notorious gangster-twin Kray brothers had taken to bare-knuckle sparring with each other in East End boxing clubs until they were melded into a single flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared entity, they would have looked like Oliver Golifer, the ridiculously monickered owner of the Newman Street Picture Library.
Golifer's terrifying demeanour was greatly at odds with his delicate, somewhat theatrical personality. He was a contradictory hulk, heavy of tread but light on his feet, with an erudite intelligence that hid behind the appearance of a particularly gruesome monkey. He knew an awful lot about London, largely gleaned from the immense collection of rare prints and monochrome photographs he had amassed in his three-floor shop.
'I thought I might be getting a visit from you,' said Golifer, opening the door to usher in London's oldest detective. 'The case is all over the papers, and I couldn't imagine anyone at the Met being able to get a fix on it. What are you looking for?'
'Public houses, Oliver,' answered Bryant, digging into his raincoat to produce a bulky bag containing, among other
things, his pub list. 'I want photographs of all these boozers, old ones, new ones, I don't care, as many as you've got.'
'What you said on the dog a
nd bone about the locations attracting him, I didn't follow that.'
'My worry is that even if we caught him right now, we might never find out how or why he's been attacking women. Perhaps you can help me shed some light.'
'I can try.' Golifer wrinkled the meaty stump that passed for his nose. 'What else have you got in that bag?'
'Sweets. They won't let me smoke at the unit. Today I've got Menthol and Eucalyptus, Liquorice Pontefract Cakes, Old English Cloves, Winter Warmers or Army and Navy Tablets.'
'I don't want any; I just wondered what the smell was. Come with me, let's go down to the basement.'
Golifer led the way to the wrought-iron spiral staircase at the rear of the store, past dusty corkboards filled with pinned pictures of peculiarly English memories that made Bryant smile as he passed them.
The Reverend Marcus Morris appearing before a crowd of excited lads in 1950 for the launch of his British boys' paper The Eagle, intended as a healthy alternative to the 'lurid' American comics that GIs had introduced to the nation's youth.
A thoughtful mother watching while the police combed bleak ridges of Saddleworth Moor for the young victim of deranged lovers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1965.
A bandaged Jack Mills, beaten, traumatised and due for an early death because he had been victimised in the Great Train Robbery in 1963.
The shattered wreckage of the BEA Elizabethan plane on the frozen runway of Munich airport, where the 'Busby Babes,' England's greatest soccer team, had died in 1958.
A faded copy of the Daily Express hailing Neville Chamberlain's 1939 peace agreement with Hitler, with the headline, 'THIS PAPER DECLARES THAT BRITAIN WILL NOT BE INVOLVED IN A EUROPEAN WAR THIS YEAR, OR NEXT YEAR EITHER.'
The walls became more crowded: a montage of barricades and protestors; police and politicians; moments of loss, elation and cruelty; the shocked faces of men and women caught by the vicissitudes of fate. Golifer's library reflected its owner's fascination with his country and the way it reacted to world events.
The Victoria Vanishes Page 14