The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  'So that's what it comes down to?' asked Land. 'Money?'

  'It's a matter of security. It may have escaped your notice, but the capital is on a permanent "Severe" terrorism alert. There is no room for your little cottage-industry detection unit. You're an anachronism, an unacceptable security risk; you've admitted so yourself.'

  'That was in the past, before—'

  'Before your detectives won you over? Ask yourself, Land, what has changed? The answer is nothing, and that's the problem.'

  'Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?' Land pleaded. He glanced back at Faraday, who had just noticed that his tapestry chair was ruined.

  'It's too late for that,' said Kasavian. 'I'm afraid the building has already been sold. Tomorrow is your very last day at Mornington Crescent. You'd better go and tell your staff to pack up their belongings.' His smile was as mirthless as any carnival huckster's. 'Don't worry, we won't do anything as drastic as changing the locks. I remember only too well what happened the last time we tried that. We're all civilised adults, Mr Land, I'm sure we can reach an amicable agreement.'

  'You mean you'd like us to reach a compromise on the terms of moving out?' said Land hopefully.

  'Good God, no,' said Kasavian. 'It's merely an expression. There's nothing you can do now except go.'

  35

  INTERPRETATION

  A pair of disembodied legs sealed in black fishnet tights and crimson satin garters was balanced gracefully on a mound of red plastic poppies. Nearby, a torso clad in a basque with lavender rhinestones set in its staves glittered menacingly.

  DS Janice Longbright peered into the shop window and sighed at the clothes she could not afford. She was tired of being broke and unloved. Checking her watch, she realised that she was running late. Carol Wynley's partner was awaiting her arrival in the flat beside the shop.

  Shad Thomson had suffered a stroke in his late fifties, three years earlier, and the apartment he shared with Carol Wynley had been adapted to allow his motorised wheelchair to pass easily from room to room. Although she was unsure how much help she should offer her host, Longbright suggested making tea for them both, and he comfortably acquiesced.

  'I suppose I got lazy living with Carol,' he told her. 'It's surprisingly easy to let someone do everything for you.'

  'You must miss her a great deal,' Longbright said.

  'I'll never know anyone else like her,' he replied. 'She knew me before the stroke, so she remembered a different person, the one who was still on his feet, racing around town taking meetings, hitting deadlines, thinking that work was so damned important. No-one will ever see me like that again. Carol was the last person to really know me. I'm someone else now. I can never go back.'

  'How long were you together?'

  'Seven years. I met her in a pub, the Seven Stars in Carey Street. I remember it had some kind of connection with Holland. She had worked for a law firm in Amsterdam, and we got talking about the history of the place. I'm a journalist. At least it's a job I can still do like this.'

  'Carol was still working in a law firm, wasn't she?'

  'That's right, as a legal PA for the Swedenborg Society.'

  'Where was she before that, do you remember?'

  'Of course. She was at the Holborn Security Group, a firm of specialist solicitors on Theobalds Road.'

  'When did she leave that job?'

  'I think it was a couple of years ago now.' Around the same time that the other three had left their non-existent jobs, thought Longbright. Where had these women all been? What were they really doing?

  'Did you ever meet anyone she worked with at the Holborn Security Group?'

  'I met one of her bosses, some kind of consultant,' said Shad, 'and once a woman of about her age dropped her off here.'

  'One of these three, perhaps?' Longbright showed him the photograph of Roquesby, Kellerman and Curtis taken in the pub.

  'That one,' said Shad, pointing at Roquesby without hesitation. 'I think she and Jocelyn briefly shared an office. I remember because Mrs Roquesby was an old colleague of Dr Peter Jukes. You must have read about him in the papers.'

  'I don't think I have,' said Longbright, but she could vaguely recall someone at the PCU mentioning his name.

  'I did some work on his case, purely out of interest. Have a look on that shelf for me, would you?' He pointed to a rack of plastic folders above his workstation. 'Dr Jukes.'

  Longbright found a slender yellow file with the doctor's name written across the top.

  'He originally came from Salisbury, Wiltshire,' Shad explained, tipping the sheets out into his lap and examining them. 'Last year his body was found floating off Black Head on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall. The coroner thought it was a simple matter of death by drowning, but a local newspaper decided to take up the case, and their reporter believed that Jukes had sustained some unexplained injuries. The inference was that the coroner didn't do his job properly. Jukes's boat was washed into a local harbour more than fifteen miles further down the coast. The coastguard thought it unlikely that he had fallen into the sea, because local tides and currents would have taken both the body and the boat into the nearest shore. Jukes told some drinking pals he was going fishing with a mate, but no friend was ever found. I got bugged by the story for a while, even asked Mrs Roquesby about it when she came by. I thought perhaps she might have heard something that didn't get into the papers.'

  'Why were you so interested?' asked Longbright.

  'I did my training on the regional court circuit,' answered Shad. 'When you hear the names of certain litigious organisations come up time and again, alarm bells go off in your head. In this case I was intrigued because Jukes was a consultant at Porton Down.'

  'Roquesby's colleague was a doctor who worked for the Ministry of Defence,' Longbright told the detectives when she met them an hour later. They were seated in the Hope & Anchor, sipping a dark malty liqueur poured from a mysterious and rather dusty brown bottle Arthur had ordered down from behind the bar. It was nearly eleven P.M and they had sent the rest of the crew home.

  'Jukes was chief scientist for chemical and biological security at the MOD's main laboratory. There was some kind of scandal over part of the lab being outsourced into the hands of privatised companies.'

  'I thought that happened all the time,' said May.

  'One of them had been under investigation for allegedly offering bribes. It made a couple of the papers, but the story was dropped pretty sharpish. You once talked to me about the case, Arthur; you said something about turning up darker connections.'

  'Did I?' asked Bryant, amazed. 'I don't remember at all. Not that that's saying much.'

  Longbright thought for a minute. 'This would have been back in the summer, you told me something about witches or warlocks—no, Druids.'

  'Wait a minute, that's right, I do remember.' Bryant was genuinely amazed. 'I told you that Jukes had formerly belonged to a Druid sect—his family had insisted it was only a hobby, but according to the Sunday rags they suggested that he had drifted into Satanist circles.'

  'You didn't tell me about this,' said May, grimacing over his bitter drink.

  'Well, no, Janice and I look into all sorts of interesting stories behind your back, don't we, Janice? But there's not much point in bringing them to your attention if we don't think they'll fly.'

  'So what happened?'

  'Oh, the Met detectives refused to believe there was a connection between Jukes's injuries and his interest in black magic. They vindicated the coroner and agreed with the verdict of accidental death. But you know how my mind works.'

  'Not really, no.'

  'I couldn't help wondering if Jukes had become an embarrassment to his employers because he was operating under the Official Secrets Act. I'm not suggesting they assassinated him, of course, merely that they encouraged people to believe that he was mentally unstable. I actually petitioned the Home Office for a look at his notes, but the Defence Secretary refused to acknowledge t
hat there was a case at all. He pointed out that Jukes had been suffering from clinical depression for a number of years, and had long been recognised as a security risk, so I let it drop. And now it turns out he knew Jocelyn Roquesby. Well, well.'

  'So what do we have?' asked May. 'Carol Wynley worked for another company that doesn't exist—April couldn't find any specialist law firm under the name of the Holborn Security Group.'

  And Shad Thomson has another set of employment dates that match those of his girlfriend's murdered companions,' Longbright added.

  Bryant stirred the thick sediment in his glass thoughtfully. 'Four women work for phantom companies. One of their colleagues commits suicide or accidentally drowns. Then, in the space of two weeks, the women, plus a fifth, are put to sleep in public places by a former mental patient.'

  'It may be that none of these facts are connected. You know how often we're criticised for jumping to conclusions; I think we have to be very careful this time, and only build the case with documented facts. We could be looking at the result of information gaps, misinterpreted events, simple clerical errors.'

  'No. I spoke to one of the doctors who signed Pellew's release form. Hopelessly evasive about the procedure, pleaded patient confidentiality, believe it or not. And I keep coming back to the pubs in which they died. The Old Dr Butler was named after a deranged doctor; the Seven Stars and the Magpie and Stump give us "seven" and "conspiracy";The Victoria Cross is the name of a pub that could not even exist; the Exmouth Arms provides the name of Pellew himself. My God, he couldn't have left us much plainer clues.'

  'You're forgetting the Old Bell,' said May.

  'Well, I don't have anything interesting on that one, other than the fact that it used to be called the Seven Bells.'

  'Seven Belles,' Longbright raised her eyes from the dark liquid in her brandy glass. 'Seven women.'

  'The mad see things differently,' said Bryant. 'It's just a question of interpretation.'

  'You think he intended to take the lives of two more victims?'

  The little group sensed the room growing colder as they considered the possibility that more lives were in danger.

  36

  GREATER DARKNESS

  T

  he icy night dragged past in a knot of sweat-soaked sheets and twisted blankets. At three-thirty A.M., Bryant disentangled himself and stood at the window in his dressing gown, staring out at the iridescent garden. A strange aura of disturbance had settled over him. He sensed that things were coming to a head. Pellew's case bothered him more than he cared to admit; it was a sure sign that something was wrong when Raymond Land felt confident enough about the investigation to go running off to the Home Office.

  You didn't work this long without knowing when some-thing bad had happened. Grounds were shifting, tides were turning against them. Perhaps it was already too late for them to save themselves.

  The street outside was quiet. Frost sparkled in the lamp-light, as if the air itself was gelid and starting to crystallise. Bryant felt slow-witted and incomplete, unable to grasp the significance of the week's events. Mrs Mandeville's memory lessons were working wonders but something continued to elude him, some passing remark that had pricked his interest,

  only to return to the indistinct background of bar chatter that had filled the last few days.

  Five years ago this is not something I'd have missed, he thought angrily. I'm becoming slow and lazy. He dug out his tobacco pouch, stuffed and lit a pipe, watching as the aromatic smoke curled against the condensation on the window. Two more women—possibly three if you did not count the death of Jazmina Sherwin—were still at risk, but how and from what? A dead man?

  A larger fear assailed Bryant, that the neat confluence of reasons driving Pellew to commit murder was deliberately misleading. Their murderer had re-created the comforts of his childhood, killed for the companionship that brought relief from his nightly fevers, but his psychosis wasn't the whole story. Something else had driven him, and perhaps was working still.

  The nurse at the Broadhampton had insisted that her patient was of above-average intelligence. Pellew had sent his would-be captors messages, but he was no historian; he just liked pubs because he felt safe inside them. The clues he'd left behind had been simple enough to decipher. But where they led...

  The embers in the pipe glowed and crackled. Bryant had al-ways felt possessed of—well, psychic ability was perhaps the wrong term, but a sensitivity, faint and tremulous, to the fluctuations of his waking world. That mental gauge had been shaken badly during his investigation of the Highwayman, the murderer who had courted fame in the tabloids by killing failed celebrities on London's streets. Now it was vibrating again, more violently than ever before. Some greater darkness had empowered Pellew, and made him as much a victim as a murderer.

  You needed to see the complete picture, not just a corner...

  Are you going to be smoking that disgusting thing for long?' asked Alma Sorrowbridge, making him jump.

  'Good Lord, woman, can you not go creeping about the house in the middle of the night? Especially not looking like that.' She was standing in the doorway in a vast red-and-yellow-striped nightdress, with crimson silk ribbons knotted through her hair.

  Alma placed her formidable fists on her hips. 'Like what?' she demanded to know.

  'Like a marquee for a particularly disreputable travelling circus. What are you doing up, anyway? I suppose you've been at the fridge again.'

  'I hear you moving about because the floorboards creak. You're thinking about work.'

  'How do you know that?'

  'It's all you ever think about.'

  'Nonsense, I frequently have other thoughts about— things,' he finished lamely. 'It so happens that I'm stuck on a problem.'

  'Maybe you should do what you usually do: go and see that crazy devil-woman. I can't help you with your case, but I can help you sleep. I'll make us some hot chocolate with vanilla pods and cinnamon.'

  'I'm sorry, Alma.' Bryant's appreciative smile would have been more attractive with his teeth in. 'I haven't been very nice to you lately, have I?'

  'I haven't noticed, you're always horrible.' Alma sniffed. 'But I know you don't mean any harm, so I never pay much mind.'

  'You're very good to me, you know.'

  'I know.' Unimpressed with this late display of sentiment, his landlady went off to make the chocolate.

  It was early morning, and the streets were still milky with mist. He rang the doorbell again, and this time the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped. Bryant looked around at the front garden, where a motor scooter had been carelessly parked on top of some diseased-looking begonias. There were slates falling off the roof, and a pair of front-door keys were sticking out of a hanging basket of dead snowdrops, where every thief in the neighbourhood could see them.

  He waited while somebody thumped and crashed toward the front door. He usually went to the deconsecrated chapel in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, to see his old friend, but this morning he had decided to catch her at home in the little terraced house on Avenell Road, Finsbury Park. Maggie Armitage, the white witch from the coven of St James the Elder, opened the door in yellow rubber gloves and a purple pinafore. Bryant wondered if she had been taking fashion tips from Alma.

  'I'm afraid you caught me hoovering,' said Maggie, snapping off her gloves to give him a hug. She had dyed her hair bus-red and painted on the kind of lipstick that could only be removed from a collar with a nail-brush.

  'I thought you preferred things dusty.' Bryant gave her a squeeze. 'You shouldn't leave your keys in the flowerpot.'

  'It's all right, I put a curse on them. And I don't mind a bit of dust, but I draw the line at involuntary emissions of ectoplasm. Maureen had a visit from Captain Smollet last night and got it all over the place. It might be good for the purging of tortured souls but it's a bugger to get out of the carpet. Maureen's familiars are all military men. I'm not sure if it's because she held her first seance near the Chelsea Barrac
ks, or if she just likes a man in a uniform. Come in and have some breakfast.'

  Maggie remained the PCU's affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic analysis, but she was prepared to offer advice on any number of subjects from numerology and necromancy to pet horoscopes and the care of orchids. Her information was spiritually sound but lacking in logic and probability.

  Bryant entered the hall, climbing past a bicycle and all kinds of junk, including what appeared to be an old Mr Whippy ice cream machine. Her little house was always overflowing with dead people's belongings, which made it simultaneously cosy and creepy. 'What do you know about conspiracy theory?' he asked.

  'Not really my subject, lovey. You need Dame Maud Hackshaw for that.' 'Can I contact her?'

  'I imagine so; she's in the kitchen straightening out my spoons. She's been practising her parapsychology on my cutlery. Come through.'

  Maggie ushered her visitor through to a kitchen cluttered with Wiccan icons, headless Barbie dolls and mouldering sea-side souvenirs. Dame Maud Hackshaw, a mauve-haired, pearl-festooned Grade III witch from the coven of St James the Elder, stared at Bryant through the thickest spectacles he had ever seen.

  'Hello, ducks, how are you?' she demanded. 'We met in an army truck outside Dartmoor, remember? And this week I was introduced to your lovely lady sergeant at the Sutton Arms. She's got the gift of second sight, which is nice for her. Doesn't realise it at the moment, of course, still a bit too young. They never do until they're in their second blossom.'

  'Maggie says you know a thing or two about conspiracy theories,' said Bryant, gingerly examining several teaspoons that had been twisted into silver spirals.