The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  'They're usually supposed to involve covert alliances of the rich and powerful, brought together to deceive the general populace,' said Dame Maud, rubbing hard at a set of fish knives. 'The most common ones involve a 9/11 cover-up, Zionist global domination, Kennedy, Monroe, the Bavarian Illuminati, the moon landings, the New World Order. For some reason, they seem to be mostly American these days. They've been described as "the exhaust fumes of democracy," a kind of release valve for the pressures of living in an intense consumer society, but of course such theories go back to Roman times.'

  'I see.' Bryant was unfazed by women like Dame Maud. He had been around them all his life.

  'Europe is traditionally associated with old-world conspiracies to do with the Vatican, the Knights Templars, the hidden meanings of the Codex Argenteus—basically anything with Latin derivatives. It's human nature to try and make sense out of chaos, to join the dots and come up with a picture. And of course it's a guilty pleasure, as long as you don't take it all at face value.'

  'What do you know about the Cato Street Conspiracy?' asked Bryant, accepting Maggie's offer of a slice of strangely heavy bread pudding.

  'That was real, of course: a plan to bring down the government, like the Gunpowder Plot. Conspiracies are not necessarily the product of overheated imaginations.'

  'Would you say there are ones we could consider true today?'

  Almost certainly,' said Dame Maud, shining the cutlery and carefully replacing it piece by piece. 'There are corporate conspiracies to keep company prices artificially inflated, and government schemes to slip through parliamentary bills under the cover of controversial world events.' She indicated the teaspoons. 'I didn't bend these with the power of my mind, by the way, but with my fingers. It's a parlour trick. I was just showing Margaret how it was done.'

  'You think your murderer was playing a similar trick on you,' said Maggie, smiling as she set down tea. There seemed to be holly in her hair, although Christmas had long gone.

  'What makes you say that?'

  'You wouldn't be here otherwise.'

  'Do you think he was? Playing some kind of trick on us? I told you my doubts on the phone. I feel I've been hoodwinked somehow.'

  'You have no reason to disbelieve this person's history, have you?'

  'That's the problem; I don't,' said Bryant, a little perplexed. 'It's all true. And his culpability has been proven beyond doubt.'

  'Then he must be cleverer than you imagined.'

  Bryant munched his pudding thoughtfully and somewhat carefully. 'But to what end?'

  'In conspiracy theory there's the issue of cui bono, "who stands to gain?" You must ask yourself the same question. If your chap Pellew is found guilty of these murders, who is the beneficiary? Certainly not the doctor who discharged him, for he can only appear in a bad light after the confirmation that his patient has been released to commit murder. Who else? Five women are dead. Who gains an advantage from their deaths?'

  'Someone who featured in all of their lives. Someone who was important to each one of them.' 'Someone you haven't found.'

  'We've made detailed examinations of their recent movements.' Bryant sighed. 'There's a dark patch on the X ray, so to speak, a period when they all just—went missing.'

  'There you are,' said Dame Maud, who had been so sensible up until this point. ‘Alien abduction.'

  'No, dear, he thinks they worked together,' Maggie explained, 'doing something they couldn't tell their relatives about.'

  'Oh, ladies of the night? Jezebels, is it? Painted harlots?'

  'No, in an office,' said Bryant, giving Dame Maud a wary look. 'Legal secretaries.'

  'I'm confused. Why would they lie to their loved ones about working in an office?'

  'That's rather the question,' Bryant admitted.

  'ATM machines,' said Dame Maud, perking up suddenly. 'They'll have needed lunches, won't they? Find out where they drew their money from. Women have to eat in the morning, it's a metabolism thing. Read their journey details from their Oyster cards, then check the coffee bars nearest to the stations from which they all alighted.'

  'Are you sure you haven't worked with the police before?' asked Bryant. 'You have a criminal turn of mind.'

  'No, dear, I haven't worked with the police.' Her moon-eyes swam innocently behind aquarium glass.

  'No, but you've been in trouble with them a few times,' Maggie pointed out.

  'It wasn't my fault that last time; it was your Maureen and her familiar, pulling my skirt off like that.'

  'You were in the Trafalgar Square fountain swearing like a navvy.'

  'I was in a state of advanced transcendentalism.'

  'You were in a state of advanced inebriation, dear.'

  As Bryant left the witches arguing in the little terraced house, he found himself wondering what a handful of kindly, maternal legal secretaries could have done to place themselves on the death list of a deranged killer.

  37

  OPEN AND SHUT

  W

  hat do you mean, the case isn't closed?' Raymond Land looked like someone had just thrown a bucket of iced water over him. Bryant had never seen him looking so tired. There were bags like suitcases under his eyes, and for once he hadn't tried to plaster his remaining strands of hair across his head.

  'I've just told you; we think there may be at least two more victims, people we haven't considered. They could have been kidnapped by Pellew before he made a run for it. And there's something else. Pellew was being monitored by a community warden called Lorraine Bonner. When he skipped his apartment, she notified his probation officer. The authorities knew he'd broken the terms of his release, but it looks like they did nothing about it. Why?'

  'I can't go back to Faraday and tell him the case is still open. He'll have kittens.'

  'I don't care about upsetting Faraday's little world when there may be human lives at stake.'

  And anyway—I suppose I'd better tell you—there's an other problem.' Land's sigh was like air leaking from an old accordian.'Kasavian's closed the unit.'

  'Again? My dear Raymond, every time we take on a case he closes the unit. It's getting so that people come here half-expecting to find us shut at odd hours. We're a crime-detection unit, not a French patisserie.'

  'Listen to me, Arthur: This time it's for good. They've removed our lease on the building, with immediate effect. We're required to vacate the premises today.'

  'Don't be ridiculous,' Bryant scoffed, before suddenly losing confidence. 'You're not serious?'

  'As a heart attack. They've sold the property. There's another department moving in on Monday at noon.'

  'How long are we supposed to vacate for? Where are we to go?'

  'Kasavian says we'll be rehoused eventually, but I don't believe it for a second. It really is the end of the line.'

  'Oh, you've said that before. We'll continue on, we always do. I haven't finished my autobiography yet.'

  'For God's sake, Bryant, be realistic for once in your life!' Land shouted, startling them both. 'We have no funding, no offices, nowhere to work, no support—nothing, you understand? It's all gone. Everything you worked for all these years, it's finished, over.' He dropped his head into his hands, surreptitiously eyeing the aspirin bottle on his desk. 'Go home, I can't talk to you anymore.'

  'Well, I'm very disappointed that you won't go to bat for us,' said Bryant. 'It can't end here, you know. So long as we can pre-vent a single death, there's cause to go on.'

  'Really? Are you sure you're not doing this for yourself, because you know that without the unit you have absolutely nothing left?'

  'That was cruel, Raymond.' Bryant did his best to look hurt. 'You've been hanging around with people from the Home Office for too long. There was a time when you cared about doing the right thing.'

  'I have to be practical about this. I looked inside the envelope you put in my jacket at Oswald's wake, Arthur. I know I wasn't supposed to, but curiosity got the better of me. You'd reached the decision to re
sign, and I know how you feel. Out of step with the present day. Heaven knows I've felt that often enough. I have no idea what people are thinking anymore; all I know is that I don't like anyone very much. Some evenings I walk to the station and it seems as though every Londoner un-der forty is completely drunk. I'm getting to the point where I hate everyone. No wonder people shut themselves away. So you see, I understand your position. That's why I have to accept your resignation.'

  'But I don't want to resign now. I have a reason for not doing so.'

  'The case is closed.'

  'No, it's not.'

  'You identified the murderer.' 'Yes, I did.'

  'You caught him red-handed.' 'Yes, that's true.'

  'And now you're saying he didn't do it after all.' 'No, I'm saying he did.'

  'Then how in God's name can someone else have done it?'

  'I! Don't! Know!' Bryant realised they were shouting at each other, and turned his hearing aid down a fraction. 'But. I. Am. Going. To. Find. Out.'

  He saw Land turning red and shouting something back, but had no idea what he was saying. 'Good,' he said. 'I'm glad that's settled. I'll get back to work.'

  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.'

  38

  DISAPPEARANCE

  M

  eera 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 Bryant.

  '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, some-one 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.'

  39