Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘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 on to the seat 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

  The 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 his 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 lifespan. Renfield came from a world that dealt in quantifiable results. Under Bryant and May, the PCU was like an old-time company 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 make-up, 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 something horrible to say. Stop 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, but he was not, and so could not. Instead he blinked and stared and frowned and fidgeted, before 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 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 organization.

  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 certainly 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 costumier 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 up 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 yours is 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 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 return 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 the nature of pubs themselves. They’re 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 supplied with all the information we need. We never had someone who could do that before John brought you in.’

  ‘I know 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 nestled between cherry-glossed fingernails. ‘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 the other day, for my birthday?’

  ‘That was Uncle Arthur’s doing,’ said April. ‘I know because he asked me to remind him of your address on Friday night.’

>   ‘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 loves, wasted opportunities. Maybe it’s something we have in common with the women who’ve been preyed upon in pubs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked April.

  ‘We’re the ones who chose different paths, 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,’ said 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 and 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, traumatized and due for an early death because he had been victimized 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 football 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 protesters, 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.

  ‘Show me those names.’ The archivist held out a meaty fist. ‘It would help if I knew what you expected to find.’

  ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t need your help, would I? Something to do with pub histories and how they got their names. I can’t help thinking the murderer might somehow have left us some pointers.’

  ‘Why the hell would he do that?’

  ‘Because he wants to be caught.’

  ‘That makes no bleeding sense at all, but I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ said Golifer. ‘All right, here, first one up, the Seven Stars, back of the law courts. A nice little boozer, I’ve been there a few times myself.’

  ‘It’s where the second victim, Naomi Curtis, died. Does it say how the pub got its name?’

  Golifer turned the photograph over and read the typed caption that ran across the back. ‘“Penderel’s Oak is the name of the oak tree which Charles II hid inside after the Battle of Worcester, is why so many public houses are named the Royal Oak.”’

  ‘No, Oliver, that’s the wrong caption.’

  ‘Bugger, they’ve been transposed. I had an assistant here for a while, but had to fire him. Hang on.’ They searched for the photograph of the Penderel’s Oak pub, and checked its description. ‘Right, here’s the Seven Stars. “Built 1602, this public house was originally named the League of Seven Stars, the sign representing the seven provinces of Holland.” Is that any help?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bryant screwed up one eye in thought. ‘The number seven . . . a Dutch connection . . . could be anything. Go back to the first pub, the Old Dr Butler’s Head in Mason’s Avenue.’

  Golifer riffled through the folds of photographs, but came up empty-handed. ‘No pictures, but I know about that one. It’s named after some nutter, Dr Butler, who reckoned he was a neurologist, but his treatment consisted of chucking his patients down a trapdoor into the Thames from London Bridge to scare the merde out of them. Apparently James I thought it was a worthwhile pastime, because he appointed him court physician, but then James was obsessed with the idea that witchcraft would destroy the fabric of England. He wrote a barking-mad treatise on demonology that resulted in hundreds of Scottish people being put to death and buried under the streets of Edinburgh. Old Butler developed a brand of ale with so-called medicinal properties, and set up a string of taverns to sell it in, and that – the Old Dr Butler’s Head – is the last surviving pub. Try me on another.’

  ‘You’re a mine of fantastically useless information, Ollie. How about this, the Old Bell Tavern, Fleet Street, scene of the fourth victim’s death. Anything on that?’

  After a few minutes of diligent searching, the archivist pulled out a dog-eared Victorian photograph and flipped it before Bryant.

  ‘The frontage is right, but that’s the wrong name.’ He tapped the picture. A sign hanging above the entrance depicted seven golden bells.

  ‘Maybe it used to be called the Seven Bells. Doesn’t mean anything.’ Bryant consulted his list. ‘All right, how about the Victoria Cross, Bloomsbury, which Carol Wynley died outside?’

  They dragged out several mouldy cardboard boxes from beneath the counters and emptied their contents across the floorboards. ‘You’re a pain in the arse, Arthur,’ Golifer complained. ‘
Do I get anything out of this disruption and chaos?’

  ‘The sense of inner calm that arises from knowing you’ve helped London’s finest in the course of their duty,’ said Bryant. ‘This place is a fire risk. Have you got insurance?’

  ‘Don’t you threaten me, mate. Here we go, look at that.’ He slipped a creased sepia photograph from its protective sleeve and held it up for Bryant to examine. Two straw-hatted publicans stood proudly in front of a pub window. Above them part of the signage could be read: Ales – Stouts – Porter – Established 1845 – The Vict—.

  ‘That’s the sign I saw. What exactly is Porter?’ Bryant wondered.

  ‘The name of the drink changed. It used to be called Three Threads, because it was made up of stale old ale mixed with good young beer to freshen it, plus a third stronger beer called Twopenny. The threads refer to the taps on the casks. The resulting mixture was dirt cheap, so it became the chosen tipple of the Covent Garden porters, and the name Porter stuck.’

  ‘How could I have seen a pub called the Victoria Cross eighty years after it was demolished?’

  ‘You couldn’t, old chum.’ Oliver chucked down the picture. ‘There wasn’t such a place.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Victoria Cross wasn’t awarded until 1857. When this pub was built, the medal didn’t yet exist. The name must have been changed after that date. Old pubs sometimes dumped their original names if they got bad reputations.’ Golifer pulled out a photographers’ magnifier and examined the lettering above the window. ‘Judging by the width of this frontage I reckon the first name was shorter, probably the Victoria.’

  ‘But I specifically remember the date – 1845 – and I remember the painted sign depicting the medal.’

  ‘There’s a simple explanation,’ said Golifer. ‘They changed the sign but not the etched detailing on the glass.’