Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant slapped his hand on the glass-covered sheet. ‘That’s where he’s gone.’

  30

  * * *

  SOLIDARITY

  Janice Longbright was ahead of them. April’s search for Pellew’s trial coverage had already picked up his mother’s interview. As the information was distributed and digested around the unit, Longbright threw on her jacket and headed for Farringdon before Renfield could try to stop her.

  The Clock House occupied a shaded corner of Leather Lane. As she passed beneath the heraldic red lion and white unicorn over the front door, she wondered how a building with so many windows could remain so gloomy inside. The tobacco fug that had obscured the mirrored interior for more than a century was now beyond dissipation by a mere smoking ban. Making her way through a saloon crowded with market traders and local office workers, she introduced herself to a barmaid, another pretty Polish girl, called Zosia.

  ‘I understand that a woman called Anita Pellew lived here,’ said Longbright.

  ‘I don’t know – I’m new here. You should talk to Patrick over there.’ She pointed at the old boy collecting glasses.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Irish pot man, thinking. ‘She went to the hospital and didn’t come back.’

  ‘Were her rooms above the pub?’

  ‘First floor.’ He put down his pint mugs to point at the ceiling.

  ‘Can I get up there?’

  ‘It’s all locked up,’ said Zosia. ‘The new manageress has the keys, and she’s gone out.’

  ‘What about the basement? Does that stay locked?’

  ‘No, because the bar staff have to get down there to change barrels.’

  ‘Is there just the single staircase behind the bar?’

  ‘No, there’s an access door outside as well.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll need to take a look.’

  Zosia raised the bar for her and led the way to the cellar door. ‘I can’t leave the bar,’ she warned Longbright. ‘Call me if you need anything.’

  The floor below occupied a far greater area than the bar overhead. At least six rooms opened from the central battleship-grey corridor, their doors pulled shut. The dusty overhead bulb provided barely adequate light. Down here, only the faintest murmurs and footfalls could be heard from the saloon.

  The first two rooms were filled with metal beer barrels and crates. Beyond these, a small office had been set up for the manager to work on the accounts. Had Mrs Pellew once sat here adding up figures while her son played in the bar?

  Longbright felt for the Bakelite light switches, as round and high as pudding bowls, clicking them on as she went. At the far end of the corridor, a door opened on to a narrow, stepped passage originally designed for the delivery of coal. Its latch was easy to slip up. She knew it meant he would be able to come and go without anyone in the pub seeing him.

  It took a lot to frighten the detective sergeant; she had spent too many years searching London’s derelict buildings, climbing through its rubbish-strewn yards and alleyways, chasing panicked men over scraps of waste ground and across windswept car parks. The evidence suggested that Pellew had no intention of causing women pain, even though he killed them. But to Longbright, this paradox made him all the more disturbing. It left a gap in his genetic make-up, a void that could not be explained away. It made him impossible to read.

  When she opened the door of the darkened end-room and saw a green nylon sleeping bag on the floor, she knew she had found him. She stepped inside, drawn by the desire to rummage through the empty white packets beside his bed, and realized they were boxes that had contained clear plastic drug ampoules, diabetic needles so small and fine that nobody would notice them.

  What she failed to notice was that the door had started closing silently behind her.

  A rag of shadow flung itself forward, seizing her in a practised grip. She should have been able to throw him over her head, but he had caught her off-balance.

  Stupid, stupid, she thought as she fell. I didn’t consider myself old enough to be a target, but of course I’m exactly the right age.

  The needle must have been tiny, similar to the one on an insulin pen, because instead of sliding in hotly it just plucked at the skin of her arm like an insect. A warm dental numbness flooded her body with astonishing speed.

  His arms extended to catch her as she fell, to ease her to the floor, but she was heavier than he’d expected and slipped through his welcoming embrace. She jarred her hip and the side of her skull as she slammed on to the cement ground.

  Anaesthetists always suggested counting to ten. She tried that now, but struggled beyond the number four. Will I die? she wondered distantly. Have I joined the sisterhood of his victims? Will this be my last conscious thought?

  He wanted to stay with her, but the circumstances were not right. She should have been seated next to him in the warm ochre light of the saloon bar, her thigh lightly touching his, her glass almost full. She should have been watching him with his mother’s eyes, listening intently, smiling and nodding as music and laughter surrounded them in soothing sussurance. The time – somewhere between nine p.m. and the bell for last orders – would have stretched to an eternity. But instead she was lying on the floor of the cellar, dying.

  Knowing it was time to leave, he grabbed his backpack from the floor, ran out into the corridor and headed for the coal steps.

  Longbright had been face-down on the cement for about twenty minutes when John May found her. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse faint but steady. When he saw the emptied ampoule beside her, he immediately searched for the mark on her exposed skin. Her hands and feet were still warm. He could only think that Pellew had underestimated her size, that the amount discharged had not been enough to kill her.

  The ambulance had trouble reaching the pub because a bendy-bus had become wedged across the turn at Holborn Circus, and the traffic was backed up in every direction. When the medics finally arrived, they took her to University College Hospital.

  ‘We should have gone with her,’ said May, climbing back into the driving seat of the BMW.

  ‘Right now we’re more useful going after him,’ said Bryant. ‘The ambulance boys say she’s going to be all right, and we have to believe them. We’ll need someone to meet us there.’

  ‘Where? You know where he’s heading?’

  ‘He finds sanctuary in pubs, and probably salvation. Before Anthony and his mother lived at the Clock House, they came from south of the river – Greenwich. He grew up in a pub, remember? We think that was most likely the Angerstein Hotel, on Woolwich Road. It’s the only other location he mentioned to nurses from the old days.’

  ‘Do you think it’s still there?’

  ‘I hope so. I’m meant to be playing in their skittles tournament this summer.’

  ‘There may have been other pubs in between. I thought he and his mother moved around a lot.’

  ‘Pellew was at the Angerstein from the ages of eight to fourteen, his formative years. And I know the place, it’s huge. That makes it the likeliest venue. He clearly feels most comfortable living and even killing in a crowd. Hardly the usual lone wolf.’

  ‘You can be as alone in a city like London as you can in the secluded countryside, Arthur.’

  ‘Poor Janice, she shouldn’t have gone ahead without us. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her. We have to find him today, John. Judging by the number of empty ampoule boxes in his room, he’s carrying enough lethal doses to take out a dozen people.’

  Back at the unit in Mornington Crescent, Dan Banbury had looked in on May’s granddaughter and found her frowning over her computer screen. He was starting to worry about how much time she was spending at the PCU. The others were used to it; April had only just managed to reconnect with the world, and he couldn’t help feeling she had swapped one cage for another. ‘You’ve got that look on your face again,’ he warned, seating himself beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve been studying the p
hotograph,’ said April. ‘Naomi Curtis, Jocelyn Roquesby and Joanne Kellerman. I don’t think they just bumped into each other in a pub and had their picture taken together.’

  ‘Why not?’ Dan studied the digitized photograph on her screen.

  ‘Look at the way they’re standing. These women haven’t just met. They’re too close. I’d only relax like that if I was with a best mate. It doesn’t look right.’

  ‘Maybe they had to squeeze in for the photo.’ Banbury squinted at the picture, tilting his head. ‘It bothers you?’

  ‘Enough to make me run some more checks. I finally managed to track down their CVs for date comparisons. It looks like they all changed jobs at the same time, September, three years ago.’

  ‘You mean they were working together?’

  ‘No, that’s just it.’ She pulled up the documents and opened their windows beside each other on the screen. ‘Curtis was at a place called Sankani Exports, Roquesby was at Legal and General and Kellerman worked for a loss-adjustment company called Cooper Baldwin, but they all left in the same month.’

  ‘Probably just a coincidence.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. So I called Legal and General’s HR department, just to get a general idea about why she left. No one by the name of Jocelyn Roquesby ever worked there. And it gets better. Sankani Exports in High Holborn ceased trading in 1997, and according to Companies House, Cooper Baldwin doesn’t even exist.’

  ‘People exaggerate their CVs.’

  ‘Come on, Dan. Three impossible jobs, three matching departure dates, three deaths?’

  ‘What about start dates?’

  ‘They’re all different.’

  ‘Have you checked the other two victims?’

  ‘I’ve ruled out Jasmina Sherwin because she doesn’t fit the pattern, and I’m waiting for Carol Wynley’s partner to email me back. It should be in any minute.’

  ‘Then hold off until you’ve got Wynley as well,’ advised Banbury. ‘If they did all know each other, it would mean Bryant was right; they weren’t chosen at random.’

  ‘I don’t know where that takes us,’ April admitted. ‘I never go to a pub unless I’m meeting someone. What if Pellew worked with them somehow, perhaps even employed them? He arranges to meet each in turn, which is how they let him get close enough to jab them with a needle.’

  ‘I don’t see how that could happen. He’d been locked up for years.’

  ‘Do you think he would have had internet privileges? Could it have been some kind of online deal?’

  Banbury rubbed at his eye, thinking. ‘I don’t know. How can we tell if Pellew’s even the right man? He’s not in custody yet.’

  ‘There’s one other thing. Cochrane, the warder at Twelve Elms Cross, sent through Pellew’s medical file. There’s a photograph of him taken at the age of eight without the crimson blemish on his face, and another one taken when he was seventeen – still no mark.’

  ‘So if it’s not a birthmark, what is it?’

  ‘A disguise,’ said April.

  31

  * * *

  THE ANGERSTEIN

  It was said that the Angersteins were descended from Peter the Great himself, that John Julius Angerstein was the illegitimate son of either Catherine or Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, but the truth was somewhat less salubrious. John Julius, a Lloyd’s underwriter, had grown rich from his West Indian slaves, and parlayed their miseries into an art collection that became the envy of kings, and the foundation of the National Gallery.

  The Angersteins made their home in Greenwich, the birthplace of Henry VIII and the home of time itself. Woodlands, their house in Greenwich Park, was built to house John Julius’s growing collection of Rembrandts and Titians, and a grand Victorian hotel commemorated his name.

  But part of the maritime town had been allowed to die. Away from the splendours of the Royal Naval College, the Royal Observatory, the Queen’s House and the Cutty Sark, east Greenwich grew dusty and rotted apart, its community shattered by the roaring motorway flyover that split the quiet streets in half. Here, the great Angerstein hotel, now just another shabby pub, was situated. Like so many other public houses of its era, it had been repaired with thick layers of paint, blue-grey this time, and its windows were rainbowed with the lights of gambling machines and posters for karaoke nights.

  John May edged his BMW through the isthmus of the one-way system and parked by the entrance just as Meera Mangeshkar arrived on her Norton, with Bimsley riding pillion. He opened his window and called over to the two young officers.

  ‘We’ve spoken to the pub’s manager. He was a bit shocked when I explained he might be harbouring a murderer in the building, but he’s going to cooperate. He says Pellew’s hiding place can only be upstairs, as the basement is passcode protected.’

  Shielding their eyes from the breaking rain, they looked up at the hotel, as arrogant and imposing as a battleship.

  ‘Looks like more than twenty rooms, plus a fire escape and a basement exit,’ said Bimsley.

  ‘The first and second floors are accessible by a small side entrance round the corner, but the manager keeps the gate locked. If he’s in there, Pellew’s only escape route is down through the bar and out of the front, or down the rear fire escape.’

  ‘How do you want to do this?’

  ‘You two, cover the floors above. Arthur, you’re staying on the ground floor. The bar staff are ready to close the main doors once we’re inside. I’ll get the fire escape.’

  ‘No one except the manager sees what we’re doing, understood?’ said Bryant. ‘If Pellew is panicked into running again, he may hurt someone or try to take a hostage. There’s no way of getting all the drinkers outside without tipping him off. Don’t forget that he’s armed with the kind of weapon we may not even notice him discharging.’ He struggled to unlock his recalcitrant seatbelt. ‘For heaven’s sake get me out of this bloody thing, John.’

  They went in. ‘Bloody hell, it’s heaving!’ said Meera. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Charity match,’ a punter shouted back. ‘Charlton Athletic.’

  Just as she asked, a mighty cheer went up. The crowd was watching their local team charge across a luminous emerald screen.

  ‘You know what he looks like. Shut everyone else out of your vision and concentrate on his face,’ said May. ‘The birthmark makes him stand out.’

  In the narrow sepia-wallpapered first-floor corridor, Bimsley ran lightly forward with the manager, a slender Asian man armed with a fat bunch of master keys for the rooms. ‘We’ve hardly anyone staying here at the moment,’ he explained. ‘Certainly no one fitting your description. There’s a service room at the end, a storeroom and another guest bedroom, but we’ve stopped letting it out because it’s got some damp problems.’

  ‘Open it up.’

  The room smelled of wet wood, old newspapers, standing water. Black stalactites crawled down the discoloured plaster cornicing of vines and grapes. A reproduction of a painting, a black boy dressed in a golden turban, leaned against the mantelpiece. It was an attractive piece until one considered it in the light of John Julius Angerstein’s background. There was no sleeping bag this time, though, no cigarette butts, no ampoule boxes – no sign of habitation at all.

  ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Laundry room on the floor below. There’s another small room beside it where the linen is kept.’

  They moved lightly down the fire stairs and checked each room. Bimsley made a supreme effort not to crash into anything. There was no sign of human occupancy except a few muddy trainer-prints, an empty pack of gum, and a crumpled piece of notepaper which Bimsley pocketed.

  And yet there was something, a disturbance in the stillness of the atmosphere, a faint trail of warmth that was enough to tip off an experienced officer that the room had been recently entered.

  ‘He’s around here somewhere.’ Bimsley sniffed the stale air as if picking up spore. ‘I’d put money on it.’

  In the raucous ba
r the game had reached half-time, and the punters were heading back to order more beers.

  Bryant leaned against a table and studied the crowd. His fingers were closed around the mobile in his right pocket. After years of dropping them down toilets and reversing over them in his Mini Cooper, he had finally managed to keep this one in working order. He watched and waited.

  There was a high shriek at the corner of the bar, but the cry dropped and curled into hysterical laughter. A collective roar went up from a pride of males. Someone else shouted to mates across the room. Bryant peered through the scrum, watching the behaviour of the pack, the passing of pints over heads, the bellowed orders, the arms rested on shoulders, the hands pressed against backs, the fingers raised to catch the barman’s attention.

  The barman.

  The cocky little sod, Bryant thought. I don’t believe he’s actually working here! But was it Pellew, though? As he turned, no crimson birthmark was revealed. His complexion was quite clear. There was no mistaking his profile, however, or the feral wariness of his eyes, like the dim and dying light within a man suffering from a serious physical illness.

  He’s watching the crowd as well, Bryant thought. Why is he doing that? Surely he’s not thinking of taking a victim here, in front of all these people? Yes, he told himself, because he wants to be seen and stopped so badly that there’s no other course of action left open to him.

  Their eyes locked, and in the brief exchange of recognition, Pellew bolted.

  The counter flap banged up in a crash of glasses and suddenly he was shouldering his way forward into the human forest.

  Bryant flipped open his mobile and hit Redial, knowing that the call sign would trigger his partner’s return. He made his way towards Pellew, pushing drinkers aside with his stick.