“You can’t just decide to take the case anymore, Bryant, you need to talk to Renfield about it. What do you mean, you saw her alive?”
“Haven’t bumped into Renfield yet, running late on his first day, not a very impressive start, is it, John, and I will get off to the morgue then, you can tell Renfield for us, can’t you? And if you’re going to start drinking that stuff first thing in the morning, I reserve the right to start smoking my Old Sailor’s FullStrength Rough-Cut Navy Shag in the office, just so you know. Pip pip.”
The slam of the door was Land’s cue to snap off the cap of his miniature and down it neat.
¦
“Well, well.” Sergeant Jack Renfield leaned against the jamb of the door, studying his opposite number. “I never thought we’d end up working together, did you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Janice Longbright. “The decision has been made elsewhere and I have to make the best of it.”
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that I’m not too happy about the situation, either? I enjoyed being at Albany Street nick. All my mates are there. Blokes I grew up with, some I even went to school with. I’ve never pretended to be an intellectual. The only college I ever attended was the police college in Hendon. I know you think I’m common. I sound common, I drop my aitches, I haven’t got the grand education that you lot have got. And yet I’ve been brought in here, on an equal footing with you, so what am I doing right?”
“You were useful to the boys upstairs, that’s all.”
“I’m a copper, not a politician or an academic. I’ve spent most of my working life dragging nonces off the street and locking them up until someone smarter tells me to let them go. But I know what the law stands for, where it begins and where it ends, and I make sure nobody on my shift oversteps the line. Raymond Land is like me; he came up the hard way. I’m not going to report to him behind your back, Longbright. I’m not out to grass anyone up, okay?”
“Then what are you here for?”
“I’m just planning to do my job and obey the rules, and make sure everyone else does it the same way. But if you or your bosses step out of line, that places you on the outside, with the criminals. You can think what you like about me, love, it isn’t going to make any difference.”
He pushed himself away from the door and sauntered out into the corridor. Longbright continued clearing her desk, but found herself shaking with anger. Renfield knew how to get under her skin.
“Hi, Janice. You look like you lost a shilling and found sixpence. What’s the matter?”
Longbright looked up and found May leaning against the doorjamb. She was always pleased to see him. “Oh, nothing, John, I’m fine.”
“If you say so, but I heard what Renfield said.” May buttoned his jacket. “Don’t let the new boy get you down. If Land asks where I’ve gone, let him know that I’m checking out a possible murder victim, and no, I didn’t get permission from Renfield first.”
“He’s already given me a warning about proper behaviour.”
“He’s not a bad sort, just a bit abrasive. He stopped me from getting beaten up by a street gang not so long ago. He’s a good man to have on the ground.”
“It’s not just Renfield, it’s – ” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Maybe I’ve been here too long. I have no life, John. I don’t know who I am anymore. Perhaps I have to stop dressing like this, looking like this.” DS Longbright certainly had a style of her own, mostly modelled on movie stars of the past. She was a fulsomely sexy woman and the look suited her, although it was somewhat inappropriate for her job. “You know, my makeup never gets any older, but underneath it I do. Sometimes I take it off at night, and have to stop and think if there’s still somebody there. All I ever do is work. I don’t exist outside the office. Does anyone even notice me?”
May tapped the door frame with his ring finger. “Can we talk about this later, Janice? I’ve just realised the time. Arthur’s already on his way to the Bayham Street Morgue.” He thought for a moment. “And check out something for me, will you? Carol Wynley had a cell phone, but it wasn’t on her body or in her effects. See if you can track it down.”
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
10
The Victoria Vanishes
“That’s her.”
Arthur Bryant peered more closely at the waxen face in the gun-grey zip bag before him. He could only recall the woman on the examination table of the Bayham Street Morgue because he had made such a deliberate effort to observe her. There was nothing remotely memorable in her appearance. If asked to sum her up in a single word, he would have said, damningly, that she appeared ‘respectable’.
“Are you absolutely sure?” asked May. “It’s just that it seems rather an odd coincidence, you being there.”
“Not really. I bumped into my butcher at the Royal Albert Hall last month,” said Bryant. “I always see people I know, even when they’re trying to avoid me. This is definitely the woman I passed last night. What happened to her?”
“At first glance I’d say she slipped off the kerb and bashed her head,” said Giles Kershaw. “There’s a contusion at the base of the skull consistent with her falling onto her back, although I’ve not found any bruising at the base of her spine. Mind you, she was wearing a thick grey woollen skirt and a thick coat which would probably have protected her.”
“Just a little cut, hardly seems anything.”
“The contusion is small, but the surrounding area is soft to the touch, and if we push in you can just see that the dura is ruptured. I removed a small bone fragment, little more than a splinter. The fracture was enough to expose her brain, causing clotting. The pupil of her right eye is unusually enlarged, which suggests a clot on that side. Any impact can ripple through the entire head, right down to the spinal cord, causing traumatic damage. The impact point showed up like a tiny black star on the X ray, and I could see some swelling in the rear right cranial hemisphere. I also found a few drops of cerebrospinal fluid leaked from her right ear, which suggests some form of basal skull fracture. There are so many things that can go wrong at the base of the skull. If she’d had immediate neurosurgical intervention I imagine she would have lived. There are more than a billion neurons in the human brain and we damage them all the time, but once the tissue starts swelling the damage rate rises exponentially unless intervention can halt it. She had quite a lot of alcohol in her blood, which exacerbated the effect of the injury. No recent food in her stomach.”
“So you think she was plastered and missed the kerb?”
“No, funnily enough I don’t.” Kershaw swept a lick of blond hair behind his ear. Like Finch before him, he seemed determined not to wear protective headgear in the morgue. He tipped his head, studying the dead woman’s physiognomy, thinking. “I think she fell all right. The impact point is consistent with a kerb-fall, a real jab of a blow.” He gestured with his knuckle. “The sort of thing you’d get from tripping over something sharp-cornered in the way of pavement furniture, but you’d have to fall very heavily. Something wrong about that, I think. You put your hands out when you fall, even if you’re drunk. Her palms were completely clean. So no, not just plastered.”
“Do you have the ID confirmed?”
“She was reported missing by her partner at around two a.m., and a local officer was told to keep a lookout. Carol Wynley, forty-six, divorced, kept her married name, did parttime secretarial work in Holborn. She’d told her fella she was going for drinks with colleagues after work. She’d often done it before and they usually went on until nine or ten, birthday bashes and leaving parties, that sort of thing, so he hadn’t been worried. They live in Spitalfields.”
“So it wouldn’t have taken her long to get home, even if she had trouble finding a cab.”
“Do you have any idea what time it was when you saw her?”
Bryant remembered the darkened dog-leg, London planes and copper beeches rustling dusty leaves above a battered brick wall. The black-painted traffic barriers, the rendered keystones, the wreath-shaped door-knocker, the ornamental wrought-iron balcony, the carved blind window. Pushing deeper into his recollections, he saw the figure of Carol Wynley weaving slightly as she moved toward him, almost stumbling on the edge of the kerb.
