of London are its keystones. Good Lord, the Romans brought them here two thousand years ago and put vine leaves outside to advertise their wares; no wonder they occupy such an important – ”
“Look here, Bryant, don’t give me one of your historical lectures on the subject of beer, I’m interested in catching a criminal, nothing else.”
“But that’s my point,
“Yes, you can,” snapped Land, irritated. “You can catch him by bringing in the victims’ relatives and shouting at them in a windowless room for a few hours. And don’t throw words like
“General Pinochet did that; it’s called torture and has nothing to do with police duties.”
“Listen, I know footslogging has become unfashionable, I know it’s all computers and DNA matches now, but sometimes a bit of shoe-leather and the odd threat of a slap is needed, and this is one of those times.”
“After all these years, you still don’t understand how we operate, do you?” said Bryant. “It’s a complete mystery to you, isn’t it?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” stalled Land. “I know you use various undesirables to give you information and that you wander off the beaten track a lot, that you won’t stick to established procedures and that you once threw a sheep carcass out the window of your old office at Bow Street to measure skull fractures. I know your methods are obscure, unsavoury and probably illegal, but somehow you seem to get the job done, but I don’t know…” Land looked up and realised he was talking to himself. “Where are you going?”
Bryant was attempting to pull a gabardine raincoat over a broad-stitched fisherman’s sweater. “To Mrs Mandeville’s memory improvement class,” he explained. “I’d forgotten all about it. Later, I shall be employing a detection process photographers refer to as
“Arthur,
“All right. Ask yourself why all three victims were found without their cell phones. We’re waiting on their call records, but I think we’ll find he has a rather novel method of contacting his victims, using each phone’s address book to send a text message to the next victim in a sort of round-robin. Which means, of course, that all the victims knew each other. And the fact that Jocelyn Roquesby was found without her cell phone suggests that he’s going to do it again. Cheerio.”
¦
Sergeant Janice Longbright alighted on the Holloway Road and began checking the shop fronts. Mrs Roquesby’s daughter lived above a science fiction bookshop in a small flat that bore the marks of serial occupation. Hardly a room was finished; rollered paint-marks fell short of ceilings, wallpaper ran out, units were missing doors, floorboards appeared beyond remnants of carpet. There was an overwhelming tang of damp in the air.
“You must be Sergeant Longbright. Sorry about the mess, I’m Eleanor Roquesby.” The ghost-faced girl held out her hand and forced a small smile. “I always say Mother must have been thinking of Eleanor Rigby, you know, the Beatles song?”
“I’m sorry to intrude upon you at a time like this. You have a lot to be upset about.”
“To be honest, I’m confused more than anything. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt her. Would you like tea?”
Longbright nodded with a certain amount of resignation. Copious tea-drinking was a hazard of British police work because it was a comfort everyone knew how to provide, in the same way that people understood how to mend a plug but not a computer.
“She was such a kind woman,” Eleanor explained, placing mugs before them. “She fostered children, ran play groups, worked hard all her life, never had a bad word to say about anyone. I’m not her natural daughter; I was given up for adoption when I was two, and she raised me as her own daughter. I want to know how she could end up being murdered in a pub.” She looked over to the windows, her knuckle against her chin. “You know, Jocelyn’s own mother was old-fashioned. She used to tell me that women couldn’t set foot inside a pub by themselves during the war without men thinking they were tarts. So we spend decades fighting for independence and equality, only to get attacked in a place that’s now supposed to be safe.”
“I know it doesn’t seem fair that she died, but we have to stop other women from risking the same fate,” said Longbright gently. “In particular, I need to locate the man who bought her a drink last night. So far we haven’t been able to track down anyone who remembers seeing him.”
“What about CCTV cameras?”
“There were none inside the pub, only outside. You say your mother never drank alone, so we must assume she arranged to meet a friend who failed to turn up. The barmaid doesn’t think the man who bought her a drink was her intended contact, because he had been at the bar for some time, while your mother was seated at the other end by herself. Do you have any idea who she might have been planning to meet?”
Eleanor thought for a minute. “Not my father, because they don’t keep in contact anymore. Perhaps somebody from work?”
“We’re looking into that possibility. Anyone else? Did she have any local friends who might have agreed to see her in town?”
“Not really. Her female friends around here are mostly married with kids; it’s not the sort of thing they can do.”
“Did she belong to any clubs, societies, groups? See anyone regularly outside of the neighbourhood?”
“There was a sort of society she went to occasionally. She didn’t mention it much because I think she was faintly embarrassed about it. I don’t really think it had a name, although she called it the Conspirators’ Club. She was interested in conspiracy theories – who killed Kennedy, crop circles, whether the moon landings were faked – just a fun thing really, something to do in the evenings. She read lots of books on the subject, but didn’t take any of it very seriously. She just said it was a good way to make friends. The club met in some pub once a month, I forget the name.”
“Could you try and dig it out for me?”
“I have her appointment book – I thought it might be useful to you.” She passed the sergeant a tiny dog- eared diary filled with what appeared to be the world’s smallest handwriting. Longbright squinted at it. “I haven’t got my reading glasses.”
“Hold on. Here you are, upstairs at the Sutton Arms, Carthusian Street, near Smithfield Market, meetings every fourth Wednesday.”
“That would mean they’re meeting tonight.”
“I guess so. Do you think this could have something to do with it? That she might have met somebody from the group?”
“There’s one way to find out,” said Longbright.
¦
April rubbed her eyes, then returned her stare to the screen, scrolling through the names in the Dead Diary. Based on the three known victims, she now had a set of correlating factors with which to match the Met’s unsolved case histories; she was searching for professional women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty who had gone alone to public houses in the Central London area. Unfortunately, the files only dated back to when the system was inaugurated, in March of 1996, but she hoped that would be far enough to provide a more distinctive pattern.
She sensed that there had been alcohol issues in the pasts of these three working mothers, all of whom had held positions of responsibility for some years. Was that why they drank, and perhaps were used to visiting pubs; was it the stress of maintaining their careers? So far as she could see, none had suffered mental health issues, none had been designated as clinically depressed or suicidal. Journalists loved innocent victims like these because they fit the white middle-class demographic of their newspapers’ readership. If they scented a failure on the part of the police, it wouldn’t take them long to start running articles about how no woman was safe in the capital.
