¦
Jazmina Sherwin checked her watch again. She had been waiting for her so-called boyfriend to turn up for nearly half an hour, but his cell phone was turned off. She pulled her sheepskin coat more tightly around her, and looked out at the empty roadway. It was already starting to get dark. The trunks of the plane trees opposite were lost in shadows. Their uppermost leaves stood out black against the dying sky. Nobody else was sitting on the benches in the front garden of the Albion, but Jazmina hated overheated rooms, and the saloon bar was unbearably warm.
The Barnsbury pub appeared to have been dropped down in the heart of the English countryside. Graceful Edwardian houses filled the backstreets between Liverpool Road and the Caledonia Road. It was hard to imagine that the chaos of King’s Cross was just a fifteen-minute walk from this spot.
A pair of crows sniped in the branches above her. A breeze rose, the shiver rippling along the street in a wave that caused the tops of the branches to gossip.
She knew she should never have agreed to meet him again, not after he had let her down the week before. What, she wondered, was the attraction of careless men? A car drifted past almost in silence, the driver insolently staring at her.
She looked over her shoulder, through the window of the pub. The barman had gone somewhere. The bar appeared to be deserted now, except for a small group of noisy fat men playing darts in the rear saloon, but she was sure someone had been standing close by her when she ordered her orange juice. She had seen him from the corner of her eye, just a dark shape really, but she’d had the sense of a heavy overcoat, a pale eye turned in her direction. Normally she was entirely at ease in pubs, but this one didn’t feel as if it was even in the city.
Shiny dark birds cawing in the trees, the evening so quiet you could hear the greenery. Something was not right. Something…
He made her start, moving in to sit beside her without disturbing the air, so that she was sure he had not been there the moment before. She was strong, but he had the element of surprise. His grip was practised and complete. She felt the hot lance of the needle enter her neck, and knew at once that the time for escape had already passed. The freezing numbness flooded her body, like dental anaesthetic but much faster, more totally invasive, and she felt herself falling down into his awaiting arms.
She heard his voice from far above, even though he could only be speaking in a whisper. “Stay with me,” he told her. She tried to remain awake, sensing that if consciousness failed it would not return. She was young and mistrustful of men, so how could this be happening?
¦
The Nun & Broken Compass had been shut for refurbishment, so Raymond Land’s pals from the Met had suggested going a little further afield today, seeing as they were on short shifts, and Land could basically do as he pleased now that the Home Office called the shots for his unit. Land was still laughing at the superintendent’s disgusting joke as they pocketed their dart sets and left the Albion. He didn’t like Barnsbury, too many stuck-up North London politicians living here, but the Albion was a bit of a find, bucolic and becalmed, hidden behind an artful undergrowth.
While they were discussing what would be the quickest way back, the superintendent noticed the girl. She was seated upright on the bench, her head hanging over her drink, and Land had been about to make a remark about birds not being able to hold their booze when one of the others realised that something was wrong with her.
In the deepening shadows beneath the leaves of mulberry trees, a young black girl had fallen asleep so soundly that she had died, her soul departing on respectful tiptoe, as quietly as the fading breeze.
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
18
Pub Crawl
Thursday morning at the PCU dawned in a tangle of disbelief and recriminations.
“You were actually on the premises,” May accused his superior, pacing the latter’s threadbare office carpet. “How could you not have seen what happened to this young woman?”
“Do you know the Albion?” asked Land angrily. “It’s a series of rooms, and we were out at the back having a game of arrows. How was I to know she’d been attacked?”
“Didn’t you hear or see anything unusual at all?”
“No, I was playing for money and concentrating on my form. I don’t think I saw another person in the pub apart from the barman, and he hardly speaks any English. This girl had apparently been stood up by her boyfriend – who is in the clear, by the way, because he was actually at a job interview in the Finchley Road Mercedes showroom and had forgotten he was meeting her. Besides, she had been sitting outside the whole time, so how was I supposed to see her?”
“Has Giles had a chance to conduct a full examination of the body yet?”
“No, he had to wait for the family to come in and ID her last night, but he says there’s a piercing on the side of her neck consistent with the MO on the first two – or rather four, if we count the uninvestigated cases.”
“Our perpetrator is becoming angrier.” Giles Kershaw was unfurled in Land’s doorway. “Very nearly snapped the needle off in her neck, left a circular bruise where he pushed the syringe base right up against the skin, and it looks like such a high dosage that I imagine she died in seconds. I’m heading back to Bayham Street. Jazmina Sherwin’s father is probably going berserk.”
Kershaw flicked back his blond hair in the habitual gesture he had acquired from bending his tall frame over tissue samples. “Something’s out of whack. This one is different – the age, the ethnicity, the social background. I’d have said it was an entirely separate incident except that she was found in a pub and killed in the same fashion. Premeditation, obviously. But a fundamental paradox: The killer wants them to die so quietly that no-one notices, and yet he chooses to kill them in public, often crowded, places. It goes against all of our received wisdom.”
“Why has he switched to a young black girl after singling out middle-aged white women?” asked Land.
“His lacunae – the calm gaps between his acts of violence – are closing. It’s only a few hours since he last took a life. Perhaps the need has now become so urgent that in this case it drove him into the nearest pub, and Sherwin was unlucky enough to be the only female there. The rest of the locations are grouped in roughly the same area. Does anyone mind if I take Renfield with me?”
“What for?” asked May.
Kershaw looked embarrassed. “I think Mr Sherwin might come back and try to thump someone, probably me as I’m the weediest. We’ve never had anyone at the unit who could handle trouble, and I’ve heard Renfield is pretty good in difficult situations.”
“He gets very stroppy and shouty, if that’s what you mean,” said May.
“It may be what’s needed in this case,” said Kershaw. “I’ll return him, don’t worry.”
“So what happens now?” asked Land, for whom events were clearly moving too fast.
“The press is making sure that this story will be all over London like a cheap suit. It’s the fault of that woman from
“It’s the scorpion and the frog,” said Land despondently. “Janet Ramsey can’t resist stinging because it’s in her nature. The last thing we need right now is more negative publicity. What are you going to do about it?”
“What happened to
“I’ve had enough crap fall on me in the last few months to drown a cow,” answered Land. “I’m going to make sure I stay dry and sweet-smelling this time.”
“Oh, I see,” said May, “when the going gets tough, the tough run for cover.”
