“I never said I was tough,” answered Land. “All I ever wanted was a quiet life.”
“Well, you’ll get it if this goes wrong, won’t you? Renfield will take great joy in filing a report to Faraday and Kasavian. In addition to pointing out that we were sitting on cold files connected to an ongoing investigation which he thinks we can’t crack, he’ll probably mention that Arthur’s memory is so bad he managed to lose the ashes of his coroner on the same night he somehow hallucinated himself back into Victorian times. So you’ll finally get your wish, to sit out your remaining working years in a police station the size of a cabdrivers’ hut in a depopulated village on the Orkney Islands that’s so quiet you’ll be able to hear a duck fart four miles away.”
“I don’t know why you have to be so incredibly rude,” said Land indignantly.
“Because you might have saved a young woman’s life if you’d been concentrating on your bloody job instead of drinking with your cronies. If you’re so keen to have Renfield write out reports, tell him to put that detail in them.”
¦
“We are going to get a lead in this case today, and we will stop anyone else from dying,” Bryant announced as he strolled into the office and tossed his walking stick into its stand, a sooty old chimney pot he had rescued from the demolition of the York Way Jam Factory in 1982.
“Did I miss a meeting?” asked May. “I love the way you just decide to announce these things. How are we going to accomplish this feat? We’re still trying to sort out links between the victims.”
“We’ll get the break. It may not seem to you like we’re closing in, but we are. Perhaps it’s someone who worked with them all.”
“Unlikely. Only Curtis and Wynley were at the Swedenborg Society. And we have no proof that they really knew each other – only that one woman was friendly enough with the next to put her number into her cell phone.”
“Then perhaps you’re approaching the investigation from the wrong end. Ask yourself, what do we know about the killer?” Bryant dropped into his chair and swung it around. “He feels at home in pubs, to the point where he can commit murder in them with total confidence. Unfortunately, due to high staff turnover, the barmaids and barmen rarely take note of regular customers. Also, his field of operation is in an area of the city which doesn’t have local custom, and that allows him to slip unseen among strangers. Perhaps he’s visited these pubs many times when he has not been moved to kill. Perhaps these women mean something special to him, have some magic that can only be captured by taking a life.”
“You know I’m going to say I don’t agree with you,” warned May.
“Yes, and therefore to prove a point, tonight the PCU is going on a pub crawl. I’ve worked the whole thing out. There have been five deaths in all, but there are only four public houses involved, as the fifth appears to have vanished some decades ago. However, all five women have connections with other pubs, so we need to check those as well, which in my book makes a total of nine places to visit, and means we need to put every member of the PCU to work undercover this evening. Here’s the roster.”
Bryant flipped open a neat black leather Mont Blanc notepad, the one gift from his landlady Alma that he had managed not to lose. “Longbright is going to head for the Conspirators’ Club at the Sutton Arms, where Jocelyn Roquesby was a regular, and Renfield will stake out the Old Bell tavern, where she died.
“Meera will visit The Apple Tree in Clerkenwell, where Carol Wynley used to socialise after work. Colin has requested to join the speed-dating night at the Museum Tavern, Bloomsbury, where our most recent victim, Jazmina Sherwin, worked as a barmaid.
“John, you’ll be going to the quiz night at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon, which Joanne Kellerman had been known to frequent. Giles Kershaw has offered to spend the evening in The Old Dr Butler’s Head, where she was found murdered.
“April will attend the Phobia Society upstairs at the Ship and Shovell off the Strand, which Naomi Curtis told her partner she visited because she suffered from claustrophobia, while Dan Banbury will check out the Seven Stars, Carey Street, where she was killed.
“Raymond Land can go back to the Albion, Barnsbury, to see if he can find out anything more about Jazmina Sherwin’s death. And I shall be joining a historical society, the Grand Order of London Immortals, which Dr Masters has recommended to me on previous occasions, because they know all there is to know about sociopathic behaviour in urban society. They’ve moved to the back bar of the Yorkshire Grey in Langham Place because their old haunt, The Plough in Museum Street, installed a plasma screen for the World Cup, an act for which they have never been forgiven.”
“And what good do you think all this is going to do?” asked May.
“As I believe I mentioned, I have an idea that the murderer is motivated as much by the locations as the victims. If that’s the case, we need to spend more time in the kind of places he finds comfortable enough to commit acts of violence in. I want everyone to be sensitive to their surroundings, and to make copious notes. Talk to people, be honest about what you’re looking for. We meet back here after closing time and pool any information we consider relevant, or possibly irrelevant.”
“You think Renfield’s going to go along with something like this?”
“We have Raymond’s backing, so I don’t see how he can stop us. Besides, we’re covering all the official routes of enquiry. This is extra-curricular. It’s going to be a long night, so no drinking alcohol. I don’t want Renfield trying to throw out evidence because our intelligence sources were one over the limit.”
“That includes you,” said May.
“Bitter isn’t alcohol, it’s beer,” said Bryant. “We will start to find a way of catching this man by the end of tonight, I promise you.” He checked his watch, more from habit than any useful purpose, as the little hand had fallen off in the blast that destroyed the PCU’s old offices, and he had not got around to having it mended.
“You don’t suppose you’re still suffering the aftereffects from losing your memory last time around, do you?” asked May.
“Remember when you blew up the unit and banged your head?”
“That was ages ago,” said Bryant. “I’ve never suffered any recurrence since then. Besides, Mrs Mandeville says I’ll start remembering all sorts of things any day now, if my internal organs can withstand the vigour of her root vegetable diet. Right, I must be off. Call me later.”
“Do you have your cell phone on you?”
“Actually I do. This is one of the first things Mrs Mandeville taught me to remember.”
“Good. Is it on?”
“We haven’t got that far yet. I shall put it on now.” Bryant made an unnecessary pantomime of operating the device be fore setting off.
From his window, May watched his partner negotiating the shuffling drunks of Camden High Street. It was difficult not to worry about Arthur’s safety these days, but Bryant seemed quite unconcerned. He waved his walking stick at a passing taxi, and glanced up briefly at the unit’s windows as he climbed in.
Two minutes later, May received a text that read:
Stop Fretting Im Fine Have Fully Mastered Predictive Tghx Will Call If I Need Ghzb
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
19
Conspirators
Bryant’s idea seemed sound enough, until you considered that nobody knew who this man was or what he looked like. Sergeant Janice Longbright studied the scrap of paper she had been handed, then searched the street. The great shuttered block of Smithfield meat market dominated an area now replenished with upscale eateries and thumping nightclubs, but here was a pub like an ancient lithograph, with a grand lead-glass bay window, polished oak doors and sienna paintwork, the sign of the Sutton Arms spelled out in gold glass on an umber background.
The interior had been given a peculiar timeless ambience of plaster busts, aspidistra pots and reproduced sepia photos that fit in well enough with Belgian beers and steak menus. A narrow staircase led to an over-lit upper
