entire wardrobe, so I adopted it. I found her old ration book inside one jacket pocket. The smell of mothballs never bothered me. I tried the look and it stuck. I can’t be doing with modern clothes. I’m too fleshy for most of them.” She looked out across the stables, early morning sunshine striping the roofs. “You wouldn’t have been able to sit out here a few weeks ago. Too much open space.”
“My agoraphobia seems to have subsided,” April agreed, “but I can’t help feeling it will resurface in some other form the next time I get stressed. It always does. I have a compulsive personality. My mother had me checked for autism.”
“Everyone has some damage. You learn to work around it. And at least it’s put to practical use at the unit.”
April barely heard her. She pushed her newspaper across the table. “My God, check this out. They’re running a frontpage article about the dangers of women drinking alone in pubs.”
“This is going to be a godsend for the tabloids,” said Longbright. “They’ll be able to attack any number of targets from promiscuity to the collapse of the family unit before pleading for higher security and more police on the streets.”
April scanned the subheads. “
Sensing a juicy public debate, the talk shows had already begun to line up their guests. It was all as Bryant had predicted; the tense issue of safety in public areas was set to return to a level last seen in London during the IRA pub bombings of the 1970s, but this time around, no-one knew what they were looking for. Everyone was suddenly a suspect. In the rush to apportion blame, it seemed that only the victims were ignored.
“These were the kind of crimes our unit was created to prevent,” said Longbright. “How difficult can it be to put a name to this guy?”
“The problem is in the nature of the pubs themselves. They’re warm, intimate places full of total strangers. You can have an argument about politics, fashion or football with someone for an entire evening, and leave without any clue to their identity. People seem to drop into an amnesiac state in pubs. They emerge without any knowledge of what’s occurred in the course of the evening.”
“Which reminds me, have you had any luck locating Oswald’s urn?”
“Not really,” April admitted. “It seems certain that somebody removed it from the bar during the wake, but the barmaid didn’t see who it was. I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good detective.”
“Rubbish, you’ve got exactly the right attitude. You quietly watch and see how everything fits together, and keep us supplied with all the information we need. We never had someone who could do that before John brought you in.”
“I’m sure the others think I got the job because I’m his granddaughter.”
“That might have been true at first, but you’ve earned your place with us.” Longbright smiled over the coffee nested between cherry-glossed fingertips. “Your grandfather and Mr Bryant still have what it takes, you know. They’re a wonderful team. The place wouldn’t survive if anything happened to either one of them. Did you know they sent me flowers on Monday, for my birthday?”
“That was Uncle Arthur’s doing,” said April. “I know because he asked me on Friday night to remind him of your address.”
“But even I had forgotten the date. I never celebrate it. How did he remember something like that when he’s supposed to be suffering from memory loss?”
“Well, if there’s nothing wrong with his mind, that would mean he really did walk into the past after Oswald’s wake.”
“Or someone wanted him to think he had,” said Longbright. A thoughtful silence fell between them. Longbright’s coffee cup was marked with a fluorescent arc of lipstick. “Listen, we’d better get back before they miss us.” She rose and pushed in her chair.
“I think Meera’s going to leave the unit. She seems really unhappy about something.”
“She’s very angry with herself.”
“Why?”
“Because she had a chance to be much happier than she is right now, and she blew it.”
“She has a lot to prove to herself.”
The DS shook out a melancholy smile. On her left hand there was still a pale line where her engagement ring had once been. “Look, we’ve all made tough choices. It’s a rite of passage for just about everyone who’s ever worked at the PCU. Lost friends, missed love, wasted opportunities. Maybe it’s something we share in common with the women who’ve been preyed upon in pubs.”
“What do you mean?” asked April.
“We’re the ones who got left behind, and to someone out there, maybe it’s as noticeable as a birthmark.”
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
26
Nomenclature
If the notorious gangster-twin Kray brothers had taken to bare-knuckle sparring with each other in East End boxing clubs until they were melded into a single flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared entity, they would have looked like Oliver Golifer, the ridiculously monickered owner of the Newman Street Picture Library.
Golifer’s terrifying demeanour was greatly at odds with his delicate, somewhat theatrical personality. He was a contradictory hulk, heavy of tread but light on his feet, with an erudite intelligence that hid behind the appearance of a particularly gruesome monkey. He knew an awful lot about London, largely gleaned from the immense collection of rare prints and monochrome photographs he had amassed in his three-floor shop.
“I thought I might be getting a visit from you,” said Golifer, opening the door to usher in London’s oldest detective. “The case is all over the papers, and I couldn’t imagine anyone at the Met being able to get a fix on it. What are you looking for?”
“Public houses, Oliver,” answered Bryant, digging into his raincoat to produce a bulky bag containing, among other things, his pub list. “I want photographs of all these boozers, old ones, new ones, I don’t care, as many as you’ve got.”
“What you said on the dog and bone about the locations attracting him, I didn’t follow that.”
“My worry is that even if we caught him right now, we might never find out how or why he’s been attacking women. Perhaps you can help me shed some light.”
“I can try.” Golifer wrinkled the meaty stump that passed for his nose. “What else have you got in that bag?”
“Sweets. They won’t let me smoke at the unit. Today I’ve got Menthol and Eucalyptus, Liquorice Pontefract Cakes, Old English Cloves, Winter Warmers or Army and Navy Tablets.”
“I don’t want any; I just wondered what the smell was. Come with me, let’s go down to the basement.”
Golifer led the way to the wrought-iron spiral staircase at the rear of the store, past dusty corkboards filled with pinned pictures of peculiarly English memories that made Bryant smile as he passed them.
The Reverend Marcus Morris appearing before a crowd of excited lads in 1950 for the launch of his British boys’ paper
A thoughtful mother watching while the police combed bleak ridges of Saddleworth Moor for the young victim of deranged lovers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1965.
A bandaged Jack Mills, beaten, traumatised and due for an early death because he had been victimised in the Great Train Robbery in 1963.
The shattered wreckage of the BEA Elizabethan plane on the frozen runway of Munich airport, where the ‘Busby Babes’, England’s greatest soccer team, had died in 1958.
A faded copy of the
