Bryant slapped his hand on the glass-covered sheet. “That’s where he’s gone.”
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
30
Solidarity
Janice Longbright was ahead of them. April’s search for Pellew’s trial coverage had already uncovered his mother’s interview. As the information was distributed and digested around the unit, Longbright threw on her jacket and headed for Farringdon before Renfield could try to stop her.
The Clock House occupied a shaded corner of Leather Lane. As she passed beneath the heraldic red lion and white unicorn over the front door, she wondered how a building with so many windows could remain so gloomy inside, as if the smokers’ fug that had obscured the mirrored interior for more than a century was now beyond mere dissipation by a smoking ban. Making her way through a saloon crowded with market traders and local office workers, she introduced herself to a barmaid, another pretty Polish girl, called Zosia.
“I understand that a woman named Anita Pellew lived here,” said Longbright.
“I don’t know – I’m new here. You should talk to Patrick over there.” Zosia pointed at the old boy collecting glasses.
“That’s right,” said the Irish pot man, thinking. “She went to the hospital and didn’t come back.”
“Were her rooms above the pub?”
“Second floor.” He put down his pint mugs to point at the ceiling.
“Can I get up there?”
“It’s all locked up,” said Zosia. “The new manageress has the keys, and she’s gone out.”
“What about the basement? Does that stay locked?”
“No, because the bar staff have to get down there to change barrels.”
“Is that a single staircase behind the bar?”
“No, there’s an access door outside as well.”
“Thanks, I’ll need to take a look.”
Zosia raised the bar for her and led the way to the cellar door. “I can’t leave the bar,” she warned Longbright. “Call me if you need anything.”
The floor below occupied a far greater area than the bar overhead. At least six rooms opened from the central battleship-grey corridor, their doors pulled shut. The dusty overhead bulb provided barely adequate light. Down here, only the faintest murmurs and footfalls could be heard from the saloon.
The first two rooms were filled with metal beer barrels and crates. Beyond these, a small office had been set up for the manager to work on the accounts. Had Mrs Pellew once sat here adding up figures while her son played in the bar?
Longbright groped for the Bakelite light switches, as round and high as pudding bowls, clicking them on as she went. At the far end of the corridor, a door opened onto a narrow stepped passage originally designed for the delivery of coal. Its latch was easy to slip apart. Tony Pellew would have been able to come and go without anyone in the pub seeing him.
It took a lot to frighten the detective sergeant; she had spent too many years searching London’s derelict buildings, climbing through its rubbish-strewn yards and alleyways, chasing panicked men through scraps of waste ground and across windswept car parks. The evidence suggested that Pellew had no intention of causing women pain, even though he had killed them. But to Longbright, that paradox made him all the more disturbing. It left a gap in his genetic makeup, a void that could not be explained away. It made him impossible to read.
When she opened the door of the darkened end room and saw a green nylon sleeping bag on the floor, she knew she had found him. She stepped inside, drawn by the desire to rummage through the empty white packets beside his bed, and realised they were boxes that had contained clear plastic drug ampoules, diabetic needles so small and fine that nobody would notice them.
What she failed to notice was that the door had started closing silently behind her.
A rag of shadow flung itself forward, seizing her in a practised grip. She should have been able to throw him over her head, but he had caught her off balance.
The needle must have been tiny, similar to the one on an insulin pen, because instead of sliding in hotly it just plucked at the skin of her arm like an insect. A warm dental numbness flooded her body with astonishing speed.
His arms extended to catch her as she fell, to ease her to the floor, but she was heavier than he’d expected and slipped through his welcoming embrace. She jarred her hip and the side of her skull as she slammed onto the cement ground.
Anaesthetists always suggested counting to ten. She tried that now, but struggled beyond the number four.
He wanted to stay with her, but the circumstances were not right. She should have been seated next to him in the warm ochre light of the saloon bar, her thigh lightly touching his, her glass almost full. She should have been watching him with his mother’s eyes, listening intently, smiling and nodding as music and laughter surrounded them in soothing sussurance. The time – somewhere between nine o’clock p.m. and the last bell – would have stretched to an eternity. But instead she was lying on the floor of the cellar, dying.
Knowing it was time to leave, he grabbed his backpack from the floor, ran out into the corridor and headed for the coal steps.
¦
Longbright had been facedown on the cement for about twenty minutes when John May found her. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse faint but steady. When he saw the emptied ampoule beside her, he immediately searched for the mark on her exposed skin. Her hands and feet were still warm. He could only think that Pellew had underestimated her size, that the amount discharged had been nowhere near enough to kill her.
The ambulance had trouble reaching the pub because a bendy-bus had become wedged across the turn at Holborn Circus, and the traffic was backed up in every direction. When the medics finally arrived, they took her to University College Hospital.
“We should have gone with her,” said May, climbing into the driving seat of the BMW.
“Right now we’re more useful going after him,” said Bryant. “The ambulance boys say she’s going to be all right, and we have to believe them. We’ll need someone to meet us there.”
“Where? You know where he’s heading?”
“He finds sanctuary in pubs, and probably salvation. Before Anthony and his mother lived at the Clock House, they came from south of the river, Greenwich. He grew up in a pub, remember. We think that was most likely the Angerstein Hotel, on Woolwich Road. It’s the only other location from the old days he mentioned to nurses.”
“Do you think it’s still there?”
“I hope so. I’m meant to be playing in their skittles tournament this summer.”
“There may have been other pubs in between. I thought he and his mother moved around a lot.”
“Pellew was at the Angerstein from the ages of eight to fourteen, his formative years. And I know the place; it’s huge. That makes it the likeliest venue. He clearly feels most comfortable living and even killing inside crowds. Hardly the usual lone wolf.”
“You can be as alone in a city like London as you can in the secluded countryside, Arthur.”
“Poor Janice, she shouldn’t have gone ahead without us. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her.
