Bryant & May 06; The Victoria Vanishes

resume her old job as a nightclub manager, but instead she had chosen her career over her husband and had stayed on.

The PCU itself should have been disbanded by now, but had successfully skated over every trap laid for it by the Home Office. Even Land had argued for the unit’s closure behind his colleagues’ backs, but had then surprised himself by fighting back in order to preserve it.

Life, it seemed, was every bit as confusing and disorderly as the PCU’s investigations.

Now, the annoyingly upper-class pathologist Giles Kershaw was to be promoted into Finch’s position in charge of the Bayham Street Morgue, which meant that the PCU was losing another member of staff. With grim inevitability, the Home Office would doubtless seek to use the loss as a method of controlling and closing them down. The oldest members of staff were destined for the axe. Land had given up hope of ever finding a way to transfer out. He had nailed his colours to the unit’s mast when he had reluctantly supported his own staff and attacked his superiors. Now, those same superiors would never find him a cushy detail in the suburbs where he could quietly wait out the remaining years to his retirement.

Land sighed and looked about the pub’s upstairs room.

Plenty of officers from Albany Street, West End Central and Savile Row nicks, even ushers from Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court had turned up for the wake, but the Home Office had chosen to show their disdain by staying away. Finch had upset them too many times in the past.

Sergeant Renfield, the oxlike desk officer from Albany Street, was watching everyone from his lonely vantage point near the toilets. Land headed over with two bottles of porter clutched between his fingers. “Hullo, Jack,” he said, refilling Renfield’s beer glass with the malty liquid. “I wondered if you’d show up to see Oswald off.”

“You bloody well knew I’d be here.” The sergeant regarded him with a baleful eye. “After all, it’s partly my fault that he’s dead.”

“There’s no point in being hard on yourself,” said Land.

“People working in close proximity to death face unusual hazards. It’s part of the job.”

“Try telling that to this lot.” Renfield gestured at the room with his glass. “I know they blame me for what happened.” The sergeant had made a procedural shortcut that had been revealed as a bad decision in the light of Finch’s death. To be fair, it was the sort of mistake that often occurred when everyone was under pressure.

“Actually, Jack, today isn’t about you. Besides, you’ll get a chance to have your say.”

Renfield looked anxious. “You haven’t already told them, have you? Have you said something to Bryant and May?”

“Good God, no. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought we’d get Oswald into the incinerator before I gave them the good news. Come to think of it, perhaps you should be the one to make the announcement.” Land patted the sergeant on the shoulder and moved away. He wasn’t alone in disliking Renfield, who was a Met man, as hard and earthy as the ground he walked on. Renfield had no time for the airy-fairy attitudes of the PCU staff, and didn’t care who knew it. Left alone in the corner of the room once more, he decided to concentrate on fitting sausage rolls into his mouth between slugs of beer. Over at the bar, Arthur Bryant adjusted his reading glasses, held up the aluminium funeral urn and turned it over to examine its base. “Made in China,” he muttered. “A lightweight wipeclean screw-top final resting place. I suppose Oswald would have approved. But how quickly we sacrifice dignity for expedience, even in death.”

“Well, he didn’t choose it for himself,” said John May. “He’d have picked something less vulgar. He was always so thorough, and yet he decided to entrust his remains to you.”

“He knew I’d do the right thing,” said Bryant with a knowing smile.

“Which is?”

“I’ve been instructed to plant his ashes in a place that would annoy Raymond. I thought the little park behind Pratt Street would do nicely, because Land always goes there for a quiet smoke. I’m going to stick it right opposite the bench where he sits, so he’ll have to keep looking at it. I’ve already had a word with the park keeper.”

“Do you think Oswald would want to be buried there?”

“Why not? It’s handy for the office. He worked in the same place for fifty years. People don’t like change, alive or dead.”

Bryant lifted his rucksack from the floor to place the urn inside it, but changed his mind. “One thing puzzles me, John. He didn’t want floral tributes, but requested posthumous contributions for the Broadhampton Hospital. He never mentioned the place before. I thought it might be where his old school pal was kept, but no. Maybe he has a family friend staying in there, some kind of debt to be honoured. He probably wouldn’t have wanted to discuss the matter in life. It’s an asylum, after all.”

“No,” replied May indignantly, “that’s exactly what it’s not. It’s no longer a place of confinement. Nowadays it specialises in advanced treatment and research into mental health care.”

“You know its sister hospital is the oldest psychiatric hospital in the world?” Bryant poked about among the canapes and thought about dipping a battered prawn. “The Bethlem Royal was once known as Bedlam, famous for the ill-treatment of its patients. Visitors were given sticks so they could poke the loonies. Insanity used to be viewed as the result of moral lassitude, you know. Charlie Chaplin’s mother and the artist Richard Dadd were both locked up in there. But I don’t think Hogarth’s ghastly engraving of the place is entirely to be believed. There were flowers and birdcages in its women’s wards, and a few surprising instances of enlightened thinking on behalf of the doctors. It’s been knocking around since the mid-thirteenth century and is still going strong, as part of the South London Trust.” Bryant removed a prawn-tail from his dentures and absently put it in his pocket. “I don’t trust this Mary Rose sauce, far too pink for my liking. Oswald told me he had no other living relatives. So why would he want us to give money to a mental hospital?”

“I really have no idea.”

May was a poor liar. When he glanced away at the floor, Bryant sensed there was something he had not yet been told about the deceased coroner.

? The Victoria Vanishes ?

4

Brinkmanship

“Look out, here comes trouble.”

Bryant spoke from the side of his mouth and stuck out his little finger in the direction of Renfield, who was heading toward them. His comment might have been intended as a discreet aside, but came over as offensively loud and theatrical. Luckily, Renfield was as thick-skinned as a pub comic, and kept his course.

“Ah, Sergeant Renfield, given up flies for vol-au-vents?”

“Do what?” Renfield pushed a mouthful of pastry to one side of his teeth with a fat finger.

“Forget it, Renfield, Mr Bryant is making a joke,” said John May.

“I don’t understand his sense of humour.” Renfield regarded them with the irritation of a perpetual outsider.

“Your name,” explained May. “There’s a character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula called Renfield who lives in a madhouse and eats flies.”

“Perhaps your geriatric comrade will be laughing on the other side of his face when he hears my news.” The sergeant talked over the top of Bryant’s wrinkled bald head.

“Don’t tell me you’ve decided to pursue a lifelong dream and join the South African police?”

“No, matey,” said Renfield with a smug smile. “I’ve been kicked upstairs. I’m joining you lot. Just been appointed Duty Sergeant at the Peculiar Crimes Unit.”

Bryant was aghast. “That’s not possible,” he said. “Raymond decides who comes and goes, and he only ever does what I tell him.”

“These are direct orders from the Home Office, chum.” Renfield’s smile grew darker, like a portly cat moving in on a crow. “I’m looking forward to a switch of scenery. I’ll be going back to the manuals and doing things properly for a change. You can guarantee that I’ll be putting a curb on some of your more illegal habits.”

“But you’re not a detective,” May pointed out.

“I don’t need to be, pal. It’s about monitoring procedure and making sure there are no more of your famous