medicine, of course, he’s a doctor, but I had no idea of the branch he specialised in. Haematology, the study of blood, blood-producing tissues and more importantly in this case, sanguinary diseases. So why would he mention the Athenian? Well, to a lecturer in mythology there can only be one Athenian: the greatest king of Athens, Theseus. I think he was referring to the Theseus Research group euphemistically, one of those bright little remarks he can expect to toss out and have ignored by his acolytes.”
“Except that you didn’t miss it,” said May, pleased. “Let’s search the place. You can explain the rest later.”
“Alas, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to do that. We need to find Mrs Quinten before we get any further answers.”
Asking the bar staff if any of them had noticed a tall, greyhaired academic in the saloon during the last few days merely started an argument between them about height, weight and hair colour, at which point the detectives realised they would not get any easy answers.
“She needed to seek him out,” said Bryant, “but there’s no record of her calling him from her house phone or her cell, so she must have known where to go.”
“Either that, or she’s somewhere else entirely.”
“I can’t allow myself to think that, John. I need to be right about this. We’ve nothing else left.”
¦
Colin Bimsley was too big for Jackie Quinten’s home. Owing to his difficulties with space and balance, he had grown up in a house where the only ornaments were unbreakable and usually cemented down. Now he edged his way through rooms cluttered with pottery jugs, dainty china bowls, display glassware, antique violins, rare maps and fragile Edwardian dolls’ furniture. “I don’t know where to begin looking with all this crap about,” he complained.
“She’s a collector,” said Meera. “I’ve already been here once today; I didn’t need you to come back with me.”
“Maybe you missed something.”
Meera shot him a look that could have peeled wallpaper. “Go and do the kitchen. I’ll check the bedrooms. I don’t trust you on the stairs. Wait.”
Bimsley’s eyes widened in alarm. “What?”
“That girl who dropped you off – have you seen her again?”
“Izabella? Not yet. I was going to give her a ring tonight, see if she was up for a beer and a curry, but now it looks like we’ll be working late. At least we’ll be together, eh?” Meera seemed to be immune to his smile, but he tried one hopefully.
“Yeah, great.” It was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic.
With a sigh, Bimsley headed for the kitchen and went through all the drawers, even looking inside the microwave. There was nothing here that he would not have expected to find. He leaned back on the draining board, looking around the tiny galley, and knocked a cup into the sink. He was trying to fit the handle back on when he noticed the empty cardboard boxes in the small backyard.
The brand-new leaf incinerator seemed an odd thing to own, as there were no trees overhanging the property. Outside, he removed the steel lid and peered in at the charred remains of paperwork. He knew that burned pages could sometimes be deciphered if they were layered between sheets of cotton and sent to forensic- document experts, but the rain had worked its way into the metal container and had soaked the remains. Reaching in, he dug his shovel-like hands into the soggy mess. The downpour had put the fire out, and only the top sheets had been burnt. Underneath, entire folders were wet but intact. He began to lift them out.
“Meera,” he called, “give me a hand.”
Together they managed to bag half a dozen barely scorched folders of paper. “Let’s get this inside and read it,” he suggested.
“We should take it back.”
“No time for that, and no place to take it back to, remember? If there’s something here that can tell us where Quinten went, we need to know right now.”
They started to sort through the documents.
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
42
Blood Money
Jackie Quinten had all but given up hope of finding Dr Harold Masters.
She had tried his darkened house in Spitalfields before heading back to the lecture hall in the British Museum, where an assistant had traced him to a rear section of the basement. Jackie was presented with instructions for finding Room 2135, but the building was a labyrinth of identical corridors and office doors. This was the backstage area of the British Museum that the public never saw: institutional, drab, unchanged in decades.
Overhead, neon strip-lights buzzed faintly behind dusty plastic panels. The last of the visitors had gone. Only the night guards and a few members of staff were left, but the museum was larger than a city block, and the handful who remained were hidden somewhere behind sound-deadening walls. The building that acted as a great repository of the past had defied many attempts to make it less oppressive, and only the dimpled glass roof of the new Great Court was truly capable of raising spirits. Elsewhere, in the narrow back channels, morgue-like chambers and suffocating windowless rooms, the weight of history bore down with a melancholy pressure that slowed movement and reduced all conversation to awed whispers.
Jackie had been feeling unsettled ever since she awoke that morning. She had discovered some days ago that Joanne Kellerman had died, and although it seemed a tragedy there was nothing to be done, for they had hardly been close friends. But in today’s issue of
She panicked. She could think of no-one else but Dr Masters to discuss the matter with, but even he had proved elusive. Suddenly, it seemed, the events of the past had returned to disturb her sleep…
The person she should have called, she realised, was Arthur Bryant. The problem was that she liked him, and enlisting his aid meant revealing the full extent of her complicity.
The corridor seemed to lead nowhere. Its end wall was entirely blank, the skirting board merely running around it to connect to two opposing doors. A marble bust of a forgotten plunderer of antiquities stood on a discoloured marble plinth. Jackie checked the number on the slip of paper in her hand and counted down the doors. She knocked on 2135 and waited, but there was no answer. The handle turned easily, so she entered.
The room was lined with plans chests, upon which were piled tagged sections of stone, statues patiently awaiting reassembly. Masters was seated beneath the single cone of light from his green enamel reading lamp, intently writing, his eyes so close to the page that his nose almost touched the paper.
“Harold?” She took a step further into the darkened room. “I’m sorry, am I disturbing you?”
“No. I suppose I was half expecting you.” He sounded confused, as if he had just woken up to find himself in a strange place. He sat back in his chair, stretching his spine. “You lose track of time down here. It’s terrible for the posture.” He did not rise to greet her. “How are you, Jackie?”
“I expected to see you at the Yorkshire Grey this week.”
“Oh, the Immortals. It completely slipped my mind. I’ve had a lot to worry about lately. I suppose you’ve heard something. It was inevitable that you would.”
She came forward into the light, setting her handbag on the edge of the swamped desk. “I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything else all day. I don’t know what to think. I tried calling Jocelyn, but I couldn’t get any answer.”
“She’s also dead.” Masters seemed to lose interest, and returned to his writing.
