The Victoria Vanishes Part 16

'I don't know what you're making such a fuss about, then,' said Bryant. 'Pellew's legs are facing the wrong way and his head looks like a dropped meringue.'

'Yeah, but I'm on the correct side of the law, sir.'

'Righteousness does not protect you from injury. I know you meant well, going after him like that, but you might have panicked him into the traffic. Pellew was a former mental patient, after all. Renfield's furious with you, but I've persuaded him not to make a fuss about what happened.'

'Pellew had been released, sir, even though he was still dangerous.'

'Well, we've still to get to the bottom of that. It's looking like he deliberately targeted his victims after all. April discovered that three of the five victims falsified their resumes, claimed they were working for non-existent companies or ones that were in liquidation. It would seem they didn't even tell their partners or families the truth about their jobs, just trotted off to work every day and came home in the evening as if every-thing was normal.'

'I don't understand,' said Bimsley. 'What does that mean? Where were they going?'

'Where indeed?' Bryant narrowed his eyes.'To a place where they might have come into contact with Anthony Pellew, perhaps.'

'The Broadhampton.'

'Noa"we've already checked the clinic's employment records. Somewhere else. Have a think while you're lying there, old sausage, it'll give you something to do.'

'Do me a favour and open that, sir.' Bimsley pointed to his locker. 'There should be a piece of paper inside.' Bryant pulled out the single mud-stained sheet and gingerly unscrewed it.

'I found it on the floor of one of the rooms in the Angerstein,' Bimsley said.'It's not much, but I'm pretty sure Pellew had been there. It might have come from him.'

Bryant found himself looking at a scribbled doodle. It appeared to be of a bird sitting atop a tree stump. 'Thanks, no idea what this might be but I'll check it out.' He rose to leave, then stopped. 'By the way, young Meera wanted to come and see you, but I had to send her to interview Carol Wynley's partner.'

'I don't suppose she could be bothered to leave me a message.'

'Would it raise your spirits and aid your recovery if I told you she did?'

Bimsley attempted to affect an air of disinterest.'It might.'

Bryant thought for a moment. 'Fine, Meera said to get well soon and hurry back. No, I'm joking, she didn't say anything at all. Sorry.'

'What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l were you doing there by yourself?' asked Renfield, who was attempting to keep his voice down on the women's ward. 'You're not supposed to conduct those kinds of searches unaccompanied.'

'How long have you been here?' asked Longbright. She tried to focus on the sclerotic sergeant perched on the edge of her visitor's chair.

'Just for a while. I've been watching you sleep,' Renfield admitted.

'I didn't need you to come with me.' Longbright pushed at her pillows, trying not to disturb the saline drip attached to her wrist. 'Arthur said that Pellew wanted to be stopped. I've done this sort of thing plenty of times before.'

'And that's exactly why you had your guard down,' said Renfield. 'You'd be in a body-bag downstairs if he hadn't misjudged your size. Pellew didn't turn himself in, so part of him must have wanted to remain at large, and that made him extremely dangerous. Your boss had it wrong.'

'Have they said how long I have to stay in here?'

'They've got to finish flus.h.i.+ng out your system. You'll be allowed home tomorrow.' He fought down a smile.

'What's so funny?'

'I've never seen you without makeup.'

My G.o.d, thought Longbright, I don't think anyone has ever seen me without makeup. 'I'll stay until the doctor comes by. Give me something to do until then, Jack. Get me the case notes.'

'You're supposed to rest.' Renfield looked about the ward. Two constables were walking a shouting, handcuffed drunk woman past the beds.

All right, Steve? Joey?' Renfield called. They nodded curtly to him, but carried on without stopping to speak.

She watched the officers pa.s.s. 'You must be missing your mates in the Met.'

'Well, they don't b.l.o.o.d.y miss me,' said Renfield, looking back. 'They won't even say h.e.l.lo to me now.'

'So you finally know how the rest of us feel. Look at the state of your fingernails. It's stress.' Longbright lowered her head back to the pillow. 'Being on the unit takes over your life until there's nothing else left. The day I joined the PCU even the duty officers at Bayham Street stopped talking to me. They thought I was waving two fingers at them, getting out to move on to a cushy number. They didn't know I took a drop in pay and position just to work where my mother once worked. I slogged away in the Met in order to build up respect and credibility, and lost it all on the day I moved across to join John and Arthur. My partner left me, my civilian friends went away, I have nothing left but the unit. The same thing will happen to you.'

'It already did.' Renfield looked down at his toe caps. 'Four years ago last month. My girlfriend died in Manchester, on duty.'

'I never heard about that.'

'I didn't tell many people. She'd been working up on Moss Side, liaising with immigration officers for a couple of years. One Sat.u.r.day night in the middle of winter some bloke had a go at her outside a rough-as-guts nightclub, just a punch in the neck, but she'd had a couple of rums before she went on duty. She went down heavily, bruised herself, suffered traumatic shock. Went home not feeling well and died in bed that night. Those two drinks meant the difference between burial with full honours and dismissal with nothing at all. You wonder why I prefer to stick to the rule book. So when you say you have nothing left, you know how I feel.'

'I think I preferred you when you were being unpleasant to everyone,' she said with a sigh.

'You know I don't approve of the way the PCU goes about things, but I'm trying to learn, understood?'

Longbright gave a small smile and held out her unfettered hand. 'Understood.'

Giles Kershaw was below the pavement of Euston Road, in the UCH morgue, talking to Alex Reynolds, the admitting surgeon. The remains of Anthony Pellew lay in the tray before them, being cleaned, opened and weighed.

'No birthmark on his face,' noted Kershaw, holding back his hair as he leaned over the body.

'You were expecting one?' asked Reynolds. 'Shouldn't you be wearing a cap? Or don't they bother with them at the PCU morgue?'

Actually, we're skilled enough to sort out our own fibres from those of our suspects at the PCU, thanks,' retorted Kershaw coolly. 'We've got this man down with nevus flammem,'

Reynolds could not recall the term. 'Remind me.'

'Port-wine facial markings. They're formed at birth.'

'Then you've got the wrong man, haven't you?'

'No, I don't think we have. I need to get a tissue sample.' Kershaw took a closer look. Anthony Pellew had not been taking care of himself. His nails were split, the cuticles bitten and torn. A cracked front tooth, bad skin due to a poor diet, worn-out underclothes, worn-out sneakers. And deep in his hairline, miniscule red specks.

Kershaw withdrew tweezers and lifted the dots into a small plastic pouch, but he could already identify the substance by its odour: lipstick. Pellew had applied the so-called birthmark with artificial colouring. Why? Was it due to some mental aberration, a form of tribal disguise, part of the ritual of killing? Or could there be a stranger reason that added method to his madness?

This case isn't over, he thought. It looks like the real work is only just beginning,

33.

CONSPIRACY.

T.

hey met on the bridge, always on Waterloo Bridge, be-cause the light was sharper here, because the sky was high and wide, because for them it was a part of London that never changed.

In all the years they had been meeting above the river, the northern horizon had never changed as quickly as it was changing now. Instead of the barges and blackened ware-houses, the working cranes and silhouetted derricks, gla.s.s balconies protruded from blank pastel walls like boxes at the theatre. The Thames itself had been transformed from a pulsing aquatic artery to an empty scenic backdrop provided for the amus.e.m.e.nt of sh.o.r.e-dwelling businessmen, a cosmetic alteration that in Arthur Bryant's opinion mainly benefited the rich in their holiday flats. What else would be provided for them, he wondered, the kind of gaudy floating pageants that had been staged in the presence of Le Roi Soleil? Fireworks and hot-air balloons? But of course the mayor, following in the great tradition of London mayors, was already providing them with such distractions. To be the Lord Mayor of London was to accept the city's poisoned chalice, and always be hated by at least half the capital's residents.

In his younger days, Bryant had pa.s.sionately supported marches, rallies and protests through the capital, even though as a public servant he was required to be non-partisan. His partner had managed to avoid taking sides, simply because he felt that the science of investigation should be considered away from distracting influences, and he regarded himself as an impartial technician. However, this stance had lately been eroded by the continued efforts of the Home Office, whose at-tempts to close the PCU had become tiresome and predictable, just another obstacle to factor into any protracted investigation.

Bryant leaned against the bal.u.s.trade of Waterloo Bridge and looked across at the graceful gla.s.s span connecting St Paul's to the Globe Theatre. The new bridge had drawn attention away from mere stone river-crossings like Waterloo.

'I hate small-mindedness,' he suddenly announced after several minutes of contemplative silence. 'The notices everywhere warning us not to trip over or turn left or take our dogs off leads. That annoying recorded voice in post offices telling you which counter is free. I bought some peas in the supermarket last week and do you know what it said on the packet? "Does not contain nuts." I hate the endless admonishments of a nanny state that lives in fear of its lawyers. While colonies of dim-witted traffic wardens swarm about looking for minor parking infringements, n.o.body seems to notice that our very social fabric is falling apart.'

'What's brought this on?' asked May, puzzled. 'Have you got another court summons over your car?'

'Several, in fact, but that's not the point.' Bryant poked his pipe between his lips and lit up. 'Once our children played on bomb sites and collected unexploded sh.e.l.ls. Now they're driven to school by paranoid parents in SUVs. The determination of dullards can always be counted upon to challenge the merits of innovators.' He noisily sucked on the pipe until the bowl's embers sparkled against the cloud-grey waters. 'To be popular in this city you have to be average, and the PCU's unusual approach to the attainment of excellence won't allow it to survive.'

'No-one else can handle a case like this,' said May. 'We'll be here so long as there are cases like this.'

'I don't think so. Have a chocolate banana.' Bryant pulled the pocket fluff from a sweet and pa.s.sed it over. He felt guilty having a smoke without giving May a sweet. 'I bet Raymond can't wait to slam the lid on the Pellew investigation. He'll be able to let Faraday know that there's no more danger lurking in the capital's public places.'

'Kershaw reckons he's got a couple of unidentified skin flakes from two of the women, but I suppose it'll take a while to see if there's a DNA match with Pellew's tissue samples. We don't rank very highly in the queue for equipment use these days. You're not in any doubt Pellew's guilty, are you?'

'Me?' asked Bryant. 'Didn't you hear? Kershaw's also got a complete thumbprint from one of the emptied plastic ampoules Pellew left in his room at the Clock House. A perfect match. We just need to complete the link by making sure that the residue inside it has the same chemical composition as the drug we found in his victims' bloodstreams.' He tightened his collar against the early evening mist. 'No, it's not his ident.i.ty that bothers me now, there's no question of that; it's his motive I find troubling. I went over April's background notes again. There's a very peculiar disparity I find myself unable to account for.'

'Perhaps I can help.'

Bryant raised himself to look May in the eye. 'What do we now know about Anthony Pellew? That he was a disturbed and lonely child, brought up in pubs by an alcoholic, unfaithful father and a mother who turned tricks when they were short of cash. As a kid I imagine he was probably left hanging about in the beery haze of the barroom while the girls flirted around his old man. Upon his father's death, he and his mother settled into the Angerstein, and later, after she'd been kicked out for prost.i.tution, they moved to the Clock House. Anthony hit adolescence only to find himself ignored and un-able to talk to the opposite s.e.x in any place other than the pub.'

'He also started drinking heavily.'

'So, after his mother was taken ill for the first time, he kidnapped a girlfriend of his own and kept her locked up in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a boozer, staying with her, talking to her. Agreed so far?'

'I think so.'

'After his trial and incarceration Pellew supposedly underwent rehabilitation, and had frequent a.s.sessments. Somehowa" we still don't know howa"he managed to secure an early release. But unbeknown to the doctors, his desire to re-create the small comforts of the past had twisted into something darker. He knew that if he kidnapped another girl, the authorities would come for him and take her away, so it seems clear he decided on a new method of fulfilling his dreams. He could keep them with him forever by fatally drugging them. They would simply fall asleep by his side in a place that made him happy. No s.e.xual a.s.sault, no violence, just the everlasting companions.h.i.+p he craved, and found he could create by taking lives.'

'You think the women he picked reminded him of his mother?'

'I wondered about that. But it would make everything so psychologically neat, wouldn't it? Even the phoney birthmark makes sense because the argument would be that he was using it as a mask, a way of proving that even though he had deliberately made himself unattractive, he could draw a woman to his side. What he was really doing, though, was marking himself out to us. Pellew could be regarded either as a tragic figure doomed to re-create the only moments of happiness he ever had, or as an arrogant grotesque preying on the lonely and vulnerable. With the exception of Jazmina Sherwin, he only selected women with maternal instincts.'

'Either way, Raymond is right to close the case,' said May.

'Except for one fact that unravels this neatly bow-tied little package. Three of these gentle, harmless ladies knew each other. So the notion of a lonely, embittered, mentally ill man wandering from pub to pub looking for random victims is suddenly thrown out, because his acts are carefully premeditated.'

'Unless it's sheer coincidence. Look at the makeup of city pubs and you'll find workers from the same professions, many of whom know each other.'

'A fair point. You can talk to someone in a pub and yet hardly acknowledge them in another environment. So many overlapping circles.'

'I should produce a set of Venn diagrams.'

'Please don't.' Bryant exhaled a wreath of blue smoke around his head.

'And what if one victim led to the next? He makes friends with Kellerman, and she leads him to Curtis, who leads him to Roquesby. Was any one of them aware of what had happened to the other two? Presumably not, or they'd have steered clear of doing the same thing, standing around alone in a pub.

Although no-one's ever really alone in a pub, are they? That's the attraction, to be counted as part of a social milieu.'

'Perhaps, but I'm not at all happy,' said Bryant firmly. And I won't let Raymond close this case until I am. I want to see the psychiatric evaluations that got Pellew released from the Broadhampton, I need to know how those women came to be in that photograph, and why their employment records were falsified over the same periods. We have to go back and take another look at the pubs. Why did I see a Victorian public house that didn't even exist under that name? Most of all, we need to find out how on earth an outpatient under observation was able to lay his hands on such highly toxic drugs.'

'That's going to take time,' said May, 'and Land wants this wrapped up fast.'

'Then he'll have to wait.'

'But if no-one else is attackeda"'

'I don't care,' said Bryant stubbornly. 'We've missed something essential.'

'Not to the outcome of the case, Arthur, only to your personal satisfaction. You know we don't always get every last detail correct. It would be like suggesting we've solved the mysteries of human nature. It's not simply a matter of genomes, there are social variables anda"'

'I know it's not an exact science, John, but there's something here that Simply. Does. Not. Make. Sense.' He thumped his walking stick on the pavement for emphasis.

'Then tell me, what do you think that is?'

Bryant punched him in the chest with a mittened hand. 'What have I always told you? The kind of crimes that reach our little unit can best be appreciated and resolved through a consideration of the laws of paradox. Pellew himself led us to him, then fled when we arrived. Why? Although he wanteda" neededa"us to catch him, why did he run to his death on a busy motorway?'

'He was trying to get away and made a mistake.'

'No. You saw him hesitate and look back. He knew that we couldn't be allowed to take him alive. If we did, he would find himself charged and interrogated, and he couldn't afford to let that happen.'

'Why in G.o.d's name not?' asked May, mystified.

'Because under interrogation he would incriminate someone else,' said Bryant, looking out into the incoming mist.

'But Arthur, there isn't anyone else. He operated alone, acting for the private gratification that he alone could receive.'

'So it would seem. And we are presented with the textbook apparatus to understand his motivation. In fact, there's little left for us to do beyond conducting a few scientific matches and placing the case in archive. The Broadhampton's medical faculty will be at great pains to justify their decision to release Pellew into the community. Everyone walks away with their hands clean.'

A police launch pa.s.sed beneath them, a white arrow cleaving sepia waters.