The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

8

Introductions

Time-Out Guide to London’s Secret Buildings: Number 34

Peculiar Crimes Unit

Camden Road, North London

Housed behind the arched, scarlet-tiled windows above Mornington Crescent tube station, this specialist murder investigation unit has been instrumental in solving many of the capital’s most notorious crimes. Founded during the Second World War to handle cases that could prove embarrassing to the government, it has continued operation right up to the present day. The unit now falls under the jurisdiction of the Home Office, which is attempting to make it more publicly accountable, and so its days are probably numbered. The PCU’s unorthodox operating methods were highlighted in a recent BBC documentary that criticised the conduct of its eccentric senior detectives for their willingness to use illegal information-gathering procedures in the preparation of their cases.

Sergeant Janice Longbright threw the magazine onto her kitchen table. More unwarranted publicity, she thought. At least this time the journalist had not gone into detail about the kind of informants Mr Bryant sporadically pressed into service at the PCU. No mention of the pollen readers and water diviners, the necromancers and psychics, the conspiracy theorists and eco-warriors, the mentally estranged, socially disenfranchised, delusional, disturbed and merely very odd people he asked to help out on pet cases, which was a blessing. How many times had they been threatened with closure? She realised now that instead of the axe suddenly falling, the PCU was to be slowly strangled to death with red tape.

She tapped the keyboard wedged on the corner of her sunflower-laminate breakfast table and stared gloomily at her computer’s empty mailbox. A month ago, she had posted her profile on an Internet dating Web site, but so far there had not been a single taker. She wondered if she had been too honest, her tastes too quirky. Surely there were others whose interests coincided with hers, men who liked criminology, burlesque and film stars of the 1950s? She bent down and scuffed Crippen behind his nicked, floppy ear. The little black-and-white cat purred, coughed, then hacked up a hairball. Great, she thought, everyone’s a critic. She only brought the unit’s cat home when she was feeling particularly lonely, but this morning even Crippen’s presence had not helped.

Going into the hall, she found her doormat similarly bare of letters. She thought someone might have remembered that it was her birthday, but it was half-past ten, and the postman had been and gone. This is the world I’ve created for myself, she thought, looking about the patchily painted Highgate flat. Three rented rooms above a charity shop overlooking a roundabout. No partner, no family still on speaking terms, hardly any friends, only a manky old cat here that no-one else wants to look after. Her former boyfriend was about to get married to someone else, but for her there was no love interest even remotely on the horizon.

She knew what the trouble was; she had given her best years to the Peculiar Crimes Unit. While other women of her age were presumably still enjoying romantic dinners and illicit weekends, she was usually to be found working late at the offices above Mornington Crescent tube station, correlating the case histories of violent killers. It wasn’t very appealing to tell a date you’d have to meet him at the restaurant because you were waiting for fingerprints to come in from a severed hand. She sighed, pushing back a thick coil of bleached hair, and was heading for the kitchen to wash up her single breakfast dish when the doorbell rang.

The courier looked far too young to be allowed near a motorcycle, but he was holding the largest bunch of yellow roses she had ever seen. A silver-edged card read:

Happy birthday from your greatest admirers

– Arthur Bryant & John May

It was the first time the detectives had ever sent her something on her birthday. Her colleagues remained her oldest and closest friends. She smiled at the thought, but as she unwrapped the roses and placed them in water, a green thorn plucked at the flesh of her thumb, and a single crimson droplet fell onto a silky yellow petal.

♦

Raymond Land had assembled them all in the unit’s main briefing room. His staff stood before him in two untidy rows. Nobody wanted to sit on the garish orange Ikea sofa because Crippen had been sick on it and the velour was still damp. Renfield stood beside his new boss like a Christian missionary waiting to deliver a sermon before a tribe of delinquent heathens.

“I thought we could take this opportunity of introducing ourselves to Sergeant Renfield,” said Land jovially. “Perhaps each of us would like to say something in turn about who we are and what we do, just to break the ice.”

Bimsley turned a snort of derision into a wet cough. “Starting with you, Colin. Stand up, please.” Land glared at him. Bimsley’s pupils shrank in anticipation of conjuring anything to say. As the silence lengthened, Meera poked him sharply below the ribs.

“Colin Bimsley,” said Colin Bimsley. “Detective Constable, which means I do the heavy lifting around here. I requested the posting to the PCU because my dad was in the unit and taught me all about the place when I was a nipper. I’ve still got his old uniform. I also inherited his balance problem, which has now been diagnosed as DSA, that’s Diminished Spatial Awareness, which means I occasionally misjudge distances and bash into things. Mr Bryant and Mr May offered me a desk job, but I didn’t want to let them down.”

“So instead he falls down steps and off roofs, and runs into lampposts when he’s chasing criminals,” said Meera, not without a hint of affection.

“I’ve got three major topics of conversation – law enforcement, football and science fiction – but I’ve read Bleak House and can tell a hawk from a handsaw. And that’s me for you.” Bimsley sat down.

“Mangeshkar, you’re next.” Land’s glare intensified.

“I grew up on the Peckham estate back when it was really a mess,” Meera told Renfield. “I got into the force and was packed off to dumping grounds like Dagenham, Kilburn and Deptford. They figured I knew the territory, and I was as tough as anyone on the estates. It wasn’t working with junkies and nutters that got to me, so much as the endless self-deception. Kids who thought they were going to turn their lives around, parents who insisted their kids could do no wrong, social workers who completely misread situations. If I’d just wanted to work with the poor I’d have joined a charity organisation. I wasn’t there to change lives; I was a copper, not an evangelist. Does it make sense to say that I came here looking for a more productive form of police work?” She stared down at her hands, as if expecting to find the answer there. “I thought I could learn more in criminal investigation. Maybe I am, I don’t know.”

“Hm.” Land had been hoping for more of a career précis, but now it felt as though he was taking confession. “April, I hope you can explain what you do here, because I’m buggered if I know.”

April glanced guiltily at her boss. She was aware that her grandfather had petitioned Land to hire her, and despite showing great promise in her first month at the unit, still felt as though she did not belong among professional criminologists. “Well,” she began softly, “I’m just here to help out. I’m good at putting things together.”

“What does that mean?” asked Renfield. “What field of expertise did you train in?”

“I have no formal training, but the Scarman Centre at Leicester University advocated the hiring of non-professionals in specialist criminology units, and Mr May asked me to join the PCU.”

“You mean your grandfather invited you in. Jobs for all the family, eh?”

“Give her a break, Renfield,” said Longbright. “The girl is bloody good. She collates information and assembles it, together with forensic evidence, witness reports, timelines, data analysis and profiling strategy, and she does it instinctively. Could you do that?”

It was obvious to Renfield that the rest of the unit was prepared to defend May’s grandchild. It was now common knowledge that her mother had been killed in the line of duty, and that April suffered intermittent bouts of agoraphobia as a result. She was thin and ethereally pale; a strong wind might blow her away. Was this fragile woman really the kind of person a specialist crime unit should be employing?

“Let’s move on to Mr Kershaw,” Land suggested hopefully.

“I suppose I’m the odd man out,” Kershaw began, thoughtfully tucking a shaving of lank blond hair behind his right ear. “Giles Kershaw, twenty-eight, single, can’t imagine why, ha-ha. I went to Eton, which left my parents as impoverished as church mice but granted them a sense of genetic superiority over the sturdy farming stock in their parish. The police force is no place for the well-educated, let me tell you. I was studying to be a biochemist when I became fascinated with the morphology of death, which pretty much put my sex life on hold. I’ve been under the tutelage of Mr Bryant and Mr May for long enough to appreciate the uniqueness of this unit, and the utter foolishness of attempts by the Home Office to close us down. Oh, and I’m your new pathologist.”

“Mr Banbury?”

Dan Banbury had passed his formative years in an East End bedroom sprawled across a mauve candlewick bedspread, angrily punching a laptop connected to several thousand pounds’ worth of computer equipment. From this unprepossessing cable-festooned site he penetrated enough security loopholes to bring himself to the attention of a forensic team specialising in high-tech fraud. However, he escaped prosecution after citing the case of Onel De Guzman, the twenty-four-year-old Filipino student at AMACC who evaded prison despite having released the world’s most destructive computer virus. The police were so impressed with his defence that they asked him to check their own security system, and Banbury found himself studying on the right side of the law. It was hard to imagine that anyone so bright could have so few communication skills.

“Dan Banbury, the unit’s IT guy and crime scene manager,” he said simply, stepping forward. “I trained in technology forensics and photography, I’ve operated in major incident agencies sorting data recordings and I’ve done a lot of on-site work. People think only planes have black boxes, but anything with a microprocessor will leave a data print, and these days that includes everything from trains to washing machines. But sometimes you just want to go into a murder scene and work out who knocked over a chair.”

“And of course you know…” Land waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Longbright.

“Sergeant Janice Longbright. Mr Renfield knows me, sir. There’s really nothing more to say.”

“Come, come, Janice. I’m sure there’s a lot we can learn from each other.”

“You’re right, sir. From studying Renfield’s behaviour I learned how to cause a colleague’s death through incompetence.” A cold intake of breath passed through the room.

“I think that’s a bit ad hominem, Janice, if you don’t mind my saying so,” said John May. “We’ve already been over this, and I know that Renfield feels very bad about the matter. He admitted acting wrongfully and is trying to put the events of last week behind him.” It seemed that the sergeant’s failure to involve the hospital services after he discovered a body on the street would stay to haunt him.

“I’d like to suggest that coming here, to work among Oswald Finch’s oldest friends, wasn’t the smartest move he could have made.”

“I know how strongly you feel, Janice, but this unit will not survive if it is divided, so it’s our duty – ”

“I don’t think you need to lecture me on duty, John,” said Longbright angrily.

“She’s right,” said Kershaw. “Everyone knows Renfield’s appointment is a trade-off for my promotion, and I’d rather step down than cause divisions within the unit.”

“You’re causing a division just by offering,” Mangeshkar pointed out.

“This is exactly the kind of thing I expected to find here,” said Renfield. “I heard you lot couldn’t organise a tug-of-war in a rope factory.”

Land could sense control sliding away from him, and raised his hands. “There’ll be plenty of time to get to know each other later,” he told them. “So, Jack – ”

“Nobody told me there was a meeting,” said Bryant, wandering in from the corridor billowing a bonfire-trail of acrid smoke from his pipe. “What’s going on? Did I miss a punchup? Are there any doughnuts left?”

“You can’t bring that filthy thing in here!” Land protested. “I sent you an e-mail about smoking this morning.”

“Well, there’s your problem, old sausage, I never read them. Hullo, Renfield, how are you getting on with your new teammates? You can’t expect an easy ride, you know. Not after what happened.”

“Where have you been?” asked May. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“British Museum. Christ’s blood,” said Bryant, explaining without enlightening. “I’d like to say their Earl Grey exceeded expectations but I’d be lying.” He turned to address the group. “Now, look, we all know Renfield here is a humourless pain in the derriere who wouldn’t notice an ironic remark if you tied it to a stick and poked him in the eye with it, but I think that’s one of his strengths. You might also know that his father was Sergeant Leonard Renfield, an old enemy of mine at the Met, and like his father, Jack has been denied promotion several times, for which he seems to blame my reports. But he has no axe to grind with any of you, and nor should you with him. It’s early days, so let’s start by drawing a line under the past and at least withholding judgement until a later date when we can all gang up on him properly. Most of the trouble between us is because the sergeant doesn’t understand what we do, so now’s our chance to show him.”

“You didn’t have to say that,” said Renfield sulkily as the meeting broke up around them. “I’m capable of speaking for myself.”

“I know you are.” Bryant smiled. “But least said soonest mended on this occasion, I think.”

“Well.” May marvelled as his partner ambled past in a cloud of sweetbrier smoke. “I see you’ve added diplomacy to your repertoire of talents, Arthur. You know we need all the allies we can get, and that Renfield has a lot of friends in the Met. You think if we get him on our side, he’ll eventually spread the word and give us more power against the Home Office. You sly old dog.”

“Perhaps this is one dog you can teach new tricks,” said Bryant, daintily pirouetting the tip of his walking stick as he danced from the room.