The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

17

Asleep in the Trees

Sergeant Renfield was looming behind her, trying to read over her shoulder.

“Anything I can help you with, Jack?” asked Longbright pointedly.

“All a bit mundane, isn’t it?” said Renfield with a disdaining sniff. “People die in or outside pubs all the time, it just never gets reported. A little beneath you, this sort of thing. I thought the PCU was about tracking down lunatics in highwayman outfits and solving murders committed in ridiculous places.”

“When deaths occur outside pubs, the victims are never middle-aged career women who’ve been drinking alone,” Longbright replied. “They’re teenaged and in groups, drunk or stoned, and have been in fights with their peers over girls and loyalty and the mysteriously coded world of respect and humiliation. Come on, Jack, you know that.”

“I ask because I’m trying to understand how this place works. You’ve got that girl April, who has no qualifications, trawling through cold cases looking for links to these dead women, and that’s not logical. Procedure requires – ”

“This unit doesn’t operate according to the laws of logic,” said Longbright. “Colin and Meera are searching for witnesses and conducting interviews as procedure requires, leaving us free to detect larger trends.”

“You mean there’s no proper system at work here. It’s like you’ve forgotten that you’re working against the clock. Lives are at stake. Don’t your bosses understand that others will die if they don’t stop fannying around?”

“The system doesn’t work within the normal structure of criminal investigation departments.”

“So what happens when a case comes in?”

“Raymond Land has to approve our involvement, but he gets overruled by Mr Bryant, who chooses the cases he thinks we’re best suited to. John usually backs him up. Then Land has to go cap in hand to the Home Office.”

“So what interests Bryant?”

“He’s concerned with deaths that occur in circumstances too troubling for the Met to deal with. The detectives write up their notes – more themes and ideas, really. Then we spend the next few days hiding what we’ve discovered from anyone who might stop us.” Longbright was enjoying the look of creeping unease on Renfield’s face.

“And where is everybody else this morning? I ask because I have to keep notes on you lot.”

“John and Mr Bryant are in a pub somewhere in Holborn consulting an expert in London mythology. April is calling the surviving relatives of Joanne Kellerman, and after work I’m getting my roots touched up before attending a society for conspiracy theorists. Raymond Land is probably in the Nun and Broken Compass playing darts with former officers from Bow Street station and slagging you off something rotten. Giles Kershaw will be running more tests on Jocelyn Roquesby, and Dan Banbury is probably going over the crime scenes of the earlier victims. Happy?”

“And out of this farrago you expect to find a murderer?” Renfield was staggered. He had expected an element of disorganisation, but nothing on this scale. It would have been easier to predict the movement of cats.

“I don’t know about that,” Longbright told him. “Things have to get stranger first, or else Mr Bryant will lose interest.”

“And when do you suppose that might happen?” asked Renfield, fighting to keep his natural temperament under control.

“Oh, right around now,” replied Longbright with a malignant smile. “Come on, Jack, lighten up on us a bit. Our clearance rate is more than double that of any other specialist unit. Find something positive to say.”

Renfield eyed her thoughtfully. “You’ve got some lovely legs on you, Janice,” he said at last.

♦

Jazmina Sherwin checked her watch again. She had been waiting for her so-called boyfriend to turn up for nearly half an hour, but his cell phone was turned off. She pulled her sheepskin coat more tightly around her, and looked out at the empty roadway. It was already starting to get dark. The trunks of the plane trees opposite were lost in shadows. Their uppermost leaves stood out black against the dying sky. Nobody else was sitting on the benches in the front garden of the Albion, but Jazmina hated overheated rooms, and the saloon bar was unbearably warm.

The Barnsbury pub appeared to have been dropped down in the heart of the English countryside. Graceful Edwardian houses filled the backstreets between Liverpool Road and the Caledonia Road. It was hard to imagine that the chaos of King’s Cross was just a fifteen-minute walk from this spot.

A pair of crows sniped in the branches above her. A breeze rose, the shiver rippling along the street in a wave that caused the tops of the branches to gossip.

She knew she should never have agreed to meet him again, not after he had let her down the week before. What, she wondered, was the attraction of careless men? A car drifted past almost in silence, the driver insolently staring at her.

She looked over her shoulder, through the window of the pub. The barman had gone somewhere. The bar appeared to be deserted now, except for a small group of noisy fat men playing darts in the rear saloon, but she was sure someone had been standing close by her when she ordered her orange juice. She had seen him from the corner of her eye, just a dark shape really, but she’d had the sense of a heavy overcoat, a pale eye turned in her direction. Normally she was entirely at ease in pubs, but this one didn’t feel as if it was even in the city.

Shiny dark birds cawing in the trees, the evening so quiet you could hear the greenery. Something was not right. Something…

He made her start, moving in to sit beside her without disturbing the air, so that she was sure he had not been there the moment before. She was strong, but he had the element of surprise. His grip was practised and complete. She felt the hot lance of the needle enter her neck, and knew at once that the time for escape had already passed. The freezing numbness flooded her body, like dental anaesthetic but much faster, more totally invasive, and she felt herself falling down into his awaiting arms.

She heard his voice from far above, even though he could only be speaking in a whisper. “Stay with me,” he told her. She tried to remain awake, sensing that if consciousness failed it would not return. She was young and mistrustful of men, so how could this be happening?

So unfair, she thought, so stupid. In that brief moment she felt as if all the evils in the world were there to be understood. Men were starving wolves who searched for weaknesses, and she had dropped her guard for the first – and only – time in her short life.

♦

The Nun & Broken Compass had been shut for refurbishment, so Raymond Land’s pals from the Met had suggested going a little further afield today, seeing as they were on short shifts, and Land could basically do as he pleased now that the Home Office called the shots for his unit. Land was still laughing at the superintendent’s disgusting joke as they pocketed their dart sets and left the Albion. He didn’t like Barnsbury, too many stuck-up North London politicians living here, but the Albion was a bit of a find, bucolic and becalmed, hidden behind an artful undergrowth.

While they were discussing what would be the quickest way back, the superintendent noticed the girl. She was seated upright on the bench, her head hanging over her drink, and Land had been about to make a remark about birds not being able to hold their booze when one of the others realised that something was wrong with her.

In the deepening shadows beneath the leaves of mulberry trees, a young black girl had fallen asleep so soundly that she had died, her soul departing on respectful tiptoe, as quietly as the fading breeze.