The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

19

Conspirators

Bryant’s idea seemed sound enough, until you considered that nobody knew who this man was or what he looked like. Sergeant Janice Longbright studied the scrap of paper she had been handed, then searched the street. The great shuttered block of Smithfield meat market dominated an area now replenished with upscale eateries and thumping nightclubs, but here was a pub like an ancient lithograph, with a grand lead-glass bay window, polished oak doors and sienna paintwork, the sign of the Sutton Arms spelled out in gold glass on an umber background.

The interior had been given a peculiar timeless ambience of plaster busts, aspidistra pots and reproduced sepia photos that fit in well enough with Belgian beers and steak menus. A narrow staircase led to an over-lit upper room, but she could not gain access to it because a table covered in books and pamphlets had been placed across the entrance.

“Can I help you?” asked a sallow-faced man with deep-set eyes and tentacles of oily hair plastered across his bald head.

“I’m here for the Conspirators’ Club,” said Longbright.

“Well, of course, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You could have read that on our Web site. Anyone could have read that, found out the address and just come in here off the street, and we have no way of knowing if they’re friend or foe. Do you know the password?”

“Oh, give over, Stanley, how can she know the password when you keep changing it?” asked a pleasant-faced woman in her mid-forties. “Last week it was Inkerman, this week it’s Bisto, how are we supposed to keep track? Just let the lady come in, for heaven’s sake.”

“Entrance fee still costs two pounds, the money goes toward our fighting fund,” said Stanley, tapping a relabelled tissue box.

“It goes toward his beer money. He’s a nuisance but he keeps out undesirables. I’m Lulu,” said Lulu. “Come on in.”

“Do you get many nutters here?” Longbright could not resist asking.

“Mainly on anniversaries of assassinations, although our last meeting on St Valentine’s night was tricky. A group of wargame strategists turned up and attempted to provide new theories about the fall of the Maginot Line using beer bottles and baguettes. Our members tend to be intense and easily persuaded, especially the single ones. Have you been before?”

“No, but a friend of mine has. Jocelyn Roquesby, perhaps you know her?”

“My goodness, you poor love, you’re in the right place, because we’ve been proposing theories about her. It’s not the sort of thing we usually talk about, mostly it’s stuff like this.”

Lulu indicated the books and brochures on the table. Several titles caught Longbright’s eye. Jim Morrison Lives on in Indian Spirit, The Bavarian Illuminati, Lockerbie and the CIA, Christ’s Blood and the Crown of Thorns, The UK Biochemical Cover-Up, The Search for Princess Diana, 1968 Moon Landing Props Found in Vegas, Floridagate, Death in the Persian Gulf, Where Anna Nicole Smith Is Now.

“They’re not all as barking as they may at first look,” Lulu told her. “People think it’s all about coming up with outlandish reasons for the Kennedy assassination – America invented all the juiciest conspiracy theories, after all – but these days most of our debates concern the limitations of world media and the way in which information is controlled. Many of these books expound surprisingly even-handed ideas, although I wouldn’t believe the one about Kurt Cobain being reincarnated as the king of the lizard aliens. Would you like a drink?”

“Thanks,” said Longbright, immediately breaking Bryant’s rule. “I’ll have a gin and French. You know, with vermouth.”

“Good choice,” said Lulu. “Perhaps we can introduce you to some interesting people tonight. I’ll try to keep you away from the cryptozoologists. Get them onto Loch Ness and you’ll be stuck here until closing time.”

“What usually happens at these meetings?” asked Longbright.

“Sometimes there’s a book launch, or a talk or a debate. It’s a lot more rational than you’d expect. We discuss theories about recent news stories and share ideas. It’s an alternative to only getting your data from the mainstream media, which is partisan, conservative and mainly concerned with scaring the living daylights out of Middle England.”

“I think I know that woman.” Longbright pointed to an elegant redhead in her early forties, dressed in a black sweater and jeans.

“She’s a new recruit. Came here by mistake, thinking it was an art appreciation class, but enjoyed herself so much that she ended up coming back. Let me introduce you.”

“Hi,” said the redhead, holding out her hand. “I’m Monica Greenwood. You’re a policewoman, aren’t you?”

Longbright was taken aback. “Is it my feet?” she asked. “They’ve always been big. I shouldn’t draw attention to them.” Admittedly, she was wearing Joe Tan crimson peep-toed pumps with ankle bows.

“No.” Monica smiled. “I’ve met you before, with John May. I’m afraid I’m the one with whom he was having the affair. Paul Greenwood’s wife.”

“Sorry, I knew I’d seen you before.” Longbright was taken aback by the other woman’s forthrightness. She recalled the scandal of the academic’s wife who had become involved with her superior during the investigation of a murder.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Monica replied. “I made things pretty tricky for your boss, didn’t I?”

“Only for a while. I was sorry to hear about your husband.”

“I stayed by him while he was sick, but now that he’s fully recovered and can take care of himself, we’re finally getting a divorce. I should have done it years ago. What brings you here? Oh, my God, you’re not working, are you?”

Janice had never been a convincing liar. “My attendance is connected to a case,” she admitted. “A woman called Jocelyn Roquesby died near here in a pub called the Old Bell tavern.”

“We were just talking about her. She was quite a regular. Naturally, there are some people here who take their conspiracies rather too seriously,” she indicated a group of barrelstomached men in cable-knit sweaters gathered in the corner, “and they think she was murdered.”

“I’m afraid in this instance they might be right,” said Longbright. “Is there any specific reason for them thinking that?”

“One of the main reasons she used to attend was because she had quite a few conspiracy theories of her own. Phillip, her ex-husband, was in some senior government post and she was supposedly well-known on the Westminster dinner party circuit. Reading between the lines, I’d say Jocelyn became a bit of an embarrassment for him – you know, a few too many indiscreet remarks made over the liqueurs – and he filed for divorce. Some of her stories sounded very plausible, though. There were plenty of people here who were prepared to listen to her ideas, and I daresay quite a few more will turn up now that she’s dead.”

Longbright began to see how conspiracy theories developed. If Roquesby had just been a housewife and her husband had worked in the local post office, no-one outside of those directly involved would have questioned the circumstances of her death. You had to be in a position of some power before the seeds of suspicion could be sown, and your demise could invite the status of conspiracy. How easy would it be to become tangled in the skein of half-truths and hearsay that encrusted themselves around the circumstances of a high-profile death?

“Did she make any good friends here? Or bring anyone else along?”

“She was ever so sweet, and rather lonely. Undergoing radiotherapy for cancer, I believe. She didn’t say much during the general debates, but really enjoyed meeting new people.”

“What kind of stories did she used to tell?”

“You have to understand that she was very bitter about Phillip. Jocelyn said he dumped her because she knew things about the government, but in fact I hear he left her for a younger woman with a bigger bust and a smaller mind, as they all do. Then one day she wouldn’t talk about it anymore. Said it was a private matter, but I think she was warned off by the gleam in the eyes of our conspirators. I imagine coming here was a way of forgetting her personal troubles. The last thing she’d have wanted to do was to have them dragged out in public. Our meetings can get extremely personal. Conspiracy theorists have little respect for privacy; everything is regarded as fair game. And conspiracies breed in the face of opposing truths. As a student, I created some crop circles with a friend down on Box Hill, taking step-by-step photographs of how we did it with a plank and some ropes. A couple of months later, I posted the pictures to the local paper. When the article appeared I received hate mail from people telling me I was deliberately trying to discredit the ‘Box Hill Circles.’ I became a victim in my own conspiracy.”

“Do you think if someone had gone up to Mrs Roquesby in a pub and started making polite conversation, she would have responded, encouraged him?”

“Not very likely. She seemed shy. I think it took a fair amount of courage just to come here. She told me she had no close personal friends at all, and hardly any family apart from her daughter.”

Which suggested that Jocelyn Roquesby had not known her attacker, and he struck at random. It was the worst possible news Sergeant Longbright could have wished for, and the last thing she wanted to report back to Bryant and May.

♦

Jack Renfield had been seated in the Old Bell tavern for over an hour, and had switched from orange juice to lager because he was bored and angry. He eyed the rowdy office workers over the top of his glass, and longed to wipe the grins off their faces by nicking them for infringing by-laws, just because they were enjoying themselves. That one, he thought, smug git trying to impress some bird from the office, he’s probably got coke in his pocket. I’d love to bust him and see the look on his face. Several of the git’s mates were on the pavement, impeding the passage of passersby. That was enough to get them arrested.

Renfield always felt like arresting someone when he was lonely.

How, he wondered, had he allowed himself to be manoeuvred into the PCU, where everyone hated him? He felt sure Bryant and May were laughing at him behind his back, ordering him to spend the evening sitting in a pub by himself, in the absurd hope that he might pick up some kind of information about the killer. Why weren’t they hammering the fear of the law into relatives and colleagues, chasing down the recent contacts of the deceased and demanding answers? A nutcase wanders around the city’s public houses armed with a syringe and nobody sees him – how the hell was that possible? And instead of trying to discover his identity, the most obvious way of working, Bryant announces that they must first understand his motive. Crimes that produced no leads in forty-eight hours were virtually dead. No wonder the Home Office tried shutting the unit down every five minutes; the place was an anachronistic embarrassment, a division that fancied itself more at home in the pages of the Strand magazine than on the mean streets of Camden Town.

And yet…

He found himself staring at a man who was behaving most strangely. He had taken off his shoes and donned a pair of red plaid carpet slippers, and had sat back to read the top volume of several magazines, just as if he were at home. But he was, in fact, assessing the young women who passed his table, surreptitiously studying their legs, their buttocks, until they had moved from sight.

The longer he watched the behaviour of strangers in the Old Bell, the more Jack Renfield began to think that there was something to the PCU’s methodology after all.