The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

20

Irrationality

“Admit to being afraid,” said a thin ginger-headed man at the podium. “It’s the first step to acknowledging that you have a problem.” He pointed a plastic ruler at the top page of the board behind him, upon which a variety of phobias were spelled out. “These are the fears of our current and past members. If yours is not listed here, I’d like you to step up here now and add it to the list.”

April looked for her agoraphobia among more obscure irrationalities. Aichmophobia, the fear of needles; Ailurophobia, fear of cats; Alektorophobia, fear of chickens; Alliumphobia, fear of garlic; Anthrophobia, fear of flowers; Antlophobia, fear of floods – and those were just the A’s. Presumably the young man’s easel held twenty-six pages of terrors.

The group was seated upstairs at the Ship & Shovell pub behind the Strand, which Naomi Curtis, the second victim, had visited in an attempt to cure her claustrophobia. It was the only pub in London that existed in two separate halves, each piece a red-painted mirror image of the other, set on either side of a sloping passageway that led down to the Thames. ‘Shovell’ was spelled with a double L because it had been the original owner’s name.

For a bunch of people who lived in irrational fear of ordinary things – computers, snow, being touched – they seemed remarkably chatty and cheerful. The ginger man’s talk lasted half an hour, after which there were questions, then everyone went to the bar except one woman, who was apparently perturbed by the sight of spilled beer.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” asked the speaker. “I haven’t seen you before. You didn’t come up to the board.”

“I was agoraphobic, but it seems to be retreating now,” April explained. “I’ve had various other phobias in the past. I was bothered by dirt and untidiness. I have a bit of a neatness fetish.”

“I suppose your doctor said you were spending too much time indoors, and developed other fears because you were looking to reduce your world still further. It’s quite common. I’m Alex, by the way.”

“April .”

She held out her hand, but he shook his head. “Can’t do it, I’m afraid. Germs. Sadly, recognising one’s phobias doesn’t necessarily lead to their cure.”

“And yet we’re in an old pub where there are probably a couple of hundred years’ worth of microbes festering in the carpets.”

“You know as well as I do that a phobia has no respect for reason.” They took their drinks to a corner of the room.

“I’m here on a mission,” April finally admitted. “Did you ever meet a woman called Naomi Curtis?”

“Don’t know. Hang on.” Alex fetched a diary from the table by the door and checked it. “Some only come to the society once or twice. We try to keep a record of names, but it’s rather hit or miss. Claustrophobic, wasn’t she? She attended a few times. We usually meet outside. It was a little too cramped for her at the bar.”

“I can understand that. Did she have many friends here?”

“I think she came with another woman, someone from work. People don’t like to visit by themselves. They think they’re going to get roped into some kind of sales pitch, but we’re just a self-funding help group. Once they understand that, they relax more.”

“Do you ever cure anyone?”

“Sometimes. But fears have a habit of mutating. They’ll vanish only to reappear in a different form. We’ve managed to keep the group going for six years now, even though we have to keep changing pubs.”

“Why’s that?”

“The landlords don’t like primal scream therapy. And once I accidentally released ants all over the saloon floor, and we had a tarantula go missing behind the bar. Never did find it. We had a disastrous meeting in the Queen’s Head and Artichoke last year, when three old ladies got locked in the lavatory. They went in as autophobics – afraid of being alone – and came out as claustrophobics. Why did you ask about Mrs Curtis, do you know her?”

“No. I’m helping to investigate her murder.”

“My God, I had no idea.”

“She was in a pub.”

“Not this one?”

“The Seven Stars in Carey Street, just down the road from here. She probably went there to meet a friend.”

“And you think it might have been someone she met here?”

“It’s a long shot.” April had already told him more than she’d intended to.

“Maybe not so long,” said Alex. “She did meet someone the last time she came, a bloke in his early thirties, funny haircut, black leather overcoat. I remember thinking there was something really creepy about him. It sticks in my mind because they sat in the corner talking intensely for quite a long time, then she left very suddenly, as if they’d had a row. Mind you, she was incredibly drunk.”

“Would you recognise him again?”

“Possibly. I think he had something wrong with his face, some kind of purple birthmark.”

“Do you mean it was the birth defect that made him appear creepy?”

“No, God, I hope I’m not that shallow. You know the way some people don’t behave how they should in company? He was hunched over his beer, openly staring at other women. We’re used to autistic behaviour but this was different. I’m sorry, it’s not much to go on, is it?”

“You’d be surprised,” said April. It looked as if Curtis’s attacker had hit on her before. Perhaps he had even tried to hurt her, only to have his plans thwarted. All nine members of the PCU were out searching public houses tonight. If any of them turned up a similar description, they would finally have a suspect.

♦

Dan Banbury found himself wedged against a wall in the claustrophobic Seven Stars pub, which was located behind Lincoln’s Inn Fields and packed to the gills with boisterous, merry legal workers. Normally he would have enjoyed himself in such an environment, but his conversation with the bar staff had been turned into a shouting match by the deafening combination of courtroom rhetoric and cheap beer.

The barmaid who had served Naomi Curtis on the night of her death could think of no other details, and was too busy to concentrate on the subject for long. Banbury jammed himself further into the corner with his pint and wondered. What kind of man would she have allowed close? In his experience women preferred cocktail bars to pubs, especially ones this intimate and rowdy. He felt sure that she could only have come in here to meet a man. This kind of pub was the choice of a male.

With difficulty, he unfolded the spreadsheet April had supplied and checked the notes she had printed. The same injected sedative, giving symptoms that had been mistaken for heatstroke. A swift, virtually painless method of killing, putting someone to sleep so easily and quietly that their death could pass unnoticed in a crowded bar. Curtis wasn’t rich, had no unusual beneficiaries, no-one who might excessively profit from her demise. It seemed unlikely to be anyone she knew, which meant that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This place was a crime scene manager’s worst nightmare, trampled flat day in and out, vacuumed and disinfected, scoured by the scrum of bodies, sloshed with centuries of beer. In a way, the man they were looking for had hit upon the perfect location to commit murder. Every night in every pub there would be petty feuds, heated arguments, friendships forged, sexual liaisons proposed and enemies made, the threats of tears and laughter. Alcohol heightened the emotions. Providing he did not draw attention to himself, a killer could easily hide inside such a world. Bryant was right; coming here had started to give him a different perspective on the problem. He studied the room again, screening out unlikely candidates. The loudmouths and drunks, the shrieking office girls and their stentorian workmates vanished one by one.

Banbury found himself left with a handful of introspective loners, any one of whom might be nursing an uncapped syringe in his jacket pocket.