The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

31

The Angerstein

It was said that the Angersteins descended from Peter the Great himself, that John Julius Angerstein was the illegitimate son of either Catherine or Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, but the truth was somewhat less salubrious. John Julius, a Lloyd’s underwriter, had grown rich from his West Indian slaves, and parlayed their miseries into an art collection that became the envy of kings, and the foundation of the National Gallery.

The Angersteins made their home in Greenwich, the birthplace of Henry VIII and the home of time itself. Woodlands, their house in Greenwich Park, was built to house his growing collection of Rembrandts and Titians, and a grand Victorian hotel commemorated his name.

But part of the maritime town had been allowed to die. Away from the splendours of the Royal Naval College, the Royal Observatory, the Queen’s House and the Cutty Sark, East Greenwich grew dusty and rotted apart, its community shattered by the roaring motorway flyover that split the quiet streets in half. Here, the great Angerstein Hotel, now just another shabby pub, was situated. Like so many other public houses of its era, it had been repaired with thick layers of paint, blue-grey this time, and its windows were rainbowed with the lights of gambling machines and posters for karaoke nights.

John May edged his BMW through the isthmus of the oneway system and parked by the entrance just as Meera Mangeshkar arrived on her Norton, with Bimsley riding pillion. He opened his window and called over to the two young officers.

“We’ve spoken to the pub’s manager. He was a bit shocked when I explained he might be harbouring a murderer in the building, but he’s going to co-operate. He says Pellew’s hiding place can only be upstairs, as the basement is pass-code protected.”

Shielding their eyes from the breaking rain, they looked up at the hotel, as arrogant and imposing as a battleship.

“Looks like more than twenty rooms, plus a fire escape and a basement exit,” said Bimsley.

“The second and third floors are accessible by a small side entrance round the corner, but the manager keeps the gate locked. If he’s in there, Pellew’s only escape route is down through the bar and out the front, or down the rear fire escape.”

“How do you want to do this?”

“You two, cover the floors above. Arthur, you’re staying on the ground floor. The bar staff are ready to close the main doors once we’re inside. I’ll get the fire escape.”

“No-one except the manager sees what we’re doing, understood?” said Bryant. “If Pellew is panicked into running again, he may hurt someone or try to take a hostage. There’s no way of getting all the drinkers outside without tipping him off. Don’t forget that he’s armed with the kind of weapon we may not even notice him discharging.” He struggled to unlock his recalcitrant seat belt. “For heaven’s sake get me out of this bloody thing, John.”

They went in. “Bloody hell, it’s mobbed!” said Meera. “What’s going on?”

“Charity match,” a punter shouted back. “Charlton Athletic.”

Just as she asked, a mighty cheer went up. The crowd was watching their local team charge across a luminous emerald screen.

“You know what he looks like; shut everyone else out of your vision and concentrate on his face,” said May. “The birthmark makes him stand out.”

On the narrow sepia-wallpapered second floor, Bimsley ran forward with the manager, a slender Asian man armed with a fat bunch of master keys for the rooms. “We’ve hardly anyone staying here at the moment,” he explained, “certainly no-one fitting your description. There’s a service room at the end, a storeroom and another guest bedroom, but we’ve stopped renting it out because it’s got some damp problems.”

“Open it up.”

The room smelled of wet wood, old newspapers, standing water. Black stalactites crawled down the discoloured plaster cornicing of vines and grapes. A reproduction of a painting, a black boy in a golden turban, leaned against the mantelpiece. It would have been an attractive piece until one considered it against John Julius Angerstein’s background. There was no sleeping bag this time, though, no cigarette butts, no ampoule boxes, no sign of habitation at all.

“What else have you got?”

“Laundry room on the floor below. There’s another small room beside it where the linens are kept.”

They moved lightly down the fire stairs and checked each room. Bimsley made a supreme effort not to crash into anything. There was no sign of human occupancy except a few muddy sneaker prints, an empty pack of gum, and a crumpled piece of notepaper which Bimsley pocketed.

And yet there was something, a disturbance in the stillness of the atmosphere, a faint trail of warmth that was enough to tip off an experienced officer that the room had been recently entered.

“He’s around here somewhere.” Bimsley sniffed the stale air as if picking up spoor. “I’ll put money on it.”

♦

In the raucous bar the game had reached halftime, and the punters were heading back to order more beers.

Bryant leaned against a table and studied the crowd. His fingers were closed around the cell phone in his right pocket. After years of dropping them down toilets and reversing over them in his Mini Cooper, he had finally managed to keep one in working order. He watched and waited.

There was a high shriek at the corner of the bar, but the cry dropped and curled into hysterical laughter. A collective roar went up from a pride of males. Someone else shouted to mates across the room. Bryant peered through the scrum, watching the behaviour of the pack, the passing of pints over heads, the bellowed orders, the arms rested on shoulders, the hands pressed against backs, the fingers raised to catch the barman’s attention.

The barman.

The cocky little sod, Bryant thought. He can’t actually be working here! But was it Pellew, though? As the man behind the bar turned, no crimson birthmark was revealed. His complexion was quite clear. There was no mistaking his profile, however, or the feral wariness of his eyes, like the dim and dying light within a man suffering from a serious physical illness.

He’s watching the crowd too, Bryant thought. Why is he doing that? Surely he’s not thinking of taking a victim here, in front of all these people? Yes, he told himself, because he wants to be seen. He wants so badly to be stopped that there’s no other course of action left open to him.

Their eyes locked, and in the brief exchange of recognition, Pellew bolted.

The counter flap banged up in a crash of glasses and suddenly he was shouldering his way forward into the human forest.

Bryant flipped open his phone and hit Redial, knowing that the call sign would trigger his partner’s return. He made his way toward Pellew, pushing drinkers aside with his stick.

One of the other barmen was standing in front of the door, blocking it, suddenly aware of fast movement. A stool rose above heads, wavered and was thrown, smashing the largest window in the saloon.

He saw Pellew’s back and shoulders rising above the assembly as he climbed up onto a table, heard the crunch of glass as he vaulted out into the street. The others were arriving now, and all hell was kicking up – the crowd startled into action, the barman getting shoved aside, the main door slamming back – and then they were out on the road running after him.

Bryant could not keep up, and leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath as Bimsley shouted for their suspect to stop.

Meera had been on her way down the stairs when Pellew made his move. Now she too was outside, sprinting after him as he hammered around the corner into Westerdale Road, not realising that he had blundered into a cul-de-sac created by the motorway ahead.

As she closed in fast behind him, she thought, Where can he go? Into one of the houses? She was drawing neck and neck with Bimsley when Pellew flung himself at the pebble-dashed concrete slabs of the motorway wall. She knew that if he managed to cross the six lanes to its far side, he would be home free.

“Colin, no,” she called as the DC showed no signs of slowing down. “You’ll get killed!”

She knew he could hear her but would not stop, and watched in horror as he too jumped at the wall, curling his broad hands over the edge, swinging his legs to one side and hauling himself to the top before vanishing over the other side.

Colin found himself facing the Friday night rush-hour traffic – three lanes of headlights and three beyond that of taillights, racing into the city dusk. Ahead, one lane in, Pellew had lurched to a stop amid honking horns, teetering on the broken line, waiting to run again. If he managed to vault the wall on the far side, he’d hit the railway embankment, which branched and ran for miles in a multitude of directions.

Having been diagnosed with DSA, the hereditary disease that caused diminished spatial awareness, Bimsley was the wrong man to be dodging speeding cars. The ground always seemed further away from him than it was, and when he walked down a passage he had to concentrate on not blundering into the walls. Now he needed to judge the relative speeds of six lanes of vehicles, and allow enough time to run across the tarmac between them.

Pellew, on the other hand, was a natural. He avoided launching himself into the paths of trucks, knowing that they would try to brake slowly to avoid shifting their loads. Instead he concentrated on the mid-sized family roadsters that sold themselves on safety features, anti-skid devices and superior braking power. He reached the central divide with ease and hopped the steel barrier to do the same on the other side.

As Meera watched with her heart in her mouth, Bimsley windmilled his arms and threw himself across two lanes at once. Vehicles swerved desperately around him.

He had decided that his only way of making it through alive would be to reduce his peripheral vision, so, with his eyes now partially shut, he lumbered toward the central divide and tried not to listen to the sound of squealing brakes.

Pellew was on the move again, pausing, darting, timing his bursts of energy, nimbly bypassing a Sainsbury’s truck as Bimsley reached the middle barrier.

Only one more lane. Pellew drew breath and lurched forward once more. This time, he failed to spot the car that the truck had just overtaken. As he glanced back at Bimsley, who was making a dash directly at him, Pellew was hit full-on by a new silver Mercedes sedan.

Pellew’s body rose and smashed against the windscreen before bouncing away into the path of cars in the slow lane, where he was hit a second and third time.

One of the swerving vehicles winged Bimsley, flipping him around and hurling him back onto the central divide.

He landed hard against the corrugated steel barrier, but this time he had the good sense to stay until the other officers arrived.