The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

32

Pigmentation

These days, Arthur Bryant seemed to be spending more and more time in hospital, less for himself than to visit others. So many of his friends had reached the age where their ailments required overnight stays rather than a mere course of pills. This evening, he had Bimsley in one ward getting his ribs bandaged and his left tarsals strapped into an ankle brace, Longbright sleeping off the effects of her poisoning in a nearby bed and Anthony Pellew downstairs in the morgue. Their suspect’s legs had been shattered by the first impact, but his skull had been crushed by the second, and he had died in seconds. Although the traffic had been moving at a fairly swift pace, none of the drivers had ended up joining them in the wards.

Bryant shambled through the ward looking for Bimsley, pulling back curtains and frightening patients. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “The shop was out of grapes so I brought you a hat.” He tossed a baseball cap that read world’s best mum on Bimsley’s bed and plonked himself down beside it. “Oh, and something for you to read.” He fished out his dog-eared paperback of An Informal History of the Black Death. “You’ll be up on your feet – or at least, foot – in a day or two. You were bloody lucky.”

“If you call getting hit by the wing mirror of a Ford Mondeo lucky,” Bimsley complained. “It couldn’t have been a Ferrari, could it?”

“If it had been, you might not be here. What’s the damage?”

“My hip’s pretty bashed up, some torn ligaments, one broken rib, left ankle sprained, some surface cuts.”

“I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about, then,” said Bryant. “Pellew’s legs are facing the wrong way and his head looks like a dropped meringue.”

“Yeah, but I’m on the correct side of the law, sir.”

“Righteousness does not protect you from injury. I know you meant well, going after him like that, but you might have panicked him into the traffic. Pellew was a former mental patient, after all. Renfield’s furious with you, but I’ve persuaded him not to make a fuss about what happened.”

“Pellew had been released, sir, even though he was still dangerous.”

“Well, we’ve still to get to the bottom of that. It’s looking like he deliberately targeted his victims after all. April discovered that three of the five victims falsified their resumes, claimed they were working for non-existent companies or ones that were in liquidation. It would seem they didn’t even tell their partners or families the truth about their jobs, just trotted off to work every day and came home in the evening as if everything was normal.”

“I don’t understand,” said Bimsley. “What does that mean? Where were they going?”

“Where indeed?” Bryant narrowed his eyes. “To a place where they might have come into contact with Anthony Pellew, perhaps.”

“The Broadhampton.”

“No – we’ve already checked the clinic’s employment records. Somewhere else. Have a think while you’re lying there, old sausage, it’ll give you something to do.”

“Do me a favour and open that, sir.” Bimsley pointed to his locker. “There should be a piece of paper inside.” Bryant pulled out the single mud-stained sheet and gingerly unscrewed it.

“I found it on the floor of one of the rooms in the Angerstein,” Bimsley said. “It’s not much, but I’m pretty sure Pellew had been there. It might have come from him.”

Bryant found himself looking at a scribbled doodle. It appeared to be of a bird sitting atop a tree stump. “Thanks, no idea what this might be but I’ll check it out.” He rose to leave, then stopped. “By the way, young Meera wanted to come and see you, but I had to send her to interview Carol Wynley’s partner.”

“I don’t suppose she could be bothered to leave me a message.”

“Would it raise your spirits and aid your recovery if I told you she did?”

Bimsley attempted to affect an air of disinterest. “It might.”

Bryant thought for a moment. “Fine, Meera said to get well soon and hurry back. No, I’m joking, she didn’t say anything at all. Sorry.”

♦

“What the bloody hell were you doing there by yourself?” asked Renfield, who was attempting to keep his voice down on the women’s ward. “You’re not supposed to conduct those kinds of searches unaccompanied.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Longbright. She tried to focus on the sclerotic sergeant perched on the edge of her visitor’s chair.

“Just for a while. I’ve been watching you sleep,” Renfield admitted.

“I didn’t need you to come with me.” Longbright pushed at her pillows, trying not to disturb the saline drip attached to her wrist. “Arthur said that Pellew wanted to be stopped. I’ve done this sort of thing plenty of times before.”

“And that’s exactly why you had your guard down,” said Renfield. “You’d be in a body-bag downstairs if he hadn’t misjudged your size. Pellew didn’t turn himself in, so part of him must have wanted to remain at large, and that made him extremely dangerous. Your boss had it wrong.”

“Have they said how long I have to stay in here?”

“They’ve got to finish flushing out your system. You’ll be allowed home tomorrow.” He fought down a smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’ve never seen you without makeup.”

My God, thought Longbright, I don’t think anyone has ever seen me without makeup. “I’ll stay until the doctor comes by. Give me something to do until then, Jack. Get me the case notes.”

“You’re supposed to rest.” Renfield looked about the ward. Two constables were walking a shouting, handcuffed drunk woman past the beds.

“All right, Steve? Joey?” Renfield called. They nodded curtly to him, but carried on without stopping to speak.

She watched the officers pass. “You must be missing your mates in the Met.”

“Well, they don’t bloody miss me,” said Renfield, looking back. “They won’t even say hello to me now.”

“So you finally know how the rest of us feel. Look at the state of your fingernails. It’s stress.” Longbright lowered her head back to the pillow. “Being on the unit takes over your life until there’s nothing else left. The day I joined the PCU even the duty officers at Bayham Street stopped talking to me. They thought I was waving two fingers at them, getting out to move on to a cushy number. They didn’t know I took a drop in pay and position just to work where my mother once worked. I slogged away in the Met in order to build up respect and credibility, and lost it all on the day I moved across to join John and Arthur. My partner left me, my civilian friends went away, I have nothing left but the unit. The same thing will happen to you.”

“It already did.” Renfield looked down at his toe caps. “Four years ago last month. My girlfriend died in Manchester, on duty.”

“I never heard about that.”

“I didn’t tell many people. She’d been working up on Moss Side, liaising with immigration officers for a couple of years. One Saturday night in the middle of winter some bloke had a go at her outside a rough-as-guts nightclub, just a punch in the neck, but she’d had a couple of rums before she went on duty. She went down heavily, bruised herself, suffered traumatic shock. Went home not feeling well and died in bed that night. Those two drinks meant the difference between burial with full honours and dismissal with nothing at all. You wonder why I prefer to stick to the rule book. So when you say you have nothing left, you know how I feel.”

“I think I preferred you when you were being unpleasant to everyone,” she said with a sigh.

“You know I don’t approve of the way the PCU goes about things, but I’m trying to learn, understood?”

Longbright gave a small smile and held out her unfettered hand. “Understood.”

♦

Giles Kershaw was below the pavement of Euston Road, in the UCH morgue, talking to Alex Reynolds, the admitting surgeon. The remains of Anthony Pellew lay in the tray before them, being cleaned, opened and weighed.

“No birthmark on his face,” noted Kershaw, holding back his hair as he leaned over the body.

“You were expecting one?” asked Reynolds. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a cap? Or don’t they bother with them at the PCU morgue?”

“Actually, we’re skilled enough to sort out our own fibres from those of our suspects at the PCU, thanks,” retorted Kershaw coolly. “We’ve got this man down with nevus flammeus.”

Reynolds could not recall the term. “Remind me.”

“Port-wine facial markings. They’re formed at birth.”

“Then you’ve got the wrong man, haven’t you?”

“No, I don’t think we have. I need to get a tissue sample.” Kershaw took a closer look. Anthony Pellew had not been taking care of himself. His nails were split, the cuticles bitten and torn. A cracked front tooth, bad skin due to a poor diet, wornout underclothes, worn-out sneakers. And deep in his hairline, miniscule red specks.

Kershaw withdrew tweezers and lifted the dots into a small plastic pouch, but he could already identify the substance by its odour: lipstick. Pellew had applied the so-called birthmark with artificial colouring. Why? Was it due to some mental aberration, a form of tribal disguise, part of the ritual of killing? Or could there be a stranger reason that added method to his madness?

This case isn’t over, he thought. It looks like the real work is only just beginning.