White Corridor

33

“We’ve rather got our hands full here, Janice,” said John May impatiently. “What can we do for you now?”

“I’m sorry, John, it’s just that I’ve never had a problem like this, and I couldn’t phone Arthur again. I know you wanted us to sort out the investigation without your help, but if we don’t find a solution to Oswald’s death before the Home Office descends on us with their royal patron, we’re finished. I thought it would help if I could talk to you.”

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Deportment,” said Longbright. “Lilith Starr was taking a course in it. She put the appointments in her diary.”

“Deportment? I presume you don’t mean getting thrown out of the country?”

“No, I mean walking around with a book on your head, carrying yourself well, learning how to sit. It’s a very old-fashioned approach to being finished. Girls in the sixties were packed off to Swiss schools to learn social skills befitting the highborn. Essentially, they learned how to make themselves attractive to men and serve them well.”

“I don’t understand. Why would a doped-up girl living in a Camden squat want to do that?” asked May. “You don’t think she was entertaining some fantasy about becoming a high-priced call girl?”

“That’s just what I wondered,” replied Longbright. “She would have to have been introduced into an organisation- the ones in Mayfair and the Edgeware Road that provide girls for hotels and wealthy clients are very tightly run these days. Mills wouldn’t have the right connections.”

“Which leaves the former boyfriend, Sam. You think he pimped for her, was maybe grooming her? It might go some way towards explaining why she fell out with him.”

“Exactly.”

“Perhaps you’d better pay her ”finishing school“ a quick visit.”

“If I can arrange it in time,” Longbright agreed. “That’s the one thing I don’t have. Arthur thinks that Owen Mills is the key to all this, but we’ve got no further with him.”

May thought for a moment. “Are Giles and Dan absolutely sure that Oswald Finch was murdered?”

“They’re unshakable. It means he was killed about an hour and a half after Mills left.”

“What if Mills is lying? He lied about his girlfriend, didn’t he? He could have come to the morgue and picked a fight with Finch, giving him a couple of smacks in the neck and chest, bringing on the thrombotic trauma.”

“He’s sullen, but I can’t see him slapping anyone about,” said Longbright.

“All right, even if he didn’t kill Finch, what if he found him already dead, and closed the door behind him as he left, leaving the room sealed?”

“Again the timing is wrong, and besides, there’s no reason why he would do that. Arthur always says there’s a rational motive at the root of everything.”

“Not since the Highwayman case, he doesn’t. The outcome of that investigation shook him up badly. He says he no longer understands the young, so he certainly wouldn’t know what to make of Mills.”

“All right, using another criterion of Arthur’s, I’d say it just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think the boy lies, so much as he simply omits the truth.”

“Mills has to be the link, Janice. Without him you have nothing. What about the dead girl? Renfield brought her in; have you spoken to him yet?”

‘Renfield.“ Longbright shuddered.

Sergeant Renfield had no interest in what anyone thought of him, which was just as well, because nobody thought much of him at all. Bitterness is an unattractive trait in a middle-aged man, and his stemmed from the fact that he had been passed over for promotion with such consistency that he could only imagine there was a conspiracy against him. There was not, as it happened; only vague dislike for a misanthropic, charmless desk sergeant who believed in guilt without proof and punishment without conditions. He performed his duties with a certain solid thoroughness, but seemed so lacking in human understanding that it was a mystery why he had decided on a career in the police. Renfield suspected everyone of breaking the law, especially the innocent, but was prepared to look favorably on his own men whenever they behaved badly. This moral blindness bestowed upon him a small team of loyal acolytes, but had also earned him an unsavoury reputation. His redeeming feature, a loyalty to the letter of the law, was the same quality that held him back. He was particularly disliked by women, who sensed that his leering eye would probably be accompanied by a roving hand if he thought he could get away with it. Renfield was considered by the PCU to be a throwback, low, wide and hairy-shouldered, too set in his ways and too stubborn to learn better behaviour, and yet perversely, there was a broad streak of decency buried within him.

“I wonder what you’re here for, Longbright,” he mused without looking up at her. He had a cold, and was surrounded by wet balls of tissue. “I hear your bosses are stuck in a snowdrift. You lot must be running about like headless chickens without someone to tell you what to do.”

“I was just passing, and thought I’d check on that girl you took around to Mr. Finch on Tuesday morning.” As far as she knew, the unit had successfully hushed up news of Oswald’s demise, but someone was bound to notice that something was wrong when they found the doors to the Bayham Street Morgue locked.

“I thought Finch would be on the blower with some kind of report by now.” Renfield blasted another tissue apart and set it aside. “Poor old sod shouldn’t still be working at his age. He’ll peg out on the job one day, wait and see.”

“He doesn’t have to report to you, Renfield.” Longbright wondered, Has he heard something?

“No, but he never misses a chance to give my lads a hard time. I told him she was just another Camden junkie, but he started arguing with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He reckoned she didn’t show the classic signs, or fit the mould or something. You know how he goes on, you stop listening after a while. Told us we should have been more thorough. It’s all right for him, with one weirdo to deal with each week; he should try keeping up with our quotas-‘

“I don’t understand,” said Longbright. “Thorough about what?”

“He wanted us to go back to the scene and check for proof of an overdose, but by the time we got there the street cleaners had been along.”

“You didn’t cordon off the site?”

“Don’t you bloody start,” Renfield complained as he miserably dragged another tissue from the box. “We did everything by the book. It’s all laid down in black and white so that my lads don’t have to keep stopping and working things out for themselves.”

That’s exactly the problem, thought Longbright as she left Camden Town Police Station. Good officers were like good doctors, relying on their innate morality to clear a path through restricting rules. The PCU took that approach to some kind of ne plus ultra. Well, it’s time to raise the stakes, she thought, flipping her collar against the falling sleet. I’d rather break the law than see the unit taken away from us now.