The Victoria Vanishes
THE VICTORIA VANISHES
Christopher fowler
The
Victoria
Vanishes
a peculiar crimes unit mystery
—-
Christopher Fowler
bantam books
THE VICTORIA VANISHES
A Bantam Book / November 2008
Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Fowler
Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fowler, Christopher. The Victoria vanishes / Christopher Fowler. p. cm.
elSBN: 978-0-553-90513-7
1. May, John (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Bryant, Arthur (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Detectives—England—London—Fiction. 4. Bars (Drinking establishments)—Fiction. 5. London (England)— Fiction. 6. Serial murderers—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6056.O846W38 2005 823'.914—dc22 2007049681
"It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety."
—Thomas de Quincey,
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
THE VICTORIA VANISHES
PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT
1b Camden Rd London NW1 0JP
DUTY ROSTER FOR MONDAY 26th FEBRUARY
Raymond Land, Acting Unit Chief
Arthur Bryant, Senior Detective
John May, Senior Detective
Janice Longbright, Detective Sergeant
Dan Banbury, Crime Scene Manager/ Information Technology
Giles Kershaw, Forensics / Pathology
Meera Mangeshkar,
Detective Constable Colin Bimsley,
Detective Constable April May, Office Manager / Liaison
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE OFFICE WILL BE CLOSING AT 4:00 P.M. TODAY, IN ORDER TO ALLOW STAFF TO ATTEND THE FUNERAL OF OUR PATHOLOGIST, OSWALD ELIAS FINCH.
A NON-DENOMINATIONAL SERVIC
E WILL BE
CONDUCTED AT ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH AT 4:30 P.M.
DRINKS WILL BE SERVED UPSTAIRS AT THE DEVEREUX PUB, OFF ESSEX STREET, THE STRAND, FROM 6:00 P.M.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH MR FINCH'S WISHES, PLEASE DO NOT SEND FLOWERS TO THE CHURCH. INSTEAD, YOU CAN MAKE CONTRIBUTIONS
C/O:
NHS Trust Ward ES Psychiatric Unit Broadhampton Hospital Lavender Hill London SE5 8AZ
STAFF BULLETINS
WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CLEARING OUT THE BAYHAM STREET MORGUE AND REFITTING IT AS A GRADE 4 'SECURE HYGIENE' AREA, SO PERSONAL ITEMS MAY NO LONGER BE KEPT HERE. THIS NOTICE ESPECIALLY APPLIES TO THE PERSON WHO LEFT A BOX OF MAYNARD'S 'OLDE TYME' WINE GUMS AND A JAR OF BRANSTON PICKLE IN ONE OF THE CADAVER DRAWERS.
NEXT MONDAY THE PCU FILM CLUB WILL BE SHOWING 'IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY' WITH GOOGIE WITHERS. THIS WAS SERGEANT LONGBRIGHT'S CHOICE, SO ALL THOSE WHO WERE EXPECTING A SCREENING OF THE NEW MARTIN SCORSESE FILM SHOULD ADDRESS THEIR COMPLAINTS TO HER.
PLEASE READ THE NEW RECOMMENDED GUIDELINES ON SUSPECT SEARCHES AND CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY. SUSPECTS HAVE RIGHTS, APPARENTLY, EVEN IF YOU THINK THEY MIGHT HAVE CUT OFF SOMEONE'S HEAD AND LEFT IT IN THEIR FRIDGE. DON'T BLAME ME, I DON'T MAKE THE RULES.
THIS THURSDAY'S EVENING CLASS, TO BE GIVEN BY RAYMOND LAND ON 'POLICEWORK AND THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING,' HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST.
PLEASE NOTE THAT SARDINES IN SUNFLOWER OIL DO
NOT AGREE WITH CRIPPEN, AS THE PERSON WHO STACKED THEIR OUTGOING MAIL NEAR HIS LITTER TRAY WILL DISCOVER TO THEIR DISADVANTAGE.
1
ASLEEP IN THE STARS
S
he had four and a half minutes left to live. She sat alone at the cramped bar of the Seven Stars and stared forlornly into her third empty glass of the evening, feeling invisible.
The four-hundred-year-old public house was tucked be-hind the Royal Courts of Justice. It had been simply furnished with a few small tables, wooden booths and framed posters of old British courtroom movies. Mrs Curtis had been coming here for years, ever since she had first become a legal secretary, but every time she came through the door, she imagined her father's disapproval of her drinking alone in a London pub. It wasn't something a vicar's daughter should do.
Hemmed in by barristers and clerks, she could not help wondering if this was all that would be left for her now. She wanted to remain in employment, but companies had grown clever about making women of a certain age redundant. After her last pay-off, she had spent time working for a philosophical society instead of heading back into another large firm. Now she was waiting for—what exactly? Someone to surprise her, someone to appreciate her, someone—
She stared back into the melting ice cubes.
Her name was Naomi, but her colleagues called her Mrs Curtis. What was the point of having an exotic name if no-body used it? She was sturdy-beamed and rather plain, with thick arms and straight bangs of greying hair, so perhaps she looked more like a Curtis to others. If she had married, per-haps she would have gained a more appealing surname. She regretted having nothing to show for
the past except the pass
ing marks of time.
She checked the message on her cell phone again. It was brief and unsigned, but casual acquaintances sometimes called and suggested a drink, then fail
ed to turn up; the legal profes
sion was like that. Looking around the bar, she saw no-one she recognised. Friends usually knew where to find her.
'Give me another Gordon's, darling. Better make it a double.'
Adorable boy,
she thought. The barman was impossibly slim, probably not much older than twenty-one, and didn't regard her with pity, just gave her the same friendly smile he bestowed on everyone else. Probably Polish;
the ones who worked in bars now were quick to show pleasure, and had a rather old-fashioned politeness about them that she admired.
She touched her hair and watched him at work. She would never eat alone in a restaurant, but taking a drink by herselfin a pub was different. Nobody knew her past here, or cared. For once, there were no tourists in, just the Friday night after-office crowd jammed into the tiny narrow rooms and spread out across the pavement on an unnaturally warm winter night. It had to be a lot colder than this to stop the city boys from drinking outside.
When she noticed him, it seemed he had been standing at her side for a while, trying to get served.'Here,' she said, pushing back her stool,
'get in while you can.'
'Thanks.' He had a nice profile, but quickly turned his head from her, probably because of shyness. He was a lot younger than she, slightly built, with long brown hair that fell across his face. There was something distantly recognisable about him. 'Can I get you one while I'm here?' he asked.
Rather a common voice,
she thought.
South London. But definitely familiar. Someone I've talked to after a few gins?
'Go on, then, I'll have another Gordon's, plenty of ice.'
He slid the drink over to her, looking around. 'I wonder if it's always this crowded.'
'Pretty much. Don't even think about finding your way to the toilets, they're up those stairs.' She pointed to the steep wooden passageway where a pair of tall prosecutors were making a meal out of having to squeeze past each other.
He muttered something, bu
t it was lost in a burst of rau
cous laughter behind them. 'I'm sorry, what did you say?' she asked.
'I said it feels like home in here.' He turned to her. She tried not to stare.
'My home was never like this.'
'You know what I mean. Cosy. Warm. Sort of friendly.'
Is he just being friendly,
she thought,
or is it something else?
He was standing rather too close to her, and even though it was nice to feel the heat of his arm against her shoulder, it was not what she wanted. In a pub li
ke this everyone's space was in
vaded;
trespass was part of the attraction. But she did not want—was not looking f
or—anything else, other than an
other drink, and then another.
He showed no inclination to move away. Perhaps he was lonely, a stranger in town. He liked the pubs around here, he told her, Penderel's Oak, the Old Mitre, the Punch Tavern, the Crown & Sugarloaf.
'Seen the displays in the window outside this place?' he asked.
She turned and glanced at the swinging pub sign above the door, seven gold-painted stars arranged in a circle. The wind was rising. In the windows below, legal paraphernalia had been arranged in dusty tableaux.
'Wigs and gowns, dock briefs. All that stuff for defending criminals, nonces and grasses.' He spoke quickly, almost angrily. She couldn't help wondering if he'd had trouble with the police.
'I used to meet my girlfriend in pubs like this. After she left me I got depressed, thought of topping myself. That's why I keep this.' He dug in his pocket and showed her a slender al-loy capsule, a shiny bullet with his name etched onto the side. 'It's live ammunition. If things get too much I'd use it on my-self, no problem. Only I haven't got a gun.' He'd finished his beer.'Get you another?'
She wanted more gin but demurred, protested, pushing her stool back by an inch. He seemed dangerous, unpredictable, in the wrong pub. He took her right arm by the elbow and guided it back onto the bar with a smile, but gripped so firmly that she had no choice. She l
ooked around; most of the stand
ing men and women had their backs to her, and were lost in their own conversation. Even the barman was facing away. A tiny, crowded pub, the safest place she could imagine, and yet she suddenly felt trapped.
'I really don't want another drink. In fact I think I have to—' Was she raising her voice to him? If so, no-one had noticed.
'This is a good place. Nice and busy. I think you should stay. I want you to stay.'
'Then you have to let go—' But his grip tightened. She reached out with her left hand to attract the attention of the barman but he was moving further away.
'You have to let go—'
It was ridiculous, she was surrounded by people but the noise of laughter and conversation was drowning her out. The crush of customers made her even more invisible. He was hurting her now. She tried to squirm out of his embrace.
Something stung her face hard. She brought her free hand to her cheek, but there was nothing. It felt like an angry wasp, trapped and maddened in the crowded room. Wasn't it too early in the year for such insects?
And then he released her arm, and she was dropping, away through the beery friendship of the bar, away from the laughter and yeasty warmth of life, into a place of icy, infinite starlight.
Into death.
2
THE FIRST FAREWELL
E
arly Monday in Leicester Square. On a blue-grey morning like this the buildings looked heavier, more real somehow in rain than in sunlight. Drizzle drifted on a chill breeze from the north-east. The sky that smudged the rooftops felt so low you could reach up and touch it.
John May, Senior Detective at the Peculiar Crimes Unit, looked around as he walked. He saw cloud fragments in lakes on broken pavements. Shop shutters rolling up. Squirrels lurking like ticket touts. Pigeons eating pasta. Office workers picking paths through roadworks as carefully as cats crossing stones.
The doorways that once held homeless kids in sleeping bags now contained plastic sacks of empty champagne bottles, a sign of the city's spiralling wealth. Piccadilly Circus was once the hub of the universe, but today only tourists loitered beside the statue of Eros, trying to figure out how to cross the Haymarket without being run over.
Every city has its main attraction,
May thought as he negoti
ated a route through the dining gutter-parrots in the square.
Rome has the Colosseum, Paris the Tour Eiffel, but for Londoners, Leicester Square is now the king. It seems to have wrested the capital's crown away from Piccadilly Circus to become our new focal point.
He skirted a great puddle, avoided a blank-faced boy handing out free newspapers, another offering samples of chocolate cake.
This is the only time of the day that Leicester Square is bearable,
he thought.
I hate it at night. The sheer number of people standing around, what do they all wait here for? They come simply because it's Leicester Square. There's not even a chance they'll spot Tom Cruise having his photo taken on a girl's cell phone, because everyone knows film premieres only take place on weeknights. There's nothing to see other than a giant picture of—who is it this week?—Johnny Depp outside the Odeon cinema, plus a very small park, the cheap ticket kiosk and those parlours selling carpet-tile pizzas that you could dry-stone a wall with. At least Trafalgar Square has Nelson.
The scene before him was almost devoid of people, and could not reveal the diegesis of so many overlapping lives. The city was shaped by assembly,
proximity and the need for com
panionship.
Lone wolves can live in the hills, but London is for the terminally sociable.
May caught sight of himself in a shop window. On any other day, he would have been pleased to note how neatly he fitted his elegant suit. He had remained fit and attractive de-spite his advancing years. His hair had greyed, but his jaw and waist were impressively firm, his colouring healthy, his energy level consistently high.
All the more reason to be angry,
he thought, but today he had good reason to be ill-tempered. He had just come to the realisation that he might very well be dying.