The Victoria Vanishes (30 page)

'I haven't noticed, you're always horrible.' Alma sniffed.
'But I know you don't mean any harm, so I never pay much mind.'

'You're very good to me, you know.'

'I know.' Unimpressed with this late display of sentiment, his landlady went off to make the chocolate.

It was early morning, and the streets were still milky with mist. He rang the doorbell again, and this time the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped. Bryant looked around at the front garden, where a motor scooter had been carelessly parked on top of some diseased-looking begonias. There were slates falling off the roof, and a pair of front-door keys were sticking out of a hanging basket of dead snowdrops, where every thief in the neighbourhood could see them.

He waited while somebody thumped and crashed toward the front door. He usually went to the deconsecrated chapel in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, to see his old friend, but this morning he had decided to catch her at home in the little terraced house on Avenell Road, Finsbury Park. Maggie Armitage, the white witch from the coven of St James the Elder, opened the door in yellow rubber gloves and a purple pinafore. Bryant wondered if she had been taking fashion tips from Alma.

'I'm afraid you caught me hoovering,' said Maggie, snapping off her gloves to give him a hug. She had dyed her hair bus-red and painted on the kind of lipstick that could only be removed from a collar with a nail-brush.

'I thought you preferred things dusty.' Bryant gave her a squeeze.
'You shouldn't leave your keys in the flowerpot.'

'It's all right, I put a curse on them. And I don't mind a bit of dust, but I draw the line at involuntary emissions of
ectoplasm. Maureen had a visit from Captain Smollet last night and got it all over the place. It might be good for the purging of tortured souls but it's a bugger to get out of the carpet. Maureen's familiars are all military men. I'm not sure if it's because she held her first seance near the Chelsea Barracks, or if she just likes a man in a uniform. Come in and have some breakfast.'

Maggie remained the PCU's affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic analysis, but she was prepared to offer advice on any number of subjects from numerology a
nd necromancy to pet horo
scopes and the care of orchi
ds. Her information was spiritu
ally sound but lacking in logic and probability.

Bryant entered the hall, climbing past a bicycle and all kinds of junk, including what appeared to be an old Mr Whippy ice cream machine. Her little house was always overflowing with dead people's belongings, which made it simultaneously cosy and creepy. 'What do you know about conspiracy theory?' he asked.

'Not really my subject, lovey. You need Dame Maud Hackshaw for that.' 'Can I contact her?'

'I imagine so; she's in the kitchen straightening out my spoons. She's been practisi
ng her parapsychology on my cut
lery. Come through.'

Maggie ushered her visitor through to a kitchen cluttered with Wiccan icons, headless Barbie dolls and mouldering sea-side souvenirs. Dame Maud Hackshaw, a mauve-haired, pearl-festooned Grade III witch from the coven of St James the Elder, stared at Bryant through the thickest spectacles he had ever seen.

'Hello, ducks, how are you?' she demanded. 'We met in an army truck outside Dartmoor, remember? And this week I was introduced to your lovely lady sergeant at the Sutton Arms. She's got the gift of second sight, which is nice for her. Doesn't realise it at the moment, of course, still a bit too young. They never do until they're in their second blossom.'

'Maggie says you know a th
ing or two about conspiracy the
ories,' said Bryant, gingerly examining several teaspoons that had been twisted into silver spirals.

'They're usually supposed to involve covert alliances of the rich and powerful, brought together to deceive the general populace,' said Dame Maud, rubbing hard at a set of fish knives. 'The most common ones involve a 9/11 cover-up, Zionist global domination, Kennedy, Monroe, the Bavarian Illuminati, the moon landings, the New World Order. For some reason, they seem to be mostly American these days. They've been described as "the exhaust fumes of democracy," a kind of release valve for the pressures of living in an intense consumer society, but of course such theories go back to Roman times.'

'I see.' Bryant was unfazed by women like Dame Maud. He had been around them all his life.

'Europe is traditionally associated with old-world conspiracies to do with the Vatican, the Knights Templars, the hidden meanings of the Codex Argenteus—basically anything with Latin derivatives. It's human nature to try and make sense out of chaos, to join the dots and come up with a picture. And of course it's a guilty pleasure, as long as you don't take it all at face value.'

'What do you know about the Cato Street Conspiracy?' asked Bryant, accepting Maggie's offer of a slice of strangely heavy bread pudding.

'That was real, of course: a plan to bring down the government, like the Gunpowder Plot. Conspiracies are not necessarily the product of overheated imaginations.'

'Would you say there are ones we could consider true today?'

Almost certainly,' said Dame Maud, shining the cutlery and carefully replacing it piece by piece.
'There are corporate conspiracies to keep company prices
artificially inflated, and gov
ernment schemes to slip through parliamentary bills under the cover of controversial world events.' She indicated the teaspoons.
'I didn't bend these with the power of my mind, by the way, but with my fingers. It's a parlour trick. I was just showing Margaret how it was done.'

'You think your murderer was playing a similar trick on you,' said Maggie, smiling as she set down tea. There seemed to be holly in her hair, although Christmas had long gone.

'What makes you say that?'

'You wouldn't be here otherwise.'

'Do you think he was? Playing some kind of trick on us? I told you my doubts on the phone. I feel I've been hoodwinked somehow.'

'You have no reason to disbelieve this person's history, have you?'

'That's the problem;
I don't,' said Bryant, a little perplexed. 'It's all true. And his culpability has been proven beyond doubt.'

'Then he must be cleverer than you imagined.'

Bryant munched his pudding thoughtfully and somewhat carefully.
'But to what end?'

'In conspiracy theory there's the issue of
cui bono,
"who stands to gain?" You must ask yourself the same question. If your chap Pellew is found guilty of these murders, who is the beneficiary? Certainly not the doctor who discharged him, for he can only appear in a bad light after the confirmation that his patient has been released to commit murder. Who else? Five women are dead. Who gains an advantage from their deaths?'

'Someone who featured in all of their lives. Someone who was important to each one of
them.' 'Someone you haven't found.'

'We've made detailed ex
aminations of their recent move
ments.' Bryant sighed.
'There's a dark patch on the X ray, so to speak, a period when they all just—went missing.'

'There you are,' said Dame Maud, who had been so sensible up until this point.
‘
Alien abduction.'

'No, dear, he thinks t
hey worked together,' Maggie ex
plained, 'doing something they couldn't tell their relatives about.'

'Oh, ladies of the night? Jezebels, is it? Painted harlots?'

'No, in an office,' said Bryant, giving Dame Maud a wary look.
'Legal secretaries.'

'I'm confused. Why would they lie to their loved ones about working in an office?'

'That's rather the question,' Bryant admitted.

'ATM machines,' said Dame Maud, perking up suddenly. 'They'll have needed lunches, won't they? Find out where they drew their money from. Women have to eat in the morning, it's a metabolism thing. Read their journey details from their Oyster cards, then check the coffee bars nearest to the stations from which they all alighted.'

'Are you sure you haven't worked with the police before?' asked Bryant.
'You have a criminal turn of mind.'

'No, dear, I haven't worked with the police.' Her moon-eyes swam innocently behind aquarium glass.

'No, but you've been in trouble with them a few times,' Maggie pointed out.

'It wasn't my fault that last time; it was your Maureen and her familiar, pulling my skirt off like that.'

'You were in the Trafalgar Square fountain swearing like a navvy.'

'I was in a state of advanced transcendentalism.'

'You were in a state of advanced inebriation, dear.'

As Bryant left the witches arguing in the little terraced house, he found himself wondering what a handful of kindly, maternal legal secretaries could have done to place themselves on the death list of a deranged killer.

37

OPEN AND SHUT

W

hat do you mean, the case isn't closed?' Raymond Land looked like someone had just thrown a bucket of iced water over him. Bryant had never seen him looking so tired. There were bags like suitcases under his eyes, and for once he hadn't tried to plaster his remaining strands of hair across his head.

'I've just told you;
we think there may be at least two more victims, people we haven't considered. They could have been kidnapped by Pellew before he made a run for it. And there's something else. Pellew was being monitored by a community warden called Lorraine Bo
nner. When he skipped his apart
ment, she notified his probation officer. The authorities knew he'd broken the terms of his release, but it looks like they did nothing about it. Why?'

'I can't go back to Faraday and tell him the case is still open. He'll have kittens.'

'I don't care about upsetting Faraday's little world when there may be human lives at stake.'

And anyway—I suppose
I'd better tell you—there's an
other problem.' Land's sigh was
like air leaking from an old ac
cordian.'Kasavian's closed the unit.'

'Again?
My dear Raymond, every time we take on a case he closes the unit. It's getting so that people come here half-expecting to find us shut at odd hours. We're a crime-detection unit, not a French patisserie.'

'Listen to me, Arthur: This
time it's for good. They've re
moved our lease on the building, with immediate effect. We're required to vacate the premises today.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Bryant scoffed, before suddenly losing confidence.
'You're not serious?'

'As a heart attack. They've sold the property. There's another department moving in on Monday at noon.'

'How long are we supposed to vacate for? Where are we to go?'

'Kasavian says we'll be rehoused eventually
, but I don't be
lieve it for a second. It really is the end of the line.'

'Oh, you've said that before. We'll continue on, we always do. I haven't finished my autobiography yet.'

'For God's sake, Bryant, be realistic for once in your life!' Land shouted, startling them both. 'We have no funding, no offices, nowhere to work, no support—nothing, you understand? It's all gone. Everything you worked for all these years, it's finished, over.' He dropped his head into his hands, surreptitiously eyeing the aspirin bottle on his desk.
'Go home, I can't talk to you anymore.'

'Well, I'm very disappointed that you won't go to bat for us,' said Bryant.
'It can't end here, you know. So long as we can pre-vent a single death, there's cause to go on.'

'Really? Are you sure you're
not doing this for yourself, be
cause you know that without the unit you have absolutely nothing left?'

'That was cruel, Raymond.' Bryant did his best to look hurt. 'You've been hanging around with people from the Home Office for too long. There was a time when you cared about doing the right thing.'

'I have to be practical about this. I looked inside the envelope you put in my jacket at Oswald's wake, Arthur. I know I wasn't supposed to, but curiosity got the better of me. You'd reached the decision to resign, and I know how you feel. Out of step with the present day. Heaven knows I've felt that often enough. I have no idea what people are thinking anymore;
all I know is that I don't like anyone very much. Some evenings I walk to the station and it seems as though every Londoner un-der forty is completely drunk. I'm getting to the point where I hate everyone. No wonder people shut themselves away. So you see, I understand your po
sition. That's why I have to ac
cept your resignation.'