‘I’ll make the recommendation,’ Land sighed. ‘You’d better brief the others so we can hit the ground running.’
‘Whatever you think best, sir.’ May left the room with an inward smile, thankful that Land had failed to effect a transfer from the unit.
‘What do you mean, it’s not here?’ said Bryant with indignation. ‘Where’s it gone?’
‘It was on the bar all evening, but I don’t remember seeing it when we closed up,’ said the barmaid of the Devereux.
‘Good God, woman, it contained the poor man’s corporeal remains. It was a cremation urn.’
‘Oh. We thought you’d won it at bingo. Well, one of your lot must have taken it.’
‘You opened the bar to the general public at ten, didn’t you? It could have been anyone.’
‘A roomful of police officers,’ the barmaid sniffed. ‘Not much of an advert, is it? Rather calls your observational skills into question.’
‘Don’t you start.’ He threw her a card. ‘You’d better call me if you hear anything.’
Back on the streets of Holborn, he reread his notes on Naomi Curtis and wondered if there was really much likelihood of the two cases being connected. The only reason he had filed a note on her was because she had died in the wrong place. It was inconceivable to imagine what had brought her from a vicarage in Sevenoaks to a smoky Holborn pub at the age of fifty-four unless she was in some kind of trouble, and had arranged to meet someone inside.
Similarly, Carol Wynley had been heading home to take care of her housebound partner when she had chosen to deviate from her route. Perhaps he had muddled the streets, and she had gone into a different pub – the Skinner’s Arms on Judd Street was also on a corner and he must have passed it – but she had placed herself in a situation that led to a skull fracture.
A phone call to the Swedenborg Society confirmed both women’s employment records. Carol Wynley had taken up her predecessor’s position, but they had overlapped by a month. Bryant made notes – in his regular spindly handwriting this time – for Kershaw to check whether traces of sedative had also been found in Naomi Curtis’s body, and for Longbright to check past Dead Diaries for any other cases with shared circumstances.
Most murders were committed without the involvement of logical reasoning. In one of his notebooks, Bryant had jotted down a quote from Gary Gilmore, the first man to be executed after the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, who said that ‘murder is just a thing of itself, a rage, and rage is not reason’. In his experience, he had found most murders to have been committed in states of rage, but the PCU had been created to investigate those cases which fell beyond the normal parameters of violent death.
A vague idea began to form in his brain, one requiring proof that Carol Wynley had entered The Victoria Cross public house alone on the night she met her death. He felt sure that May would be able to get an investigation launched, but had no clear idea of how to proceed, not while a question mark hung over his ability to recall events clearly. He needed to be positive that his deductive capability was not diminished.
The third thud dislodged a framed photograph of Colin Bimsley’s father, sending it to the floor in a tinkle of glass. Bimsley reached down and gingerly removed shards from the monochrome portrait. The grim-faced young man who peered out of the picture between chinstrap and helmet peak seemed to belong to another era, possibly early Victorian. In fact, the photograph had been taken in 1958. The old police uniforms were cumbersome belted tunics with steel buttons and metal identification numbers on the epaulettes. The outfit commanded authority from the criminal fraternity because it linked directly to the past, reminding one of Sir Robert Peel, guards and dragoons and even a knight’s armour, but my God, it must have been uncomfortable to wear.
‘What on earth is he doing in there?’ Bimsley asked.
‘Putting up shelves,’ said Meera, ‘to house his collection of law-enforcement rulebooks. Renfield is planning to report all infringements the unit commits, no matter how minor.’
‘Janice hates the idea of sharing her office with him. I think she’s convinced he’s got his own private agenda.’ Bimsley carefully wrapped the broken glass with tape before placing it in the bin, but still managed to nick himself.
‘I don’t see why everyone’s so down on Renfield,’ said Meera hotly. ‘He’s only trying to bring a bit of old-school discipline to the unit.’
‘I might have known you’d support him. Renfield hasn’t the faintest understanding of how this place works. All he’ll do is spy and sabotage and screw things up.’