The Victoria Vanishes(30)

When Mrs Roquesby began to slide majestically from her stool, Lenska, the barmaid, thought she would snap awake, but she kept going all the way to the carpet, landing hard on her knees. Running around from behind the counter, Lenska pulled at the lady, but was unable to wake her. Mrs Roquesby’s head fell back and her wig slid off, revealing the sparse, wispy grey hair of a head that had undergone cancer therapy.

Lenska loosened the collar of her blouse and tried to find a heart beat. She looked around for help, but the bar had cleared since she had rung last orders. A thick yellow froth was leaking from the mouth of the woman in her arms. Lenska knew a little about first aid, but this was beyond her, so she laid the woman down and went to call for an ambulance.

Dan Banbury saw the world from a different perspective, usually starting at floor level. Gravity required everything to fall. Dust and skin flakes, hairs and sweat drops, everything sifted down through the atmosphere to land on the ground. Any movement stirred up the air, shifting molecules in swirls and eddies that resembled hurricane patterns on weather charts, and tumbling particles cascaded from one resting place to the next. You could track them if you were able to define the direction of the air current. Sometimes particle movement would lead you back towards the source of a disturbance; it was like hunting in reverse.

Banbury’s long-suffering wife was all too aware of his enthusiasm for exploring the detritus of death, as it took the form of ruined trousers and jacket sleeves, and since he hated buying new clothes, she was forever racing to the dry cleaner’s in her lunch break. Even now he was lying on the carpet of the Old Bell public house, pushing strips of sticky tape along the underside of the counter, which appeared not to have been cleaned since Boswell propped up the bar.

‘I’m glad you managed to keep Bryant away for once,’ he muttered through clenched teeth, for he was holding a pencil torch in his mouth. ‘It’s a mystery how he always manages to make a mess of any crime scene.’

‘He’s gone to see someone about improving his memory,’ John May explained. ‘He forgot the urn containing Finch’s ashes, and now he’s feeling guilty. He got a crack on the noggin and lost the plot a while back. I’m wondering if he’s suffered some kind of a relapse. Are you getting anything down there?’

‘Far too much, that’s the problem. It’ll take chromatography to sort out the tangle of dead cells that have drifted down here. Forensically speaking, this sort of place is my worst nightmare. Dog hairs, crisps, meat pies, beer, mud flecks, skin, mites, a few mouse droppings, it’s like Piccadilly Circus.’

‘You’re sure she was alone?’ May asked the barmaid.

‘She ordered a drink and sat in the corner,’ said Lenska. ‘I can show you the till receipt.’

‘So she was here by herself for about forty minutes. Look like she was waiting for someone, did she?’

‘Maybe, I don’t know. I think I saw her check her watch a couple of times.’

‘And she didn’t speak to anyone else?’

‘She was reading a copy of the Metro – actually, there was someone else. Some guy talked to her. He ordered two drinks, so I guess he bought her one.’

‘What was he like?’

‘I wasn’t really paying attention. Early thirties, maybe, I didn’t really take him in.’

‘You wouldn’t be able to recognize him again?’

‘God, no. I didn’t register his face at all – he was just one of those blokes you always get in a pub like this, sort of invisible.’

‘You didn’t see him leave?’

‘No. I had to go downstairs to change barrels. When I came back up he’d gone, and she was alone. Right after that she fell off her stool. I thought she was drunk.’

‘If it’s the same MO, Kershaw reckons he’ll find traces of benzodiazepine again,’ said May to Banbury. ‘She had a red mark at the base of her skull like a sting, possibly from a needle. Whoever did this has found an effective method of disposal, and is probably planning to stick with it.’

‘Interesting choice of phrase there,’ said Banbury. ‘Disposal. That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? He can’t be getting sexual gratification, and presumably he’s not gaining anything financially from his victims, so why is he doing it? Plus, he’s picked the worst possible place to get away with murder, acting inside a roomful of strangers. I’m no psychologist, but you don’t think that’s it, do you?’

‘An act of exhibitionism, taking a risk in front of the punters? Possible, I suppose. Murder is an intensely revealing act, best performed in privacy. Seems a bit perverse to stage it as some kind of public performance. Besides, do people pay much attention to each other in pubs? You tend to concentrate on the friends you’ve come out with. I’m sure if Bryant was here he’d regale us with a potted history of public murder. She’s roughly the same age as the other two. Is he looking to take revenge on a mother substitute? What were they doing drinking alone?’