‘You always get one or two by themselves in London pubs. That’s the difference between a pub and a bar,’ Banbury explained. ‘Pubs are about conviviality and community, meeting mates. Bars are for being alone in, or for meeting a stranger. So why would he pick his victims in the former? It doesn’t add up.’
‘Perhaps the killer has a mother or an older sister who was a drunk,’ Kershaw suggested. ‘If he’s in his early thirties, she’d probably be in her fifties. Are the victims all similar physical types?’
‘Not at all. Jocelyn Roquesby was fifty-six, a former copy typist and human resources officer, divorced, one daughter, no current partner, lived alone in a flat in Holloway. She had just finished a bout of treatment for breast cancer. According to the daughter she liked a drink, but never went into a pub alone unless she was meeting someone. Also, the chemotherapy made her sick if she drank. So who was she there to meet?’
Meanwhile, April had gone to the Devereux on the mission of locating Oswald Finch’s remains.
‘You were working behind the bar on the night of Mr Finch’s wake, weren’t you?’ she reminded the barmaid in the upper bar. ‘If you cashed up the till, you must have also cleared the counter, so you’d remember if there was something as odd as a funeral urn left behind on it.’
‘I told your boss, there was nothing left behind,’ said the girl, who regarded all men over thirty with narrow eyes and a cold heart. ‘People leave their briefcases, umbrellas and handbags here all the time, but it stands to reason I’d have remembered an urn.’
‘So someone took it with them.’
‘And it had to be one of your lot, because you had the room to yourselves for most of the evening. Your Peculiar Crimes Unit have a reputation for being a bunch of practical jokers, you know. The manageress warned me. They’ve had parties here before. Somebody left an inflatable sheep in the ladies’ toilet last time, frightened the life out of the cleaner.’
‘Not much of a practical joke, is it,’ said April, ‘swiping the ashes of a dead colleague?’
‘Depends on what they’re going to do with them,’ said the barmaid, with a disapproving sniff.
15
* * *
VISIBLE EVIL
Raymond Land tipped his armchair forward, cleared a steamed-up arc of glass and looked down into the street. Was there anything in the world more miserable, he wondered, than a wet Wednesday morning in Mornington Crescent? Especially when you felt you were no longer the captain of your destiny, more a third mate dragged in the undertow of someone else’s foundering vessel?
‘You and your partner like to work in a pincer movement, don’t you?’ he complained. ‘First John creeps up on me with dire warnings, and now you. Three dead, at the very least! If the Home Office get wind that the proles think it’s not safe to venture into a public house without risking death, our entire national fabric will collapse. The idea of a Britain without anyone in the boozers is unimaginable.’
Bryant lounged back on Land’s sofa and felt about in his pocket. ‘There’s no doubt about it now, cheeky chops. Three murders in London pubs, all within a mile of each other. And this new woman, Roquesby, pushes the affair much further into the public arena because her former husband was security-cleared for some kind of government work. I think there’s something really big going on here. Don’t tell me we can’t get the case prioritized now.’
‘That’s not an issue.’ Land continued searching the street below, as if expecting to find the rest of his thought there. ‘I just worry.’
‘Good Lord, I know articulacy has never been your forte, Raymondo, but at least take a stab at piecing together an entire sentence.’
‘I’m not sure the unit is up to handling something like this. It’s a potential minefield.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Bryant dug a little silver box from his pocket and flicked it open. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t taken up cocaine. I thought I’d try snuff, seeing as nobody will allow me to light my pipe.’
‘Well, suppose you fail to stop this lunatic, and in the process undermine national confidence in the security of public places?’
‘You think you’ll be given the order of the boot, don’t you?’ Bryant sniffed and sneezed abundantly. ‘This is no time to start worrying about your frankly moribund career, old sausage, there are greater issues at stake. Suppose your wife was to walk into a public house by herself for a quiet drink and a gander at the papers?’
‘Leanne would never do such a thing,’ said Land indignantly.