The Victoria Vanishes(38)

She heard his voice from far above, even though he could only be speaking in a whisper. ‘Stay with me,’ he told her. She tried to remain awake, sensing that if consciousness failed it would not return. She was young and mistrustful of men, so how could this be happening?

So unfair, she thought, so stupid. In that brief moment she felt as if all the evils in the world were there to be understood. Men were starving wolves who searched for weaknesses, and she had dropped her guard for the first – and only – time in her short life.

The Nun and Broken Compass had been shut for refurbishment, so Raymond Land’s pals from the Met had suggested going a little further afield today, seeing as they were on short shifts, and Land could basically do as he pleased now that the Home Office called the shots for his unit. Land was still laughing at the superintendent’s disgusting joke as they pocketed their dart sets and left the Albion. He didn’t like Barnsbury – too many stuck-up north London politicians living here – but the Albion was a bit of a find, bucolic and becalmed, hidden behind artful undergrowth.

While they were discussing what would be the quickest way back, the superintendent noticed the girl. She was seated upright on the bench, her head hanging over her drink. Land had been about to make a remark about birds not being able to hold their booze, when one of the others realized that something was wrong with her.

In the deepening shadows, a young black girl had fallen asleep so soundly that she had died, her soul departing on respectful tiptoe, as quietly as the fading breeze.





18





* * *





PUB CRAWL

Thursday morning at the PCU dawned in a tangle of disbelief and recriminations.

‘You were actually on the premises,’ May accused his superior, pacing the latter’s threadbare office carpet. ‘How could you not have seen what happened to this young woman?’

‘Do you know the Albion?’ asked Land angrily. ‘It’s a series of rooms, and we were out at the back having a game of arrows. How was I to know she’d been attacked?’

‘Didn’t you hear or see anything unusual at all?’

‘No, I was playing for money and concentrating on my form. I don’t think I saw another person in the pub apart from the barman, and he hardly speaks any English. This girl had apparently been stood up by her boyfriend – who is in the clear, by the way, because he was actually at a job interview in the Finchley Road Mercedes showroom and had forgotten he was meeting her. Besides, she had been sitting outside the whole time, so how was I supposed to see her?’

‘Has Giles had a chance to conduct a full examination of the body yet?’

‘No, he had to wait for the family to come in and ID her last night, but he says there’s a piercing on the side of her neck consistent with the MO on the first two – or rather four, if we count the uninvestigated cases.’

‘Our perpetrator is becoming angrier.’ Giles Kershaw was unfurled in Land’s doorway. ‘Very nearly snapped the needle off in her neck, left a circular bruise where he pushed the syringe base right up against the skin, and it looks like such a high dosage that I should imagine she died in seconds. I’m heading back to Bayham Street. Jasmina Sherwin’s father is probably going berserk.’

Kershaw flicked back his blond hair in the habitual gesture he had acquired from bending his tall frame over tissue samples. ‘Something’s out of whack. This one is different, the age, the ethnicity, the social background. I’d have said it was an entirely separate incident except that she was found in a pub and killed in the same fashion. Premeditation, obviously. But a fundamental paradox: the killer wants them to die so quietly that no one notices, and yet he chooses to kill them in public, often crowded places. It goes against all of our received wisdom.’

‘Why has he switched to a young black girl after singling out middle-aged white women?’ asked Land.

‘His lacunae, the calm gaps between his acts of violence, are closing. It’s only a few hours since he last took a life. Perhaps the need has now become so urgent that in this case it drove him into the nearest pub, and Sherwin was unlucky enough to be the only female there. The rest of the locations are grouped in roughly the same area. Does anyone mind if I take Renfield with me?’

‘What for?’ asked May.

Kershaw looked embarrassed. ‘I think Mr Sherwin might come back and try to thump someone, probably me as I’m the weediest. We’ve never had anyone at the unit who could handle trouble, and I’ve heard Renfield is pretty good in difficult situations.’

‘He gets very stroppy and shouty, if that’s what you mean,’ said May.