‘No. I’m helping to investigate her murder.’
‘My God, I had no idea.’
‘She was in a pub.’
‘Not this one?’
‘The Seven Stars in Carey Street, just down the road from here. She probably went there to meet a friend.’
‘And you think it might have been someone she met here?’
‘It’s a long shot.’ April had already told him more than she’d intended to.
‘Maybe not so long,’ said Alex. ‘She did meet someone the last time she came – a bloke in his early thirties, funny haircut, black leather overcoat. I remember thinking there was something really creepy about him. It sticks in my mind because they sat in the corner talking intensely for quite a long time, then she left very suddenly, as if they’d had a row. Mind you, she was incredibly drunk.’
‘Would you recognize him again?’
‘Possibly. I think he had something wrong with his face, some kind of purple birthmark.’
‘Was that what made him appear creepy?’
‘No, God, I hope I’m not that shallow. You know the way some people don’t behave how they should in company? He was hunched over his beer, openly staring at other women. We’re used to autistic behaviour but this was different. I’m sorry, it’s not much to go on, is it?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said April. It looked as if Curtis’s attacker had hit on her before. Perhaps he had even tried to hurt her, only to have his plans thwarted. All nine members of the PCU were out searching public houses tonight. If any of them turned up a similar description, they would finally have a suspect.
Dan Banbury found himself wedged against a wall in the claustrophobic Seven Stars pub, which was located behind Lincoln’s Inn Fields and packed to the gills with boisterous, merry legal workers. Normally he would have enjoyed himself in such an environment, but his conversation with the bar staff had been turned into a shouting match by the deafening combination of courtroom rhetoric and cheap beer.
The barmaid who had served Naomi Curtis on the night of her death could think of no other details, and was too busy to concentrate on the subject for long. Banbury jammed himself further into the corner with his pint and wondered. What kind of man would she have allowed close? In his experience women preferred cocktail bars to pubs, especially ones this intimate and rowdy. He felt sure that she could only have come in here to meet a man. This kind of pub was the choice of a male.
With difficulty, he unfolded the spreadsheet April had supplied and checked the notes she had printed. The same injected overdose of sedative, giving symptoms that had been mistaken for heat stroke. A quick, virtually painless method of killing, putting someone to sleep so easily and quietly that their death could pass unnoticed in a crowded bar. Naomi Curtis wasn’t rich, had no unusual beneficiaries, no one who might profit excessively from her demise. It seemed unlikely to have been anyone she knew, which meant that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This place was a crime-scene manager’s worst nightmare, trampled flat day in, day out, vacuumed and disinfected, scoured by the scrum of bodies, sloshed with centuries of beer. In a way, the man they were looking for had hit upon the perfect location to commit murder. Every night in every pub there would be petty feuds, heated arguments, friendships forged, sexual liaisons proposed and relationships ended, the threats of tears and laughter. Alcohol heightened the emotions. Providing he did not draw attention to himself, a killer could easily hide inside such a world. Bryant was right: coming here had started to give him a different perspective on the problem. He studied the room again, screening out unlikely candidates. The loudmouths and drunks, the shrieking office girls and their stentorian workmates vanished one by one.
Banbury found himself left with a handful of introspective loners, any one of whom might be nursing an uncapped syringe in his jacket pocket.
21
* * *
DATING AND DANCING
Raymond Land indignantly refused to follow his own detective’s orders to return to the Albion in Barnsbury, so Colin Bimsley and Meera Mangeshkar took on a double shift, first travelling to where Jasmina Sherwin had been found dead. After spending half the evening here, they planned to split up and tackle two further public houses.
For months, Bimsley had fantasized about being in a pub with Meera, a combination of pleasures that made him heartsick with delight. In previous investigations he had been happy enough to spend the night rummaging through suspects’ dustbins with her, searching for pieces of food-stained evidence, but just when his wish had been fulfilled, he found that his changing attitude to the diminutive DC had robbed him of happiness.