The Victoria Vanishes(45)

In short, he had gone off her.

After putting up with her sulks, her tantrums, her cynicism, her sarcasm, her ability to start small bin fires with her pre-menstrual temper, the scales had finally fallen from his eyes, and he fancied he could see her as the woman she had become: bitter, bad-tempered, happy to keep him dangling on the promise of a date which would never be arranged.

As a consequence, the mood between them was polite but arctic. Seated side by side in the snug of the Albion, they stared into their soft drinks and allowed the silence to stretch between them.

Finally, Meera spoke. ‘This girl, Sherwin, she was supposed to be young and streetwise. She wouldn’t have let some creep just come up and touch her. We’re not going to find anything here.’

‘Well, that’s a positive attitude. You’re just saying that because you don’t believe in Bryant’s methods.’

‘Colin, look around you. The place is virtually empty. What are we looking for? The barman who found her isn’t even here any more, so he can’t point out anyone he saw.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I talked to the girl who served me these drinks.’

‘Did she say anything else about him?’

‘He was sent by the brewery to fill in for someone who hadn’t turned up for work.’

Bimsley jumped up so quickly that he knocked his orange juice across the table. While obtaining a cloth at the counter he had a word with the barmaid, who wrote him a number on a slip of paper. He waited for an answer on his mobile, turning his back on Meera.

‘The brewery never sent anyone,’ he told her, returning. ‘They didn’t get the message in time. If he wasn’t a barman, he could just have ducked behind the bar to serve her. That’s how he got close enough to be sure of his latest choice. There was only one staff member on duty last night instead of two, and if she was in the kitchen or the other bar there would have been no one at all at the front.’

‘We need to find someone else other than Raymond who was in the pub, someone observant.’

‘This is the sort of place that has regulars. You can spot them a mile off. Those two in the corner, for a start, and that old guy by the fireplace. I’ll do one end of the bar, you do the other. Look for unsteady hands and broken nose veins.’

Hard drinkers make unreliable witnesses. Several people professed to have seen someone behind the counter, but none of them could agree on a description. He was tall, thin, broad, blond, black, Asian, blotched with a crimson birthmark. Mangeshkar tallied her notes with Bimsley’s, and they headed to their next destinations.

Speed-dating night was held at the Museum Tavern on the corner of Museum Street, where Jasmina Sherwin had worked and met her boyfriend. The pub retained the seedy bookishness of Bloomsbury, its crimson leather seats filled with half-cut proofreaders poring over drink-dampened manuscripts. Like the Cross Keys in Endell Street or the Bloomsbury Tavern in Shaftesbury Avenue, it remained constant in a sliding world: the distinctive odour of hops, the ebb of background chatter, muted light through stained glass, china tap handles, metal drip trays, mirrored walls, bars of oak and brass. The Victoriana was fake, of course, modelled on obsolete pub ornaments and anachronistically updated with each refurbishment to create an increasingly off-kilter view of the past, but the blurry ambience remained undisturbed.

The tiny round tables in the rear of the room had been arranged to accommodate the couples who were about to tackle their abridged liaisons. Bimsley was assigned a number by the evening’s hostess, a pleasant-faced, overweight girl who reminded him of a character from a Pieter Bruegel painting. Her name tag proclaimed her to be Andrea from the Two of Hearts Club. She spoke with the sing-song condescension of a suburban Kentish housewife, and probably had a heart of gold until it came to gays and immigrants. ‘First time? Lovely! You’re a nice big fellow, we shouldn’t have too much trouble pairing you up. Pop your badge on and we’ll get you settled in. What’s your name, lovey?’

‘Bimsley,’ said Bimsley.

‘I think it would be nicer to be on first-name terms with the ladies, don’t you?’

‘Colin.’

‘Oh, we haven’t had one of those for a while. There.’ She patted a sticky yellow square on to his lapel. Bimsley looked around the saloon. There were several presentable, even sexy women, but the quality of the males was abysmal: a couple of boney-faced accountant-types with VDU pallor, a leaker with lank hair stuck to his forehead and sweat rolling down his cheeks, a middle-aged man dressed as a giant toddler in a sleeveless T-shirt and three-quarter-length trousers, an ageing media-type in club gear who was probably not as interesting as his haircut, a very old gentleman cruising for an heir or possibly an enjoyable way of having a heart attack. In Russia there were ten million more women than men, so at least there the males had an excuse for not bothering to look their best.