The Victoria Vanishes (3 page)

'Blimey, he's finally learning to be gracious,' said Dan Banbury, the unit's stubby crime scene manager. 'I've never heard him be nice about anyone before.'

'He must be smashed,' sniffed Raymond Land, jealously turning aside as the others helped Bryant from his wobbly table. He glanced down at the white-and-blue-iced fruitcake that stood in the middle of the pub's canape display. The inscription had read
Wishing You the Best of Luck in Hastings,
but
Hastings
had been partially picked off and replaced with a shakily mismatched
Heaven.
The iced fisherman's hut now had pearly gates around it, and the stick figure at its door had sprouted wings and a halo, picked out in sprinkles.

'I hope the cake has more taste than the inscription,'
mut
tered Land, shaking his head in despair.

Nobody had expected the retirement party for the Peculiar Crime Unit's chief coroner to become a wake, but then life at the unit rarely turned out according to anyone's expectations. Oswald Finch had died, sadly and suddenly, in his own morgue, in what could only be
described as extraordinary cir
cumstances. Yet his death seemed entirely appropriate for someone who daily dealt with the deceased.

Raymond Land had never expected to stay on this long at the PCU. After all, he had joined the unit for a three-month tour in 1973, and was horrified to find himself still here.

Arthur Bryant and John May
, the unit's longest-serving de
tectives, had been expected to rise through the ranks to senior division desk jobs before quietly fading away, but were still out on the street beyond their retirement ages.

Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright had been expected to marry and leave the force, perhaps to eventually resume her old job as a nightclub manager, but instead she had chosen her career over her husband and had stayed on.

The PCU itself should have been disbanded by now, but had successfully skated over every trap laid for it by the Home Office. Even Land had argued for the unit's closure behind his colleagues' backs, but had then surprised himself by fighting back in order to preserve it.

Life, it seemed, was every bit as confusing and disorderly as the PCU's investigations.

Now, the annoyingly upper-class pathologist Giles Kershaw was to be promoted into Finch's position in charge of the
Bayham Street Morgue, which meant that the PCU was losing another member of staff. With grim inevitability, the Home Office would doubtless seek to use the loss as a method of controlling and closing them down. The oldest members of staff were destined for the axe. Land had given up hope of ever finding a way to transfer out. He had nailed his colours to the unit's mast when he had reluctantly supported his own staff and attacked his superiors. Now, those same superiors would never find him a cushy detail in the suburbs where he could quietly wait out the remaining years to his retirement.

Land sighed and looked about the pub's upstairs room. Plenty of officers from Albany Street, West End Central and Savile Row nicks, even ushers from Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court had turned up for the wake, but the Home Office had chosen to show their disdain by staying away. Finch had upset them too many times in the past.

Sergeant Renfield, the oxlike desk officer from Albany Street, was watching everyone from his lonely vantage point near the toilets. Land headed over with two bottles of porter clutched between his fingers. 'Hullo, Jack,' he said, refilling Renfield's beer glass with the malty liquid.'I wondered if you'd show up to see Oswald off.'

'You bloody well knew I'd be here.' The sergeant regarded him with a baleful eye. 'After all, it's partly my fault that he's dead.'

'There's no point in being hard on yourself,' said Land. 'People working in close proximity to death face unusual hazards. It's part of the job.'

'Try telling that to
this
lot.' Renfield gestured at the room with his glass.
'I know they blame me for what happened.' The sergeant had made a procedural
shortcut that had been re
vealed as a bad decision in the light of Finch's death. To be fair, it was the sort of mistake that often occurred when everyone was under pressure.

'Actually, Jack, today isn't about you. Besides, you'll get a chance to have your say.'

Renfield looked anxious. 'You haven't already told them, have you? Have you said something to Bryant and May?'

'Good God, no. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought we'd get Oswald into the incinerator before I gave them the good news. Come to think of it, perhaps you should be the one to make the announcement.' Land patted the sergeant on the shoulder and moved away. He wasn't alone in disliking Renfield, who was a Met man, as hard and earthy as the ground he walked on. Renfield had no time for the airy-fairy attitudes of the PCU staff, and didn't care who knew it. Left alone in the corner of the room once more, he decided to concentrate on fitting sausage rolls into his mouth between slugs of beer.

Over at the bar, Arthur Bryant adjusted his reading glasses, held up the aluminium funeral urn and turned it over to exam-ine its base.
'Made in China,' he muttered.A lightweight wipe-clean screw-top final resting place. I suppose Oswald would have approved. But how quickl
y we sacrifice dignity for expe
dience, even in death.'

'Well, he didn't choose it for himself,' said John May. 'He'd have picked something less vulgar. He was always so thorough, and yet he decided to entrust his remains to you.'

'He knew I'd do the right thing,' said Bryant with a knowing smile.

'Which is?'

'I've been instructed to plant his ashes in a place that would annoy Raymond. I thought the little park behind Pratt Street would do nicely, because Land always goes there for a quiet smoke. I'm going to stick it right opposite the bench where he sits, so he'll have to keep looking at it. I've already had a word with the park keeper.'

'Do you think Oswald would want to be buried there?'

'Why not? It's handy for the office. He worked in the same place for fifty years. People don't like change, alive or dead.' Bryant lifted his rucksack from the floor to place the urn inside it, but changed his mind.'One thing puzzles me, John. He didn't want floral tributes,
but requested posthumous contri
butions for the Broadhampton Hospital. He never mentioned the place before. I thought it might be where his old school pal was kept, but no. Maybe he has a family friend staying in there, some kind of debt to be honoured. He probably wouldn't have wanted to discuss the matter in life. It's an asylum, after all.'

'No,' replied May indignantly,
'that's exactly what it's not. It's no longer a place of confinement. Nowadays it specialises in advanced treatment and research into mental health care.'

'You know its sister hospital is the oldest psychiatric hospital in the world?' Bryant poked about among the canapes and thought about dipping a battered prawn.
'The Bethlem Royal was once known as Bedlam, famous for the ill-treatment of
its patients. Visitors were given sticks so they could poke the loonies. Insanity used to be viewed as the result of moral lassitude, you know. Charlie Chaplin's mother and the artist Richard Dadd were both locked up in there. But I don't think Hogarth's ghastly engraving of
the place is entirely to be be
lieved. There were flowers and birdcages in its women's wards, and a few surprising instance
s of enlightened thinking on be
half of the doctors. It's been knocking around since the mid-thirteenth century and is still going strong, as part of the South London Trust.' Bryant removed a prawn-tail from his dentures and absently put it in his pocket. 'I don't trust this
Mary Rose sauce, far too pink for my liking. Oswald told me he had no other living relatives. So why would he want us to give money to a mental hospital?' 'I really have no idea.'

May was a poor liar. When he glanced away at the floor, Bryant sensed there was something he had not yet been told about the deceased coroner.

4

BRINKMANSHIP

L

ook out, here comes trouble.' Bryant spoke from the side of his mouth and stuck out his little finger in the direction of Renfield, who was heading toward them. His comment might have been intended as a discreet aside, but came over as offensively loud and theatrical. Luckily, Renfield was as thick-skinned as a pub comic, and kept his course.

Ah, Sergeant Renfield, given up flies for vol-au-vents?' 'Do what?' Renfield pushed a mouthful of pastry to one side of his teeth with a fat finger.

'Forget it, Renfield, Mr Bryant is making a joke,' said John May.

'I don't understand his sense of humour.' Renfield regarded them with the irritation of a perpetual outsider.

'Your name,' explained May. 'There's a character in Bram Stoker's
Dracula
called Renfield who lives in a madhouse and eats flies.'

'Perhaps your geriatric comrade will be laughing on the other side of his face when he hears my news.' The sergeant talked over the top of Bryant's wrinkled bald head.

'Don't tell me you've decided to pursue a lifelong dream and join the South African police?'

'No, matey,' said Renfield with a smug smile. 'I've been kicked upstairs. I'm joining you lot. Just been appointed Duty Sergeant at the Peculiar Crimes Unit.'

Bryant was aghast. 'That's not possible,' he said. 'Raymond decides who comes and goes, and he only ever does what I tell him.'

'These are direct orders from the Home Office, chum.' Renfield's smile grew darker, like a portly cat moving in on a crow. 'I'm looking forward to a switch of scenery. I'll be going back to the manuals and doing things properly for a change. You can guarantee that I'll be putting a curb on some of your more illegal habits.'

'But you're not a detective,' May pointed out.

'I don't need to be, pal. It's about monitoring procedure and making sure there are no more of your famous breaches of conduct. You don't need to be a bloody detective to do that.'

So, this is the price of getting Giles Kershaw appointed as the new pathologist,
thought May. The Home Office was planting Sergeant Renfield in the unit as a practical field man who would force them to play by the rules. The ministry officials had tried using Raymond Land to control the PCU, and that had failed. Now an alternative strategy had presented itself. May wished the unit could just get on with the business of solving crime, but instead it was mired in inter-departmental politics, despite the fact tha
t it had been set up as an inde
pendent body to avoid government red tape. Its orig
inal pur
pose had been to deal with crimes that could cause civil unrest and political embarrassment, but over the decades (and under the guidance of Bryant and May) it had proven itself adept at cracking cases where even the most advanced technology failed to identify a culprit. No computer could replicate the sheer peculiarity of the PCU'
s techniques. England had a his
tory of creating think-tanks where freedom of thought was more important than an adherence to procedure.

Renfield is just another hurdle we'll have to find a way of leaping,
he thought.
We've always managed in the past, and we'll do it again.
He was already imagining ways of defusing this latest strategy when Bryant dropped his bombshell.

'You're too late, Renfield,' Bryant told the sergeant. 'I'm not your chum, your pal or your mate. Rather, I have some news of my own that may surprise you.
I've put in for official retire
ment. I stuck the envelope into Raymond Land's top pocket a few hours ago.'

May looked thunderstruck. Renfield's broad jaw fell open. Everyone knew that the day Bryant retired he would most likely drop dead.

'I know it's a shock,' said Bryant, 'and I know what you're thinking, retirement will probably kill me, but I've made up my mind. Actually, you're partially responsible
for this deci
sion.'

'Me?' Renfield distractedly set the remains of his mushroom vol-au-vent to one side.'This is about our pathologist's death, isn't it?'

'Well, of course,' said Bryant.
‘Although I'm not really blam
ing you. Oswald Finch died because of the case you brought into his morgue, it's true. But it's not about what you did. You made me see something in myself that I hadn't seen before. It's as you've always told me: I'm miles past my best. My powers of observation were at their peak thirty years ago. When Oswald died in such tragic circumstances, I was as much in the dark about its cause as everyone else. Oh, I understood at once
what
had happened to him, but not
why.
I couldn't appreciate the human causes behind the tragedy. When you lose that ability, you start putting others in danger.'