Full Dark House (28 page)

‘What happened?’

‘He didn’t want to go through with it.’

‘The absolute bastard,’ cried Bryant, barely able to conceal the pleasure in his voice. ‘What reason did he give, if I may be so bold?’

‘Oh, the war, of course. He says it’s not right to be thinking about ourselves when there are so many in difficulties all around us. We shouldn’t bring babies into such uncertain times, et cetera. It was me who wanted to make us legal. I didn’t want to risk dying a spinster. We drove down to his parents’ on the last of his petrol, and I suppose I did talk about work quite a lot. We had a bit of a row, and finally came to an agreement. He promised not to mention his constabulary so long as I didn’t talk about the unit. But I couldn’t stay where I wasn’t needed, like some kind of evacuee. I rang the unit to explain and spoke to Mr Biddle. I wanted to warn you that I was coming back.’

‘He didn’t tell me,’ said Bryant indignantly.

‘That’s odd. How’s he working out?’

‘He’s not. Look at this, I’m making my own tea from reused leaves.’ He fished a half-dissolved sugar cube out of his mug with the pointy end of a dart. ‘We have to make one lump go around the whole unit because it’s against Biddle’s principles to buy black-market demerara. His trial period ends today, thank God. He wants to leave us and go back to the Met, and the feeling’s mutual. Here, I kept your mug just in case.’ He poured her half his tea.

‘Arthur, did you put him off?’

‘I bent over backwards to make him feel welcome, the ungrateful little sod.’

‘How’s the case?’ asked Forthright.

‘I’ll have to take you back, I suppose. Just until you can get yourself sorted out.’ Having answered an entirely different question, he turned to the window and warmed his hands round his mug, smiling to himself.

‘I thought you’d need me,’ Forthright said, ‘what with this latest development.’

He turned, the smile fading. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I picked up the call just as I was coming in. Something strange has happened again.’

39

THE ABDUCTION

The house in Lissom Grove was set back from the road and surrounded by battered birches. The hedge leading to the front door was so overgrown that it soaked May and Forthright as they passed. They were met by PC Crowhurst, who appeared from the shadowed porch and unlocked the front door for them.

‘When was she last seen?’ asked May, stepping into the gloomy Lincrusta-papered hall.

‘The evening before last, sir. The girl she shares with was away for the night, but the next-door neighbour saw her coming in with shopping bags. She didn’t turn up for rehearsals yesterday. They thought she was taking a day off sick, but when she failed to show again this morning, the other girl who boards here rang the police. I came round and found—well, you’ll see.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A member of the chorus, name of Jan Petrovic. Sixteen years old. This is Phyllis.’

A slender girl held out her hand. She had ragged blond hair cut to her jawline, and was wearing a man’s rowing sweater several sizes too large for her. ‘Hello, you’d better come through.’ She held open the door to a front room that was cluttered with the possessions of young girls living away from their parents for the first time: dinner plates, stockings, magazines, half-burned candles, a radiogram, some dance records out of their cardboard sleeves.

‘In there, next door,’ said Phyllis, wrapping her thin arms round herself. ‘I can’t bring myself to look.’ Her voice had a soft Wiltshire burr. In the kitchen, a back door led to a small yard. The window above the sink had been shattered. There were several small drying spots of blood on the wooden draining board. May turned and found himself confronted by a shocking crimson smear that arced across the whitewashed wall.

‘When did you last see Jan?’ asked Forthright.

Phyllis chewed her lip nervously and stayed in the doorway. ‘Two days ago. In the morning. I went to visit my boyfriend in Brighton. He’s studying at Sussex College. Jan was getting ready to leave for her rehearsal.’

‘How did she seem to you?’

‘Pretty much in the pink. We talked about what we were going to do this weekend. She was fed up, but that’s because she’s worried about performing in the show. She’s talked about leaving it before the opening night.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘The schedule’s too hard on her. I mean, she’s just a kid, and she bluffed her way into the part. She didn’t think she could handle it. Then this week’s goings-on have been the last straw for her.’

‘Have you known her long?’

‘No, only a few weeks. I don’t think Petrovic is her real name. She doesn’t like people to know where she’s from. I wondered if she might be Jewish.’

‘Do you have a photograph of her?’

‘No, but I think they took some publicity shots at the theatre.’

‘John, look at this.’ Forthright pointed into the corner behind the sink. Two halves of a cup lay in shadow. Beside them stood a short, wide-bladed knife, its tip stuck in the tiled floor, its handle darkly smeared. The DS stepped out of the kitchen, called the unit and asked to speak to Dr Runcorn. ‘I’ll get someone from FS over right now,’ she told May, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘You’d better make sure Phyllis is all right.’

May gingerly stepped out of the kitchen’s narrow corner and returned to the lounge.

‘I’ve been calling her aunt’s number, but there’s been no answer,’ said Phyllis, pacing along the edge of the carpet. ‘She sometimes goes there when she gets fed up. I didn’t know what else to do. Her mother rang to speak to her and I just couldn’t say where she was.’

‘When did you first think she was missing?’ asked May.

‘I tried calling her when I arrived in Brighton, but assumed she had gone to the theatre. Then when I got back and went into the kitchen I saw the mess.’

May took another look inside the kitchen. ‘Odd. The break in the window isn’t big enough to let anyone in, so why are there signs of a struggle? It’s not near enough to the back door for anyone to be able to reach in and undo the latch.’

Forthright tested the lock. ‘The door’s still locked.’ She carefully turned, studying the walls. ‘Maybe he was already inside and she was trying to get out, away from him.’

May returned to the front room. Phyllis was seated with her hands pressed on her thighs, staring blankly at the floor. ‘When you came in,’ he asked, ‘did you have to unlock the front door from the outside?’

‘Yes. The latch is faulty, so you have to double-lock it as you leave or it comes open by itself.’

‘What about the back door? Have you touched it?’

‘No. I took one look at the kitchen and backed off. Then I called the police and was put through to your department.’

‘When was this?’

‘About two hours ago.’

‘Hang on.’ May called his constable in from the front garden: ‘Crowhurst, come in here for a second.’

‘Sir?’

‘How did this get put through to us?’

‘The station rang Miss Petrovic’s work number, sir. As soon as they realized it was the theatre, the call was transferred to the unit.’

I bet it was, thought May. They couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. He looked at the chaotic front room, at Phyllis, who seemed close to tears. ‘Would you care to show me the other rooms?’

‘Of course.’

Two small bedrooms, bathroom and toilet. An attempt had been made to brighten them up, the bedrooms painted a hopeful yellow, the bathroom pink, but the flat needed more than a lick of cheap paint to make it comfortable.

‘Which one is Miss Petrovic’s bedroom? No, just show me, don’t touch anything.’

An unmade bed, socks and a sweater lay on the floor. A crumpled bath towel at the foot of the eiderdown. Stacks of books, undisturbed. If there had been violence, it hadn’t reached here. He made a slow tour, checking the window frames and door handles. The flat reminded him of his own room.

‘You think she’s been abducted?’ asked Phyllis, following behind him. ‘Something terrible’s happened to her, I’m sure of it.’ She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I should have been here.’

‘We’ll have to see what turns up from the kitchen,’ May replied. ‘We’re going to have to take some items away with us.’

When he caught Forthright looking at him, he saw the same question in her eyes. If she’s been abducted, her look said, how did he get her out of the house without opening any of the doors or windows?

The pattern, such as it was, had been broken, yet felt strangely consistent. There was the same kind of arrogant theatricality; the evidence of the abduction reminded May of the blocking rehearsals he had witnessed. It’s deception practised in public view, he thought as he left the house. The interpretation of gestures, wasn’t that what acting was all about?

But who was providing the direction?

40

GROUND ZERO

The interpretation of gestures, May recalled as he unfolded the architectural plan from his pocket. It all happened so long ago, the other end of a lifetime. We’ve learned a lot since then. Then he remembered there was no more ‘we’. He was alone now. He would never adjust to the awful singularity. There was no one else. His wife and daughter were dead. His son lived in a commune in southern France and refused to speak to him. April, his granddaughter, had suffered a nervous breakdown and could not bear to leave her house. Only Bryant had given him hope.

‘John, are you all right?’

‘Oh, I suppose so.’

‘Then show me,’ said Stanhope Beaufort, holding out a pudgy hand. The architect was uncomfortably perched on a glass stool at a glass bar with a glass counter, surrounded by glass walls, a glass floor and a glass ceiling. Hundreds of tiny silver bulbs reflected from hundreds of square mirrors. It was so bright that nobody could see a thing.

John May handed over the building plan he and Longbright had rescued from the debris of the burned-down unit and waited for his analysis. He had tracked Beaufort, one of Bryant’s old contacts, to the new Hoxton bar, and was hoping that he could explain the meaning of the page. The roar of street traffic entered the bar and bounced off the vitrine walls, vibrating everything and making it difficult to hear. Dust sifted in and settled on the shining surfaces like radiation fallout.

‘I’m sorry to hear about your poor partner.’ Beaufort tipped the paper into shadow so that he could read it. ‘Old Arthur was a bit of a one-off.’

‘He was at that,’ agreed May.

‘What do you think of this place, by the way?’ Beaufort asked, as a waiter blundered into an indiscernible column with a tray of drinks.

‘It’s very—glass,’ said May diplomatically.

‘Glass is the new steel,’ Beaufort explained. ‘They all want it, it’s so seventies. I’ve lost count of the number of accidents we’ve had here so far. The staircase is glass, too. One of the waitresses went arse over tit down it this morning. Cracked a step and knocked out her front tooth. She’s been locked in the bog all day, crying her eyes out. You can see her if you want. The toilets are transparent. The owner complained that it’s like a hall of mirrors, and I said, “That’s because it
is
a hall of fucking mirrors, it’s what you asked for.” Wanker.’

‘But you must like it if you designed it,’ said May, puzzled.

‘No, mate, it’s just a commission. The secret of design is re-interpreting what was popular thirty years ago. Everyone wants the things that remind them of childhood. I just re-imagine them with the materials of the present.’

‘So this isn’t your taste?’

‘What, New Britain? Fuck off. I live in an unfucked-about-with Georgian house in Islington with nice big comfy sofas. I’m not going to split my shins on a chrome coffee table shaped like a fucking rocket. I’ve got three kids. I don’t want them running around covered in dents. Same with the clothes. I don’t dress like this at home, I wear jumpers. This is just for the clients.’

Beaufort was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt that read: MUTHAFUCKA. ‘It’s like those singers who bang on about teen rebellion so they can buy homes in Hampstead. This is all wrong, by the way.’ He turned the sheet of paper round and held it up. ‘See the calibrations down the side? They’re in feet and inches reading left to right. That tells us two things. Pre-metric, post-war. LCC stamp here, see? And it’s not a ground plan, because the central corridor wouldn’t be measured off from a single left-hand starting point, it would have a single width measurement.’

‘So what are you saying? What is it?’

‘A depth measurement, calibrated from ground zero going downwards. That’s why it’s shaded to indicate round walls. This isn’t a corridor, it’s a shaft.’

‘What are the broken lines at the bottom?’ May pointed at the base of the diagram.

Behind them, there was a small scream and a tinkle of glass.

‘It’s the architectural symbol used to indicate water. Looks to me like you’ve got yourself a well.’

‘And the passageway off to the side?’

‘Overflow escape. It’s artesian; the water rises through natural pressure. If it rains heavily the excess drains off through the side passage and prevents the well from overflowing.’

‘Where would the overflow pipe surface?’

‘Oh, somewhere outside the building in the street, probably.’

‘I need to get an indication of scale,’ said May. ‘Could a person fit down it?’

‘Looking at this, the main shaft’s got to be six feet across, so you can reckon the side vent is four feet, easily large enough to hold a grown man. The Victorians loved stuff like this. They built their drains big so they could shove children down them with brooms and shit shovels. They were great designers, but had no thought for the poor bastards who had to use their buildings.’ Behind him, a waitress winced as she sponged blood from her sliced elbow with a cocktail napkin.

‘Not like nowadays, then,’ agreed May.

As he headed for Old Street tube, it began to rain. The area looked every bit as derelict as it had just after the war. How was that possible? May thought of the London that might have been, the abandoned plans, the failed dreams. Once, a causeway of buildings had been proposed for the centre of the Thames, a vast triumphal arch of Portland stone suggested for Euston Road, a grand national cemetery attempted on Primrose Hill, a Piranesian entry gate blueprinted for Kensington. Gothic towers, pyramid morgues, elevated railways, none had come to pass. The grand social schemes had collapsed in favour of piecemeal sale to private interests. It all could have been so beautiful, he thought sadly.