Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

“There must be something here,” said Meera, wrenching open a wardrobe door and pulling tiny T-shirts aside. “Everybody leaves a few signs behind.”

“Be careful with her belongings,” warned Colin. “She took the trouble to press her clothes and hang them up.”

“She’s dead, Colin; she doesn’t care what happens to this stuff anymore.” She kicked aside a pair of worn high-heeled boots and rooted about in the back of the wardrobe. “Nothing of any value here. There never is. White-trash clothes and junk jewellery. Crack whores will try to sell their family photo albums for drug money.”

“You have a pretty ugly view of people, you know that?”

“I don’t go around with my head in the clouds, if that’s what you mean. Last summer, over in Parkway above the Adidas shop, two junkies kept an old woman tied to a bed for three weeks while they systematically emptied out her bank account and tortured her to death. When she was gone, they put her body in a bin bag and threw it into the Regent’s Canal. You think my view of them should be something other than ugly?”

“It’s just that we don’t know anything about this girl, except that she probably split from home and came here nine months ago. Looks like she tried to keep this place decent.”

“She’d need to, if she was turning tricks on the premises.” Meera spoke over her shoulder while she was trying the second bedroom door. The Alsatian mongrel that leapt out had been maddened by starvation and confinement. Mangeshkar yelled in surprise as the dog sprayed spittle, twisting its head to bite her throat, knocking her to the floor.

In the next second Bimsley reached the animal, forcing his elbow into its jaw, bringing his other arm around to grip it in a headlock. “Hold the door open,” he shouted, lifting the thrashing animal from its feet. “Then get out of the way.”

He struggled along the hall and hurled the Alsatian onto the balcony, where it regained its feet and charged the front door, but was unable to reach them through the narrow gap.

Bimsley returned to the bedroom and pulled Meera to her feet, checking her neck and face. “You all right?”

“A bit shaken, that’s all.” She brushed herself down and looked at him. “How’s your arm?”

Bimsley checked his elbow. “I’m good. Padded jacket, no broken skin.”

“I guess she locked it in there before she went out.”

“Someone will remember the dog even if they don’t know her.”

“I suppose I should thank you.”

“You don’t have to. What’s that?”

Mangeshkar had knocked the sofa back as the Alsatian bowled her over. She held up the library book revealed beneath it. ‘Women Who Can’t Stay Faithful, by Felicity Bronwin. Lilith Starr was into self-help books. Incredible how people can delude themselves.“

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Colin, she overdosed in a shop doorway. She had bigger problems than staying faithful.” Meera threw the paperback onto the sofa. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.” Bimsley picked up the book and stared at the back cover, turning it around for Meera to see. “The author’s shot looks a lot like her, don’t you think? Family resemblance?” He took out his mobile and thumbed open the image of Lilith Starr in the morgue. In death it had become almost identical to the photograph on the book. “Looks to me like Felicity Bronwin might be her mother. This is probably why she changed her name.”

It was one-fifteen on Wednesday morning, and DS Janice Longbright was fighting to stay awake. She had drunk two Red Bulls and a Starbucks grande latte with an extra syrupy shot, but her eyelids were succumbing to forces beyond her control. She would sleep on John May’s couch tonight, but not until she had written up notes of the day’s events, something Arthur Bryant always insisted upon doing before going home.

She was puzzled by Owen Mills.

The boy had finally admitted that yes, Lilith Starr was his official girlfriend, and that they had argued the previous night. She had left his flat a little after four A.M., heading for Camden High Street, where she expected to score hash and cocaine. When she had failed to return, Mills had walked over to the spot on the south side of the canal bridge, at the entrance to Inverness Street Market, knowing that dealers always congregated there. After wandering around the area for what seemed like hours, he had finally found her lying in the doorway. He didn’t think she was breathing, couldn’t find a pulse, so he called the emergency services, refusing to give his name, and watched from the opposite corner while a constable checked her out, then had her loaded into an ambulance.

He knew she was dead because the ambulance had driven away in silence, without its lights or siren. And he knew that she’d be taken to the Royal Free or UCH, because those were the two hospitals where all A &E cases were taken. But he’d called both, and nobody in admissions had checked her in. So then he had called the morgue at Bayham Street, because she wasn’t the first dead junkie he had seen removed from the pavements of Camden Town.

Longbright had looked into his wide brown eyes and seen a strong intelligence cloaked with a mistrustful attitude. She had no reason to disbelieve his story, but felt sure there was something that he had decided not to tell her about their relationship. She thought back to their final exchange about his visit to Oswald Finch, just before she allowed Owen to leave the PCU.

“I didn’t argue with him, didn’t hurt him. I didn’t know him, hadn’t ever seen him before. He was okay about letting me see her. Unzipped the body bag, explained why she died. He showed me the notes he was writing. I must have put my hand on them, and the ink came off. He was using this old pen. But I swear I didn’t take them. I was there five minutes, that’s all.”

“You wanted something to remember her by,” said Longbright. “You took the neck chain. Can I see it?”

Owen had clutched the chain tight to his throat. “It’s all I got of her now.”

She knew she should have persisted, keeping him longer at the unit, but the PCU made its own rules, and those were set by the two old men she had always relied upon to make all her decisions.

Now, until they were safely back in London, the responsibility for everything that happened in the following hours would rest with her.

“We have to warn everyone who’s still stranded,” said Bryant. “He could attack anyone.”

“How do you propose we manage to do that?” snapped May. “We don’t even have any proper shoes. I haven’t been this cold since I fell off the pier in Cole Bay when I was twelve. I can’t feel my buttocks. Even my teeth are cold. It’s below zero and the wind is strong enough to knock you off your feet-God knows you’re not steady at the best of times. You think you’re going to wade through the drifts banging on car windows shouting ”There’s a killer loose“? All we can do is report the death and wait for someone to turn up. Have you any idea what’s going on in other parts of the county? There are sixty people trapped in a supermarket in Canterbury because the roof has collapsed under the weight of snow. We’re not going to get priority. This sort of thing happens almost every year on the moor.”

He looked across at his partner and softened. Bryant’s white fringe was now sticking up around his ears in stiffened tufts, like stalagmites. His watery blue eyes peered up at him above his travel blanket. “Try to get some sleep, at least until it’s light. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

They awoke into a strange new world of opalescent whiteness. The sky was a vulgar shade of heliotrope that reminded May of a Maxfield Parrish painting. The undulating snow dunes were as shiny as vinyl, and extended to the tips of the lowest trees. The road had been transformed into a sparkling white canyon. Some vehicles had been twisted and tipped by the snowpack that had shifted down from the surrounding moors.