Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

The detective sergeant had asked if she could take something belonging to Mrs. Bronwin’s daughter. With reluctance, Felicity had handed over a pink furry diary Lilith had left behind on her last visit.

Janice carefully leafed through the pages. “Your daughter-‘

“I have no daughter.” Mrs. Bronwin’s voice was toneless, disinterested. “What I have is a misfit who sought only to hurt me at every possible turn, and who died some while ago, as far as I or my husband is concerned.”

“You don’t seem very surprised,” Longbright ventured.

“I’ve been expecting it for some time now. That’s what drug addicts do, isn’t it, repeatedly let you down before killing themselves?”

“When did you last see Lilith?”

Mrs. Bronwin winced, as if the very mention of her child’s name was objectionable. “Last Christmas, at our home in Somerset. Not a good idea to walk into the village pub with pink hair and torn tights. The place was full of our land-workers, and it makes them lose respect. Turned up here with a young man in tow, obviously on drugs.”

“What did you do?”

“We argued and they left.” She sighed. “The endless rebellions, the pleas for attention, it’s all so drearily predictable of the young these days. The rules and traditions of country life are too boring for them, I suppose.” For a woman who writes about understanding the female mind-set, thought Longbright, she doesn’t seem interested in understanding her own daughter.

“Do you remember the boyfriend’s name? Did he look like this?” Longbright showed her Owen Mills’s photograph.

“God no, he wasn’t black.” She tried, but failed, to hide her distaste. “Fair, possibly ginger, with shaved eyebrows. But definitely not a-not black.”

“You don’t remember his name?”

“Luke,” said Mr. Bronwin, speaking for the first time.

“Matthew,” said Felicity, glaring at him.

“Did you ever hear of your daughter going out with someone called Samuel?”

They exchanged glances. “No,” they agreed, rather too quickly.

“She never said anything about dating him? We have reason to believe they were seriously involved with each other for a time, up until she met Owen Mills.”

Mr. Bronwin appeared about to speak, but changed his mind.

“You show me a picture of a withered, bleached corpse,” said Felicity Bronwin, “and I’m supposed to unfold our family history before you, just so that you can file away a report? I’m sorry to disappoint you. This pitiful creature you found frozen to death in a shop doorway bears no resemblance to my beautiful child anymore. Why should I feel any pain now, when I said good-bye so long ago?”

“Because the death of a child is always a tragedy,” said the sergeant hotly. She had met women like Mrs. Bronwin too many times before. “Perhaps you don’t believe someone can still be a child at seventeen. But your daughter suffered a pauper’s death in the middle of one of the world’s richest cities, and I’m afraid you must bear some of the responsibility for that.” Furious with the parents, but even more annoyed with herself for losing her impartiality, Longbright rose to her feet. “I’d like a recent photograph of Lilith, if you can spare one.”

“I’m not sure we have any,” said Felicity.

“Yes, we do. I’ll get it for you.” Mr. Bronwin shot his wife an angry look and left the freezing room. He returned with a photograph showing the pale, scowling redhead standing in a corner of the Bronwins’ lounge, beside a gigantic Christmas tree. She was dressed for midsummer, in the standard Goth outfit of a black sleeveless top decorated with skulls, skintight black leggings and studded boots.

Who are you? thought Longbright, studying the picture. You were the last case Oswald ever handled. What did he discover about your life that was worth dying for?

“They spoke about something serious and personal shortly before she died, I’m sure of it,” Longbright told him.

“What makes you say that?” asked Bryant, holding the mobile tightly to his frozen right ear.

“Because I’ve been talking to Owen Mills again, and I’m sure he’s hiding something about their conversation that night. He’s more astute than I first thought, but he’s still holding back. Lilith had broken up badly with her former boyfriend, even going so far as to cut his name from her arm with a penknife, possibly at Owen’s request. Her drug-taking stems from around the time she took Samuel home to meet her parents.”

“They admitted meeting this chap?”

“As good as-I think they were trying to disguise his name but couldn’t agree on a new one for him. Matthew or Luke. What I don’t understand is, if she was so in love that she had him tattooed on her arm, why did she end up hating him so badly that she would put herself through agony? And why did Owen Mills let her?”

“It sounds to me as if there were three of them in the relationship,” said Bryant. “You know about the lives of two of the participants, Mills and the girl, but you won’t get any answers until you have more information on the third.”

“Do you think I’m tackling this the wrong way?” the sergeant asked, despondent. “It’s such an indirect approach. Perhaps I should be thinking more about Oswald rather than the boy who came to see him.”

“You said yourself that Owen Mills was Finch’s only visitor. I don’t suppose John would agree with me, but in the absence of any other leads, it’s what I’d go after. The girl is dead, Oswald is dead, the ex-partner remains a blank, so you have to take aim at the last person to see Finch alive: Mills. Use everybody in the unit if you have to, but you must also keep an eye on Kershaw. He makes mistakes when he feels threatened, and I imagine he’s feeling pretty threatened right now.”

He was about to ring off, but came close to the mobile again. “I’m afraid I have to go. We’ve a murderer of our own to track down here.” He shut the phone before Longbright had a chance to ask him what on earth was going on.

The detectives had reached a dogleg in the road, and could see across the valley onto the darkening moors beyond. “It looks like there’s another volley of snow coming in,” said May. “We should get back to the van.”

“Let’s check out a few more, just another hundred yards. I’m fine, I assure you.” Bryant made his way up to the next vehicle.

This time, a young man opened the door of his Rover to meet them halfway. “You should stay inside your vehicles,” he told them. “It’s not safe outside.” He explained that he was a staff nurse at Exeter General Hospital, and had been further along the road calling on those still trapped in their vehicles.

“I’m Jez Morris, pleased to meet you.” He shook their hands with grave formality. “You’re really police officers?”

“We’re attached to a special unit in London,” said Bryant, explaining without revealing anything. He knew he might be facing the man who had murdered their truck driver. “How many more are back there?”

“Thirteen by my count, including a couple of kids. I treated an elderly couple for early symptoms of hypothermic shock, but surprisingly there’s been nothing too serious. People in these parts are pretty tough. They know they’re taking a chance if they go against a blizzard warning. How many in your direction?”

“We counted eleven,” said May. And one no longer alive, he thought uncomfortably. They left Morris with a promise to check in on him within the hour. Behind the nurse’s car, a snow-weighted beech tree had collapsed across the road, and a narrow pantechnicon had been thrown on its side. The cabin was empty, but as May called out, the lower rear door was pushed up and a young black man in a store uniform looked out.