Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

“It wasn’t you who found the body, was it?” said Longbright. Renfield was too experienced to have made such a mistake.

“My PC is nineteen years old, Longbright. The kid’s in shock; it’s his second week on the beat. She would have died anyway, if not this week then the next. Finch didn’t care about that. It was my call, but he told me he was going to report the boy.” Renfield looked miserable. “He never let anything go. That’s why he wouldn’t support your promotion, Kershaw. He didn’t trust you not to make the same kind of mistakes.”

“So before you left the mortuary, you waited until his back was turned, then tore the pages out of his report and destroyed them.”

Renfield shook his head violently. “No, I never saw any report. I didn’t think he’d had time to write it up, and wouldn’t have touched it if he had.”

Longbright left the interview room in a bad mood. Whatever else Renfield was, he wasn’t a liar. She went to Bryant’s desk and sat down behind it, rubbing her eyes, hoping that being in his tobacco-stained room would somehow provide her with inspiration. On the chart before her was the time line of Finch’s final hours. All the question marks and gaps she had left were now filled in, and they were no closer to the truth.

She checked the clock on the wall: two forty-five P.M. Two and a quarter hours left before the Princess turned up with her entourage to find the staff under arrest and the place in shambles. She could almost see Kasavian and Faraday rubbing their hands with glee. There was still one loose lead to tie up. The missing boy, Lilith’s former lover, Samuel. She was considering the problem when Kershaw knocked on her door and stuck his head through. “Can I let Renfield go, Janice? He’s kicking up a fuss.”

“Apply the same restrictions I’ve applied to everybody else, then get back to the morgue. I want you to test out something for me. It’s a ridiculous idea, but it’s the only one left. This is my last shot before we’re out of time.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Assume Finch was in pain, on medication, not thinking clearly. He knew he wouldn’t live to enjoy his retirement. I want you to see if it’s at all possible…‘ She wondered if she could even bring herself to say the words. Kershaw waited obediently. ”Could it have started with an accident? Knowing that he was dying and contemplating suicide, could he have pulled the ultimate practical joke on his old nemesis? When the fan blade came loose and fell on him, you don’t think he could have decided to make it look like murder, just to get the most bitter last laugh of all on Arthur?“

Longbright looked around at Arthur Bryant’s memorabilia. On the opposite wall was a sampler stitched in gratitude by the Oregon Ladies’ Sewing Bee after he had solved the Chemeketa Rain Devil case for them in 1963. It read The Greatest Secrets Are Hidden in Plain Sight. It was a favourite sentiment of Bryant’s. What was hidden in plain sight here?

She missed him looking over her shoulder, discoursing on any bizarre subject that took his fancy. She missed the stagnant reek of his pipe, his furtive watering of the sickly marijuana plant beneath his desk, the tottering stacks of mouldy books he dumped on her, the impossible requests, the childlike innocence in his eyes whenever she suspected him. You’d know what to look for, she thought. You’ve shown us how a thousand times over. Why can’t I remember what to do now?

She studied the books on the shelves, trying to imagine Bryant in the room, arguing with John about methodology. He’d be stepping off on a tangent, refusing to follow the obvious routes of detection, leaving the doorstepping and data-gathering to others while he blew the dust from volumes of ancient myth and folklore. It was amazing how he managed to reach accurate conclusions by examining the case from the wrong end, and no matter how often he explained the process to her, it still didn’t make sense. She read the spines on the opposite shelves: Victorian Water Closets: A Social History, Sumerian Religious Beliefs & Legends, Colonic Exercises for Asthmatics, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Mend Your Own Pipes, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Toe, Tomography and Paganism, Courtship Rituals of Tapua New Guinea, Code-Breaking in Braille. How on earth could any of these help?

Lilith Starr had suffered an allergic reaction to something other than the chemicals in the recreational drugs she had taken, but what? Longbright took down A History of Vivisection and idly thumbed through it. Samuel, Lilith’s former boyfriend, had disappeared, but Owen Mills was still around. Even though he wasn’t with her when she died, he was still the only person who could shed some light on her condition. She decided to give him one last try, but found that his mobile was switched through to voice mail.

She looked up to see April dashing past with a bowl of wilted nasturtiums. “What are you doing?” she called.

“The Princess is going to be here with half of the Home Office in two hours, and we’ve fulfilled none of the requirements on Rosemary Armstrong’s list.” April looked as if she could do with some help.

“A few crummy old garage flowers aren’t going to make any difference to our future now,” said Longbright despondently.

“No, but until I can come up with something better they will have to do,” April replied, not pleased at having to shoulder the responsibility alone.

“April, what did you do with that photograph of Lilith Starr? The one her father gave me?”

“It’s on your desk in the file. Want me to get it?”

“Please.” Longbright placed herself in Bryant’s seat, spreading her hands on his desk, amid the perfumed aroma of exotic rolling tobacco and the weird aftershave he favoured that no-one had sold for forty years. April returned with the photograph and handed it to her.

She examined Lilith’s face, her clothes. Her arms. Digging into the desk drawers, she found Bryant’s horn-handled magnifying glass and passed it over the print. Lilith still had the tattoo when the picture had been taken. Samuel. It was clearly visible on her left arm.

Hidden in plain sight. She looked back at the volume of Poe, and thought of The Purloined Letter, with its clue hidden right under the noses of the police. “She must have removed it soon after this photograph was taken.”

“Maybe that’s why she got rid of it,” said April, peering over her shoulder. “The tattooist spelled her boyfriend’s name wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look again. That’s an a , not a u .”

Longbright stared at the bare arm once more. Samael. ‘Maybe it’s right. Kids spell their names in a lot of crazy ways these days. Check with the tattoo parlour and see if he remembers.“ She rose and collected her jacket.

“Where are you going?” asked April.

“To get the truth out of Owen Mills, even if I have to throttle it out of him,” said Longbright. “He’s the only one who’s left alive to tell us what might have happened. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for our royal visit.”

Kershaw took Banbury with him to Bayham Street, hoping that the crime scene manager might spot something he had missed. He looked around the room in which he had spent so much time expecting to become the unit’s next medical examiner. Part of him was perversely pleased that Finch had failed to recommend him. If he couldn’t understand what had happened here, he would not consider himself worthy of holding the post. Today his career would live or die by the decisions he made.