Bryant & May

by Christopher Fowler

  By now May had begun to realize that arranging a meeting would not be easy. He came up against a brick wall of polite deflection. First he called English’s official numbers, but was told that English preferred not to have direct contact with the general public. When May explained that he was calling on official police business, the responses became colder. Enquiries could be directed via the Metropolitan Commissioner only. A personal assistant suggested submitting a formal request for an email interview which would then be subject to legal vetting. He was being set on a course designed to wear him down, but it had the opposite effect.

  Still, there was a problem; since the preliminary inquiry on Claremont had been held in camera, interviewing English could not be made mandatory. May called every number suggested to him, then many that weren’t. In desperation he rang the new editor of the online magazine Hard News, Paula ‘The Mauler’ Lambert.

  ‘Good luck with that one,’ she said, shouting over the noise of a bar. ‘Peter English works through a handful of official communication lines. His lawyers got him security protection under the Terrorism Act.’

  ‘Why would he have that?’

  ‘Someone posted bombs to his data company. One of them detonated, injuring a post-room assistant. It’s never been established where they came from. One of our journalists suggested he sent them to himself to get the protection. She was sued. I had to bail her out. Hang on.’ She broke off to shout at someone. ‘John? Don’t underestimate who you’re dealing with. He has a forensic knowledge of the law.’

  ‘So he’s smart,’ said May. ‘What’s he like as a person?’

  ‘Streetwise, manipulative. We once described him as a “Machiavellian jokester” and he sued us. We won the case but it was a Pyrrhic victory because he continued to sue over every article in which he was mentioned for months after.’

  ‘And he won them?’

  ‘No, he lost them all. But by keeping us tied up in litigation he drained our coffers and very nearly bankrupted us. He enjoys rough sports.’

  ‘His falling out with Michael Claremont—how did that end?’

  ‘Oh, you’re on that, are you?’ He could hear her thinking through the possibilities. ‘English told Claremont to mind his own business and made an unspecified threat that Claremont took seriously—then it all went quiet.’

  ‘And now Claremont has been badly injured,’ said May.

  ‘Well, now you have our problem.’ A cheer went up in the background. ‘Sorry, somebody’s birthday. Listen, the average household wealth for Britain’s richest decile is now three hundred and fifteen times that of the poorest, which means access across the divide has declined. The walls have gone up. It’s almost impossible to hold anyone at the top accountable these days. Trust me, you will never speak to Peter English in person, only through a battery of lawyers who will blue-pencil, edit and rewrite every word that’s exchanged between you.’

  ‘You’re telling me he’s above the law.’

  ‘No, John,’ said Lambert. ‘I’m telling you he’s making the law.’

  * * *

  |||

  Arthur Bryant was trying a different way into the case. While the rest of the PCU were interviewing Claremont’s colleagues and trying to trace the van driver, he went to speak to a magician.

  Everyone in entertainment called Dudley Salterton a trouper, which was a polite way of saying he should have retired thirty-five years ago.

  Salterton was sitting on the steps of the London Palladium with a Starbucks coffee cup. A woman dropped twenty pence into it as she passed.

  ‘Oi,’ he shouted, ‘I’m not homeless, I’m an international cabaret artiste.’ He pulled a withered roll-up from his lips and coughed hard, spitting a green globule into the cup before remembering the money and fishing it out.

  ‘You all right, Dudley?’ asked Bryant, arriving beside him. ‘You got a piece of cigarette paper stuck on your lip.’

  ‘Piss off, Arthur, I’m on in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you might be. I wanted to catch you first.’

  Bryant looked up at a lurid poster for the Old-Time Music Hall Variety Show. ‘I didn’t know they still did evenings like this.’

  ‘They don’t. It’s a seat-warmer, keeps the theatre from going dark between musicals. I bloody hate ’em. We get bewildered pensioners wandering onto the stage looking for the lavs, no offence to you.’

  Dudley was ancient and sepia with nicotine, but vanity required him to take sunbeds, wear an orange wig and dye his eyebrows chestnut. Since his wife had died his features had grown baggy with alcohol and he had stopped shaving properly. He was still living in one of the last truly disreputable bed-and-breakfast joints off the Euston Road. He smelled of sweat, rolling tobacco and Old Spice aftershave, and performed the same banter-laced magic tricks he had made popular in the 1970s. Not that the audience cared; they came to catch up with each other, to wave and eat and chat. They came because the seats were cheap and they wanted to live in a distantly remembered past populated by familiar faces, when you could make mother-in-law jokes without getting into trouble.

  ‘I’m doing a guest spot in the second act because their magician, Lo Fun, got pissed and took his finger off in rehearsals,’ said Dudley. ‘His wife used his magical chopper on her carrots and forgot to change the setting back. I told them I don’t mind stepping in but I’m not doing it Chinese, I’ll play it straight, thank you. We’re modern now, it’s nineteen—twenty—something, there’s Chinese in the audience, they’ll take offence. I do “The Birdy Song” while producing doves from unlikely places and let Barnacle Bill tell a couple of off-colour jokes, then I’m off over the Argyll Arms for a pint.’

  Barnacle Bill was Dudley’s ventriloquist’s dummy. With its rolling eyes, lascivious wink and odour of rotting rubber, it haunted the sleep of many an impressionable child. Lately, Dudley had started looking more like his dummy than ever. Both had been at their peak of popularity after the war and were soon to be shut up in boxes.

  ‘I thought you’d retired Barnacle Bill,’ said Bryant, sitting down alongside him.

  ‘That were just me messing about,’ Dudley explained, finishing his fag to the last strand of tobacco. ‘I told the children he’d died of woodworm just to get rid of them. I thought they’d never stop crying. He had a lingering death in Blackpool, I’ll bloody tell you that. We did the panto season there. It were bloody awful. Our Widow Twankey went to prison for molestation. How he got a job asking children to pull his bloomers down I’ll never know.’ He pointed towards the box office. ‘You’re welcome to a comp. There’s nobody in except a party of special needs from Dagenham. They’re not getting many of the jokes but they’re good laughers.’

  ‘Is there an orchestra?’

  ‘Piano, drums and a bassoon. Not exactly the Philharmonic. The producer’s added one of them burlesque acts, a lovely big lass from Huddersfield. She’s got a bust on her that fair makes your ears wiggle. She takes a bath in a champagne glass but it’s not going to hold her weight for much longer. There was an ominous crack last night when she started waving her swizzle stick about.’ He flicked his fag end away. ‘The writing’s on the wall for us lot. This audience is the last generation that’ll put up with such rubbish. I suppose you’re after advice again.’

  ‘I am, as it happens,’ said Bryant. He was still getting over the fact that Dudley was alive, sober and working. ‘You remember that act you used to do with Lavinia?’

  ‘You mean the Ali Baba cabinet of swords? We had to give that up after I nicked her. I thought she was going to bleed out before the band finished.’

  ‘This was different,’ said Bryant. ‘She was in a swimming costume and you filled a shower cubicle with coloured water, and when you drained it she’d gone. She came out from the flies and took a bow in a mermaid tail.’

  ‘She did until the zip went.’

 
‘How did you make her disappear?’

  ‘Oh, that were easy. The water’s inside a double layer in the Perspex, like them old pens you used to get where a girl took her clothes off when you turned them upside down. But the cubicle kept springing leaks. She always gave me grief about soaking her fags. I told her to lay off the roll-ups. A magician’s assistant shouldn’t have a smoker’s cough.’

  Bryant looked disillusioned. ‘It’s a bit of a letdown when you know how it’s done.’

  ‘And even when you don’t.’ Dudley pulled something from under his wig, examined it and tossed it into the gutter. ‘That’s why magicians never give away their secrets. They’re bloody boring.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m faced with a criminal problem and thought of you.’ He explained the circumstances of the attack on Claremont.

  Salterton rubbed his stubble, thinking. ‘It all sounds pretty straightforward to me,’ he said finally. ‘You didn’t happen to find a rope lying around?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or something that could move quickly, like a platform on wheels?’

  ‘There was a skateboard found nearby.’

  ‘Was there a vehicle with a high wheelbase behind the van?’

  ‘Yes, a council dustcart.’

  ‘That would have acted as a good shield. As I understand it, between the pavement and the road this fella was pretty much out of sight. That’s why we put blinds around magicians onstage; the audience sees before and after, and their imaginations fill in the bit they miss. Our eyes aren’t much good by modern technical standards. We see less than the average phone camera, but our brains compensate. What you’ve got is classic stage magic transferred to the street. The fella who was injured—easily recognized, was he?’

  ‘Very. Distinctive clothes and a goatee.’

  ‘And the witnesses, quite far away?’

  Bryant nodded.

  ‘Then I reckon it was a substitution,’ Salterton said. ‘Very easy to stage. The victim came out of his place a few minutes earlier, yes?’

  ‘To talk to the van driver.’

  Enthusiasm descended upon Dudley. His eyes seemed suddenly clearer. ‘Except that’s not what happened, see. When he came down the first time he was pulled into the van and taken care of. The fellow inside put on his clothes or was already dressed like him, down to the goatee. He left the body in the van and used the victim’s keys to go back into the building.’

  ‘We have a view of his back on CCTV doing just that,’ said Bryant.

  ‘A few minutes later he came back out, got himself seen and passed behind the van, pulling the rig down.’

  ‘What do you mean, the rig?’

  ‘Give over, Arthur, you weren’t born yesterday. He preloaded his props! A stack of crates with a gap at the bottom, into which he’d dropped the body, rigged to fall down when he touched them.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Try not to interrupt, you. Where was I? So, the van driver emerges dressed as your political fellow and walks behind the truck. The dustcart driver is high above him and doesn’t see what’s happening, nor do the pedestrians. He touches the rigged crates, drops to the floor and slides under the dustcart just as the whole lot comes down, so that when all the debris is removed the original victim is on the ground below the crates and the lookalike has slipped away.’

  ‘Would you need an accomplice for something like that?’

  Dudley resettled his wig. ‘I don’t see why, although it would have to be rehearsed and timed with precision, but that’s any magic trick for you. Anyway, it didn’t go according to plan because he failed to kill him.’

  ‘It just seems risky,’ Bryant pointed out.

  ‘Any riskier than poisoning someone with radioactive sushi, like that Russian fella? And what about that MI6 bloke locked in a holdall in his bathtub with the key underneath him? I used to be an escapologist and even I couldn’t have managed that. You say he was a government high-up, so it stands to reason he’d get special treatment.’

  ‘Dudley, you’ve been a great help,’ said Bryant, ‘but I’m going to have trouble selling your theory to anyone.’

  ‘That’s your job, Arthur,’ said Salterton. ‘If I can convince ’em that dragging a half-suffocated pigeon out of a top hat is the height of sophistication, you can make them believe a politician was stabbed in a van.’ He let out a sigh that contained the weight of the world. ‘Life is one big bloody trick played on the unsuspecting.’

  ‘A total salad.’ Meera Mangeshkar tried her other eye at the crack in the door. Beyond it, Tim Floris was talking to Raymond Land at the entrance to his office.

  ‘He can’t help how he looks,’ Colin whispered.

  ‘It’s not his looks, it’s his attitude. Privileged plonker.’

  ‘Apparently he and the Home Secretary are cousins.’ Colin tried to see through the door crack. ‘You haven’t spoken to him yet. He might be very nice. I like the new intern.’

  She threw him a look of deep suspicion. ‘Oh really? I wasn’t aware you’d spoken to her.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘So you’re just rating her on looks.’

  ‘Only to start with. I’ll probably qualify that opinion once we’ve become more familiar with each other.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to you impressing her with the way you eat sausages. Did you rate me on looks before we talked?’

  ‘No, I didn’t think you were my type.’

  ‘What part? Indian? Female? Breathing?’

  ‘Height. If you must know, I thought you were a bit short.’

  ‘When I first saw you I thought you had arms like a monkey but do go on, this is fascinating.’

  ‘You weren’t like the others. You played hard to get.’

  ‘I wasn’t playing. I didn’t fancy you.’

  Colin was affronted. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I thought you’d be my intellectual inferior.’

  He stared at her. ‘How did you decide that?’

  ‘I watched you trying to get a Pringles tube off your fist without letting go of any crisps.’

  ‘But you liked the look of me.’

  ‘I thought you were like a mongrel dog with abnormally big arms.’ She grinned and scratched his cropped head. ‘Good dog. I’m going off to rate the intern.’

  The operations room had not been restored to a level that warranted the recapitalization of its door lettering. Just enough of its Tetris-like floorboards were missing to keep it from looking respectable, or safe. A random assortment of borrowed, stolen and rescued furnishings included a pink dressing table, a child’s chair in the shape of a boat, a horsehair ottoman and the kind of folding seats that were set out for flute concerts. They had been arranged around the room so that staff members could help themselves. The old allocated spaces could still be discerned from the positioning of the floor sockets and chair-leg scuffs, creating the image of a phantom workforce that had died but refused to leave.

  Unbothered, Colin Bimsley squatted on a pile of rubbish with his laptop on his knee. The others had salvaged enough household items from grandparents to make the room resemble an amateur production of The Mousetrap.

  Timothy Floris was clearly amazed to find himself surrounded by working-class people. He wandered about looking like a foreign ambassador visiting a leper colony. But he was young, Longbright decided, and as yet unformed. It would do him good to get his hands dirty and knock some of the edges off his perpetually stunned demeanour.

  ‘Why don’t you grab a folding chair and take that desk?’ she suggested.

  Floris eyed it with trepidation. ‘It’s very low.’

  ‘We nicked half a dozen of them from the primary school around the corner. They’ll have to do for now.’

  ‘I’m meant to be observing,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t anything to observe.’r />
  Longbright set down another charity shop table with reduced legs. ‘I’m afraid it’s often like this. Mr Bryant tends to pursue his own leads. He rarely remembers to tell us what he’s doing.’

  ‘I don’t understand how it works.’

  Longbright puffed out her cheeks, trying to decide how best to explain the Unit’s methodology without sounding certifiable. She was concerned that anything she said would make its way back to Faraday, or worse, go right to the top.

  ‘Our senior detectives decide the course of the investigation and brief me on everyone’s respective roles. Mr Bryant has a separate set of contacts, mostly field authorities who can provide specialist information. Mr Land oversees operations and approves the collated reports in terms of effectiveness and expenditure.’

  When put that way it sounded almost plausible, she decided, omitting to mention that the reports usually appeared to have been assembled by stroppy art students and the field authorities were certifiable.

  Floris nodded thoughtfully. Just as Longbright thought she had got away with it Raymond Land came in. She knew at once that he had already forgotten there was a spy in the room.

  ‘Right, you shower, let’s see if we can give old Faraday a knicker sandwich by burying this as soon as poss.’ He rubbed his hands with static-building energy. ‘We’ve got testimonials from two colleagues saying that Claremont is medicated up to his hairline and has been “in a state of anxiety” for several months. You’ve got all the bits, they just need tarting up before I bang them off to Fatso.’

  Floris watched Land from behind his miniscule desk. The recipient of his congealed stare looked as if he had been caught standing before a broken window with a brick in his hand.

  ‘What I mean is,’ Land said with a cough, ‘we now have significant intelligence that should reassure the Home Office, so if you could carefully review your data and submit it before midday tomorrow I’ll set about closing the investigation.’