Bryant & May

by Christopher Fowler

  There’s a lovely romantic story about its name involving the mistress of Edward IV. It’s not true. Shoreditch is appropriately named after a shithole, Soersditch, or Sewer Ditch. It wasn’t even in London until the late nineteenth century. However, it was the home of London’s first theatre, and the spot where Romeo and Juliet was first performed, although the audience must have had to narrow their eyes a bit to imagine themselves in fair Verona.

  The area was dominated by St Leonard’s, the actors’ church of London. Its burial register lists Henry VIII’s court jester and one Thomas Cam, who died aged 207. Actors always exaggerate. Having so many dodgy theatricals in one neighbourhood gave Shoreditch its first creative edge. People came here for saucy entertainment, and still do. It’s had many famous residents: Richard Burbage, Christopher Marlowe, Barbara Windsor and the singing bus driver Matt Monro.

  Sadly Shoreditch declined from noble origins into poverty and prostitution. In the late twentieth century it aligned itself with neighbouring Hoxton to become ‘vibrant,’ meaning it fills up with bare-ankled media plankton who can be tricked into purchasing Japanese bubble tea, bad graffiti art and hot dogs from vans that ironically reference Brazilian favelas. Shoreditch is now visited by tourists looking for the creative edge and finding only mouse mats and fridge magnets. There are still pockets of originality here, though. Last year I got a haircut on Brick Lane that was so original I had to wear a hat just to look out of a window.

  * * *

  |||

  In Shoreditch a day of surveillance crawled past without incident until late afternoon, when the streets suddenly filled with drinkers. They arrived in small groups that coalesced around hole-in-the-wall bars and cafés, and soon spilled beyond the kerbs. What were they celebrating? The end of the week, someone’s promotion, a birthday, the awarding of a contract—who needed an excuse? The kerbs quickly filled up with empty bottles and street-food containers.

  Dan Banbury had joined Colin, armed with pieces of his drone. In an effort to fix its steering issues he wedged part of the guidance system into place using parts from a Kinder Egg toy.

  Colin Bimsley’s walkie-talkie crackled. ‘Colin, are you receiving me? Over.’

  ‘Blimey, Meera, you don’t have to shout, it’s not The Dam Busters.’

  ‘I do have to shout actually because this lot has already started and it’s only six o’clock. At least you got a quiet corner. There are ten bars in a row here and the office workers are drinking for England.’ She moved away from a couple locked in an agitated embrace. ‘Jeez, get a room.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s a couple next to me who are already rat-arsed. I don’t think he’s kissing her. It looks like he’s trying to fish her tongue out of her mouth with his teeth. They haven’t noticed it’s raining.’

  ‘Is it?’ Colin was positioned in an alley beside Hackney Town Hall. He took a look across the main road. The far side was faintly eroded as if seen through kettle steam, the rain being damp enough to flatten your hair but not enough to make your shoulders wet. ‘It sounds mad over there.’

  ‘Is there football on or something?’ Meera shouted. ‘Can you hear them singing in the background? The gentleman on my other side just puked his biryani over a drain, which he managed to miss. Looks like he didn’t chew the prawns.’

  ‘Don’t, Meera, I’m starving. Do you want to grab some noodles?’

  ‘Not sure. He’s got some hanging out of his nose that are putting me off. Hang on—that’s it, mate, get it up while it’s fresh on your stomach. All over his shoes. Nice, not even a thank you.’ There were cheers and hoots in the background. ‘Have you seen anything over there yet?’

  ‘I would have told you if I had.’ Conscious that he was a plainclothes officer speaking into his shoulder, Colin stepped back to allow three girls dressed as pink rabbits to pass. ‘I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in the past hour, but no one who looks like a murderer. Actually, I don’t know who I’m looking for. How do you tell a killer from just another sketchy geezer? Dan’s arrived with his Flymo—we’re going to send it up for a test run in a minute.’

  ‘I was planning to fit it with a facial recognition system,’ said Dan, proudly eyeing the bulky black dragonfly in his arms, ‘but you haven’t got a face that needs recognizing.’

  ‘ ’Fraid not,’ said Colin. ‘We’re chasing ghosts.’

  ‘Are you still there?’ asked Meera.

  ‘There’s nothing going on over this way,’ Colin told her. ‘We’ll head in your direction. Can you ask that bloke where he got his biryani from?’

  Dan sent the drone up but found it tricky negotiating the busy Shoreditch streets with the control box held before him. After stepping off the kerb and nearly vanishing under a lorry, he was grabbed by Colin’s meaty fist and guided through the busy side streets. The drone tilted and flew on ahead, checking the pavements. The whine of its rotors was lost beneath the neighbourhood’s high decibel turmoil.

  ‘If it spots a likely suspect, what are we going to do?’ Colin asked.

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll figure that part out,’ said Dan, studying the screen so intently that he fell over an outside table.

  ‘I can’t arrest someone on the grounds of looking dodgy.’

  ‘We have to find him first,’ Banbury reminded him, disentangling himself from a pair of metal chairs. The drinkers did not appear to mind that he had just prostrated himself in their midst, scattering plastic glasses. Indeed, they barely noticed. It was the ideal place to get away with murder.

  Considering Shoreditch had been so heavily bombed during the war, it seemed nothing short of miraculous that St Leonard’s Church had survived at all. It had been built in an unfashionably delicate style once much disliked for its overt femininity. Set back from one of the busiest roads in East London, it was now ignored by virtually everyone who passed by.

  The first thing that struck Janice about the building was its slender multitiered spire. Attached to one of the railings was a black-painted panel of wood that read, mysteriously, Oranges & Lemons letters. The building was covered in scaffolding, funding only partly raised for its never-ending refurbishment. There were clock faces everywhere, on the Tuscan portico and inside, gilded, beneath the organ.

  ‘I had a chat with the vicar,’ Janice told John May as they stood on the steps, the tentative rain sheening their coats. ‘He’s trying to find new ways of funding the repairs. The crypt contains some ornate tombs but it’s falling apart.’

  May walked back to the gates and looked out. ‘Four major roads, a railway bridge and hundreds of venues to cover. If he strikes, he’ll make it look like an accident or a suicide again. How do we fight that?’

  ‘This was always a trouble spot,’ said Longbright. ‘My mother used to patrol here. She said the locals were all on the cadge or on the grift.’

  ‘No disrespect, Janice, but your mother had a low opinion of everyone. Where are the others?’

  Longbright checked her phone. ‘Colin’s outside a motorcycle club called the Bike Shed by Hackney Town Hall. Meera’s at the top of Shoreditch High Street. We can’t cover all the routes. We should have had more officers here yesterday.’

  The streets beyond were becoming busier. They could hear the hubbub rising from between the buildings, a great weight of humanity, no single voice discernible but part of a murmuring sound wall, underscored by the distant bass thump of outdoor speakers.

  May wondered how someone could attack on these crowded pavements without being caught. Londoners had a long history of working together in times of danger. They would happily throw themselves at criminals and rugby-tackle them down so long as their best mate held their pint.

  May and Longbright followed a path around the church, through unkempt, litter-strewn flower beds. ‘We should have someone stationed at Silicon Roundabout,’ he said. The sarcastic nickname
had been assigned to a cluster of tech startups stacked around Old Street tube station.

  ‘You can’t see the church from there. It wouldn’t have a link to the rhyme.’

  ‘I was thinking about the “grow rich” part. Every one of these back streets is packed out at night but there’s nowhere that’s especially wealthy.’

  ‘The art galleries in Hoxton Square,’ Janice suggested.

  ‘They’re not within sight of the church. We need more information, otherwise we’re just wasting our time here.’

  A cry came from across the road, from an antiques shop that was possibly a bar, given the number of customers who were outside holding wine glasses. The screech resolved itself into laughter; in the shop window two girls were posing with an enormous gold-painted bison head.

  ‘Perhaps Arthur will come up with something.’

  ‘I doubt it this time. When I left him he was going to talk to someone about bookshops and poetry.’

  ‘But it seems to help, doesn’t it?’ said Longbright. ‘I mean, he goes off on these odd meetings and comes back with ideas. I know it’s unscientific…’

  ‘Unscientific? We’re the homeopaths of law enforcement. It’s why we’re a laughingstock.’

  ‘So you’d rather he stopped?’

  ‘God no, of course not. He’s brilliant at it. He gets results. But there must be a reason why he’s the only person I’ve ever known to use such a system.’

  Janice uprighted a fallen plant pot. ‘John, he’s the only one old enough to remember that such a system ever existed. When he goes, it’s gone. It’s unusable in anyone else’s hands.’

  ‘Okay,’ said May, ‘what do you want to do?’

  ‘One more circuit of the church and then we do the surrounding streets again.’

  The gardens at the rear of St Leonard’s must once have felt like countryside but were now overlooked by mean little houses. The former graveyard was deserted, its sheltering sycamores muffling the noise of people and traffic, leaving only sparrows and the faint susurration of rainfall. A few gravestones stood against a wall like the tabs on an old-fashioned cash register. The grass was studded with cigarette ends and empty fifths of Scotch.

  ‘What is that?’ May asked, stopping.

  Janice sniffed the air. ‘I don’t know. Wood varnish? Something dusty.’

  ‘Like old theatres.’ He shrugged. ‘A smell I remember as a kid.’

  ‘You know we’re near the site of the first London playhouse?’ Janice said. ‘That’s why so many Elizabethan actors are buried here.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to my partner again.’

  ‘No, the vicar. I think he’s a bit lonely.’

  ‘You might get a date out of it.’

  Janice’s walkie-talkie blipped. ‘We’re across the road from you,’ said Banbury. ‘Look up.’

  The drone had just arrived above them, a darting black spider unable to advance beyond the edge of the tree cover. Away from the street its buzz was annoyingly loud.

  Longbright and May carried on around the side of the building. The arched windows had long ago lost their stained glass, and emerald moss extruded from the cracked brickwork. The building work appeared to have stalled. They stepped over a pair of graves garlanded with roots which burrowed beneath them, splitting the coffins below.

  The bang made them start, a percussion of metal and glass cascading on stone. They headed towards the sound.

  The church’s pedimented portico was in such deep shadow that it was hard to see at first. A dark bird hopped across the steps as if scuttling away from trouble. Something lay on the flagstones. When Janice looked up she saw that where there had been a clock over the door there was now just a circular hole sifting dust.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ As she walked closer, drawing out her phone, she discerned the figure of a man lying facedown with the clock mechanism smashed around him, the brass back of its white enamel face concealing his head. The gold minute hand had been hurled to the stones nearby.

  ‘We have the body of an adult male, hit by falling debris at St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch,’ she told the controller.

  May lowered himself with difficulty to examine the shattered glass. ‘ “When,” ’ he said. ‘ “When will you pay me?” ’

  Janice touched him on the shoulder. ‘Who do you want me to call first?’

  ‘Find Arthur,’ he told her. ‘And get hold of Giles.’

  They both became aware of him at the same time: a slim dark man in his late twenties, Ethiopian in appearance, dressed in a dirty red tracksuit, standing in the open side door of the church. He suddenly snapped to attention and darted off into the bushes.

  From his control box across the road, Dan picked up on the movement and directed the drone to follow. There was no gate at the rear of the churchyard. The suspect would have to pass by Longbright and May to get out. He was fast approaching the bushes before the rear wall and showed no sign of slowing down.

  The runner smashed into the foliage without stopping, vaulting up the wall and scrambling over the high railings as if he barely noticed them. The drone shot over the fence with him, blasting leaves from the ends of branches.

  May could not move any faster. His limbs had grown suddenly heavy. He dropped his hands to his thighs, trying to catch his breath. A streak of fire shot through his chest and shoulder, a warning that he needed to remain where he was. Exhausted, he fell to the wet grass and sat back, waiting for his pulse to slow.

  Janice had always been a powerful runner but the Ethiopian was moving like Mo Farah, bounding and striding, slipping along the crowded street like a fish in a stream. He turned into Columbia Road—No flower market today, thank God, she thought—then crossed into the park and notched up the speed.

  There was no chance of catching him. As she ran, she called Meera Mangeshkar with their coordinates. ‘Can you get to your bike?’

  The connection crackled angrily. ‘I’m right by it, just tell me where I’m going.’

  The runner had already reached the far side of the park. Janice slowed up to concentrate on the call. ‘He’ll come out onto Ravenscroft Street and either turn onto Shipton Street or go for Hackney Road.’ She gave Meera a description and rang off, heading back towards John May.

  She found him lying on the grass and for a moment thought that he’d had a heart attack.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he told her as she gently raised him up. ‘We need to stay with the body. Did he get away?’

  ‘Meera’s on it; she’ll put out the word. Dan’s got the drone above him and he’ll be on my jacket cam. I’ve seen another lad very similar to him, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the CCTV footage on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields.’

  May brushed wet grass from his waterproof jacket. ‘Decoys. He employs them like a general sending in cannon fodder. It won’t matter if we catch them or not.’

  * * *

  |||

  Meera slowed the bike on Hackney Road and checked the storefronts. Artisanal cake shop. Vintage clothing. Tattoos. Plumbing supplies. Craft beer bar. Vietnamese supermarket. Each ground-floor entrance led to a maze of small rooms, for these were terrace houses that had once been inhabited by large families. Nearly all had some kind of back entrance that led to yards and storage units. A steady flow of customers streamed in and out of them, making it the perfect place to disappear.

  The ghostly rain had evaporated, and each pub and bar now had a growing cluster of customers surrounding it. She turned onto Shipton Street and cut up towards Columbia Road, but knew she had lost him.

  Driving around slowly, Meera watched the shops and pavements. People were buying supper, drinking with friends, carrying shopping home. Ordinary life, something that seemed almost alien to her now. She looked up as Dan’s drone tilted forwa
rd and buzzed past her, heading in the opposite direction. It had spotted something.

  She turned back towards Colin, passing a store with a red neon sign that read Booze & Fags, very Shoreditch. She very nearly missed him. White shoes, red tracksuit, soaked forehead, standing in the doorway of a bar called Sherpa Tensing. It had to be the runner. He had dark patches under his arms and was fighting to catch his breath.

  As he stepped outside he was engulfed by some kind of event that required its participants to dress as Powerpuff Girls and Power Rangers. There was an opening party taking place. A girl in Turkish national dress was playing an accordion. Beside her was a man selling large silvery animal balloons.

  Dan’s drone was just above them. The drinkers looked up at the whining spy and started jeering. Somebody threw a plastic beer glass at it, which was enough to set the others off. They grabbed a bunch of helium-filled unicorns from the balloon-seller and floated them up around the flying camera.

  Banbury found his screen obscured by rainbow colours. He tried to push the drone forward but the unicorns crowded out his view.

  ‘Bloody typical,’ he complained into his headset. ‘Londoners, a red rag to a bull, they just can’t resist it, can they? Can you go and stop them?’

  Meera cut across the street on her bike. She could see the runner fighting to get out of the jeering crowd as beer cascaded and unicorns bobbed about. When he tried to escape he found his exit blocked by Colin, who swiftly moved in, barrelling the drinkers out of his path. Tangled in red and silver ribbons, the drone hit the wall of the bar and fell onto the runner as a great roar went up. Moments later Colin had him locked down and handcuffed.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he called up at them. ‘It’s wet down here. There’s beer everywhere. These are Nike Yeezys, man, first time I’ve worn them. Get me up.’