Colin checked out his trainers. ‘Those aren’t real Yeezys, they’re Chinese knockoffs. You shouldn’t have run.’
‘I don’t know nothing about it. Some bloke slipped me five hundred quid, it’s in my right-hand pocket. Honest, take a look.’ He wriggled about, trying to show them the money. Colin reached into his pocket and confirmed the fold of notes as Meera pushed the drinkers back.
He held out the billfold. ‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How could you not know?’
‘I was in the churchyard. He come up behind me, told me not to turn around, asked me if I wanted to earn some fast money, nothing illegal.’
‘What, and you said yes, just like that?’
The runner assessed him. ‘Mate, are you joking me? Five hundred? To stand outside the church for five minutes? I’d do a lot more than that for a monkey.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I just sell a bit of weed but I used to be a professional runner.’
‘Well, mate, you’re involved in a professional murder now,’ said Colin, hauling the prisoner to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’
Banbury came panting over and hunted for his downed drone. It lay on the pavement looking like a smashed crab. He was appalled. ‘All that money spent on R and D, putting in dual optical, zoom and thermal cameras, and it gets destroyed by a cheap balloon?’
‘Oi, mate, it wasn’t that cheap,’ said one of the lads.
‘You killed a unicorn,’ said his friend. ‘That’s seven years’ bad luck.’
In the failing light Elise Albu was just able to recognize the shambling heap clattering his way past the bins outside her kitchen window. It could only be the poor old detective she had talked to about Cristian. Why was he here, and what on earth was he wearing? It crossed her mind that he might be senile.
She pulled open the front door before he had a chance to ring the bell with the end of his walking stick, which caused him to widen his eyes and startle her because they were a shocking shade of blue and he looked as if he might fall over backwards into the hydrangea bush.
‘Hello, are you all right?’ she asked, holding open the door.
‘Of course I’m all right. I’m always all right. Can I come in?’ Bryant lowered his stick and made a performance of stepping hugely across her threshold. ‘Your husband. The bookshop. I’ve been thinking. My dear lady, I owe you an apology.’
‘You’d better come and sit down.’
‘I’ve been remiss. I promised to help you and then other matters stole away my attention. I was meant to tell you something, what was it? Well, several things, really. I wrestled your husband away from the City of London and had my top man take a look at his corp—corporeal form.’
Elise stared at him in astonishment.
‘He committed suicide.’
‘Oh. I’m not sure if—’
‘—that’s better or worse, I know. Well, here’s where it gets a bit more…’ He tried to remember the life lessons he had learned at the Golden Buddha temple but they had already faded, the curse of an ageing brain. Something about being more mindful of others. ‘I’m sorry that your poor husband chose to, ah, divest himself of, ah, precious life with, um, so much to live for. We thought he’d been strangled.’
The strongest brandy available in the UK is the Polish Uderzyć vintage 1987, and comes in a bottle shaped like an angry bear. Elise Albu happened to have some in her kitchen cupboard, a gift from an alcoholic aunt. Guided to it under her instruction, Bryant poured her a large tot, taking a nip himself. Being nice to people clearly had its pitfalls.
‘Don’t you see,’ he said, patting her hand in a consoling fashion, ‘it changes everything.’
Much to his amazement, Elise burst into tears. She tried to speak but had to keep stopping. Bryant dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, looked inside it and hastily put it back.
‘I think I’ve approached this the wrong way.’ He pointed at the front door. ‘I can go out and come in again if that would help.’
‘No, I don’t think it would,’ said Elise. ‘If you knew this, why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘I wanted to talk to you first. Then I forgot. There’s a lot going on at the office.’ He took a deep, wheezy breath. ‘Let me start over. Sergeant Flowers failed to remove your husband’s belt when he took him down to the cell, and I’m afraid Mr Albu took his own life.’ He explained how the belt had been replaced with a strip of material. ‘Flowers complicated everything. We found traces of the mattress cover on a knife that belonged to the sergeant. Here’s the tricky part. Although your husband, um, became deceased by his own hand, I think it was the direct result of meeting that man.’
Elise was momentarily lost. ‘What man?’
‘The one he went for a drink with. We spoke to the barmaid at the Museum Tavern. She has a vague recollection of them sitting in a corner of the pub, but couldn’t describe either of them. Do you know if any of the books Mr Albu had in stock were valuable?’
She tried to keep up. ‘There was a glass case containing a few first editions, good ones, but we didn’t have enough money to be serious dealers.’ She wasn’t sure whether to tell him about Cristian’s cash-only trade in books of dubious provenance.
‘So you were involved in the bookshop?’
‘I helped out occasionally. I’m a medical manager—I don’t have much free time. The bookshop wasn’t really a going concern.’
‘I wonder.’ He scrubbed about in his overcoat pocket and produced the pocket edition of Lord Alfred Tennyson. ‘Have you ever seen this before?’
Elise wiped her eyes and examined the leather cover. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘There’s a poem in it—hang on a mo.’ He donned his spectacles and checked the index. ‘ “Lady Clara Vere de Vere”—ah, here it is. Tennyson was a baron who hung around with a lot of other aristos and wrote about one after he stayed at her country mansion.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Elise said, ‘I don’t know it. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’
Bryant turned the open pages around to face her. ‘There’s a quote in the poem that was used for the title of a famous film. These words are heavily underlined, do you see? “Kind hearts are more than coronets.” And as this book was found in your husband’s back pocket on the night he died, I can’t help thinking that it might be a clue.’
‘A clue to what?’
‘To his state of mind. You said you didn’t know why he would go for a drink with his buyer. I think he had a very good reason for going. He had this little book on him when he went, and during the course of their time together he marked those words. He was found with a pen in his pocket. We’ll need to match the ink.’
‘But if he had something special to say why not write it out on one of the blank pages?’
‘He couldn’t; he was with the very person it concerns. He had to do something completely innocuous, so he thumbed through the book as he listened and drew a simple line under that phrase. Did he like films?’
‘Very much, especially the old British ones.’
‘And there we have it.’ Bryant sat back, satisfied. ‘Why would the buyer wish to destroy the books? I wondered from the start if there could be something in the shop that he wanted not to steal, but to get rid of.’
‘I’m not sure I understand your thinking, Mr Bryant. I don’t recall anything unusual on the shelves. Cristian didn’t keep his records up to date but I’m familiar with his stock. At least I thought I was.’
Bryant had a gleam in his eye. ‘Do you still have the keys to the shop?’
‘Yes, but the fire brigade warned me—’
‘Oh, they always do that. I take no notice. Can we go there?’
Elise worried at a nail, thinking. ‘I don’t know, I don’t think I can—wh
en?’
‘There’s no time like the present.’
* * *
|||
Silver needles passed through the lamp lights as the pair made their way along Bury Place, Bloomsbury, to the boarded-over bookshop. The fire officers had sent in builders to seal the frontage and had inset a plywood door with a new Yale lock.
‘Allow me,’ said Bryant, hauling out a spectacular array of skeleton keys from his satchel.
‘I thought those only worked in films,’ said Elise, holding an umbrella over him.
‘These just have the serrated edges removed. They’re a bit fiddly but one of them usually does the trick.’
It took him moments to unlock the door. ‘They’ll have turned the power off,’ he said, taking an ancient Fidelius battery-powered torch from his satchel. He shone its beam on the blackened floor, lighting Elise’s way through the shop. Rainwater cascaded through a shattered light fitting. Many of the shelves had collapsed and the books upon them were carbonized, but near the floor a few had been shielded by an armchair. It felt as if they were in a cave.
Bryant shone his torch on a copy of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, its back half burned. ‘I guess we’ll never know how this one ends. Independent booksellers still write down the titles of the stock they sell, don’t they?’
‘Yes, Cristian was very thorough. If his ledgers survived they’ll still be here. I wasn’t allowed to take anything away with me.’
‘Can you show me where?’
They stepped between oily pools, the floor crunching and crackling beneath their feet. The air was still acrid with charcoaled wood and burned paper. Bryant’s torch beam picked out stalagmites of incinerated books.
Elise climbed behind the crusted remains of the counter. One side was untouched, the other virtually cremated. It reminded Bryant of a wartime photograph his mother had kept: a chemist’s, half blasted away, the other half still open for business.
‘It breaks my heart to see a bookshop lost,’ he said. ‘I got very depressed when I realized that if I read one book every night between the ages of ten and eighty I could still only get through about 25,500 books.’
‘I lost a husband,’ said Elise.
‘Fair point and sad, obviously, but…’ His eyes strayed to the burned books.
‘I can’t open this. Could you hold the light steady?’ Elise pulled at the handle of a metal cabinet. Bryant went behind the counter, took a fair-sized hammer from his satchel and gave the drawer a thumping whack. It slid open with a metallic screech.
‘What else have you got in there?’ asked Elise.
‘Madam, you don’t want to know.’
Elise removed the accounts books. ‘They’re scorched but legible, just about.’ She separated the top volume from the others. ‘This is the most recent. What are we looking for?’
‘Something valuable, listed and now gone. I’ll take it with me if I may. What are these?’ He pointed his beam at a sagging black shelf filled with swollen blank-spined paperbacks.
‘Cristian had his own imprint. He privately published a few works,’ she explained. ‘He hardly ever sold a single copy but it made him feel that he was playing his part by helping aspiring authors.’
‘Where were they printed?’
‘At Tiptree in Essex, by a small private firm.’
‘Did he clear the self-published editions for copyright or libel?’
‘I don’t imagine so. They weren’t intended for widespread distribution.’
‘Tell me about the books.’
‘A few were based on unsolicited manuscripts he personally liked, printed in small runs for private consumption. I think he hoped they might get noticed and picked up by a major publisher. And there was some vanity publishing—Cristian printed editions for would-be authors. It’s a common practice that hurts no one. You know the sort of thing: My Interesting Life as a Bus Driver, twenty copies intended for the author’s family.’
‘I’m familiar with the practice,’ said Bryant. ‘Our fishmonger self-published a book about Rudolf Nureyev.’
Puzzled, she watched as he bundled armfuls of the books and dumped them on the remains of the counter, blackening himself in the process. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Oh, it’s just the way my mind works,’ he said guiltily. ‘In a case like this, one would instinctively search for an enemy bearing a grudge, someone personally known to you both, but my first thought was to check the stock and see if there was anything unusual about it. Where did your husband store the editions he printed?’
‘Here,’ said Elise. ‘The print runs were tiny and he didn’t want to pay for storage, so they all went into the first-floor stock room.’
‘Which I’m now looking at because it fell through the floor.’ Bryant began to check through the least damaged editions. ‘I think I should take a few of these with me. And I might have to borrow that delightful copy of Wood-Burning Stoves of the Soviet Union.’
‘I don’t understand. You think someone would set fire to the entire stock in order to destroy one book?’
‘Did Cristian ever get overenthusiastic and publish something without telling the author?’
‘He was passionate about his new discoveries.’
Bryant crouched with some difficulty and extracted an entirely unharmed volume from the lowest bookshelf. It had a strangely heavy grey cover. Leaning on his stick, he rose with it. ‘This is a very rare edition, Mrs Albu. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, printed on fireproof asbestos in 1953 and limited to two hundred copies. A book about book burning that couldn’t be burned. It’s worth a small fortune.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You’re not convincing me. Was your husband selling rare editions on the side? Don’t say anything now. Perhaps it’s best that you think about your answer for a while.’
Only the cover was flameproof, but it had perfectly protected the pages. Leafing through it, he came to a loose sheet of paper that was clearly not from the same volume.
‘Mr Bryant, there’s something you’re not telling me, either.’
Bryant removed a plastic bag from his coat pocket and slipped the page into it. ‘I didn’t want to raise any false hopes. You say you’ve never seen Kind Hearts and Coronets. It’s about an aggrieved gentleman who kills every member of the family who stand in his way. He tells the story by confessing all in his memoirs, but at the end he accidentally leaves the incriminating manuscript where someone will find it.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what this has to do with—”
‘Let’s hypothetically imagine that your husband was illegally selling rare books. My first instinct is to assume that one of his buyers wanted something very badly that Mr Albu could not or would not sell, so he stole it and burned down the shop to shift attention from the theft. Book collectors are notoriously obsessive, and there are those who are prepared to do absolutely anything to get their hands on a rare edition.
‘But now I wonder if I have that wrong. Suppose your husband went for a drink with one of the writers who gave him a manuscript and they demanded it back? Mr Albu pretended he didn’t get around to reading it, but not only did he read it, he was so impressed that he printed up his own edition. But then he realized the dangerous situation he was in. The more his client demanded the return of the manuscript, the more your husband perversely wanted to keep hold of it. He had the Tennyson in his pocket and perhaps without even thinking, he underlined the title that pointed to the film.’
‘But Cristian only published fiction, so how could such a thing be dangerous?’ Elise asked.
‘History shows us that books can be very dangerous. Perhaps it was just fiction. But suppose it explained crimes the writer was about to commit? Now it was incriminating. And what if your husband accidentally let it be known that there were printed copies? The writer would have to get them ba
ck at all costs and make sure they were destroyed.’
‘Cristian could never bring himself to destroy books,’ said Elise. ‘He would have kept them in the shop.’
‘The only sure way of removing the evidence was by setting fire to the bookshop.’
To Bryant the incident felt like a rehearsal for the Oranges & Lemons murders. Overwhelmed by financial problems, Albu would appear to have destroyed his own store. But his nemesis had reckoned without the incompetent Sergeant Flowers.
‘There’s hardly anything left,’ said Elise, looking into the dripping darkness in despair. ‘There can’t be any copies here.’
‘Maybe your husband sold some.’ Bryant held up the scorched ledger. ‘I’m hoping this will hold the answer.’
* * *
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Back at the PCU, Raymond Land was feeling lost. Leslie Faraday had read his report and was far from happy. Phrases in Faraday’s email jumped out and poked him in the eye. ‘Unfortunately typical behaviour,’ ‘offensive in the extreme,’ ‘disappointed on every level’ and the kicker, ‘in reconsideration of your pension.’
Land knew he would have to cancel all leave and warn the staff that shifts would now run round the clock. He conveniently misremembered the past, telling himself that he hadn’t wanted to come back to the Unit in the first place, and that it didn’t matter to him what the Home Office thought. Mortified, he consigned the email chain to the bin, then rang Paula Lambert at Hard News.
LAND: Yes, I know what time it is. We’re making terrific progress with the case. I just wondered what the mood is like out there.
LAMBERT: When you say ‘out there’ do you mean our office, where everyone thinks you’re doing a terrible job, or the general public, who all hate you?
LAND: Well, I was thinking of the general public really.
LAMBERT: They all hate you.
LAND: But apart from that—
LAMBERT: They’re just hearing about another Oranges and Lemons death on the busy streets of their city right now, Raymond, how do you think they feel? If law-abiding citizens can’t step out of their front doors—
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