Bryant & May

by Christopher Fowler

  I needed everyone to be more than just confused; I had to find someone innocent they could target. As soon as I realized that Peter English was being singled out, I shifted all the signs of blame to him.

  I tried to fake camera footage of English on the steps of St Martin’s but couldn’t manage it. Finally I paid a girl who works in a comic shop to do it for me. I paid lots of people to get information, to perform little tasks, to obscure me, cover me, take the blame for me. I made everyone doubt what they had seen. My studies of magic paid off. But still the most satisfying part was the killing. I liked killing best.

  ‘She didn’t lie to you. The mistake is with your memory,’ said a figure in the doorway.

  Arthur Bryant stepped into the room and turned electric yellow. He threw a book down on the floor between them. ‘I checked. Raymond wasn’t one of the boys who attacked your mother. His name was Graham Land. You probably misheard it the first time she told you.’

  ‘If you come any closer I will kill him,’ said Floris, aligning the blade.

  ‘Then you will have failed.’ Bryant stepped closer, never removing his gaze from Floris. ‘Raymondo isn’t the one you want. He’s nothing like the others. Think about it. The rest all had one thing in common: presence. Even Gavin Spencer was said to have charm. Girls were drawn to them. Raymond doesn’t even have a clean tie. Look at him, he’s a charisma-free zone.’ He took off his hat and turned it in his hands.

  May joined his partner. ‘Let us have the sword,’ he said, his tone calm and patient. ‘You can’t complete the rhyme. Your list has to remain incomplete. It’s time to put your demons to rest.’

  ‘You can do it,’ said Bryant. ‘We don’t even know who you are.’

  The hand with the sword remained perfectly steady. ‘I was never christened. I wanted a magician’s name. I thought I might call myself Nemo, and take my mother’s surname, Nixon.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, there used to be a terrible magician called Nixon,’ said Bryant, choosing the wrong time to start recalling old British television programmes.

  The lights suddenly flared back on and everything happened at once.

  Bryant’s stick smacked at the sword blade, which very nearly removed Raymond’s ear, while his partner stepped forward without a thought of the danger he was in. Floris—they never did bring themselves to use another name—stared at the detectives in astonishment. The idea that an elderly man might attack him with a walking stick while his friend simply waved his arms about had never crossed his mind.

  When he made a grab for Bryant, he found himself gripping the old man’s fishing hat. He cried out in pain, because even though he didn’t fish Bryant kept a set of lethally sharp hooks sewn all around the brim.

  ‘It was the bleeding junction box,’ said Dave Two, wandering into the room with a screwdriver in one hand. ‘Take a look at this. Chinese rubbish.’

  Everyone froze in position and stared at Dave Two’s junction box. He stared back. ‘Blimey, don’t all say thank you at once,’ he complained.

  Meera came in behind him, and while everyone was reassessing the situation Colin came charging into the operations room and planted a fistful of signet rings on Land’s personal executioner. Everyone yelled, the cat shrieked so as not to be left out and Raymond Land passed out. By the time Peter English walked in with his lawyer, Bryant could see it would be a long night.

  There was one thing at least that they could all agree on. Floris had been brought low not by the ruthless efficiency of the capital’s law enforcement machine but by his own faulty memory.

  The PCU staff should have celebrated, but it felt as if they were on shifting sands. The events of the last few days had shattered everyone.

  Bryant had put his back out attempting to help disarm Floris and May had strained a muscle in his chest.

  Raymond Land got stitches in the back of his neck. Whenever he complained after this (and he complained a lot) the others would remind him that he might have had his head separated from his shoulders.

  Everyone argued about who would call Leslie Faraday. Eventually names were put into Bryant’s deactivated hat, and Sidney found herself granted the honour. She went into the detectives’ office to do it, closing the door behind her. For some time after she refused to speak of what transpired between them.

  Meanwhile, Dan Banbury removed the phantom router ‘Floris’ had planted in the basement and dismantled it for spare parts. He kept the microcameras for himself. The sheer amount of disinformation involved in the case meant that the exact wording for the highly complex charge sheet was drafted more times than the Magna Carta.

  Raymond Land was fully exonerated when a prisoner called Graham Land was discovered in Wormwood Scrubs. He had repeatedly confessed to assaulting a girl in his teens, but no one had listened to him.

  Back in their office, the detectives found themselves staring at the framed photograph of the real Floris and his Home Office colleagues. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice that,’ said May, studying it, ‘even after you told me about the experiment with the student. They do look a little alike, especially with the beards.’

  ‘I think he kept it there out of hubris,’ said Bryant. ‘He wanted to see if we would notice. He had a lot of nerve. He must have decided to replace Floris after studying him. What do you suppose will happen to Michael Claremont now?’

  ‘His past will surface and his reputation will be shredded,’ said May, as sanguine as ever.

  ‘The inquiry is going to be a nightmare,’ Bryant complained. ‘Poor old Raymondo can’t handle the paperwork, he’s far too shaken up.’

  May shot his partner a look. ‘Arthur, how did you know what was happening?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have known,’ Bryant admitted, ‘if it hadn’t been for the smell of oranges. Citrus fruits contain a group of compounds called terpenes that give them a powerfully characteristic scent. I couldn’t think of Claremont’s accident without smelling them.’

  ‘That couldn’t have been the only thing.’

  Bryant tipped back in his chair and unwrapped a chocolate, giving the matter some thought. ‘The accidental triggering of the fire alarm when Raymond visited the Home Office struck me as overly convenient. I was thinking about it when I set English’s sprinklers off at his office. I didn’t see how it could be Floris and I had no idea that his victim might be Raymond. But the smell of oranges turned up again and again, and lingered everywhere, especially in here. It seemed to be leaving a trail.

  ‘I thought that if we were being tricked by one thing—the supposed accident that Michael Claremont suffered—then what if we were being tricked by everything? But I also thought of Cristian Albu. Something was off right from the start. Why did he go for a drink with Floris? He could have just sold him the book and sent him on his way. Then I realized—he went because Floris turned on the charm. He wanted to go. Magicians are naturally charismatic. They practise being magisterial. Did you know there are virtually no female magicians? They only get to be the assistants to males.’

  ‘Someone’s missing a trick,’ said May. ‘I wonder how many times Floris came in here and searched through our notes. What was the book you threw down in front of him?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ Bryant’s eyes twinkled annoyingly. He brought May over to his bookcase. ‘Stand here and look straight ahead.’

  When May checked the spot on the bookshelves being pointed out by his partner, he saw that between two of the volumes, Enamelling For Beginners and Ring Any Bells? Memory & Cognizance in the Novels of Victor Hugo, there was a third volume with a red leather spine.

  Taking it down, he read the cover: Making a Murderer.

  He glanced back up at the gap. How long had it been sitting there? ‘I sit looking at that bloody bookcase all day. Where did you find it?’

  ‘In a job lot I bought from the King’s Cross book barge l
ast month,’ Bryant explained. ‘I don’t know how it got there from Bloomsbury but books do tend to migrate. I didn’t get around to reading it, but I think it’s going to prove very useful now.’

  * * *

  |||

  The following morning May’s list of prisoner questions was rendered obsolete when the nameless man was found dead in Room 158 of the Happy Hotel, King’s Cross. He had curled up in bed and with grim determination cut his throat, leaving behind the handwritten postscript to his memoir, which had been arranged at the bottom corner of the duvet, where he had always seen his mother telling her story.

  Bryant was handed the memoir’s amendment. To the printed volume he could now add the final chapter. He sent copies of both to Elise Albu.

  I’ll never know the truth about what happened in the church that night.

  Their crime was possible because they instinctively chose the right girl to attack. She did not tell a soul, and they did not get caught. Their lives were, for the most part, a series of escalating successes, inversions of her downward path.

  I was finally betrayed by my own memory. If I had not been driven to find Raymond Land I would not have diverted the investigation to the PCU, and would not now be in the basement of this poky little hotel in King’s Cross.

  Some people will point to a moment in their lives when everything began to go wrong. Mine occurred before I was born. I had no control over it, but I will have control over the end.

  Tomorrow I am due to be charged with a long list of improbable-sounding crimes. Happily I will not be there for the farrago of lies they’ll parade before me. I wish there was time to describe the incredible pleasure I felt when I claimed each life for her.

  I have sharpened the plastic cutlery the waiter stupidly left with my evening meal by running it along the fashionably rough concrete bathroom wall. In the morning they will find me with an ugly but effectively cut throat. The rhyme will finally be complete, if different from how I intended. It will have symbolic meaning.

  I believe some people are cursed. Not just by poverty, although that will be the easy answer affixed to my story by the nation’s hand-wringers. We are cursed by its by-product, a debilitating lack of confidence. It is why we stay silent, why we are controlled, why we apologize, why we are afraid. We are overruled by the ones who expect to be heard, and as they destroy our lives we thank them for it.

  I see her here of course, my mother, still sitting at the end of the bed even in this overlit little room, but I know that by daylight she will be gone forever. The only way to banish her is to take her with me. Finally we will no longer need to be afraid.

  So, Mr Bryant and Mr May, as I’m sure you will both read this, let me leave you with a final thought.

  There are no female magicians.

  When they take out my cold body and ask themselves why I planned so long and hard for justice, they will discover my last secret.

  I have always been my mother’s daughter.

  The following week involved grudging congratulations from an embarrassed Home Office, especially when Leslie Faraday discovered that the real Tim Floris had managed to misplace his swipe card for a couple of hours so that it could be duplicated by an energetic imposter. The public mood was briefly disturbed when it became known that the heroic victims the press had championed shared a sordid secret in their past. The topic trended on Twitter, then vanished.

  It was not until the following Saturday that the PCU team got together to discuss what would happen next. In the evening Longbright hired a riverboat from the Thames Police at no cost (they owed her a favour for dealing with a long-immersed corpse; best not to go into the details). Longbright thought it would do them all good to get some moderately fresh air instead of sitting in the basement of a pub, even though their nostrils were filled with the reek of the river’s dark recesses.

  As Dan Banbury had his navigation licence and couldn’t enjoy a drink because he was driving his wife back from her mindfulness workshop in Sevenoaks later that night, it seemed a good idea to let him pilot so that everyone else could get smashed.

  ‘I say, Raymondo, do you have to keep that huge plaster on your neck?’ Bryant asked, jouncing along in the stern. ‘You look like you’ve just got a tattoo.’

  ‘It’s not a Gillette nick, I was attacked with a sword,’ Land complained.

  ‘It’s a good job I saw the light moving in the window. I thought if there was a candle there could be a chopper. He managed to finish the rhyme.’ Bryant knotted his scarf even higher around his throat and sat back, accepting a hefty gin and tonic in a plastic cup. London slid past, its illuminated bridges adding an oddly unreal sheen to the Thames, as if it had been photographically treated. The clouded sky reflected its gaudy new colours, yellow, purple and green.

  ‘Hey, Sidney, I hope you’ve been keeping notes this week,’ said Meera as they passed beneath Waterloo Bridge, now washed in bilious pink and orange. ‘I’ve enjoyed watching you recoil every time Mr Bryant opens his mouth.’

  ‘His language is offensive,’ Sidney said breezily, ‘but I can live with it.’

  ‘Just as well, because you’re not going to change anyone.’ Meera raised her beer cup in a toast.

  ‘Just remember that before you were born he was fighting to ensure your rights,’ said Longbright. ‘If you’re going into the force you’ll need to be very patient and accepting.’

  ‘And suspicious,’ added Colin. They all raised their glasses to that.

  ‘I know young people look at Mr Bryant and see only an old man but I know what he’s done,’ Sidney assured her.

  ‘I am here, actually,’ said Bryant. He had been staring at the racing black waters, lost in thought. Something had changed in him these last few weeks. The truths upon which he had always relied had been turned on their heads. Nothing was as it seemed, and far from being perturbed by the thought of a world in flux he was exhilarated by the challenges this new life presented.

  Banbury swerved to avoid something he hoped was a log and not a floating body. Freezing spray doused them, making everyone shout.

  ‘How was your first case with the PCU?’ May wanted to know.

  Sidney studied him pointedly. ‘First?’

  ‘Of course, the decision’s not up to me. The final decision is your mother’s.’ He looked at Longbright.

  Everyone’s eyes followed.

  ‘You are Janice’s daughter, are you not?’

  ‘We were going to tell you,’ Longbright began, warily awaiting Sidney’s reaction.

  ‘It was obvious from the outset,’ said May. ‘The name on her internship form is Hargreaves. I’m old enough to remember that you used to live with a detective inspector named Ian Hargreaves. His favourite actor was Sid James. Sidney looks exactly like a combination of you and him, although mercifully nothing like her namesake. Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘It was my fault,’ Sidney said, stopping her mother from answering for her. ‘I wanted to be judged on my own merit. I knew you’d be predisposed towards me if I told you who I was.’

  ‘Well, you’re not in yet,’ said Bryant. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  ‘I wasn’t working at the Unit when I had Sidney,’ said Longbright. ‘Ian was offered a management position in New Zealand that was too good to turn down. He wanted to take Sidney, and I let him. I came back to work at the PCU.’ Longbright looked fondly at her daughter. ‘When Ian announced he was moving to Madrid I talked to you both about leaving, but you convinced me to stay. Ian remarried. My daughter and I stayed in touch.’

  ‘So that’s why you have an unplaceable accent,’ said Meera, turning to Sidney. ‘I just assumed you were being annoying.’

  ‘Anyone else got a surprise they’d like to share?’ Land asked. ‘Gender reassignment, spontaneous generation, evil twin?’ He winced as he accepted a glass of wi
ne. ‘I’ve got one. I had an email from Dr Gillespie claiming that you’—and here he pointed at Bryant—‘have some kind of ageing disease that’s making you prematurely decrepit, although I’d question prematurely.’

  ‘Did you check to see if it was really from him?’ asked Bryant, huddling himself around his gin.

  ‘No! He is the company doctor; I shouldn’t have to, should I? If you can’t trust your own doctor…’ He stopped himself. ‘The real Tim Floris didn’t consider that someone might have copied his swipe card. You can’t check everything.’

  ‘He guessed you wouldn’t, my little pierrot,’ said Bryant. ‘That’s what the disseminators of disinformation count on. Do you remember all that fuss back in the seventies about the Bermuda Triangle? How everyone thought planes and boats were vanishing from the map? Some time later the mystery was solved. It was all down to poor data research. Every so-called ‘missing’ vessel in the North Atlantic could be accounted for. The full tracking information was eventually published but it was so densely detailed that nobody read it. The mystery is always more popular than the solution. Now when somebody leaks several thousand pages of incendiary material to a newspaper only a tiny handful of people ever read it all.’

  ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ said Land.

  ‘What, am I suffering from some kind of Methuselah syndrome? I can’t believe that after all this you’re still prepared to believe any old nonsense you’re told. No I am not, thank you. I find the question most offensive. Although I may have lied about my age.’

  ‘What, younger or older?’ asked May, disconcerted.