Bryant & May – England’s Finest

by Christopher Fowler

  I wanted a cigarette, but perhaps it wasn’t entirely an accident that I went up to the viewing deck. I saw him heading up the stairs, with her some way behind him. I don’t know if you’ve been to the new Tate extension, but it’s terribly awkward, spatially. There’s a bank of lifts, hopelessly inadequate, and this big staircase, terrible feng shui, and there’s been a huge row over the viewing deck because it overlooks some very expensive apartments with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and the residents are complaining that they’re being gawped at all day.

  Anyway, I suppose I followed them. I must admit I was a little bit curious, and I was by myself with nothing better to do … When I got upstairs I saw that it was still raining. I pushed open the glass door and there were the two of them, out by the wall arguing. I say arguing, I couldn’t hear them because there was a traffic helicopter somewhere overhead, but it looked very aggressive; I could tell by the way they were standing. And she had spoken so glowingly about him to me just minutes before, I thought it was odd that her mood could change so quickly.

  The light’s not good up there. I suppose they keep them low because of the neighbouring buildings, and so you can see across London, but there wasn’t much to see tonight. He was facing me with his back against the railing, which is surprisingly low considering how high up you are, and she was facing him so she had her back to me, and suddenly he went over. I couldn’t see how her hands were placed but he was like – you know when you sit on the edge of a swimming pool and just sort of drop backwards into the water? That’s how he went, like that. And I thought, My God, she’s crazy, and headed for the doorway back to the stairs, then I heard her scream very angrily, and as I ran down the stairs I could hear her behind me, and for a moment I thought she was coming after me as well.

  She took the stairs all the way down, but when she got to the bottom she just stopped and waited, and then the police arrived, and she walked calmly up to them – I remember thinking how tranquil she suddenly seemed, as if she was fully accepting of what would happen – and she spoke very softly to them. And that was that.

  Someone had already covered the body. It had just missed a little boy and his mother. The whole thing – it was just so strange. I suppose the thing that bothered me most was that I couldn’t associate this woman I’d been chatting to earlier with someone who would shove her lover over the side of a building.

  Longbright sent May the remaining documents she had collated, and laboriously printed them out for his partner. Half an hour later, May found Bryant standing on his smoking terrace, a tiny wooden balcony that faced into the central courtyard of the PCU building. Far from keeping his pipe smoke away from everyone it had the effect of distributing the aroma to all the offices.

  ‘Dan’s got some footage for us to watch,’ said May. ‘Is this thing safe? I take it you read Janice’s notes.’

  ‘Not all of them, but I took away the salient points,’ Bryant replied, puffing thoughtfully.

  ‘So you know that Scott’s first wife died twelve years ago and that he has a daughter by her.’

  ‘I think I missed that part. What else did I miss?’

  ‘He and Miss Hope got together not long after the first wife died. The phrase “whirlwind romance” came up a few times in Janice’s calls to the families. His daughter Emily is eighteen and devastated, but for a reason we’ll come to. Rebecca Hope ran a number of different businesses, although they fared badly during the economic downturn, leaving her broke. Mark Scott owns a large house in Hampstead overlooking the Heath, which he was given by his parents. He’d been treated for depression for a number of years, and was on a pretty severe medication regime. Lately Hope had also been prescribed similar medication. It sounds like the relationship was in trouble. They weren’t married, but apparently he changed his will leaving everything to her, cutting the daughter out entirely because lately he and Emily had argued. Janice is tracking down other family members, but so far she says the most obvious and noticeable element of the relationship between Rebecca and Mark is the great love they had for one another.’

  ‘Which only deepens the mystery as to why she would want to kill him,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Whether they were happy or not I guess we’ll find out when Janice talks to their friends later today. In the longer version of her statement, Miss Hope reiterates that she loved him very much. What she doesn’t do is show any regret for what happened.’

  ‘Then why would she shove him off a building?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? He comes from an upper-class family, father in the House of Lords, owns land in Hampshire, that sort of thing. She alienated his family at an early point in their relationship – I don’t suppose it took much, as her parents ran a bakery in Leeds. In my experience rich families can be extraordinarily unpleasant about attractive women wanting to marry their favourite sons.’

  ‘You see, this is where your Facebook and your Tweety thing can’t help,’ said Bryant vehemently. ‘All this information flying around the stratosphere, all these selfies and texts, and yet they’re useless when you really want to get at the truth. You can sit there playing Call of Nature all day—’

  ‘I think you mean Call of Duty.’

  ‘—and it doesn’t tell us a thing about who you really are.’ He took a last drag at his pipe and knocked it out on the railing, mindless of the burning ashes that scattered themselves throughout the courtyard. ‘Let’s take a look at that footage.’

  ‘You don’t all have to huddle around my laptop,’ said Dan Banbury irritably. ‘I’ve sent the file to everyone.’

  ‘Can’t open it,’ said Bryant. ‘Just play the blasted thing.’

  ‘You haven’t even tried, have you?’ Banbury sighed and hit play. The monochrome footage had a granular gloom that turned figures into blossoms of soot. It showed an angled patch of concrete with a two-legged shape at one end.

  ‘Can you enhance it?’ asked May.

  ‘This isn’t a Tom Cruise film, John. I can’t just hit a button and zoom it into crystal sharpness. It’s a poorly positioned out-of-date closed-circuit camera with dust over its globe. But I’m pretty sure that’s Mark Scott. Watch this part.’ He fast-forwarded to a later point in the recording. A second figure, much smaller, ran into the frame. She wore a tight black gown with a sequinned hem. The tops of both their heads were cut off, but it was obvious that some kind of confrontation was taking place. ‘See, he steps back, closer to the wall, almost like he’s afraid of her, she comes forward, they’re still not engaging directly, then …’ He slowed the image down.

  The detectives watched as the smaller figure stepped so close to the larger one that they overlapped and became one. A moment later, only one pair of legs could be seen. ‘And over he goes,’ said Banbury.

  Another figure, clearly female, passed closer to the camera, heading for the deck’s doorway. ‘And there goes Lisa Harper, anxious to keep clear and get the hell out. I’d say that was pretty conclusive evidence, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It seems that way,’ said Bryant grudgingly.

  ‘Is it admissible evidence?’ asked May. ‘The quality’s not good.’

  ‘We’ll have to take advice on that.’ Banbury shut down the footage. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The witness clearly stayed in her corner beneath the camera, so she’s in the clear,’ said Bryant.

  ‘She was never under suspicion,’ said May.

  ‘She still needed to be ruled out,’ Bryant replied. ‘Lisa Harper was tall and blonde. Rebecca Hope is slender and fairly short. I wonder why he moved like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Back and forth, almost as if they were sparring. There was something strange going on between them. Hope doesn’t seem the devious type. Perhaps she’s not lying to us so much as omitting a crucial part of the story.’

  ‘Why can’t we just accept her testimony?’ asked Renfield. ‘She pushed him over and that’s that?’

  ‘Because she can’t give us a reason fo
r having done it,’ said Bryant.

  ‘He could have annoyed her, forcing her to act in anger, purely on the spur of the moment. That’s how it appears to me.’

  Bryant looked around at the others. ‘Anyone else have an idea of how to proceed?’

  ‘Can we get hold of the dress Rebecca Hope was wearing last night?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘You’ll split the seams, you’re too big-boned,’ said Bryant rudely.

  Longbright had a genetic predisposition towards heft. She was not, however, like those larger women who looked as if not all of their body would follow them when they came to a sudden stop, but was pleasingly firm-muscled.

  ‘I’d like to match it to that footage,’ she said, ‘just to be sure that it’s what we’re seeing in the shot.’

  ‘I think we need to schedule another interview with Hope,’ said May. ‘It sounded to me as if she was sticking to a script.’

  Because the Holland Park murder case was occupying so much of their time, they didn’t get back to Rebecca Hope until late in the evening, by which time she had been in custody for almost twenty-four hours. As they hadn’t been able to apply for an extension, the detectives knew that they would shortly have to release her unless she was charged.

  Before they entered, they studied her through the small window of the interview room. She sat motionless, facing away from them, small and so still that she might have been carved from wood. The basement room had fierce, flat strip lighting and a single window that opened into a locked stairwell leading up to the street. There was nothing to look at, and she continued staring straight ahead as they entered. There were tired creases above her eyes. She had refused to eat, and had only sipped at a glass of water. Clearly she was under great emotional strain.

  ‘Miss Hope, we need to talk a little more about what happened,’ said May gently.

  There was no reply.

  ‘If there’s nothing more you can tell us, we have to take your statement as it stands, and that means you’ll be charged accordingly,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘I’d much rather you just got it over with,’ she said in a small, soft voice. ‘I’m ready to accept the responsibility. There’s nothing more to be said, I’m afraid. You know what happened. You must do your job.’

  Bryant shot his partner a look. This is going to be an uphill battle. ‘We still have a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the beginning.’

  Upstairs, Janice Longbright had taken receipt of a package and was unwrapping it when Meera Mangeshkar came in.

  ‘You’re working late,’ said Longbright, cutting open the box with a paperknife.

  ‘Colin and I are still collating the witness statements on Holland Park. What’s that?’

  ‘Have a look.’ Longbright carefully unfolded the black evening dress and held it up. ‘It weighs nothing. No wonder she was cold.’

  ‘Is that Rebecca Hope’s gown?’ Meera, a girl who rarely strayed from Dr Marten boots, leggings and sweatshirts, studied the dress with interest. ‘Blimey, there’s nothing of it.’

  ‘Haute couture, my dear.’ Janice pressed the material against her chest. ‘I don’t know how women get into things like this.’

  ‘No outfit is worth freezing your tits off for,’ said Meera.

  ‘Have you ever worn a vintage dress?’ asked Longbright.

  Meera looked at her as if she had just asked why the DC never took holidays on the moon. ‘Of course not. Why would I?’

  ‘Well, say you have somewhere smart to go—’

  ‘Can I just stop you there? The smartest place Colin’s ever taken me is the Mecca Bingo hall in Tooting.’

  ‘Every woman should own a little black number.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make you feel good when you’re fed up. Don’t tell me this job never gets to you.’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘What do you do when it does?’

  ‘I get pissed.’

  Janice released a sigh of despair. ‘Try the dress.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d fit it. I’m a size six, mostly.’

  ‘What do you mean, mostly?’

  ‘I spend too much time at the gym. Upper body strength.’

  Janice checked the label. ‘This is a six so you should be fine.’

  Meera looked horrified. ‘I’m not trying that on; it looks like it’d fall apart. What’s it made out of, anyway?’

  ‘It’s satin and crêpe de Chine. I used to model clothes like this.’

  ‘What, before you ended up stripping?’ Meera held up the dress and poked at it.

  ‘I was never an ecdysiast, I was a hostess.’

  ‘Sure you were. All right,’ said Meera, pulling off her sweater, ‘but don’t laugh.’

  ‘If you could just describe what was going through your head when he went over the edge,’ said May, checking his watch. ‘Just give us something, Miss Hope, and we may be able to have the charge mitigated.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want that,’ said Hope flatly.

  ‘You must have had a reason,’ snapped Bryant. ‘You didn’t leave home to go to the exhibition together; he left first and you caught him up. Why?’

  Hope looked down at the floor, refusing to catch his eye. ‘You have to charge me with murder or let me go.’

  ‘Arthur, we’re out of time,’ said May. ‘I can’t get an extension without Raymond’s approval and he’s gone off somewhere.’

  ‘There must be someone in the Murder Investigation Team who can grant approval.’

  ‘They need Land’s signature.’

  ‘Charge me,’ Hope challenged. ‘You have to do it.’

  Bryant looked at the page that lay between them. On top of it was a black biro. All that was needed now were two signatures.

  The alarm on May’s phone made them both jump. Hope remained immobile. Realizing what the tone signified, she suddenly looked more peaceful. ‘That’s it,’ said May, reaching across and picking up the pen. He uncapped it and started to sign the charge sheet.

  The door to the interview room slammed open. ‘Don’t sign it!’ Longbright cried. ‘She didn’t do it.’

  ‘You know nothing,’ replied Hope.

  ‘I know you couldn’t have killed him.’ Longbright set the dress down on the interview table. ‘It’s a size six from 1935. The satin is worn thin.’

  ‘It was my grandmother’s,’ said Hope, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Mr Bryant, Meera is a size six. She just tried the dress on,’ Longbright explained. ‘It fitted her perfectly, but people were slimmer when it was made. It’s physically impossible to raise your arms above waist height. She couldn’t have pushed Scott in the way she described without tearing the sleeves to pieces.’

  ‘If you didn’t push him, what did you do?’ asked May.

  Hope’s shoulders sagged forward. She gnawed at a knuckle, thinking through the implications of her response. The room remained silent. Finally she spoke. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said.

  ‘Then how did he—’ May began.

  ‘He jumped,’ said Bryant. ‘She followed him there because she knew he was going to try.’ He turned to Hope. ‘That’s why you and he were standing on opposite sides of the gallery’s reception room, wasn’t it? He hadn’t seen you until that moment.’

  Her voice was so quiet now that they could hear the rain falling into the basement stairwell, and had to strain forward to hear her. ‘Have you ever dealt with someone who’s severely depressed, any of you?’ she asked. ‘There’s no rationality to it. There’s nothing you can say or do that will make them feel better. He suffered from bouts of depression all through his life,’ she went on. ‘He’d tried to kill himself before. I had always managed to stop him. But we reached a point where he just wanted to die. He had stopped taking his meds, and wouldn’t allow me to get him any more help. You don’t understand what the strain of living with someone like that does to you. The more time we spent together, the more this – thing – took over our lives, until I had
all but disappeared.’

  She rose and walked unsteadily to the window, where raindrops were cutting through the dirt on the panes.

  ‘I knew he was determined to do it this time. He wouldn’t alter his will to favour Emily. He wanted to leave everything to me. I followed him up to the observation deck, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him. Then that blonde woman followed us up. As he moved towards the railing I knew I had to make it look like murder, so I closed in on him, knowing she would back up my story.’

  ‘You knew what would happen afterwards,’ said Bryant.

  ‘What?’ asked May. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You can’t inherit from somebody you’ve murdered if it can be proved you had something to gain, and the will was made in Miss Hope’s favour,’ said Bryant. ‘The house in Hampstead would pass to his daughter. That’s right, isn’t it, Miss Hope?’

  ‘He wouldn’t change the will, and there was a clause in it preventing me from passing it to her,’ she said numbly. ‘But she would inherit if I couldn’t.’

  ‘A loophole,’ said Bryant. ‘You didn’t plan this. You wouldn’t have worn the dress if you had.’

  She looked up at them, wiping her eyes. ‘The thought occurred to me when I was up there, standing before him, listening to him explain yet again why I would be doing him a favour by letting him end it all. I suddenly thought: This time I don’t have to beg and plead. This time Emily could be protected, and perhaps the court would show me mercy when the facts surrounding his medical history emerged.’

  ‘You needn’t have taken that route,’ said Bryant. ‘You’re a declared bankrupt. If you receive an inheritance after filing for bankruptcy, it usually becomes part of your bankruptcy estate. The property would most likely have passed to Emily anyway.’