‘Mr Bryant was suffering the after-effects of having been poisoned,’ Longbright reminded her boss. ‘He’s back to normal now.’
‘He was never normal,’ said Land forlornly. ‘He is the thorn in my paw, the stone in my shoe, the fly in my ointment. You think Her Majesty’s Government causes trouble for us? Wait until you see what the Americans can do. They won’t appreciate some superannuated Harry Potter interfering with international policy. You have to keep him as far away from them as possible, do you understand?’
‘I just thought you should be kept in the picture. I didn’t think you’d seen the letter.’
Longbright took her leave, although not before Land noticed that she had failed to agree to his terms.
One of the Daves stuck his head around the door of the detectives’ office.
‘Bugger off,’ Bryant warned. ‘We can’t have you two electrifying things while we’re trying to work.’
‘Sorry to bother you,’ said Dave One. ‘It’s just that me and my colleague were talking about that lad whose body we found in the basement. We heard you’ve been asked to investigate the case.’
‘How do you get your information so fast?’ asked May impatiently. ‘Is there some kind of underground network we should be aware of?’
‘They did find him,’ Bryant reminded his partner. ‘You’d better come in.’
Dave One stepped across the threshold and scratched at his scrubby beard. ‘The basement door was locked when we went down there. We were the first to open it. But there’s another way in from the building next door.’
‘You mean Flint could have come in from the other side?’
‘It’s just that you wouldn’t hide a body down there, because of the difficulty getting it down the stairs, right?’ Dave One looked at his boots, embarrassed. ‘I know it sounds daft—’
‘No, it doesn’t at all,’ said Bryant, enthused. ‘You think he was killed down there. It means he could have met someone in the Ladykillers Café or the bar, and there was an altercation.’
‘We thought you should talk to the owners.’
‘You can’t, Arthur,’ warned May. ‘We can’t be seen to be working on the case.’
‘What, you think the Yanks have got spies out watching the building? Surely they won’t stop me going for a cuppa and a cake.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Come on, I’ve had my eye on their Victoria sponge for a while.’
Jack Renfield was careful not to smile too much. He had been racking his brain trying to think of a way to win back Longbright, and now the opportunity had presented itself. As he had been teamed with her once more, he would be able to show her how thoughtful and supportive he could be. It had been quite a learning curve for the former desk sergeant from being the confused butt of everyone’s jokes to reinstatement as a trusted member of the PCU. He tried not to appear too dog-like when gazing at her.
‘There’s not much to go on.’ Longbright turned the pages on her notepad. ‘We know Howard Flint was estranged from his son. The CIA brief says that he knew the boy was still living in London but wished to have no further contact with him. Jericho Flint was last seen on the evening of August the tenth. It means that whoever stashed him in our basement did so right under our noses.’
‘Either he was killed here, or brought in already dead,’ said Renfield. ‘I know we’re lax on security but there’s no way someone could have carried a corpse through this building. The electronic entry system was installed at the main door as soon as we arrived.’
‘But the Daves say there’s another way in,’ Longbright said.
He caught her eye just as she had the same thought. ‘Let’s see for ourselves.’
Number 231 Caledonian Road occupied the end-of-terrace position on a sliver of land that had formerly hosted (in reverse order) a public house, temperance rooms, a chapel, a brothel, a boarding house and a private residence. When the Hoop & Grapes lost its licence and closed down, the property remained derelict for several years before being converted into offices that were purchased by the Home Office to house the Specialist Operations Directorate. The PCU jumped the queue because it urgently needed to be rehoused, Arthur Bryant having managed to burn down their old unit at Mornington Crescent.
The basement was much older than the late-Victorian edifice that had been constructed over it. A painted wooden door at the rear of the ground floor led to the basement staircase.
‘Dan reckons the lower floor was laid after 1824. Something about the mass manufacture of concrete. It was built over a tributary of the River Fleet and used to store beer barrels.’ Longbright stopped before a riveted iron door edged with yellow and black striped tape. ‘The Daves were meant to put some lights in but didn’t get around to it.’
‘Here, let me.’ Renfield squeezed past her. Gripping the handle in a meaty fist, he dragged the door open.
‘The US Embassy brought in members of their own team to stay with Flint’s body. They spent an afternoon at the unit, but didn’t allow anyone else downstairs.’ She turned on her cage light and held it high. ‘After they removed the remains, they taped up the door with specific instructions that no one should enter the basement. Obviously they forgot to tell the Daves.’
‘This part looks a lot older than the building above,’ said Renfield.
Longbright’s light fell on the eight-foot-long stone box that had contained the consul’s son. ‘The lid is a single piece of Portland stone.’ She pointed to the great slab that leaned against the container. ‘It took two of them to push it off.’
‘Whoever brought him down here must have known about the box,’ said Renfield. ‘You don’t just stumble on something like this. How come nobody came down to the basement when we first moved in?’
‘Raymond told us it belonged to the building next door. I checked the lease, and it turns out he was wrong – as usual.’
‘If Flint was already dead there had to be at least two others with him, putting him in the casket while we were working upstairs.’ He pressed his hand against the box and felt the damp, cold stone on his skin. ‘What’s it doing here anyway? How could anyone have known about it?’
Longbright led the way over to the door in the partition. She leaned close to the wood. ‘I can hear something moving about on the other side.’
Renfield placed his ear against the door as well. ‘Maybe it’s rats.’
The door suddenly opened outwards and Bryant stepped in. ‘The café has a cocktail bar downstairs,’ he explained as May followed him in. ‘They have a very good selection of gins. It appears several of these basements were once connected. If this is the way they brought him in, they’d still have had to pass through a busy bar.’
‘Why would anyone go to so much trouble?’ Renfield asked. ‘What do you gain by hiding a body down here?’
Longbright shone her torch at the empty sarcophagus. ‘Who’s going to look for it in a cop shop?’ she replied.
‘How would you like to not smell of cabbages any more?’ Longbright asked brightly.
Meera Mangeshkar regarded her with suspicion.
‘I’m talking about taking you off bin duty.’
Meera scrunched her lips. She might have been trying to imagine elephants in outer space. ‘Me and Colin always get the bin searches. There’s no one else to do them.’
‘Perhaps I could persuade Raymond to outsource the dirtiest jobs. You’ve both been doing them for long enough.’
Mangeshkar’s mistrustful eyes narrowed still further. ‘What’s the catch?’
‘No catch. Jack and I could do with your help. The consul’s son hung out with a young crowd. They won’t open up to us, but they might to you.’
‘You’re a police officer. You can get them in here and scare the shit out of them.’
‘That isn’t how we do things, Meera, you know that.’
‘You’re saying we should go undercover?’
‘Jericho Flint was sleeping in a camper van on Market Road. There’s a healthy counter-culture scene ar
ound there. There’s also a big recording studio complex nearby that has a twenty-four-hour café used by sound engineers and musicians. I’ve sent you and Colin some profile notes. Find out who Flint’s friends were. His father wants to know what his son had been up to.’
‘Why? It says here he hadn’t seen him for a year. Why didn’t they speak? What’s missing from the notes?’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out,’ Longbright replied. ‘Jack and I have an appointment with the US consul tonight.’
‘They’re moving the embassy from Grosvenor Square to Nine Elms,’ said Meera. ‘The new one looks like a fortress with swords on the top and a moat.’
‘I imagine that’s pretty much what it is. Apparently they didn’t think much of the security in this place. We’re meeting Mr Flint tonight in a “soft secure” building in Mayfair, but I can’t get you in. Only two of us are getting clearance for entry. If we’re given any further information I’ll feed it through, but you can start right now by going to the Vinyl Café. Try not to look like coppers.’
‘What do you mean?’ Meera seemed aggrieved.
‘The boots.’
‘I don’t know what else to wear.’
‘Look around you. Try dressing like a normal girl for once.’
‘There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don’t know where to begin. I’ve seen the old photos of you in your low-cut gold lamé gown down the strip club, dressed like Marilyn Monroe.’
‘Diana Dors, actually.’
Meera shrugged. ‘I don’t know who that is, presumably someone old. I’ll go undercover but I’m not wearing a dress over black leggings or doing anything weird with my hair.’
Longbright considered her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of uniform. You don’t have the fashion gene, do you?’
‘No, I have the climbing-in-and-out-of-bins gene, thanks to being stuck on rubbish duty for ages. You’re the glamorous one, but I agree you’re pushing it age-wise so I’ll give it a go.’ She looked down at her ribbed navy PCU sweater. ‘Colin will be all right, he always fits in.’
‘You two seem to be getting on pretty well these days.’
‘I’m waiting for him to underestimate me. That’ll be fun.’
‘You know he’s in love with you, right?’
Meera rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not thick. He just needs to slow down a bit.’
Janice laid a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t hurt him, Meera. He’s not as strong as you.’
‘Yeah, well. Ta for the advice. Not sure you’re the one to be giving it.’
‘Because of me and Jack?’
‘Yeah. On, off, nobody knows where you stand.’
‘It comes with the job.’ Janice gathered her notes and pulled a pencil out of her hair with some difficulty.
‘You mean the job comes first. Like Superman not marrying Lois Lane.’
‘They got married.’
‘Only in one timeline. Then ended up single in another.’
‘Then I guess that’ll be like me and Jack.’ She waved Meera away. ‘What is this with the personal stuff? Nobody around here ever discusses their personal life.’
‘That’s because most of us don’t have one,’ Meera pointed out.
‘Go on, get out of here, before I change my mind.’
Jack Renfield studied the address on his phone. The bay-windowed Victorian houses in Mount Street hid their true identities. It was hard to tell which was a private club, an expensive restaurant, a consulate, a sultan’s apartment. Many were merely elegant shells for shifting money around the world.
‘I read some pretty brutal comments from Howard Flint about the British police,’ said Renfield, checking the door numbers. ‘Didn’t he accuse us of being soft on terrorism? I thought consuls are meant to be non-partisan.’
‘They are, and so is the ambassador. It’s here.’ Longbright climbed the tiled steps to an elegant red-brick mansion with closed grey blinds. ‘He’s heading back to Boston soon. We’re lucky we caught him.’
The door was opened before they could ring the bell.
‘We’re from—’ Jack began.
‘We know who you are,’ said a secret service agent, stepping back. Longbright raised an eyebrow at Renfield and stepped inside. The black and white tiled hall and oak-panelled rooms beyond offered the perfect simulacrum of a wealthy Mayfair house in the 1930s, but there were telltale signs of hidden technology. Sharp-blue LEDs were embedded in the skirting boards, and tiny black cameras winked from the corners of the ceilings.
‘DI Longbright, DS Renfield, come through.’ Howard Flint beckoned to them with a welcoming smile that did not reach as far as his eyes. He had the air of a harried diplomat trying to organize the evacuation of a colonial outpost before the eruption of a volcano. His untidily parted red hair almost hid the white plastic button in his right ear. Every now and again he paused, listening to it, before glancing back at them. ‘We were expecting somebody more senior. I can’t spare you much time tonight. Everything I have to say is in the official report. I’m putting my wife on to you.’ He made it sound like a threat. Leading the way to a bare office where two chairs had been placed before a desk, he indicated that they should sit, then left the room.
‘Awkward,’ Renfield mouthed at Longbright. A gold antique carriage clock pinged on a black marble mantelpiece. The door opened and in came Kate Flint. Longbright goggled and thought, This woman means business; hair set hard, jaw set firm, a square-collared grey moiré two-piece suit, discreet pearls, clear nail varnish, patent-leather heels. If her home was a fortress, she was definitely its guardian. Janice realized she was much younger than her fashion sense suggested, certainly a generation later than her husband. Formal introductions were effected. The consul’s wife tapped her foot and appraised each of them unnervingly.
‘There were a few points not covered in the report,’ Longbright began.
‘Why don’t I just talk,’ replied Kate Flint, not phrasing a question. She paced the room, leaving them to twist about in their seats. ‘My husband and my son were not in contact with one another. Jericho chose to remain in London after his gap year rather than return home to begin an internship in a legal firm. During this interim period neither of us maintained close contact with him, although my husband made extensive inquiries as to his whereabouts. We held on to his passport because he could not be trusted to take care of himself. We need to know what happened to him between August tenth and the discovery of his remains on your premises. We should have been apprised of your role in his death, how he gained admission to your building and which of your officers may be culpable.’
‘I don’t think you understand the situation, Mrs Flint,’ Longbright interrupted. ‘Your husband’s tenure in the consulate has now expired, so while we will still do everything within our power to help you discover the truth about your son, we have to conduct the investigation in accordance with our own jurisprudence and the procedures set down by London’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command.’
Flint stared at her in brutal silence for a few moments, then continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘What we need you to do is find out who killed our son and why, and to do so before his official service so that we may grieve with closure. We will need a full timeline of your unit’s accountability in this matter, and further to that we will need—’
‘You are required to aid us in the official investigation, Mrs Flint,’ said Longbright, raising her voice. ‘We’ll have questions concerning your relationship with your son. For example, why did you have no contact with him?’
Flint’s face stayed emotionless. ‘Our relationship with Jericho is no concern of yours. What should worry you more is that he was found dead inside your unit, which places every member of your staff under suspicion of direct involvement in his death.’
Renfield tried to calm the situation. ‘When can we expect to be informed about the findings in the coroner’s report, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘My husband has decided
that you should not be allowed access to the report, as it was conducted outside of your jurisdiction.’
‘That could be seen as obstruction,’ warned Long-bright.
‘Howard never wanted you to handle the case. Apart from the ethical issues raised by a potentially culpable department investigating itself, your unit’s track record is a matter of grave concern to us. Your senior detectives are past retirement age. They fail to run their investigations according to national statutory regulations. They have a history of evidence contamination and rights abuses. They openly share privileged information with undesirables and have been the subject of countless internal investigations. I understand they’ve repeatedly ignored Home Office guidelines and were prosecuted for releasing illegal aliens into the community.’
‘They get results, Mrs Flint,’ said Renfield.
‘They burned down their own unit, didn’t they? Yet somehow, despite all of this, they’ve managed to renew their charter and continue in office. Clearly they have some kind of special relationship with the City of London Police Commission.’ Like her husband, she had mastered the art of the menacing smile, which she now used to devastating effect. ‘Under the circumstances, we are unable to share any information concerning our own independent investigation, and feel it is better that you reach your own conclusions. Your detectives will find out that their network of special relationships does not extend to the international consulate of the United States of America. We are leaving at the end of the week. You have until then to submit your own findings.’
Dismissing them with a brief raising of her hand, she left the room.
‘Blimey,’ said Renfield as they left, ‘was she trying to put the frighteners on us or what? What do you think was going on there?’
‘Either she thinks we’re complete morons or they’ve got something to hide,’ Longbright replied as they crossed the road. ‘It’s going to be tricky working without the coroner’s report. I wonder what will happen if we apply for their phone records.’
‘Janice, we’re on our own. Whatever happens, they’re going to hang us out to dry. If you think they haven’t already reached their own conclusions you’re underestimating them. Our investigation is a technicality, nothing more.’
Bryant & May – England’s Finest Page 14