Bryant & May – England’s Finest

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I don’t think you should do that,’ Alexandra said.

  ‘I’m just having a little look,’ he told her. The volumes inside were old but of no interest. Most concerned crop planting and animal husbandry. All were printed in Romanian.

  Alexandra seemed to make up her mind about something. ‘Look out of the window,’ she said. ‘See what the babushka is doing.’

  Old Apple-Face had retired to the outside wall and was sitting on a kitchen chair in the lightly falling snow, wearing just a thin grey shawl around her shoulders, doing nothing and apparently feeling no cold.

  ‘OK, come with me.’ They crossed the tower floor to a rough wooden chest of drawers. ‘I know it’s not your idea of a library, but it is here. They keep the most valuable items in things like this.’

  Charlie studied the chest. It was fastened with a fat rusty lock.

  ‘Is there any way we can get inside?’ Alexandra was timid and culturally over-respectful, but Charlie had no such compunction. ‘You want to get lost for a few minutes?’

  ‘You can’t just break in! This is what I was afraid would happen. You promised, Charlie.’

  ‘Go downstairs. I’m not going to steal anything, I swear.’

  ‘It’s a federal offence to remove anything from the building. You’ll go home tomorrow and I still have to live here.’

  ‘I’m just going to take a look, OK? I swear I won’t touch a thing.’

  ‘You really are a piece of work, Kemp,’ she said, lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘You come from a country that has never been sucked dry by a parasitic invader. This is something you can’t have. I know these people; they’re not thrilled about having a tourist industry built around a book by a British author who never even visited their country.’

  ‘I give you my word I won’t do anything,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘It’s just closure for me. To say that I saw it. I’ll be down in a minute, I promise.’

  After she had reluctantly left, he dug out his Swiss Army knife and worked on the lock. It slid open with embarrassing ease.

  Inside the drawers were a number of gaudy icons, all fake, priests’ robes embroidered with red silk, brocaded white christening dresses, hand-stitched blankets and, at the bottom, a handful of books. He removed the stack, checking out of the window.

  Alexandra was stumping about in the courtyard, smoking hard, trying not to look suspicious.

  He looked down at the volume in his hands. The blue leather cover jumped out. It was entirely blank, with one gold word embossed on the spine. Dracula.

  The book had never been read – you could always tell a virgin copy by the way the pages seemed unwilling to leave one another, the tiny ticking sound the spine made as it was stretched for the first time, the reluctance of the covers to move further apart. It was unsullied, the first and last one, the only one.

  Stupidly, he’d forgotten to bring his cotton gloves. He didn’t want to release sweat-marks on to the pages, but he had to open it and check. The book had crimson edges and the dye came off on his thumbs, but the white interior showed no discoloration and the smell of the print was still overwhelming.

  The publication date matched. The ending was brief but new to his eyes, describing the utter destruction of the castle. It seemed desultory and flatly written, as if it had been tacked on because the author had no other way of finishing the story. He could see why Stoker had subsequently removed it. He wanted to sit down and read right through but had to content himself with riffling through the pages, just to prove that he was not hallucinating.

  He fumbled in his rucksack for the forgery he’d had made. He’d known the size and shape of the edition, but that was all. No one had ever mentioned that the real version was a different shade of blue and had painted edges, but no one here would know or care. Back home, the literary world would sit up and take notice when they saw what he had.

  Replacing the lock and closing it, he made his way back downstairs. The babushka was still on her chair, basking in the lightly falling snow as if it was a summer’s day.

  He looked around but there was no sign of Alexandra. He waited but she didn’t return. He started to get cold. Beyond the entrance, the turkeys were eyeing him with suspicion. There was no one around. It was beginning to snow more heavily. He set down the backpack and looked at the low hills.

  Someone brushed past him.

  The snow was in his eyes. He had the sense of a figure, tall and black – and then – and then—

  He reeled back. What he saw was not possible. He stared at the scene, half-obliterated by falling snow, and gasped.

  He backed into an archway and tried to catch his breath. He had no idea how long he stood there. Moments, minutes, half an hour.

  The hand that fell on to his shoulder made him jump.

  ‘You’re under arrest, Mr Kemp,’ said John May. Behind him was an older, smaller man wrapped in scarves. Accompanying him were two Inspectori de Poliţie, the Romanian police.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Charlie said anxiously, looking around for the backpack. It was already in the hands of one of the inspectors. The other policeman stepped forward. ‘You’ve been under surveillance,’ he explained. ‘You’re being arrested in connection with the murder of Alexandra Constantin.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, panicked. ‘It was Dracula.’

  The great grey concrete police station at Braşov had not been designed to reassure anyone placed under arrest that all would be well. It was, however, efficient and well ordered, and had, May noted, faster Wi-Fi access than he was used to in King’s Cross.

  The detectives were received with civility and accorded a meeting with the chief inspector, Ştefan Timmar. The inspector was a small, sharp-featured man who remained motionless in repose but seemed filled with contained energy.

  ‘I take it that’s your Wolseley outside?’ Bryant said amiably. ‘A fine English car. The rest of us seem to be driving Dacias.’

  ‘We make sure we have the best of what is available,’ Timmar said, looking from one to the other. ‘It is indeed a fine old English motor. Are you retired?’

  ‘No, we’re still in active service,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘This is good. Life is prolonged by hard work. I must thank you for aiding us in this matter. But you do understand that Mr Kemp is now under European jurisdiction?’

  ‘Of course,’ said May, ‘and that will be respected. However, we would like to interview the suspect.’

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged. You can sit in while we take his statement.’

  ‘And we’d like to see the body,’ said Bryant.

  ‘That is a little more problematic,’ said Timmar. ‘There are fewer of us here than we would wish. We have no coroner’s office in Braşov – we mostly deal with tourists losing their wallets in nightclubs – so the body will have to be taken to a mortuary in the valley where we have professional staff on site. Obviously it must remain sealed until then to prevent contamination.’

  That’s never bothered us in London, Bryant thought with some embarrassment. It would be mortifying to think that the Romanian police were more thorough.

  ‘It’s Saturday, so we will have to wait for someone to come up on Monday,’ Timmar said, ‘but you are welcome to accompany them then.’

  It was out of the question. The detectives needed to be back in London at the start of the working week.

  The three of them visited the cold-storage facility in the basement, where they were able to view the body through sealed plastic. They were handed copies of the initial report.

  ‘She died from a single wound at the right side of the throat,’ said Timmar. ‘We have no murder weapon. Her blood was found on Kemp’s coat. There are no other footprints going out of the castle gate, and that is the only exit.’

  ‘So – no other suspects,’ said Bryant.

  ‘None.’

  They sat in on Kemp’s interrogation. When he heard the British voices once more, he turned anxiously on his st
ool. ‘Can you get me out of here?’ he begged the detectives. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid that as the arrest was made on Romanian territory you must remain here,’ May explained. ‘We can have a lawyer appointed by the consulate. Is there anything more you can tell us?’

  ‘They’ll find my fingerprints on her,’ Kemp warned. ‘We spent the night together. They’ll find her scarf in my bag. She dropped it at the hotel. I was going to return it. They’ll find something else in the bag too …’

  Bryant was acutely aware that they could be overheard and that his time with Kemp was running out. ‘You’re a career thief, Charlie, but they’re going to charge you with murder. Isn’t there anything else?’

  ‘Look, there’s some other stuff that’s going to come out,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘We’d been lovers. I lied to her about how I made my living, and when she found out the truth she left me. I couldn’t get her out of my mind and came back for her. She filed a complaint against me.’

  ‘You mean you stalked her?’ May exclaimed.

  ‘I know it was stupid. I was obsessed with her. Then when I found out about the book—’

  The chief inspector raised his hand imperceptibly, and one of the officers cautioned Kemp to say nothing more.

  The detectives remained for the opening of Kemp’s backpack, which contained a few clothes, the dead woman’s scarf and a volume of Dracula bound in blue leather, the title embossed in gold on its spine.

  Three hours later, Bryant and May returned to Bran Castle, leaving the inspectors with their prisoner. The statement had been filed and the consul summoned, but they had seen enough to know that Charlie Kemp wasn’t about to be released on bail. They had listened to his story, and had found it hard to swallow.

  ‘Alexandra was a heavy smoker,’ he had told the police. ‘When I came out I thought maybe she had gone off to find cigarettes. I was about to make my way through the outer wall to where we had parked when something black swept in front of me.’

  ‘What do you mean, something black?’ asked Timmar. ‘Please be more specific in your description.’

  ‘A tall figure, a man in a long cloak and black hat. I think I walked forward, trying to see. As I reached the corner of the castle, I saw him hunched over someone lying in the snow. I recognized Alexandra. She always wore that red fur coat. I knew she was dead. I felt sick. When I looked back the man had gone.’

  ‘A wound in her throat made by a black-caped figure,’ May said as they re-entered Bran Castle. ‘A little over the top, don’t you think? Anyway, I thought vampires only came out at night.’

  ‘You heard him yourself,’ Bryant replied. ‘Whether he knows it or not, Kemp is obsessed with Stoker. He must have made up the story, but why? There were no other footprints leading back outside the castle. Don’t tell me his cape wiped them from the snow. But Kemp came to steal a book. He had no motive for killing his girlfriend.’

  They made their way back to the tower gate. The light was lowering, the sky filled with eerie bands of greenish-yellow.

  ‘He needed her to get him in, so why would he kill her?’ May’s breath condensed in the falling temperature. ‘And to suggest that a real-life Dracula is stalking the castle is preposterous. This might have been the home of Vlad Dracul once but there’s no coffin in the basement, just a gift shop.’

  In return for leaving the police inspectors alone with a British citizen awaiting representation, Bryant had persuaded them to let him have the keys to the tower. He had promised to return them in half an hour. It had been made quite clear that this was to be the end of their involvement in the matter. They had been civilly treated as guests, but the hospitality had a limit.

  ‘Alexandra Constantin was coming to the end of her time here, wasn’t she?’ asked Bryant, pulling down his scarf. ‘Kemp’s passport showed him making a visit here about a year ago. That must have been when he met her. She conducted research at the castle. That was why Kemp had targeted her. He knew she could get him to the book so that he could substitute the forgery.’

  ‘So why make up that absurd story about her being attacked by Dracula?’ asked May. ‘He must have realized he wouldn’t be believed.’

  ‘Unless that was what he really saw.’

  ‘Please, Arthur, let’s not go there,’ May begged. ‘I’m sure you’d love to believe that a real-life vampire is stalking the ramparts of his old castle. You have a terrible habit of muddling fact and fiction.’

  ‘Then we have to find a way of proving Kemp’s story.’ Bryant pointed over to the gate. ‘Let’s find out if anyone else saw this creature, starting with Old Mother Riley over there.’

  At the mention of the murder the old lady at the ticket barrier grew extremely animated, waving her arms at the sky.

  A young guard standing on the other side of the gateway stepped in to translate. ‘She says she saw it all. The vampire grabbed the poor lady’s throat and bit her, sucking out her blood. Then he turned into a bat and flew off into the clouds.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I think she is a little crazy. She is telling everyone. The story is going all around the place.’

  ‘What about you?’ Bryant asked. ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ came the reply. ‘I saw a man. He was tall and thin, and wearing a black cloak.’

  ‘Did he come past you?’

  ‘No, he was already inside.’

  ‘Did you see him attack the woman?’

  ‘No. I guess I thought he was a priest. You know, the same sort of clothes. I only saw him for a second or two. There was a tour representative waiting to talk to me. I had to attend to him.’

  ‘Great,’ said May, finding a bench in the courtyard and seating himself. ‘Dracula has two eye witnesses.’

  ‘Or maybe they just saw a priest.’ Bryant stood beside him. ‘You’ll get Chalfonts sitting there in the snow. It’s freezing. I want to see that book before they close for the night.’

  They made their way back up to the tower repository. A red plastic cordon had been taped around the chest containing the Stoker edition. Bryant was about to pull open the drawers but May stopped him.

  ‘Don’t add your own fingerprints, for heaven’s sake. We have no jurisdiction here. Timmar was just being polite.’

  ‘But I need to see the book, John. I’m not leaving until I do. It’s the only clue we have.’

  May sighed. There would be no moving him until he had his way. Bryant was wrapping the end of his scarf around his hand.

  ‘No, you’d better let me do it,’ May said, slipping out of a shoe, taking off one of his socks and wrapping it around his hand. Reaching in, he shifted the stack of books to reveal the copy of Dracula.

  Bryant knelt and studied it for a full five minutes. ‘I knew it,’ he exclaimed finally. ‘Kemp didn’t switch books. This one has red edges. The pages on Kemp’s copy are plain. It was still in his backpack.’

  ‘Wait, maybe his forgery is the one with red edges.’

  ‘No. You must have noticed that his thumbs were stained red. He’s a book lover. He couldn’t resist reaching in and opening it. How do you open a book like that?’ He mimed pulling the pages apart with his thumbs. ‘And it scattered red dust from the dye in the drawer. Look.’

  Bryant tugged on his partner’s arm for a hand-up. ‘There’s something else. I’m missing something.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. ‘I’ve seen it around here somewhere. Come on, John, think.’

  He turned to the portraits that decorated the room, two bad oil paintings of Vlad Dracul bloodily impaling soldiers, and several Edwardian representations of Count Dracula from the novel. The display finished with photographs of Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace in Sighişoara, a tourist trap complete with red nylon curtains, modern-looking candles, and a hardboard coffin with a cheap suit of clothes and a trilby laid out in it.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ said May. ‘Kemp lied about what he saw.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’ Bryan
t went to the window. ‘We’ve been had.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Look around you.’ Bryant pointed to the walls. ‘Kemp said he saw a man in a black cloak and a hat, so he wasn’t lying. Stoker’s Dracula and all of the pictures based on his book show the count hatless. That’s how he’s always been depicted in English drawings and films. It’s only here in Transylvania that he’s shown wearing a hat. That ridiculous stage-set in Sighişoara, these paintings and sketches. They dressed someone up. There were no footsteps in the snow leading outside because nobody went outside. It was one of the policemen, and he went back into the castle. They struck a deal. Everybody wins, don’t you see? The police get kudos for catching an international thief, the book stays where it belongs and the tourists have a nicely salacious addition to the legend.’

  ‘But the body—’

  ‘We saw a body. Remember what Raymond told us? Nobody messes with the police here.’

  The light had faded so that the horizon of fir trees appeared like a spiked black wall. Outside, just beyond the castle staircase, a black Wolseley waited with its engine idling. In the passenger seat of the car sat a crimson-haired woman in a red fur coat. She cast a long, cool look up at the castle, dropped her cigarette and rolled up the window.

  ‘She planned the whole thing,’ said Bryant. ‘Why would she want to be officially declared dead?’

  ‘Around here there must be a great many reasons for choosing to disappear,’ said May.

  Chief Inspector Timmar nodded curtly to May as if in acknowledgement of his words, then climbed behind the steering wheel. Alexandra appraised them, then closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat as the gleaming black Wolseley took off into the gathering night.

  Bryant & May and the Forty Footsteps

  During the Second World War, Winston Churchill employed a man named Colonel Colin Gubbins to set up a number of secret auxiliary units.