Link still believed in incarceration, not rehabilitation, and would, in an ideal world, have rounded up all these whining layabout protestors and shipped them out to Afghanistan to serve on the front line. He was a bullet-headed officer in his late forties, with the proportions of a street bollard and cropped brown hair like the bristles on a worn-out broom. His eyes had been chips of ice that could see through brick walls until he was jabbed in the left one by a junkie armed with a broken fence post. The splinter had split his pupil, and although the burst blood vessels had been drained and had healed, he had been left with a strange fractured look, like a damaged toy soldier. He never laughed, joked, smiled or relaxed, and was never fully off duty.
From the moment he met Raymond Land he hated him, for his paunch and his limp handshake, for his weak chin and apologetic face, for the aura of damp appeasement that reminded him of Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister who had failed to halt the Second World War. One look told him that Land was a wishy-washy prevaricator, an apologist, a doormat. And for a copper, he was annoyingly short.
‘You took your bloody time getting here,’ he said, setting off along the perimeter of the cordon.
‘I think there’s been some confusion,’ Land pointed out, knowing that there was always confusion when it came to the awkward chain of command that ran between the Met, the City and the PCU. ‘I thought we only took cases from the City of London public liaison officer, Orion Banks.’
‘You would if she was still with us,’ said the superintendent, setting a pace that Land had trouble matching. ‘Now you’re my responsibility.’
‘What happened to Miss Banks?’ Land was disappointed. He and Banks had been getting on well, even if she did use a lot of media gobbledygook, and he’d rather fancied her, especially now that his divorce was going through.
‘She’s gone to Channel Four’s publicity department, where I imagine her talents will be better served,’ said Link. ‘If you’d been here a few minutes ago you’d have seen this one.’ He nodded his head towards the olive nylon tent covering the bank’s blackened entrance. ‘They’ve already scraped him up.’
‘Scraped who up?’ said Land, trying not to sneeze. The smoke had dissipated, but had left an unpleasant sharpness in the air.
Link held open the tent flap and ushered him in. A more appalling stench assailed Land’s nostrils. He had only smelled something like that once before, after a bomb had torn a guardsman apart in Knightsbridge. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the dimness and tried to assess the scene. The mahogany doors of the bank were coated with an ebony craquelure. The windows on either side had cracked with the extreme heat. A thick layer of black ash covered the marble step. Fire paths were capricious. They could obliterate everything within a certain radius but leave parts within the circle completely untouched.
He saw what had been left: a length of corrugated brown cardboard as long as a person but only a few inches wide, scorched along its wavering edge. ‘Someone was sleeping rough here,’ he said, making out the charred shape of a prone body on the step.
‘Well done.’ Link headed out, expecting Land to follow. ‘A homeless bloke had dossed down for the night and was still curled up in his sleeping bag covered in cardboard sheets when some bastard chucked a Molotov cocktail into the entrance. Petrol everywhere, all over cardboard and rags, and him cocooned inside a nylon tube like a boil-in-the-bag dinner. The only part that didn’t melt was the metal zip.’
‘It could have been a woman,’ said Land, pinching his nose as he mentally measured out the length of the cardboard.
‘Unlikely. There’s a female shelter a couple of streets over. They keep an eye on girls at risk on the street.’
‘You think one of the protestors did this?’
‘Of course, who else? He probably didn’t realize someone was sleeping there – it was only just getting light – but it’s still manslaughter.’
Land’s instincts told him different. ‘He must have seen the cardboard. Surely he knew someone could be underneath.’
‘No, he’s just a yob on the lookout for trouble. But we’ll get him. There’s CCTV up there’ – Link flicked a finger at a dome of black plastic embedded in the ceiling above the bank’s entrance – ‘and over there.’ A second unobtrusive lens covered the doorway from the opposite direction.
‘So this isn’t our case,’ said Land, trying to understand why he had been brought here.
‘Not technically, but you can give us a hand.’ Link wiped black sticky ashes off the sole of his boot. ‘We’ll track him down, no problem, but we don’t have time to ID the victim. My boss reckons that’s something you can do.’
‘We could take the whole thing over,’ Land suggested, knowing that he was pushing his luck. ‘We’ve not got much on at the moment.’
Link shook his head. ‘Yeah, nice try; not going to happen, though. Your unit’s cock-ups are the stuff of legend around here. I wouldn’t trust you to take a banana trifle around to my mum’s, but whoever it was who decided to put you under City of London jurisdiction thinks it’s better to keep you occupied. Get your forensic lad on it, Dan Banbury: he’s a good ’un. Don’t give me those ancient mummies you try to pass off as detectives.’
‘Arthur Bryant and John May are—’
‘I know what they are, and how long they’ve been around. Our lads reckon they’re still working on the Jack the Ripper case.’ He snorted at his own lame joke.
‘Bryant and May have a higher strike rate than anyone else on the force,’ said Land, realizing that he had been pushed into the unenviable position of supporting the very team who so often made his life a living hell.
‘Whatever,’ said Link dismissively. ‘Just make sure they stay a safe distance from my investigation and we’ll get along fine. All you have to do is identify a man-shaped piece of charcoal and file a few forms, without informing the rest of the fruitcakes you call a unit, OK? You’d better run along now.’
5
PORTAL
The Peculiar Crimes Unit was housed in an awkwardly trapezoidal four-floor Victorian corner building (plus basement and attic) on Caledonian Road, a three-minute walk from King’s Cross Station and the international Eurostar terminal. It had been constructed at a time when the neighbourhood had been largely inhabited by anarchists, spiritualists, con men, racketeers, drug-dealers, brothel madams and army deserters: every shade of law-bender, in fact, who needed to get off the street quickly when a copper passed.
There were still a few shady types skulking behind the newly gentrified organic cake shops, but few realized that the unit was even there. From outside it looked less like a police unit and more like a run-down backpackers’ hostel. The area was full of cheap accommodation. Occasionally a Chinese student tried to gain entrance, peered through the window and changed his mind.
‘Insufferable,’ fumed Raymond Land in his first-floor office. ‘He only wants you to work on it, Dan, no one else.’
Dan Banbury was, mainly speaking, the crime scene manager of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. ‘If he wants an ID I’ll need Giles,’ he warned through a mouthful of toast. He’d been forced to do the school run this morning because his wife had a doctor’s appointment, and had left his home in Croydon without any breakfast. ‘I don’t do bodies. We’ll have to have a pathologist. And what about—’
‘Don’t say their names.’ Land held up his hand. ‘If those two get anywhere near this, you know what will happen. One moment it’s a simple case of identification, and the next they’ll be hiring Devil-worshippers and trying to uncover some kind of global conspiracy. You know how weird Bryant gets.’
‘He gets results,’ Banbury reminded him, brushing crumbs from his shirt. ‘Does it matter what methods he uses?’
‘It does when I have to approve his expenses.’ Land slapped the stack of papers on his desk. ‘Look at this lot. Two hundred and fifty nicker for the services of an expert on premature burials. One hundred and seventy-five quid for an occult archivist, whatever that i
s. Seven pounds fifty and a hot meal for a bloke who said he could walk through walls – well, at least the price went down after he broke his nose. But it all mounts up, and it makes me look a total fool. I suppose there have been small triumphs,’ Land conceded. ‘I got Bryant to tidy his desk up and take that disgusting old Tibetan skull of his home. He says he’s going to use it as a sandwich container. Anyway, we haven’t got the case. We’ve got a new liaison officer by the name of Darren Link, and he already hates us. We’re just being used as an ancillary service, so there’s no reason to involve anyone else.’
‘All right,’ said Banbury, shaking his head as he took the work docket from Land, ‘but John and Mr Bryant will find out. They always do.’
‘Only if you tell them,’ Land all but shouted as his crime scene manager walked away.
‘Tell us what?’ asked John May, sauntering into the room with his hands in the pockets of his elegant navy-blue Savile Row suit.
‘There’s a door on this office,’ cried Land. ‘Would it be asking too much for you to knock first?’
‘Frankly, yes. Anyway, there’s not a door on your office.’ May hiked a thumb back at the bare hinges. The two Daves had taken it off over a week ago, saying something about sanding the bottom because it was catching on the floorboards, but it still hadn’t reappeared.
‘Then it’s a metaphorical door.’ Land dropped into his chair. ‘Knock before you come in.’
‘You want me to mime knocking? Should I also make my own sound effects?’ asked May. ‘Then what do I do, try the non-existent handle?’
‘I’m not going to have a conversation about an invisible door!’ shouted Land. ‘Just show some bloody respect!’
‘Why, what are you up to in here?’ May was instantly suspicious. ‘Why was Dan coming out with a file under his arm? Have you given him a job you’re not briefing us on? Arthur won’t be happy about that, you know.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with either of you. You don’t know everything that goes on around here.’
‘Yes, we do, because we’re the ones who tell you. You know Arthur insists on being in charge.’
Land glanced towards the doorway, fully expecting his nemesis to come wandering in. ‘Just get on with your – whatever it is you’re doing.’
‘That’s just it,’ said May. ‘We’re not doing anything. There is nothing to do except paperwork. I thought that woman at the City of London was going to feed us fresh cases.’
‘Orion Banks has been replaced,’ said Land forlornly.
‘Already? That’s a shame. I thought she had taken a bit of a shine to you.’
‘Mind my grief. Just when my divorce is finally going through. I wasted the best years of my life with Leanne.’ Land looked as if he’d just missed the last bus home. ‘I should have dumped her and found someone else while I still had only one chin. Now it’s too late.’
‘Oh, it’s never too late,’ said May, catching a glimpse of his handsome profile in the window.
‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ Land said with a sigh. ‘You’re decades older than me and women can’t keep away from you. The effect you have on them is positively creepy.’
‘Did someone say we have to knock on a door that isn’t there?’ asked Meera Mangeshkar, who was passing Land’s office and felt like being annoying because she had nothing to do.
‘Apparently we have to pretend that it’s there,’ May explained. ‘Think of it as a portal to a mystical sanctum.’
‘All due respect, sir, Mr Land’s as mystical as a sausage sandwich.’
‘Are there sausages?’ asked Colin Bimsley, who was passing too.
‘There are no sausages, there is no door, now will you all get out?’ yelled Land.
‘I thought you said there was a door,’ May concluded.
Welcome to the offices of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. For the sake of succinctness this account will be trimmed like fat from pork, leaving only the lean facts of the case, but in truth modern British police departments are rather like insurance offices. People stand around and chat, attend unnecessary meetings about performance targets and sit through seminars outlining initiatives that achieve nothing. They argue, drink too much tea and spend hours filling out forms. But in the matter of this inquiry the staff of the PCU won’t be doing that. In the space of one week there will be death and destruction for the most mysterious of motives, and it will end in a terrible loss.
All that’s missing to start this particular fireball rolling is the detective who always causes the most trouble in any unit investigation: Mr Arthur St John Aloysius Bryant.
6
CURTAIN UP
The spotlight thumped on and the crimson velvet curtains swept open to reveal, downstage centre, what appeared to be a tramp, possibly someone auditioning for Waiting for Godot.
The tramp looked around in confusion, spotted the audience, then began to edge his way offstage. Unfortunately he found his exit blocked, and as he was standing in a 1930s art deco lounge beside a woman in a long dress of silvered silk arranging daffodils in a bowl, he was immediately assumed to be some kind of comedy gardener. The more he bumped and shuffled his way around the furniture, the more the audience laughed.
A brilliantined young man in a dinner jacket entered stage right and was astounded to find his place taken by this wizened interloper. However, in keeping with the maxim that The Show Must Go On, he persevered with his cue.
‘Don’t be so awfully cross with me, Lavinia. You know how you hate wrinkles so. When I saw you outside the casino, standing there in the moonlight, I simply couldn’t help myself. You really are the most frightfully lovely creature, you know.’ He tried to close in on his mark beside the actress but the tramp was in his way, blinking out at the audience like a befuddled tortoise.
‘What the hell is he doing out there?’ asked the stage manager in a panicked whisper.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the unnerved ASM. ‘I tried to get him off before the curtain went up.’
‘Oh, Roger, if only you hadn’t been such a frightful cad,’ trilled Lavinia. ‘Now there’ll always be something utterly ghastly between us.’ She eyed the tramp disdainfully as the audience collapsed in laughter and the curtain came down.
‘I wasn’t going to leave until I had an answer,’ Arthur Bryant insisted stubbornly, pulling his coat free of the ASM’s hands.
‘What are you talking about?’ the stage manager asked. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m a police officer.’ Arthur Bryant handed over what he hoped was his PCU calling card and not an ad for a shoe shop. ‘I’ve been following your stagehand.’ He pointed to a ferret-faced young man seated in the corner of the flies, attached to an iron post with a plastic cable tag. ‘I tailed him all the way from Piccadilly Circus because of these.’ Digging deep into his tweed overcoat he produced two fistfuls of wallets. ‘He was dipping tourists. I saw him duck in to the stage door and tried to stop him, but he ran up the steps into the dark.’
‘Weren’t me, Granddad,’ grunted the tethered felon.
Bryant regarded his captive. ‘And they say the art of conversation is dead. Well, I’ll be on my way, then.’
‘Now look here,’ said the stage manager, ‘you can’t just go swanning off like that after ruining our leading lady’s opening speech—’
‘I’m not swanning off,’ Bryant pointed out as he reknotted his scarf. ‘I’m exiting stage left.’
‘Is that all you can say?’ asked the stage manager, aghast.
‘Well, your leading lady could try to sound her aitches,’ said Bryant, squinting back at the stage. ‘It’s Noël Coward. She’s meant to be from Westminster, not Wapping. Someone will be along to pick up Mr Chatterbox here shortly. Cheerio.’
At the unit, Arthur Bryant had always been affectionately known as ‘the Old Man’, even though his partner John May was just three years his junior. Set beside each other, the pair might have been born two decades apart. Bryant had lost his hair in his thirti
es, and his short, stocky frame seemed to have been predesigned for senior status. He had never lifted anything heavier than a book, and had regarded a flight of stairs as a challenge since his mid-forties. When he spoke it was because his peculiar passions required him to impart information, as he was insensible to the etiquette of small talk. He was a mobile time capsule, insulated from the world by private obsessions. Paradoxically, it was one of the things that made him so valuable to the PCU. In a city that was rapidly forgetting the past, he was an inconvenient reminder of all that had gone before.
Arthur Bryant remembered.
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ said John May, shaking his head. ‘Even after all these years, your every action remains a mystery to me. You’re a detective, you’re not meant to behave like some teenaged PC fresh out of Hendon. And why you had to follow him into a theatre of all places—’
‘He was a junkie doing some speed-acquisition of tourists’ wallets, John. I took one look at him and knew he would test positive for stupidity.’ Bryant threw himself down into his old leather armchair. ‘Of course I could have alerted a beat copper, but there was less chance of finding one in the area than locating the Nécessaire egg.’
‘The what?’
Bryant waved a hand vaguely. ‘Oh, one of the eight Fabergé eggs that vanished from the vaults of the Kremlin Armoury. Anyway, I saved some poor spotty rookie from two days of interviews and form-filling. And besides, I’d heard good things about that particular theatrical production. Wrongly, as it turned out.’
‘So you cuffed him, then thought you’d have a nose around and got caught by the curtain-up.’ May checked his desk and carefully cornered off the few sheets of A4 that he found there. On Bryant’s side stood a Himalayan range of screwed-up paper. ‘Meanwhile, they’re still rioting on our patch, all over the Square Mile, are you even aware of that?’
Bryant & May - The Burning Man Page 3