Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Perhaps you should write an open letter to the next generation.’

  ‘Don’t get me started about where that leaves us writers! I was supposed to have a meeting with the BBC yesterday but the department heads are all away on a training course about how to make decisions. My God, if they can’t make decisions, why the hell are they in charge of departments? Their consultants get paid flogging fortunes while the writers are paid almost nothing. You know why? Because we originate, and that’s the one thing executives don’t want. But I ask you, what are they? Nothing more than pipe-layers, emptying the well of our ideas on to the parched soil of their audience demographics. And they’ve decided we must go because they hate the fact that we own the well.’ She swept some loose strands of hair back from the sides of her face and looked around, optimistically hoping to locate the teapot. ‘We appear to be out of builders’. I can do you Darjeeling with a dash of Lapsang Souchong. No milk, I’m afraid – our local grocery shop just got turned into a flogging Starbucks.’

  Eleanor had a stare that could wither plants and ignite dry objects. Bryant had a great admiration for angry, erudite women, even tiny, slightly mad ones. Rage was nothing without articulation. It was hard to work out how old she was now; her seething passions kept her youthful.

  ‘I was wondering about your take on all this.’ He waved his hand vaguely at the smeared window. ‘The riots. You’re rather in the line of fire here.’

  ‘Bring it on, I say. Flogging well bring it on.’ She filled the mugs and hunted for spoons. ‘There were more mobs and insurrections during the reign of George the First than in all the reigns since the Norman Conquest. If you felt wronged, you rioted or duelled or fought or printed up your grievances and threw the pages all over the city. You did something, damn it. But what have we had in the last thirty years? The miners’ strike, a bit of sulky car-overturning during the Thatcher regime—’

  ‘The Poll Tax Riots,’ Bryant reminded her, accepting a rather unclean mug and looking for a place to set it down.

  ‘Oh, those.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Barely more than a daylong hissy fit. This has been brewing for a very long time.’ He presumed she wasn’t referring to the tea. ‘A bunch of Mayfair bully boys deregulate the City and turn us from being the masters of our own destinies into little more than drifting twigs in the gutters of private enterprise. No wonder we all feel so emasculated! And the internet hasn’t helped. God forbid you express your beliefs online; someone will shout “hater” at you, and that’s your Socratic discourse brought to a flogging end. No, Arthur, I welcome this, I really do. Let’s get back to George the First. The young have had their futures taken from them by stealth. I’m no advocate of public violence, but there has to be some form of civil disobedience. Did you know they’re talking about evacuating private residences? Well, why not, if that’s what it takes to make the Whitehall mandarins sit up and take notice? The creation of order is a mark of civilization, but what happens when order is allowed to create itself? The big companies dictate the terms and use their lawyers as henchmen.’ She shook her head hard enough to bring down a loose curl. ‘Poor old George Orwell got it hopelessly wrong, forever worrying about state control when he should have been more afraid of the opposite. The political parties absented themselves and became mere functionaries for the real centre of power: the banks. Do you know why Margaret Flogging Thatcher sited her new financial Xanadu in London’s furthest eastern reaches, in Canary Wharf? To send a message to Parliament. To say to them: You are no longer in charge, so up yours. She wanted a new railway line that would service only the financiers and bypass all the poor areas, before even she realized that was a step too far.’

  ‘Do you think there’s any significance in this happening now? This banker chap, Dexter Cornell, is he just a straw man? It couldn’t be connected with Guy Fawkes somehow, could it?’

  ‘Bless you, Arthur, always searching out the universal mantic solution, always happy to drag psychotropism into the argument. I’d have to say no, but the proximity to Guy Fawkes Night did make me wonder. There must be some residual memory of rebellion in the public mind.’

  ‘We have a problem,’ said Bryant, hoping to derail Eleanor from her polemic. ‘The week has started with two murders which I believe are related. A homeless man was burned alive on the steps of a bank, and a financier died after being tarred and feathered.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s the same person behind both cases?’ Eleanor asked, not unreasonably.

  ‘Nothing concrete. An assonance of elements. Fire, cruelty, bankruptcy. I don’t know. Most homicidal violence is domestic. It happens behind closed doors to partners and children. Part of our remit is to prevent public affright. That’s why they gave the case to us. The financier died in a public space, a shop. Neither of these cases has any element of domesticity. There don’t seem to be any upset wives, mothers or siblings involved. My team’s looking for quarrels within their families, but I have a feeling we won’t find anything there.’

  ‘If you think it’s someone with an axe to grind, you’ll have to find the link between a poor man and a rich one.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, but so far I’ve come up empty-handed,’ Bryant admitted. ‘Still, there’s something you could do for me.’

  ‘I’ll try my best.’

  ‘I presume you’re monitoring events in Cheapside and all around the Bank of England?’

  ‘My students and I are filming everything,’ she said. ‘Someone needs to keep impartial records. The protests aren’t dying down; they’re spreading exponentially. The groups are learning to work together. Their frustration is born of manufactured powerlessness. No one’s advocating the replacement of one system with another; they’re not economists. There’s no consensual agenda. But it’s important for the people to unite and show that they will no longer be taken for granted.’

  A light went on behind Bryant’s eyes. ‘The riots and the murders are linked – one is feeding off the other. Crikey.’

  ‘Nobody says “crikey” any more.’ Eleanor leaned back in her tattered armchair. ‘And your investigation is far from over. Guy Fawkes Night is Saturday. That’s when this riot will come to a head. It’s only Tuesday.’ She took a sip of her tea and winced. ‘It sounds to me as if the person you’re searching for is the very essence of rebellion, conducting an ideological war in microcosm. At the very least, you could be looking at four more murders.’

  19

  BURNING BRIDGES

  ‘What have you been doing?’ asked May, exasperated. He had been sitting in his office going through the witness statements again when Bryant wandered in, looking as if he had just climbed out of a wet hedge. In fact, he looked wetter than it was humanly possible for anyone to be. Perhaps he had just climbed out of the canal.

  ‘Do you know, I’m not entirely sure,’ Bryant replied. ‘It’s not something I can quantify with any metaphysical accuracy, as such.’ He had always been aware that his thought processes were more those of an academic than a policeman, and as he grew older it became harder than ever to explain them to others.

  ‘Look at the state of you. Get some of those wet clothes off and chuck them on the radiator.’

  ‘Do you always boil a saucepan of sprouts for at least two hours?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘What?’ said May, thrown. ‘No.’

  ‘Good, then you’re not my mother.’ He struggled out of his overcoat and found that his damp brown sweater had lengthened dramatically.

  ‘What happened to you? You could catch pneumonia. At least tell me where you’re going in future. I’m still your partner.’ He had always kept a watchful eye on Arthur, and now it felt more crucial than ever that he should not be left to his own devices. ‘There have been a couple of journalists outside asking questions about you,’ he warned.

  ‘Really? That’s encouraging. I didn’t think they left their desks any more. Try tipping a bucket of boiling tar over them.’ He gave up trying to squeeze the sweater bac
k into shape and draped it over the windowsill like the pelt of some out-of-condition animal. ‘Got anything new?’

  ‘Joanna Papis said she left Freddie Weeks because the relationship was going nowhere and she wanted to get on with her career, yes? Well, it turns out she was working for Glen Hall.’

  Bryant’s eyes widened. ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘She was looking after his personal accounts. Apparently it’s a bit of a status thing at Findersbury to have a young lady handling your private finances, a bit like having an English nanny.’

  ‘So there is a connection.’

  ‘Just don’t say it,’ said May.

  ‘My dear chap, I wouldn’t be so graceless. Is someone talking to Papis again?’ He sneezed explosively.

  ‘It’s in hand. What about you?’

  ‘A whiff of a smidgen of a suspicion, nothing more.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That there might be further deaths in or around the Square Mile in the approach to Guy Fawkes Night. Four to be exact.’ He unwound his sopping scarf and added it to the hat stand.

  ‘I don’t see how that’s likely. At this particular moment it’s probably the most heavily filmed area in the world. It would take a very determined person to risk so much exposure.’

  ‘Oh, I think we can safely say that someone who’s prepared to tar and feather his victim in the middle of Brixton Market is fairly determined, John. My fear is that he’ll attack in a different manner. He’ll use fire again, though. Arson’s his thing.’ He dug out a handkerchief that looked as if it had been used to clean windows and blew his nose. ‘The downside of keeping the press in the dark is allowing the killer to think he’s getting away with it. And this kind of murder is a drug; next time he’ll need a bigger hit. The first time he merely threw a petrol bomb. The second time he planned the death carefully. Now he’ll want to get closer. That’s what arsonists do. They want to stand close enough to feel the heat of the flames. And what can we do – send a warning circular to everyone who works for a bank?’

  ‘Maybe the girl can give us something more on Glen Hall.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Bryant, ‘by all means talk to her; anything to close the gap.’

  ‘What gap?’

  ‘He’s got a head start on us, hasn’t he? While we flounder about, he’s following some kind of predetermined map. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and we can only run behind him.’ Bryant went to the window, wiped the dirty pane with his handkerchief and peered down into the street. ‘He’s out there right now, putting something else in place.’

  ‘Then we’re up the creek.’

  ‘Not quite. The Royal Exchange, London’s centre of commerce, 1566. The Bank of England, the second oldest central bank in the world, 1694. You don’t destroy those institutions overnight, or even in a week.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said May gloomily, ‘unless you have thousands of angry people to help you.’

  ‘What did you say your name was again?’ asked the verger of St Mary’s Church, Camden Town. He looked sleepy and confused, as if he’d just woken up. The church was in almost total darkness. It was too expensive to keep lighting the place.

  ‘Mick Flannery,’ said the young man. ‘From Guttridge and Sons. About the leak.’

  ‘You took your time,’ said the verger, who had a strong Dublin brogue. ‘You were supposed to be here two weeks ago. We’ve been putting buckets out. The Madonna’s started to warp. Where are your ladders?’

  ‘I have to carry out the works inspection first,’ he explained. ‘You want me to price the job out, don’t you? You’ll need two estimates for the insurance claim.’

  ‘I suppose so, but you’ll have to find your own way up there, I’ve got my work to do,’ the verger warned, although it didn’t sound as if he believed the lie himself. He pottered off into the damp gloom, leaving the builder to find his own way to the gallery. Over his head, the warbling of pigeons sounded above the pattering rain.

  The verger had disappeared from view. There were just two old ladies in the pews below, with faithful hearts and heads bent in devout prayer, the last of their generation, the end of the congregation. St Mary’s was threatened with deconsecration and conversion into luxury apartments, but until the sale got the go-ahead, half-hearted snippets of restoration work continued.

  The young man reached the wooden stairs leading to the bell tower, and climbed. He walked around the edges, past the bell no one had rung for years, until he reached the slatted doorway that opened on to the roof. Taking the canvas tool bag from his shoulder, he removed a claw hammer and stepped outside.

  It would have been a simple matter to reach down and begin work, if it were not for the fact that the rain was making the verandah slippery. Not for the first time he wondered about the sanity of his actions, but decided he had come too far now to stop. The alternative was a lifetime of spiralling misery and regret.

  Dropping to his knees, he examined the great rectangular patches and located the soft metal clips that held them in place. Then, using the end of the claw hammer, he began prising them back. The first section came away in a shower of dirt. As the rain fell harder, he knew it would limit the time he could spend up here before somebody realized what was going on.

  The panel fitted exactly into his tool bag. He decided that six would be enough to do the trick.

  The old lady was far from pleased. ‘I don’t know how you can expect me to concentrate on Our Lady’s advice with cold water dripping down the back of me neck,’ she told the verger.

  ‘Mrs O’Donnell, you know where the problem spots are,’ said the verger. ‘I’ve told you before not to attempt communion with the Holy Virgin while sitting under a precipitation; you’ll be catching your death.’

  ‘But this is a new one, right near the front.’ She pointed an accusing finger at one of the pews. Even from this distance the verger could see rain cascading down into the seats. Dozens of Catholic churches in this city and barely enough parishioners to fill one of them, he thought. What a fecking godless time we live in. He followed Mrs O’Donnell’s finger up to the roof and was shocked to see daylight coming in between the crossbeams. His next realization was far from charitable. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, digging out his phone to call the building firm. ‘The little bastard’s stolen the lead off the roof.’

  He had turned the old garage under the arches into a workshop simply by breaking in and changing the lock, and had installed the bench and equipment from his father’s shed. This was revenge on a budget; he was completely broke. Worse, he owed everyone money. But he would not be turned from his path now. He had no home, no cash, no job, no friends, no future. Once you’ve decided to burn your remaining bridges and go to hell, he thought, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take everyone else with you.

  With tears in his eyes and the fire of righteous anger engorging his heart, he took out the lead slates, picked up the blowtorch and set to work once more.

  20

  FUGUES

  A spiral of acrid smoke hung in the dark morning air like a corpse twisting in oily water. Most of the street fires were out for now, but a branch of Barclays, an insurance company and the offices of Eastcheap Financial Services all bore the blackened scorch marks of the previous night’s activities across their stone façades. There was a rhythmic tinkling as street-cleaners swept up broken glass, glittering on the roads like dropped Christmas baubles.

  Superintendent Darren Link and his team had made numerous arrests, with accusations ricocheting from both sides about unnecessary force and provocations. The rest of the police stood around like builders waiting to be chosen for a day’s labour. Photographers were huddled in doorways, looking as if they were expecting a celebrity to stumble out of a nightclub.

  The protestors had come prepared. With khaki flak jackets and backpacks, and their socks tucked into their trousers, they appeared to be planning a moorland ramble rather than confronting capitalists in the city’s financial epicentre. The aggressi
on of the previous night had subsided into guarded politeness, but it was clear that everyone was waiting for the next clash to begin.

  Bank and Mansion House tube stations had been trellised and nearly all of the surrounding roads were now closed off. Shop fronts had been covered in chipboard slabs, and windows were shuttered. The prime minister had been filmed disembarking from a British Airways flight looking as if he was about to sue his travel agent. A few minutes later he appeared on the BBC promising that the city would remain open for business, but as the Wednesday rush hour began traffic was almost non-existent. The networks were advising employees to work from home, and many had jumped at the chance to cancel their usual commute. Others relished the challenge of tackling a war zone and strode to their offices, daring confrontation. Sirens still sounded distantly, but at least the cacophony of car and office alarms had ceased.

  Everyone was wondering how long the truce would hold. Several elderly ladies in matching red knitted scarves were seated by the side of the road on folding chairs, aged campaigners who looked as if they might be waiting for the start of the Lord Mayor’s Show.

  Jonathan De Vere made his way between the barricades and swore when he saw that Bank station was shut. By some miracle he was able to flag down a taxi, and moments later was fighting off sleep in its back seat as it followed the makeshift detour signs towards Hyde Park. He had been working all night, keeping hackers’ hours, as he always did when Lena was away. She was in Amsterdam attending a conference on the restoration of medieval manuscripts, so he put in the extra hours writing presentations. She had insisted on going, even though she was heavily pregnant, so he figured the least he could do was work as hard. Besides, he lived close enough by to get three hours’ rest before having to go back and talk to the designers.