Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘There was no air exchange because of the closed windows and sealed internal doors,’ Carter replied. ‘The problem for you is that the heat has sterilized the immediate site.’

  ‘Jonathan De Vere.’ Bryant unfolded a letterheaded sheet and attempted to read it. ‘Anyone heard of something called CharityMob?’

  ‘It’s an app,’ said Banbury, on his knees and peering at the base of the burned bedspread.

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It gets mobile-phone users to donate their social reach. It’s got a very cool interface.’

  Bryant gave his partner a blank look. ‘I suppose that means something to you?’

  ‘Information,’ translated May. ‘It’s the number of unique people who read an ad that contains social information. To widen your user circle you need to constantly expand your social reach.’

  ‘Nope, sorry, I still have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Bryant, dismissing him. ‘There must be something else here. Dan, have you done that weird thing you always do?’

  Banbury also had a system of his own. Before the rest of the circus arrived he would get suited up and go in with his notepad, repeatedly asking himself what he was seeing and hearing. Then he would crawl about, following the left-hand wall around the room, noting blood distribution, saliva, fibres, anything lying around. He would check the central-heating timer to help estimate the time of death, note which lights were on, whether there were any open drawers, and whether the toilet seat was up or down. In his time with the detectives he had experienced more than his share of bizarre sights, but this one ranked in the top ten.

  ‘Giles is standing by to look at the body,’ he said, studying De Vere’s skull mask. ‘That thing looks heavy. Some kind of traditional design … Could it mean something?’

  ‘I’ll need to check,’ said Bryant. ‘Can you make sure his head survives the transit in one piece? You don’t know what damage that thing’s done.’

  ‘So how did this work?’ asked May. ‘He came into the flat, his assailant followed him in or was already here – then what?’

  Bryant rose and grimaced, stretching his back. ‘De Vere wasn’t restrained. He was drugged first.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked May.

  ‘Because of the kitchen.’ He led the way and pointed to the work surface, where some sugar had been spilled from its container. ‘The cup’s under the bed, on its side. The carpet’s very wet so he hadn’t finished drinking from it.’

  Banbury crouched at eye level. ‘Want me to test these granules?’

  ‘If you would be so kind, Dan, and the tea. And take a sample from the hob, will you? There are some black particles beside one of the rings. Let’s get a couple more people over here and talk to everyone in the building. Entry signs, escape routes, all tradespeople and residents listed. It’s got to be the same bloke, hasn’t it? He’s playing with fire again.’ He collared the hallway constable. ‘You. Spotty teenager in a uniform. When’s the ambulance coming?’

  ‘It’s already round the back, sir.’

  ‘Anyone notice anything?’

  ‘The neighbour saw the cleaning lady heading down the stairs, sir. She didn’t raise the alarm because she’d seen her lots of times before. Lady upstairs called about the smell of burning.’

  ‘Was the front door open?’

  ‘The neighbour says not.’

  ‘Nobody ever sees anything in a building like this. He must have had a key.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath for fingerprints but we might get glove marks,’ said Banbury. ‘I’ve got some leathers from the Brixton site.’

  ‘You can do that?’ DuCaine was surprised.

  ‘People assume leather gloves are untraceable,’ said Banbury. ‘They’re good for gripping, but there’s a leather grain present on the surface of the glove. It can be as unique as human skin because leather itself is skin. New pairs are tricky, but I like old ones. They have pores that pick up dirt and grease from different surfaces, so you can get good transfer particles. Unlined gloves get saturated with oil and sweat if they’re regularly worn, and that sometimes comes through. I’ve heard of DNA traces coming right through a glove.’

  ‘Fraternity, unless you spent the whole of your time at Hendon fast asleep you should know all this,’ said Bryant. ‘Dan, stop getting overexcited. Just remember you’ve only got one chance. If you seize the wrong things to start with, you’ll set us off in the wrong direction. I’ll leave you to deal with the site but it seems pretty straightforward.’

  ‘Straightforward! The mask—’

  Bryant was a picture of impatience. ‘He got hold of the main-door and front-door keys, probably on the same ring, probably from the cleaning lady, let himself in, doctored either the sugar or the cup, then waited it out. He knows his victims, yes? He knows their habits. I’m taking the folder and the briefcase.’

  ‘Let me dust them first.’

  ‘All right, but hurry up.’ Bryant knew it wasn’t very professional taking evidence away in a Tesco shopping bag, but in the last few days everything had felt like this: chaotic and disjointed.

  The shopping bag fell over. He pulled it upright and rose, then suddenly lost his balance.

  The building was slowly tilting on its axis, and then London was moving too, so that everyone and everything was sliding away from him. Outside the kitchen window the buildings sailed past one another like yachts competing in a race. Arthur Bryant dropped the bag and brought his hands up to his face, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  Strange room, strange people, sudden silence – for a moment he felt utterly lost. It was as if someone had stirred the world up with a huge wooden spoon and had let it settle back in a completely different order. He no longer recognized the view from the windows, the cream and grey walls, the hunched figure examining the carpet by the bed, the young black officer looking at him in puzzlement.

  He was floating, remembering—

  For a long time nothing ever changed in London. It was all comfortably familiar, almost annoyingly so. London had been like his mother’s cutlery drawer; there was a special place where every piece fitted. The streets you avoided, the streets you loved. The butcher, the baker, the troublemakers …

  Now nothing was in its place. People had changed. They had become aliens. The unlined, unblinking young were from a remote, inhospitable planet. Crowds of unfamiliar faces came at him, talking to each other in ways he could not comprehend or staring blankly at their phones, wave upon wave passing without a glance as if he had ceased to exist. Friends and colleagues vanished and were replaced by freshly minted strangers, and there was no one left who knew him or cared …

  Turning around with an increasing sense of panic, he saw May watching him thoughtfully.

  ‘Come on, old pal, get your bearings,’ he said gently, extending his arm. ‘I’m here. I’ll take you back to the PCU.’

  And then they were outside. As he stepped back into the street, Bryant saw that the right sole of his old brown Oxford shoe was detaching itself. Sagging against a wall, he tried to push it back on but it flapped down uselessly, then fell off. He stared at the black rubber fillet lying on the wet pavement, and turned to his partner. ‘John,’ he said plaintively, ‘I’m falling apart.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ May picked it up, smiling with gentle concern. ‘We can fix this.’

  Bryant heard the sounds of the street returning to his ears. And then there were trees and pavements and cars and pigeons, and he saw the classical Greek ornamentation that marked out the square as part of Belgravia, and knew he was near Chelsea in west London and all would be all right again if he just hung on to his partner’s arm. But pride would not allow him to do so.

  ‘Are you OK now?’ May asked, looking in his eyes.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Bryant pulled himself free. ‘It was very hot in there, that’s all.’ He made his way unaided to May’s BMW, impatiently waiting for the passenger door to be opened, because he very badly
wanted to be back in his office, surrounded by his beloved books.

  22

  UNMASKED

  When they arrived back on the first floor of the PCU Janice Longbright was waiting for them, and she must have been told that something had happened because she was ridiculously over-solicitous and apologetic, bringing tea and biscuits and sitting Arthur down in his armchair as if he was a damned invalid.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Bryant grumbled, wrinkling his nose. ‘Stop all this fussing. And take the Custard Creams away, Crippen’s been on them again. Well, what have you got for me?’

  ‘There’s a yard of stuff online about Jon De Vere,’ she said, falling back into her work mode, which he much preferred. ‘He’s a young start-up entrepreneur, a former hedge-fund manager who gave up his job to “give something back”, as he put it.’ She tapped a nail on her screen. ‘Two years ago he became the managing director of an app-development company called Apptly Said and made a fortune from a voice-activated app called CharityMob. Now he’s the rising role model for tech-heads all over the world. Unbelievably popular in the online community; a practising Catholic who raises money for disadvantaged kids. Pretty much an all-round decent guy.’

  ‘So, no obvious nemeses? There must be something.’

  ‘It’s useful that De Vere uses social media as much as he does – we’ve got virtually every move he’s made in the last couple of years all laid out for us. Based just off Threadneedle Street, married with a child on the way. I’ve already spoken to his wife, Lena. She’s at a conference in Amsterdam. She sounded OK, no tears, steady nerves, wanted to know the details.’

  ‘Did you give them to her?’

  ‘No, because you haven’t told me. She’s catching the next flight back, should be here just after lunch. She wanted to know if she could stay at the flat in Belgravia, so I had to warn her that it wouldn’t be habitable tonight, and then at least not until Dan had finished collating forensics. She didn’t seem that bothered – said she’d check herself into the Palmeira Hampton in Cadogan Place.’

  ‘As you do,’ said Renfield. ‘She’s not short of a bob, then.’

  ‘She’s shocked but steady, sounds as if she’s up for an interview. Maybe it would be a good idea for me to get to her before the loss kicks in.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Bryant, shaking his head. ‘Glen Hall worked for a bank – in these times, you could conceivably understand why someone might hate him. But Freddie Weeks and this chap De Vere sound like martyred innocents. There must be something that connects them, mustn’t there? Do we know when De Vere was last seen?’

  ‘The security guard at his office says he was working there all night,’ said Longbright. ‘It’s something he often does when his wife’s away. He left his building some time around eight thirty a.m. The day receptionist usually starts then but was running late because of all the tube diversions.’

  ‘All early-morning attacks – why? Crimes usually occur later. Explain what he does again in terminology I can understand, would you?’ Bryant looked suspiciously at the packet of Custard Creams that still lurked on the nearby desk.

  ‘He develops phone and tablet applications for charitable causes,’ said Longbright, checking the CV on her screen. ‘He was a technical whiz-kid, fast-tracked by Google, and – here’s the shocking part – he turned them down to go it alone.’

  ‘Forgive me – why is that shocking?’

  ‘Nobody turns Google down. The problem is that De Vere doesn’t seem to have any enemies at all. Not so far, anyway. It’ll take time to go through everything.’

  Jack Renfield turned the screen of his iPad around. The PCU had no budget for technology, so he usually brought his in from home. ‘Have you seen this stuff? The guy’s a living saint. He marched with Anonymous against the bankers and launched a smoking-gun site aimed at weeding out corrupt traders. Guess who he had a pop at last week? The Findersbury Bank. He also used the CharityMob site to blow the whistle on Dexter Cornell two days before the whole thing kicked off.’

  ‘Wait, you mean De Vere did this before Cornell was outed for suspected insider trading?’ asked May.

  ‘The piece kind of implies that it has an inside track on financial irregularities. They’re promising more updates to come.’

  ‘So we have a connection,’ said Bryant, pleased.

  ‘Not really,’ Longbright warned. ‘Cornell is just the catalyst for the riots—’

  ‘—which resulted in the death of Freddie Weeks.’

  ‘If De Vere was running pieces about Cornell, it’s possible he put himself in the line of fire.’

  ‘Enough conjecture.’ May rose, clapping his hands. ‘Right, let’s get started with the rounds. Janice, you can assign teams for interviews.’

  ‘You know how I hate the procedural stuff,’ said Bryant, easing himself upright. ‘I think I’ll go and see how Giles is getting on.’

  ‘You really don’t need to,’ May told him. ‘Why not take it easy today? We can cover everything.’

  Bryant was petulant. ‘You sound like you want to get rid of me. I shall “not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day.”’

  ‘You what?’ said Renfield.

  ‘“Rage, rage”!’ shouted Bryant, picking up his walking stick and waving it like a pirate cutlass. ‘“Rage against the dying of the light”!’

  ‘Has he been at the sherry?’ Renfield looked nonplussed.

  ‘No,’ said May wearily, ‘he’s been at the Dylan Thomas. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.’

  On his way out, Bryant passed Land’s office and bellowed ‘Knock, knock’ through the invisible door. The unit chief had the look of a schoolboy who’d been caught reading a comic under his desk.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Can I ask your advice?’

  Land very nearly pointed at himself in surprise. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I know I can always count on you for an unbiased opinion because you’re not really involved in anything important that goes on here.’

  While the unit chief was trying to frame a response to this, Bryant continued. ‘Hypothetically speaking, suppose there was a situation in which a detective needed to question someone who could cause trouble for his boss?’

  ‘How much trouble?’

  Bryant rubbed his nose. ‘Oh, a lot.’

  ‘Would this hypothetical detective be able to prove that the person he wished to question had a direct link to his investigation?’

  ‘More of an implication. But as my grannie used to say, “You can’t stand near a Frenchman without getting onions all over you.”’

  ‘Then I would tell the detective to stay away from his high-risk client and not do anything that would make his boss want to beat him to death with a claw hammer,’ said Land. ‘Hypothetically speaking. Where are you going?’

  ‘I believe the detective has decided on a change of plan and is off to do something else.’

  Land peered over the top of where his glasses would be if he wore them. ‘Does he need someone to come with him?’

  ‘No, he’s quite capable of managing, thank you.’ Bryant pulled his hat further over his ears and trundled off.

  As he walked, he thought about his health. He had no fear of dying, but the idea of being trapped in a hospital bed surrounded by supine old men and harassed caregivers filled him with unutterable horror. If something bad was happening to him, he decided that he would meet it head-on and fight every last inch of the way.

  Accordingly, he refused to allow anyone to accompany him and caught a bus to the St Pancras Mortuary. Unfortunately he got on the wrong bus, ended up in Camden and was forced to backtrack, marching through the rain on a loop that took him past the PCU’s former headquarters at Mornington Crescent.

  The sky was the colour of a bad sprain. Between the hornbeams and hawthorns of Oakley Square and the rain-glazed cobbles of Camden’s backstreets, the dark old offices above Mornington Crescent tube station no
w shone with harsh LED purity. He wondered who was occupying the building and went over to check the front door. A brushed steel plaque had been set in place of the old PCU sign and read ‘Data InfoSpace Hub’.

  How many years did we sit up there late at night, he thought, sifting through the cases that no one else wanted to handle? How many vulnerable women did we manage to protect, how many families did we keep together? It was all about preventive policing back then, when the mere sight of a neighbourhood copper would be enough to stop kids from picking on each other or men from knocking their wives about. And after that, all the crazy cases, hunting for the Dagenham Strangler, tracking down the Mile End Maniac and uncovering the identity of the Shepherd’s Bush Slasher. What about all the small neighbourhood cases we solved? Did we get any thanks for catching the Shoreditch Counterfeit Coconut Mob or the Chapel Market Cheese Smugglers? All I got out of that was a pound of Wensleydale from a grateful grocer. When I accidentally blew the place up I should have done a better job of it.

  By the time he reached the St Pancras Coroner’s Office his overcoat was soaked to the lining again and his head was filled with sorrows. Even Rosa took pity on him.

  ‘You look dead,’ she said, pulling him in from the porch. ‘Don’t drip on the floor. Give me your coat. Now, now.’ She waggled her fingers at him. ‘This is madness, a man of your age. And your shoes, look at the state.’

  For once, Bryant did as he was told. Squelching meekly down the hall in his darned socks, he found Kershaw in his customary position at the dissection table. ‘What happened to you?’ Giles laughed. ‘Did you actually fall into the canal this time? You have been busy this week, haven’t you? Three bodies in three days: what’s going on?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’ Bryant wrung out a glove and stuck it over an Anglepoise.

  ‘Well, you’re just in time. I’m about to open the box.’ The coroner gently tucked the grey Mylar coverlet more tightly around De Vere’s body. ‘I’m not sure what we’re going to find underneath, but I imagine it’s not going to be very nice.’