Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I don’t see how you can be a policeman and think like that,’ said Alma. ‘You’re the ones in authority.’

  ‘But that’s precisely my point, don’t you see? We’re not any more. There’s nobody steering the ship of State. We’re adrift on the tide of capitalism and heading for the rocks. Where’s my hat?’ He rose unsteadily and checked his pockets for phones, pens, bits of paper and anything else he might need for a day at the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

  ‘Don’t forget your sandwiches,’ Alma instructed. ‘Salmon and shrimp paste, in your Tibetan skull. Why you can’t use a Tupperware box like anyone else is beyond me.’

  Bryant set off, leaving the leafy quadrangles of Bloomsbury for the diesel fumes of traffic-choked Euston. The poor air quality of the arterial road always seemed to clear his head. He badly wanted to break the case, and he needed someone to ignore a few rules. After thinking it through carefully, he decided that Fraternity DuCaine was the man for the job. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and there was something imposing about the young detective constable that might cause the suspicious to sidestep him. Besides, in the wake of his brother’s death he was still desperate to prove himself, and the task would show his mettle.

  It seemed to Bryant that the law favoured Cornell’s protection over that of his own unit, in which case it was time to circumvent the law. He needed all of the devices and documents with which the directors had been sequestered in their fourth-floor boardroom on the fateful day that they and Cornell had shared the same building. Somehow the collapse of the Shanghai deal had transmitted itself to the board, and it must have been sent into the meeting. Therefore, there had to be physical evidence.

  ‘Anything, you name it,’ said DuCaine, delighted to be singled out for a special assignment. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Bryant?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult for a man of your skills,’ said Bryant. ‘I want you to break into a bank. It’s something I’m sure your brother could have managed with the greatest of ease.’

  Thus, having laced the challenge with a measure of sibling rivalry (and a deceased sibling, at that), Bryant presented his plan to DuCaine.

  27

  PROFILE

  The figure turned slowly about, trying to understand where it was, bare feet balanced on narrow sawn-down trunks. It was too dark to see clearly. There were wavering patches of light ahead, divided by the warped branches of trees. Boughs and foliage had become separated somehow, and appeared to be stacked upright in an immense tepee. The smell of sawdust and pine sap filled the air, wet grass and … smoke.

  Something was flickering sharply through the brush. The heat from below was welcome at first, gently warming the bitter night air, but quickly grew uncomfortably hot.

  The branches caught, flames stepping from one to the next in relays of sparks. Cinders coasted through the smoke into the wooden cage, searing eyes and lungs. The man threw himself against the smouldering branches, but they held fast.

  Then the flames fanned and flooded beneath his heels, and the fire became an inferno …

  Longbright let out a yell of fear.

  She was wet with icy sweat. The other side of the bed had not been slept in. Jack Renfield had promised to come back when his shift ended; he had taken Late Turn on Wednesday night, so she had given him a front-door key. He must have been too tired to come here. Checking the alarm clock she saw that it was almost time to get up, even though the night was still deep.

  She slipped from bed to shower, dressed with damp hair and headed out into the cool dawn in search of an open coffee shop. This was her life, moving alone through empty streets beneath grey and violet skies, seeing only office cleaners, students and the odd luggage-trundling tourist heading for the first flight off the stand. In front of the station, two smiling, infinitely hopeful young men were trying to hand out brochures beside a board that read: ‘What Can Jesus Do for You Today?’

  Soon the rush hour would bring the eddying tides of the city’s workforce here, a million a week through this station alone. It had reached the point where she couldn’t bear to be out on the streets of King’s Cross at lunchtime, as the foot soldiers of industry passed her clutching sandwiches in bags, discussing the minutiae of office politics, reminding each other who had said what in which meeting and who wasn’t pulling their weight, their conversations as abstruse and incomprehensible as those of academic theorists.

  Longbright was a career officer, and damaged by being so, unable to function properly in the normal world. Like her bosses, she could not stop herself from searching the most casual conversations for behavioural clues. She was bored by banter and failed to remember the things most civilians never forgot: birthdays, anniversaries, the simple give-and-take of social intercourse.

  But then she was at work again, extra-strong coffee in hand, and her skills flowed naturally once more, pressed into the service of the day ahead. Accept your lot, honey, she told herself. It could be much worse. You could be happy.

  She thought about calling Maggie Armitage, but decided against it. No more looking for affirmations and explanations; the dreams would fade once she started spending a little more time with Jack, right up until the moment he crowded her and she felt herself backing away again, as she always did in relationships that threatened to become stable and serious. If she thought about it in any depth, she knew she would come to the realization that they had just three or four months ahead without conflict, maybe less. She wondered which of them would retreat first.

  To keep her caffeine levels topped up, she brewed strong Yorkshire tea and seated herself at her desk, warming her hands. She was the second member of staff to arrive after Bryant, whose closed door warned her that he was not to be disturbed. She opened the night’s emails to see if any answers had come in.

  The first that caught her attention was a scrap of CCTV footage that showed a figure in grey Nike sweatpants and a hooded top breaking into a Mercedes saloon, parked in a concrete underground bunker. The time code read 2.57 a.m., with today’s date. There was no address, but she recognized the vehicle.

  John May came in behind her and helped himself to tea. As usual, he was immaculately dressed, with not a silver hair out of place. Longbright wondered how he always managed to look as if he’d slept in a vacuum pack.

  ‘Good morning, John. Take a look at this.’ She tapped at the screen with an elegant nail, freshly painted with Jungle Huntress crimson polish, an original 1950s shade she’d purchased through a friend in Poto-Poto, Brazzaville. ‘Someone broke into Jonathan De Vere’s car early this morning.’

  May leaned over her shoulder. ‘Looks like the NCP car park in Saffron Hill. You can see the rate card in the corner.’

  ‘Why would he park all the way over there?’

  ‘The only other one is Aldersgate and that’s usually full.’

  ‘Dan was supposed to dust the vehicle for prints yesterday,’ said Longbright, ‘but he didn’t have time. De Vere’s wife said something about picking it up, but I guess she didn’t get around to it yet.’

  ‘Was anything taken?’

  ‘The cameras don’t cover the interior so it’s impossible to tell if there was anything on the seats.’

  ‘Is that the best shot of him? It’s not much to go on.’

  ‘He’s tall, about six two, solidly built. We know he has to be strong. It looks like our man. I could get Dan to try to enhance the shot.’

  ‘Janice, you know as well as I do what happens when you enlarge footage: you get big grainy pixels. It’s not like the movies. What else is there?’

  ‘We’ve got the rest of the interviews back; nobody has a bad word to say about De Vere. Outwardly devoted to his wife, working for the global community, adored by everyone. All very boring.’

  ‘You cynic.’

  Janice gave a shrug. ‘There’s nothing much you can say about good people.’

  ‘Except that this one’s dead.’

  ‘Lena De Vere warned me not to dig into her past, so I h
ad a good nose around. Quite a past, it turns out. She hung out with a party crowd, real tabloid fodder. Cautioned for possession, marijuana, cocaine, yadda yadda, all a bit last-century. She was honest because she knew I’d find it if I looked. She’s having an affair with a metallurgist and is pregnant with his child. Then there’s her husband’s connection to the bank—’

  ‘What connection?’

  Longbright turned in her seat to face him. ‘Did you even bother to read the report I sent you?’

  ‘Sorry, Janice, it must be on my desk.’

  ‘De Vere had been asked to help them set up some kind of children’s charity. I don’t think he got very far before he died.’

  ‘You think there’s a reason for murder there?’

  ‘What, providing free computers for disadvantaged kids? If there is, the world’s an even darker place than I thought.’

  May sat on the corner of the desk. ‘All right, spit it out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something’s up. What’s wrong?’

  Janice rubbed her eye. ‘Take no notice of me. I’m not sleeping very well, that’s all. Bad dreams.’

  ‘They’re part of the job.’

  ‘That’s just it. The job. Except it isn’t a job, is it? It’s a vocation, like being a blacksmith. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing. Are we still needed? I mean, honestly? In the second decade of the twenty-first century? Since you and Arthur grew up, crime has changed out of all recognition. Don’t you think it’s possible that—’ She stopped, picked up a pen, toyed with it, set it down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Skip it.’

  May wagged a finger at her. ‘Never start a sentence you’re not prepared to complete.’

  ‘Well, what if we’re the cause?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We get the high-profile investigations. Our cases turn up in the press. What if this guy has a grievance that he can’t get aired any other way? So he acts crazy and brings his protest to our attention.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon find out if you’re right,’ said May.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Arthur has a theory. He thinks our man has such a grievance that he wants everyone to share it, and he won’t be finished until he’s infected the entire population of London, maybe the whole country.’

  ‘They’re smashing up Knightsbridge now,’ said Longbright. ‘The New York Times is calling London “a powder-keg city”. They’ve made the Guy Fawkes connection even if our press hasn’t.’

  May went to find his partner. Bryant was barely visible behind a humungous stack of ancient, dilapidated books that included An Informal History of Cow-Staining; Stipendiary Justice in Nineteenth-Century Wales; Unusual Punishments for Sodomy, Vol. 13: Northern Portugal; How to Cook Bats; and ‘Take My Wife, Please’: Negotiation Techniques in Abduction Cases. Behind him, the blackboard had been filled with names, dates, arrows, little drawings and random facts circled in red chalk. ‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’ he said rudely. ‘I’m rather busy.’

  ‘How did you get on with the doctor? I know you were due to look in on him last night.’ May asked the question as casually as he could, instantly placing too much emphasis on it.

  ‘He wants me to smoke electric cigarettes. I won’t tell you what I told him.’

  ‘Oh. Anything else?’

  Bryant slammed his book shut with irritable impatience. ‘He gave me a cognitive function examination. Basically a memory test aimed at the terminally confused.’

  ‘Well, how did you score?’

  ‘Low enough for him to treat me to a rodomontade of statistical flummery before packing me off with some rubbishy pills. I need to talk to you about acts of public defamation.’ It wasn’t the smoothest of deflections, but once Bryant had decided not to talk about something, nothing would turn him. ‘London has a long history of communal shaming. Such events used to attract huge crowds. The public acted as witnesses and judges with the complicity of the government, whipping prisoners and pelting them with dead cats and buckets of offal. They jeered and punched those charged with sedition, corruption, extortion and a whole range of other crimes that people are largely allowed to get away with today.’

  May’s brow furrowed with the effort. ‘Where exactly are we going with this?’

  ‘Show some patience. Look.’ Bryant held up a grotesque woodcut of a screaming man being pilloried. ‘Some unfortunates did die in the stocks, but those punishments were more about causing dishonour than violence. Often the guilty could get themselves off by recanting and apologizing for their actions, or by paying penance. At some point we lost our sense of shame, John. Now, Dexter Cornell lines the pockets of his directors—’

  ‘We don’t know that he did.’

  ‘He did, I just don’t know how yet – and he refuses to repent publicly, thus avoiding the pillory, the stocks, the cart to Tyburn. These days the guilty keep their nerve and lie barefaced to juries. We no longer whip people through the streets. Instead we send them to executive-level open jails for a few months’ R and R before they hire PR teams to restore their reputations. Fraud, perjury, perverting the course of justice count as nothing, so what does our killer do? He takes the law into his own hands.’

  ‘Arthur, you cannot take the side of a murderer.’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand his mindset. He destroys all those who have hurt him. But he didn’t start out like that. I think there’s a pattern. Look.’ He rose and thumped his fist on the blackboard, causing a fog of chalk dust to settle over himself. ‘Our killer is angered by something Freddie Weeks does. He goes away, stews about the perceived slight, returns and sets fire to the lad. Perhaps he thinks that Weeks will react fast, that he’ll leap to his feet to put the flames out, and that will be enough to show him who’s boss. Half the murders in London involve issues of respect.’

  He thumped the board again. ‘Next, he shames Glen Hall by tarring and feathering him, but this also results in a death. The tar gets into Hall’s nasal passages and chokes him – Giles has confirmed this.’

  Another thump raised more chalk dust. ‘Then Jonathan De Vere is branded by a red-hot Vulcan mask, and he also dies. Don’t you see? Burning, tarring and feathering, branding, he’s dishonouring his enemies, and if they don’t survive it’s their bad luck. The tarring is for betrayal, the branding symbolizes duplicity. The victim has been two-faced, so now he’ll be given two faces! He’s convinced himself he’s giving them what they deserve. There will be others to come. There must be others. But the pattern is artless enough to show that there is no pattern. And these acts are actually not very elaborate at all. They’re … What’s that expression you use when you’re trying to sound young—’

  ‘Lo-fi.’

  ‘That’s it. These acts of revenge are thrown together with the tools at hand. The victims dragged him down somehow, and now he has nothing, so he’s resorted to stealing the instruments of their deaths. The verger of St Mary’s Church in Camden reported lead being nicked from his roof. Some road-menders in Kentish Town had their tar bucket and burner stolen. These are not very classy acts, John. At least they give us a radius of operation.’

  ‘Then how would his path have crossed with that of a banker and a dot-com millionaire? It doesn’t make sense, Arthur. Have you thought that he might just be a mad anti-capitalist taking potshots wherever the opportunity arises?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but it’s my job to think beyond that. There are plenty of officers infiltrating the protestors and making lists of contacts, but we have to see things differently.’

  ‘So you’ve assembled your own psychological profile.’

  Bryant rooted around among the papers on his desk. ‘It’s an unusual one. He started out with a sense of indignity and anger, but now he’s enjoying himself. It’s a good job he’s still being kept out of the press, otherwise he’d be on his way to becoming a martyr. I think we’ll find he has a history of arson, but I still lack data.’

 
‘I can run a search for priors, cross-reference with protest histories and see if we get any matches.’

  ‘Matches.’ Bryant nodded. ‘Very good. What’s happening in the Square Mile? I haven’t seen the morning papers yet.’

  May pulled a copy of Hard News from his pocket and threw it on the desk. ‘Have a look at that. Some idiot MP from the shires is championing Cornell and his fellow bankers, trying to make a case for them being misunderstood heroes. The effect of that speech has been to send raging lynch mobs heading towards London. By the end of the day almost every part of the country will be represented in the capital. Link tried to close all of the central stations this morning, but I think it’s already too late for that. The mob will find a way in.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Bryant, ‘the gates are being forced open. This could be just the start. How do you get the genie of rebellion back in the bottle without breaking it?’

  ‘You realize this no longer falls under our remit,’ May pointed out.

  Bryant was indignant. ‘It’s public unrest!’

  ‘Yes, but we’re not equipped to deal with a citywide riot. We can’t control what’s happening.’

  ‘Of course, there’s an obvious solution to ending the crisis. They could throw Cornell to the lions.’

  ‘They could, but it’s not happening, is it? Why not? He must have something the government needs.’

  Bryant tapped his skull. ‘Now you’re using your head. What could that be?’

  ‘I don’t know, money, power …’ May thought for a moment. ‘The Chinese.’

  ‘I think it’s the most likely possibility, don’t you?’

  May rose and studied the blackboard again. A roll of thunder was loud enough to rattle the windows above his desk. ‘If that’s the case and we try to intervene,’ he remarked, ‘we’ll get crushed flat from all sides.’

  ‘And if we don’t, we’d be failing to do our job,’ retorted Bryant. ‘Either way, we’re damned.’