Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’ Raymond Land asked Longbright, seating himself opposite her without waiting to be asked. He liked her room; it smelled of perfumed roses, a scent you never found in a regular cop shop. It reminded him of his mother. ‘I just had a call from Dr Gillespie.’

  ‘Oh.’ Janice pushed aside the tick-box forms that made part of each day so tiresome. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He thinks Bryant is developing an unusual form of Alzheimer’s, not one he’s seen before. He wants to run some further tests, but of course Bryant doesn’t want them. Did you know about this?’

  ‘I guessed that might be the case,’ said Longbright. ‘Did he say how long it takes to advance?’

  ‘He can’t tell. There’s no standard rate of progression. It’s irregular, and it might have been going on for years, in which case it could be reaching a point where we lose him quite quickly. The question is: How long can he keep on working?’

  ‘You can’t take his work away from him, Raymond. Don’t you see he has nothing else? He’ll drop dead if he’s forced to quit. Retire him and you’ll kill him.’

  Land looked pained. ‘Janice, this is the case of our lives. It’s all tangled up with this bank thing, and we’re in the firing line whatever we do. If we allow him to continue, he could place everyone in danger.’

  Longbright rubbed at her tired shoulder, thinking. ‘Does John know about this?’

  ‘Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. I thought you’d be more … impartial.’

  ‘Apart from anything else, you’d be killing our only chance of cracking the case. You know we can’t do it without Arthur.’

  ‘And we can’t do it with him.’ Land was determined. ‘He’s making mistakes, Janice, and that puts us all at risk.’

  ‘He’s always made mistakes. He’s always been scatty and confused in his thinking. But he gets it right most of the time. John and I are taking turns to accompany him.’

  ‘Yes, but he keeps managing to slip away, doesn’t he? Do you know what will happen if anyone finds out that we’ve been covering up for him?’

  ‘No one must know,’ said Longbright firmly. ‘You owe him this much. John and I will take full responsibility for him, just until we see the case out.’

  ‘Janice, I don’t see how I can—’

  ‘Please,’ said Longbright. ‘I’ve never begged you for anything before. We can take care of it, Raymond. Please let us try until the end of the week, at least.’

  ‘All right,’ said Land uncertainly. ‘But only until the weekend. Then he’s off.’

  As Land left, Longbright returned to the coroner statements. Death by fire, three times over. Her nightmare was slowly rising into daylight. With each passing day more of the city was aflame, and a killer was somehow finding the opportunity—

  Opportunity.

  She went next door to talk to May. As soon as she saw his face, she knew he had also received a call from Dr Gillespie. ‘Arthur’s gone to the British Library,’ he told her. ‘He can’t get into trouble there.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Cover for him, of course. We can’t tell the others.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Longbright. ‘He could be right. We keep assuming that whoever is doing this started using the riots as an opportunity to act, but what if it’s the other way around now? What if our guy’s somehow causing the riots?’

  ‘How could one person manage that?’

  ‘By leaking the news about Cornell’s insider deal and sparking the first protest, then bolstering it with further deaths.’

  ‘But the press embargo is still in place.’

  ‘The more I think about it, the more sense it makes,’ Longbright insisted. ‘We need to find out how the news got out about Cornell. Maybe Arthur’s not the only one who’s been in a fugue state lately. Maybe we all have.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ said May, ‘do you have any idea what Arthur’s up to?’

  ‘No, I thought you did.’

  They both rose together and headed for the chaotic stacks of paper on Bryant’s cluttered desk.

  31

  CALL TO ARMS

  The most polluted route in London takes you along the Euston Road, an ashen artery that traverses the city from west to east, palisaded with dismal concrete boxes. And yet, in one of those anomalies so typical of London, there are all sorts of oddities tucked away on it, including several excellent pubs, a couple of scalding Szechuan restaurants and half a dozen excellent if somewhat idiosyncratically organized bookshops, one of which is in the basement of the British Library. It was here that Bryant found Monica Greenwood waiting for him. The wife of a brilliant but disgraced academic, she’d had a hard time coping with her husband’s newly acquired criminal status, but had somehow emerged with her dignity intact. She had lightened her hair and tied it up loosely, in the way that certain sexually confident women in their late forties did without a moment’s thought. Her face shone as soon as she caught sight of him.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Arthur.’ She hugged him warmly but carefully, knowing that he was liable to leave bits of liquorice, cabbage and tobacco stuck to her.

  ‘I took a chance,’ said Bryant, doffing his homburg. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were still here.’

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I tend to get a bit too lost in my work these days.’ She smiled a little ruefully. ‘Paul’s out of prison now but we split up. I suppose you knew that.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. We’d reached the end of the road long before his little transgression. What are you working on?’

  ‘That’s where I thought you could help me. I remember you were a member of the Conspiracy Club.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She walked around a stack of books, replacing the errant titles. ‘I gave it up, Arthur. They got a little too wacky even for me. It was around the time they came up with “scientific proof” that Michelle Obama was a man.’ Monica had the kind of laugh that made others smile. ‘A step too far, I’m afraid. I joined a lot of cranky societies while Paul was in jail. Funnily enough, it helped to keep me sane.’

  He indicated the ‘Art & Design Section’ sign beside her. ‘So you’re back in paintings now?’

  ‘Sort of. I’m collaborating on a new book about The Night Watch. You probably know the theory.’

  Bryant rolled his eyes. ‘I did, but I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Experts argue that Rembrandt filled his painting with symbols and hidden layers of meaning, the so-called “Fifty-one Mysteries”. Ostensibly it’s a portrait of a Dutch militia company, so who is the ghost figure, why are there five light sources, why is the soldier behind the central characters firing a musket into the middle of the crowd, stuff like that. It’s supposed to involve Rembrandt launching an accusation of murder and corruption that led to his own downfall. The painting was certainly altered, but the “conspiracy” looks more and more like a prank perpetuated by artists and film-makers. It’s what we find with most conspiracies: they only exist because somebody wants them to.’

  ‘That’s what I always suspected, however much I’d like some of them to be true,’ Bryant admitted, loosening his scarf.

  ‘We all would,’ said Monica, ‘because everyone else out there is denying the very things we can see with our own eyes. We live in a world where a Fox News presenter can tell her audience it’s been proven that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were both white, instead of Palestinian and Turkish—’

  ‘—or mythical—’

  ‘—and the chancellor of the exchequer can stand up in the House of Commons and say that the directors of a British bank are entirely above reproach.’

  ‘He did that?’

  ‘This morning. So how do we react? Either we invent a convoluted unifying theory to explain everything we’ve ever expected – an Illuminatus conspiracy – or we act on our gut instinct and fight back. Which is what they’re doing just a couple of miles from here.’

/>   ‘It sounds like you and I share the same attitude to anarchy,’ said Bryant, ‘which is good because I have some inside knowledge about the London riots. I think they’re traceable back to one person, and I’m trying to find him.’

  ‘Of course you are. We’re all trying to find someone to blame.’

  ‘No, I mean I really am trying to find him.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help you there.’

  Bryant fixed her with a gimlet eye. ‘You have a very visual mind, Monica. You know, our unit was founded by freethinkers who decided that all serious crime was basically problem-solving. They hired people like me because I see things differently. That’s what I need from you. Here.’

  She waited while he trawled through his pockets, finally handing her a blue plastic memory stick. ‘This contains all the photographs I could cull from journalists covering the riots. You’ll also find the faces of five men and one woman in a separate file. I want you to search for them in the crowds. The person I’m looking for must have attended some of the demonstrations. I’m afraid it’ll be horribly time-consuming.’

  ‘No, I’m fast at facial recognition. Aren’t there computer techniques you prefer to use?’

  ‘I asked Dan, our IT chap, and he said it was too expensive. We don’t have the software in-house, so we’d have to outsource it.’

  ‘And I’m cheaper.’ Monica tucked the flash drive into her bag. ‘You’ve got a nerve. How soon do you need it?’

  ‘Before the fifth, if possible.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go, but I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘Thank you, Monica. You’re a wonderful woman.’

  She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘You sent my husband to jail, Arthur.’

  ‘I know. I thought I’d redeem myself by getting you to work for naught but the thanks of a grateful nation.’

  She laughed, despite herself. ‘You never change, you know that? I’ll call you. Presuming you still have a phone that works?’

  ‘After a fashion. Don’t worry, I know where to find you. The future of the city may depend on this.’

  Monica Greenwood watched as her old friend attempted to leave via the stockroom, then the toilet, before she finally headed him towards the stairs. I’m glad the future of the city is in such good hands, she decided.

  Janet Ramsey, the editor of Hard News, didn’t know much about journalism but she had a nose for a good story. A little London girl reunited with her lost puppy was worth ten famines in Africa because it was human interest. People were tired. They didn’t want to hear about mass tragedy, and besides, there was always a famine occurring somewhere. It was like these protests, a lot of unemployed troublemakers running around with nothing better to do, and over what? A corruption scandal, as if that was news these days. It was so hard to put a human face on the damned thing. Cornell had been done to death. They needed a new angle.

  Her staff knew how she felt, which made it all the more surprising that they decided to hand her the oddly wrapped cardboard package. Inside, Janet found a set of photographs and a card.

  She shouted across the open-plan office to her associate editor. ‘Miles, do you know anything about this?’

  Miles waddled over, eating some kind of chocolate cake, because there was always a birth, marriage or leaving party to be celebrated with empty calories. ‘It came in for your eyes only,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

  Ramsey checked the envelope. ‘No stamps. Did someone drop it off?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Well, can you bloody well find out?’

  He leaned over the desk, trying to see. ‘Who prints photos any more?’

  ‘Someone who wants to catch my attention, obviously. I wonder how many more of these went out. We might not be first to run with it but we can put a fresh spin on the story. I want this in tomorrow’s edition.’

  Miles checked the wall clock and shook his head. ‘Not going to happen, chief.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Janet. ‘Jonathan De Vere’s been murdered.’

  ‘Christ! Are you sure?’

  She held up the photographs. ‘You tell me. And there’s a note, just in case we’re too slow to make the connection. Our old friends at the PCU are handling the investigation.’

  ‘But they’re doing that banker, the tar-and-feather guy who suffocated.’ Miles and Janet had been sitting on that story for twenty-four hours at the request of the Fraud Squad and the effort was killing them. ‘Which has got to mean—’

  ‘Sometimes I look at you and can actually see your brain working,’ said Ramsey. ‘They’re connecting the deaths.’ She knew that if the PCU were involved in cases with locations outside City of London jurisdiction it was because they’d found a causal link. She’d been crossing swords with Bryant and May’s unit for the past twelve years, and knew how they operated.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked Miles.

  ‘Is the piece on Hall still ready to go?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been filed and subbed.’

  Ramsey thought through the options. Hard News had a killer story on the UK’s new saint of IT. De Vere was thought to be untouchable, a saviour of British industry right up there with Richard Branson and James Dyson. He had yet to be knighted, but barring any unforeseen bad press it was only a matter of time.

  Well, Hard News had the bad press in hand. It turned out that De Vere wasn’t quite as gilt-edged as everyone supposed. His pregnant wife was having an affair and his company was about to file for bankruptcy, leaving a string of smashed charities in its wake. They had been building their case against him for the past few days, knowing that an early release might swing public opinion against them, but now it appeared that De Vere had been murdered and the information was being withheld.

  ‘Who sent you that?’ Miles asked as he turned over the unmarked brown packet.

  ‘It’ll take you thirty seconds to verify,’ replied Ramsey. ‘I can smell the civil service all over this. Go with “an anonymous source” for now.’

  As Miles ran an advance-guard warning that a new front page was going in, Ramsey called her old frenemy John May for a confirm-or-deny. It was possible that the photographs had been sent to other nationals, but if the sender was using an old-school delivery system, then presumably the Web press didn’t have it as their offices were rarely central – and no one else had the secondary story about De Vere’s fall from grace.

  She studied the envelope, knowing that what she had on her desk was the perfect lead for their new online service. Judging by the photographs, which revealed the damage to De Vere’s face in grisly detail, the killer was someone who was used to getting his hands dirty. The homeless boy burned, Hall tarred and feathered, De Vere branded: it looked like one of the protestors was taking direct action. And there it was, her link to Cornell. Resentment, revenge, a call to arms: it was like Les Misérables, and it could syndicate worldwide.

  ‘John,’ she said as her call was answered, ‘I’ve got the story. Before I run with it, we need to talk.’

  32

  INSURRECTION

  Leicester Square had always been slightly disreputable, from the days of the Alhambra Theatre, where the leading ladies were not those on the stage but the ones plying their trade in the balcony, to the private beer parlours that could be found above, below and behind the square’s more salubrious buildings.

  After years of gentrification, sanitization and pedestrianization only a few remnants of the square’s raffish past were still on their original sites. The Cork & Bottle wine bar was a seventies time warp, the Talk of the Town had reopened as a Chinese casino, and a couple of small walk-up private members’ bars struggled on with watered gin and ageing clientele.

  In Leicester Place, just a few paces from the neon-lit square, nothing much had changed in decades. Joan Collins was currently appearing in its underground theatre, and the luxuriously shabby Prince Charles Cinema was still running a repertory programme that was likely to pair The Wizard of Oz with Flesh for Franken
stein. It was as if the last forty years had never happened.

  The club was called Insurrection, and had once been part of the undercroft of the Église Notre Dame de France, a beaux arts church built on the old war-damaged site of an older minster, constructed in turn to replace the Panorama, which had opened in 1793 to display a circular view of all London. The club had returned the site to its sensation-seeking root, and was hung about with inverted golden crosses, apocalyptical vistas and images of uprisings.

  ‘Blimey, how did he get over there?’ asked DS Jack Renfield. ‘And why hasn’t he got any trousers on?’ The crimson-painted auditorium smelled of fireworks. It had been evacuated but not made safe, so the PCU staff had been warned that they were there under their own cognisance.

  The room had been hosed down. One of the bar alcoves was a smouldering, blackened ruin, but the rest of the place was untouched apart from a single patch of soot on the ceiling that might have already been there. The body had been blasted across the recess and lay twisted in an impossible position, one grubby trainer slightly off the ground. The EMTs had been first on the scene and had ascertained that the blast’s sole victim was dead, but on instructions from the PCU they had left the corpse in situ. The alcove’s central unit had been neatly eviscerated, leaving the ones on either side completely undamaged.

  ‘A detonation will do that.’ Dan Banbury stepped over a puddle. ‘During the Blitz, people were blown out of bathtubs without sustaining injury, and their mantelpiece ornaments ended up a quarter of a mile away. You never know what you’re going to get.’

  Renfield leaned forward and squinted, trying to see more clearly through the still-thick air. ‘He looks like he’s in one piece, even though his head’s not the right way round. What’s that horrible smell?’

  ‘I think his bowels were caught by surprise.’

  ‘Nice.’ Renfield wrinkled his broad nose. ‘Pity he didn’t live. It would have been interesting seeing him use a chair now, what with his legs bending the wrong way.’