Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Severed spinal cord, I imagine,’ said Banbury. ‘Looks like the blast threw him forward and turned him over, twisting his back.’

  ‘No one else injured?’

  ‘Apparently not. It was a very neat job. I’m interested in the seat.’

  Shards of metal were embedded in the rear wall with pieces of cream foam rubber hanging from them, like some kind of avant-garde Christmas decoration. Banbury had slipped on his shoe covers and padded over to the twisted remains of the banquette.

  The first thing he found when he looked under it was the base of a slender tin box, blackened and warped by the explosion. When he picked out several fragments of a plastic cover, followed by the spring from a tiny clockwork motor, he knew exactly how the blast had occurred. An unstable primary explosive and a primitive ignition system, in this case a mechanical joy buzzer, placed inside a container on a bed of granules, probably nitrocellulose or fulminate of mercury. Pressing down on the lid in the right spot would have depressed the button on the buzzer, which vibrated in the unstable chemical compound, and because the whole thing was tightly encased it packed a hell of a wallop. It was something a really perverse child could have knocked together in less than ten minutes, although the trickiest part would have been getting it into the seat.

  He headed back to the other side of the cordons and went upstairs to the entry booth, followed by Renfield.

  ‘Was he alone in the place?’ he asked the shocked Goth cashier whose lacquered upright hair made her look even more surprised.

  ‘He was the first one in,’ she managed. ‘We’d been shut for cleaning. We had a big stag party in here last night and the lavs were bunged up with vomit.’

  ‘I need details of your clean-up crew,’ said Banbury. ‘Names and contacts of everyone who was allowed inside.’

  ‘I don’t think we can get that,’ protested the cashier. ‘Most of them can’t speak English. They come and go. It’s a dive bar, not the Bank of England.’

  ‘Did you see anything odd going on last night?’ Banbury persisted.

  ‘You mean odder than forty blokes in grass skirts and Viking helmets? I only looked in once, but no, not really.’

  ‘So someone was able to cut open one of the seats without being noticed.’

  ‘Most of the seats have been repaired dozens of times.’ She tapped the sign above her head. ‘It’s called Insurrection. Our customers get boisterous.’

  ‘Do you have credit-card receipts for the entry system?’ asked Renfield.

  ‘It’s cash only, mostly students.’

  ‘Why did he take that seat?’

  ‘It’s where he always sits,’ she explained. ‘He’s the last out and the first in.’

  ‘So you know who he is.’

  ‘Yeah. His name’s Frank Leach.’

  ‘What else do you know about him?’

  From the look on the cashier’s face, you would have thought someone combusted in the club every night. ‘Piss artist,’ she said. ‘Downs a skinful, makes a nuisance of himself with the bar staff, wobbles off to any other place that’ll take him.’ She indicated the stairs to the street.

  A few minutes later, with the victim’s identity confirmed and the names of the cleaning crew placed on request, Renfield left Banbury sifting through bits of burned rubber and metal, and headed back to report to Bryant and May.

  33

  TENSE NERVOUS HEADACHE

  Raymond Land was the last to arrive in the unit’s common room. Everyone was in their usual places; in that respect they were like schoolchildren, with the troublemakers (Arthur Bryant and Meera Mangeshkar) at the back and the ones with the smart answers (in this case, Dan Banbury and Jack Renfield) at the front.

  ‘I have a lot of coloured chalks here,’ said Land, ‘and my pointing stick and Bryant’s blackboard. We’re not leaving this room until it’s all scribbled over.’

  Colin tried to stifle a laugh and failed. Albert Camus had once said that there was nothing more despicable than respect based on fear, but Land had the opposite problem. His team failed to respect him precisely because he gave them nothing to be afraid of.

  ‘Four deaths,’ he said, holding up the correct number of fingers in an effort to drive the point home. ‘And no single line of inquiry providing us with a decent lead. We’ve got nothing. It’s like he doesn’t exist. What have you lot got to say for yourselves?’

  Bryant raised his hand.

  ‘Not you, someone else,’ snapped Land, exasperated. ‘And who was the bloke who got his trousers blown off in the club?’

  ‘Frank Leach, online loan shark,’ Longbright told the room. ‘We’re trying to find out about that. No friends, no enemies to speak of, but like De Vere, Leach was heavily linked to social-networking sites. There are a lot of threads to sort through. It’s going to take a while.’

  Land waved his hand at Dan and Jack. ‘You two, you were there. Are you sure this … incident is connected?’

  ‘I think you should let Mr Bryant speak,’ said Renfield loyally.

  ‘There’s no question in my mind at all,’ said Bryant, shifting his gobstopper. ‘There are the repeated motifs, for a start. The use of fire and cheap low-tech equipment. Then there are the masks. Freddie Weeks was covered with cardboard, Glen Hall’s face was smothered with tar, Jonathan De Vere had a mask hammered on to his face, and this chap, Leach, was sitting in this alcove.’ He held up a photograph that showed a curving red wall painted with naked men and women wearing fox masks. ‘It seems obvious to me that the killer is now referencing the masks of the protest movement.’

  ‘I’m interested in forensic evidence, Mr Bryant, not your whimsical conjectures,’ said Land.

  ‘That’s not so easy,’ said Banbury. ‘The incendiary element has prevented us from getting much from the victims, so I’ve been looking at the secondary sites, the floor above the shop where Hall was killed, De Vere’s kitchen and the club auditorium.’

  ‘Please spare me threads and fibres,’ Land complained. ‘How the hell did anyone manage to plant a bomb in a bloody bar seat?’

  ‘The cleaning team,’ suggested May. ‘It seems likely one of them was bogus. They’re hired piecemeal and given cash by a dodgy company paying below minimum wage, so they’re going to be tricky to track down. There’s something else you should know: Janet Ramsey was sent a photographic record of the case lifted from our files, together with a list of names. Someone wanted her to know that the deaths were connected, and that we were in charge of the case.’

  Land ran a hand over his face. ‘Tell me she’s not running the story.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference now if she killed it. Other packages went out. The Fraud Squad got the BBC and Sky to hold off until they could organize a press conference. Ramsey has turned over the shots to us, but not before she went to press.’

  ‘Can you lift anything from them?’

  ‘They were just screen grabs. It feels like a pretty clumsy attempt to drop us in it – probably someone we’ve upset recently.’

  Land groaned. ‘That doesn’t narrow it down.’

  ‘I’m afraid it gets worse,’ May warned. ‘De Vere was about to be accused of financial mismanagement. Oh, and there’s a sex scandal thrown in too, so there’s something for everyone.’

  ‘This is going to escalate the protests,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Am I missing something?’ asked Land, bewildered. ‘Why would it do that?’

  ‘Because people are going to see how easy it is to wipe out the bad eggs,’ answered Bryant. ‘If they start taking the law into their own hands, nobody will be able to hold them back. This country successfully maintains the illusion of democracy. We’re under more surveillance than any nation in the world except Monaco, and no one ever complains! The tax authorities go after small firms and individuals instead of the worst avoiders. Now people are being told that they’ll have to work harder for longer and live worse lives than their parents. What will it take to start a fire that can’t be put out? How
big does the match have to be?’

  ‘Just whose side are you on, Mr Bryant?’ demanded Land, outraged. ‘Your job is to uphold the law, not question it. Why is it always the big picture with you? Why can’t you just get on with finding a murderer?’

  ‘A society that doesn’t question its laws is doomed to fall.’ Bryant was furious now, although with one eye screwed up and his false teeth bared he tended to look like Georges Méliès’s image of the moon with a rocket stuck in its eye. ‘Don’t you dare to doubt my loyalty. John and I sacrificed any chance of having a normal life for this unit. Every man and woman here with us is doing the same thing for what they believe is the greater good. But when even the police start thinking that maybe this fellow is on to something, how are civilians going to feel? He’s wiped his trail clean, but he hasn’t thought of everything. If he’s made a mistake we’ll find it, but how much time do we have? I said there were six suspects—’

  ‘Wait,’ said Land, relishing the chance to use his coloured chalk. ‘Go on.’

  ‘To set up each death the killer has to know something about his victim’s habits. He knows where they live, what they like, how their schedules work. De Vere’s wife is having an affair with a metallurgist. That gives her partner a motive and makes him a possible suspect. Dexter Cornell has single-handedly become the unacceptable face of capitalism. Maybe he wants to take everyone else down with him. Suspect number two. The three boardroom directors who are just seeing their little insider-trading scheme go up in smoke. If it turns out they’re connected to any of the victims it makes them suspects three, four and five. And finally there’s the smart girlfriend, Joanna Papis – yes, Raymond, a female – who joins Freddie Weeks and Hall together, making her a putative sixth.’

  ‘How did that happen?’ asked Land. ‘Did I miss a meeting?’

  ‘We haven’t even begun to eliminate any of the six because we’re not geared up to handle an operation of this size, and Darren Link knows it.’

  Land was so busy drawing red and blue lines around the names that he almost missed the point. ‘Wait – you’re saying that Link wants us to fail?’

  ‘Of course, because he hates that this unit was founded by leftie liberal academics.’

  ‘Blimey, one of you must have some good news,’ groaned Land. ‘Anyone?’

  ‘Glen Hall had a male partner,’ said Fraternity DuCaine. ‘Because Hall was a banker and concerned with privacy at work he never mentioned him to any of his colleagues, but the partner is somewhere in the deep background, and I’m getting to him.’

  ‘OK, anyone else?’

  Meera raised her hand. ‘Colin and I are working on an angle. This guy likes handling fire. We think there’s something in his job history.’

  ‘Maybe he worked in a foundry,’ Colin added. ‘We’re talking to everyone who might have a connection in that field. Arsonists tend to have long histories going right back to when they were children. We’re trawling past cases of criminal damage, particularly those that took place during riots.’

  ‘Good,’ said Land, ‘now we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘There’s a key point we keep coming back to,’ said May. ‘How did the rumour about Cornell’s deal break out in the first place? Arthur and I are trying to find the source of the leak.’

  ‘I’ve been looking into De Vere’s funds,’ Longbright added, ‘and there’s something very wrong with his accounting. His bookkeeper resigned and took off for South Africa, and there’s a huge hole in De Vere’s finances. He was involved in government-backed charities, so he had some very influential colleagues who are going to demand fast answers as the press story unfolds.’

  ‘Whether we like it or not,’ said Bryant, ‘the papers are going to link the deaths with the riots, and they’ll be only too happy to suggest that some kind of citywide apocalypse is imminent. But you know, they may have a point. I think the killer is pulling out the threads that hold London’s stability together. So far he hasn’t put a foot wrong.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that cheerful summation of the week’s events,’ said Land. ‘I’ll just go and gas myself. Or perhaps I’ll go up the Gherkin with a machine gun and wipe out all of the protestors.’

  ‘Raymondo, you’re sweating,’ Bryant pointed out. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No, I’m bloody not,’ growled Land. ‘I have a tense nervous headache.’

  ‘I’m a qualified masseur,’ said Colin. ‘Do you want me to give you a neck rub?’

  ‘Don’t come anywhere near me,’ Land warned, knowing how many people Bimsley had damaged with his uncoordinated fists.

  ‘D’you know, Leach’s death rings a bell.’ There was a peculiar wistfulness in Bryant’s voice. ‘In the late 1960s, John and I chased a suspect through the slums on the Isle of Dogs. We finally trapped him in the Roxy cinema during a screening of Bullitt. Just as we thought the case was closed, our murderer gave us the slip through an alley at the rear of the picture house. I thought perhaps he might have come back, except that he’d be around eighty by now. I was upset about missing the film’s climax. I finally saw the end of Bullitt on telly in the eighties, and I still didn’t understand the plot. But then I realized it never really mattered that much who did the murder, so long as you enjoyed being with the main characters.’

  Land stared at his senior detective as if he’d just announced that he was joining the Royal Ballet. This little speech was the clearest evidence so far that Bryant was finally going gaga.

  ‘Robert Vaughn is the baddie,’ Bimsley told Bryant. ‘The chain was off the hotel door because Johnny Ross was expecting him, but he was double-crossed.’

  ‘Corrupt politician, innit,’ added Renfield. ‘Nothing changes.’

  Land rose unsteadily from his seat and looked at the faces surrounding him. Bryant was mentally fading from view, drifting into vagaries and non sequiturs, and the rest of them were still listening to him. ‘I don’t want to know what you all think about the plot of Bullitt,’ he said hotly. ‘I’m doubling shifts and cancelling all leave until this thing is sorted out or we admit defeat and turn it back to the CoL. Now get on with your work before I do something to you with my pointing stick that goes against the laws of physics and common decency.’

  Longbright altered the shift roster, and they divided the interviews between them. John May’s resemblance to a dashing but possibly disreputable captain of industry qualified him to fit in with the three directors of the Findersbury Bank, Fraternity DuCaine was packed off to find Glen Hall’s partner on Renfield’s classic-car-club principle, Jack Renfield got Lena De Vere’s metallurgist boyfriend, Meera Mangeshkar agreed to talk to Joanna Papis, and it was decided that Longbright’s naturally warm demeanour might draw something more useful from Dexter Cornell.

  Out of these came some eliminations. May found that all of the bank’s directors could account for their time when the murders occurred, which was annoying because he didn’t like them at all. They were slick and glib and crafty, with acquisitive minds and eyes like angry marbles, and their qualified, circuitous conversations were designed to mislead as much as any country-house maze. But facts were facts and they were all willing to provide witnesses for the hours in question, so they were reluctantly dismissed.

  The metallurgist boyfriend proved a damp squib, too; a single handshake told Renfield that he was barking up the wrong tree, partly because his suspect had immaculately groomed nails, and partly because his arms were like overcooked white asparagus. The man had clearly never lifted anything heavier than a jeweller’s screwdriver in his life. Renfield’s instincts were confirmed when he discovered that the metallurgist had been abroad for the previous three days.

  This, in the main, left Papis and Cornell.

  34

  THE GIRL AND THE BOY

  By nine-thirty on Thursday night, the entire Square Mile was in lockdown. The protestors were unable to leave and everyone else was unable to enter. Then at 10 p.m. the leading story on the BBC concerned Jonathan De Vere’s
fall from grace, and all hell broke loose.

  Within minutes, rioters poured around the closed Bank and Cannon Street stations, with Occupy and Make Capitalism History 2 (splitters’ group) joined by protest latecomers Break the Banks and Kill List, a party dedicated to making the lives of the nation’s richest tax-avoiders unbearable. More groups coalesced in Trafalgar Square before a hastily arranged gaggle of guest speakers. This event was organized across a dozen social-network platforms and, inspired by fiery rhetoric, headed off along the Strand, catching the police support units entirely by surprise. As the canary-jackets pursued the mob, ARVs arrived to block the bridges, escalating a peaceful protest into a running siege.

  By midnight the streets were on fire again. The amber glow from a dozen makeshift bonfires of chairs and billboards gave the city a strange medieval appearance, and the chiaroscuro effect reshaped the older, overlooked buildings, restoring their strange grandeur with splashes of fierce saffron light and deep black shadows. Somebody had set fire to a sofa in the middle of the Aldwych, and so Kingsway was closed, causing further chaos. There was now a violent picket outside the Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street; the disruptions had crossed into Covent Garden.

  It was a cool night and groups of figures stood warming their hands around burning oil drums, their faces lit by the flickering flames. TV crews filmed from every vantage point, training their cameras on a pale sea of tiny rectangular panels as a thousand mobile phones recorded the event. Covert footage was beamed via satellite to intelligence agencies in Europe and America. Alarming new images were Dropboxed into news agencies for public consumption. Microsites were launched and subgroups were hashtagged, Instagrams and Vine loops were posted, and grinning selfies were taken against the infernal backdrop.

  The great golden grasshopper that hung above Sir Thomas Gresham’s coat of arms at number 68 Lombard Street became famous once more for being in the background of a thousand photographs. It was an unlikely symbol for a financier, Aesop’s sign of laziness, but it was photographed glistening against a roiling wall of brown smoke and yellow flame, and became a new emblem for the troubled times.