Puzzled, Land rose and pushed back his chair.
Another point, further to the left, went under the ancient, moth-eaten Persian rug Bryant had thrown down on the floor. Land lifted a corner with his shoe to see where the line went next. It disappeared under the desk, so he moved the desk and rolled the rug back.
“Mr Bryant – ” His voice rose and broke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Arthur, may I have a word with you?”
After what seemed like an age, Bryant stuck his head around the door. “What is it? I’m very busy, you know.”
“There’s a pentacle under my desk.”
Bryant came into the room and made an elaborate fuss about getting out his spectacles. Fitting the wires firmly behind his ears, he peered at the floor. “So there is.”
Land was outraged. “Have there been Satanists up here?”
“I really have no idea.”
“I’m sure you do. You always have an idea. You pretend you’re dotty, but you know a hawk from a handsaw. You’ve probably got a dossier on this place tucked among those weird books you keep.”
“Is this all you wanted?” asked Bryant irritably. “You do know we’ve got a murder investigation on our hands? Perhaps I can be allowed to return to my – ”
“No, it’s not all,” said Land plaintively. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t have a purpose. You always know what to do. What should I do?”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody takes any notice of you because you don’t do anything. You sit there worrying. People do peculiar things and you can’t understand why. Life is short and filled with pain, and just when you start to finally get the hang of it, you drop dead. So pull yourself together and give me a hand. Do something and make a difference. I have over a hundred blurry photocopies of land-purchase agreements to go through, and could really use some help.”
Land should have been annoyed. There was a murderer on the loose, time was running out, and he had no idea what Bryant was doing with property contracts, but as he followed Bryant’s instructions he felt strangely elated.
♦
“I was told I’d find Xander Toth here,” said John May. He had come to the Camley Street Natural Park, an urban nature reserve run by the London Wildlife Trust, to talk to the leader of the Battlebridge Action Group. The small sanctuary consisted of woods and wetlands backing onto the canal, and had been reclaimed from the former red-light district. The site had originally been a coal drop for the railway, but after the discovery of wild orchids growing by the water it had been reborn as a wildlife park. Toth worked here as one of the volunteer gardeners.
“He’s planting, over there on the bank,” answered the girl who was refilling the bird-feeders at the entrance. May followed her directions and picked his way across a muddy meadow filled with reedmace, wondering if he was about to meet the abductor who stalked the lonely road leading from the Keys nightclub. He decided to take a soft approach to the subject and let his suspect speak out.
“Xander Toth?” he called.
“You’re the other one, aren’t you?” Toth set aside his spade and pulled off his gardening gloves, leaning over to shake May’s hand. He was standing in a dell filled with evening primrose, hollyhocks and oxeye daisies.
“Detective John May. You know me?”
“I saw you talking to Marianne Waters the other day. You think I’m a troublemaker.”
“I didn’t say that. I know you want to build a pagan temple on the site of St Pancras Old Church, but that’s about it.”
Toth grinned. “See, that’s the kind of quote that’s taken out of context.”
“Maybe you should have thought more carefully before you gave it.”
“People will think I’m crazy whatever I say.”
“Are you? It’s the kind of thing that can really damage a good cause.”
“No, I’m not crazy. I’m committed.”
“And you don’t believe in compromise.”
“Tell me, Mr May, how would that work? ADAPT gives back a little corner of land so that we can erect a maypole or something, donates a little money toward the restoration of the graveyard in return for sticking up some sponsor plaques? And we agree to back off so they can build London’s largest shopping mall on public property?”
“That’s a very cynical outlook, Mr Toth. The world moves on; you can’t go back in time.”
“I don’t want to go back. I want people to have what’s rightfully theirs. ADAPT has spent years perfecting the art of turning people out on the street and making them feel grateful for it.”
“Tell me something I don’t understand. You have fewer than thirty registered members on your side. That’s according to your own Web site. If all these people you say you represent can’t even be bothered to stand up for their own land, why should you care?”
Toth looked down at the freshly turned earth and shook his head. “You know how quickly areas can change? ADAPT demolished all the buildings on the land they bought, and ploughed up the ground. Since then, wildlife has started returning to the region. Geese, herons, foxes, rare flowers, migrating wild birds not seen here for decades. Do you believe that the landscape in which you grow up has the power to shape you?”
“Of course. Inner-city kids are very different from ones who – ”
“I’m not talking about demographics. The land on which we build our houses decides who we are. If you thought your environment had become harmful, how would you feel about raising a child in it? I’m about to become a father.”
“How much do you know about the history of this area?”
“Pretty much everything there is to know. It’s my specialist subject. I talk to the local people and try to educate them about it.”
May thought back to what his partner had told him about the myths born in the ancient woodlands of Battlebridge. “Then you know how strongly it’s associated with the image of a man in horns. You have the knowledge, Mr Toth. You have the motive. Who else is it more likely to be?”
“You’re accusing me, Detective. What are you going to do – apply for a warrant to search my home?”
“You were supposed to provide my partner with times and dates of your whereabouts. We’re still waiting for that list. Several of your members have criminal records for drug offences. Your flat is listed as the registered address of the Battlebridge Action Group. If there are reasonable grounds for me to suspect that there are drugs on your premises, I don’t have to apply for a warrant. If I find anything that connects you with the stag-man, I’m going to arrest you.”
“Oh, really?” Toth studied him with interest. “What are you going to charge me with?”
May was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the idea. If Toth was responsible, what had he actually done? A few workers had walked out, and one man had broken his ankle in an accident that had arguably been caused by a hallucinated sighting of Veles, a Romanian childhood legend. What about the girl the stag-man had supposedly abducted? She had apparently vanished into the night sky, no name, no identity, no loved ones to even report her missing. May had nothing. He was chasing an invisible man.
“Nice to meet you, Mr May,” Toth shouted after him. “I don’t want you coming near my house, you hear me? Remember, I know my rights better than anyone. Stay away from me.”
Even as he walked away, May felt sure there was another part of Alexander Toth that remained hidden from view. And until he discovered what it was, he would not be able to put the case to rest.
∨ Bryant & May on the Loose ∧
29
Ancestry
If London’s Euston Road is the ugliest street in London (it isn’t, quite; City Road can induce such a state of clinical depression that there should be a medical term for it) then the chamber of Camden Council is its Sistine Chapel of human misery. Arthur Bryant was feeling rather buoyant as he approached it, but each step he took into the building drove the sensation from him. He had come to see a town planning officer name
d Tremble, formerly a solicitor with Horsley, Dagett & Tremble, who now acted as an advisor to the council in matters concerning the compulsory purchases of land.
Bryant wanted to be outside digging up corpses and chasing (as much as his bad leg would allow) unscrupulous but fiendishly brilliant villains through the back alleys of the city. Instead he was meeting a clerk about forgotten bits of paperwork.
And if Camden Council was a boring place to be when there were desperados waiting to be apprehended, Ed Tremble looked like the most boring of council officials, to be ranked beside Leslie Faraday in the great roll call of grim government time-servers. No man ever seemed riper for retirement. Bryant could almost see the weeks, days and hours counting down on his face. Tremble appeared to be having trouble remaining upright. The solicitor looked like he was covered in dust: baggy grey suit, thin grey face, thinning grey hair. On closer examination he actually was covered in dust, having just returned from the basement archive where he had been digging up information for the insistent detective who had called him (on his cell phone, a number he was sure he had never given out) at an unearthly hour on Thursday morning.
Tremble had a secret, however. Underneath his dreary exterior, he was quite interesting. When his penchant for investigating the area’s past was indulged, a light shone in his eyes and he became almost passionate, which was why his wife kept a stack of local history books on her bedside table.
“I’m not entirely sure that some of this information isn’t classified,” said Tremble, plonking down a huge stack of filthy green folders and leaving more dust on his jacket in the process. “The development of the King’s Cross site has been under public scrutiny for three decades. Nobody wants to make any more mistakes.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bryant, unwrapping a lemon drop.
“Well, the building of the Regent’s Canal and the Great Midland Railway turned a thriving area into an industrial wasteland. The river was filled in and the fields were turned into cheap housing for French immigrant workers. Dickens called the site ‘a suburban Sahara’. So this time the consultation process took in every local group and involved literally hundreds of meetings. Summary reports were produced after every stage. Perhaps you’d rather see those.”
“No, I want to go right back to the beginning,” said Bryant. “I’m interested in the very first tranche of purchases made by ADAPT.”
“They weren’t in the picture back then,” said Tremble. “It was called the King’s Cross Central Development Office in those days. The company became a public-private partnership in the mid-1990s, and finally changed its name to ADAPT in 2003. All the companies have sexier names now. Process, Change, Pulse – I can’t keep up. What are you really looking for, Mr Bryant? I mean, what interest could the police have in old land purchases?”
“All wars are fought over territory, Mr Tremble. And this is a fascinating piece of ground. How much do you know about King’s Cross?”
“Far too much for my own good,” Tremble admitted. “What’s most striking is the way it has always switchbacked from rural idyll to urban squalor. One decade you have swans and spa fountains, the next, dustheaps and decay.”
“What do you know about Xander Toth and the Battlebridge Action Group?”
“He’s a pain in the rump, but I suppose he has more reason to be than most.”
“Why is that?”
“The name, Toth. The area around Euston was once the Manor of Tothele, later Tottenham Court Road. I suspect it derives from a word meaning the sun. Altars on druid sites are called Heal or Hele stones, because the sun rises over them. Helios is Greek for sun. Tot-Helios became Tothele, or Sacred Sun Site. The manor was a royal residence of King John in the thirteenth century. He hunted in the surrounding forest. Very popular with the royals, that area. Edward the Fourth, Elizabeth the First and Charles the Second’s mistress Nell Gwynne all lived there. By the 1670s it had become Tottenham Court. So it was a rare example of a sacred site that became a royalist stronghold. Which means that Mr Toth can trace his ancestry back to the throne of England. That might explain why he feels so strongly about the land.”
“So it would be a prestigious area for ADAPT to own in its entirety, presuming they could purchase back all the separate properties and reunite it into one site?”
“Indeed. I think it even comes with its own sovereign laws, rights to hunt and dig, that sort of thing.”
“That’s very useful, Mr Tremble. You’re wasted here.”
“Tell me about it,” said Tremble.
♦
Bryant headed for his next stop.
The elderly detective looked hopelessly out of place in the arctic-white reception area of the ADAPT offices. He was rumpled and tired, and very nearly ready to slide off the vast white leather sofa and fall asleep. He was at the age where he fantasised about having a nap in the afternoon. Indeed, he had done so throughout his fifties, but now he was old enough to be constantly aware of his fragile place in the world, and would not allow himself to miss a moment more of his life.
So there he patiently sat with his brown trilby squashed between his hands, his presence making the place untidy. Bryant’s shabby overcoat was so vast that he appeared to be vanishing inside it. His wispy white tonsure was still fanned up around his ears as if he had just risen from bed. An impossibly slender young woman approached the sofa where he sat, but changed her mind when she saw its occupant. Bryant kept his watery blue eyes locked on the receptionist, daring her to leave him stranded in this snowy wasteland of designer chic for much longer.
After a few minutes, a small boy with a perfect blond designer haircut and an outfit that made him look like a miniaturised member of a boy band sat down next to him and began hammering a hand-held computer game. Electronic explosions and power chords filled the lobby. The boy punched the air, texted his success to a friend, then grew bored. He turned his attention to Bryant, studying him with vague distaste.
“Are you more than a hundred years old?” he demanded, as if interviewing an Egyptian mummy.
“I feel like it most days,” Bryant admitted. He did not like children because he had always been an adult.
“Then how do you stay alive?”
“I eat small boys.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe me.”
The boy looked disgusted. “Duh. Get real.”
Bryant removed his false teeth and nipped the child hard on the arm with them. The boy screamed and burst into tears.
“Mr Bryant, you can go up now,” the receptionist called. “Miss Waters is ready for you.”
As he passed, she whispered urgently at him, “That’s Miss Waters’s son.”
“Good. Where is she?”
“Her administrative assistant will meet you on the third floor.”
The closing lift doors snipped off the sound of the wailing child.
Marianne Waters had a corner office with floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking a steam-cleaned courtyard lined with chrome uplighters and silver birches. She was a strong-looking woman, Bryant decided, studying her tight black suit. Hard-bodied and muscular, without a centimetre of body fat. He tried to imagine her saying silly words like ‘ping-pong’ and ‘hippopotamus’, but the image wouldn’t spring to life.
“Do you ever watch television, Mr Bryant?” she asked, walking to the window. “I always enjoy the historical adaptations, all those happy street urchins and ladies in bustle skirts worrying about their suitors. The reality was down there.” She tapped a nail against the double-glazing. “It’s hard to imagine how tough urban life used to be. These buildings were blackened with soot and filled with laundresses who were too old and ill to work by their mid-thirties. A woman of twenty-five looked fifty.”
“At least you were able to save some of the original buildings,” said Bryant, dropping onto the nearest seat.
“These factories were left over from the bad old days. Their staff worked with mercury, lead and arsenic. The dyes rotted
their nails, and mercuric vapour burned out their bronchial tubes. They suffered from anaemia, blood poisoning, cardiovascular disease, dermatitis, kidney damage. The employment laws favoured management, of course. The rates of pay were whatever you could get away with. Now the offices are air-conditioned, and have natural light. We’ve improved the environment beyond all imagining.”
“I agree that our standards are different now, but the gap between rich and poor remains. It’s not your fault. Most of the office workers we interview hate their jobs and are only doing it to pay their bills. They binge-drink and take drugs and go mad with frustration and boredom.”
“You’re right. It isn’t my job to rebalance the whole of society, Mr Bryant.” Her mood changed as soon as she realised he would not be easily led. “Why are you here?”
“A rather esoteric subject for an investigation unit, I’m afraid. Land purchases. You made over two hundred and sixty of them in order to secure this land, and it took thirty years. Any problems there?”
“What kind of problems?”
“Well, what do you do about the ones who don’t want to sell?”
“You mean do we trick property owners into signing away their homes?”
“Oh, I imagine all the guidelines are carefully followed. At least on paper,” Bryant replied lightly.
“More than that. We have government backing every step of the way, at both local and national levels.”
“So you can’t really fail, can you?”
“If you’re implying something, Detective, it might be better to just come out and say it.”
“Well, you must admit you’re having a fairly unusual month. Body parts turning up on your site, some lunatic stalking the workers in fancy dress. At first I thought someone was out to stop you from finishing the project. Silly, of course; an international juggernaut derailed by a worker with a grudge. Then I thought, what if he’s just trying to draw attention to the company and its work practices? You don’t have a high public profile. You get on with your work and keep your heads down. Suppose someone started to shine a spotlight on you? So, first the culprit dresses as a local hero and marauds around your site, making a mockery of your security system. Perhaps he still has friends inside the company who’ll arrange to leave doors unlocked and lights deactivated. And when that has no effect he gets desperate, stepping up his activity until it results in a murder which has to be hidden, which then turns up a second corpse. And he dresses it all up in the myths of local history, just to keep everyone interested. That’s why you need to search through your employment records and see if there’s someone on your books who’s capable of such a thing.”
Bryant & May 07; Bryant & May on the Loose b&m-7 Page 18