Bryant & May 07; Bryant & May on the Loose b&m-7

by Christopher Fowler

  “So how did he end up coming to you?”

  “He found the deed. See, old Mr Porter never got around to putting his house deeds in the bank. A lot of people didn’t, in them days. He kept his important documents in a tin box in the basement. Nobody ever went down there much ‘cause it was too wet, and bad for the chest. I suppose when the house was bombed the box fell into the well. It couldn’t have fallen very far, though, or Terry would never have found it. They’ve been turning up all sorts of things on those old properties, but apparently you only get a short time to dig up the site before they’re covered by the new buildings.”

  Bryant thought of the remains of London’s Roman basilica, now only viewable from the basement of the hairdresser’s off Gracechurch Street that had been built over it, and the sportswear shop that had housed the ancient and venerable London Stone for so many years. Notoriously, archaeologists had been given just six weeks to uncover treasures beneath a part of the London Wall before it was concreted into an office car park.

  “You’re telling me that Mr Delaney found the original freehold property deeds to number eleven Camley Lane and traced them to you?”

  “He used a pile driver to break the well open, and there was the box. Terry thought it was a bomb at first. He told me there’s over five thousand unexploded bombs still buried in London soil. He said he wanted to return the deeds to their rightful owner. Thought that way they’d have a chance to claim the land before the registration date passed, ‘cause it was due soon.”

  The deed expires on the day of the greatest sacrifice, thought Bryant. I knew it. The city has plans for us all.

  “I explained that I wasn’t the owner, that Mrs Porter had just lived with us until she died.”

  “So who is the actual owner?” Bryant asked.

  “I told him,” said Mr Barker, “that would now be her granddaughter. But I didn’t have her address.”

  ♦

  After Dan Banbury had visited her at Yield to the Night, Janice Longbright had reached a decision. She would no longer wear the obscure lingerie brands from the 1950s that were both uncomfortable and inappropriate for work. She would stop dressing like a post-war movie starlet. She had kept her signature look for many years, but you couldn’t be young forever, and it was time to start dressing like a woman in the full bloom of her middle years. Away would go the bleaches and lipsticks worn by Diana Dors and Jayne Mansfield. No more cleavage-revealing sweaters or strappy heels. She had not dressed for men, but to make herself feel good.

  So she had bought herself jeans, sneakers and a shirt, and started to look like everyone else.

  Bad timing, Janice, she decided now. Because she was lying on Liberty DuCaine’s sofa bed in his flat in Vauxhall, wishing she wasn’t wearing her sensible Marks & Spencer underwear.

  When you haven’t touched anyone else’s lips for a long time, Longbright thought, it’s a really weird sensation. Her ex-boyfriend’s kisses had lacked subtlety, consisting of either pecks or tongues. Liberty, however, had explored her mouth with gentle languor. For a brief moment she realised what she had been missing for so long.

  He was a physically imposing man, and now he seemed to take up the entire room. He surrounded her with gentle warmth, his thighs touching her hips, his palms on either side of her face, his soft breathing, a smile in the dark.

  At some point – she could not later recall when – he tore off his shirt with thrilling enthusiasm; he threw the garment behind him and it settled over a lamp. His soft skin had a faint, clean base-note of sweat that lingered on her hands. She heard herself say “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” but didn’t believe her own words.

  His chest hair formed a neat black trapezoid, a ladder of tight curls tracing to his navel and down into the waistband of his jeans. The wide, dry breadth of his hand covered her bare stomach. The shock of a man’s cool touch on her was extraordinary; she could not recall the last time someone had cupped her so gently, unfolding her desires with such lightness and loving care.

  She sank down deep into his IKEA cushions, her PCU uniform scratching against the blanket on the sofa bed. Suddenly it felt so tiring to be an English policewoman, to behave correctly wherever she went, to be strapped into a tight uniform and providing a role model for others all the time. She wanted him to tear at her clothes, to press her deep into the comforting night, the muscles in his thick brown arms lifting and widening as he raised his body over her. She felt him connecting with her at six or seven points, from her toes and hips to her mouth, and wondered if they could simply melt into each other, becoming one.

  It felt like a seduction conducted out of sequence, starting with a fierce culmination, his eyes never leaving hers, his body moving with increased connection, gentler and gentler, resolving to a faint and tender kiss.

  She fought to stop herself from being sensible. She knew they had to work together. She knew that it could create problems if they decided not to be this close again. She knew she had to get rid of the IKEA cushions. Her eyes were fully open to all the attendant dangers.

  But right now, on this cold, starry night in May, it seemed far better to let them gently close.

  ♦

  After Longbright had called him from Brighton about the connection between two of the victims, Bryant had barely been able to contain his excitement. His interview with Keith Barker had lent further shape to the ideas that were developing in his head.

  As the two detectives walked along the rainswept Caledonian Road that night, heading for John May’s BMW, he started piecing together events. Old Mr Barker did not realise it, but he had just placed an international corporation at the heart of a conspiracy to murder.

  “While Cavendish was clearing land rights for the ADAPT Group,” Bryant told May, “he found that in the case of a few plots of land, ownership couldn’t be verified – but the project has been in development for thirty years, so what’s a few more months? All ADAPT had to do was wait for the rights to lapse, and that’s what happened in most cases. I suppose if the worse came to the worst they could take a chance and quietly go ahead with construction, hoping that nobody came forward. But then the builder Terry Delaney threw a spanner in the works. He turned up a house deed, and went to Maddox Cavendish with news of his find. That was their first contact; Delaney rang Cavendish for advice. Then Cavendish took Delaney out to lunch and tried to obtain the deed. Whatever happened over that lunch, Delaney didn’t feel comfortable about simply surrendering the deed to ADAPT, and told Cavendish that he was determined to trace the rightful owner. Cavendish needed the deed to stay hidden in order to prevent the blocking of the project, or he had to be able to purchase it. But now, it had surfaced in the worst possible manner. He must have been having kittens.”

  “How crucial is the property to the group’s plans?” asked May, ushering Bryant into his car.

  “Let me show you.” Bryant pulled a crumpled roll of paper from his pocket and spread it out on the dashboard. “Most of the houses in Camley Street were subdivided before the war, except for number eleven. The Porters – the ones who were bombed, yes? – their garden extended all the way to the edge of the canal and down both sides of the property. It’s right in the centre of the mall’s main wing. This isn’t a proposal that can simply be junked and moved a few hundred feet to the left – it’s taken years for the public hearings and for the council to approve the plans. Worse still, any publicity could bring to light the fact that the house is constructed over one of Britain’s oldest sacred sites, and although archaeologists usually get limited time frames in which to examine ancient remains, this one might be important enough to have a stay of execution granted.”

  “So you think Delaney was trying to return the deeds to their rightful owner when he was killed. But if this is about property, why was it necessary to commit murder?”

  “One scenario presents itself. Cavendish realised he had single-handedly screwed up Europe’s biggest building project. He had failed to locate a key property ownership f
or the site, and knew that his future was on the line if he didn’t resolve the situation. He went to Delaney’s apartment and ransacked it, but Delaney returned home early and surprised him. In the ensuing struggle, Delaney died.”

  “Come on, Arthur. Cavendish was a small, rather mousey executive. It seems highly unlikely that he would then decide to decapitate Delaney with all the professionalism of a hit man before dragging the rest of his victim’s body to a chip shop in the Cally Road.”

  “Banbury told me Cavendish wasn’t well liked and didn’t socialise with the rest of the department, rarely went for a drink with them even when it was someone’s birthday. When he wasn’t in the office, he was in the company gym. And they all thought he was too ambitious.”

  “But if his bosses got wind of what had happened, others at the ADAPT Group may be culpable to varying degrees. It could take years to prove anything.”

  “Yes, that’s a problem,” Bryant agreed. “And derailing the project for a full investigation would be disastrous.”

  “So, how would Cavendish have felt, presented with this do-gooder who, over the course of a lunch, decided he’d do the right thing and return the deed?”

  “We can assume he panicked, and came to the realisation that he had no other choice but to set about burgling Delaney’s flat.”

  “All right, let’s say he did; why would he murder two people and remove their heads according to an ancient legend? Where does that leave Adrian Jesson, a coffee shop manager with no connection to the other two?”

  “There’s something wrong with the theory,” Bryant admitted. “Who killed Cavendish? Right now we need to find the woman to whom Delaney passed the property document.”

  “What about the rest of the project’s key leaders?” asked May. “Are they suspects? Or are they in need of protection?”

  “The only way we’ll be able to answer that is by finding out exactly what Cavendish did when Delaney told him he couldn’t have that deed.” Bryant shook his head gloomily. “I have to know what happened, but I don’t know how to access the information. I can’t turn back time.”

  ∨ Bryant & May on the Loose ∧

  39

  The Find

  A little more than two weeks earlier, the city had been a slightly different place. The PCU had still been in limbo, and Terry Delaney had still been alive.

  Delaney watched as the canary-yellow bulldozer roared into reverse, trying to pull itself free from the remaining wall. His work boots found traction in the viscous mud and he quickly moved out of range as the brick slab toppled backwards and crashed over, lifting its concrete base out of the earth, spraying rocks and clumps of soil everywhere.

  While the driver of the bulldozer concentrated on shoving the last chunks of rubble back into a pile, Delaney went over to the ragged crater and climbed in. He should have been working in a team today, but the other guy had called in sick, said he had food poisoning. Alcohol poisoning, more like, thought Terry as he checked the base of the hole.

  Nobody was sure whether there were any foundations to the remains of the building they had just pulled down. The plans didn’t show a basement, but they were often wrong. The worst job Terry had ever undertaken was digging out the lower ground floor of a warehouse in Wapping. The buildings on the docks were built without foundations, so their stability was provided by making them pyramid-shaped, with the thickest layers of bricks at the bottom. They had run weeks over schedule on that one.

  He checked the perimeter but found no sign of another floor. He was just about to climb out of the hole when he noticed the faint circle of bricks in the very centre of the pit. He knew at once that it was a well; the whole area was peppered with them. Most old factories had drawn up their water from boreholes sunk into the river Fleet. Terry knew a lot about King’s Cross. His family on his father’s side had come from the area, and he enjoyed studying historical documents, matching what he read with what he had been told by his grandparents. The wells usually ran deep, and upon discovery would have to be reported, studied, then filled in – all in a short space of time, if the work schedule was to be kept.

  He pulled out a couple of the loosened stones and then shovelled off a layer of earth, but found ragged stumps of concrete poured over broken brickwork; someone had filled it in, probably during the war. But something else had been exposed by the bulldozer, a flattened black box that at first glance appeared to be some kind of land mine. But now he saw that it was made of cheap tin, and had been cemented inside the well wall like a letter box, someone’s homemade safe. The lid had been crushed and twisted when the bulldozer had pushed down the wall. He punched it with his gloved hand and it popped off, clattering to the floor. Terry looked up to see if anyone else had noticed.

  Inside was just a brown manila envelope, nothing else, but it had once been considered valuable enough to hide. He stuck it inside his jacket and climbed back out of the crater.

  The day dragged by. He could feel the heat of the envelope in his pocket. At home later that afternoon, disappointment set in as he opened it and tipped out the contents. A couple of insurance policies, three birth certificates, for Thomas Porter, Irene Porter and their son, William, and some house deeds to a building long gone. He read the typed print. Number 11, Camley Lane, freehold and valid in perpetuity. Did it mean that whoever held the deeds owned the land?

  The next morning, he went to Camden Council on his lunch break and did some research. The ownership of the plot in Camley Lane continued according to the original registration, providing that no other sole tenant had occupied the land for eleven years. Which meant, by his reckoning, that the Porter family still owned it.

  Terry Delaney was broke. He was behind on his child support, and hadn’t taken his little girl anywhere nice in months. He did not want to go through life getting into a financial hole every time his van’s insurance came up for renewal. But it would not be right to claim the land for himself. It wouldn’t hurt to check up and see if the Porters were still in the area. Terry knew what was going onto the site of number 11, Camley Lane, and how much it was costing. The deed might be worth a fortune. Better, he thought, that the Porters should have what was rightfully theirs than let some faceless corporation get away with stealing it. Perhaps they would even reward him for bringing the document to light. And if they didn’t want it, or he couldn’t trace them, maybe the ADAPT Group would pay for the find.

  ♦

  The casual phone call left Maddox Cavendish in a cold sweat.

  Ever since he had realised that the documentation for Plot BL827 was missing, he’d been praying that no-one would pick up on his mistake. He’d been working on the project for almost thirteen years, and still couldn’t believe he had managed to overlook the plot of land, despite all the tabulating and cross-referencing he had painstakingly carried out. The system was so complex that Sammi, his assistant, left him with all the data inputting.

  And now this call, from a moronic bloody workman of all people, saying that he was in possession of a valuable property deed, and was having trouble returning it to the rightful owner.

  Cavendish had managed to talk him into a meeting. He would go in with an offer and strike a simple deal in hard cash. Workmen wanted everything off the books, didn’t they? The deed could then be filed and forgotten, and he would trim the cash payment from the accounts system.

  He would take Delaney to lunch – that was it. Buy him a fancy meal and a couple of bottles of wine, loosen his tongue, put him at ease. Cavendish pushed back in his office chair and started to relax. The worst was over. The mistake could be rectified. All he had to do was stay cool and treat Delaney like any other client who needed winning over.

  ♦

  He booked Plateau, on the fourth floor of Canada Square in Canary Wharf – glamorous white furnishings, floor-to-ceiling glass, fabulous food, what could go wrong?

  The lunch was disastrous. Cavendish had appeared arrogant and dismissive, and Delaney wasn’t impressed by the restaurant’s
good taste. Cavendish realised that he had underestimated Delaney, who had clearly done his research. He had left the deed at home, but had written down the wording to prove it was in his possession. When asked about the expiration date, he cheerfully informed Cavendish that there wasn’t one, and that the property rights would pass to whoever held the deed in perpetuity. The only good thing was that Delaney didn’t seem to know about the eleven-year ownership rule.

  So, how much was ADAPT willing to pay for it?

  When Cavendish named the figure of £2,500, Delaney laughed in his face. No deal, he said, swigging back his wine with a vulgarity that made Cavendish wince. Not unless the amount could be quadrupled. But to do that, Cavendish knew he would need to seek permission from the company accountant, and that meant telling Marianne Waters what had happened. It was bad enough that his assistant might already know about the problem; he had foolishly left the planning permission files open on his computer.

  “You’ll have to give me a few days,” Cavendish warned him. “I can’t get that kind of money together overnight.”

  “I don’t care if you have to draw it out of your personal savings,” Delaney countered. “If you don’t come through in the next couple of days I’ll find a way to pass the deed to the owners, and the entire project will come to a halt.”

  “You’ll get nothing that way.”

  “I don’t care,” said Delaney. “Two years ago you called me in to carry out a demolition, and fired me halfway through the job. I couldn’t get compensation because you’d kept the job off the books. I’ll be happy enough just repaying the compliment.”