Alma Sorrowbridge’s features were inclined toward a receptive smile on most days, but she was clearly alarmed to find visitors on her doorstep this early. Saturday was her morning for spraying everything in lavender polish and baking, and she didn’t like to have her routine disturbed, but more to the point she did not wish to referee a fight between her oldest friend and his partner. ‘He’s still in his room,’ she informed May, ‘and with all due respect I don’t think he’ll be wanting you here.’
‘I’m not his enemy, Alma. Anyway, who said I came to see him? Are you making cornbread today?’
‘Cassava and ginger bake, and cinnamon buns. And I’m doing a pineapple cherry cake.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and widened the door. ‘I suppose you can come in, but I have to be at the church before nine. You know I do my rounds on Saturday. The first batch is just cooling.’ Alma was capable of single-handedly supplying the British Army with all of its pastry requirements. She cooked with evangelical zeal, arranging vast batches of cakes and filling her van with trays that she would take around to old people who couldn’t get to the shops.
The old industrial unit in which Arthur Bryant had made his home was so bizarrely arranged that the contrast between the inside and the outside required mental adjustment. May and Mangeshkar made their way into a huge room that looked like a cross between a seventy-year-old furniture repository and a Moroccan rubbish dump. Around the walls were tottering piles of encyclopaedias; a moulting championship perch in a glass case; a great many post-war lampshades; sextants, telescopes and outdated opticians’ equipment; several late-Victorian seaside dioramas, including one scene of drunken Jack Tars swinging from lampposts and another featuring a family of dancing weasels; some large drippy brown canvasses that provided more clues to the artist’s disturbed frame of mind than any pleasure to the viewer; and a miniature model of the port at Gdansk made entirely out of painted bread.
‘I try to get the place clean but he keeps bringing back more of these things,’ Alma complained. ‘What am I supposed to do? I have no idea where he finds them all. It’s not like they’re even antiques.’
May eyed an ancient bear’s head that someone had seen fit to make into a lamp. One of its eyes had fallen out and was lying on the table. ‘Obviously,’ he said.
‘At least he’s stopped doing that now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s stopped going out at all.’
‘Oh, that’s a bad sign.’
‘You should see his bedroom; it’s a thousand times worse than this. If I wasn’t a good Christian, I would walk right out of here and never come back.’
‘So that’s what you think of me, you gargantuan quisling.’1 Arthur Bryant stood propped in the doorway in a Victorian nightcap and a purple quilted dressing gown. His snowy hair stuck up around the cap like a row of alfalfa sprouts. He appeared smaller and more wrinkled than ever. ‘I gave strict instructions that I was to receive no visitors until further notice.’
‘We’re not visitors, we’re your friends,’ said May indignantly.
‘We’ve all been worried about you, sir,’ interposed Meera, who was determined to sound less blunt than usual and show the caring side she was fairly sure she must possess. ‘You can’t just hide away like this.’
‘I’m hardly hiding away, am I?’ As Bryant made his way over to the armchair by the fireplace, the others noted how slowly he was moving but kept the thought to themselves. ‘I’m at home, that’s all. I feel tired and ancient. My back is playing up. I need new knees. All I ask is that I am left alone. And now this—this Antiguan termagant has denied me even that basic right.’
‘Hmm. You’ve become a stranger to the badger’s brush.’ May indicated the bristles on his partner’s cheeks.
‘I have no good reason to shave. Men only shave for other people. If left to themselves they’d all grow beards like Robinson Crusoe. And they probably wouldn’t wash, either. I choose not to go out. I’ve seen all the world I need to see.’ His voice grew softer. ‘I don’t want you to see me like this.’
‘So you’ve elected to become the God of this reduced realm,’ said May, displeased.
‘I have all the home comforts I need, my books, my notes, Alma to cook for me.’
‘I’ve seen this sort of behaviour before. When great teachers retire they lose the will to live. Soon you’ll start regressing into another childhood. You’ll be asking Alma to leave your bedroom door ajar at night, and telling her you don’t eat sprouts.’
‘I don’t eat her sprouts now.’
‘So this is what it’s come to, has it? Our friendship means nothing to you. I always knew you were selfish, Arthur, but your behaviour is beyond even my expectations. I should have known. Right from the moment I first met you, when you had me deciphering naval flag codes before I’d even got my coat off, all you ever cared about was yourself.’
‘That’s not entirely true,’ retorted Bryant indignantly. ‘There have been times—not lately, perhaps—when my generosity has known no bounds. I gave you all the credit when my efforts brought about the capture of the Little Italy Whelk Smugglers.’
‘An action which resulted in me having to hide several dozen drums of black-market treacle from the police, I remember. You always give me the credit when you’re about to get caught for something.’
‘Excuse me?’ intervened Meera, whose brief attempt at patience had already evaporated. ‘This is, like, an ancient history lesson or something. Can we get back to the real world? Tell him, Mr May.’
‘There’s been a murder in King’s Cross,’ said May, duly prompted.
‘Hardly headline news.’ Bryant slouched further into his dressing gown. ‘I’d be more surprised if there hadn’t been.’
‘It’s a professional job.’
‘One for the Met, then. They have all the right contacts in that area. There are eleven recognised gangs in the borough of Camden alone.’
‘Except that in this case no-one has a clue who’s behind it. The victim’s remains haven’t been identified because his head was cut off and we don’t yet know if his fingerprints are on file. He’s been dead for a few days. I thought it might pique your interest.’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ snapped Bryant. ‘You think every time someone dies my heart quickens? It doesn’t.’
‘You’re being so unfair, Mr Bryant,’ said Meera. ‘Why don’t you just get dressed and come and visit the crime scene?’
‘You come any nearer, young lady, and you shall get the benefit of my toasting fork where you least expect it.’ He turned back to his old partner. ‘I was looking through my casebook over the weekend, and realised that once you get beneath the unique circumstances of a crime, the perpetrators are depressingly similar. They’re selfish, blind, unpleasant people, and worst of all, they no longer have the ability to surprise me in any way.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said May, ‘but there’s a very good reason why you should be interested. It’s a case that could bring down the government.’
‘This kind of crime creates a potentially disastrous situation in the area,’ said Leslie Faraday. ‘King’s Cross—of all places—the PM’s flagship development—you understand the implications.’
Faraday had taken to coming in on Saturday mornings because his supervisor did, and he was anxious to have his diligence noted. He ventured into Kasavian’s office with the trepidation of Van Helsing entering the lair of the undead. The room of casket-coloured oak had absorbed a hundred years of tobacco smoke before the banning of cigarettes, and somehow the very air seemed to be stained sepia. There were patches on the carpet where no light had ever fallen.
Oskar Kasavian winced at the watery morning sunlight and turned away from the window, slipping back into shadow. With his sharply hooked nose and pale, elongated features he reminded Faraday of Nosferatu in the 1922 German film version he had seen on a drizzly evening in November 1979 at the East Finchley Rex, an event he had never forgotten, because he never forgot any
thing. He had been on a date with a girl called Deirdre Fairburn who went out for a choc-ice halfway through the film and never came back. Faraday had remained in his seat to watch the end of the film because it was not the first time a girl had given him the slip.
‘Of course I understand. Do you know how much money the government is spending on security resources to convince investors that the area has been cleaned up? The return of organised crime is unthinkable. Have you spoken to Islington? I heard they had a suspect in custody.’
‘They seem to think the crime didn’t occur on their turf, but yes, they were holding a man called Rafi Abd al-Qaadir. They had no evidence and were forced to let him go, thanks to our Mr Bimsley, who brought in a lawyer to argue on his behalf. Now they’re trying to track down the Nigerian businessman who sold the lease of the shop where the body was found. Trouble is, the place was open and empty for a month. They’re checking their usual contacts, but I can tell they don’t know what to make of the death. I’m waiting for a pathology report.’
‘Have you at least managed to keep this away from the press?’
‘For the moment, but there’s no way of stopping information from getting out so long as it’s a publicly registered CID case. I’ve already warned APPRO not to issue any kind of statement.’
‘St Pancras International is right next door, and it’s the terminal for the next Olympics. They’re about to open a luxury hotel that will house senior members of the Olympic Committee not five hundred yards from where this corpse was found. If anyone at the PM’s office gets wind of this we will be crucified.’ Kasavian looked like a man who was no stranger to crucifixion, or subsequent resurrection.
‘There may be one solution,’ Faraday ventured, ‘but I don’t think you’re going to like it.’
Back in Chalk Farm it was like old times, insofar as the detectives were arguing. ‘All you have to do is talk to Leslie Faraday,’ said John May. ‘He owes you several favours. If he can be persuaded—’
‘You’re forgetting one thing.’ Bryant leaned forward, his blue eyes widening. ‘I am not interested.’
‘Come on, we’re wasting our time here,’ said Meera, grabbing May’s arm. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Mr Bryant, after all your lectures about looking for the unexpected in everyday crimes.’
‘That’s because I finally realise there’s nothing unexpected anymore,’ Bryant replied, slumping back.
‘That’s not true and you know it. Unexpected things happen all the time. I was coming out of a nightclub on Friday night when some bloke dressed as a bloody stag attacked me in the street, slashed my arm and ran off.’
Bryant was brought up short. ‘A stag?’ he repeated.
‘Yeah, you know, big animal, they have them in the countryside or in zoos or something. Furry coat, antlers, the lot.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Right in the middle of King’s Cross, the bit behind the cross-channel railway line that’s a dug-up field.’
‘You’re talking about the triangular piece of land between the Battlebridge Basin and the Eurostar terminal?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Meera looked puzzled.
‘You have to show me exactly where this happened, right now. Find my shoes, someone.’ Moments later Bryant had shucked his dressing gown and was scrabbling to get into a grubby old herringbone overcoat, still clutching his walking stick, which became accidentally threaded through one of the sleeves, so that as he floundered about he resembled a particularly disreputable scarecrow coming to life.
‘For God’s sake don’t just stand there, woman, help me get this blasted thing on properly!’ he shouted. Then he fell over.
‘Oh, Mr Bryant, you’re back!’ cried Alma Sorrowbridge, pulling him out of the fireplace and patting him down before anything could burst into flames.
1 Person who betrays his or her own country by aiding the invading enemy, after Vidkun Quisling, the pro-Nazi Norwegian leader.
11
TREMORS
You know, I always felt that the Peculiar Crimes Unit might finally find its spiritual home in a railway terminus district like King’s Cross,’ said Bryant as the trio marched along York Way in blustery squalls of rain. He spoke above the ever-present bourdon of taxi engines, a low thrum that underscored life in the area from every dawn to every midnight.
The road behind the railway yards turned into the kind of strange no-man’s-land Bryant had often seen in London after the war. These urban limbos had been created by bomb damage and government indecision. With a nation to rebuild, cash for housing was in short supply. After the rubble from fractured terraces had been cleared away, the scarred earth remained as a slow-healing memory of the wounds inflicted by war. Children turned the chaotic rockeries of brick and plaster into fantasy lands, exploring for buried treasure. Rocket and dandelions sprang up between chunks of brickwork and rusting iron. If they were lucky, children might gleefully discover a live, undetonated bomb. Occasionally someone was blown sky-high. Those were the days, thought Bryant.
‘I don’t understand,’ May admitted. ‘You’re not interested in a mutilated corpse found in a derelict chip shop, but a drunk with antlers in fancy dress annoying a couple of girls immediately gets your attention.’
‘That’s the difference between us,’ said Bryant, tapping the side of his head. ‘I always see the bigger picture.’
‘What bigger picture? What do you see that I’ve missed?’
‘Let’s find out if he’s left any tracks first. Meera, you lead the way. My energy’s coming back, but my legs don’t seem to have got the message yet.’ They picked a path through the geometry of scaffolding that had sprouted from the walls of King’s Cross station. The signs of construction and renewal were everywhere. Roads were closed; pipes were being lowered into trenches; a hundred canary-jacketed labourers crossed the roofs of half-renovated warehouses, bellowing to each other.
‘I remember when there were only fields and factories behind the station.’ Bryant waved his walking stick at a vast wall of blue-tinted wavy glass, the first of the new buildings to be completed. ‘Wild horses, bargees and gypsies. The ladies of the night brought so many punters to the grassy area beside the canal basin that it was nicknamed Pleasure Field.’
‘Must have been a long time ago,’ grunted Meera.
‘Not at all. Ten, maybe twelve years at the most. It’s changing fast now. Nearly all of the traditional gasholders have been dismantled, the old tenement buildings torn down. It was never pretty around here in my lifetime, but it had a rugged, dirty charm. My old man had many professions; one of them was as a street photographer. He showed me the pictures he took. There was a garden of rose bushes in front of the station. A licorice factory. An old theatre called the Regent, pulled down to make way for the town hall. And there was a wooden roller-coaster.’
‘It’s got a Starbucks now.’
Bryant gave a shrug. ‘It won’t be there for long. Nothing ever stays around here. To my mind the symbol of King’s Cross is a sturdy drain-fed weed sticking out of a sheer brick archway, something that can survive in the most inhospitable circumstances. An honest area, in the sense of being without hypocrisy, and a true test for the urbanite. The buildings will rise and crumble to dust, but the people won’t change.’
From the corner of Wharf Road they could see a group of low brown buildings, Victorian warehouses that had somehow been spared the wrath of bombs and town planners. The structures huddled alone in a field of tractor-churned mud, bordered by railway embankments, the canal and the bare brick wall of the road that passed between them and the Eurostar railway terminal. The area roughly formed a great triangle, upon which was soon to rise a new town of glass and steel. The project was vast in scope and barely possible to imagine completed, even with the help of the computer-rendered images in its publicity brochures. Colleges and offices, shopping malls, public housing and luxury apartment blocks were to appear on a blighted site that had been alternately ignored and fought over for deca
des.
‘I wonder what they’ll find under all this soil.’ Bryant stopped to get his breath and tapped the muddy road with his walking stick. ‘In the Middle Ages this was part of the Great Forest of Middlesex, although it was inhabited in prehistoric times, of course. The first Paleolithic axe ever recognised in England was discovered near King’s Cross Road—in 1680, if memory serves.’
‘You were there, I suppose,’ said Meera. ‘The club’s this way.’
The Keys club was living on borrowed time. Having survived the death of the super-clubs and the return of acoustic music, it had remained true to its hard-house and electro roots, only to face annihilation at the hands of property developers. It had received a stay of execution when Camden Council rejected a plan which would have required the demolition of the listed building it inhabited, but construction had started all around. Each day, the earthmovers came a little closer. The new town would spread out from its nexus at the shoreline of the Regent Canal. The first building, a shopping mall, was nearing completion. The site even had its own concrete plant; such was the quantity required to pave over so many acres of earth and landfill.
‘Meera, you were walking between the club and the road when you saw him, is that right?’ May was forced to shout above the roar of the industrial equipment as they approached.
‘See the tall spotlight, over there? I borrowed Dan’s fingerprint kit and came up here first thing this morning, before it started raining. I tried to lift prints from the pole but they were too badly damaged. He’d swung around and smudged them.’ She pointed to one of a dozen tall steel lampposts that kept the landscape illuminated at night.
The slippery mud made walking treacherous. May and Mangeshkar were forced to take Bryant’s arms to keep him upright.
‘I shouldn’t have worn Prada shoes,’ said May, watching as liquefied clay closed over his toe caps.
On the Loose Page 7