Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Mad people always are. Have you had a chance to think about the phrase that sounded like a quote?’

  ‘You mean “nature and the bonds of art.” I’ll have to run a check.’

  ‘Whitstable hasn’t returned home yet. The house is under surveillance, but so far there’s been no report of any activity. He has a brother, Peter, registered as living in the same house, although we’ve had no sight of him so far. Obviously we’ll interview William if and when he returns. I’d better let you get on with your unpacking.’

  ‘Looks as if you have a bit of a backlog to deal with yourself.’ Bryant gestured at the unsteady stack of cardboard folders propped up on his partner’s desk. It was characteristic of May to take on more work than he could handle.

  While Bryant had remained at Bow Street to oversee specific ongoing operations, May had been staffing and organizing the new unit. This was a chance for him to set up a division running on entirely new lines. Their high arrest rate had been acknowledged by their superiors in the Met, but their unorthodox techniques were impossible to incorporate into the Greater London network. A revamped independent unit designed to showcase new methodology was the logical answer; much to his surprise, May had been able to persuade the legendarily slothful Home Office and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary that this was so. Now they had to prove their claim.

  Bryant was filling the last of his desk drawers with files when the overhead lights began to flicker.

  ‘Does that sort of thing affect the electric typewriter?’ he asked, staring at the keyboard as if expecting it to bite him.

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ replied May. ‘The London Electricity Board has been warning everyone about outages all month. The National Grid is about to start rationing power. If Edward Heath is forced to put the nation on a three-day working week, we’ll be sitting in the dark writing with pencils. It’s a dilemma; either Heath gives in to union demands, or he blacks out Britain.’

  Sergeant Longbright entered and handed a single sheet of paper to May.

  ‘Well, here’s a turn-up.’ May tipped his chair forward. ‘Guess who we have listed as the largest clients at Jacob and Marks, and personal friends of Max Jacob?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whitstable, Peter, and Whitstable, William, brothers currently residing together in Hampstead. Max Jacob is their family lawyer.’ He thumbed his intercom button and called Longbright back. ‘The lads on their way to question Peter Whitstable, tell them they’re to observe the house and follow the occupant if necessary, nothing more.’ He turned to Bryant. ‘Looks like our two investigations just became one.’

  ‘Both events occurred around the same time on Monday evening, within a quarter of a mile of each other. At least it rules out William Whitstable as a murder suspect, unless he could be in two places at once.’

  ‘You mean it rules out one of them. William can’t go back to his house. If he tries to meet with his brother, we should be there.’

  The call came through at four twenty-five p.m.

  ‘Peter Whitstable returned to the house a few minutes ago, and just left again on foot,’ reported Longbright. ‘Our car’s following. Do you want to speak to them?’

  ‘No,’ said May. ‘Tell them we’re on our way.’

  Bryant grabbed his car keys from the table. ‘I’ll drive,’ he said cheerfully. May well remembered their last nightmarish journey together. His colleague was more interested in the drivers around him than the smooth navigation of his own vehicle. Staying in lane, waiting for lights, signaling moves, and remembering to brake were all actions that fell below Bryant’s attention level.

  ‘Thanks for the offer, Arthur,’ he said, ‘but I think I’d rather drive.’

  ‘Really, it’s no problem. I find it rather therapeutic.’

  ‘Just give me the keys.’

  ‘The traffic system needs a complete rethink,’ mused Bryant as the unit’s only allocated vehicle, a powder-blue Vauxhall with a thoroughly thrashed engine, accelerated through Belsize Park. ‘Look at these road signs. Ministerial graffiti.’

  ‘It’s no use lecturing on the problem, Arthur. That’s why your driving examiner failed you thirty-seven times.’

  ‘What makes you such a great driver?’

  ‘I don’t hit things.’ May circumnavigated the stalled traffic on Haverstock Hill by turning into a back street.

  ‘Did you know that in 1943 the London County Council architects produced a marvelous road map for London that was so visionary it would have ended all modern traffic snarl-ups as we know them?’ said Bryant. This was the sort of bright snippet of information he was apt to produce while taking his driving test.

  ‘What happened to it?’ asked May, turning into a side road.

  ‘One of their tunnels was routed under St James’s Park. It’s royal ground. The councillors were scandalized and threw the plans out. Progress toward a better world halted by the threat of displaced ducks, that’s postwar England for you. There they are, just ahead.’

  The unmarked police vehicle was two cars in front of them, at the traffic-blocked junction of Health Street. A portly middle-aged man was threading his way against the crowds exiting from the corner Tube station.

  ‘They’ll meet in the station foyer, out of the way. Pull over here.’ Bryant had opened the door and was out before the car had stopped. ‘I’ll stay close by. You get ahead of them.’

  He strolled past his subject and stopped by a magazine rack. It was growing dark, and the lights were on in the tiled ticket hall. Bryant glanced up from the magazines. If Whitstable was meeting his brother from a train, William would have to pass through the ticket barrier to his right.

  Just then, Peter Whistable hove into view. He resembled his brother in complexion and corpulence, but was dressed in modern-day clothes. Behind him, Bryant could see May’s car stalled in traffic. There was no sign of the unmarked surveillance vehicle. If it had turned the corner it would be caught in a rush-hour stream from several directions. Bryant hoped his partner would be on hand to help. He was in no shape to single-handedly tackle a pair of angry fifteen-stone men.

  The ticket hall emptied out. Hampstead was the deepest station in London, and reaching the surface involved waiting for a lift. Bryant stepped back behind the racks as the younger brother approached. He asked the stallkeeper for the time, then took a slow walk to the barrier.

  His watch read exactly five o’clock. He could hear one of the elevators rising, its cables tinging in the shaft.

  The lift doors parted to reveal a car crowded with commuters. As they began to filter out he caught a glimpse of William Whitstable’s black silk hat. Whitstable was checking a fob-watch on an elaborate gold chain. Bryant looked around anxiously. There was no sign of his partner. What could have happened?

  Peter had spotted his brother and was moving toward the barrier. Bryant stepped aside to avoid the barrage of passengers, and in doing so revealed himself to both parties. William’s eyes locked with his, and he launched himself back to the elevator. Just as the doors were closing, he managed to slip inside.

  Bryant looked around. Peter had pushed into May’s arms, while the two surveillance men ran past him in the direction of the stairs.

  ‘They’ll catch him, Arthur,’ called May from the entrance, but Bryant was already boarding the next arriving lift.

  Below, home-going commuters filled the northbound platform. The south side was almost empty. Bryant could see his men working their way up through the passengers. A warm soot-haze filled the tunnel as the distant rumbling grew louder.

  Moments later a crimson southbound train burst free from the tunnel and roared in. The few waiting passengers stepped back from the platform edge. There was a sudden commotion on the opposite side as William Whitstable was discovered by one of the policemen. Bryant saw arms flailing as people were pushed aside. Suddenly he knew that Whitstable would escape unless he did something to prevent it. He rushed on to the platform, stepped through the open doors of the s
tationary southbound train, and found his way to a seat, watching from the window as his quarry appeared, running along the empty platform, to jump between the closing doors three carriages further along.

  As the train moved off, Bryant rose and moved forward. He had walked through the second carriage when he spied Whitstable standing in the aisle of the third.

  The train was already starting to decelerate as it approached the downhill gradient to Belsize Park station. If he managed to alight before Bryant could stop him, Whitstable would be faced with the choice of reaching the surface via the lift or the stairs. Bryant knew that if his quarry took the stairs he might lose him. He reached the door to the third carriage just as the train rattled over points. The carriage lights flickered ominously. He tried to twist the door handle, but it would not budge. Whitstable was turning to face the doors, readying himself to jump through.

  The train slowed as Belsize Park’s platform appeared. Bryant threw his weight down on the red metal handle, but was unable to shift it. He stared through the glass at William Whitstable. The pair were immobilized, hunter and hunted, unable to fix a course of action.

  A muffled explosion slammed the tunnel air against his eardrums. He looked up to find that the window in the connecting door had suddenly become coated with dark liquid. For a moment he thought that Whitstable had thrown paint around the walls, in an act reminiscent of his attack in the gallery. As Bryant stumbled towards the next carriage, he could hear shouts of panic as passengers fought their way free of the wrecked compartment.

  A shocked young woman with spatters of blood on her face tipped herself into his arms. Before he could ask what had happened, she turned and pointed back at the smoking detritus which had embedded itself in the walls of the train.

  ‘He exploded,’ she screamed at him and kept on screaming. ‘He was just standing there and he exploded!’

  8 / Horology

  The familiarity didn’t lessen the fear.

  Soles slapped on familiar cobbles, slipping and splashing in shallow puddles. Breath came in ragged gasps as the figure vanished around each corner, tantalizingly out of reach. Once again she was running through high-walled alleyways, the flickering lantern held aloft, illuminating the sweating brickwork.

  Again, she found herself stopping dead in her tracks. He was turning now, laughing, wanting to be recognized. His arms were coated with blood, as if they had been plunged into a terrible wound.

  And Jerry was awake, the pillow saturated in sweat, the house silent around her. In the corner of the room, a nightlight glowed. The alarm clock beside her bed read four thirty-five a.m. Gwen and Jack were asleep at the end of the corridor. She groped for the light switch, knowing that only brightness could dispel the chill touch of the dream.

  She had returned home late to find that Gwen had left a glass of chilled white wine with her plated meal. It was the first time her mother had ever done that. Perhaps it was a gesture to show that she understood her daughter was growing up, even if she refused to allow her to leave home.

  Jerry knew she meant well. It was a fact that made Gwen harder to dislike. Angry with her mother’s underhand tactics, Jerry had deliberately slammed around in an attempt to waken the house, but no one had appeared to reprimand her. Her mother was contemptuous of her need for a nightlight, and refused to accept the reality of her fears. Her solution was to book extra therapy sessions. Jerry’s father would explain his position on the subject by launching into one of his stories that began, ‘During the war . . .’ During the war he could turn a Chieftain tank on a threepenny bit in pitch darkness with blackout curtains tied around it. Or something equally boring and stupid.

  Back then, he would explain, nobody was afraid of the dark. Men were decent God-fearing chums who kept their chins up and their lips stiff whenever the Hun forced their backs against the wall. Not any more, though, judging by the way Jack instantly obeyed his wife’s every command. Gwen ruled the house with an iron fist in a Dior glove.

  Jerry sat up and flattened her unruly hair. She wished Joseph was staying at the house. She had enjoyed their evening together. After the play, he had taken her for something to eat, and they had squashed in beside each other in a dingy Spanish restaurant, watching the red wax drip from the chianti bottle while they made loud small talk above thundering guitar music.

  Joseph had graduated from college with a portfolio of designs that were about to be realized in the grandest way imaginable. His work had been chosen over hundreds of designs from other young hopefuls. Jerry had talked as little about herself as possible, painting a picture of domestic ease with her parents. She explained that she was temping in the receptionist’s job until she could start art college. For a brief moment, as she watched the candlelight leaping in his brown eyes, the thought crossed her mind that he wanted to be with her all night. But the moment passed and they parted awkwardly on the steps of Waterloo Bridge, and she supposed that tomorrow the status quo of guest and employee would be restored. A pity; she liked him because he was everything she wasn’t. There was something appealingly insolent about him, in the way he swung his arms as he walked, in the sunny, careless looks he threw at strangers. She was sick of being surrounded by men her mother approved as acceptable role models. It was time to choose her own friends.

  The thought of Joseph dissolved her nightmares into harmless light. She knew now that she could find untroubled sleep with such a guardian angel to invigilate her dreams.

  ‘You’re in early. Couldn’t sleep? Sign of a guilty conscience.’

  May hung up his overcoat and took a look around the office. His new roommate had been hard at work. Over a dozen crates of books had been unpacked. The shelves now groaned with forbidding procedural volumes, psychotherapy manuals, and medical texts. There was a particularly nasty-looking plant on the window ledge, possibly the remains of a diseased aspidistra. Bryant looked pale and out of sorts. He was trying to lever open the main window by wedging the tip of a screwdriver beneath the lintel.

  ‘I don’t sleep much any more,’ he said, cracking a spray of paint chips from the window frame. ‘I don’t want to waste time by being unconscious. It’s not every day a suspect explodes on you. Have you seen today’s papers? It’s been a godsend to the gutter press. They were all preparing features on Princess Anne’s wedding gifts when this landed in their laps. Now they can start running hate columns on the IRA again. If I catch any of those weasels near my witnesses there’ll be hell to pay. Give me a hand with this window.’

  The press wasn’t the cause of Bryant’s anger, and May knew it. He had seen this mood too many times before. ‘You couldn’t have prevented his death, Arthur. Nobody knew he was carrying an incendiary device.’ Together they shoved at the window until it burst open in a cloud of dust and dried paint.

  ‘Are you sure it was a bomb?’ asked Bryant. ‘Four witnesses saw a sudden ball of flame appear at Whitstable’s midriff. What kind of explosive can kill a man in a halffull railway carriage without injuring anyone else? First his lawyer, and now him. Tell me it’s a coincidence if you dare. What else have you got on Jacob?’

  May pulled out a handful of papers. ‘Some scuff marks by the sinks in the Savoy toilet that the cleaners managed to miss, looks like Kiwi brand boot polish from Jacob’s right shoe. The pattern of marks will most likely confirm that he was attacked there. Some tiny scraps of linen at the site of the scuffle, a standard Indian blend, possibly from a pocket lining. No fibre match with Jacob’s clothing. One thing—the cottonmouth venom doesn’t have to come from a live snake. It maintains its potency, which means that it could simply have been injected from a syringe into his neck.’

  ‘There were two puncture holes, like snake fangs.’

  ‘Perhaps the murderer tried to get the needle in once, and Jacob struggled so much that he had to jab it in again.’

  ‘But he’d been rendered unconscious before the administration of the poison.’

  May raised his hands in exasperation. ‘Then maybe the ki
ller wanted it to look like a snake had attacked his victim.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ asked Bryant doggedly. ‘Snakes aren’t exactly a common sight in England.’

  ‘As for the rest of the findings, take a look at the headlines. The press seems to know as much as we do. The guard on Peter Whitstable will keep the journalists at bay for the time being.’ May frowned in annoyance. ‘Why do you want the window open, anyway? It’s freezing outside.’

  ‘I didn’t want it open,’ replied Bryant testily. ‘I wanted the option of having it open. There are about twenty layers of paint on the frame. It’s like seaside rock.’ He pointed at the crate blocking May’s path to his desk. ‘That’s the last one I have to unpack.’

  May knew that his partner would not settle to a comfortable work pace until he had made the new office his own in some way. He reached down into the opened crate and pulled up a bony brown object inlaid with silver. Turquoise gems returned sight to its eyeless sockets. ‘Where on earth did you get this?’ he asked, turning it over in his hand.

  ‘A friend of mine brought it back from Tibet,’ explained Bryant. ‘It’s an engraved human skull. So long as the Chinese government is systematically destroying Tibetan culture, it stays on the shelf to remind me of the evil and injustice in the world.’

  ‘You only have to take a look at the overnight crime figures to be reminded of that,’ said May, holding the skull at arm’s length. ‘It smells terrible.’

  ‘I don’t think they emptied out the brain cavity properly.’

  May watched his partner as he carefully unwrapped a china figurine, a woman dancing in a delicate green dress, and placed it on his desk. It was strange being part of a team again. Arthur wasn’t looking so steady on his feet these days. He seemed to be ageing at a faster rate than everyone else.