Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks b&m-3

by Christopher Fowler

  She led the way back between glass cases of Victorian fans, canes, calling cards, and snuff boxes, as high above them the late-afternoon rain pattered steadily on angled skylights.

  “Very few people bother with this part of the museum.” She turned into a corridor that had been partitioned off from the main floor. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  Here the overhead lamps were spaced further apart, and the occultist’s multicoloured sweater sparkled like the scales of a tropical fish as she moved between pools of light. “We’ve been following the case in the papers, of course, and you know how one makes these connections. It was Nigel who remembered reading a Victorian text about the powers of light and darkness.”

  At the end of the corridor, a red velvet rope separated them from a dark flight of stairs. Maggie slipped the hook and beckoned Bryant through. She flicked a switch at her side and a dim radiance shone from below. “The documents kept here are extremely sensitive to light,” she explained as they descended. “As a special-interest group we’re allowed access to them, although I’m not allowed to bring vegetable soup with me, after an unfortunate incident with a Necromicon. Nigel was checking some numerological data when he got to thinking about the sevens. Do you know anything about the power of numbers?” They reached the foot of the stairs and she looked across at him, her eyes lost in shadow, less comical now.

  She paused to sign the visitor’s book which lay open on an unmanned reception desk, then walked between dimly illuminated cases, checking their contents. “Seven is a very special number. It traverses history like a latitude, always appearing at times of great upheaval. It’s a schizophrenic number, Janus-faced, often representing both good and evil, a grouping together and a tearing apart. There are many bloodstained sevens in history: Robert E. Lee’s Seven Days’ Battles in the American Civil War, for example; the destruction of the Red River settlement in the Seven Oaks Massacre; and the battle of Seven Pines. There’s the Seven Weeks War – that’s the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 – and of course the Seven Years War which involved just about the whole of Europe in 1756.

  There are everyday sevens, like the seven-note scale, the Seven Hills of Rome, the days of the week, the seven-year itch. Then there are lots of legendary sevens: the seven Greek champions who were killed fighting against Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, the Seven Holy Founders, the Seven Gods of Luck, the Seven Wonders of the World, the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, the Seven Wise Masters of ancient Arab myth, and the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, soldiers who were resurrected from the dead – ”

  “I think I get the idea,” interrupted Bryant. “What have all these sevens to do with the Whitstable murders?”

  “Well, they don’t directly – but this does.” Maggie stopped before the end case and wiped dust from the glass with her sleeve. Bryant peered down. Pinned open in the case were several pages from a Victorian guild booklet that had been damaged by fire. The sheets were edged with gold leaf, a tribute to the Goldsmiths to whom they owed their origin. The watercolour illustrations had faded badly. Still, the central photograph was clear enough.

  It showed a sour-faced man with bright, menacing eyes, muttonchop whiskers, and bushy eyebrows, standing in the centre of an ornately carpeted room. On either side of this commanding presence sat three men. Each man had a handwritten phrase marked beneath his person.

  A chill draught blew at Bryant’s ankles as he read, from left to right: Arathron, Bethor, Phaleg, Hagith, Ophiel, Phul. The nomenclature beneath the sinister central figure was Och.

  “The names pertain to the Seven Stewards of Heaven,” said Maggie, tapping the glass with a painted nail. “God governs the world through them. They’re also known as the Olympian Spirits, and can be invoked by black magicians. Each has a certain day associated with him, as well as a particular planet in our solar system. This central figure here, the tall man, is the Master of the Sun, Bringer of Light, and he governs Sundays. I wondered if you’d come across him yet in your investigation.”

  “Oh, Maggie,” said Bryant, wiping his glasses. “I most certainly have. I saw his picture only yesterday. What is he doing here?”

  “I’d say these finely dressed Victorians belonged to some kind of society, wouldn’t you?” The occultist smiled darkly. “Look at the arcane instruments on the table beside them. There’s no date to the picture but I’d say it was around 1870, perhaps a little later. There’s no way of identifying who six of the fine gentlemen are, but we know the identity of the seventh.” Her finger moved over the central figure of Och, then to the panel of text below. The name in the box was that of James Makepeace Whitstable.

  “The Victorians were up to their ears in strange sects and movements,” she explained, “but the Stewards of Heaven had an ancient and extremely powerful belief system connected to the secret powers of darkness and light. Night and day, good and evil, held in perfect balance.”

  “Presumably this particular sect is no longer in existence?”

  “It hasn’t been for centuries, but it looks as if your victims’ ancestor was trying to revive it. As the Seven Stewards are hardly a familiar topic nowadays, I assume he failed to draw a large number of converts.”

  “It may not have completely vanished,” murmured Bryant. “It could simply have remained dormant until now.”

  “That’s what I wondered,” said Maggie, turning from the display case. “As alternative belief systems go, this one operates on a pretty grand scale. Such societies have a habit of reviving themselves when conditions are right. Their growth and decline occurs in a regular cycle.”

  “How long would each cycle last?”

  “It could be any timespan of up to one hundred years. In fact, century cycles are rather common.”

  The image of the Waterhouse painting had sprung into Bryant’s mind. The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius depicted seven men.

  He took another look inside the glass case, mentally superimposing the painting over the watercolour illustration. Seven acolytes in both. Cold draughts now filled the room, and he gave an involuntary shudder. “One hundred years,” he said. “That brings James Whitstable right back into the 1970s.”

  “This is a very powerful occult force,” said Maggie. “It looks as if your troubles are only just beginning.”

  ♦

  PC Burridge’s lanky body was numb with cold, and the freezing rain was starting to leak through his sou’wester. His late-night beat was dark, dismal, and depressing. It had never felt less like Christmas.

  Be observant, they had always told him. Be ever vigilant. But there was nothing to observe beneath the arches of the Embankment except the occasional forlorn tramp, and vigilance was a matter of course with so many anti-war demonstrators around. No wonder they call us Plods, he mused, plodding heavily through the tunnel to emerge in a deserted alley at the side of the Mermaid Theatre. His beat was about to get worse: the prime minister was losing his battle with the electrical unions, and the constable would shortly be walking the streets in darkness.

  A thin, echoing wail forced him to break from his thoughts. The cry came from the tunnel at his back. Perhaps there was something trapped in one of the recesses of the dripping wall.

  The constable stopped and listened. Suddenly the crying began anew, rising in pitch. He screwed up his eyes and stared into the gloom. He could just make out a bedraggled cat, sitting beside a bundle of coloured rags.

  As he walked further into the tunnel the cat ran off, and he saw that the bundle was a small body.

  PC Burridge placed his arms around the child to pick her up, wondering if his pleas for recognition had been perversely heard and from now on he would be known as the policeman who discovered Daisy Whitstable. He pressed his ear against the child’s thin chest and heard a faint heartbeat within. Wrapping her inside his jacket, he radioed for an ambulance, praying it would arrive in time.

  ∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

  26

  Madwom
an

  All hell had broken loose at Mornington Crescent.

  The press were doorstepping the building, and the phones were ringing off their hooks. All the papers wanted the Daisy Whitstable story. The child’s parents had been informed, and Isobel Whitstable was being treated for shock. It was eleven a.m., and Bryant had yet to make an appearance, leaving his partner to face the wrath of their acting superior.

  “Where the hell was she all this time? Her clothes were bone-dry. Where had this nutcase kept her? She’s not been interfered with and seems to be in one piece, but she’s suffering from exposure. We won’t be allowed to talk to her for at least twenty-four hours.” Raymond Land flopped heavily on to the sofa and lit yet another Player’s Special. In the last few minutes the acting chief’s face had flowered with red blotches. “Why was she taken at all? Child kidnap motives are sexual, or for ransom. It makes no bloody sense. Do you realize how useless this makes us all look?”

  “We can’t assume anything until forensic tests have been carried out on her clothes,” said May.

  “Do we have any further information on the icecream van?”

  “It seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. We’re searching all the contract garages and storage arches in London.”

  “You realize this could be an entirely separate attack,” said Land. “Have you considered that, or are you just shoehorning it into your current investigation?”

  “It seems unlikely that the Whitstables are being targeted from more than one direction. Daisy’s kidnap must be connected. Her dry clothes suggest she was dropped off under the arch, so that she could be found alive.” May shifted to avoid the fountains of smoke funneling from Land’s flaring nostrils.

  “I’ve had nothing from you or your partner in two days,” Land reminded him. “Instead of constructive reports all I get is a list of complaints, first from the Whitstables about your unhelpful attitude and the non-advancement of the case, and then from that whingeing twerp of an arts minister who just wants us to shove the whole thing in a file marked Solved. Now we’ve really stepped up into the big time.” He pulled so hard on his cigarette that it crackled. “They’re going to throw us to the lions, do you realize that? It’s more or less the end of our careers. The Home Office have called twice in the last hour. I’m having to hide from them. Don’t you have anything at all for me?”

  May had seen the look on Raymond’s face before, a look of panic under pressure that could only bring more trouble. He was begging for something to release to the media, but how could they help him? They had nothing so far that would stand up as substantive evidence.

  Earlier that morning, Bryant had hesitantly described his discovery at the V&A. May could imagine Land’s reaction when he informed him that their only suspect was a man who had been dead for nearly a hundred years.

  “Bloody cold out,” said Bryant, suddenly breezing in behind his superior. “Oh, hello, Raymond, what are the barbarians doing at the gates of Rome?”

  “What?” asked Land, momentarily non-plussed.

  “Journalists.” Bryant waved his hand at the window. “They’re everywhere, bullying receipts out of taxi drivers, crawling all over the place shouting their heads off.”

  “Daisy’s been found, Arthur,” said May quietly. “She’s alive, barely. They took her into St Thomas’s a few hours ago.” He recounted the preliminary findings of the admitting doctor.

  “I need to know if you have anything for me,” said Land. “Whatever I tell the press can’t be worse than what they’re capable of making up. I can’t afford to alienate them any further.”

  “It’s a little late to worry about that now,” said Bryant. “They’ve been accusing us of incompetence for the past fortnight. I suppose John must have mentioned our new lead.”

  “I’ve been explaining that we’re following a new line of inquiry,” said May, signaling silence to his partner, “but that we’re not quite ready to present it.”

  “What line of inquiry is this?” asked Land, confused. “If you’re keeping anything back from me – ” Just then the office door reopened and the two workmen entered armed with cans and buckets. Land turned to glare at them. “Christ on a bike, do they have to be here all the time?”

  “We do if you want these offices finished,” said the older of the two workmen. “We pack up on Friday for ten days. It’s Christmas, mate. Do you know how many layers of paint we’ve still got to strip off before we can do your sills?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Land, grinding out his cigarette and rising.

  “At least we’re making good use of our time,” said the younger workman. “Leave it to the working classes to handle all the shitty jobs. At least we’ve got a sense of duty.”

  “Yeah,” agreed his mate. “Try catching a few criminals instead of telling taxpayers where they can’t park.”

  “I can’t delay speaking to the Home Office any longer. I’m going to tell them that this whole thing will be wrapped up by the end of the week,” said Land, heedless of the breach in security represented by the listening workmen. “And I’ll say the same thing at the press briefing if I have to.”

  “Why not give them a hypothetical sequence of events?” asked May. “Release plenty of facts and figures, all the exact times and dates we’ve held back, and let them draw their own conclusions. There can’t be any harm in that. They might even be able to help us.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” agreed Land, a little mollified. “You’d better talk to them. If you can’t arrest anyone, at least you can come up with a plausible explanation as to how this whole damned mess occurred. We must explain that whatever triggered these attacks is finally over and done with.”

  “He’s going to try and shove it all under the carpet,” said Bryant after the door had shut. “Wait and see.” He unwound his ratty scarf and dropped it on to a chair. “Four deaths and an abduction, and he doesn’t care about getting to the truth so long as he keeps himself off the hook.”

  “He’s panicking because someone’s pressuring him to put a lid on the whole business,” said May. Understandably, the kidnapping of a child was a highly emotive issue, and the media would wring every last drop of coverage from it. Until now, the biggest story of December had been how Bourne and Hollingsworth were stocking up on candles and oil lamps, ready for the strike blackouts.

  “It’s a government cover-up, innit?” said one of the workmen. “Stands to reason. Just like Jack the Ripper.”

  “Thank you, Fabian of the Yard,” said Bryant, surveying the mess beyond his desk. Half of the office was now a sickly hospital green, which the workmen were scraping off to reveal orange lincrusta wallpaper from the 1930s.

  “This room is starting to make me feel sick,” said May, tossing his partner’s hat over to him. “Let’s go.”

  “But I’ve only just come in,” complained Bryant. “It’s thick fog outside.”

  “It’s not much better in here,” replied May, noting the filled ashtray that Land had left behind. “Come on. We’ll slip out the back and I’ll buy you a pint over the road.”

  “It’s much too early for me.”

  “We have to talk where no one can find us.”

  The saloon bar of the Nun and Broken Compass was mercifully deserted. Only the disgusting dog that lay half in the fireplace ceased clawing clumps of hair from its ears to briefly register their arrival.

  “Two days to make a breakthrough,” said May, returning from the bar with pints of Bishop’s Finger. “The chances of wrapping the whole thing up in forty-eight hours are pretty slim. The city’s already half empty. Have you found out anything more on James Whitstable’s group?” Bryant’s first appointment of the morning had been to conduct further research on the Alliance of Eternal Light.

  “Only that his family denies any knowledge of his activities,” said Bryant, relishing his first sip of beer. “There was a biography of him written in the twenties but the British Library has no record of it, so Janice is s
earching through private collections.”

  “Everything about this case is upside-down,” complained May. “We eliminate all the suspects, only to resort to digging through the past. None of the traditional investigative methods work, and any evidence that turns up seems to appear entirely by accident.”

  Just then the door opened and Sergeant Longbright stuck her head into the saloon bar. “Mr Bryant, there you are. Your friend Mr Summerfield called. He wants to see you urgently. He says he’s made some kind of discovery.”

  ♦

  The Triumph 250 sat beneath a dripping plane tree, its engine quickly cooling. Joseph slid from the pillion and massaged his rump as Jerry kicked up the stand. She had managed to borrow the motorcycle from a school friend.

  “You haven’t given me an answer,” Joseph said, shoving his sweater further into his jeans. “What are you going to say when she opens the door?”

  “I’ll figure something out. I could introduce you as the photographer who works with me. She’s the only lead I have and she certainly knows more than she’s told me so far.”

  Jerry checked her watch. Nearly nine-thirty p.m. The street behind them was shrouded and silent. The lights were on in Peggy Harmsworth’s house, but they had no proof that she was even home.

  “I don’t see how you expect to extract any more information from her without arousing suspicion. Nobody makes business calls at this hour.” Joseph pulled the sleeves of his leather jacket over his hands. The freezing fog had turned the overhead branches crystalline. This was no night for them to be standing around outside. Seen through the saffron aureoles of the surrounding streetlamps, the Holly Lodge Estate took on the unreality of a film set.