England's Finest

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  The cold night air didn’t seem to bother him. I wasn’t sure what else was left to say. I knew things were as bad between us as they could ever get.

  He asked me what I thought of the exhibition, almost as if I was a perfect stranger.

  I told him I liked some of the paintings but to be honest a lot of it was lost on me. One room was full of ductwork and cables. I thought the workmen were still finishing the ceiling but it turned out to be an installation about Syria.

  I remember looking out into the sky and thinking the clouds had jaundice—light pollution, I suppose. I was glad there were no real stars to be seen above the city, only the red pinprick lights of cranes. Stars make me feel lonely.

  ‘I’m not sure we’re supposed to be out here,’ he said, leaning back against the railing. ‘It looks like they’re still working on the exterior. They were rushing to get it finished for the opening. I thought they were going to glass the whole thing in. Someone could fall over…’

  We stood there a little longer, just looking at each other. He was always so reasonable, so pleasant, so English, and at first it had worked. He had always made me want to be kind in return.

  Behind us someone came up to the glass doors and looked at the bad weather, but was driven outside by the need for a cigarette. Then I heard her footsteps, high heels on concrete. It was the woman I’d been speaking to downstairs.

  I looked back at Mark. I was sick of arguing with him. I was defensive and angry. I don’t remember much about what happened next. I saw my hand hitting his shoulder, and Mark’s expensive brown shoes slipping on the wet concrete. I raised my arms and put my hands on both his shoulders, and pushed as hard as I possibly could. I heard him cry out, and then he was gone. The beautiful grey suit blurred with the falling rain and simply vanished over the edge. The paperback fell onto the wet floor.

  I stared at the railing that was too low, the safety barrier he had fretted about, and realized I was left with the other woman, who stood there struck dumb by what I had done. Then she turned and ran away. She wanted nothing to do with it. He disappeared in seconds. The observation deck was filled with swirling rain. I couldn’t even see Mark’s footprints anymore.

  I remember the accusing looks of people lining the staircase as I made my way down, soaked and shaking violently.

  As I passed the room with the Dalí painting I briefly caught sight of it again, and this time I couldn’t see the woman in it. I later found out that it isn’t about a woman at all, but two men, Vermeer and Velázquez. The woman in the picture is just a trick, a phantom. The woman was never real.

  Only I know what happened between us, and the pain will never go away. I think there are always some things that should be held back. There’s only one person who should know everything about you, and that’s the person you love the most. Not a police officer who looks at you with suspicion and spends all his time trying to catch you out.

  If I told you how much I suffered because of him, would that make it any better? His daughter and I, we only ever wanted what was best for him. Mark was so self-destructive, I’d always thought that there was nothing we could do. But last night I realized that there was something I could do. I could kill him.

  * * *

  —

  ‘Am I missing something?’ Longbright asked. ‘I didn’t hear any mention of a motive.’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ May replied, turning the page around and studying it again. ‘When I asked her why she did it, she said she didn’t know. All she’ll admit is that she needed to do it for his sake, and that she’s glad she did.’

  ‘That makes no sense. I’ve got some background history on them.’

  Bryant looked around Longbright’s desk. ‘Where’s the file?’

  ‘I emailed it to you.’

  ‘But you know I like you to print it out.’

  Longbright adopted her don’t-mess-with-me look. ‘You know we’re paper-free, Mr Bryant.’

  ‘You may be, I’m not. What happens to my file if the power fails, like it did last week?’

  ‘It only failed because you blew up the junction box,’ May pointed out.

  ‘John, can you print out the document for him?’ asked Longbright. ‘There’s something odd about the whole setup.’

  Excerpt from the transcribed statement of Lisa Harper, taken at Snow Hill Police Station, 5 Snow Hill EC1, on 18 November at 8:37 P.M.

  I met the woman I now know to be Rebecca Hope at an exhibition at the Tate Modern called Seeing Is Not Believing, which I suppose is appropriate, considering what I saw earlier tonight. It was a private view and the press were there and some of the artists were in attendance. She and I got talking; I can’t remember how. She was wearing a beautiful black cocktail dress—vintage I think, because it was high-necked with a backless triangle but had sleeves, very 1930s. I’m in fashion, I notice these things. I pointed out a nice-looking man carrying a book, something by Charles Dickens, I think, and she said it was her partner. Then she went off. I remember thinking she seemed very agitated. I thought it was odd, him standing over there and her over by me, almost as if they didn’t know each other. It wasn’t as if either of them were off talking to other people. They were just standing…apart. I thought, Either she’s lying or they’ve had a fight.

  I wanted a cigarette, but perhaps it wasn’t entirely an accident that I went up to the viewing deck. I saw him heading up the stairs, with her some way behind him. I don’t know if you’ve been to the new Tate extension, but it’s terribly awkward, spatially. There’s a bank of lifts, hopelessly inadequate, and this big staircase, terrible feng shui, and there’s been a huge row over the viewing deck because it overlooks some very expensive apartments with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and the residents are complaining that they’re being gawped at all day.

  Anyway, I suppose I followed them. I must admit I was a little bit curious, and I was by myself with nothing better to do…When I got upstairs I saw that it was still raining. I pushed open the glass door and there were the two of them, out by the wall arguing. I say arguing, I couldn’t hear them because there was a traffic helicopter somewhere overhead, but it looked very aggressive; I could tell by the way they were standing. And she had spoken so glowingly about him to me just minutes before, I thought it was odd that her mood could change so quickly.

  The light’s not good up there. I suppose they keep them low because of the neighbouring buildings, and so you can see across London, but there wasn’t much to see tonight. He was facing me with his back against the railing, which is surprisingly low considering how high up you are, and she was facing him so she had her back to me, and suddenly he went over. I couldn’t see how her hands were placed but he was like—you know when you sit on the edge of a swimming pool and just sort of drop backwards into the water? That’s how he went, like that. And I thought, My God, she’s crazy, and headed for the doorway back to the stairs, then I heard her scream very angrily, and as I ran down the stairs I could hear her behind me, and for a moment I thought she was coming after me as well.

  She took the stairs all the way down, but when she got to the bottom she just stopped and waited, and then the police arrived, and she walked calmly up to them—I remember thinking how tranquil she suddenly seemed, as if she was fully accepting of what would happen—and she spoke very softly to them. And that was that.

  Someone had already covered the body. It had just missed a little boy and his mother. The whole thing—it was just so strange. I suppose the thing that bothered me most was that I couldn’t associate this woman I’d been chatting to earlier with someone who would shove her lover over the side of a building.

  * * *

  —

  Longbright sent May the remaining documents she had collated, and laboriously printed them out for his partner. Half an hour later, May found Bryant standing on his smoking terrace, a tiny wo
oden balcony that faced into the central courtyard of the PCU building. Far from keeping his pipe smoke away from everyone it had the effect of distributing the aroma to all the offices.

  ‘Dan’s got some footage for us to watch,’ said May. ‘Is this thing safe? I take it you read Janice’s notes.’

  ‘Not all of them, but I took away the salient points,’ Bryant replied, puffing thoughtfully.

  ‘So you know that Scott’s first wife died twelve years ago and that he has a daughter by her.’

  ‘I think I missed that part. What else did I miss?’

  ‘He and Miss Hope got together not long after the first wife died. The phrase “whirlwind romance” came up a few times in Janice’s calls to the families. His daughter, Emily, is eighteen and devastated, but for a reason we’ll come to. Rebecca Hope ran a number of different businesses, although they fared badly during the economic downturn, leaving her broke. Mark Scott owns a large house in Hampstead overlooking the Heath, which he was given by his parents. He’d been treated for depression for a number of years, and was on a pretty severe medication regime. Lately Hope had also been prescribed similar medication. It sounds like the relationship was in trouble. They weren’t married, but apparently he changed his will leaving everything to her, cutting the daughter out entirely because lately he and Emily had argued. Janice is tracking down other family members, but so far she says the most obvious and noticeable element of the relationship between Rebecca and Mark is the great love they had for one another.’

  ‘Which only deepens the mystery as to why she would want to kill him,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Whether they were happy or not, I guess we’ll find out when Janice talks to their friends later today. In the longer version of her statement, Miss Hope reiterates that she loved him very much. What she doesn’t do is show any regret for what happened.’

  ‘Then why would she shove him off a building?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? He comes from an upper-class family, father in the House of Lords, owns land in Hampshire, that sort of thing. She alienated his family at an early point in their relationship—I don’t suppose it took much, as her parents ran a bakery in Leeds. In my experience rich families can be extraordinarily unpleasant about attractive women wanting to marry their favourite sons.’

  ‘You see, this is where your Facebook and your Tweety thing can’t help,’ said Bryant vehemently. ‘All this information flying around the stratosphere, all these selfies and texts, and yet they’re useless when you really want to get at the truth. You can sit there playing Call of Nature all day—’

  ‘I think you mean Call of Duty.’

  ‘—and it doesn’t tell us a thing about who you really are.’ He took a last drag at his pipe and knocked it out on the railing, mindless of the burning ashes that scattered themselves throughout the courtyard. ‘Let’s take a look at that footage.’

  * * *

  —

  ‘You don’t all have to huddle around my laptop,’ said Dan Banbury irritably. ‘I’ve sent the file to everyone.’

  ‘Can’t open it,’ said Bryant. ‘Just play the blasted thing.’

  ‘You haven’t even tried, have you?’ Banbury sighed and hit PLAY. The monochrome footage had a granular gloom that turned figures into blossoms of soot. It showed an angled patch of concrete with a two-legged shape at one end.

  ‘Can you enhance it?’ asked May.

  ‘This isn’t a Tom Cruise film, John. I can’t just hit a button and zoom it into crystal sharpness. It’s a poorly positioned out-of-date closed-circuit camera with dust over its globe. But I’m pretty sure that’s Mark Scott. Watch this part.’ He fast-forwarded to a later point in the recording. A second figure, much smaller, ran into the frame. She wore a tight black gown. The tops of both their heads were cut off, but it was obvious that some kind of confrontation was taking place. ‘See, he steps back, closer to the wall, almost like he’s afraid of her, she comes forward, they’re still not engaging directly, then…’ He slowed the image down.

  The detectives watched as the smaller figure stepped so close to the larger one that they overlapped and became one. A moment later, only one pair of legs could be seen. ‘And over he goes,’ said Banbury.

  Another figure, clearly female, passed closer to the camera, heading for the deck’s doorway. ‘And there goes Lisa Harper, anxious to keep clear and get the hell out. I’d say that was pretty conclusive evidence, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It seems that way,’ said Bryant grudgingly.

  ‘Is it admissible evidence?’ asked May. ‘The quality’s not good.’

  ‘We’ll have to take advice on that.’ Banbury shut down the footage. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The witness clearly stayed in her corner beneath the camera, so she’s in the clear,’ said Bryant.

  ‘She was never under suspicion,’ said May.

  ‘She still needed to be ruled out,’ Bryant replied. ‘Lisa Harper is tall and blond. Rebecca Hope is slender and fairly short. I wonder why he moved like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Back and forth, almost as if they were sparring. There was something strange going on between them. Hope doesn’t seem the devious type. Perhaps she’s not lying to us so much as omitting a crucial part of the story.’

  ‘Why can’t we just accept her testimony?’ asked Renfield. ‘She pushed him over and that’s that?’

  ‘Because she can’t give us a reason for having done it,’ said Bryant.

  ‘He could have annoyed her, forcing her to act in anger, purely on the spur of the moment. That’s how it appears to me.’

  Bryant looked around at the others. ‘Anyone else have an idea of how to proceed?’

  ‘Can we get hold of the dress Rebecca Hope was wearing last night?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘You’ll split the seams, you’re too big-boned,’ said Bryant rudely.

  Longbright had a genetic predisposition towards heft. She was not, however, like those larger women who looked as if not all of their body would follow them when they came to a sudden stop, but was pleasingly firm-muscled.

  ‘I’d like to match it to that footage,’ she said, ‘just to be sure that it’s what we’re seeing in the shot.’

  ‘I think we need to schedule another interview with Hope,’ said May. ‘It sounded to me as if she was sticking to a script.’

  * * *

  —

  Because the Holland Park murder case was occupying so much of their time, they didn’t get back to Rebecca Hope until late in the evening, by which time she had been in custody for almost twenty-four hours. As they hadn’t been able to apply for an extension, the detectives knew that they would shortly have to release her unless she was charged.

  Before they entered, they studied her through the small window of the interview room. She sat motionless, facing away from them, small and so still that she might have been carved from wood. The basement room had fierce, flat strip lighting and a single window that opened into a locked stairwell leading up to the street. There was nothing to look at, and she continued staring straight ahead as they entered. There were tired creases above her eyes. She had refused to eat, and had only sipped at a glass of water. Clearly she was under great emotional strain.

  ‘Miss Hope, we need to talk a little more about what happened,’ said May gently.

  There was no reply.

  ‘If there’s nothing more you can tell us, we have to take your statement as it stands, and that means you’ll be charged accordingly,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘I’d much rather you just got it over with,’ she said in a small, soft voice. ‘I’m ready to accept the responsibility. There’s nothing more to be said, I’m afraid. You know what happened. You must do your job.’

  Bryant shot his partner a look. This is going to be an uphill battle. ‘We still have a few mi
nutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the beginning.’

  * * *

  —

  Upstairs, Janice Longbright had taken receipt of a package and was unwrapping it when Meera Mangeshkar came in.

  ‘You’re working late,’ said Longbright, cutting open the box with a paper knife.

  ‘Colin and I are still collating the witness statements on Holland Park. What’s that?’

  ‘Have a look.’ Longbright carefully unfolded the black evening dress and held it up. ‘It weighs nothing. No wonder she was cold.’

  ‘Is that Rebecca Hope’s gown?’ Meera, a girl who rarely strayed from Dr Martens boots, leggings and sweatshirts, studied the dress with interest. ‘Blimey, there’s nothing of it.’

  ‘Haute couture, my dear.’ Janice pressed the material against her chest. ‘I don’t know how women get into things like this.’

  ‘No outfit is worth freezing your tits off for,’ said Meera.

  ‘Have you ever worn a vintage dress?’ asked Longbright.

  Meera looked at her as if she had just asked why the DC never took holidays on the moon. ‘Of course not. Why would I?’

  ‘Well, say you have somewhere smart to go—’

  ‘Can I just stop you there? The smartest place Colin’s ever taken me is the Mecca Bingo hall in Tooting.’

  ‘Every woman should own a little black number.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make you feel good when you’re fed up. Don’t tell me this job never gets to you.’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘What do you do when it does?’

  ‘I get pissed.’

  Janice released a sigh of despair. ‘Try the dress.’