England's Finest

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  Bryant was acutely aware that they could be overheard and that his time with Kemp was running out. ‘You’re a career thief, Charlie, but they’re going to charge you with murder. Isn’t there anything else?’

  ‘Look, there’s some other stuff that’s going to come out,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘We’d been lovers. I lied to her about how I made my living, and when she found out the truth she left me. I couldn’t get her out of my mind and came back for her. She filed a complaint against me.’

  ‘You mean you stalked her?’ May exclaimed.

  ‘I know it was stupid. I was obsessed with her. Then when I found out about the book—’

  The chief inspector raised his hand imperceptibly, and one of the officers cautioned Kemp to say nothing more.

  The detectives remained for the opening of Kemp’s backpack, which contained a few clothes, the dead woman’s scarf and a volume of Dracula bound in blue leather, the title embossed in gold on its spine.

  * * *

  —

  Three hours later, Bryant and May returned to Bran Castle, leaving the inspectors with their prisoner. The statement had been filed and the consul summoned, but they had seen enough to know that Charlie Kemp wasn’t about to be released on bail. They had listened to his story, and had found it hard to swallow.

  ‘Alexandra was a heavy smoker,’ he had told the police. ‘When I came out I thought maybe she had gone off to find cigarettes. I was about to make my way through the outer wall to where we had parked when something black swept in front of me.’

  ‘What do you mean, something black?’ asked Timmar. ‘Please be more specific in your description.’

  ‘A tall figure, a man in a long cloak and black hat. I think I walked forward, trying to see. As I reached the corner of the castle, I saw him hunched over someone lying in the snow. I recognized Alexandra. She always wore that red fur coat. I knew she was dead. I felt sick. When I looked back the man had gone.’

  ‘A wound in her throat made by a black-caped figure,’ May said as they reentered Bran Castle. ‘A little over the top, don’t you think? Anyway, I thought vampires only came out at night.’

  ‘You heard him yourself,’ Bryant replied. ‘Whether he knows it or not, Kemp is obsessed with Stoker. He must have made up the story, but why? There were no other footprints leading back outside the castle. Don’t tell me his cape wiped them from the snow. But Kemp came to steal a book. He had no motive for killing his girlfriend.’

  They made their way back to the tower gate. The light was lowering, the sky filled with eerie bands of greenish-yellow.

  ‘He needed her to get him in, so why would he kill her?’ May’s breath condensed in the falling temperature. ‘And to suggest that a real-life Dracula is stalking the castle is preposterous. This might have been the home of Vlad Dracul once but there’s no coffin in the basement, just a gift shop.’

  In return for leaving the police inspectors alone with a British citizen awaiting representation, Bryant had persuaded them to let him have the keys to the tower. He had promised to return them in half an hour. It had been made quite clear that this was to be the end of their involvement in the matter. They had been civilly treated as guests, but the hospitality had a limit.

  ‘Alexandra Constantin was coming to the end of her time here, wasn’t she?’ asked Bryant, pulling down his scarf. ‘Kemp’s passport showed him making a visit here about a year ago. That must have been when he met her. She conducted research at the castle. That was why Kemp had targeted her. He knew she could get him to the book so that he could substitute the forgery.’

  ‘So why make up that absurd story about her being attacked by Dracula?’ asked May. ‘He must have realized he wouldn’t be believed.’

  ‘Unless that was what he really saw.’

  ‘Please, Arthur, let’s not go there,’ May begged. ‘I’m sure you’d love to believe that a real-life vampire is stalking the ramparts of his old castle. You have a terrible habit of muddling fact and fiction.’

  ‘Then we have to find a way of proving Kemp’s story.’ Bryant pointed over to the gate. ‘Let’s find out if anyone else saw this creature, starting with Old Mother Riley over there.’

  At the mention of the murder the old lady at the ticket barrier grew extremely animated, waving her arms at the sky.

  A young guard standing on the other side of the gateway stepped in to translate. ‘She says she saw it all. The vampire grabbed the poor lady’s throat and bit her, sucking out her blood. Then he turned into a bat and flew off into the clouds.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I think she is a little crazy. She is telling everyone. The story is going all around the place.’

  ‘What about you?’ Bryant asked. ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ came the reply. ‘I saw a man. He was tall and thin, and wearing a black cloak.’

  ‘Did he come past you?’

  ‘No, he was already inside.’

  ‘Did you see him attack the woman?’

  ‘No. I guess I thought he was a priest. You know, the same sort of clothes. I only saw him for a second or two. There was a tour representative waiting to talk to me. I had to attend to him.’

  * * *

  —

  ‘Great,’ said May, finding a bench in the courtyard and seating himself. ‘Dracula has two eyewitnesses.’

  ‘Or maybe they just saw a priest.’ Bryant stood beside him. ‘You’ll get Chalfonts sitting there in the snow. It’s freezing. I want to see that book before they close for the night.’

  They made their way back up to the tower repository. A red plastic cordon had been taped around the chest containing the Stoker edition. Bryant was about to pull open the drawers but May stopped him.

  ‘Don’t add your own fingerprints, for heaven’s sake. We have no jurisdiction here. Timmar was just being polite.’

  ‘But I need to see the book, John. I’m not leaving until I do. It’s the only clue we have.’

  May sighed. There would be no moving him until he had his way. Bryant was wrapping the end of his scarf around his hand.

  ‘No, you’d better let me do it,’ May said, slipping out of a shoe, taking off one of his socks and wrapping it around his hand. Reaching in, he shifted the stack of books to reveal the copy of Dracula.

  Bryant knelt and studied it for a full five minutes. ‘I knew it,’ he exclaimed finally. ‘Kemp didn’t switch books. This one has red edges. The pages on Kemp’s copy are plain. It was still in his backpack.’

  ‘Wait, maybe his forgery is the one with red edges.’

  ‘No. You must have noticed that his thumbs were stained red. He’s a book lover. He couldn’t resist reaching in and opening it. How do you open a book like that?’ He mimed pulling the pages apart with his thumbs. ‘And it scattered red dust from the dye in the drawer. Look.’

  Bryant tugged on his partner’s arm for a hand-up. ‘There’s something else. I’m missing something.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. ‘I’ve seen it around here somewhere. Come on, John, think.’

  He turned to the portraits that decorated the room, two bad oil paintings of Vlad Dracul bloodily impaling soldiers, and several Edwardian representations of Count Dracula from the novel. The display finished with photographs of Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace in Sighișoara, a tourist trap complete with red nylon curtains, modern-looking candles, and a hardboard coffin with a cheap suit of clothes and a trilby laid out in it.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ said May. ‘Kemp lied about what he saw.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’ Bryant went to the window. ‘We’ve been had.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Look around you.’ Bryant pointed to the walls. ‘Kemp said he saw a man in a black cloak and a hat, so he wasn’t lying. Stoker’s Dracula and all of the pictures based on his book show th
e count hatless. That’s how he’s always been depicted in English drawings and films. It’s only here in Transylvania that he’s shown wearing a hat. That ridiculous stage set in Sighișoara, these paintings and sketches. They dressed someone up. There were no footsteps in the snow leading outside because nobody went outside. It was one of the policemen, and he went back into the castle. They struck a deal. Everybody wins, don’t you see? The police get kudos for catching an international thief, the book stays where it belongs and the tourists have a nicely salacious addition to the legend.’

  ‘But the body—’

  ‘We saw a body. Remember what Raymond told us? Nobody messes with the police here.’

  The light had faded so that the horizon of fir trees appeared like a spiked black wall. Outside, just beyond the castle staircase, a black Wolseley waited with its engine idling. In the passenger seat of the car sat a crimson-haired woman in a red fur coat. She cast a long, cool look up at the castle, dropped her cigarette and rolled up the window.

  ‘She planned the whole thing,’ said Bryant. ‘Why would she want to be officially declared dead?’

  ‘Around here there must be a great many reasons for choosing to disappear,’ said May.

  Chief Inspector Timmar nodded curtly to May as if in acknowledgement of his words, then climbed behind the steering wheel. Alexandra appraised them, then closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat as the gleaming black Wolseley took off into the gathering night.

  Bryant & May and the Forty Footsteps

  During the Second World War, Winston Churchill employed a man named Colonel Colin Gubbins to set up a number of secret auxiliary units.

  These specially trained divisions consisted of around four thousand uniformed guerrillas who worked far beyond the usual constraints imposed on wartime personnel. Their members were known as Scallywags, and during active service their life expectancy was just twelve days.

  Britain was uniquely placed to set up experimental, multilevel resistance units because it had seen the nations of Europe collapse in quick succession, and had a head start when it came to planning a counterattack.

  The average age of the scientists, inventors, engineers, tacticians and boffins who made up Britain’s Scallywag force was twenty. They were sworn to secrecy and disguised as members of the Home Guard. Often those around them thought they were cowards, not realizing that they were fighting a secret war.

  After the hostilities, a number of special operations units continued working in peacetime. Some were military, some scientific, some were involved in espionage and surveillance, and many employed freethinkers using untried methods. One branch was the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

  But that was long ago. And two young men who had been chosen to think in new ways about the policing of the capital had worked together ever since. Their techniques were eccentric and, to the casual observer, contradictory. Singly they became lost in thickets of information, but together they cut paths to the truth.

  Of course, that was long before the truth became lies, news became fake and politicians became children. The art of policing changed dramatically. It was now about numbers and targets and customer care, except at the PCU, where life continued largely untroubled by modernity. Occasionally the detectives were handed cases because nobody else could understand them, and on some very quiet days they uncovered crimes that nobody even knew existed. Today was one of those days.

  It started because Alma Sorrowbridge, Arthur Bryant’s landlady, complained about his books.

  ‘I don’t mind you reading but they’re everywhere,’ she said as she set a slice of her treacle, lemon and sultana ginger cake before him. ‘There’s a compendium of medieval socks on my cooker hood.’

  ‘Now, that’s a very interesting book,’ said Bryant, digging his fork into the hefty slice without a thank you. ‘Some of their socks were divided at the toes so they could be worn under thonged sandals, which suggests that the English never had any dress sense.’

  The kitchen was as fresh and neat as a café on its first day of opening. The plants had been recently watered, a new gingham tablecloth had been laid, coffee had been brewed, bread baked and homemade jams set out. The pair bickered like an old married couple. It was Arthur’s favourite time of the morning.

  ‘All right, what about this?’ Alma said, holding up an enormous volume entitled A Complete History of Bloomsbury. ‘It was in the toilet.’

  ‘That’s probably a good place to read it,’ said Bryant, munching.

  ‘No, it was in the toilet. It had fallen down from that dodgy shelf you put up above the cistern. It could have killed somebody. Books are dangerous. George Bernard Shaw broke my father’s nose. His teacher threw the collected works at him, caught him square in the middle of his face. That’s how dangerous books are.’

  Bryant set his fork aside. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘As you won’t let me eat in peace, is there anything else you’d like to get off your chest?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alma, picking greenfly off her love-lies-bleeding. ‘Poisons. I gave you those spice bottles to keep your samples in.’

  ‘And I used them as instructed.’

  ‘Then why are they back in my spice rack?’

  ‘I left them on the counter. You must have muddled them up.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice. I’ve got my church ladies coming later, and now I don’t know if I’m going to feed them or kill them.’

  ‘None of the samples are lethal but a few are amphetamine-based,’ Bryant pointed out. ‘Your ladies will just get through their hymns a bit quicker. Any other complaints?’

  ‘No,’ said Alma. ‘Go on, finish that and get off to work. I’ll leave your mittens on the teapot until you’re ready to go. Is Mr May picking you up?’

  Bryant was tempted to lick his plate but resisted. ‘No, I’m strolling into the West End this morning, Mrs S. My comedy partner is at the dentist and we’ve no cases on.’

  ‘Then you should cut across the garden squares and get yourself some fresh air.’ She poured herself a cup of coffee. ‘I’ve complained to the council about the planting. Their summer bedding is a disgrace and the grass in the college quadrangle is wearing out.’

  ‘You know the gardens play havoc with my hay fever around this time of year,’ he complained. ‘My nose has been blocked for a week.’

  ‘Fresh air, Mr Bryant,’ she repeated. ‘You need to breathe more. It’ll make you a nicer person.’

  * * *

  —

  You know when summer has finally arrived in London because if you go up a few floors and open a window you can hear people everywhere. Foliage forms great green barriers between the streets, and beneath the trees, in the back gardens, outside the pubs and on the pavements there rises a steady, dense murmur of conversation, punctuated with the odd shriek of laughter.

  London was blooming. Bryant found himself surrounded by the buildings of University College. A series of new squares and quadrangles had been constructed over the old gardens. Once there had been open fields here. Now students from around the world sat in groups waiting for lectures to begin. The detective took a good look at the green in Torrington Square and concluded that while the planting didn’t measure up, the square itself was well kept. He paid special attention to the slender rectangle of lawn.

  At first he thought it had been worn bald by children, but there had been recent heavy rain, and the ground was still soft and damp enough to sprout grass overnight. The bare patches were neatly spaced at regular intervals. They ran northeast to southwest in pairs, with the largest bald patch, about the size of a man’s shoe, at the start in the uppermost corner. After seven paces they started to fade out, and by the time Bryant reached the lower edge of the lawn they had disappeared completely. He knelt and examined them more closely. They were very clearly footprints.

  ‘Oh, so you’ve found them.’


  Bryant looked up and saw the ursine academic Ray Kirkpatrick towering above him, hands on hips, studying his old friend with amusement. With his foresty beard, ponytail and studded leather jacket he looked more like a heavy-metal biker than an English professor. Hauling the detective to his feet, he led him back to the start of the footprints. ‘They go that way,’ he explained, ‘from the top to the bottom. I said to myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if Arthur turns up for a look. It’s odd seeing them back again.’

  ‘What do you mean, again?’ Bryant asked, tipping back his hat.

  ‘You mean you don’t know about them? Have you got a few minutes to spare? There’s a book I’d like to show you.’

  ‘I’ve nothing urgent on at the moment,’ Bryant admitted. ‘I can be led astray.’

  They wandered over to the British Library, where Kirkpatrick was attempting to prove the provenance of a medieval manuscript that had been found during the City of London’s Crossrail excavations. Up at his first-floor desk, he tunnelled beneath a hill of documents and emerged with a yellowed pamphlet. ‘I was reading this last night.’

  He carefully unfolded the booklet and showed it to Bryant. ‘The legend of the Field of Forty Footsteps. The earliest reference we have is from 1692, when the lands around the British Museum were still open meadow. It was always a dodgy area, ladies of ill repute, cutpurses and so on. At the time of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, which was, let’s see, in 1685, there were supposedly two brothers in love with the same titled lady. She couldn’t choose between them so they fought a duel at Southampton Fields while she watched. They were both fatally wounded. After that it was said that the grass never grew where their bodies fell or where their feet had trod. The Poet Laureate Bob Southey was told about the footsteps by his friend John Walsh, whose mother had seen the steps ploughed up, only to mysteriously reappear.’