‘Is that possible?’ asked Vince, his voice fuzzing as a truck passed.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but it’s worth checking out. Head in that direction and we’ll call you back.’
‘Wait, you don’t have my number.’
‘Last number redial!’ they exclaimed in unison.
‘That’s the trouble with young people today,’ said Maggie Armitage, still trying to read the newspaper. ‘They’ve a very poor grasp of modern technology.’
‘Have I been missing something?’ asked the frail elderly gentleman, unwinding a length of ratty red scarf from his throat. To those who did not know him well, Arthur Bryant was a cantankerous old tortoise who crept about the city in a rusty blue Mini Minor. He was two years past retirement age and capable of only the most rudimentary politeness to a handful of close acquaintances. Shunning technology, buried beneath scarves, forever complaining, he lived only for his investigative work at the North London Serious Crimes Division, housed above the tube station at Mornington Crescent.
As his commissions grew more prosaic and less taxing, he kept his agile brain alive by arguing with his partner John May, and by paying regular visits to Masters and his charming wife. For twenty years Bryant and May had shared an office at Bow Street police station before moving north, working the cases no one else wanted, and evolving some highly unorthodox methods. Their knowledge of London and its fringe elements was unique and indispensable, and gave them an advantage over younger officers.
‘Arthur, you’re late again,’ the doctor pointed out. ‘You were supposed to be here ages ago.’
‘Oh, I had some difficulty with Bunthorne,’ explained Bryant, rummaging around in the pockets of his voluminous tweed overcoat. A puzzled look crossed his wrinkled features for a moment, then he pulled a ginger cat from one of the pockets.
‘What on earth have you got there?’
‘Well, that was the problem with Bunthorne, you see. All this time I thought he was a tom, but tonight he wandered into my bedroom and rather unexpectedly produced four kittens. I had to leave Alma with them.’
‘But that’s not a new-born kitten,’ said Maggie, pointing to the ginger cat that was now contentedly threading its way through the legs of the assembly.
‘No, you’re right there,’ said Bryant vaguely. ‘It’s a stray I picked up on the way over. I had cats on the mind, and the snow was starting to turn to rain, and the little thing was shivering inside a scrap of bin liner on Battersea Bridge. A bowl of warmed milk would probably please it, Jane. Then perhaps someone could explain what all the excitement’s about.’
Chapter 35
Persuading George
Xavier Stevens studied his quarry carefully. He knew this type, the empty-headed secretary aspiring to nothing more than a mortgage in the suburbs and a husband who didn’t fuck around on her. She’d be hard-nosed for a while, then start wanting to go home when she realised he wasn’t joking, and that was when he could start looking forward to making her cry.
‘What are you going to do, stick bamboo shoots under my fingernails?’ Pam shut her eyes wearily. ‘You’re all silly little boys. None of you know when to stop playing games.’
‘You’re the only one who thinks it’s a game.’ He re-sited the kitchen chair and perched himself before her, legs apart, hands on knees. ‘If my colleague Mr Wells doesn’t get all of the copies of this damaging document, there is a chance—wouldn’t you say—that it might be published after all. And if it is published, with all of its inaccuracies and character smears, Mr Wells and his colleagues will be publicly embarrassed. Are you with me so far?’
‘People can say what they like. It’s a free country.’
‘But freedom itself is a prison. Does no one read Sartre any more?’ He stared at her with poorly concealed contempt. ‘Think it through. What good will it do anyone to publish? It will simply help to destroy a respected institution, and upset a lot of people who really should not be upset. The best thing you could do—for us and yourself—is speak with Reynolds and get him to surrender the other copy to you. You’re his best friend. Who else can he trust at this precise moment?’
‘You want me to betray him?’
Stevens looked around at the walls, incredulous. ‘Well, obviously!’ He raised a hand. ‘I know, I know all about you people and your fierce working-class loyalties.’ Cheek, she thought, having always considered herself at least aspirationally middle class. ‘But if I don’t get hold of the remaining document before dawn, I’m going to start cutting off your toes.’ He fished about in the pocket of his black leather jacket and produced a pair of ominously heavy-duty wire cutters. ‘I’ll do it cleanly at the joint—I always do—but I won’t give you the piece I remove, so you won’t be able to have it sewn back on. Without it, you’ll find that your sense of balance is adversely affected. So if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life falling over, go ahead and make that call.’ He raised her right foot and gently eased off the tight pink pump, caressing her toes through her tights.
Sweat broke out on Pam’s forehead. This, from a managerial point of view, was the worst possible thing that could happen to her. The thought of facing a corporate career with missing appendages was too much to contemplate. Even so, she had no intention of telling them where the other manuscript was, even if she could be absolutely sure of what Louie had done with it.
‘It will do you no good threatening me with violence,’ she said bravely. ‘I can’t fear you because I understand your motives. This cruel streak is to do with the inadequacy you feel about the size of your penis, isn’t it?’
—
‘George Stokes will not be thrilled about being woken at this time of the morning, and even less so by the idea of leaving his cosy house in East Finchley to travel back into the city,’ said Bryant. ‘Besides, reopening the museum after hours is inconceivable. The board of governors would have him removed from his post for committing such a breach of the rules. The gallery is a treasurehouse of works held in trust for the nation. He can do nothing that might put so many priceless paintings at risk.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘Sod it, let’s call him anyway.’
But George Stokes was not at home, his wife sleepily informed them. As luck would have it, he was working late at the gallery itself, making final preparations for the Hever Castle exhibition which was due to open in just a few hours’ time. They could call him there. These days he spent more time at the gallery than he did at home. She gave them the number of his direct line.
‘It’s completely out of the question, Harold,’ Stokes explained, answering after an age (he had been lost in the pages of the Model Car Collectors 1996 Price Guide, trying to work out the value of his boxed ‘Goldfinger’ Aston Martin DB5 while his assistant was off in the toilet). ‘There would be all hell to pay if something got damaged.’
‘But can you physically do it?’ asked Masters.
‘Of course. There are a number of senior keyholders, but only three of us know the disarming code for the alarm at any one time. It changes’—he had been about to tell Masters how often it changed, and thought better of it—‘all the time. And every setting is recorded by computer. There’s just me and Albert here, watching the monitors.’
‘Oh George, stop being so damnably clavigerous.’
‘I’m not, I’m—what does that mean?’
‘Custodial,’ said Masters, ‘key-bearing.’
‘But that’s what I am, Harold, the bearer of the keys to a national institution.’
‘It’s not the Bank of England.’
‘No, but its contents are probably worth more.’
Masters decided it was time for a little blackmail. ‘George, how long have we known each other?’ he asked gently. ‘I’ll tell you. We first met in 1967. That’s how long. I’ve never given you bad advice since then, have I?’
‘No, of course not, but what you’re asking is beyond reason—’
‘Is it unreasonable to want to protect what’s right and good
against the forces of evil?’ he asked. ‘If the boy fails to complete the tasks set for him this night, his work will be repressed, his very life will be in danger. This is not a third-world dictatorship, George, it’s not Communist China, it’s England, and if you’re prepared to see everything you stand for eroded by those who abuse their power and use intimidation to gain their ends, then you’re not the man I thought you were.’
‘And you think this jingoistic bollocks will win me over, do you?’
‘I have someone here who wants to talk to you,’ said Masters, passing the receiver to the elderly detective.
‘Now, George, I hope you’re not going to be squeamish about this,’ said Bryant. ‘I can’t make you help us, even though the NLSCD has helped you before, because I don’t believe in making folk feel guilty by holding favours over their heads, but I do think you should get downstairs to the gallery floor and open it before my clumsy great lads set off up there and kick in a few windows answering a tip-off about intruders.’
‘Arthur, you’re talking about admitting an outsider into one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. I have a duty—’
‘And I have a duty to uphold the law,’ interrupted Bryant. ‘These men are killers, and they may well strike again tonight. It seems likely from what I’m hearing here that we won’t have a hope in hell of stopping them through the regular channels. Now, George, you know there must be a point at which our duties intersect.’
‘None of you are listening to me. I simply cannot place national treasures at risk. In the first place I don’t have this kind of authorisation. Secondly, the video cameras record everything that happens here—’
‘I didn’t want to have to do this,’ said Bryant with a sad sigh. ‘George, forgive my retrogression, but do you remember the fishing expedition to Kerry, where you lost your head over that pretty little colleen at the hotel and arrived home a day late, and how you persuaded me to explain to your poor dear lady wife that the fog had prevented us from reaching the airport?’
‘That was fifteen years ago—’
‘The pain of infidelity is undimmed by time.’
‘You’re a right bastard, Bryant, you know that?’ He thought for a moment. ‘How long would the alarm system have to be off for?’
Got him, thought Bryant.
‘Five minutes at the most,’ he replied.
‘I suppose if it appeared that there was a line fault with the system, I could have the entry circuits and the motion detectors switched off for two or three minutes, but no more than that. I don’t know what I’d tell Albert.’
‘Send him off to make tea or something.’
‘The closed circuit monitors would have to be shut down, too. This boy has to find a letter, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you know which gallery it’s in?’
Masters reclaimed the receiver. ‘Perhaps you could help with that. We’re looking for a painting in the Hever exhibition that features lots of crucifixes. There may be some kind of Chaucerian quote on the frame.’
‘God, Harold, do you have any idea how many paintings there are in here? Your lad would have to know exactly where he was going. There’d be no time to mess about. If I know which gallery he’s heading for I’ll only have to disarm one sector, and it’ll look less suspicious.’
‘Tell him we’ll work out where Vince has to go by the time he gets there,’ hissed Maggie, tugging Masters’s sleeve. ‘There’s less than thirty minutes left.’ She looked questioningly at the rest of the group. ‘Well, we can work it out in that time, can’t we?’
Chapter 36
The Fail-Safe
The entrance to the National Portrait Gallery was in darkness as Vince crossed Charing Cross Road by the rain-darkened statue of Edith Cavell, and the rotund little man who suddenly stepped from the shadows made him jump.
‘Mr Stokes?’ he asked.
‘Quick, come inside, out of the light.’ He beckoned frantically, then pointed up at the wall. The gallery’s security cameras were aimed down at the glistening pavement before them. ‘I’m given to understand that it’s a matter of national urgency for you to get in here,’ he said, shaking his hand. ‘Now you listen to me. I don’t hold with breaking the law, but it’s lucky for you that you’re dealing with old friends of mine. I can sympathise with what they’ve told me, about these toffs holding you to ransom, like. I’m self-taught, me, from Burnley. Came to London in the fifties to make meself a living, and I’ve done all right. So, as I said, I sympathise. Dr Masters assures me that nothing illegal is to take place, but the fact is that you will be trespassing once we pass beyond this point. I must exact a solemn promise from you, therefore, not to touch any of the exhibits.’
‘You have my word on that,’ said Vince. Stokes saw how wet and tired the boy was, and a wave of pity swept over him. ‘You look done in, lad,’ he said, his Lancashire accent broadening in sympathy. ‘Bet it’s been a pretty rough night for you. Let’s get you inside.’
‘That’s just it,’ he replied miserably. ‘They haven’t called back with the location yet. I don’t know where I’m going once I’m in.’
—
‘I don’t have a catalogue of all the paintings,’ complained Masters. ‘How are we supposed to know exactly which picture has lots of crucifixes in it? It’s absurd.’
‘Can’t he just head for the area with the most religious paintings,’ asked Stanley Purbrick, kicking Bryant’s stray cat out from under his feet, ‘triptychs, altar-pieces, that sort of thing?’
‘It’s a bit hit and miss, isn’t it?’ said the doctor’s wife. ‘Maggie, don’t you have any bright ideas?’
‘Don’t encourage her,’ complained Purbrick. ‘She’ll want to hold another seance, and I’m still recovering from the last one. All those talking cats frightened the life out of me.’
‘There’s something odd about the list,’ said Mrs Armitage, her voice muffled as she struggled into a voluminous yellow sweater. ‘Surely the bottom name isn’t a type of cross, is it? Aimee? Harold, don’t you know?’
‘I’ve never heard of one if there is.’
‘What about the final line of poetry?’ asked Arthur Bryant, removing his bifocals and screwing up his eyes at the sheet of paper Maggie had passed to him. ‘You said it was Chaucerian?’
‘I think so. I mean, the spelling is mediaeval and the sentiment feels right…’
‘Aimee. French for “loved”?’ Bryant tapped a pencil against his teeth. ‘Aimee…’
The book Maggie slammed shut made them all jump. ‘That settles it. The others are all definitely crosses. “Aimee” is not a cross.’
‘Aimee. A crucifix. Anne Boleyn. What an odd group.’
They made an odd group too, seated in a circle at the dining-room table, hunched beneath twin cones of light thrown by the pair of bronze-green Victorian lamps, books, teacups and wineglasses scattered all about the rumpled tablecloth. Jane Masters rose to her feet. ‘I’m going to make some more coffee,’ she said with an air of finality. ‘Someone should call poor George and let him know that we’re stumped. Having got him to agree to this, you can’t leave him in the dark.’
It was a bad line, not helped by the fact that Vince answered in a whisper. ‘What have you got for me?’ he asked, trying to keep their conversation brief.
‘Put Mr Stokes on, would you?’
‘They want to speak to you.’ Vince handed him the phone. Stokes eyed it warily, then gingerly lowered his cheek near it, as though scared of being bitten. ‘Hello?’
Masters carefully explained the problem.
‘Amy?’ asked Stokes, confused. ‘Who’s Amy?’
‘No—Aimee. Wait—the Holbein exhibition, where is it situated?’
‘On the lower ground floor at the back. Why?’
‘I want you to go there and see if you can see a cross or crosses of some sort. Then call me back.’
‘Don’t you have any idea where this thing is, then?’
‘If I did, I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’ said Masters sourly.
The interior of the gallery was as cool and silent as any garden of remembrance. Marble columns tapered into blackness, but it was not possible to switch the lights on without tripping one of the alarms for which Stokes did not have a code. The custodian reached up on tiptoe and opened the steel case of a box behind the reception desk, then punched in a series of numbers that caused a dozen rows of red LEDs to pulse.
‘Four minutes,’ he explained, ‘that’s how long we’ve got before the system overrides my manual command and turns itself back on. It’s a fail-safe.’ Stokes flicked on his torch and shone the beam ahead. ‘Let’s go.’
They ran as quietly as they could across sheets of squeaking marble to the rear of the building, then down the staircase to the lower ground level. Merely crossing the floors took over a minute. Vince’s boots squealed as he slid to a stop. Stokes raised his torch and a startling image confronted them.
There stood Holbein’s portrait of ‘Anna Bullen’, a tragic English noblewoman dead for over four and a half centuries, immortalised in paint by a German genius. The trusting innocence of her eyes was matched by the simple elegance of her dress. Three thin chains of gold adorned her neck. The hindsight of her tragedy steeped her portrait in an aura of unbearable melancholy.
Stokes shone his light around the walls, illuminating the courtiers and courtesans of a long-forgotten world. The beam skittered across portrait after portrait, briefly subjecting each to scrutiny.
‘What about over there?’ Stokes suggested.
Vince ran up to the banks of paintings. ‘Crosses,’ he whispered back. ‘Hundreds of the bastards.’ There were priests and cardinals, nuns, deacons, bishops, tortured sinners, penitents, martyred saints, crucifixes in almost every painting. ‘Damn. How long have we got left?’
‘Two and a half minutes. There won’t be time to get back—’
‘Wait a minute.’
Disturbia Page 19