‘Meera, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s how to handle rejection.’
‘Really? I haven’t seen any evidence of that. I virtually had to take out a restraining order on you.’
‘Yeah, I kept giving you another chance, didn’t I? Well, not any more. Besides, if she turns me down I won’t have been rejected. According to Orion Banks, I’ll just have exceeded my core competency.’
‘Fine. But – but – just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Mangeshkar made a smile in the air and pointed at him. ‘Laugh. In. Your. Face. Remember that.’ She stalked away, not entirely sure that she had won the argument.
5
CORPSES AND CONSTELLATIONS
Bryant had a routine. Builders’ tea, never café latte. Paperwork, never computer screens. Scribbled sketches, illegible addenda, manuals and manuscripts, ink stains and gnawed pencil stubs. A pipeful of something grown under his desk and dried out on the bathroom radiator whenever he could sneak it in. This was how he liked to work, seated opposite the same familiar friendly face, surrounded by the bookmarks of his soul.
‘Dan says that the casket has a rubber skirt running all the way around the inside that effectively seals it shut,’ said May. ‘He reckons it was either pushed open from the inside or unsealed from outside – there’s no damage to it.’
Bryant worried at a nail as he tried to decipher a note. His hands were a disgrace. ‘I want to see the boy, Romain Curtis.’
‘He already made a statement last night.’
‘You mean this thing?’ Bryant rattled a thin sheet of paper before his partner’s eyes. ‘I asked them to send me over a copy but I might as well not have bothered. There’s hardly anything on it. Look, four lines. The idiot who ran them in didn’t ask any proper questions and failed to make a verbatim report. He didn’t take them seriously. I need to talk to the lad myself. If he’s adamant that Wallace got to his feet, it means he was somehow buried alive.’
‘What, he fought his way out and then someone strangled him?’
‘No, Giles is sure the ligature mark was made earlier. And that he was hanged.’
‘So a hanged man rises from a grave and then drops dead. That isn’t a case, it’s a scene from a Hammer horror film.’
‘But it’s a scene that happened. Dan measured sight-lines from Curtis’s position to the grave – it’s feasible that under the night lamps he really saw what was happening. But there’s nowhere near enough data to draw any conclusions yet. We need to talk to the undertaker, the family, everyone. Why is it taking so long?’
‘Because Raymond has to vet everything through Banks, and she still hasn’t cleared us to go ahead. What a case to start with.’ May pushed his fingers through his silver hair. ‘Anyway, why would the City of London let us take it on in the first place? It’s not even in their jurisdiction.’
‘Don’t you get it?’ said Bryant. ‘It’ll be just like it’s always been. We’re going to be given the stuff nobody else wants. Batted back and forth, a dead letter office, a dumping ground. And perhaps that’s not a bad thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If we can keep Orion Banks on our side, they’ll leave us alone. And that’s when we function best.’ Bryant offered up a disconcertingly hopeful smile.
‘Then let’s find out if we’ve got a murder on our hands, or whether a dead man really came back to life,’ said May.
‘Good,’ Bryant agreed. ‘You can start by getting the boy back. I want to interview him by myself. You’re too friendly-looking. I need to wrong-foot him by acting like a weird old man.’
‘Acting?’ said May.
Romain Curtis arrived an hour later, having been fished out of a physics class by Renfield. The boy was at the awkward age when height outstripped strength and a quick mind was compromised by inexperience. He wore regulation school trousers topped with an immense black and yellow T-shirt that had a design of the solar system across it. His rolling walk and two-setting clipper cut gave him a little edge, but there was nothing threatening about him.
When ushered into the detectives’ room he appeared uncomfortable in his own body, not knowing what to do with his large but oddly delicate hands. Settling himself in the ratty ochre armchair opposite Bryant’s desk, Romain found himself facing what appeared to be a very old monkey in a giant’s overcoat. He waited to be told what to do.
Bryant set down the page he was holding and peered at the lad. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘it seems you were a witness to something pretty unusual, even for around here, so you’ll have to excuse the pretend-policeman who took your statement. He’s more used to dealing with phonejacking and household disturbances. I imagine you completely threw him.’
‘He wasn’t interested, man.’
‘I can tell that. He barely bothered to take down your statement. Of course he’d have been more inclined to believe you if you hadn’t been smoking dope.’
Romain had spotted the healthy marijuana plant that grew under Bryant’s desk, and was clearly distracted by it.
‘Oh, that,’ said Bryant airily. ‘It’s for my arthritis. A medical prescription, entirely legal. I’m the law and I say so. Look, I know that a little grass can relax you, but it won’t make you see things that aren’t there. Therefore you may find me a tad more receptive to your story than some over-zealous nitwit looking for someone to arrest. Because judging by this’ – he waved the page again – ‘I get the feeling that you didn’t tell the officer everything.’
‘No point,’ Romain mumbled, looking down at his red Converse trainers. ‘He wouldn’t have believed me.’
‘Why not? What did you see? Start from when your lady friend – Shirone, is it? – first heard a noise in St George’s Gardens.’
‘We was – were – sitting on the grass and that.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Nothing, man, hanging out.’
‘Stargazing?’
‘What?’
‘Your T-shirt. The solar system.’
Romain pulled at his shirt as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Oh, yeah, it’s a kind of hobby.’
‘Make the shirt yourself?’
‘Yeah. I got the dyes and pattern-cuts at home. I make them for friends. I’m hoping to go to St Martins.’
‘They specialize in fashion design, don’t they?’ London’s famous college of art had recently moved into the old customs houses at the back of King’s Cross Station.
‘Yeah, textiles.’
‘Have you told your friends at school?’
‘No, man. They’d take the piss.’
‘So, an astronomer, a designer. You have hidden depths, Mr Curtis.’ His voice softened. As alien as the lad was, he was likeable. ‘There you were lying on the grass, smoking a little weed, thinking about the immensity of the universe – you don’t take anything stronger, do you?’
‘Than weed? No. I’ve seen what that does.’
‘Good, right answer. There’s a purposefulness of ambition about you. What happened after Miss Estanza heard a noise?’
‘She got up and acted a little freaked, and I went to see what the damage was. We was – were – in the middle of the park, and the noise was kind of to our left near the trees. There’s a high wall at the back, then flats.’
‘Was it cloudy or clear?’
‘A bit of both. I was pointing out the stars to her.’
‘So you went over towards the shadows, and then what?’
‘I saw him, standing up in the grave, trying to walk towards me.’
‘Standing in the grave or beside it, behind it?’
‘In the grave, I think. He must have been right in the damn coffin.’
‘Must have been.’
‘It was dark over there, under the cover of the branches; I can’t remember exactly. His legs moved and his right arm went up, and he pointed at the sky behind me. I turned around to look at what he was pointing at. Then I heard him speak.’
‘Wait, he spoke to you?’
>
‘Yeah, in this kind of raspy voice. He said, “Ursa Minor”.’
‘He pointed out a constellation of stars?’
‘Yeah. But he was wrong. It’s a mistake everyone makes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was the Plough. Ursa Major. It has seven stars, just like its little brother, but there’s a difference. Ursa Minor has a saucepan shape, the same as the bigger constellation, but it starts with Polaris, the North Star.’
‘Forgetting for a moment that we’re talking about a dead man, why do you think he wanted to impart this information to you?’
Romain hesitated, started, then stopped again. ‘You’re gonna think—’
‘Forget what you think I might think,’ said Bryant. ‘Tell me what you thought at that moment.’
‘Just when I looked up, there was a shooting star. I suppose I thought he was trying to tell me he came from there. You know, like an alien. I thought he’d come from space.’
‘But now you don’t.’
‘No, of course not. That part was definitely the dope.’
‘Well, I’m glad we agree on that. How much had you had to drink?’
‘A few lagers.’
‘Feeling the effects?’
‘Yeah, a little.’
‘Think it messed with your perception?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Pity you didn’t take a picture, put it on Facebook.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I could smell him. He smelled really rank and was still wobbling about and that, and Shirone was yelling at me, all twisted out, and the lights started going on in the flats overlooking the park so we legged it.’
‘Into the hands of our wonderful quasi-legal system.’ Bryant sat so far back in his chair that for a moment Romain thought he was about to vanish beneath the desk. ‘Well,’ he said finally, bouncing back up, ‘that’s quite a story. Anything to add?’
‘No, man. That’s it.’
‘I think we’ll let you go now.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Probably. You seem like a bright lad. You’ve got a game plan for your future. I can’t imagine that you’d want to waste our valuable time by making up such a ridiculous story.’
‘I seen a lot of crazy stuff around here, man. You keep it to yourself. That’s the only way to stay safe.’
‘You saw what you saw. It’s up to us to interpret it. We’ll be speaking to your lady friend, just to corroborate the circumstances, nothing more. Please feel free to take a ginger biscuit on your way out.’
Shrugging, puzzled, Romain rose and took his leave, pausing at the door. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to call you if I think of anything else?’
‘No, Mr Curtis, it’s not a television show,’ said Bryant, returning his attention to his desk paperwork. ‘Good luck with St Martins.’
Half an hour later, Longbright was able to speak with Shirone Estanza to confirm Romain Curtis’s story. The girl was less focused about the night’s events and more prone to exaggeration, but she agreed with their rough order. Crucially, she also thought she had heard the cadaver speak, although she had not understood what it said. There was, however, one detail on which her testimony differed. ‘He went back into the park,’ she said. ‘After we came out, Romain ran back in.’
‘Did he tell you why?’ asked Longbright.
‘No.’
‘How long was he gone?’
‘Not long, probably less than a minute.’
‘Did he say anything when he came back?’
‘I asked him what he did and he said “nothing”.’
‘Constellations and corpses,’ said Bryant later, reading Longbright’s computer screen over her shoulder. ‘There must be a perfectly simple explanation.’
‘If there is,’ sighed Longbright, ‘it’ll be the first time. What’s happening at the site?’
‘There’s still a crime scene tent over it. Until Banks approves a full investigation, our hands are tied.’
‘So we’ve just conducted two interviews that weren’t signed off.’
‘It would seem so, yes,’ said Bryant lightly. ‘Our first open challenge to Ms Banks.’
6
ETERNAL REST
Romain Curtis wasn’t sure it was a good idea to see Shirone again – having a girl go into a screaming fit on what was basically a first date had put him off – but when he came home from school that afternoon she was sitting on one of the brightly painted swings in the children’s playground in front of the flats, waiting for him.
‘The cops called me in, too,’ she said. ‘Why do I feel like we did something wrong?’
‘They’re trying to figure out what happened,’ said Romain, anxious to get inside and crash through his homework.
‘Where did you go? When you left me outside the park and went back.’
‘I just wanted another look. We left so quick—’
‘And what did you see?’
‘Did you tell them I went back?’
‘I said you were only gone for a minute.’
‘If I tell you then two of us will know, and if they pull you in again you’ll have to lie, so it’s better that I don’t, OK?’
‘Come on, Romain. I’ve lived in your street all my life. We should stick together.’
He sighed. ‘Nothing happened. I wanted to see who was there but the dead guy in the suit was lying face down in the dirt. I didn’t even touch him. I came straight back to find you.’
‘OK.’ She could tell he was missing something out. He dug out his door keys and turned to leave. She knew he still didn’t trust her, and wanted to make up for the interrupted evening. ‘Listen, the Fly Rebels are at the Scala tonight,’ she said, jumping to her feet and following him. ‘Me and some mates are going.’
‘Does that include your brothers?’
‘Old-school soul? Not their kind of thing.’
Romain had a pretty good idea what their kind of thing was; it involved violently disputing territorial rights with the Indian gang that ran Drummond Street near Euston Station. It didn’t seem likely they’d stay out of trouble for long, and it was best to keep away from them.
‘So, are you coming tonight or what?’ asked Shirone.
‘I have a pile of schoolwork to do.’
‘It’s early. Do it now and we can meet up later.’
He’d meant to say no, to stick to his promise and study. But after the previous night’s fiasco part of him still itched to have a little fun. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What time?’
‘Ten thirty.’
‘I’ll have to see that I can get out.’
‘The first drink’s free before eleven. I’ll call for you.’ Shirone lifted herself off the swing and turned to allow him a good look at her body. ‘Maybe we can pick up where we left off. Only I’m not going near the gardens this time.’
‘That’s OK. They still got a police guard in there anyway.’
‘Why?’
Romain shrugged. ‘I guess they haven’t reburied the dead guy yet. Hey, don’t look now but there’s your boyfriend.’
A tall, stooped teen with very black hair was passing on his way to the next block. He was dressed in a long leather coat with a silver skull painted on the back. ‘Don’t let him see me,’ Shirone pleaded. ‘Martin’s always hanging around somewhere. He’s too intense.’
‘You want me to say something?’
‘No, he’s harmless, just annoying.’
‘You’re never going to get away very far from him,’ said Romain. ‘We grew up here and most of us will probably die here.’
‘Not me,’ said Shirone. ‘I’m going to get out as soon as I can.’
‘Me too,’ Romain agreed. ‘I got big plans.’ He had the whole thing worked out in his head. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted to share it with anyone yet. There was an unspoken truth among some of the Cromwell Estate’s kids that if you wanted to leave, you were betraying those who
stayed behind. The best thing to do was just disappear one day.
Jackie Quinten had a hand-knitted look. Like a generation of English ladies from the Home Counties, she at first seemed maternal and matronly, but there was a steeliness in her. And like the plants in St George’s Gardens, she was bred to withstand the most severe urban conditions and outlast virtually everything else.
She was shown into the PCU’s interview room by the intern, Amanda Roseberry, who had asked to sit in on the conversation. Bryant preferred to conduct such sessions in his office, but decided to try and play by the rules for a few days, especially as Roseberry seemed to be on friendly terms with the City of London Public Liaison Officer. At least Banks had now greenlit their interview sessions, even though she had no idea that they’d already started behind her back.
‘I`ve been tending the gardens for seven years,’ Mrs Quinten explained. ‘We’ve never had any trouble. Bloomsbury has more squares and gardens than anywhere else in Central London, and people are grateful that they’re there. They used to be known as “open-air sitting rooms for the poor”, you know. Virginia Woolf used to walk among the graves to plan her novels.’
‘I don’t understand why someone could still be buried there in the present day, if the original graveyard was closed in 1885.’ Bryant had a huge photography book of London burial grounds open on his desk, and was defacing the relevant pages with notes.
‘Well, it was intended to serve as a burial ground for the parishes of St George the Martyr, Holborn, and St George’s, Bloomsbury, but the parishes were combined and others were allowed to use the site.’
‘Other churches, you mean?’
‘Mainly funeral homes. You know what London’s like; nothing is ever straightforward. Because two churches had used the ground it was considered to be nondenominational, and after 1885 a few of the local funeral parlours continued to have dispensations to bury clients there in exceptional circumstances, but very few ever did. I think only one of them still does, John Wells and Sons in Lamb’s Conduit Street. They’ve been around since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and they’re still in the same place.’
Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart Page 5