‘What on earth for?’
‘They might be able to shed further light on his state of mind.’
‘He wanted to get out,’ said Martin.
‘That’s a lie. We were happy together. We had our differences but we were a happy family.’ Mrs Wallace sat down with an air of defeat. ‘We were a happy family,’ she said again, as if trying to convince herself.
‘Nevertheless, I’d like to have a quiet word with someone who was close to him at work.’
‘Thomas didn’t get on with the senior partners. He never socialized with them. He was closer to his clients.’ She reached over to a notepad – the same one, it seemed, that her husband’s suicide note had been torn from – and after thinking for a moment, jotted down a telephone number. ‘You might be better off talking to this gentleman,’ she said. ‘A man called Krishna Jhadav – I don’t know if I’ve spelled that right. He runs the brokerage, the account my husband was looking after until Mr Jhadav pulled it away from him. The pair of them were quite close. They played golf together at least once a month.’
‘I had to sit through a disgusting dinner while they talked about industrial waste,’ said Martin. ‘The guy was a total scumbag, obviously on the take from other companies, like all of his capitalist pals.’
‘My husband paid the price of failure,’ said Mrs Wallace. ‘What I’d like to know is why somebody decided to compound that price by vandalizing his final resting place.’
‘It crossed my mind that someone might have had an objection to him being buried in a public park,’ said Bryant.
‘It has been some kind of graveyard for centuries. Nobody seemed to mind.’
‘Was there a shovel?’ asked Martin, genuinely interested.
‘I suppose there should have been,’ May admitted, ‘but we haven’t turned one up. We have a colleague examining CCTV footage, but the nearest cameras may not be able to show us anything.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s summer. The trees are in full leaf, and around here that’s a problem. Unless they’re cut back all the time they obscure some of the cameras. And the council’s tree cutters are out on strike at the moment.’
‘So neither of you have any other theory as to why my husband’s grave was attacked, or what he was doing …’ She looked for a moment as if she might break, but rallied. ‘What his body was doing,’ she corrected. ‘I mean, he was dead.’
‘That is the supposition,’ said Bryant carefully.
‘Well, he’s not really likely to have come back to life. Even for a moment, surely?’ She looked from one to the other.
‘Well, I don’t think so—’ began May.
Bryant cleared his throat. ‘There were cases outlined in Dr Heinrich Kornmann’s book De Miraculis Mortuorum of the pulse and heartbeat lowering to such an extent that they become undetectable and a deathlike state was induced,’ he mused. May glared a warning at him.
‘Surely you’re not suggesting that a modern doctor could fail to notice such a thing?’ Mrs Wallace was outraged.
‘They can’t be expected to be conversant with the state of Scheintod, or death trance, also referred to as the Counterfeit of Death,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s extremely rare and generally involves undiagnosed epilepsy, but I think at this stage we have to consider all possible—’
‘We have to go,’ said May, seizing his partner’s arm. ‘Please allow us to offer our most sincere condolences for your loss, and be assured that we’ll contact you as soon as we have any further information.’
‘For all the good it will do,’ Vanessa Wallace muttered, utterly lost. She was looking down at the profusion of paperwork, her hand at her mouth. Her son had finally set down his mobile and was staring angrily out of the garden window. The only sound in the bare room was the ticking of a 1930s carriage clock, but when May looked more carefully he saw that it was a cheap reproduction, the gilt too bright, the tick without weight.
It’s time to leave them in peace, he thought, giving a nod to each in turn. This is a house where grief will live for a long time yet.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said as soon as they got outside. ‘The poor woman just lost her husband and you’re going on about undetectable heartbeats and the possibility of him waking up in his coffin. Do you understand that other people have feelings, even if you don’t?’
‘Oh, come off it,’ Bryant replied indignantly. ‘Even you were surprised when the lad made that crack about jumping off the restaurant roof. And she’s not remotely sorry for him, she’s angered by his weakness and by the parlous state in which he left his finances.’
‘Thomas Wallace was about to be given the boot for losing his firm’s biggest account. It seems pretty clear-cut to me that he died and his grave was vandalized by kids, unless you think there’s something else worth investigating.’
Bryant was pursuing his own train of thought. ‘We need to see if he had any enemies. Someone might have thought it was a good idea to desecrate his grave, just to hurt his wife. See what you can find out.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked May.
‘I’m going to the Tower of London,’ said Bryant. ‘I’ve been urgently summoned by the Raven Master.’
8
CRY CORPSE
The Tower of London had changed since he was last there. The visitors’ entrance had been moved to a different spot and there was a new café near by. These days the White Tower looked so much smaller, hemmed in as it was by the shimmering steel and glass cliffs of the business district.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Bryant remembered standing in the centre of Tower Green and imagining himself present at the execution of Anne Boleyn, for the simple reason that there had been nothing to bisect the horizon. Although views possessed intangible values and the sightlines to St Paul’s Cathedral remained protected, the frontline of financial London had gradually advanced around the Tower. Since 1066 the old fortress, protected by a moat and a river, had accrued purposes to become a complex of mismatched buildings set within the concentric rings of its defensive walls. It had been a palace, a prison, a residence, an armoury, a treasure house, a menagerie, a mint – and was now a box to tick off the bucket list, another World Heritage site to trot through in a couple of hours, squeezed in between a ride in the London Eye and a West End musical.
The Tower was a place no true Londoner ever really thought about; it was just there, over to the east and down at the waterline, barely visible behind nests of scaffolding and the accretion of ugly red rooftops, a bank of Gormenghastian dwellings that housed the Yeoman Warders, who were required to be home each night before the 700-year-old Ceremony of the Keys. If it had been founded upon a hill like other castles, the Tower would still have looked down upon the city. Instead, the city had risen volcanically above it, and how paradoxical it was that England’s most potent monument should now sit beneath its people, awaiting their attendance.
Bryant was shown in through a narrow causeway separated out from the tourist trail. The site was closing now, and the last few visitors were making their way towards the exit. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, twelve Yeoman Warders had been kept here to guard the palace. In typically English confusion, their duties were different from the Yeoman of the Guard, the ceremonial bodyguards who were still required to search the cellars of the Palace of Westminster prior to the State Opening of Parliament. The Warders, or Beefeaters, dressed in thistle, rose and shamrock, in maroon and gold stripe for state occasions, but during the day they wore simplified uniforms of navy and red, and spent their time entertaining tourists with stories. They were men – and one woman – of maturity and gravity; a minimum of twenty-two years’ distinguished service in the armed forces was required before a new member could be appointed.
Bryant had known Matthew Condright since the Falklands War, but had seen little of him. The Warders gave their lives over to the Tower, and Condright had remained a steadfast royalist whose duty came before all othe
r concerns. At least, it had until a problem had arisen involving the hounding of a fellow soldier, and then he had asked for Bryant’s help in finding the culprits. Today he had turned to his old friend once more.
Condright received him in his tied accommodation, a cosy home he shared with his wife under the battlements of the castle keep. His sideburns and shovel beard seemed to mark him as a Warder even out of uniform. He shook Bryant’s hand warmly, but ushered him from the door and into an outside passage almost immediately. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t talk in front of Hannah,’ he said, ‘although she knows – God, they all know – and that’s why I called you. Bloody useful that you’re under the City of London now, because we can’t allow outsiders to get hold of this. It’s a matter of national importance, and nobody can know. If it got out, I hate to think—’
‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’ said Bryant impatiently. ‘Nobody’s dead, are they?’
‘No, nothing like that – something far stranger, if you can believe it. I can barely believe it myself. You probably know that I’m the Raven Master here.’
‘I did read something about it, yes.’
‘They’ve gone. All seven of them. Hugine, Erin, Merlin, Munin, Rocky, Pearl and Porsha. Vanished into thin air. I know it doesn’t seem possible.’
‘Wait, the Tower ravens have all disappeared? Doesn’t that mean that England will fall?’
‘Bloody hell, Arthur, let’s start with the practical part first, eh? They’re one of our star attractions, and they’ve been nicked.’
‘There’s method in my madness, Matthew; indulge me for a moment.’
‘All right.’ Condright sighed. ‘The legend says that the ravens must never leave the Tower because it’s tied to the Crown of England, but these days we think that was a romantic myth created by the Victorians.’
‘I thought there was a history of English kings associated with ravens dating back to the time of Charles the Second.’
‘I believe there is, but the legend can only be dated as far back as 1955. Forget the history for a moment. What I need to know is where they’ve gone and who took them. I’m about to lose my job over this. Can you imagine what would happen if the news got out? There would be an international scandal. The Crown Jewels are housed here. What if they’re not safe either?’
‘When did you become aware that the ravens were missing?’
‘On Friday morning. I went down to feed them – they’re kept in overnight.’
‘Can we go and see the cage?’
‘Of course.’
Bryant and Condright set off across the uneven cobbles of the walkway leading from Henry III’s Watergate to the Lanthorn Tower. They made an incongruous pair; Condright towered over the detective. He stopped before a low metal cage covered by a large black tarpaulin.
‘They’re natural carnivores. I feed them raw meat from Smithfield Market, and biscuits soaked in blood,’ he explained. ‘Nobody could have got in to steal them, because the building is locked up tight every night.’
‘The Ceremony of the Keys.’
‘And the birds always pass the night inside this cage.’
‘How do they get in?’
‘There’s a flap at the back. They always come in for their food. We don’t let visitors feed them.’
‘Who else has the key to the cage?’
‘That’s the thing. Only me. Nobody else.’
‘Could someone have borrowed it from you and copied it?’
‘No. It never leaves the chain inside my coat. And the only time I take this off is to go to bed.’
‘So – your wife.’
‘No, Arthur. She never touches my clothes. I take care of them myself. She knows that my livelihood is tied to the performance of my duties.’
Bryant crouched down and lifted the edge of the tarpaulin. Beneath it were the black steel struts and wire mesh of the empty cage. ‘What happens to the birds during the day?’
‘They’re free to roam about during visitors’ hours but their wings have been clipped, so it’s impossible for them to fly away.’
‘Could somebody have walked out with them?’
‘Not possible. Have you seen how big they are? The visitors’ bags are carefully checked, and besides, the birds are noisy and will attack strangers if approached. They’re vicious, raucous buggers. I’m at a complete loss.’
‘There has to be a symbolic purpose to the theft,’ said Bryant. ‘They’re not valuable, are they?’
‘They’re the symbol of England, Arthur. At least, that’s what they’ve come to stand for. We’ve covered the cage for now and posted a sign saying it’s closed for renovation, but in a couple of days people are going to start asking why they haven’t seen any birds hopping about on the green. You have to keep this to yourself. Don’t let anyone outside the unit know what you’ve been asked to investigate. My head will be on the block if they’re not found quickly.’ It was an unfortunate turn of phrase, given the setting.
‘I don’t suppose someone’s pulling your leg, are they?’ asked Bryant. ‘This couldn’t be some kind of elaborate practical joke?’
‘I wish it was,’ said Condright. ‘We’re trying to buy some replacements right now, but so far we haven’t found good matches. To me, each bird has a distinctive personality, although the public can’t see the differences between them.’ He helped Bryant to his feet. ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I can see why it was done but not how, or by whom. Tell me, who else knows about this?’
‘We’ve informed a select few, but it would be disastrous if any details reached the press – they’d turn us into a laughing stock.’
‘We should be able to keep a lid on it,’ Bryant agreed, ‘but I’ll still have to clear the investigation with my superior at the City of London. I can’t wait to see her face when I tell her about this.’
When Bryant got back to the unit and informed his partner, John May laughed so hard that he nearly choked on the piece of cheesecake he was eating.
‘Where did you get that from?’ Bryant demanded to know.
‘The new intern went out and bought cakes for everyone,’ said May, dusting crumbs from his suit jacket. ‘So England will fall unless you find who swiped the ravens? Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep reading an Agatha Christie?’
‘All right, have your laugh, but look at it from his point of view. Matthew has been entrusted with the safekeeping of one of London’s best-known traditions. Someone’s out to get him. Someone from his past, someone he encountered in active service for his country, who knows? The Warders aren’t immune to scandal, you know. Back in 2009 two of the Yeomen were dismissed for bullying the only female Warder. One was reinstated, but it tarnished the reputations of them all. They work as a team in the service of the Queen. It’s a very serious matter.’
‘OK,’ said May, holding up a hand. ‘I’m going to let you deal with this one. If I were you, I’d check their meat supplier. From what I remember, those birds are the size of Alsatians and ferocious. If somebody made off with them, they would have to be drugged first and smuggled out in … I don’t know, the false bottom of a holdall or something.’
‘You’d need seven very big holdalls. Strictly speaking, there are six ravens and one in reserve, like a volleyball team.’
May tried to stifle another laugh, as he had no desire to spit cake crumbs over the office. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You do what you have to do, Arthur. I’m going to carry on checking CCTV footage with Dan, looking for a way that Thomas Wallace might have risen from the grave. And if you think of it, you might ask Raymond when we’re going to get assigned a nice normal murder case again.’
‘Not every investigation starts with a body found in a canal or a railway siding,’ said Bryant indignantly. ‘According to my latest copy of the Police Gazette, London’s murder rate is at a forty-three-year low and dropping. Last year there were only half a dozen gun deaths in a metropolis of nearly eight million people. We’re living in one of th
e safest cities on the planet. That’s a welcome bit of news for the good citizens of London but it’s bloody boring for those of us who make a living from bad tidings. You and I are going to get fewer cases that involve gruesome slaughters and more that involve cats stuck up trees.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ said May. ‘Most of the really big crimes take place on the other side of computer screens now, shifting dodgy mineral deposits from the Congo to Russia.’
‘I’m too old to retrain for investigating anything like that. Besides, I like a proper crime, something that involves a blackjack or a garrotting, or a humiliated colonel trying to offload a crate of black-market nylons.’
‘Fine,’ said May, ‘you carry on pretending it’s 1953 and I’ll try to make sure that we still have jobs to go to in the present day, shall I?’
Bryant opened a page of his 1932 Arthur Mee Children’s Encyclopaedia and pointed to a sinister photograph of a raven casting a great dark shadow on the English landscape. ‘The ravens aren’t just the symbol of England, John, they’re also a sign of death. If you see them flying overhead, someone will die. It’s because their cry sounds like “Corpse! Corpse!” And although the idea of the loss of the ravens preceding the fall of England is recent, it’s an extension of a much older myth. There have been royal animals at the Tower since at least 1213. As late as 1882 the three great sights of London were meant to be the lions at the Tower, the tombs of Westminster Abbey and Bedlam. If ever a lion died, it was thought that the sovereign would also perish. The animals are fertility symbols, of course, a nod to London’s pagan past.’
‘I don’t see what any of that’s got to do with someone nicking a bunch of fancy crows,’ said May.
‘Oh, that I had your gift of eloquence,’ said Bryant sarcastically. ‘Those “fancy crows” weren’t killed by some mindless vandal; they were spirited away without leaving a trace. This was an emblematic act of treason, a warning.’
‘A warning of what?’ asked May.
Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart Page 7