Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  Now he found himself in the warm perfumed air of an Afro-Caribbean hair salon and nail bar. None of the clients were frightened, but one of the girls yelled and threw pink spiky rollers at him as he passed. The student looked back and saw that Banbury, deficient in all tracking skills but tenacity, was still behind him.

  The entire terrace appeared to be connected, like market buildings in Morocco and India. A further door took them through to the upper floor of a homewares store, its shelves filled with saucepans and knives of every imaginable shape and size. I’m going to die here, Banbury thought, catching his breath as he searched among the overcrowded stands.

  He thought of arming himself with a carving knife, but they were sealed in plastic packs. A flash of red at the far end set him off again. Turning on his heel, he grabbed the largest utensil he could find by its handle. He beat Red Hood to the end of the next shelf and swung as hard as he could, catching the student’s head a glancing blow with a wok.

  Red Hood threw a punch back that connected with Banbury’s collarbone and sent him sprawling into a stack of smashing, clattering teapots. A hand on the shelf, another on the door jamb, he’s leaving spoor everywhere, Banbury could not help thinking. This time there was no further exit available. Red Hood spun around, looking for a way out, then started moving to the open window at the front of the room.

  No, Banbury thought, looking down at the red-and-white-striped awning of the stall twelve feet below, I thought we agreed, no Bruce Willis moments.

  He could not see what it sold, but for all he knew it was garden shears and bread knives, all pointing upwards. Red Hood jumped without thinking twice, and Banbury, having come this far, could only follow.

  The stall sold pillows and duvet sets. The awning split when his quarry hit it, and Banbury followed, landing among the quilts and comforters. Unfortunately one of the wooden top-struts fractured and a shard pierced Banbury’s left thigh. On the other hand, he’d landed directly on top of Red Hood and would have now been able to cuff him, if he had been carrying handcuffs. His wallet was in his jacket, which was still hanging on the back of the chair in the chapel – it had his Met and PCU ID cards in it.

  ‘I’m a copper, call my unit if you don’t believe me,’ he yelled at the horrified stallholder as the man beneath his boots started to revive. ‘I’m not getting off him. Write the number down. Have you got a pen? This guy is under arrest. My God, I’m out of condition.’

  39

  WIVES AND MOTHERS

  ‘It’s not a hook-up,’ said Sennen Renfield as they headed down the steps of Albany High School on Tuesday evening. ‘She has some study questions, and I told her you could help her. On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Martin asked.

  ‘I’m there too. I’m looking out for her interests, OK? She’s been through a lot and I don’t want you upsetting her.’

  ‘Why would I agree to that?’

  ‘Because you like her.’ Sennen knew she had won the argument. She was greatly enjoying her new covert role among her classmates. It felt as if she had the upper hand for once. She was in control.

  ‘OK, let’s go.’ Martin slung his bag over his shoulder, not waiting for her to catch up.

  ‘She’s in a coffee shop in King’s Cross Station,’ Sennen called. They walked together through the rain, slipping between stalled cars, dodging the tourists who dragged their cases between terminals wondering what on earth had possessed them to come to London in the summer. ‘She’s scared to go anywhere by herself. First she had your mum stalking her—’

  ‘I told you it wasn’t her. Why are you always going on about my mum?’

  ‘There’s a lot of weird stuff happening. My dad says there’s someone going around wiping out, like, everyone to do with Romain Curtis.’ She’d made that last part up, but it sounded feasible.

  ‘What would your dad know about it?’

  ‘He’s only in charge of the entire case, isn’t he? He’s a police officer, yeah?’

  ‘You never properly explained what he did. I thought he was, like, behind a desk or something.’

  ‘You didn’t ask. Anyway, my dad says they’re getting ready to make an arrest any moment now.’

  Martin suddenly seemed interested in her. Now she was really loving the new level of attention, and decided to take it further. ‘And you know something else? He already knows who the killer is and why they did it and everything. Only he’s not allowed to say until they make the arrest.’

  She could tell she had impressed him. ‘Wow,’ he said, clearly seeing her in a new light. ‘So the investigation’s right in our ‘hood.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sennen. ‘But I can’t say any more.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She decided to extemporize. ‘He told me who did it. He needed to share what he knew with someone ’cause it was eating him up.’

  ‘Jesus, Sennen, don’t tell anyone else; something like that could be really dangerous,’ Martin warned. ‘Suppose they found out that you knew something? They could come after you.’

  ‘That’s why I’m friendly with Shirone’s brothers,’ said Sennen. ‘Nobody’s going to mess with them ’cause they’re really hard.’

  ‘OK, but maybe you should carry a blade or something, just in case.’

  ‘I’m not walking around tooled up,’ said Sennen indignantly. ‘Hello? School’s got a knife arch?’

  ‘Fair enough.’ They had turned into Euston Road and crossed over to the station. Martin caught sight of Shirone sitting by the rain-streaked window in the coffee shop and held up his hand. ‘There she is. You coming in or what?’

  ‘Try and stop me,’ said Sennen with new confidence.

  Vanessa Wallace had barely been able to stop crying in days. She couldn’t bring herself to look in a mirror – she was sure that her swollen face added years. She supposed she was lucky that Krishna Jhadav had refused to press charges on the condition that she stayed away from him. Could nobody else see the truth? The police were useless; she could trust no one. God, and the embarrassment of a restraining order, or at least the threat of one, on top of everything else. She hadn’t been happy for a long time, but now she was living a nightmare.

  She had cleaned everything in the house ten times over, and there was finally nothing left to do. She had wanted to clean inside Martin’s room but he kept the door locked, jealously guarding his private space. She wanted to get him to open up about his father, but nothing would make him talk to her. All he ever said was that he hated Thomas for being so weak. They had never been a demonstrative family, never been able to discuss their feelings without embarrassment, and hatred was such an unlikely emotion for Martin. There was no violence in him, just undirected pain.

  Her behaviour in the aftermath of Thomas’s suicide had distanced them even further from each other, and nothing could ever be put back together. Thomas had been a decent man, a moral man, in spite of their differences. He’d loved her and his son but he’d never found his proper place in the world. Now she had lost her place too, and wondered if Martin would ever regain his equilibrium. He was refusing counselling, and she feared he was falling behind in his studies. The old M*A*S*H song was wrong; suicides weren’t painless, they were horribly selfish.

  But Martin – he was her only hope, and perhaps he would be all right. In the last twenty-four hours he had changed somehow, brightening up a little, taking calls in his room, talking to one of the girls at school. She knew he was sweet on the tarty-looking one who’d been out with the boy who died – a name like Shirley, but one of those made-up names girls had these days. Perhaps she would be able to reach him, if anyone could.

  Irina Cope found herself standing in the middle of the aisle in Sainsbury’s, not knowing what she was doing there. After hearing how Krishna had died, she had called the agency and been instructed to take off as much time as she needed. Her appalled disbelief at being told the news had already given way to a stranger, more dislocated feeling. She felt cheated out
of something indefinable. Krishna had never confided in her, never opened up to her. She had always assumed that one day they would talk, sharing their pasts and thoughts for the future, but now that opportunity had been lost. How could you mourn someone you had never really got to know?

  She thought, Either I have to get a basket and buy something, or I need to leave. What did I come in here for? Yoghurt? Tea?

  Janice Longbright, the detective sergeant who had been so kind towards her, had called with the news that Jhadav’s death was not accidental. She had immediately thought of Vanessa Wallace, but had then wondered, was it remotely likely that someone who had already been cautioned by the police would take Krishna’s life?

  Her partner, the man she had hoped to marry, had made money buying and selling waste for a living, and he had drowned in it – was anything more bizarre ever likely to happen? She wanted to run home and lock the doors, to get under the covers and never leave the flat again. They’d had a baby-faced local constable posted outside the house since Mrs Wallace attacked Krishna, and now Longbright had told her he would stay until the case was closed. She looked about her, at the mothers and children doing their weekly shopping, living lives where nothing too strange or disturbing ever happened, and could not understand why she had been singled out for this torment.

  Romain’s mother, Louisa Curtis, returned from the church in Finsbury with Alma Sorrowbridge. They walked slowly together through the rain with their red and yellow umbrellas touching, talking of God’s plans for the world. They didn’t reach any firm conclusions, but Mrs Curtis appreciated the walk back even though her shoes were letting in water. It was good to have someone with whom she could share her troubles.

  ‘Mr Bryant isn’t what you’d call a believer in the traditional sense,’ said Alma, somewhat euphemistically. ‘He’s always picking holes in the Bible and making fun of it.’

  ‘Well, it is contradictory,’ said Mrs Curtis. ‘Doesn’t Elijah get taken up to heaven in Kings, when it says that no man can rise up to heaven in John? There are a lot of passages like that. I don’t think you should take it literally.’

  ‘Mr Bryant certainly believes in something,’ Alma decided, ‘but I think it’s linked to an inner spirit rather than a greater power. Police officers have a very black-and-white sense of morality. He reckons people should suffer what they make others suffer. I’m never quite sure whether he doesn’t like people at all, or loves them too much.’

  ‘It helped to be with other people today,’ said Mrs Curtis. ‘The children have been wonderful. So many of them have written to me about Romain. I didn’t realize he was quite so well liked. There are flowers tied to the lamp-post on the street where it happened. The class wanted to hold a candlelit vigil there, but Camden Council wouldn’t let them. Something to do with Health and Safety. It’s all so confusing. They talk about closure, don’t they? I’m not sure I know what that is. I mean he’s gone and I’ll never really find out why, so I just have to let him go without knowing.’

  Alma looked over and saw her sniffing, and dug out a packet of paper handkerchiefs. ‘You can’t start crying now, not after you got all the way through the service.’

  ‘He was my light,’ Mrs Curtis said miserably. ‘He was the one who would have changed us all.’

  ‘Then you have to make sure he still does,’ said Alma firmly. ‘We have to put our trust in Mr Bryant. Even though he doesn’t believe in God, perhaps God has belief in him.’

  The bereaved women of London walked in the rain and shopped and looked from their windows, and tried to imagine a world where their tragedies had not happened. They knew that the city had rolled on through plagues and wars and bombings and fires, and its families had survived by transmuting into strange new forms. London was cold and hard, but could, when the occasion called for it, rise, warm itself and provide succour, so the one thing none of them did was wallow in self-pity. To live here required the ability to change and evolve.

  Death came suddenly, but life on these streets was never truly over.

  40

  BETWEEN THE LINES

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ asked Raymond Land as Bryant swept in, scattering rain and paperwork everywhere.

  ‘Don’t be cross – I hate it when you’re cross.’ He waved at the intern. ‘You, Lavinia or whatever your name is, could I have a cup of tea? I’m gagging.’

  ‘I don’t do tea,’ said Amanda Roseberry sweetly. ‘I’m Radio Operation and Driving Skills, not Teabags, and so far I haven’t had a chance to use any of my training.’

  ‘Look, I’ll try to think of a way of using you if on this occasion you whip up a brew, how about that? Raymondo, I urgently need to talk to John so you’ll forgive me if we forgo the lighthearted banter for a while.’

  ‘You don’t wriggle away that easily,’ said Land. ‘Orion Banks has put my direct line on speed-dial since we found Jhadav’s body. She won’t be put off any longer.’

  ‘What is she going to do, Raymond? Close us down? That was Oskar Kasavian’s job, and look how far that got him. She’s the one who’s been delaying us all this time. Banks is a summer rain; she drifts in and gives everything a good soaking before dissipating and re-forming over some other poor sod’s department. Don’t worry about the small things. We’re so close now.’

  Land’s ears pricked up. ‘What do you mean, close? Do you have something?’

  ‘Yes, I do, as it happens.’

  ‘Then tell me, just this once tell me first. Arthur – may I call you Arthur?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Bryant shrugged apologetically. ‘I have to see John. You know he’s the other half of my brain.’

  ‘Well, what am I?’

  ‘You’re sort of like the control part of any experiment.’

  Land looked stumped. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I talk to you and I always know what not to do,’ Bryant replied.

  Land was crestfallen. He had really tried of late, but this was the last straw. ‘I go out on a limb for you,’ he warned. ‘Everyone out there thinks you’re mad.’

  ‘Good. So long as they continue to underestimate us, the more we’ll surprise them.’

  ‘But I don’t want to surprise anyone!’ shouted Land. He found himself arguing with an empty room.

  Bryant discovered his partner at his computer, attempting to spear rolls of congealed spaghetti carbonara on to a bending plastic fork.

  ‘When was the last time you had a home-cooked meal?’ Bryant asked.

  May thought for a minute. ‘I think it was just before Brigitte gave up on me and returned to Paris,’ he said. ‘I’m used to eating with a keyboard in front of me now.’

  ‘After this is over I’ll have Alma cook us a beef and ale pie. We’ve got ourselves a New Resurrectionist. Our Dan managed to land him, or rather, land on him. Meera’s quite put out about it. She doesn’t like to be upstaged when it comes to duffing up suspects. She sprained her ankle falling off some scaffolding. Dan’s got a bandaged leg but he’s really making a fuss over what was effectively a splinter, the big baby.’

  ‘Who is this person he’s caught?’ asked May through a mouthful of cold pasta.

  ‘One of the men who was there the night I was taken to the chapel. I recognize his voice.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘He’s waiting in the interview room. Thought you’d like to sit in.’

  They headed upstairs together. ‘You’re going to be sensible with him, aren’t you?’ asked May. ‘I know you’re probably on his side but I don’t want you blithely waving everything he says through the logic checkpoint just because his ideals match yours.’

  ‘I resent your insinuations about my impartiality,’ Bryant replied. ‘Just for that, you can ask the questions.’

  ‘Resurrectionists? Oh no you don’t, this is your baby.’

  As Bryant seated himself in the interview room, he checked the charge sheet. ‘Addison Court? Sounds like a council block. Are you sure that’s you
r name?’

  ‘I was born in America.’ Despite being sat on and arrested, Court was impossibly fresh-faced. He had the Midwestern milk-fed look of a college kid. London had yet to leave its grubby scuffmarks on him.

  ‘Ah, so you are. Well, let’s not remove the remaining scraps of dignity from the proceedings by pretending that you don’t know why you’re here. The question is: why did you run?’

  ‘We left behind a body,’ said Court. ‘There wasn’t time to take it with us.’

  ‘Why did you all feel the need to vacate the premises with such celerity?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Why did you bugger off?’

  ‘We heard about Stephen getting shot in Hyde Park. We thought you’d decide that one of us did it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How did you hear about him getting shot?’

  ‘We had a phone call.’

  ‘A man with a deep, slightly Eastern European voice?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Mr Merry picked up the news from the mics,’ Bryant told his partner. He turned his attention back to the student. ‘Why would I think that one of you was guilty? You asked me to find him, remember?’

  ‘It meant you’d come looking for us, whether you thought we were guilty or not. Our security had been compromised. We needed to relocate. Kinda sad, seeing as Stephen went to all the effort of securing our rent.’

  ‘Fair enough, I’ll buy that. Do you have any idea who shot him?’

  ‘I think we all assume it was the person who hired him.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because he’s taking care of business, man. He went to Stephen because he needed someone who knew how to dig up a grave and open a casket. He’d have had to let Stephen know what he was planning, and once Stephen knew, he was a risk.’

  ‘Which brings us to this mysterious client,’ said Bryant, leaning forward. ‘What do you think he wanted?’