“I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr Bryant,” replied May with a lift of his glass, and this time he really meant it.
Bryant looked over his friend’s shoulder, in the direction of Waterloo Bridge. Something drew his eye to the centre of the bridge. There was a coruscating flash of dark sunlight, a spear of greenish yellow, and for the briefest moment two elderly men could be seen leaning on the white stone parapet. Then the light settled, and they were gone.
Far above them, the silver-grey barrage balloons that protected the city turned lazily in the early evening air, like old whales searching for the spawning grounds of their youth.
∨ Full Dark House ∧
62
SLEIGHT OF HAND
“What time is it?”
“Almost sunset.” May came away from the hospital window.
“You can see the river from here.”
“Look, John, I’ve still got the mobile phone you bought me.” Arthur Bryant pulled the silver Nokia out from under the bedclothes and waved it at his visitor, waiting for a compliment. The hospital room was awash with garish flowers and get-well cards.
“I thought you’d lost it,” said May, tearing off a grape and eating it.
“No, I’d accidentally switched it with the television remote. Every time Alma changed channels to watch QVC she speed-dialled the Berlin headquarters of Interpol.”
“Well, why didn’t you use the speed-dial to call me?”
“I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I’d been hit on the head,” Bryant complained.
“How is the old noggin?” May peered at the top of his partner’s skull. A row of neat stitches extended from his right ear to the middle of his left eyebrow. “You’re going to have a scar there. Can you remember what happened that night after I left you?”
“Only bits,” Bryant admitted. “I went downstairs to get my paperweight back.”
“What paperweight?”
“The one I threw at the lads from Holmes Road when they came by to make fun of me. It must have been around six in the morning when I went out. I thought I’d better get the thing back because it was a souvenir from the war. I was just coming up the stairs when I saw him. The top door was wide open, and Elspeth Wynter’s son was standing there. He had a green metal cylinder in his fist. He started accusing me of persecuting him, and said he was going to kill me. I should never have sought him out at the Wetherby. I’d upset him when I reminded him how his mother had died. It’s funny the way little things can trigger memories. Give me those, for God’s sake.” He reached forward and emptied grape pips from May’s cupped palm. “Ow.” He clutched at the top of his head and fell back onto the pillow.
“You shouldn’t move about,” warned May. “The nurse says you have to lie still for a few days. What happened after you saw Todd standing there at the unit?”
“What do you think? He hit me, and there was an explosion. I’d just nipped out in my shirt sleeves, I had no ID on me, no wallet. I woke up in a hostel off the Charing Cross Road. A very nice lady kept feeding me mushroom soup. I went back home but my teeth were hurting, so I picked up my dental records.”
“You also took the blueprints covered with your notes from the Palace.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t remember why I’d taken them. I went to see you but I couldn’t get in, so I thought I’d wait. Some hideous monkey-like woman appeared from nowhere and started screaming at me.”
“You missed your own funeral.”
“Was it a good turnout?”
“Excellent, lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, really miserable. You’d have loved it.”
“How did you figure out what had happened?”
“I must admit you had me going for a while. Maggie suggested we try to get in touch with you on the other side – ”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become a believer,” interrupted Bryant. “ – and she needed something you’d touched, so I took her Nijinsky’s shell. She reached the person who’d been killed in the explosion, just as she’d promised. But she’d made contact with Todd, not you. He’d touched the tortoise too. It had probably been his only childhood friend.” May tucked the blanket around his partner’s pyjama’d chest. “I think you’d better come and stay with me for a while, just until you’re a hundred per cent.”
“God, no, you have the television on all the time, it would drive me mad. This one’s bad enough.” He pointed to the wall-mounted TV, tuned to a silent news broadcast.
“We’ll discuss it later. What would you most like to do when you’re better?”
“Oh, I don’t know, take tango lessons, do a bit of sky-diving, the usual stuff.” He thought for a moment and smiled. “Or perhaps we could just go to the river and watch the tide going out.”
“Why not?” May agreed. “There aren’t too many of the old rituals left. It seems a pity to break this one. We’d better get your choppers sorted out as well.” He looked at the bedside table, where Bryant’s gruesomely enormous false teeth sat grinning at him. “If it wasn’t for those horrible things I’d never have thought of searching for you.”
“Then I’d like you to keep them.” Bryant grinned toothlessly, then the smile faded. “He’d not had much of a life, you know, Elspeth’s son. In and out of institutions and halfway houses. He was registered under his mother’s name, Wynter. Yet he seemed not to remember her when we spoke.”
“He remembered enough to follow you back to the unit and wait there until the next night. We were wondering where he got the incendiary device from.”
“Ah, um, I’m rather afraid that was my fault.” Bryant looked sheepish.
“What do you mean?”
“It was mine. I’d kept it as a souvenir from the war.”
“Kept it, all this time? Where?”
“On my desk.”
“I don’t remember anything like that on your desk.”
“The paperweight, the one I chucked at the lads from Holmes Road that night.”
“You’re telling me that was a bomb?”
“I thought it had been defused. I painted it yellow in the sixties – it was the sort of thing you did back then. I must have destabilized it when I threw it out of the window. I got back to the room and found Todd there. He threatened me.”
“So this green metal cylinder he was carrying wasn’t a bomb?”
“No, it was his thermos flask. He hit me over the head with it.”
Bryant gingerly touched his scar. “That’s how I got this. He was trying to kill me. I didn’t know what to do, but the paperweight was still in my hand so I chucked it at him. I didn’t expect it to explode.” May buried his face in his hands. “I can’t believe you blew us up. We thought you were the victim, not the bomber.”
“Try to look on the positive side,” said Bryant brightly. “Maybe now they’ll give us some decent offices.”
“We are in so much trouble,” moaned May. “Do you realize we’ve buried someone else in your grave? Why can’t you be like regular old people and put irresponsibility behind you?”
“I know there have been some inconsistencies in my past behaviour, John, but from now on I’ll try to be exactly the same.” Bryant’s watery blue eyes looked hopefully towards a more certain future. “Oh, before I forget,” said May, emptying the contents of his nylon backpack onto the end of the bed, “I know how much you hate staying in bed and I thought you might like something to occupy your mind while you’re lying here, so I brought you the job applications Sam Biddle forwarded to the unit. You can go through them and select a few of these ‘ordinary civilians’ for interviews.” Bryant eyed the pile of letters suspiciously. “Do I get paid for working overtime?”
“You merely receive the thanks of a grateful nation.”
“Huh.” He lifted the letters up by their corners, examining them as though they were dead animals. When he reached one handwritten envelope, his brow furrowed even more deeply than usual. He opened its flap with a theatrical flourish.
“Hmmp.” He
waved at his bifocals. “Pass me those, would you?”
He unfolded the letter. “Aha. Hmph.”
“I assume you are making those cartoonish noises to attract my attention,” said May wearily.
Bryant tossed the letter at him. “How about this one? We’ll give her an interview, shall we?”
May read for a moment, then raised his eyes. “This is a formal application to join the unit from April, my granddaughter.”
“And you thought there wasn’t anyone in your family willing to carry on the tradition.” Bryant smirked. “Shows how much you know about people.”
“Wait, did you put her up to this?” asked May.
Bryant’s eyes widened with indignant surprise.
“No, of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have, because when I told you last week that the Chief Association of Police Officers was inviting non-professionals to train alongside detectives, you acted as though you didn’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, well then, I don’t. You ought to see her, though.” He licked his lips. “Blimey, I’m starving. It must be nearly time for them to bring the mince trolley round. You’d better be off before it arrives.” As May slipped the note back in its envelope, he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “Perhaps I should get Longbright to fix up an appointment.”
“I think you’ll find she already has. Next Tuesday at eleven.” He was going to ask how Bryant could possibly know, but his partner was already starting to feign sleep.
“You missed your vocation, Arthur,” he said softly. “You really should have been on the stage.”
“The city is my theatre,” murmured Bryant. “I never want to leave it.” He closed his eyes and allowed himself to sink into vast white pillows. “The war.” His voice became a faint whisper. “How little we knew about people then. How little we ever really learn.” Above the foot of the bed, the silent television replayed footage of guns and men, and a distant battle that could never be won.
EOF
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Document ID: d4a68c6b-db61-4ef3-b56f-9a05fb929cd1
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Document creation date: 9.5.2012
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Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House b&m-1 Page 36