Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection)

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Wait, how did you find out all that?’ May asked.

  ‘We’re on a boat,’ said Bryant as if it was obvious. ‘My hearing aid flattens out all sound, so I can hear several conversations at once. Mrs Beaumont is broke. She needs to get her hands on the tapestry because she has a buyer lined up in London. The vicar is probably on the scrounge for a donation to his mission. If Demir Kahraman had simply wanted to thank us he could have sent us a hamper or something. Instead he gets to put up a couple of old farts—’

  ‘Speak for yourself!’

  ‘—on his nice boat for a week. And I don’t trust that Ymir, either; he’s got the build of a bodyguard.’ Bryant packed away his mosquito spray. ‘Right, let’s go up to dinner. The last thing I ate was an easyJet sandwich. It was so bland I ate part of the cardboard wrapper without noticing.’

  With the setting of the sun, the sea had deepened to sumptuous, glowing shades of emerald. A few other yachts were moored nearby, dotting the edges of the lush coastline. No lights showed in the hills and cliffs. The night was so still that the stars were reflected in the ocean. It was impossible not to relax in such an atmosphere of placidity.

  The chef prepared dinner on a wood-fired barbecue clipped to the side of the yacht’s railing. On the table were courgette flowers stuffed with minted halloumi, pilafs and koftas, dolmades, baked sardines, tabbouleh, hummus and chicken skewers. The centrepiece was a grilled octopus, its tentacles separated.

  Bryant whistled. ‘It looks like everybody gets a leg.’

  Demir Kahraman was the perfect host, making sure that his wife and daughter were split among the other guests around the table. Nevriye and Yosun were natural conversationalists, and May loved being seated between two such charming women.

  Alcohol loosened everyone’s tongues. The Rev. Charles Parsley had already caught the sun and was turning blotchy. He was the only one the mosquitos seemed to bother with, and irritably batted them away from his face.

  ‘This isn’t your natural habitat, then?’ Bryant ventured.

  The reverend brushed at his right ear, distracted. ‘What? No, not at all. I have a parish in Winchester. But we’re required to visit outposts from time to time. I’ll only be staying for a few weeks.’ He looked as if he was already thinking about his trip home.

  Mrs Beaumont seemed on edge and uncomfortable. ‘We’re making a stop tomorrow morning, is that correct?’ she asked the captain.

  ‘That’s so, madam. We always stop there.’

  ‘It’s a funny little place,’ said Yosun Kahraman, ‘so small that it has no name. We’ll be making several stops over the next few days. It’s easier to collect mail and fresh vegetables from these little landing points than in Bodrum.’

  As his partner joked easily with the ladies, Bryant narrowed his eyes and studied the group. The guests helped themselves to food and wine, and the atmosphere grew more relaxed. There was so little breeze that the candles on the table burned in perfect unflickering teardrops.

  But Bryant was puzzled. There was a tension at work he could not see, only sense. Something felt out of kilter. Occasionally he caught what he thought was a strange look, a covert glance, a quickly changed expression – and then it was gone.

  The chef served pastries, and a tray of after-dinner liqueurs appeared. Nevriye played the guitar, singing sweetly and softly. Demir talked admiringly of his wife’s recent appearance in a Turkish romantic comedy, then moved on to discussing the worsening political situation in his homeland. He talked about the difficulty of doing business in a country of increasingly authoritarian excesses, and seemed genuinely worried until his daughter stroked his shoulder, calming him.

  As the others prepared for bed, Bryant and May sat at the bow drinking thick Turkish coffee. ‘You know why I think we’ve been invited?’ said Bryant. ‘To keep an eye on things. Yes, Mr Kahraman wanted to thank us, but we’re his insurance.’

  ‘Insurance against what?’ asked May.

  ‘Not what, whom,’ Bryant replied, rising unsteadily. ‘Well, they’re safely off to bed and so am I. I just hope I’m wrong.’

  The next two days passed in a haze of sun, swimming and seafood as the Kahramans’ yacht docked at tiny coastal towns and deserted beaches along the rocky coast. At one stop the ladies went ashore to look at fabrics and jewellery while the men found a blue and white bar overlooking the sea. Ymir collected mail for his boss. Bryant bought a wholly preposterous hat. May tanned and read a week-old copy of The Times. The Reverend Parsley flapped a handkerchief around his scarlet face and complained about being hot, as if it was the last thing he had expected from a country like Turkey. Demir Kahraman strode along the jetty barking into his phone. The ladies arrived laden with bags and ordered lemonades.

  Nevriye tipped back her chair and dozed. Her mother read mail, started a book and slowly fell asleep. Mrs Beaumont wrote letters home and stared out to sea, lost in thought. Bryant marvelled at the effect of the sun on everyone. He did not fall asleep.

  Ymir arrived with the tender and they headed back to the boat for lunch. The chef had laid out a dazzling meze with a whole glazed salmon as its centrepiece. The desserts were just being cleared away when Yosun Kahraman clutched her forehead and called her daughter over.

  ‘I’ll take Mum down to her cabin,’ said Nevriye, ‘she’s not feeling well.’

  ‘It’s probably just the heat,’ said Mrs Kahraman as she was helped to her feet. ‘I’ll be fine after a nap.’

  The captain turned on the air conditioning below deck, and the yacht drifted in the hazy heat of the afternoon.

  An hour later, Demir Kahraman went to check on his wife, and found her seriously ill.

  His initial shock was followed by an urgent demand to fetch a doctor, who arrived by tender and diagnosed a very bad case of food poisoning. Mrs Kahraman would have to be taken to hospital at once. Luckily there was a well-equipped clinic just over the next hill.

  Demir went with his wife. When he returned two hours later, he was able to announce that his beloved Yosun’s condition was serious but stable. She would have to stay in hospital until the cause of the illness could be ascertained and reversed. Demir summoned the chef and asked him to explain himself. Raci described the ingredients of the lunchtime feast in great detail, and insisted that there was nothing unusual in any of the dishes. ‘Besides, you all ate everything that Mrs Kahraman ate,’ he pointed out with great indignation.

  ‘Then why is my wife now in a hospital bed?’ shouted Demir.

  ‘I say, look here, making accusations won’t solve anything,’ said Parsley. As the recriminations continued, the detectives shot each other a look and slipped below deck to Mrs Kahraman’s cabin.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked May as his partner began ransacking drawers.

  ‘I’m taking a quick shufti,’ said Bryant. ‘Have a look around for pills or anything else she could have swallowed.’

  ‘The doctor said food poisoning.’ May snatched a bottle of aspirin out of his partner’s hand and set it down.

  ‘Poison is poison. It just means she ingested something,’ Bryant insisted. ‘What are these?’ He opened a packet of pills and pulled out several silver foil sheets so that May could inspect them.

  ‘They’re statins, for high cholesterol. Tamper-proof packs. Put them back.’

  ‘You heard the chef. She ate the same as everyone else. Now, either she took something that acted in combination with her food, or she was fed something separate and harmful, either knowingly or unknowingly.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that someone on this boat deliberately set out to poison her?’ asked May. ‘Because that would be the most preposterous—’

  But Bryant wasn’t listening. ‘They went ashore and separated. We need to question everyone.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Arthur! We’re guests on a yacht, not working out of King’s Cross. If we do we’ll upset Demir.’

  ‘And if we don’t his wife could die,’ said Bryant.

  They
started with Raci the chef, who enumerated every ingredient in his cooking and presented every unwashed wine glass for inspection.

  ‘She drank some iced water,’ May pointed out. ‘Is it possible she contracted a bug that way?’

  ‘All of our ice is made with bottled water,’ the chef explained, ‘but in general Turkish tap water is fine to drink – it just doesn’t taste very nice.’

  The captain and Ymir also tried to help as best they could, but no new light was shed on how Yosun Kahraman had become so seriously ill.

  The Reverend Charles Parsley was uninterested in the whole affair. Several times he mentioned that he urgently needed to reach his mission and would probably have to take a taxi now, which would prove ruinously expensive. He was obviously regretting having persuaded Demir to take him along the coast. As for Demir’s wife, it was a terrible shame, of course, but he would pray for her recovery.

  Jane Beaumont was more solicitous, in her unyielding county way. She had been seated opposite Yosun during her meal and had not seen her eat or drink anything unusual.

  ‘What about on your shopping expedition?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘Ymir went to collect mail from the post office, Mrs Kahraman and I went to look at cushions and some supposedly antique brassware that turned out to be nothing of the sort, and her daughter went to a T-shirt shop. Then we met up again and all came back on board.’

  ‘And lunch was called when?’

  ‘About half an hour after that.’

  ‘Hghm,’ Bryant grunted.

  May knew that sound and it worried him. It meant that his partner had just stored some information away, but he could not imagine what it was.

  Nevriye and her father sat together. ‘I know it seems rather impertinent to ask questions while you’re worrying about Mrs Kahraman,’ May began, ‘but the more you can tell us about your wife, the more we may be able to help her. She’s a highly respected actress, which means that certain obsessive fans may regard her as public property. Has she ever had any trouble from them?’

  Demir looked at his daughter, who shook her head. ‘No, we don’t think so. She adores her fans. She always says she couldn’t live without them. Nobody has any reason to hate her, nobody in the world. This has to be an accident or a terrible mistake.’

  ‘And in your business, have you any enemies?’

  ‘I export furniture, Mr May,’ said Demir. ‘It is not the kind of profession that makes enemies of people.’

  In the evening, the family headed to Yosun Kahraman’s bedside and spoke to the doctor. They returned with heavy hearts. Mrs Kahraman’s condition had worsened. The doctor warned that if he could not find out the cause of her ailment he would not be able to treat her properly.

  Once again the detectives sat on the deck after everyone else had gone to bed, and discussed the problem. ‘Well, it looks like you were wrong,’ said May. ‘Ymir isn’t here as a bodyguard, and we weren’t invited in a professional capacity. You don’t suppose this has anything to do with the daughter, do you? After all, we did get her boyfriend jailed.’

  ‘The dealer in fake Anatolian kilims?’ Bryant considered the point. ‘I wonder if he’s out of Wandsworth yet.’

  ‘It would help if I could get a Wi-Fi signal,’ said May, checking his phone for the zillionth time.

  ‘If it was the boyfriend, surely he’d have gone after Nevriye?’ said Bryant. ‘After all, it was she who came to us for help and told us of her suspicions. He must know that.’

  ‘He would have had no reason to go after the mother,’ said May.

  ‘I suppose not.’ Bryant took a ruminative sip of his coffee. ‘Unless this wasn’t about motive.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if it was about opportunity?’

  ‘What opportunity? We’re on a boat, Arthur. We’re miles from anywhere and anyone.’

  ‘The ladies went ashore yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, to a town that consisted of five shops, a general store, a bar run by a man with industrial-strength body odour, and several unattractive donkeys.’

  ‘Exactly. Don’t you see?’ Even in the moonlight, May could catch the gleam in his partner’s eye.

  ‘Have you got something in mind?’

  ‘Yes, but it involves a conversation with someone down there.’ He pointed his finger at the deck as he rose to his feet and headed off.

  ‘Why do you have to make a mystery out of everything?’ May shouted in his loudest whisper. ‘Just for once, couldn’t you confide in me?’

  ‘I will, as soon as Ymir has answered one simple question,’ Bryant called back. ‘It’s just a precaution in case I’m wrong. Wait here for me.’

  A few minutes later he returned not just with Ymir but with everyone following him on to the deck in various hasty states of dress. The vicar, somewhat surprisingly, was in a heavy metal T-shirt.

  ‘They were all awake,’ said Bryant apologetically. ‘I hated to disturb them but perhaps it’s for the best.’

  Oh sure, thought May, knowing how dearly his partner loved an audience.

  Bryant turned to Nevriye. ‘What did you do when you went ashore, Nevriye?’

  ‘I walked with my mother and Mrs Beaumont for a while,’ the girl replied, yawning. ‘Then I saw a T-shirt I liked in a shop window and went in to see if I could try it on, but they didn’t have my size.’

  ‘And meanwhile, your mother and Mrs Beaumont looked at antiques?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jane Beaumont, unhappy to be roused from her bed but curious all the same. ‘They were mostly locally produced bits of junk. There was nothing worth buying.’

  ‘And Ymir, you went to the general store, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the Kahramans’ assistant.

  ‘Would you say it’s an old-fashioned place?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it’s a simple country store.’

  ‘Why did you go there?’

  ‘To collect the mail.’

  ‘Why would you have mail waiting there? Doesn’t it just go to the post office in Bodrum?’

  ‘Mrs Kahraman knows she has fans all over the country, and likes to keep in touch with them,’ said Ymir. ‘There’s a bedridden lady who always sends letters to a poste restante here.’

  ‘Does Mrs Kahraman keep all her fan mail?’

  ‘Yes. I look after the correspondence for her.’

  Bryant turned to the captain. ‘You keep a guest book on the bridge, don’t you?’

  ‘You know I do, Mr Bryant, you asked to see it five minutes ago and tore a page out of it.’

  ‘So, if I lay down these signatures …’ Bryant set the torn page on the deck table with a theatrical flourish. ‘And add this one from Mrs Kahraman’s fan letter, you can see—’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Jane Beaumont loudly and suddenly, pointing at Nevriye. ‘You deserve to lose your mother, just as I lost my son! You deserve to suffer as I suffered!’

  ‘Mrs Beaumont is the mother of the boy we jailed on your evidence,’ Bryant explained. ‘He was running drugs out of a counterfeit carpet shop. Unfortunately, it appears that while he was in jail, he got into a fight and died of a knife wound.’

  ‘He was a good boy,’ Mrs Beaumont cried. ‘But he went to London and kept bad company. He probably met his friends through you!’ She stabbed an accusing finger at Nevriye.

  ‘Mrs Beaumont concocted a very simple plan,’ said Bryant. ‘She decided to poison your mother using a completely undetectable method. She started writing to her over the course of a year, telling her what a big fan she was, making sure that Mrs Kahraman regularly received a flattering note or gift from her. It got so that your mother looked forward to the letters, and got Ymir to pick them up for her. The latest one was filled with all the usual flattery, and Mrs Beaumont asked for one thing back: an autograph. She even included a stamped addressed envelope, but not one of the new kind that stick themselves, an old-fashioned one you have to lick to seal. You see the beauty of her method? She not only got
Mrs Kahraman to poison herself; she mailed the sole piece of evidence back to the killer!’

  In the silence that followed, you could have heard a sea anemone flowering on the ocean bed.

  ‘Except that Ymir hasn’t had time to post the letter yet.’ Bryant produced it from his pocket with the flair of a master magician. ‘Captain, can you make sure this is taken to Mrs Kahraman’s doctor at once for analysis? Unless you’d care to do the decent thing, Mrs Beaumont, and tell us what you used?’

  ‘It’s wheatear,’ said Mrs Beaumont, deflated and defeated. ‘It grows in my garden. The stems contain oenanthotoxin. Hemlock. It’s lethal if it goes untreated.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was your son, Jane,’ said Nevriye. ‘We never stayed in contact with each other. I hadn’t heard—’

  ‘The fact remains,’ Bryant interrupted, ‘that he would not have died if he hadn’t first broken the law. It’s a tragedy, but another death doesn’t make it right. Mrs Beaumont, thank you for telling us the truth. Captain, can you radio the hospital at once?’

  Mrs Beaumont fell to her knees and cried, her rigid county demeanour finally shattered.

  The next morning, after a conversation with the doctor, who said that they had been able to successfully administer an antidote to Mrs Kahraman, the detectives discussed the matter with Demir Kahraman and his daughter, and it was decided that Mrs Beaumont should escape prosecution.

  When John May went to her cabin to tell her the news, he discovered that tragedy had not been averted. Mrs Beaumont was lying half out of her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. In her right hand was an empty plastic bottle of sleeping pills. On her chest was a photograph of her dead son. Unlike her victim, she could not be saved.

  ‘And that was the end of my holiday,’ Bryant told the staff at the PCU, when asked to explain his early return. ‘I thought I’d get some nice grub and a suntan, instead of which I got attempted murder, revenge and suicide. You won’t catch me mucking about on boats again. Things are quieter here in King’s Cross. Here.’ He threw Janice Longbright a bottle of mosquito repellent. ‘I won’t be needing this again.’