♦
“I’m over here,” said the hole, as a fistful of toothbrushes came flying out of it.
John May walked to the earth mound surrounding the edge and looked down. His partner was on all fours in the muddy pit, scrabbling at sheaves of half-buried Bakelite handles. What on earth did he think he was doing?
“I told you it was a toothbrush factory,” Bryant panted. “The estate agent insisted it was dentures.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My new apartment, it’s converted from the only remaining part of a toothbrush factory that survived the wartime bombing. This whole area was riddled with small workshops.”
“After all this time I still don’t understand you,” complained May, giving him a hand out of the quagmire. “You go missing from the unit without telling anyone where you’re heading, and now I find you at home? And why do you have to know the history of the ground you live on? Why can’t you just leave things alone?”
“Well, yes, that would be the easiest thing to do,” Bryant admitted, “but so many questions would remain unanswered. Did you not wonder how I managed to buy this place so cheaply?” Bryant had made his new home on the unfashionable side of Chalk Farm, which bordered the fashionable, expensive, celebrity-riddled Primrose Hill.
“Let me guess. It was cheap because it has a peculiar shape, uneven floors, damp patches, a leaky flat roof that appears to be made of tin, and is built on a triangular piece of overgrown waste ground barely ten yards from a heavily used railway line?”
“It has character.”
“It has mice.”
“And it has no foundations. That’s why it was cheap.” Bryant stamped mud from his Wellingtons and entered the yellow brick apartment through an old-fashioned green stable door divided across the middle.
“So it’s liable to fall down as well. You know it was never designed to be lived in. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was illegal to do so. Poor Alma, how she must miss her cosy apartment in Battersea. Have you got any heating?”
“Not as such,” Bryant admitted. “Now that you mention it, Alma has been covetously glancing at brochures on Antigua lately. The toothbrush-making machinery probably kept the whole place warm in winter. Never mind, there’s a stack of broken trestle tables at the end of the garden. I could burn them if it gets really cold.”
“Look, I’ll bring you a portable radiator. And throw out all those filthy toothbrushes.” May’s St John’s Wood flat was as clean and bare as an operating theatre. Even April had warned her grandfather that he was exhibiting signs of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. May reacted to the chaos of the world around him by creating a hygienic haven where he could work and think far into the night. Bryant, on the other hand, seemed to be living with the ants.
“I rather thought I’d create an artwork with the toothbrushes, although I’m not sure how easy it is to carve Bakelite. I suppose my fleeting interests are a bit of a curse. To whom will I pass on all my arcane knowledge? I do admire your ability to draw a line underneath the past and leave it alone.”
“It’s the best thing to do,” said May, searching for somewhere clean to sit. He was worried by the fact that his partner was digging in the garden at a time when he should have been concentrating on the case. Every few months, fresh fears assailed him about Bryant’s advancing age affecting his abilities. Everyone had doubts as they grew older, but when wrong decisions were made in the course of crime detection, lives were at stake. He hoped he would once again be proven wrong but could not shake the feeling that they were now living on borrowed time.
“Exactly, you see. England has the most contemporary spiritual landscape in Europe. Why not make the most of it? Continuity has been fractured, leaving a spiritual vacuum. The meaningful aesthetics of family and religion have fallen by the wayside. We have tribalisms, but no belief system against which we can measure ourselves. And just when we’re free to reinvent ourselves on this wonderful blank canvas, to finally prove responsible for our own destinies, international corporations are busy trying to fill the void. What could be more grotesque than companies behaving like vengeful deities by copyrighting the genetic code, or stopping seeds from reproducing? So someone must remain behind to remember the past, and I’ve appointed myself for the task. Do you want tea?”
“I’ll make it,” May insisted. “You get cleaned up.”
Bryant’s landlady had been hard at work in the jumble of cavernous, damp rooms that now constituted their home. 'Youched by her decision to give up her Battersea apartment for him, Bryant had placed the new property in her name, in order that she could continue to call herself his landlady. In return, she had transformed the inhospitable chambers, dividing areas off for dining and relaxing, but making sure not to touch the room designated as Bryant’s study.
Here were stored the surviving texts and artifacts that shaped and informed his life: Beethoven sonatas and Socratic dialogues; Greek mythologies; treatises on the Essex witches and the dinner parties of Attila the Hun; accounts of Walpole, Cibber, Keats, and Pepys; the poems of Philip Larkin and the concerts of Sir Malcolm Sargent; eyewitness accounts of the Conquistadors entering Mexico City; the discovery of Virginia and the great Knightsbridge safe-deposit raid of 1987; the kings of England and fights historical (“from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical”); books on insects, dowsers, the art of skittles, great sea disasters, sand dancers, Japanese ferns, sausage-making, code-breaking, the films of Launder and Gilliat, underground rivers, bus routes of the 1920s, the lost lion statues of London, the whereabouts of Lord Lucan and the private diary of Laurence Shirley, the only British earl to be hanged for murder; folders filled with clippings of forgotten crimes, photographs of dead admirals and the interior decoration of Victorian brothels. On top of this nightmarish mélange was a brand-new stack of youth-oriented lifestyle magazines. May was touched by the thought that his partner was at least trying to adjust to the modern world, although he had no doubt that the attempt was doomed.
“You recall we were having a conversation about the English concept of home,” called May, searching for cups. “You said the convoluted shapes of London streets trapped residents in coils from which they never truly escaped.”
“You only have to look at the figures, dear chap. We’re bombarded by adverts for faraway places, but many of us barely manage to stray more than a few miles from where we started.”
“Something came up this afternoon. I went to see the teacher of the pupils who barracked you. He’s a postmodern relativist with a chip on his shoulder about elite education, but he managed to suggest something interesting about the Highwayman. According to him, the area on which the estate is built has always had a champion, a kind of vigilante. What do you know about distance decay?”
Bryant thoughtfully poured out some sepia tea and passed over a tray of misshapen biscuits. “Oh, I read an article about this. People subconsciously make an energy analysis before they go anywhere. Consequently they make lots of short trips but few long ones.”
“That’s right. Criminals carry out mundane crimes close to home, and travel further afield to commit violent acts. They keep a buffer zone around their immediate area of residence in order to avoid recognition. Villains escape to the safety of home, but still often return to their crimes. Are these raisins?” May pointed to something in a lumpen biscuit of dubious provenance.
“I don’t know. Alma’s eyesight isn’t what it was, so they could be dried peas.” Bryant scrunched his features as a biscuit fought back against his dentures. “Ever hear of Governor Joseph Wall? He had a man flogged to death in Gorée, an island off the coast of the Gambia, in 1782. After guiltily hiding out in France and Italy, he returned to England and wrote to the Secretary of State offering to meet the charges against him. Twenty years had passed, and he didn’t realise that the matter had been completely forgotten. Naturally, we thanked him for returning, then executed him. My point being,” Bryant paused for breath as he brought out fresh biscuits and, more my
steriously, a plate of Brazil nuts, “that the man felt he was unable to go home without giving himself up, and chose to take that risk, which suggests that the territorial instinct maintains a very powerful hold on us. Now, if that territory consistently attracts a certain class or type, they’ll always return. So if we assume that our Highwayman’s possible home base is on the estate, it would explain why he has travelled within a certain radius to commit his attacks. He might be choosing his victims not by their celebrity status but by the fact that they venture into his field of operation.”
“You’ll be pleased to know there’s a piece of geographic profiling software available that can calculate this,” said May, risking a biscuit. “We need to place the Highwayman at this home site, and find at least three locations where he’s been known to commit violent acts. For each location we plot out a different likely area in which the offender lives, and see where the areas overlap to form a hot spot. Then we conduct door-to-door interviews. If it turns out that one of our existing suspects lives within the radius, we conduct DNA testing.”
“Very impressive,” Bryant conceded. “Where might this software be?”
“At the moment it’s only leased to the Houston FBI, but we could – ”
“Faraday is holding the purse strings, remember?”
“But when lives may be at stake – ”
“ – we’ll need to fall back on human ingenuity.”
“We could at least ask Raymond Land tomorrow. He wants us both to meet with him first thing, says it’s urgent. That’s what I came to tell you. I tried calling, but your mobile’s not responding.”
“Ah, er – I don’t have it at the moment.”
“The one I bought for you? What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain tomorrow. For now, I’m using my old mobile. At least I would be, but it fell into the hole while I was digging out the toothbrushes.” He pointed to something May had taken for a tinned chocolate sponge on the draining board but now realised was a mud-coated phone. “Let’s go and see Land.” He sighed. “I’m in the mood for a fight.”
♦
The Highwayman poised himself on the apex of the roof, looking down at the city, his black tricorn hat tipping a thin stream of rain over the edge of the building. He felt a dark energy coursing through his nervous system, a sense of power over the residents of the streets below. His boots gripped the slates as he breasted the wind, keeping his balance. He turned to face the rising air currents, his cape lifting in the chill night, a creature conjured from a mythical past, a killer for a harsh new era.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
23
Incrimination
It was six-thirty on Thursday morning, and the lights were on in the all-night taxi office with the canary-coloured plastic fascia that read Mornington Cabs. Above this was the great tiled crescent front window of the PCU, where Raymond Land kept his office. He looked out onto Koko’s, a nightclub housed in the century-old Camden Theatre; three kebab and pizza take-aways; a Sainsbury’s Local hidden behind a fortification of steel delivery trolleys; a makeshift Internet café filled with students; a pockmarked statue of Richard Cobden, the repealer of the Corn Laws in 1846; and a terrace of bricks, where, until just a week ago, a blackened pawnbroker sign had read Old Paintings & Violins Exchanged, this last piece of street furniture having survived above a shop for more than one hundred sixty years until mysteriously vanishing into some property developer’s auction. It was a typical London scene, the old and new wedged untidily together in easy symbiosis.
But this morning, Land wasn’t thinking of the view. He nervously pushed at the strands of grey hair straggling on his head as he seated himself behind the protecting width of his desk. As much as he hated his job, he was far more disturbed by confrontations. He lined up his pens and studied his guests. May, smartly suited, was seated patiently with his hands in his lap. Bryant wiggled a pipe cleaner about in the bowl of his briar, unconcerned; he was used to being in the unit early. Judging by the state of his clothes, he looked as if he had slept there.
“I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you, Raymondo,” said Bryant now, squinting into the pipe stem and blowing bits of burnt tobacco everywhere. “Faraday is merely a mild laxative; he eases things through the system. There’s little he can do about us.” If he was worried, he hid it well.
“I keep telling you, it’s not Faraday,” Land pointed out. “He has a new hatchet man called Oskar Kasavian. That’s who you need to look out for.”
“I don’t understand how you’ve put us in this situation,” said May with some exasperation. “You went to Faraday to complain about us, didn’t you? Surely you must have seen where such an action might lead.”
“I was frustrated and angry,” Land admitted. “You know how I get, John. I thought it might gee you up a bit.”
“It’s going to do more than that. By the sound of it, we have a survival battle on our hands.”
“And it’s all your fault,” added Bryant unnecessarily. “Do I need to remind you how many times we’ve covered up your mistakes? ‘The sinking ship drowns all the rats’ – Confucius.”
“Now look here, Arthur, you can’t deny that the number of cold cases on your files has been creeping up, and there’s little chance of them ever being closed. They must be brought to some sort of resolution, or you’ll be used as an example of outdated detection techniques, and will forfeit your careers. Kasavian has spent this week going through all the records. He’s noticed that the unit has one particularly problematic case to sort out – one that goes back a very long way, and has a number of serious repercussions for the unit.”
“You’re talking about the Leicester Square Vampire,” said Bryant. “You know that’s not solvable.” His longest-running nemesis had been carrying out random attacks on the streets of London for decades. The acts themselves always took the same form, although descriptions of the attacker varied, and there were no links between any of the victims. “A case is cold from the point when its official investigation ends until the day its secrets are finally exposed. Good God, look at Napoleon and the wallpaper.”
“I’m sorry?” said Land, confused.
Bryant sighed as if having to explain to a recalcitrant child. “Historians long suspected that Napoleon was poisoned, so they put a sample of his hair in a nuclear reactor to find out if it was true, irradiating the strands and passing them through a spectrometre. Wallpaper was made with arsenic back in the 1820s. The idea was to prove that he had somehow come into contact with the – ”
“Enough!” Land slapped the table, surprising himself. “You simply don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation, Bryant.” He knew that this particular cold case was the Home Office’s trump card. Kasavian needed a single documented instance of malpractise within the unit, and had picked up on rumours that neither of the detectives would wish to be confirmed. “The outcome of this will affect us all.”
“Oh, come on, Raymond, everyone knows you’re looking to get transferred. You’d be happy guarding a model village on the Isle of Wight, but we’ve still got a future here.”
“A future?” Land was incandescent. “What are you talking about? What future? All you have left is a past, and look at the trouble that always causes. Look at the trouble your screw-ups will cause now, at the worst possible time for all of us.”
“I say, there’s no need to be rude.” Bryant felt affronted. He glanced uncomfortably at his partner. This was the last thing either of them needed. “Do we have to go into the Leicester Square business?” he asked sheepishly.
“It’s too late; the investigation is already in motion. It’s all going to come out into the open. You need to put your house in order fast.”
“We’re making progress with the Highwayman,” pleaded Bryant. “Don’t force us to defend our position on a case that’s been rumbling on for over thirty years.”
“The debunking of phantoms and bogeymen is what you do best,” said Land. “You had a clear remit
; to stop the general public from panicking, to protect the vulnerable, to remove danger from the streets. Admit it, you lost sight of your duties.”
“We had to look at the greater picture. Our job is to help keep the city in equilibrium between myth and reality.”
“I don’t hold with all that spiritual holy-water-sprinkling demonsummoning nonsense, Bryant. You’re a policeman; you can’t afford to hold eccentric views. Some kind of closure must be reached over the Leicester Square Vampire. I’m not prepared to leave this job under a cloud. Take a fresh look at the case. A nutter in a costume attacking total strangers – he might have more in common with the Highwayman than you realise. Who knows, perhaps one case will help inform the other.”
Bryant examined the idea. A pensive pout crippled his face, shifting his ears and popping his eyes into pockets of wrinkled flesh. It wasn’t an attractive sight. “You know, Raymond, sometimes you actually come up with a useful suggestion,” he told the supervisor, brightening. “Admittedly it’s not very often, and usually accidental when it does happen, but on behalf of the unit I accept your challenge.”
May felt like dropping his head in his hands. If there was one thing more dangerous than seeing his partner demoralised, it was seeing him fired with enthusiasm.
♦
DS Janice Longbright found she could hear everything that was going on in Raymond Land’s office simply by listening at the grate. The Edwardian offices were still fitted with fireplaces, although the chimneys had long ago been bricked up, and Land’s pleading wheedle droned down through the iron bars of the draught trap beneath the chimney breast, revealing his most secret plans to her.
She remembered hearing how her mother had also eavesdropped on her superiors, although in wartime the task had proven a little easier as the wall between their offices had been blown down. Still, it paid to take heed of the prevailing mood in the PCU, especially when the detectives were facing fresh censure.
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