Bryant & May 04; Ten Second Staircase b&m-4

by Christopher Fowler

  ♦

  With dissent and confusion collapsing the unit, John May took positive action, and borrowed the staff car to track down Lorraine Bonner. When he found her, he tried to find out who Luke Tripp was meeting in the estate’s community centre.

  “We keep a room-hire roster.” Lorraine took him to her office and consulted the bulletin board behind her. “I heard about your trouble on the staircase. Sorry we couldn’t be there, but I did warn your partner. Let’s see, we had addiction counselling from two to three, followed by a meeting of the garden committee.”

  “This would have been just after four o’clock. Anyone take it out between four and five?”

  “That’s a session handled by a teacher from St Crispin’s,” she explained. “He’s a former Crown prosecutor who helps out with some community work on the estates, in collaboration with our anti-gang initiative. Last night was his directional guidance and confidencebuilding task force, a fancy title for improving low self-esteem among disadvantaged children who join gangs to provide themselves with alternative families. Whenever trouble flares up, the usual things are blamed – hip-hop, pop videos, horror films, gaming, violent Web sites – but the kids around here are media-literate, and little of what they see enters their real lives. They don’t believe much of what they see.” She gave a wry smile. “Well, except all those commercials that show the kind of beautiful life you should be having instead of sitting around here smoking dope. They want the things they’ll never have in a straight job, so they set out jacking other kids right on the street.”

  “There’s nothing sadder than the poor stealing from the poor,” May agreed.

  “Are you a Christian?” asked Lorraine.

  “I share certain fundamental Christian beliefs,” May admitted.

  “Let me tell you what I believe, Mr May. The passage from youth to age? It’s a staircase we climb throughout our lives, from one step to the next. We learn something new with each step, and keep changing our behaviour. That staircase is as old as the human race itself, but now some part of it has ruptured, so that it’s harder for us all to make our way across the gap. We need to repair the passage to responsibility and adulthood. Either we find the next step or we stay where we are, endlessly repeating our mistakes.”

  “So you set about making your own repairs with community classes.”

  “Three years ago we had a problem with methamphetaminebased drugs on the estate that led to several tragic deaths, so the parents got together and paid for a volunteer to come and take a community class.”

  “What’s his name, the teacher taking this class?”

  “Kingsmere, Brilliant Kingsmere.”

  “You’re telling me his name is Brilliant?”

  “It was a very popular name once. Way back in Victorian times. And he’s a pretty cool guy. The kids look up to him.”

  That was why Luke Tripp had visited the estate. He was in Kingsmere’s exclusive extracurricular set. “Why did the parents pick a teacher from a private school?” asked May.

  “There’s been bad feeling between the school and the estate – we heard tell that a few of the private boys were beaten up, some stupid argument about right-of-way to their playing fields. The parents thought it would be a good way to heal the old wounds.”

  “Are his groups successful?”

  “How can you tell?” Lorraine sighed. “Kids sense when they’re being preached to, no matter how smartly you sweeten the pill.”

  “Do you have an attendance list for Kingsmere’s meetings?”

  “Don’t need to, Mr May. They’re open to anyone. There’s another meeting tonight. Why don’t you go along?”

  Kingsmere. It was odd how many times the teacher’s name had appeared in the investigation. In the absence of any other course of action, May decided it was time to check him out.

  ∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧

  35

  Brandalism

  “Your chairs are horribly uncomfortable,” complained Arthur Bryant. “I crossed my legs and fell off.”

  “They’re Philippe Starck,” said Julio Stamos. “They’re intended as a style statement.”

  “If you’re going to keep people waiting for twenty minutes, you could perhaps try making a comfort statement. Treat yourself to some cushions; it wouldn’t compromise your ideals too much.” Bryant brushed himself down irritably.

  Stamos usually knew what to expect when the police came calling, but this rumpled old man wrapped in an absurdly large overcoat and a lint-covered green scarf had thrown him. There was a peculiar miasma of herbal tobacco in the air, or perhaps smouldering straw, and he felt sure it was emanating from his visitor.

  “You are from the police?” he asked by way of confirming that some moulting tramp hadn’t simply wandered into the offices of GRAF magazine by mistake.

  “You spoke to my sergeant,” Bryant confirmed. “I require fifteen minutes of your time, no more.”

  Stamos led the way to a graceful white box with free-floating backlit walls and chocolate leather sofas. “Perhaps you’ll find this a little more comfortable.” He indicated a seat partially occupied by Lazarus, his snuffling Vietnamese potbellied pig, a retro-eighties pet accoutrement currently favoured by style gurus all over Hoxton.

  “My sergeant tells me you’re the country’s leading expert on graffiti.”

  “Street art is a movement with its roots in folklore. It protests against the system and creates beauty from dereliction.”

  “It’s also illegal.” Bryant hefted the glossy fat copy of GRAF, flicking past the slick ads for Land Rover, Nike, and Nokia. “I can’t believe this retails at twenty quid a copy.”

  Stamos decided he was dealing with an idiot. “It’s bought by art directors, fashion photographers, music video producers – they’re not buying it with their own money.”

  “The examples of art in here are very beautiful,” admitted Bryant.

  “They fetch high prices, too. Many artists have become highly collectible.”

  “But their work is not what I see on the street.”

  “No, ninety percent of that is admittedly bad. Tagging, piecing, and bombing over each other on trains and scratching on windows, that’s not the real stuff. Graffiti is about possession and ownership, making a name for yourself.”

  “You said this was art from the street, but your magazine shows work in galleries and is full of ads placed by corporations. You’re encouraging kids without training to make the environment even more polluted, threatening, and ugly.”

  “Who’s to decide what’s ugly?” said Stamos hotly. “Those seethrough posters for underwear that cover the backs of busses? That’s just corporate crap. Is graffiti any more of an urban blight than advertising? Public spaces are tightly controlled by capitalist interests. Unless you’re rich, access to public walls is blocked, and if you do get into a public space, chances are you have to be selling something. The average London resident is subjected to hundreds of ads every day, and at least ten percent of them are illegally sited. Graffiti is social communication from the heart. It creates folklore because every act of tagging has its own dramatic story of why and how it was sprayed.”

  “Yes, I saw what kids did to the Olton Hall,” said Bryant. Graffiti artists had spray-painted several carriages of the elegant old Scarborough-to-York steam train, wrecking it and earning the outraged hatred of the public.

  “Yeah, you can’t buy publicity like that.”

  “Perhaps not, but your advertisers can discreetly sponsor it in your magazine.”

  Stamos sighed. “No-one’s denying that the media is complicit. They see it as shorthand for cool. I presume you didn’t come here to give me a lecture on morality, Mr Bryant.”

  “If I gave you a lecture, it would be on hypocrisy, Mr Stamos. Can you identify particular kinds of graffiti?” Bryant opened his scarred leather briefcase and pulled out the photographs Banbury had taken at the Roland Plumbe Community Estate. “I need to understand what these mean.”
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  “Graffiti means ‘little scratches,’ from the Italian graffiare, but it’s also from the Greek word graphein, meaning ‘to write’,” said Stamos, surveying the pictures. “Examples have been uncovered in Pompeii. Much of it was political, related to specific social events, and usually appeared under authoritarian governments. The state removes such graffiti in order to depoliticise the marginalised. After this, you get personalised graffiti, racial and sexual slurs from men, very little from females. Gang graffiti hit-ups convey identity and territorial supremacy. What you have here is the most common kind of graffiti, tagging, which began at the end of the sixties and is largely associated with hip-hop culture. The idea is to get up in as many places as possible to establish territorial rights. This is from central London, north side of the river, right?” Stamos examined each shot carefully. “Police try to create links between taggers and organised crime, carjacking, drug use, but in truth there are rarely any at all. You’ve got tagging and piecing here.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Tagging only takes a few seconds – it’s about sticking your signature somewhere. Piecing is rarer and altogether more elaborate. You can trace it back to the artist more easily, and it requires a lot more talent. It started within black subcultures but has moved out into a white middle-class arena.”

  “Can you identify the gentlemen behind these markings?”

  “That’s harder. Artists frequently change their tags. Not that they’re worried about getting caught; it only means a bit of community service, repairing bikes, folding leaflets, or power-jetting walls. But there are some telltale symbols here. What are you expecting to find?”

  “My partner has a suspicion that the boys who created these signs may be involved in a number of serious crimes,” Bryant explained.

  “I don’t think so. These elaborate arrows here? They indicate territory. These numbers, one eighty-seven, refer to the Californian penal code for murder. The large red-coloured K stands for Killer. Most of this style is just copied from the USA, American gun culture, reused by European wannabes. These drawings, a slice of bread and what looks like a duck and a chicken, are marks of disrespect against rivals who are trying to use the same area. The drawings of hands represent a personal warning. The arrow points to the initials NJ, which stand for ‘New Jerusalem,’ an immaculate Christian city where ‘nothing unclean may enter.’”

  “From the Book of Revelation,” said Bryant, intrigued. “Chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-seven, if memory serves.”

  “Then there’s the K wrapped around by the symbol for a rival gang. Finally, these tiny initials, NSED, are a mark of defiance and conviction. They stand for ‘No Surrender Every Day.’ So what you’ve got here is a reiteration that this is pure, or innocent, territory, with the arrows and initials pointing elsewhere. You could literally read the entire wall as follows: ‘We are not the ones who should take the blame. We’re wrongly suspected but we’re clean, and you should be seeking amongst the ranks of our enemy, because they’re hiding a killer.’ However, there’s also a confirmation that they will not help you by revealing information.” Stamos thought for a moment. “There’s another reading for the wrapped K – it could be the initial of the person you seek.”

  Bryant sensed progress at last. “You’ve certainly been more helpful than I expected,” he said, somewhat ungraciously. “I’ll see myself out. Good luck with your magazine. I think it’s utterly hideous, but then I’m old and poor.”

  The publisher’s choice of phrase had proven interesting. The message he had translated echoed the words stencilled on a wall in the East End, in Goulston Street, supposedly written by Jack the Ripper on September 30, 1888: The Juwes are the Men That Will Not be Blamed for Nothing.

  As he stepped from the building, he considered the gang on the Roland Plumbe Community Estate in a new light. Not only were they aware of the police investigation; they knew the true identity of the Highwayman.

  Now he was faced with a new problem: How on earth could he extract the information from them?

  ∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧

  36

  Skulduggery

  “I don’t have to do it, John,” said Sergeant Longbright. “This is not part of my job description.”

  “What are you talking about? None of us has an official job description, because Arthur deliberately keeps losing the forms.” May was exasperated. He had only asked Janice to attend Brilliant Kingsmere’s Friday night community meeting undercover.

  “The last time I did this for Mr Bryant, I ended up in an Egyptian lap-dancing club, remember? I didn’t even get to keep my dress. Whenever I attend a meeting in your place, something odd happens. Switch me with Bimsley and stand me in the rain all night, guarding a witness or running surveillance on a suspect; I’d rather do that. You’ve been to the estate now, you’re known there.”

  “That’s exactly why I can’t go, because the kids will behave differently when they see me, and it’s important that they respond with their guard down. I’ve already had one run-in with them.”

  “Any evidence I record will be inadmissible, you know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want to find out what Kingsmere is up to. The Saladins know the truth about the Highwayman. Arthur thinks that they’re trying to point the finger of blame at someone through their graffiti warnings. They could simply be deflecting attention away from themselves, but then why leave any message at all? If any of them, or anyone close to them, attends Kingsmere’s sessions, I want to hear what they have to say. I’d send Meera, but she’s too blunt with men.”

  “All right,” Longbright said with a sigh, “but this is the last time. How do you want me to play it?”

  “Don’t ask too many questions. Don’t tape or take notes. Just observe and steer the conversation if it’s needed, but whatever you do, don’t lead anyone on. There must be no coercion. As for image, you might try to tone yourself down a little.” He eyed her spectacular breasts with alarm. “Be inconspicuous.”

  She threw him a hooded look. “You mean cover up my best feature.”

  “Your best feature is your mind, Janice. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Find out something we can use.”

  ♦

  “Guess how many privately managed societies are currently operating in London?” asked Bryant, looking annoyingly pleased with himself.

  “You mean with registered memberships?” asked Dan Banbury.

  “Registered in the sense that a committee holds member lists with names and contact details, yes. We can’t measure them otherwise.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, three hundred?”

  “Seventeen thousand. Upstairs in pubs, in halls and churches and living rooms, everything from the Enrico Caruso Appreciation Society to the National Warlocks Confederacy. Fans of Locked-Room Mysteries meet in the Edgar Wallace pub near the Law Courts. Moroccan cooks get together at the Queen’s Head and Artichoke in Fitzrovia. The Metropolitan Police have their own magicians’ Magic Circle. The Pagan Federation meets at The Rose and Crown; Egyptian researchers gather at The Museum Tavern. The Vampire Society and the Dracula Society aren’t on speaking terms at the moment because they’re arguing about Darwinism and an outstanding beer bill. Everybody wants to belong to something. So tonight I’m going to the Grand Order of London Immortals.”

  “In heaven’s name, why?” Banbury had yet to adjust to Bryant’s investigative leapfrogging. He was still cataloguing evidence information, and resented Bryant wandering in to discuss his latest fancies.

  The elderly detective raised a badly photocopied sheet in triumph. “A somewhat unexpected lead from Frank at the Greenwich Library. I asked him to send me a list of London societies. The order’s Hall of Fame includes the Leicester Square Vampire.”

  ♦

  Over in the converted Catholic school in Bayham Street that housed the unit’s mortuary, Oswald Finch was growing more suspicious by the minute.

  He checked the ID sheets against the z
iplocked bags, touching the lettering as if expecting to discern some clue in Braille. “I don’t buy it, Mr Kershaw. I saw the e-mail, too, you know. I’m not entirely out of touch with modern ways, despite your boss spreading rumours about my impending senility. If this man Kasavian is really determined to shut down the unit, why would the Home Office allow the exhumations to go ahead? What about the permission of the surviving relatives? Who signed this order? I’ve never heard of permission being granted as quickly as this. It’s all highly irregular.”

  “It’s still in their interest to close the case. And technically, the permission was granted several times before but never acted upon, so I didn’t have to return to the relatives. Two of the bodies had been placed in storage at the Central Mortuary in Codrington Street. The third was exhumed last night.”

  Finch shrugged. “All right, let’s get it over with.” He handed his young colleague a mouth filter. “I have no sense of smell, so it won’t bother me, but the ventilation unit in here is temperamental, and I don’t want you contaminating the site by throwing up.”

  “Let’s do it.” Kershaw’s nervous swallow betrayed his relative inexperience with cold-case cadavers. The three civilian victims of the Leicester Square Vampire who had been granted approval for reexamination lay before them, awaiting assessment of their DNA. Out of deference to John May, only Elizabeth’s body had been left undisturbed.

  Finch unzipped the first bag and thrust his head inside with unnerving enthusiasm. “Good, this one’s dry. Nice and easy.” He withdrew two samples from a three-decades-dead black female so withered that only her dyed red hair had survived unravaged. Kershaw pushed a short, razor-tipped needle into her thigh, then took several minutes locating a heart ventricle for a second extraction. “We’re supposed to record this procedure, you know,” he admonished.

  “Can’t do it; they won’t buy me a new camera, and old Bryant accidentally dropped the last one off Brighton Pier taking pictures of seagulls.”