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

by Christopher Fowler

  “And you kill the patient in the process. You could have worked with the unit instead of fighting us for so long.”

  “What difference would it have made? We won eventually. Now, would you mind telling me where your case files on the Highwayman are?”

  Longbright looked around the chaotic room. “Only Mr Bryant keeps hard copies. Everything else is stored on the main server. You’ll need the access codes. I’ll put them in for you.”

  “No, just write them down and I’ll do it.” Renfield eyed Bryant’s Tibetan skull with trepidation.

  “I can’t do that. Mr Banbury added a security device. The codes have to be logged at different speeds to open the file gates. He taught all senior personnel how to alter their typing technique.” I can’t believe I just made that up, she marvelled. It sounded almost authentic.

  “Very well, but I’m watching you,” warned the sergeant, wedging himself into a chair beside her.

  As she accessed the documents, she maintained a steady stream of distracting conversation, until the sergeant broke his attention to briefly glance out of the window. It was all the time she needed to add her own private e-mail address to the files.

  “I want everything printed out,” the sergeant commanded.

  “It will take ages to produce hard copies. We only have a very old printer. I’ll queue all the relevant folders, then you can get someone to take it all to the station.”

  “No, I’ll wait,” said Renfield doggedly, folding his arms.

  “As you wish.” Longbright rose and walked towards the door.

  “And you’re waiting with me.” He pointed to the seat behind her own desk. “Just sit yourself back down.”

  She sat and waited while Renfield cleaned his nails, picked his nose, examined the breakfast stains on his shirt, and scratched his bottom. Pulling open the lowest drawer of her desk with the toe of her boot, she leaned forward, making a show of adjusting her hem. She could not allow the sheet of paper containing May’s confession to be bagged up and taken with the rest of the unit’s contents. Kasavian would be only too happy to misinterpret it. Slowly and silently, she slid the page from its hiding place.

  Suddenly, Renfield looked at her. “I can’t trust you for a minute, can I?” he sighed. “What have you got there?”

  Reluctantly, she raised the hand with the page in it, turning the blank side to face the sergeant.

  He snapped his fingers at her. “Bring it over here.”

  Longbright rose and walked over, furiously searching for a way out. She held John May’s career in her hand.

  “Give it to me.”

  Renfield snatched the sheet from her, glanced at it, saw that it had nothing to do with the Highwayman, screwed it into a ball, and tossed it back at her. “Go on, get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got more important things to do.”

  The detective sergeant fled the room, heading for home and her waiting laptop.

  ♦

  As April was sending her text, the detectives were just pulling up before the gates of St Crispin’s. May patted his jacket pocket. “Have you still got your other mobile?” he asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Bryant replied with the hint of evasion that suggested it might have fallen under a steam roller or been torn apart by wolves.

  “Then where is it?”

  “Ah, that would be more difficult. I do still have it, in the sense that it hasn’t left my possession, but it’s full of meat.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was cooking a spaghetti bolognese for Alma last night and it fell out of my apron pocket into the sauce pot. We dried it in the oven and now it seems to be intermittently working.”

  May shot him a murderous look. “Let’s go in. God help anyone trying to contact us.”

  The corridors of the school were in darkness. Classes had yet to begin. Outside, the rain had given way to a wet autumnal mist. As it rolled in from the Thames it thickened, clinging to the hedges, blanking the windows, and deadening sound from the street.

  “He doesn’t behave like a mature, rational human being,” said Bryant, looking unnaturally pale in the gloom. “The Highwayman keeps baiting the police, getting us to run after him before dropping out of sight. That’s what I didn’t appreciate before. It’s like a series of dares. Multiple attackers actively court publicity. Does that mean he wants to be caught? Perhaps at some subconscious level. He’s anxious to stop just short of capture, but the impulse takes him closer to the edge each time. He has an antipathy towards his fellow creatures. We’re nothing to him, just objects to be used as a means to an end.”

  “Which is?”

  “His eventual deification, of course.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would go to so much trouble to be noticed,” said May, pushing open the internal doors and searching for a light switch. “All this complex ingenuity, the sheer work involved.”

  “First of all, he finds it no trouble at all. Second, this kind of killing is an achievement that ultimately requires some form of acknowledgement. Respect, fear. And finally, approval. Third – ” Bryant stopped to wipe his brow, trying to understand why he felt so strange. He’d forgotten what he was saying.

  “There’s a light under his door.” May reached Kingsmere’s study first. He leaned forward and twisted the doorknob. “You know we don’t have enough to make a formal charge,” he whispered to Bryant. “All we can do is take him in for questioning, unless he chooses to incriminate himself. Are you ready?”

  “I was expecting you both earlier,” called Kingsmere, anticipating them.

  He was seated behind his desk, marking term papers, and barely bothered to look up. When he did so, May noted that he appeared to have aged. He removed a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and studied them wearily.

  “Tell us about your grandfather,” suggested Bryant, unravelling his sepia scarf and gratefully drawing up a seat.

  “What’s the point?” Kingsmere countered, tossing his glasses onto the desk and massaging his eyes. “I imagine you already know quite a lot about him. He had very little respect for the forces of law and order. He went to jail for the values in which he believed.”

  “He was a fascist, a Mosley supporter.”

  “In later life, yes. His ideals became a terrible burden.”

  “What about your father?” Bryant asked, trying to concentrate. “How did he feel?”

  “You should know,” replied Kingsmere, making eye contact for the first time. The teacher rose and opened the cupboard behind him, reaching in for the bundle he had left there. “You’re probably looking for these.” He dropped the mask and tunic on the desk.

  “Do you want to make a formal statement?” asked May, surprised by Kingsmere’s calm attitude.

  “If you want,” he replied. “There’s not much to say. I guess you’ll want to test these clothes for proof, but I can save you time. My father was the Leicester Square Vampire.”

  ∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧

  46

  Appearances

  It was hardly the confession they had been expecting.

  Brilliant Kingsmere stared into the shadowed oaken corners of his study. “The other masters will be arriving soon,” he said. “Perhaps there’s just time to explain a little.”

  He rose and locked his office door before sitting on the edge of the desk in front of them. “You know, it’s strange watching someone slide into an illness brought on by the very things in which he believes,” he said. “My grandfather was an idealist. He wanted people to be better than they ever could be. When they repeatedly failed him, he grew bitter. We thought he would be content to turn into one of those caricature colonels, firing off angry letters to the press. Instead, he started accosting people in the street. At first his demands were trivial, telling them to pick up litter, warning them about antisocial behaviour. Later my father discovered that he had been following teenagers and threatening them. He could be a very intimidating man.

  “
Even then, we thought it was harmless enough. My father had started to follow in his footsteps, preaching to classrooms when he should have been watching what was happening in his own family. One day, he was picked up by the police after threatening a young girl who had been attending his class. She didn’t press charges and they dropped the case. We never mentioned the matter. Families like ours rarely discussed their problems in those days.”

  “Then how did you discover he was carrying out attacks on women?” asked May.

  “I only found out the truth about his late-night disappearances when he was dying. The outfit was in a mildewed cardboard box on top of his wardrobe. I didn’t know what it was, so I asked him. By this time, my father was eaten away with bowel cancer. It seemed so wrong, me questioning this shrunken yellow man, lying in hospital dosed up with morphine, pestering him about things he had done when I was just a baby. It seemed absurd to imagine him spending his nights dressed up in a cloak, accosting young women. During the war, Leicester Square and the surrounding area had long been used by prostitutes known as Piccadilly Commandos. After the fears of the war faded, some measure of old-fashioned morality returned, but then came the original Summer of Love. My father was horrified. He had become a champion of morality, and the strain of his evangelical zeal took its toll. Look through history, and you’ll see a point is reached when rabid Christians decide that killing is better than curing. No-one suspected him. The police were searching for someone of a lower station in life. The idea that the murderer might be a middle-class academic was unthinkable to them. The only one who came close to realising the truth was you, Mr Bryant. You understood why he acted as he did. You even interviewed him once. But instead of following your instincts, you trusted the word of a fellow academic.”

  Bryant looked back at the pile of black clothes in the cupboard. He realised now that the Highwayman’s outfit had been modelled on its earlier incarnation. The present-day killer was someone close to Kingsmere.

  “I don’t understand how you can preach social responsibility to children, knowing what you do about your father,” said May.

  “I would have thought it was obvious. I want to make amends for the things he did. I’m not ashamed of my family history. Nor have I tried to cover up my father’s misdeeds. Quite the reverse; I told my extracurricular class about him, and even brought his clothes along as proof. It was our secret, a matter of trust between us.” Kingsmere surveyed the darkened schoolroom. “Ten years ago, I was idealistic enough to try teaching in a state school in Deptford, but my tenure proved disastrous. I wasn’t prepared for what I found there, and things are worse now. You see eleven-year-olds who can textmessage faster than I can write, but who can’t read a book because the teachers don’t know enough grammar to teach them. Kids who can name a hundred clothing brands but can’t tell you why it’s wrong to stab someone. The national literacy strategy has left everyone confused about the fundamental basics of teaching. Pupils are encouraged to pick soft subjects because it makes everyone’s lives easier. There’s no discipline, no interest, no empathy. The few who learned anything in my Deptford class did so against superhuman odds. In the absence of any enforced methodology, children invent their own language, new ways of communicating, and as George Orwell pointed out, once they start to do that, they change the way they think. Remove the language of sustained concentration from their vocabulary and you remove the concept itself. I want to help put a stop to that. It’s a reasonable dream.”

  “If you knew about the crimes your father had committed, you should have gone to the police,” said May.

  Kingsmere appeared not to hear. “I know teachers who are as stoic as bollards, ploughing on through a wild sea of feral children, never trying to tame and shape their ideas but accepting their new world order with implacability. The intelligence of Western youth is being transformed. You either accept the fact, or fight a losing battle of old ideals. I retreated to the calm haven of a private school, into the world of so-called proper education, where I could create an attentive audience. But I found the same strange dissonance existed here, too, albeit in a subtler form. The children are craftier, more knowing; they’ll say what you want to hear in the hope that you’ll be fooled and will leave them alone.

  “Once I saw through that, I petitioned the board of governors to start conducting extracurricular classes. All you need is a hint of achievement, and you get messianic about such things. You think you can change the world, but the world incrementally changes you. My father had been filled with the same fervour, but he allowed his lack of achievement to wear him down. He would lecture teenagers on the importance of civility, barely noticing the laughter behind his back. He preached old-school socialism to heckling, disinterested Thatcherites at Speakers’ Corner, wrote letters, fought councils, demanded answers, to no avail. His desire to challenge the system corrupted him, and he became mad in the process, committing terrible, desperate crimes. Then he died in agony. Tell me, what good would it have done to come forward?”

  “At the very least, it would have helped the victims’ survivors,” May said flatly. “The state can’t take all the blame for an individual’s behaviour. Are you prepared to give us a statement?”

  “I suppose it’s the least I can do, given the trouble you’ve been through over the years,” said Kingsmere, pulling his coat from the back of the chair.

  “Wait,” said Bryant. “Mr Kingsmere, I wonder if you would be so good as to roll up the left-hand sleeve of your shirt for me.” Puzzled, the teacher did as he was asked, revealing pale unmarked flesh. Banbury had specifically mentioned hitting the Highwayman’s left wrist with his dart gun.

  “You can go ahead, John.” Bryant looked back at the piled clothes. “I’ll bag these up as evidence and follow you in a while.”

  As the pair left the room, he took over the teacher’s chair and bounced back in it, thinking. Something was not right. If Kingsmere had told his favoured pupils about his father, painting a picture of a life spent struggling against the system, why had none of them mentioned it? Was it because they knew the Vampire had inspired another murderer, and were anxious to keep him hidden? The shadow of the Highwayman remained here in the school, in the very bricks and stones of ancient Clerkenwell. The Vampire had merely provided a template for his successor, the latest in a line of mythical London monsters stretching back into the city’s distant past…

  He carefully folded the Vampire’s mask inside the tunic, and was about to remove it as evidence when he noticed something lying under a chair in the corner of the room. Unzipping the fallen backpack, he saw what appeared to be the Highwayman’s tricorn hat sticking out of one of the pockets. But when he went to pull it free, the hat came apart.

  Bryant found himself looking at two plain black baseball caps, one with its brim curled upwards, the other with its brim twisted down. Placed over each other with the peaks at opposite ends, they formed a perfect tricorne.

  He dug deeper into the bag and found a second leather mask. Somewhere, he now realised, there was another tunic. His submerged suspicions began to surface, synapses reconnecting, tumbling logic on its head. The effect of the red pills seemed to be phasing his electrical responses into disturbing new configurations.

  The paradoxical impossibility of Saralla White’s murder.

  The convoluted absurdities of the deaths.

  Elliot Mason changing his shoes at the gallery because they hurt his feet.

  The placing of the Highwayman at the site of Alex Paradine’s death, outside the recording studio; two witnesses had seen the killer, but only one had mentioned his cape.

  Janet Ramsey’s recorded telephone call, picked up by DS Longbright. Not ‘he’s not male’, as Banbury had reiterated, but ‘it’s not a man’.

  The echo of the Ripper graffiti, conveniently located along the walls of the estate staircase.

  Murder committed on a spot connected with the executions, the Knights Templars, and the blood of Christ.

  Brilliant Kingsm
ere’s lectures about his father. Why this school, these pupils?

  The mythical connections between Robin Hood, the Leicester Square Vampire, and the Highwayman.

  The Saladins.

  The desire for celebrity.

  Checking from the window, he saw that May had taken the unit staff car. It was too late to call him back now. Bryant climbed woozily to his feet, left the evidence on the desk, and walked around the classroom, trying to focus his mind. This was where Kingsmere took his extracurricular lessons.

  He checked the cupboards and desks one by one, but all personal items had been placed in lockers for the weekend. There was nothing more to be found here.

  Walking back through the still-darkened assembly hall, he noticed that its ceiling skylights were streaked with rain that made the walls weep. He felt drugged.

  Ahead was the stage, and the pale oak podium from which he had made his disastrous speech. His first contact with St Crispin’s Boys’ School. He climbed to it now and balanced behind the lectern, looking down into the empty hall.

  There was no speech lying here this time, just a discarded recruitment brochure for the school, aimed at wealthy parents.

  He flicked it open, found his spectacles, and squinted at the introductory paragraph:

  St Crispin’s was founded in 1623 by the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Lindsay. For almost four hundred years the institution has prospered, its pupils bestowing honour and glory that reflect the talent and diversity –

  The usual waffle designed to open wallets, he thought, skimming.

  – many of its Old Boys have gone on to great achievements in the world of politics, sport, and the liberal arts, although one particular former pupil is remembered for a different reason, and has become a part of London’s mythological fabric. When the young Richard Turpin first arrived here –

  The Thieves’ Key. The key was the thief.

  Dick Turpin opened the lock to the entire investigation.