Ten Second Staircase

by Christopher Fowler

Both detectives had a propensity to become evangelical about fighting crime, but in different ways. May's righteous anger was born of a vocational desire to protect the innocent. Bryant was more concerned with understanding the moralities and beliefs of urban society. He feared that one day they would become incomprehensible to him, and had vowed to retire upon the realisation.

  'By the way, how did you manage to get here before me?' asked May suddenly.

  'I was giving Victor a run, if you must know,' said Bryant, referring to the rusting yellow Mini Cooper that still sported a chain of vermilion daisies, painted around its roof during the first Summer of Love.

  'You told me the exhaust had fallen off.'

  'It has.' Bryant looked at him blankly. 'What of it?'

  'You can't drive it like that. It must sound like a Lancaster Bomber.'

  'That's right, I have to turn my hearing aid off while I'm driving, but at least people know I'm coming. I made a vicar jump into a hedge this morning. I was in Vauxhall visiting my psychochiropodist,' he explained. 'She reads feet. Apparently I'm about to have an unexpected brush with death. Either that or I've got a bunion. Let's go and see if Kershaw's discovered anything.'

  8

  LOCK AND KEY

  They found Giles Kershaw stretched prone on the floor, taking digital shots of the green-tinged fluid samples splashed from the installation tank. 'The body will be nicely pickled in preservative, although contamination will throw off my tests,' he remarked, tearing off his plastic gloves and flipping them into a zip bag. Scientifically trained officers tended to see crime victims as specimens, but the PCU staff cared to an unusual degree, despite how they sounded.

  'What do you think is in the solution?' asked Bryant, thumping his stick against the tank.

  'I'm a forensic pathologist, not an embalmer, but I can tell it's a pretty lethal chemical concoction. She wouldn't have lasted more than a few seconds after ingesting it, and the instinct to draw breath upon falling in would have paced up the poisoning process. The gallery should never have been allowed to leave so many cubic litres lying around in an unsealed tank. It's like dumping an open barrel of toxic waste in a public place. If it got warm in here, the stuff could start evaporating into the atmosphere.'

  'Good, that gives us something to hold Burroughs on,' said Bryant with relish. 'I didn't like the cut of his jib. Matching silk tie and handkerchief, far too spivvy for my taste. What else have you got?'

  'A couple of bootprints, black rubber soles, here and here.' Kershaw pointed to some thick streaks and crescents on the parquet. 'They tend to leave marks on this kind of wood flooring when someone's treading on the side of the shoe, or slipping, say in a scuffle.'

  'That's not much to go on,' May complained. 'Could be anyone.'

  'Not quite, old sausage.' Kershaw flicked a lick of blond hair from his eyes and pointed to the faint black print. 'These are motorcycle boots, a large size, possibly forty-five, forty-seven. The striations at the edges, see here? The soles are designed for grip. I've come across this distinctive pattern before: River Road Men's Twin Buckle Engineer Boots, pricey and well made. Feet spaced far apart but not running or jumping—the prints are too consistently light— so it's a pretty wide stride. Gives us a height of, oh, something between six one and six three. Big guy. Height's no real indication of strength, of course—a lot of tall people are rather weedy and hunched—but it's suggestive all the same. The victim's corpse is heavyset but quite short.'

  'You're not telling me he could have thrown her into the tank like a shot-putter?' Bryant was incredulous.

  'You're right, it doesn't seem very likely,' Kershaw admitted, tossing back his hair in an affected manner that annoyed Bryant intensely. 'She would have to have been rendered inert for him to achieve it, which begs the question: If White was unconscious, why would he bother to drown her? Why not polish her off outside the tank?'

  'Because the killer was making a point,' Bryant explained testily. 'He wanted her to be found floating inside her own artwork. A sense of drama, a bit of poetic justice. Surely that's obvious.'

  'In which case you're talking about a pretty advanced level of premeditation,' warned May. 'Let's not jump to conclusions until the postmortem.'

  They headed for the cafeteria, where Sergeant Longbright met them, handing over a chaotic stack of forms and leaflets. A siege mentality had settled across the gallery. The schoolchildren were being dismissed, while the remaining visitors slumped on uncomfortable steel chairs, complaining about being kept behind. 'Here are the basic statements,' said Longbright. 'I had to do it longhand because my batteries have gone.'

  'Serves you right; notepads shouldn't be electronic.' Bryant sniffed. 'You never heard of a pencil going wrong.'

  'I wrote everything on the backs of gallery guides; sorry about that. You can add your own notes at the bottom of each page. I'll type them up later.' Janice Longbright was no ordinary DS, but an organisation of oddly developed talents, all focussed on the idea of pruning Bryant's chaotic scraps of investigative information into some form of cohesive assembly. She'd been doing it for years and getting no thanks, as her mother had before her. 'The visitors are getting pretty restless,' she cautioned. 'I've let them make calls to warn their families that they've been delayed, but no-one's been allowed to leave the gallery. Colin has made up a simple floor plan. It should give you a rough idea of where everyone was when the body was discovered.'

  Bryant squinted from the drawing to the gallery. 'You haven't got much sense of scale, have you?' he complained.

  'I wasn't planning to submit it for the Royal Academy summer exhibition,' Longbright bridled.

  'There's no need to get shirty.' He riffled through the witness statements. 'Anyone outside the main chamber hear a scream or a splash? It's pretty quiet in here.'

  'That's because there's an ambient noise cancellation system in operation.' Calvin Burroughs pointed up at a pair of small black speakers bolted into the corners of the room. 'It damps down background sounds and allows better concentration. It also means that there's very little bleed-through from one room to the next.'

  'Even so, two of the kids in the main chamber say they heard a shout.' She checked through the statements and found the appropriate pages. 'Gosling and Parfitt. I interviewed them separately; they both said the same thing. A high-pitched cry, presumably a woman, short and sharp, nothing else.'

  'And they didn't do anything?'

  'They're teenagers, Mr Bryant. Eventually they decided to go and have a look, but it wasn't a very organised response.'

  Bryant nodded at the crowd as he unwrapped a boiled sweet. 'Any men over six foot amongst that lot?'

  'The teacher, Elliot Mason. I'd say he's about six one.'

  Bryant peered over the coffee counter and checked out the teacher's shoes. 'Suede slip-ons; they're no good. Turn the place over, every cupboard and crawlspace, see if you can find any discarded clothes or footwear. You'll have to use the Met boys. I can't spare unit staff. I don't suppose there's anyone in here actually wearing motorcycle boots?'

  Longbright shook her head. 'No, and no equestrians, either.' In reply to Bryant's quizzical look, she explained. 'I think our only witness has an overactive imagination. A boy called Luke Tripp reckons some kind of horseman rode into the gallery, grabbed White, and threw her into the tank. I told him he'd have to talk to you.'

  Bryant looked over at the schoolchildren and blanched when he spotted their distinctive navy-and-gold blazers. 'Oh, no,' he groaned. 'Not them. It's the school where I gave the lecture last week, St Crispin's. I can't talk to them. They'll be prejudiced against me.'

  'These are the kids who barracked you?' May grinned. 'Don't tell me you're scared of them.'

  Bryant unfolded a pair of filthy spectacles and squinted through them. 'I don't know if these are the exact ones, although that jugeared homunculus over there looks familiar. But they're from the same school. They're bound to have heard what happened. John, couldn't I leave you to talk to them?' he wheedl
ed. 'It's cold in here. I need to go somewhere and warm up.'

  May and Longbright watched in amazement as Bryant tucked in his unravelling scarf and shuffled slowly from the cafeteria. 'Well, I've never seen him like this before,' said May, worried.

  'I think they really got to him.' Longbright shrugged. 'He's convinced he's lost his touch. It's not a generation gap, it's a solid brick wall; he won't listen to the young, and they won't listen to him. You're the only person he'll take advice from, John. Can't you have a word, show him how it's done? If he cuts himself off like this, he'll become even more isolated.'

  'Arthur always says he's too old to change. But he'll have to learn a few new tricks if we're going to get Leslie Faraday off our backs. The new minister is gunning for us. Take a look at this.' May unfolded a sheet of paper and passed it over.

  Longbright read the memo. 'Where did you get this?'

  'From Rufus.' May employed the young hacker to keep an eye on e-mails running between the Home Office's hopelessly insecure central server and the unit. 'Faraday's planning to make a name for himself by "clearing out the deadwood," as he calls it. The file corrupted as I downloaded it, so I lost the date and recipient, but I suspect Raymond Land has had a go at him about us. The last thing we need right now is Arthur providing them with more ammunition.'

  Before Longbright could voice an opinion, Giles Kershaw came over to join them. 'Mr May, there's something you should see.' He held up a plastic bag and shook a flat metal key into the palm of his glove. 'Machine-cut brushed aluminium alloy, nicely stencilled and finished. No obvious fingerprints, but I'll run it under a spectroscope.'

  'What is this?' asked May, squinting at the stencilled sections.

  Kershaw took the key back, as if suspecting that May could not be trusted with it. 'A pictogram of some kind. Now watch.' He tilted the metal and angled his pocket torch over it. 'Set the light source to one side and it reveals a picture.'

  They found themselves staring at a V-shaped outline of a mask topped with a tricorn hat.

  'Where did you find it?' asked May, intrigued.

  'Placed right against the side of the tank, where I think it was intended to be found. He's left us a calling card. But look at the serrated edges. This isn't a standard configuration. It wouldn't fit any cylinder or mortise lock that I know of, so why cut it in the shape of a key at all? Besides, it would bend if you tried to twist it. And there's another thing. Check out the back.'

  He turned over the key to reveal a row of numbers: 21. 9. 17. 05. 'I think there was someone here after all. And he's set us a puzzle.'

  May caught Longbright's eye and knew she was thinking the same thing. 'If there's one thing that will restore my partner's enthusiasm, I think it will be this,' he said. May remembered the first time he ever met Bryant, at the age of nineteen. The young trainee detective had asked him to decipher a message hidden in butterfly wings. 'Arthur may not know much about the young, but he knows an awful lot about breaking codes.'

  9

  PHANTOM IN THE NOOSE

  All police units are underfunded, but the PCU had been so broke for so long that the sudden budget increase they had experienced after the successful resolution of their last case had merely confused the staff. John May had upgraded the computers, Sergeant Longbright had bought a coffee machine, and Arthur Bryant had purchased a set of highly inappropriate Aubrey Beardsley prints. Still, the improvement in the Mornington Crescent offices was noticeable. There was upgraded computer software. There was a reception area. There was a sofa. There was a nasty smell in the bathroom, but as it stemmed from Bryant's abortive experiment to determine the burning point of horsehair, nobody knew how to get rid of it.

  Late on Monday afternoon, Janice Longbright caught up with her boss as he was about to enter the unit's interview room.

  'Where have you been?' asked May. 'I've been phoning you for the last half hour.'

  'Sorry, chief, my flat was burgled at lunchtime. Some little sod kicked the door in and stole my telly. I was waiting for the K-Town cop shop to send someone around.'

  'Can you not refer to Kentish Town by its gangsta name? And why on earth didn't you get Banbury to come over?' asked May, amazed.

  'Wouldn't like to pull rank, sir. Not fair on other people.' Longbright tucked a lacquered curl back into place and thrust out her formidable chest. 'Hope I'm not too late.'

  'No, they just arrived, come in.'

  May and Longbright seated themselves beside Luke Tripp and his tailored mother. It was intended that the sergeant would gently coax the boy into providing a more detailed description, but one look at Mrs Tripp's face forced them to change tactics. May ran through the legal ramifications of the statement, then let Longbright defuse the unhappy parent.

  'Your son is the only witness to this crime,' she explained. 'Nobody else saw the man he described anywhere in the vicinity of the building. That's why we need him to provide exact details of the event.'

  'You're suggesting he's a liar.' Hannah Tripp turned to her son. 'Luke darling, you don't have to tell them anything if you don't want to. They're not real policemen.'

  'It's true we're not bound by the rules of the Metropolitan Police Force, Mrs Tripp, but we have other powers granted by the Home Office that you may find quite draconian if we choose to enforce them. I think it's easier for everyone if Luke just tells us, in his own words, exactly what he saw.'

  'Is that a threat?' asked Mrs Tripp. 'My husband's in a senior management position at Sotheby's salesroom. He'd have something to say about this.'

  'That's fine, Mrs Tripp. We'll be happy to accept his advice if we need a Ming vase valued, but as far as your son is concerned, we need to get to the truth.'

  'I don't care for sarcasm.' Mrs Tripp smoothed her son's hair. 'Luke is an only child. He's highly sensitive. When he was little, all his friends wanted to be pilots and firefighters. Not my boy. His big dream is to star in his own play at the Royal Court Theatre. He paints, he sings, he loves listening to Donizetti. He only looks young, you see; he's nearly fourteen. An experience like this could seriously affect his school performance. The man he saw was a murderer.'

  'That's why Sergeant Longbright is here,' May explained. 'She's trained to deal with precisely this kind of delicate situation.'

  'Then the sergeant alone should talk to my son.'

  This was precisely what May had wanted. 'Fine. I'll be outside if you need me,' he said quietly, rising to leave.

  Longbright left a respectful pause until after the door had closed. 'Perhaps we could go back to the moment when your class first arrived at the gallery, Luke,' she suggested.

  Arthur Bryant's office was starting to look like a collision between a greenhouse, a secondhand bookshop, and a cryptozoological museum. Shoving aside the dead cactus Raymond Land had angrily returned (Bryant had placed it in the Acting Head's office as a gift, but it had germinated poisonous seeds that left purple stains everywhere until, in desperation, Land had sprayed it with lighter fluid), he adjusted his spectacles and studied the numbers on the aluminium key again: 21. 9. 17. 05.

  'Well, obviously, it's a date,' he said finally. 'The twenty-first of September, 1705. I have a book of historical dates somewhere.' Seated at his green leather desk beneath a pool of amber light, he appeared to have regained some of his former confidence. He rattled an aniseed ball against his false teeth as he took down a gilt-edged volume of British history and began leafing through it.

  'Hmm, work began on Blenheim Palace, War of the Spanish Succession, the queen of Prussia died, nothing very relevant there. Queen Anne would have been on the throne, but we need something more localised, something . . .' A smile crept across his face. 'I think we need to schedule a staff meeting,' he told Kershaw.

  At four P.M., all members of the PCU staff were summoned to its freshly painted briefing room. April sat nervously at the rear, until coaxed to a forward seat by her grandfather. She had no idea what to expect from her new job, except that its daily operations would prove uno
rthodox. The senior detectives preferred to conduct discussion groups before assigning work to their colleagues. According to Bryant, creativity was the key to criminal investigation, not data control. Most Met officers found his theories ludicrous, and argued that his effectiveness was the result of blind luck.

  April looked expectantly around the room, wondering what would be demanded of her. Crippen threaded his way between her legs, looking for affection. The moulting feline belonged to Maggie Armitage, the unit's affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic analysis, but she had loaned Crippen to Bryant indefinitely because he had given her accordionist fleas during madrigals.

  'Our first officially recorded briefing session,' Bryant began, dragging a polychromatic scarf from the rack and knotting it around his throat. 'It marks the start of a new level of efficiency and professionalism here at the PCU. Would anyone like a sherbet lemon? There are flying saucers and licorice allsorts as well.' He shook the box of childhood confectionary and dumped it out on the table before him. While Longbright was serving tea, Bimsley tipped his chair too far back and fell off it. Meera tapped her pen impatiently and shot him a filthy look.