Ten Second Staircase

by Christopher Fowler

  'Why did they need their own language?' asked Frank.

  'Because the criminals of London were transported for petty larceny and buying stolen goods, and hanged for everything from shoplifting to murder. They needed to be able to function below the eye level of the law.'

  'Well, you can take your pick here. It's a complete linguistic guide. Substantives but not many nouns, plenty of adverbs, and something referred to as the Copulative. Do you honestly think all this stuff is going to help you with the case?'

  'He's leaving me clues,' said Bryant. 'I need to be able to understand them. There's not a society of highwaymen, is there?'

  'How do you mean?' asked Frank.

  'Oh, you know the sort of thing, people who dress up and research their favourite characters. I presume the library is listed as a resource for all sorts of clubs and associations.'

  'Yes, it is,' Frank agreed. 'I can probably get you a few addresses, but it'll mean making some phone calls.'

  'I haven't got much of a budget,' Bryant warned. 'Do it for Dorothy.'

  Back outside the library, though, Bryant began to wonder. He was cold and tired, he'd forgotten to take his tablets, and his legs were playing up. He was also halfway across the city poking about in arcane library books when he should have been getting his report ready for Faraday's inspection.

  If the time he'd invested in this esoteric trawl through the forgotten world of London's thieves failed to pay off, there would be no way out. How did knowing that the Leicester Square Vampire had modelled himself on Robin Hood help to close the case?

  May had insisted on reattaching himself to the Vampire investigation. Bryant knew that his own erratic methods could drag them both down, as well as stranding some of the country's best minds without hope of employment.

  You have to give up this behaviour once and for all, Arthur, he thought as he walked to the corner in the rain and tried to remember where he parked the car.

  As he passed the murky trash-filled alleyway behind the library, the Highwayman was close enough to reach out and touch his scarfwrapped neck. Instead, the leather-clad wraith shifted back into the darkness until only the dull gleam of his eyes remained.

  34

  ELABORATE ACTS

  'Let's go, Peculiar!'

  Dan Banbury raised a hand on either side of him. The rest of the group stood in a ragged circle, joined at their fists. Only Meera Mangeshkar looked sceptical, mainly because she was having to hold Colin Bimsley's hand.

  'Come on, you lot, put your backs into it this time,' said Banbury, attempting to sound hearty.

  'Let's go, let's go, let's go, Peculiar!' echoed the group, lifting their arms high. They stopped in mid-chant and turned towards the door.

  Arthur Bryant was watching them with his mouth open. 'What on earth is going on here?' he asked finally. 'What are you all doing in my office?'

  'Team-building, sir.' Banbury began confidently, but his voice broke. 'Stimulates the brain and releases stress-inhibiting hormones. Only way to keep our spirits up.'

  'Well, could you kindly not,' snapped Bryant. 'I don't want this place infected with happiness. Nothing will be achieved unless you're all dead miserable.'

  'I thought in the light of Mr Kasavian's announcement this morning, it might prove beneficial.'

  'Well, you thought—What announcement?'

  'About closing down the unit on Monday, sir.'

  Thunderheads rolled into Bryant's eyes. 'Whatever you've heard is wrong, and whoever told you is a lying hound. Besides, if that had been the case, Raymond Land would have been creeping around here by now, visiting his particular form of spiritual ebola on us.'

  'Come on, there's no need to cushion us; we all received the memo, old bean,' said Kershaw nonchalantly.

  'I'm not cushioning you, you upper-class nincompoop. I have no idea what you're talking about.'

  'There's to be an internal investigation of the whole Leicester Square Vampire business. Your comment about him possessing eternal life made the papers this morning.'

  'Eternal life?' repeated John May, stepping in from the corridor. 'Tell me you didn't say that, Arthur.'

  'I've been misquoted. I said he was an example of an eternal myth,' Bryant barked. 'I was just answering a question posted on the unit Web site.'

  'And you didn't realise it was from a journalist?'

  'I stand by my remark. The Leicester Square Vampire's physical appearance is a universal archetype, a perverse spirit of old England, if you will. Take a look at the evidence in engravings and photographs; every few years the same kind of creature appears. Ultimately he eludes capture, because question marks hang over the guilt of the condemned culprit. Look at the mythology surrounding the Vampire—he ran through alleys, launching himself at strangers, drawing symbolic blood before soaring aloft, untouchable and unstoppable, before vanishing through brick walls. He didn't, of course; they were merely illusions caused by our unwillingness to accept more mundane truths. We want to believe in divine retribution, even when it appears to be directed at innocents. We never checked back far enough. All the evidence was there. When the first crime occurred, we studied only the recent files. Nobody thought of going back through the centuries.'

  'I wonder why,' said May bitterly. 'Arthur, I gave you licence to be unorthodox, but this mental meandering has to stop.'

  'Even you noticed the similarities between the Highwayman and the Vampire,' Bryant reminded him. 'The same ideals connect them spiritually and ideologically, if not physically. They share a common root, and it goes right back to Robin Hood. The idea that a murderer can somehow be rehabilitated in the public mind as a hero, a people's champion, has enduring appeal and goes back hundreds of years. The Vampire knew it, and so does the Highwayman. And the reason why I'm performing this "meandering," as you put it, is to get the Vampire's case closed before Faraday uses it against us.'

  'Then you're too late. You should have concentrated on the factual evidence, because that's all the Home Office is prepared to recognise.'

  'We still have time to give them the kind of report they're expecting.' Bryant slapped the engravings he had pinned behind his desk. 'There's a split between appearance and meaning. If we only read the surface signs, we'll always get it wrong. Has it ever occurred to you that the time period between fear and acceptance has become radically truncated in the modern age? The Vampire attempted to strike fear into people's hearts, but compared to most modern criminals, he seems quaint and rather absurd. Two weeks ago a man was kicked to death by fourteen-year-olds and thrown off Hungerford Bridge "for a laugh." How would the Vampire's antics have struck them? Would they have shown the respect he craved? The Highwayman is merely the externalisation of a centuries-old inadequacy, except that now his actions are accelerated to suit faster, darker times. We have found our motive.'

  'What we need is the identity, Arthur. This is about capture and punishment, not apportioning blame to society. Right from the start, this unit should have been dealing in tangibles. You've had your chance and wasted another day. No more poking about in archives or consulting with psychics. Oskar Kasavian is not a man to be trifled with. He's taking us down because we've failed to make connections.'

  'The victims have no links, John! Don't you think I've looked? They never appeared on the same TV show or were interviewed in the same article; they never met one another; they shared no mutual mourners, no common age, race, or class. The only common factor between any of them is this man Leo Carey, the publicist who was married to White and worked for Danny Martell.'

  'There's one other,' said May. 'Elliot Mason. The relief teacher once taught Paradine's son.'

  "I hate to make matters worse,' Banbury interrupted, 'but I got the results of the footprints back this morning. It seems we have two radically different sizes of the same boot. The first print, taken from the floor of the Burroughs gallery, is a size eleven. The second, lifted from the roof of the Oasis pool, is a size eight. We know from the height of the gallery tank that he
would have to be abnormally tall—and extraordinarily strong—to lift White over the edge. However, we should be able to get another height estimate from the picture taken by the girls on the Roland Plumbe Community Estate.'

  'According to Jack Renfield, the picture wasn't taken there at all,' said May.

  'Doesn't have an effect on the result,' said Banbury, tapping open the photograph on May's computer. He expanded the background brickwork behind the blurred shot of the Highwayman. 'These are half-bond yellow brick balustrades, so by factoring in the standard sizes of brickwork we can calculate their distance from the foreground figure, and work out his approximate height. Either he's bending his knees, or he's become shorter.'

  'Don't be ridiculous. You're telling me our Highwayman is capable of changing size.'

  'I think he possibly wears something in his shoes to give him added height on certain occasions.'

  'Why would he do that?'

  'Perhaps he has something wrong with his legs. I suppose it could be some kind of a brace. The gallery prints are deeper and heavier than the rest, as if he was burdened with extra weight.'

  'I hate to say it,' said Bryant, 'but this supports my hypothesis.'

  'I didn't know you had one.'

  'I'm wondering if the Highwayman doesn't exist.'

  He glanced up at the stunned faces of his team.

  'I asked myself, was the London Monster a real flesh-and-blood

  character, or something created for self-publicity? He abused, assaulted, and cut fifty-nine Mayfair ladies in the buttocks until they started sticking frying pans down their knickers. Epidemic hysteria produces symptoms of so-called conversion reactions wherein illogical, aberrant behaviour spreads through the populace. The Monster ceased to operate, and perhaps some other member of the public, taken with the idea, copied the example he had set. He received fan mail from women across the capital. In early twentiethcentury Paris, someone pricked women with hat pins. In 1956 in Taipei, there was an epidemic of razor slashings. In Illinois in 1944, a mad gasser sprayed women with paralysing "nerve gas" that proved to be nothing of the sort. The Leicester Square Vampire was also a manufactured monster. With this in mind, the witness statements from the time could be viewed with suspicion.'

  'You're suggesting he was someone we interviewed?'

  'The complicity of the public in creating the myth suggests so, yes. The originator stays around to help fan the fire of notoriety.'

  'But we no longer have the statements, and there's no way of tracing the people we questioned.' May thought for a second. 'You think the same is true of the Highwayman? That it's someone we've placed at the crime scenes?'

  'You've been on the estate where this picture was meant to have been taken,' said Bryant. 'You've seen the signs and symbols the Saladins scrawl on the walls like talismans.'

  'You think a bunch of disenfranchised kids could bring a killer to life and direct him to murder whomever he pleases?'

  'History shows us that the poor have to claim back what they should rightfully be able to share,' said Bryant.

  'So they conjure up a supernatural hit man from bones and hair and magic tokens.'

  Aware of the silence, May looked around to see that everyone was watching them. He had resolved never to argue with his partner in front of the unit, and had broken his promise. Furious with his lack of self-control, he left the room.

  'Well, that was a load of bollocks,' said Mangeshkar finally. 'Anyone care for a mutiny?' The blank looks provoked her. 'You're a bunch of cowards. Maybe Kasavian has the right idea; shut this place down and save the taxpayer some money.' She, too, stormed out. The remaining staff members could hardly blame her.

  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.

  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.'