Bryant & May - Oranges and Lemons

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  She turned over her bandaged palm. ‘It’s fine, darling. I think there are still some splinters in there but I’m not going to sit around in A&E all day. I shouldn’t have waded in like that. I might have known it would be organic fruit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Fancy, expensive, delivered in cheap wooden crates full of straw – more “authentic-looking”, I suppose.’

  ‘A bit of a coincidence, you passing,’ Bryant said.

  ‘Hardly, love – I’m only over the road.’ She lit a Superking from a match and fanned it out. ‘I’m smoking inside, don’t judge me. I know him, of course. A charming dinner companion, always wears a buttonhole. I don’t usually warm to podgy men. The wife’s nice too, a bit prickly, ambassador for a European charity, saves churches in the Netherlands.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘About six months ago, at an Inns of Court dinner to honour a retiring judge.’

  ‘What’s your professional impression of him?’

  ‘He’s honest. Impassioned. An accomplished public speaker.’

  ‘Level-headed?’

  ‘Implacable. It comes with the job.’

  ‘Did you see Ms Takahashi?’

  ‘Yes, she was standing further away than me.’

  ‘Tell me about the van and the bin lorry. Why did Claremont choose to cross there?’

  ‘The gap was right outside his door. And Sunday morning, I assume he was heading for the church.’

  Bryant chastised himself. ‘I’m such a heathen. That would never have crossed my mind.’

  ‘The driver of the bin lorry was asleep with his boots up on the dashboard. They don’t start until ten on a Sunday in Covent Garden.’ Her left hand cradled her right elbow as she smoked. ‘I didn’t see the door of the fruit van come open but I heard the crash as the crates came down.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else with him?’

  ‘He was alone. I ran over and dug through a great lethal pile of wood and nails. Most of the fruit had scattered. I couldn’t move him and I couldn’t see the driver around. I was amazed that the crates could do so much damage, but we’ve often had cases of negligence involving unstable loads. The driver is usually thrown to the wolves for failing to tether his load correctly.’

  Bryant shook his head. ‘Unfortunately he did a legger the moment the officer’s back was turned. His whereabouts are unknown.’

  Margot blew smoke through a gap in the kitchen window. ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘According to the CCTV footage Claremont came out of the entrance twice. Pity we have no facial recognition cameras there.’ Bryant opened the fridge and had a poke about inside. ‘This pâté will never keep. Would it be wrong to take it? There’s a space in front of Marconi House exclusively reserved for diplomatic vehicles. I guess he was going to tell the driver to move his van. The cab of the vehicle is out of shot, but it looks like they talked briefly, then he headed back inside. Five minutes later he reappeared. Presumably the driver said it was a Sunday and he was entitled to unload—’

  ‘Was he? Allowed to unload there on a Sunday?’

  ‘Yes, but not in the diplomatic space. Then the back of the van opened and the crates came down.’

  Margot pinched out her cigarette. ‘So maybe the driver lost his temper and gave them a push.’

  ‘And there’s my problem,’ said Bryant. ‘The crates fell and one piece impaled Claremont. People can injure themselves on anything. But oranges and lemons? Well, it’s the bells of St Clement’s, isn’t it? Just along from the flat. The church of St Clement Danes, the oranges and lemons church, although I’m not sure why we call it that. And Claremont. Clement. Was the assonance deliberate? I wonder if the church sent him the box of fruit that was found in the flat.’

  ‘Darling, you can’t use me to bounce your ideas off,’ said Margot gently. ‘You need your partner. You know what your problem is.’

  ‘Oh, I hate it when friends say that.’

  ‘You’re a living paradox,’ said Margot. ‘You venerate the law above all else, yet you break all the rules that govern it.’

  ‘Because the law has to be flexible. I understand how it works. But I don’t understand people.’

  ‘Then you have to learn. It’s time you listened to John on that subject.’

  ‘If anyone else gives me advice—’ Bryant began.

  Margot rose and slipped into her coat. ‘Dan says you’ve got the unit back just for this case. I’d make the most of it if I were you. If you want to understand what really happened, you have to get inside someone’s head.’

  ‘I have no idea how to do that,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t but John does. Take the pâté; it’ll only go to waste.’ She blew him a kiss and left.

  9

  Welcome Back

  The first illuminated hoarding on Piccadilly Circus was the Perrier sign, which went up in 1908. Over a century later it had been replaced by a vast curved LED screen showing a hyper-realistic hamburger seventeen metres high. Very few of the one hundred million people who passed through the circus every year realized that behind the signage was an old office building. One of the suites backing on to the suppurating hamburger was the office of Dr Arnold Gillespie, FRCP. As its windows were permanently boarded up the doctor relied on artificial light that had the effect of giving him eye-strain, depression and insomnia.

  Today he was also bruised about the face and wearing a supposedly flesh-coloured eye-patch, so he was not in the mood to deal with any difficult patients. Unfortunately a knock at the door revealed Arthur Bryant, who had turned up unannounced.

  ‘You were supposed to come in a fortnight ago.’ Dr Gillespie irritably waved Bryant to a seat.

  ‘I forgot about it.’

  ‘It was for a memory test.’

  ‘There you are. You should have reminded me.’ He seated himself with a grunt. ‘What have you done to your eye?’

  ‘I got hit in the face by my wife’s reconnaissance drone. She was taking photos of next door’s crazy paving.’ Dr Gillespie patted his paperwork. ‘I’m very busy – what do you want?’

  ‘I understand the Right Honourable Michael Claremont is a patient of yours.’

  ‘So that’s what this is about? I’ve already had a call from the Home Office. I can’t tell you anything unless it’s a criminal case. Patient confidentiality – you know that.’

  Bryant dismissed the notion. ‘Are you treating him for depression?’

  ‘He’s been under some stress. He feels his parliamentary impartiality is being tested.’

  ‘Has he said by whom?’

  Dr Gillespie gingerly touched his eye-patch. ‘I’m his physician, not his priest.’

  ‘Do you think he has any serious mental health problems? Thoughts of suicide?’

  ‘I doubt it, although we don’t fully understand what triggers them because there are too many variable factors. For decades doctors believed that overwork killed people. We used to ask patients if they were under stress in their jobs, and no one ever said no.’

  ‘I’ll need a full list of his medication. One other thing: does he have a vitamin C deficiency?’

  ‘Everybody does, in the sense that some vitamins aren’t stored in the body. It’s worse in the city. You just have to eat an orange.’

  ‘Why is he taking so much medication?’

  The doctor sighed wearily. ‘Because he wants to, Mr Bryant. Ultimately we’re largely responsible for our own health and like most people today he’s a hypochondriac, so I mainly prescribe placebos.’

  Bryant regarded him with a sharp eye. ‘It’s a piece of cake being a GP, isn’t it? A few referrals here, a few happy pills there. I could do it.’

  ‘You could try.’ Dr Gillespie gingerly adjusted his eye-patch. ‘I’ve got a sick dog at home. If you care to come round I’ll set him on you.’

  Bryant punched a groove in his hat and jammed it back on his tonsure. ‘I shall trouble you no longer. By the way, I left a
stool sample on your reception desk.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you for one.’

  ‘Think of it as a souvenir.’

  As the rowdy cosmos of Piccadilly Circus closed about him once more, Bryant stood outside Brasserie Zedel on the newly pedestrianized and sanitized edge of Soho, and recalled walking these streets with his partner and Janice Longbright. They’d seen and heard it all under these arches: the catcalls from the prostitutes; the dark laughter of the rent boys; the shady deals and racy nights. Now there was a giant McDonald’s.

  He told the taxi driver to take him to Shad Thames.

  While Bryant headed for a reckoning with his partner, Raymond Land was on his way to the Home Office Liaison Department in Marsham Street. He had been summoned back for a meeting, but as he approached the building he found the entire road filled with members of staff, coatless and in shirt sleeves. At the lobby doors security guards were ushering everyone outside.

  Land stood with the others, wondering what to do. Approaching him was some kind of feminized male model with a trimmed beard, Tom Ford glasses, a tight suit and a severe haircut. He shook Land’s hand warmly.

  ‘Mr Land, I’m awfully sorry about this. The security alarm just went off again. It keeps happening but no one has been able to fix it – Whitehall in a nutshell. We should be allowed back inside in a few minutes. Timothy Floris. Call me Tim.’

  So this was the publicity-friendly operative Land had recently heard about, appointed as an ‘advisory interlocutor’, one of the Home Office’s new job titles introduced to add a fresh element of gibberish to their Kafkaesque world.

  ‘It isn’t really my field,’ Floris admitted in a voice that was rather too high and thin to command respect. ‘One of my tasks is to damage-limit the department’s relationship with the media, mainly by keeping everyone away from microphones and Twitter.’

  ‘That must be a full-time job,’ Land sympathized. Faraday rarely spotted his own foot without trying to insert it into his mouth.

  ‘Mr Faraday and I came to an agreement. We’ve got your old building in King’s Cross back for the duration of the investigation. Obviously you have no equipment so we’ll bring in the essential tech kit if you can rustle up some furniture. I’m calling in every favour I can to get you kitted out and fully operative again.’

  Land made a noise of agreeable consent but was waiting for the catch. There was always a catch with the Home Office.

  ‘Mr Faraday is not keen on handling the details himself …’ Floris began awkwardly.

  I bet he’s not, thought Land. We’ve run out of ways to humiliate him.

  ‘He’s asked me to act as an independent observer, which means I’ll be seconded at the unit.’ He winced in apology. ‘Obviously I won’t interfere in any way. You should think of me as a …’

  ‘A spy,’ said Land drily.

  ‘A resource,’ said Floris with an ingratiating smile. His teeth were bleached.

  It was a reasonable price to pay for a chance to clear their name, Land decided. ‘We’d better get started,’ he said.

  John May’s flat looked as if it was between tenants. Arthur Bryant walked into a bare-boarded hall with white walls. Beyond it was an empty white room overlooking the grey high tide of the Thames. The room had a special feature: even weak sunlight reflected from the waves and shone ripples of light across the ceiling, creating a calm underwater atmosphere.

  Bryant went to the open window and looked out. He drew a deep breath and smelled the musk of Thames silt, sharpened through oxygen blooming from the embankment trees. A narrow balcony overlooked the river, upon which an iridescent patch of oil was moving sluggishly downstream like a vast undulating brooch. There was light everywhere even on this purblind day, the sky pushing its way in and filling his vision with furious clouds.

  He turned and studied the room. There were no mantelpieces, no shelves, no flat surfaces for the arrangement of books. May’s flat was an idealized department store layout, a theatre set for some obscure futurist entertainment. Why would such a naturally warm-hearted man choose to live this way?

  ‘I’m in here,’ called May.

  Bryant stepped back, overwhelmed by the panorama, and followed the voice.

  His partner lay propped up in bed so that he faced the picture windows. His chest was bandaged and he was wrapped in a grey blanket that matched his leonine silver hair. Elegance came naturally to him even in adversity, so that he appeared to have been art-directed into place in this sparse, ascetic home. His enforced inactivity had added a little weight to his bones.

  ‘Arthur.’ He fought down a smile, determined not to look grateful.

  ‘You shouldn’t leave your front door open, I could be anyone. Are you well? When we asked you to take a bullet for the team we didn’t mean literally.’

  ‘Very funny. This is coming out in a couple of days.’ He showed Bryant the drain in his chest.

  Bryant inwardly recoiled. The plastic tube made him realize just how closely his partner had brushed against death. He stood awkwardly before the picture window that framed the Thames like a Canaletto, not knowing what to say or what to do with his hands, so he took out his Spitfire pipe and fiddled with the stem. ‘Don’t worry,’ he managed, ‘I won’t light it.’

  ‘If you have to. The window opens.’

  ‘Best not. Your lungs, FFS.’

  May looked at him. ‘You have no idea what that means, do you?’

  ‘How are your lungs?’

  May smoothed the counterpane. ‘At about sixty per cent of their capacity. It hurts if I breathe too deeply. I’ll probably never run anywhere again.’

  ‘Running at your age is undignified anyway.’

  ‘I’d just like the option.’

  ‘We’d all like the option, John.’ Bryant stuck the pipe in his mouth unlit. ‘By the time they reach sixty most people have around six health problems. Then it’s just a matter of gently coasting downhill to senility and death.’

  ‘I’m so glad you came by to cheer me up,’ said May. ‘You must come again.’

  ‘I would have visited you earlier but I was under a vow of silence.’ He picked up a packet of medication and examined the contents, clattering his pipe. ‘You know I’m not very good at this.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How long before you can go out?’

  ‘A couple of weeks. The staples are out but I have to wait for the stitches to dissolve. The doctor says I have a good chance of completely—’

  Bryant was unable to contain himself a moment longer. ‘I was in the wrong, all right? I admit it. I was furious because you jeopardized the investigation. I didn’t take human error into account.’

  There was a moment of silence. ‘You never could. I know you’re still angry with me.’

  ‘Well, of course I am.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’

  ‘Can you stop saying that? I made a mistake and now they’re going to throw the book at me. Happy?’ May winced as he tried to sit up.

  ‘Of course I’m not.’ Bryant found his face heating up. ‘All my life I had to fight for everything and you had it all and nearly chucked it all down the drain. The handsome one, the charming one, the likeable one, women chasing after you, men looking at you in admiration and respect. Me, the short fat ugly one with the obsessive ideas and the boring conversation. I was grateful for every advancement, no matter how small. It was so easy for you, you probably never even noticed. You’re blind.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked May. ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Well, I hope you feel better for getting it off your chest. You think I’m blind? Take a look at yourself. You’re the reason why the unit still exists.’ He air-poked Bryant in the chest. ‘It’s you. You’re the main attraction. They come for you, not me. I’m the straight man, the line-feeder. But you know what? I’d be perfectly happy with that if we could only keep the unit.’

  Brya
nt felt the last shred of his annoyance evaporate. ‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘You like people. Civilians bore me to tears with their talk of marriages and babies and feelings but it’s something I need to learn. I’ve tried every major school of spiritual teaching and they’ve done nothing except leave me with a craving for pad thai.’

  ‘I don’t see what I can do,’ May answered.

  ‘Teach me about people, John. I’ll try not to look bored but I’m not promising anything.’

  ‘Arthur, it gladdens my heart to hear you say that, but we no longer have the unit.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. There’s been a development.’ He looked around. ‘I presume you have a television hidden in here somewhere?’

  ‘No, I have a tablet.’

  ‘Of course you do. You’ve seen what happened to the Speaker of the House? He didn’t have an accident, he was attacked. Someone tried to kill him and slipped up.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘My dear fellow, all the signs are there. It’s as plain as the drain in your chest. The Home Office is giving us back the unit because they think Claremont divulged parliamentary secrets while he was in an unstable state and we’re going to do a bit of spying for them, but instead we will be investigating the attack.’

  ‘On whose say-so?’

  ‘Mine, obviously. Of course we’ll be defying orders and have no money or resources and you’re laid up but it’s this or me wandering around the park trying to remember where I live again.’

  May’s head hurt. ‘Let me get this straight. You still want us to work together?’

  Bryant nodded so vigorously it looked as though his teeth were about to fall out. ‘Of course. Are you in?’

  ‘I was never out.’

  Bryant grinned. ‘I’d give you a hug but I don’t do the touchy-feely thing, and – ribs.’

  May looked down at himself. ‘As you can see I’m somewhat incapacitated at the moment, but I can work from here. You could start by feeding me anything you’ve got so far.’