Bryant & May - Oranges and Lemons

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘For all we know he has a team of experts working day and night to cover his tracks,’ said May, narrowing his eyes. ‘Why are you so keen to take his side?’

  ‘You’re not the only one who’s been doing a bit of research.’ Land thrust out his chin. ‘English is an easy target. People resent him for being a self-made man. Actually I used to know him. We were friends at school. He seemed a very nice chap.’

  ‘Raymondo, you did not go to a posh school,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m amazed you went to school at all.’

  ‘I meant at school at the same time. Schools.’

  ‘So not the same school at all.’

  ‘But I was always bumping into him. We were old friends and—’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many times did you bump into him?’

  ‘Oh, often.’

  ‘So you must have been really close. How often?’

  ‘Ah – dozens – dozens of times probably.’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘Oh yes, quite a few.’

  ‘More than once? Because you went to a grammar school and he went private, and I seem to remember you lived in the wrong part of Greenwich and he probably lived in a nice bit and your paths would not naturally have crossed. I can’t imagine he’d have wanted to be seen with you.’

  May’s ears pricked up. ‘Michael Claremont lived in Greenwich for a couple of years. And the shop fitter, Gavin Spencer.’

  ‘Raymondo, how old were you when this mythical friendship occurred?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, about fourteen or fifteen,’ said Land, ‘but I don’t see what that has to do with—’

  They went to find Longbright in the operations room. ‘Janice, did anyone else live near Michael Claremont or Gavin Spencer in South-East London when they were in their early to mid-teens?’

  ‘We ran full checks on their background histories,’ Janice told him. ‘It was hard to find much on them at all. Only Claremont was required to provide a detailed history prior to his election as Speaker of the Commons, and Gavin Spencer had notes attached to his prison record. We didn’t find anything to suggest they’d ever met. Besides, if something occurred way back then, why would anyone wait for so much time to pass before acting?’

  ‘You didn’t go and ask around the neighbourhood to see if anyone remembered their faces?’ said Bryant.

  ‘Of course not, it was too long ago. We don’t have the time or resources to do that sort of thing any more,’ said Janice. ‘But we conducted thorough background checks online.’

  ‘Online,’ Bryant repeated.

  ‘We have to be ready for any comeback from English,’ said Land, who had followed them. ‘You can bet his lawyers are drawing up a response right now.’

  ‘He has to be kept under constant surveillance until this is over,’ said May. ‘I want you to get full approval for his arrest, Raymond. This is our last chance to catch him.’

  48

  Making a Murderer

  Atena waited on tables at her parents’ restaurant in Green Lanes and slept under the counter between shifts. She grew up with the gift of confidence and easy conversation, and I heard she was planning to study law, something I longed to do if only I had the means. Instead I was forced to remain self-taught.

  I heard she married well. My only friend. I never saw her again.

  By this time I was suffering from bouts of depression, although I still took any work I could find and continued my studies in every spare moment. I watched and I waited. The powerless can only observe. That, I know now, is why social media remains so popular; it is the home of the powerless.

  I remembered the only happy photograph I had seen of my mother, taken at a local funfair when she was young and pretty; I barely recognized the sickly thing that had taken her place. I never saw joy in her face, only the acceptance of defeat. I knew how others saw us, limping child and angry parent, searching charity shops, sitting in laundromats, watching the rain from cheap cafés, waiting for something better.

  There’s a stage of poverty you reach when you start to look different. It’s very hard to get rid of that look. My mother died in a basement flat full of cockroaches with a needle hanging from her arm. She was not killed by drugs but sepsis. By this time she was overweight and severely diabetic. I knew the exact moment when her life had gone wrong. In my imagination I undertook a grand scheme that would rebalance my world and save me from her fate.

  Right from the outset nothing went according to plan. Two of the six responsible were out of the country, one working in Madrid, the other in Singapore. But I was good at waiting. It gave me more time to plan.

  They both returned within two months of each other, and then, infuriatingly, another one left for six months to work in Italy. I knew enough about them all to be sure that they weren’t in contact with one another. Were they ever really friends, or merely drawn together out of devilry on dull summer nights when there was nothing to do but hang out and get into trouble? I wondered if they felt remorse, but a more terrible thought struck me. Did they remember what they had done? Did they even remember each other? What appeared momentous to me may have meant nothing to them.

  I had left it too long to exact revenge. Modern policing involves DNA tests, face recognition software and electronic spoor. I knew a little about coding but not enough to erase whole histories, so I set myself incremental goals and practised until I could attain each one.

  One of the first things I did was remove or alter the few online residential addresses I could find for any of the six between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. I couldn’t get to Claremont’s details because they resided in a government file, and I found nothing on Gavin Spencer’s background because he had an almost non-existent digital footprint.

  Searching for them became more than just an exercise. It was a reason to stay alive.

  The plan needed to be explored in almost infinite detail, so I went back to my memoir. Suddenly I found I was writing not just a fictional account of a murder spree but a memento mori. If I’m honest with myself, I think that by this time I had abandoned the idea of physically taking revenge. It was as if the act of writing it down was in itself a form of retribution.

  I worried that the plan had flaws I could not see. They say authors grow so close to their fictions that they fail to realize what’s wrong with them. I needed outside advice from someone, but who could I trust?

  When I walked past the bookshop, I knew it was the kind of place that was run by an expert. The owner hardly ever had customers. I discovered that he read unsolicited manuscripts from new writers and offered them advice, so I submitted my creative exercise.

  Cristian Albu read the book and wrote to tell me that it worked because I had made a clichéd plot believable. I had been in danger of losing my purpose but now I had found it once more, and decided to move forward at once with the plan. The time was right. All of my targets were in London at the same moment.

  I knew I might never get another chance. When you approach a problem single-mindedly and concentrate on completing each section with the desired effect, you remove most of the chance elements and guarantee the outcome.

  I promised they would die and I told myself I would deliver their deaths, even though I knew events might unfold differently to the way I had planned.

  It transpired that I had made a single fundamental mistake.

  There is no such thing as a perfect crime.

  Part Six

  * * *

  THE GREAT BELL AT BOW

  Children of Cheape, hold you all still,

  For you shall hear Bow bell rung at your will.

  Clerk of the Bow Bell

  49

  Question Everything

  Script extract from Arthur Bryant’s ‘Peculiar London’ walking tour guide. (Tour of the City’s old market places. Bring more dosh than you think you’ll need, you’ll be buying a load of tat, trust me.)

  Cheapside connects St Paul�
��s Cathedral to the Bank of England. In medieval times ‘cheap’ meant ‘market’, and markets were everywhere in this ancient part of London’s Square Mile.

  The streets were named after the items sold: Bread Street, Poultry, Milk Street and Honey Lane were here in all their rambunctious glory, so it’s no surprise that Chaucer was raised among the stalls. The highest members of royalty passed among the lowest tradespeople.

  Cheapside was once described as ‘the busiest thoroughfare in the world’ and was long considered one of the most important streets in London, because you could buy cabbages and chickens here, but you could also buy gold. The street was devastated during the Second World War and has now transformed itself into the pedestrianized shopping hell in which you find yourself today.

  The cockney epicentre of London is St Mary-le-Bow, a church that has always had trouble with its bells. They were so often unringable that it became a matter of national concern, and even when they pealed there were problems. The bells shook the stonework from the spire and killed a merchant in Bow Lane. After the Blitz they were recast, each with an inscription from the Psalms on it. The first letter of each Psalm formed the acrostic ‘D WHITTINGTON’. The British love word puzzles.

  Cockneys are an endangered species now because the Bow bells can’t be heard above the noise of traffic. They’re dying out because hardly anyone lives in the area. The only hospital within earshot of Bow bells has no maternity ward.

  I would like to read you a selection of bawdy speeches set in Cheapside from Henry the Fourth Part One. Anyone not wishing to be enlightened by the words of the immortal Bard may avail themselves of the myriad retail opportunities offered by Zara and H&M. If I’m left with fewer than three punters you will find me across the road in Williamson’s Tavern.

  They were stationed thirty yards from the church of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, outside a tanning salon that was loudly advertising specials on leg waxing and muff management. A steady stream of half-asleep office workers passed them. Nobody looked up at the church. Hardly anyone looked up at all.

  ‘I could kick the nuts off a chicken korma right now,’ said Colin, pinching his stomach through his PCU tunic. ‘Look at me, I’m wasting away.’

  ‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning,’ said Meera. ‘Have a cereal bar like everyone else.’

  ‘I’m not a budgie. You’ll be suggesting a bell and a mirror next. Come on, there’s a café over the road. It’ll take five minutes.’

  ‘And what if we miss him?’

  ‘We can see just as much from there. Murderers don’t get up this early. Look around. It’s a lovely morning; we just need a bit of grub to make it perfect.’

  Meera turned on him. ‘How do you do it, Colin? How do you stay so bloody perky and cheerful no matter what happens? The seas are rising, the forests are vanishing, our leaders are imbeciles and murderers roam the streets, but when you look out there all you see is sunshine and food. It must be exhausting being you because it’s exhausting even being near you.’

  He looked at her as if she had spoken to him in Turkish. ‘You can’t do anything about the first three and the last one will be resolved by people with bigger brains than us, so why worry? We’re foot soldiers, Meera. We’re like thingy and whatsit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’

  Meera’s eyes were like fireworks. ‘At least they tried to get Hamlet murdered. I have ambitions too. You’re just happy when it’s not raining. I’ve set my bar a lot higher than that.’

  ‘Than me, you mean.’

  She softened and touched his arm. ‘No, not you. It’s just that there’s more I can do. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I want to apply for specialist training.’

  Colin’s happy mood evaporated. He kicked at the wall behind him. ‘But that would mean you leaving the PCU.’

  ‘If that’s what it takes. It doesn’t affect us. This is probably our last day on the case anyway. We’re no further on than we were when it started. Tomorrow it will go to the SCC, the Home Office will have proven their point and the unit will head into mothballs for the last time. That’s why I need to think about moving on.’

  ‘Why do you always say that?’ Colin asked. ‘I this, I that, never we, never us.’

  ‘I don’t think of us as being together,’ she replied carelessly. ‘I’ve always been independent.’

  ‘Too much independence cuts out everyone else. Don’t become the person who does that.’

  Meera was losing patience. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying.’

  Colin waited while someone shouting into his phone passed them. ‘I’m saying you should learn to rely on me, Meera.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘In my head it’s really simple. We just get married.’

  Meera could not have looked more amazed if she had gone to a football match and found herself attending a public hanging. She attempted to wipe the look of stupefaction from her face. ‘Do you want to take a minute to think about what you just said?’

  ‘I’ve already taken a lot longer than a minute to think about it,’ said Colin, removing a ring box from his jacket pocket. ‘I guess I loved you from the first moment I saw you.’

  ‘You guess? It’s not love at first sight if you’re not sure.’

  ‘I’m sure. I remember thinking, I love her even if she is a bit short. Meera, I need to know if you feel the same way about me.’

  She stalled. ‘It certainly wasn’t reciprocated. You were eating. Anyone who can watch you fit a whole saveloy into your mouth in one go isn’t going to fall in love with you at first sight. Or at second sight, when you’ve swallowed it and run your finger around your teeth to get the extra bits.’

  Colin could feel the moment ebbing away. His hand with the ring box was still outstretched. ‘But do you think you ever could—’

  ‘Can you shut up for a minute?’

  He closed his mouth. He wasn’t sure about the way she was watching him – like a child with a magnifying glass on a sunny day waiting for an ant to stand still. He wanted to add something profound and beautiful but decided against it because he couldn’t think of anything.

  ‘If you want to win a maiden you must slay a dragon,’ said Meera.

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘You have to ask my mother first.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry your mother.’

  ‘I mean you have to get permission from her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you do,’ said Meera, ‘she’ll pay for the whole thing.’

  Colin looked as if his eyes were about to fall out. He thought of all the happiest moments of his life, starting with finding that he could now reach the shelf where his mother kept the beer. This was better.

  ‘What’s that in your hand?’

  He looked down, startled to find the box in his palm. ‘There’s nothing in it yet ’cause I’m a bit brassic at the moment, but I’ll fill it, I promise. I’ve got a can of Fanta in my bag; I could give you the ring pull off that for now.’

  ‘As irresistible as it sounds,’ said Meera, ‘I think I’ll wait.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ He pinched his cheeks. ‘I’m waiting for the sky to fall.’ He held her hand. ‘My old man said I would never amount to anything. He said I’d never make a copper because no one would ever look up to me. I wish he was still alive. I miss him.’

  ‘You have a very good heart, Colin Bimsley,’ said Meera. ‘I’d be proud to marry you.’

  He was about to kiss her when his phone rang. It was Janice. ‘Stop whatever you’re doing, Peter English has disappeared,’ she said. ‘We had two Met officers following him this morning from his flat to his office, but he managed to shake them off. We’re sending you back-up. From this moment on you need to be really alert. Question everything you see and hear.’

  50

  The Great Bell

  ‘How did he slip away?’ asked Bryant, stabbing at a hamburger carton with his walking stick and deftly flicking it into a
bin. This afternoon he had chosen to bring along his ebony cane with the retractable spike.

  ‘They saw him go into the building but couldn’t follow him because they’re not being allowed to enter without a warrant,’ May explained. ‘English’s lawyer is trying to argue that there are no grounds for the granting of one. A few minutes later someone spotted English in the street behind.’

  The pair headed over to a wooden bench in the little cobbled courtyard outside the church of St Mary-le-Bow and seated themselves. From here they could see anyone entering or leaving. There were supposed to be four Met constables stationed around the church. They couldn’t be seen, but Bryant conceded that was the point.

  ‘I should never have set off the fire alarm at Peter English’s office,’ he said out of the blue. ‘It tipped him off because now he knows that I know.’

  May struggled to see the point but gave up. ‘What do you mean?’

  His partner appeared not to have heard. ‘I have been deceived and now we all have to face the consequences. Do you know about the bear?’

  ‘I’m having enormous trouble following your thoughts,’ May admitted.

  ‘If you look at the art of deception from a neurological point of view it gets very interesting.’ Bryant sorted through a paper bag of boiled sweets. ‘I know my eyes don’t work very well but I console myself with the knowledge that nobody’s do. We need our brains, specifically shape-selective neurons, to make sense of what we see. Perspective and occlusion are tricks of depth perception that mess with our minds.’

  He popped a barley sugar into his mouth, then remembered to offer May one. ‘There are a number of famous experiments that show just how terrible our powers of observation are. One involves a student stopping to ask a porter for directions. Some workers pass between them carrying a large board, and a different person takes the place of the student without the porter even noticing his change of identity. Another experiment involves footage of a football match as a striker heads towards the goal. Nobody spots a big fellow in a bear suit dancing across the pitch because their brains have focused exclusively on the attempt to score. Deception is simply a system learned like any other.’