Bryant & May

by Christopher Fowler

  Timothy Floris had come over from the Independent Police Complaints Division on the other side of the building, and was too sharply dressed, too healthy and too young to be working in a Home Office back room. He knew it and Faraday knew it, with the result that Faraday cut him out of the loop whenever he could.

  Floris decided to try again. ‘I know you’ve had a long, fractious relationship with the Peculiar Crimes Unit, but the Home Secretary believes that it’s time to reconsider your position.’

  Fractious didn’t begin to cover it. There were still a number of senior officials at the Home Office who would have been happy to dismantle the Unit with their bare hands, especially since Bryant had once led three of their wives out of Claridge’s restaurant in handcuffs.

  ‘After all the grief they’ve given me?’ Faraday stared at Floris in frank disbelief. ‘Just when we finally get rid of them once and for all? Do you know how much they were costing us?’

  ‘I have the budgets here,’ said Floris, tapping his tablet mainly for effect. ‘The Unit was cheaper to run than almost any other.’

  ‘But why them?’ Faraday almost pleaded.

  ‘Perhaps I can explain,’ said Floris with infinite patience. ‘The Speaker of the House of Commons is required to be politically impartial. Speakers must ensure that the rules of parliamentary law are adhered to. When a new one is elected she or he must resign from their party and remain separate from all political issues, even in retirement. Claremont is the youngest-ever speaker, and greatly respected. If he dies he could trigger a fight for succession that has tremendous political ramifications.’

  ‘How so?’ Faraday asked, trying to sound interested.

  ‘Whoever steps into his shoes will have to be as independent as he was. Unless they’re not.’

  ‘Meaning…’

  ‘Meaning the government cannot be trusted to choose an unbiased parliamentarian.’

  ‘I’m a civil servant, Mr Floris. When my paymasters change I barely look up from my desk. The Serious Crime Command can handle the investigation. I will not have those lunatics at the PCU running around destroying everything again, particularly when the matter is so sensitive.’

  This was a bit rich coming from someone who, on a stag weekend in Brussels, had been photographed pretending to post a letter in a burqa-wearing woman. Nobody knew it was Floris who had anonymously posted it on Twitter.

  Faraday looked across at Floris and felt threatened. This pipsqueak with threaded eyebrows and manicured nails belonged to an ambitious new generation that was entirely alien to him. Floris was the type who favoured protein boxes and palm-held technology, who talked about ‘drilling down’ and ‘leaning forward,’ and was out of place in a department that had only just abandoned secretaries and wire-mesh in-trays. Faraday, who had been known to scoff pork pies at his desk, hated him. But Floris wasn’t a real civil servant, he reminded himself, just someone whose parents both worked in the murky crosshatched section between the Single Intelligence Account and the Home Office, which probably explained why their son had sprung up through the ranks with such celerity. There were even rumours that he was related to the Home Secretary, although no one was quite sure of the lineage.

  There was a chill wind blowing through the corridors of power these days. The millennials were after his job, waltzing around their open-plan creative spaces with almond milk lattes. One by one they were being foisted on him, and were probably checking to see if he was trustworthy. He would have to keep his eye on these Midwich Cuckoos and make sure his job stayed secure.

  Floris tapped at the screen of his ridiculous little tablet. ‘Mr Faraday, you need to look at this from a different POV.’

  ‘A different what?’

  ‘A different point of view. The SCC can’t take it on, but the PCU can.’

  Faraday gave an adenoidal snort and surreptitiously wiped his nose. ‘You’re forgetting that I disbanded it. Its senior detectives aren’t available anymore and the rest of the staff have been placed on gardening leave.’

  ‘There’s another way to conduct the investigation that could benefit everyone.’ The screen was turned around so that Faraday could have read it if only the type size hadn’t been so small. ‘I think you should call in the head of the Unit.’

  * * *

  |||

  Raymond Land had been looking forward to retirement on the Isle of Wight, partly because of the time difference (it was always 1965 there) and because he would be able to go to the shops in his carpet slippers. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that.

  He rocked back on his heels and set down his trowel. It was a late Monday afternoon at the start of April and the perfect time for spring flowers, but nothing had bloomed in his garden. He had started out simply with daffodils and bluebells but they hadn’t come up. He couldn’t understand it. Schoolchildren managed to grow daffs, for God’s sake, and you couldn’t stop bluebells from sprouting like unwanted hairs. There were supposed to be some hyacinths in there, too, but all he had managed to grow so far were a few ugly green potato stems covered in some kind of weevil.

  Rising, he stretched his back and looked down to where the Ventnor pier had stood for over a century before collapsing into the sea. It was the first sunny day in nearly a month. The ground was spongy and welled beneath his Wellingtons. The air smelled of rotting seaweed and cow dung. Something was trilling in the distance: not a springtime bird, just the phone he had left in the kitchen. Making his way through the nettles and bindweed, past the mossy, partially collapsed garden fence that shielded his paranoid neighbours, he reached the back door just as the trilling stopped.

  How had he ever thought his retirement would be idyllic? The house was falling down, the locals were Neanderthals and the nearest pub was half a mile away. In one month he had read two-thirds of a novel, half completed an Airfix model of the HMS Ark Royal (he had abandoned it after gluing one of the radar masts to his eyelid) and watched half a TV whodunnit before his satellite dish was blown off the roof during a storm. The most exciting thing to happen so far was a duck climbing through his toilet window.

  Seagulls wheeled about the bungalow screeching like knives on plates. Sometimes the odour of cow methane forced him to close his kitchen windows. When he looked at the missed-call number and saw that it was not someone trying to sell him double glazing but the Home Office, his pulse returned to a faint blip.

  He rang the number back and was put through to Leslie Faraday. This could go either way, he thought. Faraday’s probably furious after our last encounter, and he has a vested interest in getting us out of the building.

  Faraday’s tone caught him by surprise. ‘Land, is that you? I’ve got Deirdre on my extension. I have something to tell you that can go no further.’

  ‘I’m retired, Leslie,’ Land answered. ‘Who on earth am I going to tell? The woman in the local charity shop?’

  ‘The Speaker of the House of Commons was just seriously injured in a freak accident.’

  ‘I fail to see what this has to do with me.’

  ‘The SCC can’t handle it because it’s not a criminal case.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘The matter is far from straightforward. There are—elements.’

  ‘ “Elements,” ’ Land repeated.

  ‘I can’t get into it on the phone. You need to come in right now. Alone.’

  * * *

  |||

  Having travelled up to London the previous evening, Raymond Land put on an unironed shirt and left his Travelodge, heading to the Home Office’s Marsham Street headquarters.

  In the chilly marble reception chamber he was given an ID lanyard, passed through a turnstile and greeted by a black-suited young woman with flawless skin and tied-back blond hair.

  ‘Mr Land? Follow me, please.’ She stopped before the lift and ushered him in w
ith the sympathy of a student offering a tube seat to a pensioner.

  Land was delivered to a glass office on the third floor and greeted by the portly liaison officer. Faraday, he had always felt, was a fat cork on the ocean of law enforcement. His initiatives sank without trace around him but he always resurfaced, bobbing along with the political tide until he could insert himself into another career fissure and bung everything up again.

  Faraday introduced him to Fatima Hamadani, a young Muslim woman from Manchester who, Land later discovered, had suddenly found herself transferred to the police liaison department a week after Faraday’s unfortunate stag photo surfaced online. She sat as still as a rock, her hands folded neatly together over a notepad, and looked incredibly fed up.

  ‘We’re just waiting for two more,’ Faraday explained. ‘From your old unit.’

  For a brief, mad moment Land entertained the thought that it might be Arthur Bryant and John May until he remembered that even if they could be at the Unit they couldn’t because it had gone.

  Instead, he looked up through the glass wall and saw Janice Longbright and Meera Mangeshkar being shown into the room. Janice looked magnificent, as if she’d caught up on a lifetime’s missed sleep. Freed from the restraints of active duty she had returned to her glamorous postwar stylings, complete with a coppery coiffure and a polka-dot blouse with a pinched waist and a turned-up collar. Meera, on the other hand, looked impatient, annoyed and suspicious.

  ‘Goodness, a lot of ladies,’ said Faraday, the female-to-male ratio clearly unsettling him. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Deirdre has left tea and biscuits in the corner, and the loos are just outside to the right. The first door says “gender free” but it’s actually the men’s. Fatima, perhaps you could lead us off?’

  Hamadani did not need to consult her notes. She had already realized that her legendary efficiency would mainly be required to cover her new boss’s failings. ‘We have a preliminary report on Mr Claremont’s health. His wife is with him. I understand her request for privacy but she’s being quite obstructive.’

  ‘What’s the prognosis?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘His skull is grazed and a sliver of wood has pierced his stomach lining. It missed his vital organs but two years ago he had a heart valve replacement and his doctor is concerned that the trauma has placed it under strain. I believe the wife wants to move him to a private clinic in Scotland.’

  ‘And where did this accident take place?’

  ‘Outside Marconi House in the Strand.’

  ‘That building has been redeveloped, hasn’t it? Why was he there?’

  ‘It’s residential now,’ Hamadani explained. ‘Mr Claremont has a town flat there. It happened at nine o’clock on Sunday morning.’

  Faraday stopped dunking his custard cream for a moment. One half fell into his tea. He raised a hand. ‘I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, ladies. Mrs Longbright—’

  ‘DI Longbright is fine,’ said Janice, nettled. ‘I am not married.’

  Land raised his right hand tentatively. ‘May I ask a question? Why are we here?’

  ‘Well.’ Faraday carefully set aside his broken biscuit. ‘I thought you might be wondering that. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to reallocate your boys and girls.’

  ‘But you’re planning to,’ said Land, alarmed.

  ‘Unfortunately it hasn’t been possible.’

  ‘But you closed the Unit down. You must have made some bloody provision.’ Incarceration on the Isle of Wight had blunted Land’s manners.

  ‘It’s become a little more complicated.’ Faraday took up a fresh biscuit and baptized it. ‘As you know, we decided to terminate the Unit because a number of controversial actions contravened procedural guidelines.’

  ‘The PCU achieved its success rate by not following your guidelines,’ snapped Land.

  Faraday was not to be goaded. ‘I have been convinced that it would be in the government’s best interests to allow the PCU to operate as an independent investigative body, just in this matter.’

  A slow smile crept across Land’s face as he looked from one civil servant to the next. ‘You want to open us again as some sort of pop-up? Perhaps we could sell pulled-pork bao buns and designer handbags at the same time. What are you up to?’

  ‘It’s a jurisdictional problem. The SCC can only examine the cause of Mr Claremont’s injury and its circumstances. We need to know more than that.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘He was trying to cross the Strand between parked vehicles,’ Hamadani told her. ‘A van shifted its load just as he passed, burying him under a stack of crates, some of which smashed and injured him. We want to understand what was going through Mr Claremont’s mind at the time.’

  ‘A lump of wood, by the sound of it,’ said Land.

  Faraday took over; he couldn’t have Hamadani doing all the talking. ‘We need to know if Claremont has been acting out of character lately, and if so who he’s been talking to.’

  ‘Isn’t that something the Minister of Security should be handling?’

  ‘Ordinarily, yes, but she feels that there are certain…’

  ‘Elements,’ Land completed, catching Longbright’s look of puzzlement. ‘You want to know if he was bonkers.’

  Faraday carefully placed his words. ‘There have been concerns about his behaviour in Whitehall for some time now.’

  ‘Of course there have, Leslie. Claremont acts according to his conscience, which must terrify you lot. He’s the enemy of rich lobbyists pushing vested interests. You know—your mates.’

  ‘If Mr Claremont isn’t in full possession of his faculties it’s important to know whether he shared any privileged information,’ said Faraday primly.

  ‘Oh, so it’s a spying job?’

  ‘It’s not quite as dramatic as that, but—’

  ‘I think what Mr Faraday means,’ Hamadani cut in, ‘is that it’s an unorthodox investigation and something for which you would be ideally placed. You would be allowed to take it over on the condition that you could reassemble your staff.’

  ‘I see,’ said Land, knowing that one detective was recuperating and the other one had vanished.

  ‘You’d have to start immediately,’ added Faraday. ‘Time is of the essence. According to the SCC, your unit is better equipped to deal with this because of your unique approach to such matters.’

  ‘And what is our approach?’ asked Longbright, who was fascinated to know how their methods were perceived.

  ‘From the side.’ Faraday waved his hand as if suggesting Tote odds or an approaching shark. ‘Unexpectedly. You would have to be fully functional within the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I don’t see how that’s possible,’ said Land. ‘We have no premises, you’ve taken away all our equipment and we’re missing—’ Meera kicked him under the table.

  ‘Well, we’d have to come to some sort of arrangement, obviously,’ Faraday conceded.

  ‘You mean you’d allow the Unit to remain open?’

  ‘Just for the duration of the investigation.’

  ‘Mr Claremont had just undergone a full psychological evaluation,’ said Fatima Hamadani. ‘He was granted the highest level of clearance, which allowed him full security access.’

  ‘Why are you questioning your own evaluations?’ asked Land.

  ‘Because this accident seems improbable and is therefore highly suspicious.’

  Land shrugged. ‘A lot of accidents are improbable. My grandmother was bitten by a horse and died after falling off the stretcher.’

  ‘When will it be possible to interview Mr Claremont?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘We’re hoping to be able to speak to him within the next forty-eight hours,’ Hamadani replied.

  ‘What was a van doing unloading at nine o’cloc
k on a Sunday morning? Have you questioned the driver?’

  Hamadani passed her a single sheet. ‘Unfortunately the driver went missing moments after the accident. Presumably he had his own reasons for not wishing to be interviewed by the police. He may have been in violation of his employment terms or knew he would be made liable for failing to secure his cargo.’

  Longbright read the page through. Mohammed Alkesh had been hired to deliver forty crates of fruit to the church opposite Claremont’s flat. Had he stuck around, he would have been taken to Holborn Police Station to make a formal statement. A young constable had tried to keep the scene under control until the ambulance arrived. Descriptions of Alkesh were tentative and unedifying; he was young and wore a black sweatshirt with a brown leather baseball cap. Nobody at Kent Farmhands Organic Fruits seemed to have met him, but that was not unusual.

  Faraday closed his blank notebook with finality. He liked the kind of meetings that shifted responsibility to others. ‘The Home Secretary needs to be one hundred percent sure that Claremont was of sound mind. If you find anything that suggests otherwise we’ll advise an immediate overhaul of the vetting process. Both the Home Office and the Foreign Office will have to withdraw clearances across Europe and resubmit everyone for testing. We need answers by the end of the week.’

  ‘How can you prove someone sane by then?’ asked Longbright. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Faraday agreed, looking at Land because he was senior and a man, ‘but we need you to try. I’ll have you liaise with, er…’ He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Hamadani, who was scribbling furious notes on her pad and suddenly looked up like a rabbit sensing it was about to be shot. ‘She’ll supervise the operation.’

  ‘Perhaps we could have someone impartial this time,’ Land suggested.

  ‘I think you’ll find Fatima very fair-minded,’ replied Faraday.

  Hamadani quickly raised her hand in protest. ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate.’

  ‘Why not? If you’re based at the Unit you’ll be able to keep the Home Secretary directly informed.’