Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  DuCaine raised his eyes to heaven. ‘It’s not the 1970s. Nobody over twenty-five goes clubbing any more; they’re online just like you and me and everyone else.’

  ‘All right,’ said Renfield, ‘keep your hair on, I just thought I’d ask, that’s all.’

  Janice Longbright found herself in an expansive Arabic vision of what the designer thought an English drawing room might look like, with polished marble instead of floorboards and a backlit atrium substituted for a plaster ceiling. The Palmeira Hampton was blandly glamorous in the way of all global hotel chains, and therefore not very English or anything specific at all. At least the red velvet armchairs were comfortable, and she remained silent while the waiter finished pouring tea into Lena De Vere’s cup, feeling that the interview was going to be more awkward than she had expected.

  ‘First of all, I’m sorry that I had to find you so quickly, but you’ll appreciate that time is of the essence. I’d like to offer my sincere—’

  Mrs De Vere waved her condolences aside. She was blonde and attractive in a way that would prevent any real personality from showing in her face for a few more years. ‘I understand. I suppose it hasn’t really sunk in yet, so now’s probably a good time to talk. I’m very tired and would rather get this over with as soon as possible.’

  ‘Of course. I have to tell you that at the moment we have no suspects in this case, so I must ask who was closest to your husband, and if he had enemies.’

  ‘Enemies?’ Lena gave a sharp little laugh. ‘No, he didn’t have enemies. He was too busy changing people’s lives. I suppose you could say the banks were his enemies, generally speaking; Jonathan prided himself on his anti-capitalist credentials. When he was still at school he tried to take his local building society to court, but he quickly discovered that didn’t work. So he looked for ways of doing good through business. Jonathan worked very long hours. He didn’t have much time left over to be with friends or family.’

  ‘That couldn’t have been easy for you.’

  ‘Let’s just say that we weren’t first in the receiving line when it came to getting his full attention.’ She unconsciously touched her stomach, and Longbright remembered that she was pregnant. Her clothes were tailored so that she barely showed.

  ‘This is a delicate matter, but I have to ask you who you were with in Amsterdam.’

  ‘I was attending a seminar at the Rijksmuseum.’

  ‘So I understand. But who were you with?’

  ‘I wasn’t with—’

  ‘Before you answer, you should know that I called your hotel and they had no record of your booking.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Lena De Vere folded and refolded her napkin. ‘Do we really have to go through this?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I was there, but I wasn’t staying under my name. My husband is well known to the press and I was thinking about his reputation. You don’t expect something like this to happen. I wasn’t prepared.’

  ‘Can I ask once again who you were with?’

  ‘A friend of mine. He makes jewellery; he’s a metallurgist. If it’s possible, I’d like to leave him out of this. Jonathan and I – we’ve been having difficulties for some time.’

  ‘You mean your relationship.’

  She caught Janice’s glance at her stomach. ‘To save you the awkwardness of asking, the child is not my husband’s. Jonathan was on antidepressants, plus being a heavy smoker – he was impotent. We’ve been … privately separate … for a while. I do want to keep this out of the press.’

  ‘I’m not in a position to promise that,’ said Longbright.

  Lena De Vere’s face betrayed no emotion. ‘I understand,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I need you to think carefully about who your husband knew and saw regularly. I’m afraid we’ll have to take his laptop, phones and all his passwords. Did he ever have anything to do with the Findersbury Bank?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Jonathan was brought in by the board to set up a charitable trust for them. He was in the middle of organizing it when that idiot Cornell set the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘The connection hadn’t been made clear to me,’ Longbright admitted, surprised. ‘What kind of trust?’

  ‘It involves supplying preloaded computers for schoolchildren in India.’

  ‘So your husband dealt with the directors?’

  ‘I believe so. He never told me any details. As far as I know, they were still being hammered out.’ Mrs De Vere winced as the baby kicked.

  ‘When are you due?’ Longbright asked.

  ‘In about nine weeks. I’m – My husband was a very good man. Things will be – awful without him. It’s just that this – right now – the timing, I mean. I don’t know what to do first.’

  ‘I can put you in touch with an appropriate support group if you need one.’

  ‘What I’d like is a drink.’ She stepped aside from the thought. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘If you dig into my past I’m sure you’ll turn up enough about me to counterbalance my husband’s well-publicized goodness. I suppose I was one of his improvement projects. After you’ve done some research, perhaps you’ll feel that it didn’t take as well as the others.’

  ‘It’s not my job to judge,’ said Longbright gently. ‘If you—’

  Mrs De Vere looked away to the window. There seemed to be some kind of commotion outside, a shifting crowd pushing one way and another, like a rugby scrum. An arm was raised and there came an explosion of glass. The window of the lounge bar was shattered by a chunk of concrete. The entire room rose to its feet in a single motion. One teacup dropped to a thick rug and rolled in a circle.

  ‘I think you’d better go,’ said Longbright, shepherding Mrs De Vere to the lobby even as the waiters mobilized to usher out the guests.

  Longbright ran to the entrance and found an angry horde armed with placards that read ‘BASH THE RICH’. The cards were printed in the same sans-serif typeface that Jonathan De Vere used for his CharityMob app.

  She looked up the street. A great dark sea of protestors had filled the space between the buildings, flooding down from Hyde Park. She called Renfield. ‘Jack, what’s going on? I’m still in Knightsbridge. There’s trouble breaking out here now.’

  ‘There was a rally in Hyde Park,’ he told her. ‘They tore down the enclosure fences in protest at the heavy police presence, and it looks like all hell’s breaking loose. You should get out of there before they lock the stations down.’

  ‘OK, I’m on my way.’ As she headed out, she realized that the rioters were almost at the gates of Buckingham Palace. How much longer would it be before the police decided to raise the stakes and turn its newly purchased water cannons on the crowds?

  24

  SECURE

  ‘He’s going to go bananas if he finds out where we’ve gone,’ remarked May.

  ‘Then he won’t find out,’ Bryant promised. ‘This is our stop.’

  The Paddington train deposited the detectives at Burford, where they were able to find a taxi that would take them to Oakley Manor House. They passed over a sluggish meandering river and through a pretty street of stone the colour of Shropshire blue cheese. The town lay in a dip fringed with hawthorn, dogwood and poplars, surrounded by damp emerald hills.

  ‘Blimey, this is depressing,’ said Bryant, peering from the taxi window with a grimace.

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s beautiful. This is the Cotswolds.’

  ‘I know.’ Bryant sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Coachloads of Chinese tourists creeping around antique shops photographing everything from teapots to toilet seats so that they can make exact reproductions when they get home. But it’s all fake to begin with, mocked up for the tourist trade, so they’re just getting copies of copies.’

  ‘What a dreadful old cynic you are,’ said May. ‘This is an area of outstandin
g natural beauty. You’d be happier if there were a few more pound shops and some gang-related crime, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, there’s crime, all right. Everyone’s busily peddling the family plate to anyone gullible enough to think they’re buying a bit of Ye Olde Englande. And all those charity shops selling dead people’s rubbish just to dodge paying taxes. Have you ever seen people in charity shops? It’s like watching tropical fish move about. And why is there always a cake stand? Who uses cake stands? Look out there: it’s not right to have so many trees. And it smells funny.’

  ‘It’s the countryside. What do you expect? Do you want me to chuck some plastic bags out of the window to make you feel more at home?’

  Bryant harrumphed and sat back in his seat, looking like a Brueghelian peasant with gout.

  It was late afternoon by the time they arrived at the edge of the ash-tree-lined estate, with its grand gardens laid out after the style of Inigo Jones, dotted with statues of Greek deities that could be glimpsed like ghosts palely loitering between the luxuriant hedgerows.

  ‘So this is where his punters’ money went,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s not his family home. I looked this gaff up in my country-house bible. Cornell’s only had it for about three years. He bought it from a Russian who tried to turn the Regency master bedroom into a pole-dancing parlour.’

  ‘Pull your tie straight and smarten yourself up a bit,’ said May. ‘I don’t want him thinking you’ve come here to apply for the position of wrinkled old retainer.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Bryant stepped out on to the gravelled path and looked around as the taxi drove off. ‘There’s no bell.’

  ‘No, but there’s that.’ May pointed up at the black glass hemisphere suspended from the stone newel that divided the steel gates. Even as he spoke, the barriers swung silently back, allowing them on to the drive. At its centre was a vast cherub-bedecked fountain and a pond filled with lurid goldfish.

  They were met at the door by a severe young woman in a black business suit. ‘Please wait in the library. Mr Cornell will join you shortly,’ she said, clearly expecting them to follow her without a word. They found themselves in an ornamentally plastered room of double height, lined with glass bookcases containing the kind of calfskin volumes no one had opened in a century.

  ‘Keep an eye on the door,’ said Bryant, pulling out various desk drawers and checking the contents.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ May warned. ‘And let me do the talking.’

  ‘What do you think these are?’ Arthur raised a handful of blank white swipe cards. ‘Does the bank have an electronic key entry system? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, it does; now put those back. He’s coming.’

  Bryant hastily pocketed the cards as their host arrived.

  Dexter Cornell was younger than either of them had expected. Indeed, the banker looked to Bryant’s aged orbs as if he had been newly displaced from the womb: pink, unlined and balding, with a thin blond thatch that barely bothered to be hair, and the slightly protuberant eyes one usually found in paintings of eighteenth-century duchesses. His handshake, however, proved surprisingly powerful and was clearly driven by thick arm muscles.

  ‘Please, have a seat.’ Cornell indicated an awkward arrangement of red leather chairs and a tiny, unstable-looking octagonal table that had been laid for afternoon tea. As a mantelpiece clock pecked out the passing seconds, an elaborate, parodic ritual began involving silverware and slender pairings of white bread and orange salmon. He’s overplaying the English gentleman a bit, thought Bryant. Well, it won’t wash with me.

  ‘Quite a nifty little hideaway,’ he remarked. ‘We thought it would be quicker to come and find you.’

  ‘It’s an investment.’ Cornell smiled. ‘The upkeep is fairly horrific, but one has to keep these grand old homes going.’

  ‘Did you put the security system in yourself?’ asked Bryant. May knew that his partner had logged Cornell as a potential suspect. In May’s mind there was an element of psychosis in all powerful men, even if it remained dormant.

  ‘The place is empty most of the time, so you can’t be too careful,’ said Cornell with impatience. ‘I assume you didn’t come to discuss the house.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said May, taking over. ‘I understand that one of my colleagues explained the purpose of our visit. In the wake of the unfortunate events surrounding your departure from the Findersbury Bank, three men have died, so it seems you may be indirectly connected to the tragedies.’

  ‘There’s very little connection, from what I’ve been told,’ said Cornell, allowing them to see that he had knowledge of the investigation. ‘I fail to see how you reach the conclusion that it involves me.’

  ‘Nevertheless, in order to eliminate you from our inquiries we’ll need a detailed breakdown of your movements at the times in question.’ May handed him a folded sheet of paper.

  Cornell pocketed the page without examining it. ‘What if I’m unable to account for any absences?’

  ‘I’m sure a man with your busy work schedule can account for every second of his time,’ said May. ‘If you could email that back by tomorrow morning?’

  ‘According to my friend Superintendent Darren Link, two of these men might have simply suffered accidents.’

  ‘We don’t believe that to be the case, although we have no proof to the contrary,’ said Bryant, unfazed by Cornell’s pointed reference. ‘It may be that an anti-capitalist organization or one of its splinter cells has also placed you in its firing line.’

  ‘Well, am I a potential victim or a suspect?’

  ‘That’s not for us to say at the moment.’

  Cornell had started to breathe noisily through his nose, as if trying to let steam escape before something blew up. ‘So I’m the one being judged here, not the terrorists who are launching attacks on the banking system.’

  ‘The right to legitimate protest is a keystone of the democratic process,’ May reminded him mildly. ‘The moment it oversteps its guidelines and endangers life it becomes a police matter. Your – situation – with the bank’s directors is of no concern to us. You’re entitled to protection just as any other citizen would be in circumstances like this.’

  ‘We’re approaching a date that’s traditionally associated with anarchy,’ Bryant pointed out. ‘You may need protection.’

  ‘So – what do you expect from me?’ Cornell glared at each of them in turn.

  ‘You can start by giving us an assurance that you’ll remain here for the rest of the week.’

  ‘You want to put me under house arrest!’

  ‘It would be for your own good.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ Cornell warned. ‘You have no idea of what’s at stake right now.’

  ‘I know that your Shanghai deal in East Africa is still going to make you a lot of money even though it collapsed,’ said Bryant casually.

  ‘Let me show you something.’ Cornell’s features set hard in an effort to contain his fury. Rising to indicate that the meeting was terminated, he tapped his phone and summoned two men to the room.

  Although they were dressed casually in jeans and black sweatshirts, the pair wore quasi-military badges and were obviously more used to wearing uniforms. Both had ex-army SLR Blackout rifles slung across their chests, and seemed unable to place their broad arms at their sides.

  ‘I have my own private security team on this,’ Cornell told the detectives. ‘The bank is off-limits to you, do you understand? As is this house. You think you can just wander down here, spy on me and report back? I don’t need your protection, although you might if you decide to make something out of this. Go back to your care home and stay out of my business. I’ll go wherever I damn well please, whenever I please, without your permission. You really have no idea who you’re dealing with.’

  ‘You know what puzzles me?’ said Bryant, nonchalantly turning to the disgraced CEO. ‘It’s not a matter of whether or even how you did it. The insider deal, I mean. I keep as
king myself how anyone else knew. If you’d all just kept quiet you would have got away with it. Your building has sprung a leak, Cornell. You don’t know where it is and you don’t know how to stop it. That’s why you’ve run away here.’

  Cornell turned to one of his men. ‘Get these two a cab back to the station before I really lose my temper. I don’t want to see them again.’

  The guards escorted the detectives to the front door and shut it firmly behind them. While they waited on the steps for the taxi, Bryant kicked at a boot-scraper until he managed to break it. ‘Well, I thought that went quite well,’ he said.

  ‘What part of it went well?’ asked May, amazed.

  ‘He revealed his true colours. I’ve a good mind to stamp all over his flowerbeds. I think we should put him on the suspects list just for being unpleasant. The first thing I’m going to do is check out the licences on those weapons. A banker with an armed-response team? That’s a new one on me.’

  ‘Why did he get so angry when you mentioned the Shanghai thing?’

  ‘Cornell set up this huge development project with a corporation in Shanghai to co-finance the building of hotels in East Africa, but they pulled out over the construction of a port and because of increased instability in the region,’ said Bryant. ‘That’s the root of the insider deal. But Cornell knows a lot more than he’s telling.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because according to Dan, Cornell is still in contact with the Chinese. Dan’s tracking a ton of email traffic to and from Oakley Manor House.’

  ‘How is he doing that?’ May was fairly certain they didn’t have clearance for such an action.

  ‘It’s probably best that you don’t know. He tried to explain to me about service-provider protocols but I lost the will to live. I’m certain Cornell is double-crossing his own directors.’ Bryant swung the handle of his walking stick at a stone and heard it land in the ornamental pond with a satisfying smack.

  ‘You think he told the directors to dump their shares, and he’ll then do a private deal with the Chinese?’