Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  He caught sight of himself in the spotted mirror above the sink. He looked unwell. ‘It’s showtime,’ he told the cadaverous face, smiling so hard that he immediately started to cry.

  Like Raymond Land, Fraternity DuCaine had also been following Bryant’s instructions, waiting in the shadow of the grey iron bridge until the Findersbury Bank opened on Thursday morning.

  The Square Mile had become a no-go zone for almost everyone except the protestors and the police. The morning papers had been filled with photographs of jammed motorways and packed trains as residents fled the city. DuCaine was reminded of old photographs of evacuees leaving stations at the start of the Blitz.

  Crutched Friars had now been completely sealed off at either end, so that the demonstrators could only get as close as the next street, while the few remaining employees continued to use the side entrance accessed from the alleyway.

  The PCU had been denied a warrant for the premises as they had no grounds for conducting a search. Ironically, the request had been refused by one of their own, Darren Link, because the Serious Fraud Squad was conducting its own investigation on the premises, and needed to ensure that there was no contamination of evidence by other teams.

  This created a fresh problem for DuCaine, who was planning to gain access by using one of the swipe cards Bryant had filched from Dexter Cornell’s house. Banbury had printed DuCaine a fake staff card, but he would have to pass a battery of bank employees and Fraud Squad officers, any one of whom could get him into serious trouble if he was caught. Knowing that DuCaine was a naturally natty dresser, Bryant had suggested that he should pass himself off as a low-level bank employee in a suit and tie, but DuCaine was starting to doubt that the subterfuge would work. Everyone would be watching their colleagues’ backs, knowing that someone was leaking information to the press. So far, news of the three murders had been successfully sidelined, but Cornell’s life was being autopsied daily in the national headlines.

  On the other side of the bridge an argument had broken out. DuCaine went over to see what was happening.

  ‘I can’t deliver down there, they won’t let me in today,’ complained a young Polish man on a bicycle. In his wicker basket stood a stack of lunch packs bearing ‘Cheapside Bakery’ labels.

  ‘I’ll get them in for you,’ said DuCaine, flipping out his ID. ‘Give me the basket and your jacket. I’ll bring them back.’

  The delivery man’s reluctance faded on sight of the police badge, and he helped DuCaine load up with lunch packs. The brown linen bakery jacket was a bad fit, but he pushed up the sleeves so that it looked passable.

  As he could not risk ringing the bell for entrance, DuCaine tried the swipe cards and found that the third one worked. Taking the lunch packs with him, he slipped through the door and into the hall. Inside, the ground floor was in virtual darkness because of the chipboard that had been nailed over the windows.

  He passed a pair of harassed-looking assistants on the stairs. For once DuCaine’s colour gave him an advantage; in an old-world bank like this it unfortunately appeared that a black man in a service industry uniform was less likely to stand out than one in a suit.

  On the second floor, when a secretary came out of her office as he passed and asked him for a sandwich, DuCaine realized he had no idea how much to charge her, so he suggested £2.50.

  The secretary peered at the contents of the sandwich box. ‘You’ve dropped your prices,’ she said. ‘I’ll take another one.’

  He used the fire stairs to get to the fourth floor. The glass offices on either side of the main corridor were filled with employees anxiously tapping at their terminal keyboards, and if they noticed him they soon looked away again. He found the boardroom – the only room with frosted windows – at the end of the hall, but the door was shut. One of the other swipe cards opened it, but as they were all blank it was tricky keeping them separate.

  He let himself inside, heard the door lock behind him and took a look around. The narrowness of the street kept sunlight away, so he was forced to turn on the lights.

  Bryant had told him that the Fraud Squad had prevented anything from being removed. Snapping on anti-contaminant gloves, he checked out the huge walnut table, the blotters, pens and old-fashioned ring-bound notebooks, wondering how much he could move them without being noticed. The team would already have photographed everything, if they were efficient. Overhead was the black glass half-globe of a closed circuit camera. Nobody had mentioned this. Perhaps there was footage of the meeting. Perhaps it was recording him right now.

  Three places had been used. Bryant had specifically asked him to note their positions. In front of each black leather chair a notebook had been set on the table. They were filled with handwritten tabulations that meant nothing to him, so he photographed them. He checked Bryant’s advice again; some of it made no sense, but he needed to prove that he could follow instructions; he was on loan to the unit, but was anxious to secure a permanent place there.

  After he had finished searching the boardroom for the list of anomalies Bryant had specified, he went to leave but found a huddle of staffers in the corridor. Worse, he heard a voice he recognized, and saw that Darren Link was coming to join them. Crouching low, he waited, praying that they were not about to come in.

  They stopped before the frosted glass for a moment, talking softly, then moved on. He heard the swing door at the end of the corridor swish shut, and started to leave, but the boardroom door refused to open. Searching his pockets, he found that one of the swipe cards was missing. He could see it lying on the floor outside, just visible beyond the edge of the frosted glass.

  There was no other way out. You wanted to be tested, he told himself, and you’ve got your wish. Walking to the window, he opened the top pane and stuck out his arm, taking a series of shots on his phone. When he checked them, he saw that it might just be possible to lower himself out and make his way across the concrete ledges to the drainpipes. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but there was no other choice.

  He was still deciding what to do when a shape showed through the window between the boardroom and the hall. It bent and rose. Someone had found the dropped card. What if they raised the alarm?

  Swearing under his breath, he pulled himself up and swung his lean body outside in a single smooth action, releasing the window catch behind him so that it silently closed. He was now trapped outside the building, and there was nothing he could do but go forward.

  The first thing was to get clear of the glass. From the corner of his eye he saw a young woman enter the room, puzzled. She looked about for a moment, and was joined by a colleague. DuCaine was wearing tough-grip rubber-soled boots that clung to the ledges, but his fingertips were barely able to find purchase on the sharp edges of the steel windows, and the frames were slippery with raindrops. The only way to maintain balance was to shift his centre of gravity by pressing his torso flat against the glass. The street was still empty but there were offices opposite, and someone was bound to be alarmed by the sight of a man climbing across a building.

  Crushing his eyes shut, he stepped between the windows. His legs were long, his gait wide, but it was still a stretch, and for one nightmarish moment he was unable to curl his fingers around the corner of the window-frame. Worse, the next office had an open window facing away from him. There was no way around it.

  ‘Hey, where’s my stuff?’ The Polish delivery man was calling up to him. DuCaine glanced down and saw him pointing to the left, along the line of the floor below, where a narrow steel cleaning cradle hung against the brickwork. He knew then that in order to reach the cradle he would have to jump down to it.

  The noise was incredible. He landed hard, sending the platform bumping and clanging away from the wall. Lowering himself over the side and extending his body as fully as possible, he was able to drop on to the lid of a recycling bin and take off before anyone could come after him, throwing the delivery guy’s jacket back with a cry of gratitude as he went.

  H
e had no idea what the visit had achieved. Mr Bryant had not explained what he was looking for. As he rounded the corner heading for Bank station, hoping it might be open, John May’s words came back to him: ‘Don’t try to understand what Arthur wants – his only concern will be that you did exactly what he asked.’

  The station wasn’t just shut; it was on fire. An ugly new mood had seized the seething crowds. As DuCaine veered away from them and headed north, he heard what sounded like a gunshot cracking in the cold morning air, as if to announce the start of a new level of violence in the city.

  30

  FUGUE STATES

  ‘You sent me to see a tramp,’ raged Raymond Land, storming indignantly into the detectives’ office. ‘A deranged, filthy, stinking, barking-mad lady tramp.’

  ‘If I had told you what she was like in advance, you wouldn’t have gone,’ said Bryant reasonably. ‘She was once regarded as one of the finest thinkers of her generation.’

  ‘Well, she’s bonkers now. What the hell happened?’

  ‘Pressure. She became somewhat ideologically confused. Her classes on the history and purpose of public insurrection became lessons in activism, and then radicalism. She began to attract attention in the wrong quarters, and was eventually reported and prosecuted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. After a diagnosis of schizophrenia and her subsequent mental collapse, she disappeared.’

  ‘But you managed to find her.’

  ‘I consider it part of my job to ensure that no one is ever truly lost.’ For once Bryant’s smile, usually so scary, had a glimmer of distant compassion that suddenly made him look much younger.

  ‘She didn’t make any sense, but I did what you asked and wrote everything down.’ Land handed over his notebook. ‘I still can’t imagine how you think it will help.’

  ‘No, but I might be able to see something you miss. It’s like …’ He studied the ceiling, trying to find the words. ‘Like examining a painting in minute detail. Instead of just looking at the central figures, you try to understand the peripheral oddities, half of which are usually lost in the shadows. They appear so unimportant to the whole, and yet without them the picture has no cohesion. It’s like that Degas painting The Absinthe Drinker. In the foreground there’s a folded newspaper lying between two tables. What’s it doing there? The answer is that its sole purpose is to draw in the viewer’s sightline and lead the eye to the main character.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest bloody idea what you’re babbling about,’ growled Land, heading off in disgust. ‘The tramp lady touched me. I need a shower.’

  ‘Murder as one of the fine arts,’ remarked Bryant innocently, turning to his partner. ‘Why does he get so upset?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s ever read Thomas De Quincey, Arthur,’ said May. ‘Don’t push him; he’s having a hard time at the moment. He’s got odd socks on today.’

  ‘It’s not my fault his wife left him. I’ve more important things to worry about. There are three dead men out there, and six suspects.’

  ‘Six? How do you work that out?’ May was intrigued.

  But he received no reply; instead, Bryant creaked out of his chair and wormed his way into his grandfather’s greatcoat, all but vanishing in the process.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked May. ‘Let me get Janice.’

  ‘No, I don’t need a watchdog today,’ rejoined Bryant testily. ‘I’m going to the British Library. I may be some time.’

  And with that he was gone.

  His preparations were finished. All he had to do now was wait.

  Perhaps it would go wrong; things so easily could. But if they did, he would find another way. He had changed his plans before, first setting out to rid the world of Freddie Weeks, then punishing each of the others. Now he was plotting a new course, spreading his rage to the protestors. The one thing that could not be changed was the timetable.

  He walked through the tunnel at the Barbican and carried on across London Wall into the financial district, following the hovering helicopters. He could hear chanting and police instructions issued through bullhorns. The noise came from every direction now. The separate protest chapters from around the country had joined together and were spreading out.

  He couldn’t believe how much the movement had grown, from Mansion House to Aldgate East, reaching as far up as St Mary Axe and down to Monument and Leadenhall Market, then following pockets throughout the city, wherever there was conspicuous, iniquitous wealth. Soon the main mass would break free of the Square Mile’s confines and tumble out into Camden Town and down to Southwark, rippling west to Hammersmith and east beyond Whitechapel. Even if it stopped there, hemmed in by the capital’s ring roads, the damage would be done: no one would trust the city again for a very long time.

  He climbed to the second floor of the deserted glass-and-brushed-steel mall that overlooked Bank station, and watched the human core shifting back and forth like tidal seaweed in a rock pool. The protestors had stopped fighting for territorial space and were learning to move together against a common enemy. For the first time you could feel their united sense of purpose. Change was in the air, as solid and real as the vulgar new buildings developers were erecting along the Thames. The corruption at the Findersbury Bank perfectly summed up how everyone felt: These people would no longer be allowed to behave as if they were above the law.

  The danger now was that the government would throw some sop of an amendment to the process of financial disclosure and buy off the angry crowds. He had to make sure that if they tried to do so, their pleas for calm would not be heard. He had to create a louder noise.

  Last night, as he had sat at the table in Mrs Demitriou’s squalid little rented room, piecing together the contents of the package, he decided that this could be the start of the biggest war in the world. Not a war of religions or ideologies, but of information. Who would get to control the first global system of mass communication?

  The computer hackers had a utopian goal. They had got lucky when they uncovered details of corruption in the bankrupt Icelandic banks. After the video footage of a US helicopter attacking unarmed Afghan civilians, the tortured Bradley Manning had emerged from the shadows to join Julian Assange as another damaged, polarizing hero in the struggle for information dominance, not realizing that the moral obligation to tell the truth in a lie-filled information age could be turned against itself. Credit companies had cut off support for WikiLeaks, but the rallying call was heard and the information proved impossible to suppress. The battle had switched tactics as earnest Edward Snowden followed the dictates of his conscience. But the revelations about NSA spying were simply too numerous for people to grasp. They needed something more manageable, and like a gift from the heavens, along had come the Findersbury Bank.

  It was impossible to know how deeply the corruption ran. There were rumours all over the Web that the Chinese were colluding with the Bank of England. Who knew what was true any more? The only thing anyone could be sure of was that at the end of the week Findersbury would follow Barings and Lehman Brothers into the dustbin of history. There could be no return to the days of innocence.

  He sat back and looked at the tacky little explosive device, pleased with himself, and set about wiping it clean of prints.

  Leslie Faraday studied his door nameplate. It was made of grey die-cut aluminium and glued to a wood backing. It read ‘ROOM 2718 City of London Special Unit Coordinator L Faraday Esq’. He’d have liked the sign to be a little bigger, with the lettering in a more traditional serif font, but it would do for now. They had even given him back Miss Queally as his assistant – you weren’t allowed to say secretary any more – even though all she did was print out his letters and eat chocolate éclairs over her keyboard, dropping choux pastry on everything.

  The offices in Love Lane weren’t as nice as his old place in Westminster, but he had been allocated a new mesh chair with sprung arms and an inflatable lumbar area. His window faced the blank walls of grey stone office buildings lined with
police ARVs queuing for the underground car park, and a rectangular garden with trimmed hedgerows, flowerbeds and benches where he could eat his sandwiches. All in all, he thought he’d be very happy here. He glanced down at his shirt and realized that he could only see as far as the third button. He was transforming into his favourite food, an apotheosis of pork. I’ll join a gym and lose some weight, maybe get a hair weave, look like I mean business. He sucked in his stomach and tried to see his belt.

  He hadn’t fully read the job description; they had been so anxious to get rid of him after his superior Oskar Kasavian left that he had simply goggled at the salary hike and signed the contract. Faraday’s astonishing ability to fail upwards amazed even the hardiest of career civil servants.

  Now, as he scrolled through the divisions covered by his department, he was horrified to discover that the Peculiar Crimes Unit was there once more, like some kind of stubbornly returning verruca, and that he was in charge of their budget. Scrunching away the headache that was building behind his eyes, he patted down his non-existent hair and considered the situation.

  Perhaps they had changed. Maybe they had mellowed. Arthur Bryant could have calmed down a little and agreed to take a back seat for once, and John May might have stopped supporting his insane partner’s every move.

  No, he concluded, looking at the case schedule that showed him they had been put in charge of the Findersbury murder investigation, they’ll be just as nightmarish as they’ve always been. If they solve the case they’ll get covered in glory and I’ll be the one who comes away with his foot in a bucket of paste. Unless I do something right now to put a stop to it.

  He depressed the intercom button. ‘Miss Queally, would you please come in here? Bring your notepad with you.’ It was odd that the press hadn’t picked up on the story. It was time they discovered what had been going on.