Bryant & May - The Burning Man

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘The TV footage,’ said Bryant, taking the reins once more. ‘Monica didn’t just spot a face, she spotted a physical movement. A man moving through the crowds, short but strong, with a pronounced limp. She spotted Freddie Weeks.’

  Colin Bimsley spat an ice cube into his glass.

  ‘One of the few things we knew about our arsonist was that he was comfortable working with metals,’ said Bryant. ‘It never crossed our minds to ask what Freddie’s father, Gerry Weeks, did for a living. He runs die-cutters in a machine shop. He had the boy apprenticed to him for a while, but Freddie hated it. The man we found on the steps of the Findersbury Bank was so badly burned that he was identified by the serial-numbered titanium implant in his foot. Freddie made a duplicate of his own implant. He had a plan, but to carry it out he first had to erase his own identity. He befriended a homeless man of roughly the same size and age, gave him some money and his watch, and asked him to perform a favour: check himself in as Freddie Weeks at the Clerkenwell Green hostel, then sleep on the steps of the Findersbury Bank.

  ‘And that’s where he made a mistake. Because although the CCTV camera at Crutched Friars recorded an image of a man sleeping rough, it also picked up Weeks when he went to the entrance the first time, before throwing the Molotov cocktail. And he had to go there to leave the implant rod at the site. Of course, there were risks involved. He had no way of making certain that the body would be sufficiently burned, and there were other variables. But he kept an eye on them, and did a damned good job of covering his tracks. Of course, he had the rioters to help him do that. We still don’t know the name of the homeless man who died in his place. Unfortunately, when Weeks “killed” himself he didn’t mean it to look like murder, and accidentally became his own suspect, which convinced us to start looking for him.’

  ‘So where is he now?’ asked Renfield.

  ‘For that you have to understand Weeks’s mindset,’ Bryant answered. ‘His revenge was personal, and the sense of empowerment it gave him made him realize that he could take revenge for everyone out there. He was physically strong, driven and smart. We knew his mother had discovered religion, but never thought to ask her about it. She’d become a Catholic, just like her son. Freddie Weeks suddenly saw how everything might fit a pattern. The Catholic–Protestant conflicts of the past fed directly into his warped world view of turmoil, protest and conflagration. Having kidnapped Cornell and set up the camera to film him, he headed for the coast. And he had one last message for the police: “Follow me and you’ll get burned.” He nearly killed one of our best officers tonight.’

  ‘If Weeks wanted to fire up the rioters, why did he leave Cornell alive?’ Colin asked.

  ‘Because he decided that letting him live would make everyone even angrier.’ Bryant stifled a yawn. ‘They’ve been cheated of their revenge.’

  ‘We’ll find him now,’ said May with certainty. ‘Weeks got Cornell to give him his credit card PIN numbers, but Cornell managed to flag them. Never mess with a captain of industry.’

  ‘We haven’t caught him yet,’ said Meera, unimpressed.

  55

  TAKING ACTION

  Six days later, Freddie Weeks was arrested in southern Spain, having used his old passport to enter the country. He had managed to draw out a little of Cornell’s cash, but by this time Karin Scott had identified Michael Flannery, the man Weeks had befriended, thanks to a series of coincidences so fortuitous that they could have constituted an entirely separate, credulity-stretching chapter in Mr Bryant’s memoirs. Weeks was finally confronted by a very nervous policeman in a tapas bar in Plaça Reial, Barcelona.

  Weeks was returned to London and brought to PCU headquarters for questioning. He was tanned, short and indifferent of feature, with prematurely thinning brown hair. He twisted as he walked, but to make up for the weakness in his foot, his arms were thick and powerful. For the rest of the day he remained slumped half-asleep in the interview room, bored by the formality of the proceedings. He accepted state representation and resented any delay, clearly blunted by the thought of all that lay ahead. When he finally spoke he showed no emotion and expressed little interest in explaining himself. Next to him a plastic pail plinked, steadily filling with rainwater, marking away the hours.

  ‘I knew that without an identity, I could do whatever I wanted,’ he said at one point, sprawled in his chair before the detectives.

  ‘And what did you want?’ asked May.

  ‘To burn everyone who wrecked my life.’

  ‘According to your parents you were a bright, politically committed pupil at school,’ said Bryant.

  Weeks gave a derisive grunt. ‘Working hard and being clever isn’t enough any more, is it? I had ideas. I came up with a money-maker that could give something back to the community. It was called CharityMob. I pitched it to Glen Hall and he took it to Jon De Vere, who liked it so much he stole the concept. I didn’t give up. I tried to go it alone, and borrowed from Frank Leach’s loan company. But then Leach doubled the interest and I couldn’t pay it back. It should have been simple. Do some good; get a reward. Instead I got shafted, like everybody else.’

  ‘What about Joanna Papis?’

  Another grunt. ‘The moment I needed her most, she dumped me. I lost my future, my flat, my girl, everything. I was broke, I owed money and someone got rich from my idea. Every time I turned on the TV, I saw them: all the other poor bastards who’d been cheated, just like me.’

  ‘You make it sound as if they were all working together.’

  ‘That’s what it felt like.’

  ‘So you waited until the time was right, when Dexter Cornell sparked a riot,’ said May.

  ‘I don’t feel bad about it,’ Weeks said. ‘Why should I? None of them showed me any kindness. They deserved what they got.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill Cornell.’

  Weeks shrugged. ‘He hadn’t done anything bad to me.’

  ‘Neither had Michael Flannery.’

  ‘Don’t you know the first rule of revenge? An innocent has to suffer. Besides, Flannery was a loser. At least he proved himself useful to the cause. I did what was right. I took action. I did what everyone should do.’

  He said no more after that. The charges were duly filed. For Bryant, there was little satisfaction to be gained from hearing Weeks’s confession. His crimes had roots that would remain for years to come. There would be other men like Weeks, and perhaps they would not be stopped. As much as Bryant loved his city, he was ashamed of the way in which it shamelessly encouraged the greed of others, crushing those who found life a struggle. Once, he too had been one of those young men.

  John May was as good as his word. He collected Blaize Carter in his silver BMW, which impressed her, and took her to the Szechuan restaurant in the Shard, where they could study the whole of London spread out below them. She had selected an elegant dark outfit for the evening and looked beautiful but slightly awkward, as if she’d been invited to a fancy-dress party.

  ‘So what happens now?’ she asked. ‘Do you just sit back and wait for another case?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Everyone else is claiming the responsibility for catching Weeks. There’ll be a post-mortem, and we’ll be blamed for failing to stop him earlier. And now that our bosses know about Arthur’s health condition, they’ll want him out of the unit as quickly as possible.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Someone has to look after him.’ May traced his toothpick across the tablecloth. ‘He always goes a bit vague after we close an investigation, but this time he’s changed almost overnight. It’s as if it used up his last ounce of strength. But I have to be there for him. I can’t imagine going on alone. I don’t know what I’d do without him.’

  ‘You need your own life as well,’ Blaize reminded him.

  ‘That’s what anyone I’ve ever got close to has said. I had a French girlfriend for a while, completely crazy but fun to be with. She hated Arthur, complained about him all the time
. She said, “The trouble is, there are three of us in this relationship.” Then she left, and he was still there.’

  ‘What if you had to decide?’

  ‘That’s a really mean question.’

  ‘But it’s one that must be in some people’s heads.’

  ‘I’ve gone too far down this road to change my priorities now, Blaize.’

  ‘That’s what I figured,’ she said, finishing her glass and catching the eye of the waiter. ‘It’s been a lovely evening but I have to go. I have an early start in the morning.’

  Afterwards, he wondered about the conversation, and whether he had missed a chance that might never come back.

  John May thought about a lot of things that night. Now that the drifting cinders of rebellion had burned themselves out, it felt as if deep and lasting change was in the air. The events of the past had a habit of closing off their chapters and filing themselves away with times, dates and brief descriptions, as though they knew they would one day be required by historians.

  And what would historians write of the Peculiar Crimes Unit? That it was another eccentric English institution populated by the sort of strange characters who’d worked at Bletchley Park? Would they recall the incendiary history of the unit and its founders, how they’d deciphered the hidden cryptography of London’s most elusive mysteries, and how it had involved blowing themselves up in the process? It really was a hell of a blast, thought May as he lay in bed, remembering how his partner had managed to detonate staff headquarters and accidentally initiate a new phase in the life of the unit. Only Arthur could manage to advance all their careers by killing himself at the outset.

  Chuckling to himself, he fell asleep and dreamed of Londons yet to come.

  56

  INTO THE UNKNOWN

  On the Sunday morning that the case was officially closed, the rooftops of King’s Cross were erased in a thick grey fog. Having barely slept, the staff members of the PCU arrived to hand over their documents to the City of London Fraud Squad. The investigation had ended up involving Dexter Cornell, who, together with his fellow directors, was eventually indicted on nineteen counts including fraud and conspiracy. A new company was appointed by the minister of state for international development, who promised ‘total transparency’.

  Once the public realized that the financier had not been burned alive, and was rather more prosaically awaiting charges in a police unit, the crowds milling around the Bank of England started to disperse as if they had reached the end of a noisy but ultimately unsatisfying Coldplay concert. It didn’t help that Cornell issued endless statements through his lawyer about how badly he’d been treated. The more the banker tried to blame others for his predicament, the less interested people were in him.

  Finally the revolution fizzled. The tents were folded up and the placards were taken down, and everyone went back to doing the things they felt more comfortable doing: queuing for trains; standing at bus stops; wandering around shopping centres; complaining about the weather; and tutting over the sex lives of politicians.

  The city cleaned itself up. The mayor was photographed holding a broom. MPs made impassioned speeches about ‘why it must never happen again’. Life went on.

  The fog descended like a veil of forgetfulness, covering the windows of the Peculiar Crimes Unit with racing rivulets and softening the contours of the buildings, turning London into a city of pallid ghosts. Traffic slowed and sounds faded until it felt as if everyone had glimpsed the limbo outside and gone back to bed.

  The meandering towpath of the Regent’s Canal, which curled from King’s Cross to Camden Town, tapered away into oblivion at either end, and the sphere of fog enclosed them as they walked.

  ‘You haven’t said anything about my offer,’ Renfield remarked in the most casual tone he could muster.

  Longbright kicked a stone into the still green reflections. A duck answered and took off, the tips of its wings tapping the surface of the water. She wore a baseball cap over her burned scalp. It would be the first and only time she would ever do so.

  ‘I was mortified when Darren Link came in and saw my Halloween outfit on the coat stand,’ she said. ‘It reminded me of when I was fifteen. My mother let me go to my first Halloween party at a school friend’s house, and I worked on my outfit for weeks. I was a bit obsessed with naval heroes at the time, and somehow decided I should go as Sir Francis Drake. I made the whole outfit, working from a painting I’d seen in a book, except that the tunic was designed to completely cover me, leaving the starched ruff at the top with just a bloody stump sticking out, and I carried Drake’s severed head, made out of papier-mâché, under my arm. When I got to the house, I realized I’d entirely misunderstood the purpose of a Halloween party. I was the only girl there who wasn’t dressed as a sexy witch. That was when I decided I’d be sexier than the rest of them, and stronger too, just like my mum.’

  She stopped and turned to Renfield. ‘You see, Jack? I’m still like my mum, still in the force. And I know you. You asked me to marry you for the wrong reason. You thought you’d lost me. I’m grateful you came for me, but I’m not going to change. I’m always going to have this job. I’m always going to be a pain in the arse.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to give it all up,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘just take something safer, where I can keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Can you honestly see me in some MPS admin role?’ She tugged her hand free. ‘Look at me, Jack! This is who I am. And I love what I do.’

  ‘You love it more than me.’ It was a simple statement of fact that he challenged her to deny.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Janice. I should have known better.’

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek and took a step away. ‘I’ve sort of enjoyed my time at the unit. It’s been like sitting on the set of some really strange horror film, where you watch things going wrong and don’t know whether to laugh or beat someone up. But I have to tell you: I’m not like Bryant and May. And I’m not like the rest of you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to transfer back.’

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘We’re just different people, Janice.’ Renfield shook his head and smiled to himself. ‘I know you all used to make fun of me. I wanted to earn your respect.’

  ‘You did,’ she said.

  ‘But I shouldn’t have had to.’

  ‘It’s not like you’ll be gone forever. I’ll still see you around.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

  ‘Well, you could at least give me a goodbye kiss.’

  ‘Look after yourself, Janice.’ He put his hands in his pockets and turned away, walking back up the canal path. His place was taken by a duck.

  ‘Take care, you,’ she called, watching him go. She dug out a tissue and blew her nose. ‘I don’t know what you’re looking at,’ she told the duck.

  The following week, Jack Renfield applied to be transferred from the unit, and returned to his old position as a Metropolitan Police Service desk sergeant.

  Back at the unit, one of the Daves scratched his arse with the end of a bradawl. He peered down between the uprooted floorboards, into the great hole they had made in the hallway. ‘Stone me,’ he said. ‘How deep do you reckon that is?’

  The other Dave stuck his head up from inside the pit they had created. ‘I’m on the top step of the staircase,’ he replied. ‘I can’t see the end of it from here. Bung us a torch.’

  The first Dave poked about in his tool bag and handed down a rubberized flashlight.

  ‘Jesus and Mary, you won’t believe what’s down here,’ he shouted up from the darkness. ‘You’d better call someone, fast!’

  Colin Bimsley stacked the chairs in the common room and cleared away the last of the cups, but overloaded the tray and managed to drop it, smashing the lot and sending shards of china all over the room. ‘Don’t come in here!’ he shouted, throwing out his hands in warning as Meera appeared in the doorway.

  W
hen no sarcastic reply came, he glanced up. She looked as miserable as London in February. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, scuffing at her cheek with the sleeve of her sweater.

  ‘Sure?’ Colin set down his dustpan with a clang. ‘You should be happy, what with getting married and everything. You’ll soon be in Delhi, riding a painted elephant while everyone pelts you with marigolds. Big party, crying rellies, wedding singers, lots of dancing, pat the dog and screw in the light bulb.’ He did a Bollywood bop. ‘Crazy old mother-in-law, half a dozen nippers, learn to cook dahl, the works.’

  ‘I’m not marrying Ryan.’

  ‘You’ll be able to say goodbye to this place—’

  ‘I’m not marrying him, Colin. The wedding’s off.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s what you wanted.’

  ‘No, it’s what my mother wants.’ She threw her coat on to a chair and bent down to help him pick up the broken crockery. ‘The two of them have been organizing the whole thing behind my back. He’s become a total control freak.’

  ‘They’re probably just trying to take the pressure off you. They know how busy you are with the unit—’

  ‘For God’s sake, Colin, will you stop being so bloody nice for a minute?’ Meera all but shouted. ‘I’m trying to tell you something. I don’t love him.’

  ‘But you grew up together. You’ve got all these things in common.’

  She released a weary sigh. ‘It’s not enough of a reason to marry him. I can’t just do it to please my mum and my sister. I’ve got to want to be with someone so much that I can’t imagine being with anyone else. I grew up with all those stupid romantic Indian movies like Devdas and Veer-Zaara. All they do is show you what you’re never going to have. Ryan’s like someone out of one of those films, and it’s not what I want. Being with him – it’s like being with a bloody Valentine card all the time. Every time he calls me sweetie I just want to punch him in the balls. That can’t be love, can it?’