Jack thought for a minute. ‘Every family has a black sheep. Brothers are usually disastrous to high-fliers. Jimmy Carter had Billy, Richard Nixon had Donald.’
‘There’s a cousin,’ said Janice. ‘Jericho has Nathan.’ She scrolled her screen, peering close.
‘There’s no one around to see that you wear glasses,’ said Jack gently.
Longbright batted the thought aside. ‘He escaped accusations of insider trading and the harassment of a female work colleague.’
Jack leaned closer and stole one of her chocolate digestives. ‘See if he has a Facebook page.’
‘Don’t eat those, they’re fattening. Nathan Landry Mandell. Jackpot.’ She tinked the screen with a lacquered nail. ‘The cousin’s the wild card. Dropped out of college, busted for possession, DUI and sex with a minor, although he was just sixteen and she was one week from legality. Parents kicked him out so he came to Europe. There are shots of him working in the outdoors in a uniform.’ She sped through the sidebar of photographs. ‘This is why I never post on Facebook. I can tell you exactly where he is.’
Jack brightened. ‘How?’
She enlarged one of the photographs. ‘That white curve in the corner of the shot is a giveaway. It’s the ramp of the Lubetkin Penguin Pool at London Zoo.’
‘You think he and Jericho kept in touch?’
‘It’s worth a try,’ said Bryant, wandering past. For a man with a faulty hearing aid he seemed to pick up on everything. ‘John and I can head there as soon as the staff arrive for work.’
* * *
—
They went to the zoo together a little after eight the next morning, taking May’s BMW to Regent’s Park. Bryant was in fine garrulous form, having managed to grab a couple of hours’ sleep on the PCU’s ratty sofa bed. May was suffering. He had not been sleeping well lately and had stayed up with Longbright and Renfield through the night. Now he felt distanced and disconnected from his surroundings.
London Zoo had been the brainchild of the founder of Singapore, Stamford Raffles, and was the world’s oldest scientific zoo, having begun life as a place for the study of natural history. The animals from the menagerie at the Tower of London were moved in, and a peculiar range of neo-Georgian pavilions, galleries and kiosks took their place beside the streamlined sweep of the art deco penguin pool and the mountainous outback-themed Mappin Terraces. Here elephant rides and chimps’ tea parties delighted children for decades until the tide of public opinion turned against them.
They found Nathan Mandell in the Nightlife area, a day-for-night world of bats, rats, lorises and blind-eyed cave creatures. Mandell wore the red sweater of a volunteer, and was attempting to slide a sheet of glass back in place over a tank of lizards. Rotund and flushed, he lacked the bloodless hauteur of the Flint clan. For a moment it looked as if he might turn and run, so startled was he to be approached without warning.
‘It’s all right, we only want to ask you a few questions,’ said May, raising a calming hand containing his identification. ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’
‘Sure, I guess.’ Mandell put the glass back in place and stepped down from the edge of the lizard cabinet. Behind him, fruit bats hanging from a tree branch unfurled their spidery wings and rewrapped themselves.
Mandell lowered his bulk on to a plastic chair in the zoo’s café and patted his thinning sandy hair into place. He glanced apprehensively from one detective to the other. ‘I don’t have anything to do with them. Not Howard or Kate, or Jerry. We used to play together as kids—everyone called us Tom and Jerry, you know? But I was kind of wild and he dropped out to re-create himself. That’s what he told me: “I’m going to re-create myself. I’m not like my parents. I’m going to be an artist.” I thought maybe we’d get to hang out, being in the same country and all, but he didn’t want to stay in touch. He’s kind of a loner.’
‘How did you end up working here?’ asked May.
‘I like animals. I look after the pygmy slow lorises and some of the lizards. Animals don’t have agendas or ambitions. Everybody in my family has a hidden agenda. They don’t talk; they negotiate deals with you, and you always come out worse off.’
‘When was the last time you saw Jericho Flint?’
‘Over a year ago. We had a family gathering, rented some grand old manor in Kent called Tavistock Hall. It was my aunt’s eightieth birthday. She lives over here. Jerry didn’t get an invite but he turned up anyway. We talked for a few minutes. He didn’t stay.’
‘Why not?’
‘His father, man. Howard hates him.’
‘Why?’ Bryant cut in.
Mandell gave a small laugh. ‘Where do I start with that one? Let’s see now. He refused to stick to the family plan and get himself into law school. He chose to live like a bum and turned down his father’s handouts. He didn’t want to be obligated to his old man. That’s what Howard does, he ties everyone to his side with favours.’
‘How did his son manage without his father’s offer of money?’
‘He sold a lot of commercial art at first, but then he did some crazy stuff—“terrorist graffiti,” he called it. He hacked a bunch of personal files on MPs and corporate chiefs, and spray-painted their dirty secrets all around Spitalfields. He did these caricatures in the style of old circus posters, really sinister. Howard kept him out of jail.’ His face clouded with concern. ‘What’s happened?’
‘He’s dead,’ said Bryant. ‘We need to know who was close to him.’
‘Well, not me. But still, that’s a shame. He was kind of a lost soul.’
‘Do you think he made enemies over his terrorist art?’
‘He certainly upset his father. Jerry painted a huge picture of him, just off Brick Lane. You can still see it on the wall there, next to the Pride of Spitalfields pub on Heneage Street.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. Jerry laughed about it. There were others, one outside the Star of Bombay Balti House, and one on Bacon Street, but both those buildings got knocked down.’
‘Did you and Jericho Flint have any friends in common?’ asked May.
‘We were both the black sheep of the family but that didn’t make us bosom buddies. How did he die?’
‘We don’t know yet. The day of your aunt’s birthday, did he bring his girlfriend?’
‘Who, Rose?’ Mandell shook his head. ‘No, he said he wanted to introduce her but he changed his mind when the old man announced he was attending. I guess Jerry didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. He knew Howard would humiliate her.’
‘Do you think he got into some kind of trouble he couldn’t tell his parents about?’
‘He was free-spirited but he didn’t hang out with bad people. He wanted to be left to live his own life, just like I did. It caused a lot of fights between all of them. I told him, you can’t argue with the old man, you just have to say your good-byes and get out. I thought me and Jerry would be friends. He was smart. He didn’t think I was smart. He didn’t want to be around me.’
‘You can do something for him, Nathan,’ Bryant suggested. ‘We need to find the girl. We have to report back to the consulate by the end of the week, and right now I don’t have any information to give them.’
Mandell stabbed a finger at him. ‘Be careful of Howard Flint. He always gets what he wants. If you let him down in any way he’ll destroy you. I asked him for help. I’d gotten myself into a bad situation and needed a hand. I almost went down on my knees and begged him.’ He looked around at the almost deserted café. ‘He doesn’t know it but he did me a favour. I’m happier here. There’s no pressure. I’ll never have to see any of them again. Poor Jerry. He was the only one I ever liked.’
* * *
—
‘He wasn’t much help,’ said May as they left the zoo and walked back to the car park.
Bry
ant batted some weeds with his walking stick. ‘We’re either asking the wrong questions or being taken for fools.’
‘Not by Mandell,’ said May. ‘I don’t think he’s smart enough to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.’
‘Imagine, John, you’re offered a position in the family dynasty. You can have anything you want so long as you behave in a manner that befits your status. Instead you turn it all down and choose to live as a penniless artist. Your art earns you some notoriety, so your family breaks off all contact with you. You’re off the grating—’
‘You mean off the grid.’
‘Yes, that, too, and you sell paintings to make ends meet. You’re on the way to joining other artists who died in poverty. Blake, Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, Rembrandt, Vermeer—but you don’t have enemies. You fight with your girlfriend. Where is she? We need someone who can place them both near the Unit on the night he died.’
May looked away. The clouds had formed a great tilting lid of blue above a silver-pink sky. ‘We could do a knock along Market Road, see if anyone remembers him. I know it was over five months ago—’
‘We don’t have the time or the resources for that.’
‘What about this picture he did of his father?’
‘It may have been painted over but there might be something left,’ said Bryant.
‘Want me to come?’
‘Go and get some sleep. You look like you’ve been dynamited.’
‘And I suppose you feel fine,’ May grumbled.
‘Of course I feel fine,’ said Bryant, swinging his stick. ‘I’m working.’
* * *
—
While Bryant headed off to study the site where Jericho Flint had painted his father, Colin and Meera went to find Kharmel Hunter, the former manager of the Wilberforce.
The Commercial Tavern, Spitalfields, would not be opening its doors for another two hours, but the staff were already on site. The pub was classically schizophrenic, full of garrulous locals at lunchtime, seated with their elbows on the bar and pints of cloudy bitter before them, and piratically bearded Shoreditch hipsters in the evening, sipping craft ales and discussing video games. The décor was equally divided, being traditional and solidly Victorian without, wackily collaged within: a magpie mix of artwork pasted from old Janet and John books, with one entire wall covered in jigsaw pieces attached to the plaster by plastic clothing tags. Catering to mismatched clienteles had doubled its revenue.
When Kharmel Hunter looked up and saw Meera and Colin coming towards him, he knew at once that they were police officers, mainly because he had seen them in the Ladykillers Café. Hunter was built for strength, not speed, and remained in place, quietly continuing with the stocktake.
Hunter was much older than Meera had expected him to be. In the lines of his face were the tracks of the music industry, riffing from Pink Floyd through prog rock to punk.
He kept his answers to a minimum, knowing that the more he said the more they would suspect him, but he could not stay silent on the subject of why he was fired from the Wilberforce. ‘You’ve been to the bar, you know what it’s like. There’s a cold room at the back where they keep the spirits and mixers. It never had a lock on it the whole time I was there.’
‘So punters stole from it?’ asked Meera.
‘No, they went in there to conduct business. You have to go through the bar to reach the toilets and the stockroom. They’d come down and order a drink, then go through to the back and buy a couple of grams. Small-time stuff.’
‘You didn’t report them or try to stop them?’
‘I threw a few out, but only if I was sure they wouldn’t come back later. I had no backup behind the bar. I told the management agency that we needed locks but they didn’t do anything. I had to keep a tight watch on the customers after that.’
‘If you did your job so well, why did they kick you out?’ Meera asked.
‘Some cases of Scotch went missing. I explained that it couldn’t have happened on my watch.’
‘Do you remember a young woman and a man in the bar on the night of August the tenth last year, sometime after midnight?’
‘Yes.’ He looked from one to the other.
Colin and Meera looked at one another. ‘Yes?’
‘She was in her early twenties, long dark hair, hippyish. They went in the back, but only the girl came out.’
‘Wait, how could you remember this?’ Meera asked.
‘It’s simple,’ Hunter replied. ‘On August the tenth the bar was closed for a private party. Mine. It was my birthday.’
‘So they tried to gate-crash?’
‘Yeah, they downed a few drinks and disappeared, then she came back by herself. I figured he couldn’t have left without me seeing him go past.’
‘You didn’t think that was odd?’ asked Meera.
‘It was a party,’ said Hunter, slowly and clearly.
‘Was this the girl?’ Colin held up a photocopy of the painting.
‘Definitely, that’s her.’
‘And the guy?’ He found a shot of Jericho Flint on his phone and turned it around.
Hunter looked puzzled. ‘No, that’s not him. He was in his late thirties—and bald.’
* * *
—
Arthur Bryant stood before the poster-covered wall on Heneage Street and tried to find any trace of painted brickwork. It was still raining hard, and the brim of his trilby had decided to channel water down the back of his neck.
He looked up at the wall and studied it carefully. There were brash ads for bands, clubs and art installations that meant nothing to him or to anyone else outside of the immediate area. He might have been looking at a wall from an earlier century. Beneath so much fly-posting, Jericho Flint’s rendition of his father had been obliterated.
The posters were an inch thick. It sounded as if Jericho Flint’s portrait of his father had been painted straight on to the brickwork. Seizing a corner of the pasted layers, Bryant pulled hard. The paper had set solid at some point, but the constant rain had softened the glue.
Bryant raised a boot and braced it against the wall, pulling harder at the corner. The compacted posters started to tear. They came off in a single great panel, falling on top of him and sending him sprawling. When he finally managed to fight himself clear and climb to his feet, Bryant found himself looking up at Jericho Flint’s original painting.
* * *
—
‘We need a photo ID of any bald male working for the consul,’ said May.
‘You know we don’t have access to that kind of information,’ Longbright reminded him.
May thought for a moment. ‘Dan, can you pull CCTV footage from the street cams opposite the consulate?’
‘I should be able to,’ Banbury told him. ‘They were installed by Metropolitan Police Directorate, not Westminster Council. What period of time do you want to cover?’
‘Flint’s team started moving out at the beginning of the week, didn’t they? You need to go back four months from then.’
‘We have a facial-recognition system that can handle that.’ Banbury made a call to Anjan Dutta at the King’s Cross Surveillance Centre.
‘I hope it’s better than the one you put in on our front door.’ Everyone turned as Bryant arrived in the doorway of the common room.
‘What happened to you?’ asked May, astonished.
Bryant had leaves, train tickets, pieces of paper, chicken bones, cigarette butts and other assorted bits of street trash stuck all over his coat, trousers and hat. There was a dog-end cemented to his left ear. He looked as if he had been magnetized.
‘Glue,’ he explained. ‘I tried to get some posters off a wall and they fell on me. The rain had melted their paste.’ He sank into his armchair. ‘I went to Spitalfields. I found Jericho Flint’s original painting. Could
somebody get me a cup of tea?’
Longbright and Banbury came through with results at the same time. Just as the crime scene manager’s laptop received a photograph of a bald man in his late thirties leaving the consulate, Longbright nailed the ID. ‘Samuel Fellowes, former head of Manchester special constabulary, now seconded to Howard Flint. Take a look.’
Bryant discovered that he could not get up. He was forced to slide himself out of his overcoat and leave it stuck to the armchair.
‘I took a picture,’ he said, passing over his phone. ‘That’s Jericho Flint’s painting. It’s what this has all been about.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said May, trying to unstick his hand from the phone’s screen.
‘You will,’ Bryant promised. ‘I just need one more thing to prove my point.’
‘What’s that?’ asked May.
‘A biography of Marcel Duchamp,’ Bryant replied cheerfully.
* * *
—
At first the consul refused to take their calls, but finally agreed to visit the Unit after Bryant had a few quiet words with him. Seated in the common room in a grey Gieves & Hawkes suit, he looked as out of place as a racehorse in a greyhound stadium.
‘Welcome to the Unit’s nerve centre,’ Bryant said. ‘Don’t sit there. That armchair’s got glue all over it.’
Flint made no protestation as he was steered to a desk, but made it clear that he found his surroundings repellent. ‘Well, this had better be good,’ he warned, checking his watch. ‘I have a flight to catch.’
‘I’m not sure that will be possible,’ said Bryant, handing over a printout of the photograph he’d taken in Spitalfields. ‘I imagine you thought you’d seen the last of this.’
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