England's Finest

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘Can you roll it back to seven forty-five last night?’ May indicated the centre of the screen. ‘These are GPS traces on everyone in Soho last night. We can follow just three of them. That’s the girl, Sams, turning into the alleyway from Gerrard Street. Casper, can you take it back another ten minutes and give me from then to seven-fifty P.M.?’

  ‘So what you’re doing is…’ Bryant raised a finger, then stopped. ‘No, it’s gone. Technology and I aren’t on speaking terms. I can’t even take a proper selfie. The other day I accidentally sent a picture of my nostrils to the vicar.’

  ‘These three lines show you the movements of Naomi Sams, Little Nicky and Archie Marlow over the period in question.’

  Casper’s screen now showed a spidery matrix overlaid across the street map. As the new information scrolled up Bryant peered at it intently. ‘I haven’t got my trifocals,’ he apologized.

  ‘Locations, ages, social groups, dates, times, everything’s traceable,’ Casper explained.

  They watched as the three protagonists moved into place. Two of the orange dots suddenly converged. ‘When Naomi Sams turned into the alley, Petrides had already been attacked in the storage room. It looks as if Marlow was standing over him when Sams interrupted them.’

  ‘I’ve pulled the files Dan requested on Petrides and Marlow,’ said Casper. ‘I’ve sent them to your laptop.’

  May thanked Casper for his time while Bryant reknotted his scarf, ready for takeoff. As they stepped on to the street May opened the documents on his phone. Rain had decided to put in an appearance and was starting to darken the pavements.

  ‘Is this how we’re going to conduct all future assignments?’ asked Bryant. ‘Tap away at our telephones and trust whatever they tell us?’

  ‘Is it any less reliable than talking to someone who swears they were nowhere near the crime scene?’ May asked, absently pulling his partner from the path of a bread van.

  Bryant watched in surprise as the vehicle passed him. ‘The battery must have gone in my hearing aid.’

  ‘I keep telling you, they’re electric vehicles. Please try not to die. We need to go back and check through these files.’

  ‘You can do that. I’m going to take a look at the crime scene.’ Bryant pulled his coat collar straight and took a tentative step on to the rain-slick pavement.

  ‘Dan’s already been over it,’ said May, still studying his phone.

  ‘I don’t mean that crime scene,’ said Bryant. ‘I mean the one on Piccadilly.’

  * * *

  —

  It’s impossible to tell that an act of terrorism ever occurred here, Bryant thought as he examined the plate-glass windows of Servicio, the champagne bar through which a stolen builder’s van had been driven. The bar was situated near the circus end of Piccadilly, a crowded area that could not be easily screened off with concrete barriers. Bryant tapped his walking stick on the ornately carved wood surround of the window, marvelling at the neatness of the rebuilt frame. It was impossible to see where the old and new woods were joined. It was policy now, he knew, to restore the damaged areas as quickly as possible. Only in Bloomsbury’s Tavistock Square, where a bomb had detonated on a double-decker bus, were there still signs of destruction; the nearest building was pockmarked from flying debris.

  Bryant entered the champagne bar. Along the rear ran a beaten copper counter. At the front was the restaurant, resplendent in starched white linen and napery. After he had explained the purpose of his visit, the manager, Davina James, offered to show him around. Her pinned-up hair, black-framed glasses and tightly cut black suit suggested efficiency and authority.

  ‘Business has been terrible since it happened,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘People are so stupid—events like this never occur twice in the same place but they still stay away. I saw the whole thing. I was standing over by the counter. The kerbstone outside is quite high and I saw the van bounce up it. My first thought was that he was just parking badly. They do try, once in a while—they last about twenty seconds before the police drop on them. Then I realized he wasn’t slowing down.’ She stopped, looking out of the window. What she saw was not today’s rain-glossed thoroughfare but the evening traffic from two weeks ago. ‘I froze on the spot. I could see what was going to happen. I couldn’t go forward without risking my own life, and I suppose a sense of self-preservation was trying to pull me away. I grabbed the nearest chair and dragged it back. The woman sitting in it fell on the floor and rolled aside. Everyone was looking at me, not at the van, so I raised my arm and pointed.

  ‘Just then, its grille hit the glass. The central pane broke into three enormous pieces. One went over to that first table like a guillotine and hit the lady sitting there. The whole vehicle lifted over the window edge and came into the restaurant. I heard the van’s engine revving above the first screams. The front four tables all went under the wheels. There was a boy of about six sitting just there—he was the one the papers all featured—he simply vanished. The woman who had been hit by the glass dragged the tablecloth off when she fell. As it settled over her it turned red. The van’s engine suddenly stopped, I don’t know why, and the room fell silent. The driver stayed in the vehicle. He didn’t move an inch until the officers dragged him out. He was—well, not smiling exactly, just content, as if he was at peace.’

  Bryant did not trust himself to speak. He could see the scene as it unfolded. He had been at the site of the Tavistock Square bombing, had seen the red bus ripped apart as if a giant can opener had cut off the roof.

  Reliving the moment had tainted everything. He could not see the restaurant as a place of sociable dining anymore, but only heard the crying of the wounded. Thanking her, he took his leave and headed out across the road.

  Standing on the wet pavement opposite he found himself by a Costa Coffee shop. Two Japanese tourists were taking selfies and smiled at him. He bought a tea and sat outside at one of the tables, sheltered beneath a striped canopy. The van driver had been in and out of care homes and mental health institutions all his life. He was no terrorist. He had copied something he had seen on television, imitating other atrocities to assuage his own demons.

  Bryant sat back and sipped his tea, studying the frontage of the champagne bar. Could the two dead men have met the assassin somewhere before, in a care home or hospital? Did Archie discover that Little Nicky was somehow involved on that terrible day?

  He called John May and asked him to speak to Counter Terrorism Command, to see if they would share any withheld information. Then he returned to his tea and looked back at the bar. Tourists were passing it without any idea that just two weeks ago it had been a devastated ruin.

  And then, quite suddenly, he knew what had happened.

  * * *

  —

  May and the rest of the team had been over Casper’s documents and had drawn a blank. Neither Archie nor Little Nicky had ever had contact with the van driver. Neither had been in any of the same institutions. Yet the first time they had called each other in over a year was two hours after the attack. The call log showed they had once been in contact for a period of six weeks, around thirteen months earlier, but that was it.

  Little Nicky had gone to the Lucky Dragon to collect a payment from the manager as part of a protection racket he was attempting to foist on to new restaurants. Archie had followed him there. That was all the information they had.

  When Arthur Bryant came in out of breath and opened a laptop, everyone looked at him as if he’d gone mad. Meera Mangeshkar held her breath while she waited to see if he could unlock it. When he did so successfully, Dan Banbury began to worry. If Bryant could do this, he might find the app for the trackers that Banbury had hidden in his coat, hat and briefcase. In his experience it was best to keep the old man as far away from technology as possible.

  ‘Reverse engineering,’ Bryant said excitedly. ‘It’s working backw
ards to the components, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve been doing. I thought I could leave the computer stuff to you lot and concentrate on what I could see. I went to the spot in Piccadilly where the van crashed into the restaurant, and what did I find on the other side of the street? A coffee shop. Archie Marlow happened to be there two weeks before his death, on the evening of the attack. I spoke to the barista, who remembered him because he complained about his latte not being hot enough. Archie saw it all.’

  * * *

  —

  Archie Marlow was broke. It was raining, and his right sock was wet from the hole in his shoe. His girlfriend had dumped him, his gambling debts were sufficiently big for a loan shark to threaten him with a Chelsea Smile* and his landlord was about to kick him out of the rathole he illegally rented.

  Archie never stopped looking for an angle. He’d tried everything above, below and far beyond the law. Usually he relied upon a febrile sense of opportunism to find ways of scraping together a few quid, but tonight even this had escaped him. He was thinking about ways of faking his own death when he saw the builder’s van suddenly accelerate.

  He had never seen Piccadilly looking so drab and emptied out before. It made the white van stand out. His phone was in his hand, and without thinking he started filming. When the van suddenly mounted the kerb and ploughed into the restaurant, shattering its plate-glass frontage, he knew he was holding solid gold. He continued to film, remembering not to pan about or zoom too quickly, until the first police arrived.

  All he could think of was Abe Zapruder, and the most examined piece of film in history. Twenty-six seconds shot at Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963. The plume of crimson at Kennedy’s throat. Jackie climbing over the back of the presidential limousine in her pink pillbox hat. Solid gold.

  Who was in the restaurant? It looked fancy, expensive, the kind of place world leaders visited incognito. If it turned out that the van had been deliberately aimed, his footage could prove almost as valuable as Zapruder’s. His hands were sweating so heavily that the phone almost slipped from them. With trembling fingers he stopped filming and played back the footage.

  It was all there, the whole thing. Thirty-seven seconds.

  Sirens made him look up. There were flak-jacketed officers running and cordons appearing. He needed to get out fast. As he slipped from the coffee shop he started placing calls.

  The first news agencies he tried wanted him to stay on the line while they checked out the story. He rang the cable channels first. They wanted to see the footage before opening negotiations. Nobody would commit. Worse, everyone wanted to know his name.

  His stomach sank as he realized he was sitting on a goldmine he could not sell. If he went through any official channel they would need to verify his identity, and would quickly find out too much about him. He tried to think of someone he could call, and the only name he came up with was someone he wouldn’t trust with a milk carton, let alone a piece of film worth a fortune.

  * * *

  —

  ‘You can see what happened,’ said Bryant. ‘It was thirty-seven seconds of footage that could transform his life. He called Little Nicky because their paths had crossed before. Dan, do you still have Naomi Sams’s phone?’

  Banbury gave it up with reluctance. Bryant squinted at it and stabbed at the key pad. ‘It’s four—three—zero—seven,’ said the crime scene manager impatiently.

  ‘A year earlier Archie Marlow set up a company to develop an app, and in the course of raising money for it he met Little Nicky, who promised to help him get funding, stole the idea and ripped him off,’ said Bryant, continuing to poke at the phone. ‘You know what they say about chaps like Archie: once a loser, always a loser. Despite their history he trusted Little Nicky a second time because he had no one else to turn to. Little Nicky agreed to act as a broker and put his own name down as the owner of the footage. Then he sold it all over the world and pocketed the payment. Getting ripped off twice by the same creep is more than enough reason for murder, don’t you think?’

  ‘And you figured all this out without technology how exactly?’ asked Banbury.

  ‘Tortured grammar but I take your point,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s simple. I sat where he sat, and saw what he saw. Like the rest of you I’d watched the footage repeated endlessly on TV. There was no other angle it could have been filmed from.’

  Satisfied with what he saw on the screen of Naomi Sams’s phone, he turned it around so that everyone could see. ‘Breadcrumb. The best way to find your way home. Registered to a company owned by Nikos Petrides. It’s right there on the screen. What it doesn’t say is “Based on an idea stolen from Archie Marlow.” You see what this means? Archie got caught out by his own invention. Breadcrumb brought to his door the person who would accidentally cause his death.’ He chucked the phone aside. ‘Technology’s all very well but sometimes you simply need to see what’s before your eyes.’

  * Razor cuts to the corners of the mouth

  Author’s Notes on the Cases

  Bryant & May and the Seventh Reindeer

  Every Christmas I walk through Covent Garden, and last year it snowed on their giant illuminated reindeer. I watched the performers in James Street and remembered I’d known the true sad story of the fellow inside the Alien suit. That was all I needed for the tale, plus an opera diva, obviously.

  Bryant & May’s Day Off

  It’s fairly clear that this tale is set in the postwar years, before London’s riverside resort Tower Beach closed down in 1971. The idea of swimming in the Thames now horrifies us, but I liked the idea of trying to find a criminal on a beach, where everyone looks the same.

  Bryant & May and the Postman

  I thought it would be fun to show the PCU involved in the nuts and bolts of a case, persistently questioning a suspect until an answer emerges, but this was also a chance to show their shortcomings. My father never quite managed to become a modern man, although he did have a crack at using hair gel. It didn’t end well. He looked like a shampooed dog.

  Bryant & May and the Devil’s Triangle

  This is a real corner near my flat and a genuine accident black spot, although not designated as such. I’m interested in the areas that remain ignored because they appear to have nothing to offer. Developers leave them alone, the oddest tales often come from them and they have the weirdest shops (this corner boasted a rubber maid’s uniform store for many years).

  Bryant & May and the Antichrist

  A couple of years ago I moved flats for a while and had to keep memorizing different codes to get in (the property was on a canal with a series of gates). The only way I could remember them was by doing what Bryant does to solve the case. Plus, I like making the reader do a bit of work!

  Bryant & May and the Invisible Woman

  A combination of factors caused this: a visit to Dalí’s astonishing theatre-museum in Figueres and an open night at the Tate Modern, when a woman told me it was the best way to find a date in London. Plus, I’d been wanting to give the PCU women more of the spotlight for a while.

  Bryant & May and the Consul’s Son

  This is very much the centrepiece of the book, a long-gestating mystery that began as little more than a throwaway gag in Strange Tide. I was going to resolve it in the next novel but couldn’t find a place to fit it in—too long for a subplot, not long enough for a novel—so I decided to write it up as a separate case. The locations are all real; one spot is where I headed to record an audio version of a book, an odd little London corner hidden in plain sight.

  Bryant & May Meet Dracula

  Otto Penzler owns a wonderful store called the Mysterious Bookshop in New York, and after visiting all the locations mentioned I wrote him a Transylvania-set tale called ‘Reconciliation Day.’ I thought it would be cool to adapt the research for the telling of a different story, one taking Bryant & May out of their comfort zone, and
this is the result.

  Bryant & May and the Forty Footsteps

  I stumbled across the legend of the forty footsteps in several differing accounts in rare volumes of London history, and as it had happened near to me I set out to track it down. This proved harder than expected, as it’s mostly underneath the concrete of University College London. I think I located the exact spot, but I can’t be sure. As with all London legends it’s the idea that grips.

  Janice Longbright and the Best of Friends

  This started out very differently, as a synopsis for a novel that I never got around to writing. My editor at the time was unenthusiastic and I soon became excited by a different idea, so it was shelved. But writers never throw anything away, and stories can sometimes find their feet with a fresh look. Originally it was going to be entirely set in the Younger Woman clinic.

  Bryant & May up the Tower

  This started out as a vignette in The Casebook of Bryant & May, a graphic novel drawn by the excellent Keith Page, but I’d always felt I could have fun with it in written form. My first job was at a company based at the foot of the tower (then named the Post Office Tower) which always fascinated me. I managed to go up to the restaurant before they closed it. Sixties futurism rocks!

  Bryant & May and the Breadcrumb Trail

  Ah, a sadly ever-topical London subject, to which I added Arthur Bryant vs technology, a disgusting death and an odd little newspaper item. I was very much on home ground in this tale. As the modern policing world becomes ever more reliant on technology the detectives look increasingly out of touch, but at the root of all detection is the idea that human nature never changes.