‘Indeed they were, music halls mostly, but the remaining sites are listed. I watched as they put a wrecking ball through the Deptford Hippodrome.’
‘How many other files have you got tucked away?’
‘You’d be surprised. That business with the tontine and the Bengal tiger, all documented. The runic curses that brought London to a standstill. The corpse covered in butterflies. I’ve got all our best cases, and a register of every useful fringe group in the capital.’
‘You should upgrade your database. You’ve still got members of the Camden Town Coven listed as reliable contacts. And do I need to mention the Leicester Square Vampire?’
‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ said Bryant. ‘Look at that, a touch of old Shanghai in London.’ He pointed as a fleet of bright yellow tricycles pedalled past, dragging bored-looking tourists around the sights. ‘Do you want to buy me a cup of tea at Somerset House?’
‘It’s your turn to pay.’
‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’ Bryant squinted at the fading sun that was slipping behind the roof of the Savoy, as pale as a supermarket egg. ‘Not only were the files on the Palace Phantom still in the archives, but I discovered something interesting about our murderer. I’ve often thought of him over the years, poor old bugger.’ Ahead, the Embankment was picked out in neon, fierce reds and blues, part of a Thamesside festival. It looked like a child’s drawing of the river finished in crayons.
‘What did you find out?’
‘I was thinking of paying a visit to the Wetherby tomorrow morning,’ Bryant announced, not quite answering the question. The Wetherby was a sister clinic to the Maudsley on Southwark’s Denmark Hill, and housed a number of patients suffering from senile dementia.
‘Are you finally going to have yourself checked over? I’d love to join you, but I’m having lunch with an attractive lady, and nothing you say will persuade me to do otherwise.’
Bryant made a face. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’re entertaining the notion of relations.’
‘I have every hope.’
‘I must say I find it rather grotesque that you still have a sex drive at your age. Can’t you just use Internet porn? How old is this one? She must be younger because you don’t fancy women as old as you, which makes her, let me guess, late fifties, a post-war child with a name like Daphne, Wendy or Susan, a divorcée or a widow, a brunette if your track record is anything to go by. She probably considers you the older child she never had, in which case she’ll be mooning over you, wanting to cook you meals and so on, and won’t mind waiting a little longer for the pleasure of finding one of your vulgar off-the-peg suits hanging in the other side of her wardrobe.’
Irritated by the accuracy of his partner’s predictions, May dug out his lighter and lit a cigarette, which he wasn’t supposed to have. ‘What I do in my free time is no concern of yours. I’m not getting any younger. My cholesterol’s through the roof. This might be my last chance to have sex.’
‘Don’t be revolting,’ snapped Bryant. ‘You should pack it in, a man of your age, you’re liable to pull something in the pelvic region. You’re better off taking up something productive like wood carving. Women cost a fortune, running up restaurant bills and trawling shops for a particularly elusive style of sandal.’
‘They still find me attractive. They might even consider you if you smartened up your act a bit.’
‘I stopped buying shirts after they went over six quid. Besides, I like the trousers they sell at Laurence Corner, very racy, some of them.’
‘They sell ex-military wear, Arthur. That’s the lower half of a demob suit you’re wearing. Look at those turn-ups. You could park a bike in them.’
‘It’s all right for you, you’ve always been able to impress women,’ Bryant complained. ‘You don’t have the demeanour of a bad-tempered tortoise.’
May’s modern appearance matched the freshness of his outlook. Despite his advanced age, there were still women who found his attentiveness appealing. His technoliteracy and his keen awareness of the modern world complemented Bryant’s strange psychological take on the human race, and their symbiotic teamwork dealt them an advantage over less experienced officers. But it still didn’t stop them from arguing like an old married couple. Their partnership had just commenced its seventh decade.
Those who didn’t know him well considered Arthur Bryant to have outlived his usefulness. It didn’t help that he was incapable of politeness, frowning through his wrinkles and forever buried beneath scarves and cardigans, always cold, always complaining, living only for his work. He was the oldest active member of the London police force. But May saw the other side of him, the restless soul, the gleam of frustrated intellect in his rheumy eye, the hidden capacity for compassion and empathy.
‘Fine,’ said Bryant. ‘You go off with your bit of fluff, and I’ll go to the clinic by myself. There’s something I want to clear up before I close my first volume. But don’t blame me if I get into trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble could you possibly get into?’ asked May, dreading to think. ‘Just make sure you wear something that distinguishes you from the patients, otherwise they might keep you in. I’ll see you on Sunday, how’s that?’
‘No, I’ll be in the office on Sunday.’
‘You could take some time off. I’ll even come and watch you play skittles.’
‘Now you’re being patronizing. But you can come to the unit and help me close the reports. That’s if you can tear yourself away from . . . let’s see, Daphne, isn’t it?’
‘It is, as it happens,’ admitted May, much annoyed.
‘Hm. I thought it would be. Well, don’t overdo things.’ Bryant stumped off across the bridge, waving a brisk farewell with his stick.
That had been on Friday evening. May had no idea that Sunday would be their last day together in Mornington Crescent.
3
FULL CIRCLE
Five days later, Longbright stood in a private, neglected section of Highgate Cemetery, watching as a simple service placed a public seal on Arthur Bryant’s life. Behind them, journalists and Japanese tourists took photographs through the railings. Arthur had no surviving relatives. His landlady Alma was the only non-official in attendance. She had threatened to talk to the press if she wasn’t allowed at the graveside. Alma was privy to most of the unit’s secrets, via her indiscreet tenant.
Longbright remained beside the wet rose plot containing her colleague’s urn as members of the unit trooped by, awkwardly pausing to offer their condolences. Liberty DuCaine led the new generation of unit employees. It felt like the passing of an era.
Longbright was strong. She preferred to stand alone, and refused to cry. Her fiancé offered to drive her home, but she told him to wait in the car. The cemetery grounds were still waterlogged from the recent torrential rain. Briars and nettles drooped over fungus-stained stone, nature anxious to hide all signs of earthly disturbance. Arthur Bryant had arranged to be buried here sixty years earlier, after the death of his greatest love. The retired detective sergeant found it hard to appreciate that a man of such peculiar energy could be so totally obliterated: the forensic lab had identified his body by the melted set of false teeth Bryant had been fitted with during the year Margaret Thatcher came to power.
Some kind of songbird was making a fuss in the tree behind her. Longbright turned towards it, and found May standing silently in her shadow. ‘I guess that should be a symbol of hope,’ she said, ‘but I wish I had a gun.’
‘I know how you feel,’ admitted May. ‘I don’t know what to do without him, how to begin going on. What’s the point? It’s as though someone tore up the world.’
‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry.’ She took his hands in hers. She felt angry, not sorry. She wanted to accuse someone and blame them for the loss of their friend. She had seen more of life’s unfairness than most people, but it did not stop her from wanting revenge. Alma Sorrowbridge came over and stood quietly with them. The West Indian landlady wore a
large silver cross on her black-lace bosom. She was very old now, and shrinking fast.
‘John, I wanted to speak to you earlier, but they’—she pointed back at the journalists—’they were watching me. I have something for you.’ She pulled a newspaper-covered oblong from beneath her coat. ‘I found this in Mr Bryant’s flat. It’s addressed to you. Not that I’ve been touching his things, you understand.’
May accepted the slim folder and tore off the wrapping. His breath condensed around the cream linen cover as he studied it. ‘This is Arthur’s handwriting,’ he said, tracing an ink indentation with his finger. ‘Has anyone else looked at it?’
‘I showed it to Detective Sergeant Longbright earlier.’
‘I took a section of the binding for forensic testing,’ Longbright explained. ‘Just to make sure it was his.’
May examined the gilt edge of the paper. ‘I’ve certainly never seen it before. Might be the first chapter of his book.’
‘It was stuck down the back of the wardrobe,’ said Alma. ‘I moved it to hoover. He told me he was going to write his memoirs, and wanted to borrow my old fountain pen because it had a broad italic nib.’
‘Why would he want to write with that?’
‘You know how he had these funny ideas. Never let me clean under his bed in sixty years. He had things growing.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘No, in round glass pots.’
‘Ah, Petri dishes, yes, he did that sort of thing all the time. Thank you for this, Alma.’
Bryant’s landlady made her painful way out of the cemetery. May wondered how long she would cope without her tenant. He watched her go before returning his attention to the book. His numb fingers carefully parted the pages. Inside was a single loose sheet covered in dense scrawl. ‘He never kept case notes like this,’ he told Longbright. ‘Arthur wasn’t organized enough. He couldn’t even find his dry-cleaning tickets.’ Despite Bryant’s lack of proficiency with laundry collection, it appeared that he had indeed written something in the last weeks of his life. Unfortunately, it wasn’t readable.
‘It’s in shorthand,’ explained Oswald Finch when May talked to him later. The unit’s staff had been temporarily rehoused in storage rooms on the top floor of Kentish Town police station. Finch was, strictly speaking, a retired forensic pathologist but knew a thing or two about indecipherable writing, as anyone who had seen his own handwriting could testify. ‘Definitely shorthand. Not the most recent kind either, an older version. This is tachygraphy of the type that Samuel Pepys used in his diaries. Before the nineteenth century it was popular among lawyers and naval officers. Hopelessly arcane now, of course. Be interesting to see how he copes with modern vocabulary. Analogous nouns and phonetic spelling, probably. That’s why he wanted the broad nib, to place emphases.’
‘But can you transcribe it?’ May asked impatiently.
‘Good heavens, no. But I might be able to download a program that can. Could you leave it with me for a few days?’
‘I’d rather read it myself. Can you forward the program to me?’
Finch had almost forgotten that May had once trained as a codebreaker. ‘I don’t see why not. It won’t be very user-friendly, though.’
‘How typical of him not to write it in plain English. I’ll call you with a new e-mail address and security reference. I’m going to be on leave for a while. I have to get out of London.’
Finch understood. Arthur Bryant was virtually a symbol of the city. There were memories of the man and his cases almost everywhere you looked.
A few days later John May drove down into the Sussex countryside, and it was there, on the rich green downs above Brighton, seated in the attic room he had rented above an unpropitious pub called the Seventh Engineer, that he downloaded the translation program and set to work.
At the start of the document was a note from Finch:
John—I’ve tried to give you a head start by programming substitutions for the most frequently used words, but some of it’s still a bit wonky. Bryant appears to have used a very peculiar writing style. It’s rather rambling and all very indiscreet, the only good thing being that many of the people in his account are presumably dead and therefore unavailable to pursue lawsuits. I hope it throws some light on what has happened. Perhaps DS Longbright can help you fill in the gaps. From the way Arthur hid it, he seems to have anticipated that something disastrous might occur. If you think this has any bearing on the blast, we’d better put together a report for RL.
RL was Raymond Land, the unit’s impatient and unforgiving new acting head. May’s eye was drawn to the postscript: ’By the way, you might be interested to know that Longbright’s mother features in the case. I’d forgotten she once worked at the unit. I think Arthur had a crush on her.’
May set about copying the pages of the notebook into his laptop. After typing in a few hundred words, impatience got the better of him, and he ran the translation program. His fingers idled against the keyboard as he tried to make sense of what he read.
He was looking at an account of their first case, the start of a memoir. Through the fractured text he began to hear Bryant’s voice. Pouring himself a gin, he began typing again. He transcribed the single loose sheet and ran the translation program, watching as the letters unscrambled themselves.
An uncomfortable sensation began to take hold of him. The loose page was a fresh addendum, a confidence not intended for publication. Its final line acknowledged a failing: ’I know I will go back, because I cannot leave the past alone . . .’ May was suddenly sure that Bryant had done something to cause his own death. You didn’t work with a man for sixty years without gaining an insight into his behaviour. Arthur had disturbed the past, and somehow it had killed him. The idea was preposterous, but stuck fast.
He stared at the words on the screen and thought back to their first meeting in the Blitz. That strange, exhilarating time had also ended with a consignment to flames. It was as though events had somehow come full circle. Bryant had known that his actions could place him at risk. Why else would he encode the memoir and hide it?
The elliptical translation wasn’t enough to provide an explanation. May knew he would have to rely on his own elusive memories in order to appreciate what had happened. As the sun slipped below the trees and the shadows became scented with damp earth, he closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to drift across over half a century, to a time when London’s character was put to a test few other cities could have hoped to survive.
He tried to remember how the seeds of their future had been sown. It was 1940. It was November. A nation was at war, and the world had blundered into darkness.
4
SKY ON FIRE
Viewed from the far perspective of world terrorism, the wartime bombing of London now seems unimaginably distant. But the blossoming white dust clouds, debris bursting through them like the stamens of poisoned flowers, contained the same moment of horror common to all such events.
The conflict had been so long anticipated that in some perverse way its arrival was a relief. The people of Britain had methodically prepared their defences. This time the island did not wait to recruit its forces. Conscription created armies, and attacks were launched by sea and sky. For those who remained behind, daily life took strange new forms. Children carried their gas masks to school. Public information leaflets explained the rules of the blackout. Rationing made the nation healthier. An aura of orderly common sense settled across the city of London.
As the fittest men were conscripted, the streets grew quieter, and an air of becalmed expectancy prevailed. It felt as though a great change was drawing near. More civilians found a purpose in war than in peace. Nothing could be taken for granted, not even an extra day of life. For those who were as old as the century, it was the second time to fight.
In 1939, London was the largest city in the world. The riches of the British empire still poured through its financial institutions. Memories of the Depression had faded. Good tim
es, boom times, had arrived. Despite the false celebration of ‘peace in our time’, rearmament paved the way to prosperity. One still saw reminders of the Great War on the streets: one-armed liftmen, blinded match-sellers, men who stuttered and shook when you spoke to them. During that earlier conflict, German airships had bombed the city but managed to kill only 670 people. Surely, everyone said, it would not happen again.
Even so, the Committee of Imperial Defence had begun a study into air-raid precautions as early as 1924. They calculated how many bombs could be dropped by Germany should hostilities recommence, and how many people they would kill. Every ton of explosive would cause fifty casualties, a third of them fatal. Three thousand five hundred bombs would fall on London in the first twenty-four hours. It would be essential to maintain public order, to prevent the city from descending into a living hell. For the first time in a war, the reinforcement of morale at home became a priority.
The first bomb to explode in London was not dropped by the Germans but planted by the IRA, and aimed at the most prosaic of targets—Whiteley’s emporium in Bayswater. German bombers could not reach their target, and the city had become an impregnable citadel. The country’s prime minister had seen active military service, and was experienced in the way of warfare. The King remained in Buckingham Palace. The government, the monarchy, the people were seen to be moving in one direction. The shops remained open. The deckchairs were set out in Hyde Park, and the band played on.
But by November 1940, the uneasy anticlimax of the Twilight War had been over for six months, and the Blitz had become a way of life. After the fall of France, the nation was braced for imminent invasion, and Londoners were so used to living under the constant threat of air attack that they simply went on with their business. ‘Taking it’ became part of the fight, as important as attacking.
Bombs were particularly devastating when they hit crowded stations. One hundred and eleven people were crushed and blown apart at Bank station. Sixty-four were drowned in cascading mud at Balham. Everyone knew someone who had died, or who had narrowly escaped death. The thin newspapers were filled with vague news of victories, but personal experience suggested only misery and endurance.
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