‘But where to start? We have yet to discover the lair of the Leicester Square Vampire. He’s still got my shoes, you know. And that poor girl he snatched, buried alive with all those rabid bats and someone else’s head. There are other cases starting to come in. We’ve got a twenty-one-year-old Hurricane pilot accused of a brutal stabbing in Argyll Street, several witnesses, his bloody fingerprints on the body, and a cast-iron alibi that places him in the middle of Regent’s Park, tied to the back of a cow. He’s one of the Channel heroes, so it’s in everyone’s interests to exonerate him, but how? No, our labours here are only just beginning. This city is a veritable repository of the wonderful and the extraordinary. Isn’t that right, Mr May?’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr Bryant,’ replied May with a lift of his glass, and this time he really meant it.
Bryant looked over his friend’s shoulder, in the direction of Waterloo Bridge. Something drew his eye to the centre of the bridge. There was a coruscating flash of dark sunlight, a spear of greenish yellow, and for the briefest moment two elderly men could be seen leaning on the white stone parapet. Then the light settled, and they were gone.
Far above them, the silver-grey barrage balloons that protected the city turned lazily in the early evening air, like old whales searching for the spawning grounds of their youth.
62
SLEIGHT OF HAND
‘What time is it?’
‘Almost sunset.’ May came away from the hospital window. ‘You can see the river from here.’
‘Look, John, I’ve still got the mobile phone you bought me.’ Arthur Bryant pulled the silver Nokia out from under the bedclothes and waved it at his visitor, waiting for a compliment. The hospital room was awash with garish flowers and get-well cards.
‘I thought you’d lost it,’ said May, tearing off a grape and eating it.
‘No, I’d accidentally switched it with the television remote. Every time Alma changed channels to watch QVC she speed-dialled the Berlin headquarters of Interpol.’
‘Well, why didn’t you use the speed-dial to call me?’
‘I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I’d been hit on the head,’ Bryant complained.
‘How is the old noggin?’ May peered at the top of his partner’s skull. A row of neat stitches extended from his right ear to the middle of his left eyebrow. ‘You’re going to have a scar there. Can you remember what happened that night after I left you?’
‘Only bits,’ Bryant admitted. ‘I went downstairs to get my paperweight back.’
‘What paperweight?’
‘The one I threw at the lads from Holmes Road when they came by to make fun of me. It must have been around six in the morning when I went out. I thought I’d better get the thing back because it was a souvenir from the war. I was just coming up the stairs when I saw him. The top door was wide open, and Elspeth Wynter’s son was standing there. He had a green metal cylinder in his fist. He started accusing me of persecuting him, and said he was going to kill me. I should never have sought him out at the Wetherby. I’d upset him when I reminded him how his mother had died. It’s funny the way little things can trigger memories. Give me those, for God’s sake.’ He reached forward and emptied grape pips from May’s cupped palm. ‘Ow.’ He clutched at the top of his head and fell back onto the pillow.
‘You shouldn’t move about,’ warned May. ‘The nurse says you have to lie still for a few days. What happened after you saw Todd standing there at the unit?’
‘What do you think? He hit me, and there was an explosion. I’d just nipped out in my shirt sleeves, I had no ID on me, no wallet. I woke up in a hostel off the Charing Cross Road. A very nice lady kept feeding me mushroom soup. I went back home but my teeth were hurting, so I picked up my dental records.’
‘You also took the blueprints covered with your notes from the Palace.’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t remember why I’d taken them. I went to see you but I couldn’t get in, so I thought I’d wait. Some hideous monkey-like woman appeared from nowhere and started screaming at me.’
‘You missed your own funeral.’
‘Was it a good turnout?’
‘Excellent, lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, really miserable. You’d have loved it.’
‘How did you figure out what had happened?’
‘I must admit you had me going for a while. Maggie suggested we try to get in touch with you on the other side—’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve become a believer,’ interrupted Bryant.
‘—and she needed something you’d touched, so I took her Nijinsky’s shell. She reached the person who’d been killed in the explosion, just as she’d promised. But she’d made contact with Todd, not you. He’d touched the tortoise too. It had probably been his only childhood friend.’ May tucked the blanket around his partner’s pyjama’d chest. ‘I think you’d better come and stay with me for a while, just until you’re a hundred per cent.’
‘God, no, you have the television on all the time, it would drive me mad. This one’s bad enough.’ He pointed to the wall-mounted TV, tuned to a silent news broadcast.
‘We’ll discuss it later. What would you most like to do when you’re better?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, take tango lessons, do a bit of sky-diving, the usual stuff.’ He thought for a moment and smiled. ‘Or perhaps we could just go to the river and watch the tide going out.’
‘Why not?’ May agreed. ‘There aren’t too many of the old rituals left. It seems a pity to break this one. We’d better get your choppers sorted out as well.’ He looked at the bedside table, where Bryant’s gruesomely enormous false teeth sat grinning at him. ‘If it wasn’t for those horrible things I’d never have thought of searching for you.’
‘Then I’d like you to keep them.’ Bryant grinned toothlessly, then the smile faded. ‘He’d not had much of a life, you know, Elspeth’s son. In and out of institutions and halfway houses. He was registered under his mother’s name, Wynter. Yet he seemed not to remember her when we spoke.’
‘He remembered enough to follow you back to the unit and wait there until the next night. We were wondering where he got the incendiary device from.’
‘Ah, um, I’m rather afraid that was my fault.’ Bryant looked sheepish.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was mine. I’d kept it as a souvenir from the war.’
‘Kept it, all this time? Where?’
‘On my desk.’
‘I don’t remember anything like that on your desk.’
‘The paperweight, the one I chucked at the lads from Holmes Road that night.’
‘You’re telling me that was a bomb?’
‘I thought it had been defused. I painted it yellow in the sixties—it was the sort of thing you did back then. I must have destabilized it when I threw it out of the window. I got back to the room and found Todd there. He threatened me.’
‘So this green metal cylinder he was carrying wasn’t a bomb?’
‘No, it was his thermos flask. He hit me over the head with it.’ Bryant gingerly touched his scar. ‘That’s how I got this. He was trying to kill me. I didn’t know what to do, but the paperweight was still in my hand so I chucked it at him. I didn’t expect it to explode.’
May buried his face in his hands. ‘I can’t believe you blew us up. We thought you were the victim, not the bomber.’
‘Try to look on the positive side,’ said Bryant brightly. ‘Maybe now they’ll give us some decent offices.’
‘We are in so much trouble,’ moaned May. ‘Do you realize we’ve buried someone else in your grave? Why can’t you be like regular old people and put irresponsibility behind you?’
‘I know there have been some inconsistencies in my past behaviour, John, but from now on I’ll try to be exactly the same.’ Bryant’s watery blue eyes looked hopefully towards a more certain future.
‘Oh, before I forget,’ said May, emptying the contents of his nylon backpack onto the end of th
e bed, ‘I know how much you hate staying in bed and I thought you might like something to occupy your mind while you’re lying here, so I brought you the job applications Sam Biddle forwarded to the unit. You can go through them and select a few of these “ordinary civilians” for interviews.’
Bryant eyed the pile of letters suspiciously. ‘Do I get paid for working overtime?’
‘You merely receive the thanks of a grateful nation.’
‘Huh.’ He lifted the letters up by their corners, examining them as though they were dead animals. When he reached one handwritten envelope, his brow furrowed even more deeply than usual. He opened its flap with a theatrical flourish.
‘Hmmp.’ He waved at his bifocals. ‘Pass me those, would you?’ He unfolded the letter. ‘Aha. Hmph.’
‘I assume you are making those cartoonish noises to attract my attention,’ said May wearily.
Bryant tossed the letter at him. ‘How about this one? We’ll give her an interview, shall we?’
May read for a moment, then raised his eyes. ‘This is a formal application to join the unit from April, my granddaughter.’
‘And you thought there wasn’t anyone in your family willing to carry on the tradition.’ Bryant smirked. ‘Shows how much you know about people.’
‘Wait, did you put her up to this?’ asked May.
Bryant’s eyes widened with indignant surprise.
‘No, of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have, because when I told you last week that the Chief Association of Police Officers was inviting non-professionals to train alongside detectives, you acted as though you didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Oh, well then, I don’t. You ought to see her, though.’ He licked his lips. ‘Blimey, I’m starving. It must be nearly time for them to bring the mince trolley round. You’d better be off before it arrives.’
As May slipped the note back in its envelope, he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. ‘Perhaps I should get Longbright to fix up an appointment.’
‘I think you’ll find she already has. Next Tuesday at eleven.’
He was going to ask how Bryant could possibly know, but his partner was already starting to feign sleep.
‘You missed your vocation, Arthur,’ he said softly. ‘You really should have been on the stage.’
‘The city is my theatre,’ murmured Bryant. ‘I never want to leave it.’ He closed his eyes and allowed himself to sink into vast white pillows. ‘The war.’ His voice became a faint whisper. ‘How little we knew about people then. How little we ever really learn.’
Above the foot of the bed, the silent television replayed footage of guns and men, and a distant battle that could never be won.
Appendix
NOTATIONS MADE BY MR ARTHUR BRYANT IN AN ACCOUNT OF HIS FIRST CASE WITH MR JOHN MAY
Abyssinians, uses of when stuffed
For purposes of ventriloquism
Possession of by squadron leaders
Actors, unreliable behaviour of
Agoraphobia, dangers of
Airships, German, poor performance of
Amateurs, abilities of encouraged by Home Office
Architect, incomprehensible explanation by
Armitage, Maggie
Psychic powers of
Price charges for ectoplasm clearance
Link between horseracing and women’s suffrage
Ability to use harpsichord as boiled-egg slicer
Astaire, Fred, appearance at Palace
Bananas, as weapon against Hitler
BBC, hilarity caused by bombing of
Bengal tiger, as shameless plug for other published Bryant and May cases
Betts, Corinne, as murder witness
As stand-up comic
Biddle, Sidney
Bovine addiction to law and order
Enjoyment of complicated paperwork
Pleasure derived from hitting geography teacher
Bombs, used in destruction of police stations
Falling on London like jellyfish
Exploding in tube stations
For use as stage props
Bridge, Waterloo, as conduit for rumination
Psychic phenomena on
Bryant, Arthur, displays of temperament against constables
Addiction to illegal narcotics
Insensitivity
Rudeness
Uselessness with opposite sex
Poor dress sense of
Comparison to tortoise
Inability to read flags
Love of tachygraphy
Hopelessness with technology
Association with tontine, Savoyards, butterfly-covered corpse etc.
Possibility of being mistaken for mental patient
Preference for wood carving to having sex
Unflattering description of
Capistrania, Tanya, thankless role in tale as unloved murder victim
Carfax, Sergeant, similarity of wife’s face to witch doctor’s rattle
Caterpillars, poisonous, use of in teapots
Cats, ginger, arrival through kebab shop windows of
Stuffed, as conduit for dead squadron leader
Cheese, see Skittles
Chorus girls, unlikeliness of wearing knickers
Davenport, Farley, highly unflattering description of
Emotional constipation of
Dental records, pertinence in murder investigations
Likelihood of use in identifying werewolves
Dwarves, gigantism amongst
Finch, Oswald, inflexibility in humorous situations
As butt of cruel practical jokes
Under attack by dangerous vegetation
Forthright, Gladys, desire for assonance of
Peculiar taste in role models
Unsuitability of choices where men are concerned
Ginger people, use of by Germans during blackouts
Greeks, shipbuilding and theatrical enterprises
Incendiary devices, inadvisability of using as paperweights
Mistaken for thermos flasks
Jack the Ripper, ability to melt pavement slabs
Landladies, unlikely swordsmanship abilities of
Lift, as device for removing feet
Lithuanian botanists, incidence of vampirism amongst
London, bus standing on end in
Matthews, Jesse, eerie power to drive men mad
May, John, predictability of female dinner dates
Peculiar ability to turn women’s knees to jelly
Last chance to have sex of
Stoic qualities of
Claustrophobia suffered by
Memory, lost
Memory, regained
Memory, revived
Muses, as template for murder spree
Norwegian painter, similarity to medical officer
Norwegians, anaemic condition of
Offenbach, Jacques
As progenitor of Gilbert and Sullivan
As inspiration for deranged serial killer
Opinion, Public, violent death of
Orpheus mythology, as motive for murder
Palace Theatre, resemblance of to Borley Rectory
Paperweight, use of for incendiary purposes
Parole, Helena
Heartlessness of
Alcoholism of
Medusa-like qualities of
Pepys, Samuel, talent for tachygraphy
Petri dishes, mysterious existence of under Bryant’s bed
Phantoms, ability of to walk through walls
Likelihood of picking a fight with Claude Rains
Planet, as symbol of Freemasonry
As murder weapon
Plants, tropical, propensity for sickening cats, wives etc.
Poltergeist, dangers of intrusions by while saying grace
Pope, violation of with roofing tiles
As condom spokesman
Pork, as substitute for human feet
Senechal, Charles, clouted by
planet
Skittles, as a boring esoteric hobby for aged detectives
Statuary, as esoteric clue in criminal investigation
Stone, Miles, unfortunate choice of pseudonym by
Inability to be faithful with women
Technology, peculiar backfiring of when confronted by technophobes
Teeth, as clue in criminal investigations, see Dental records
Theatre critics, climbing abilities of
Thwaite, Olivia, floral solution to prominent nipples by
Tortoises, life-threatening habits of
Uses of in spiritualist rituals
Trammel, Betty, mysterious true identity of
Traps, grave
Traps, star
Turk, body parts found in chestnut brazier by
Varisich, Anton, orchestra conductor forced to work with buskers
Wagstaff, Edna, psychic sensitivity of with dead pets
Whittaker, Geoffrey, unorthodox sexual arrangements of
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
Novels
ROOFWORLD
RUNE
RED BRIDE
DARKEST DAY
SPANKY
PSYCHOVILLE
DISTURBIA
SOHO BLACK
CALABASH
Graphic Novel
MENZ NSANA
Short Stories
CITY JITTERS
CITY JITTERS TWO
THE BUREAU OF LOST SOULS
SHARPER KNIVES
FLESH WOUNDS
PERSONAL DEMONS
UNCUT
THE DEVIL IN ME
DEMONIZED
FULL DARK HOUSE
A Bantam Book
Doubleday UK hardcover edition published 2003
Bantam hardcover edition / June 2004
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2003 by Christopher Fowler / Defiant Films
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
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