‘Actually, I can. The sticker found on Taylor’s body is a re-interpretation of a design used by the hospital. As you can see here, the patient’s arms and legs are held apart by iron rods which are then chained to the walls.’ He pointed to the inked symbol within the pages. ‘At first I thought the drawing was taken from Leonardo da Vinci, but then I noticed the thin black bands on the wrist and the ankle, see? The illustration here is described as “an unspecified method of coercion for violent lunatics and proponents of unwarranted anarchy, 1826.” Gloria Taylor told everyone she was twenty-three, but she was younger. She became pregnant at the age of sixteen and suffered a nervous breakdown two years later. Her parents tried to have her institutionalised. It’s probably just a coincidence that the symbol somehow became attached to her, but I thought you’d want us to investigate all avenues.’
‘I suppose you all think you’re very clever,’ Land blustered lamely. ‘I’m sure you imagine you can run this place without me, but I’m here to make sure you can’t. Because you don’t think of everything, you know. There are two workmen brewing up tea on a Primus stove in the hall, both apparently called Dave, and they don’t seem to have been given any instructions about what to do.’
‘That’s because they’re your responsibility, old sausage,’ Bryant reminded him. ‘You specifically said you wanted to take care of them, remember? I imagine you don’t, otherwise you’d have arranged a work schedule for them. Okay, someone deal with the Daves for poor old Raymondo here; I’ll put the kettle on and let’s all get back to work.’
Having returned the acting temporary chief to his usual state of incandescent frustration, Bryant strolled out to the balcony for a smoke, but Land followed him.
‘And there’s another thing I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,’ Land hissed. ‘Your memoirs. You can’t be serious.’
‘I have no idea to what you are referring, mon vieux tête de navet.’
‘You should; I found a manuscript of the first completed volume when I was unpacking one of your boxes yesterday morning. What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’
Bryant regarded him with wide blue eyes. ‘I’m writing down histories of our cases at the Unit precisely as I remember them.’
‘That’s the problem—you don’t remember anything precisely.’
‘Oh, I have a system for that.’ Bryant screwed up an eye and peered into his pipe stem. ‘When I remember two facts but can’t recall the event that connects them, I use the bridge of my imagination.’
‘All I can say is it’s a bloody long bridge. You wrote up a full account of your first case—’
‘The business at the Palace Theatre, the crazed killer who struck during a rather saucy production of Orpheus in the Underworld. You read it?’
‘Yes, I did, and I’ve never read such a pile of pony old rubbish in my life.’
‘Obviously I had to make a few changes to protect the innocent.’
‘A few changes? You say it took place during the Blitz, for God’s sake! I know for a fact that you didn’t meet John until the 1950s.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. You met when you were working out of Bow Street Station.’
‘No, we didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. Apart from anything else, if your account was true you’d be in your late eighties by now, whereas you’re clearly not.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘No, you’re not. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not denying the basic facts—I’ve seen the official case notes—but you’ve moved the whole investigation back by about fifteen years.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Yes, you have. Stop contradicting me!’
‘I’m not. You only think I am.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do.’
‘Just stop it! I know what I’m talking about. The Unit was founded in September 1940, but you weren’t in it then. I’ve read the Home Office file on the place. It was called the Particular Crimes Unit at that point. It didn’t become Peculiar until you came along.’
‘That’s not how I remember it. And if that’s not how it happened, it’s how it should have happened. Far more colourful background material.’
‘What, so the Palace Theatre murderer was killed by a bomb while escaping, instead of getting banged up in Colney Hatch Asylum until finally being carried out in a box?’
‘Poetic licence. If I wrote down your days exactly as they happened, my readers would be asleep in minutes.’
‘Well, I hope we’re not going to be treated to revised versions of all our cases.’ Land had a sudden frightening thought. ‘And I hope I’m not featuring in any of these lurid fabrications?’
‘Oh, I’m weaving you in all the way through, dear chap.’ Bryant patted him consolingly on the shoulder. ‘My publisher said I should make it as amusing as possible, so I shall be popping you in whenever my readers are in need of a cheap laugh.’
He closed the balcony doors behind him and lit up a satisfying pipe.
NINETEEN
Nikos
As John May descended the basement steps and entered the University College Cruciform Library on Gower Street, he realised he had no description of the man he was there to meet. He needn’t have been concerned, however, as Nikos Nicolau was waiting for him.
May knew it was wrong to judge by appearances, but it seemed that Nicolau had gone out of his way to appear unprepossessing. He had been put together wrongly; his head was too large, his back slightly hunched, his eyes protuberant. Thinning hair was slicked across a broad expanse of skull bone, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. He was wearing a crumpled baggy T-shirt bearing the slogan A Joy to Have in Class, which seemed unlikely, as he didn’t smell very fresh. The senior detective was fastidious about personal grooming, and it bothered May to admit that he was adversely influenced by its lack in others.
‘Mr May? There’s a corner over here where we can talk.’ Nicolau led the way to a pair of red sofas screened off from the central part of the library. ‘I have trouble working down here because there’s no natural light. I have a melatonin imbalance, and get extremely claustrophobic, but it’s necessary for me to be here because they have good pharmacological reference tools, and that’s my study area.’ He spoke with the clipped North London accent of a transported Greek, but sounded as if he had trouble with his sinuses.
‘I appreciate your making the time to see me.’ May seated himself and extracted a notebook. ‘Cassie Field gave me your details. She works for the Karma Bar just behind here?’
‘Oh, the babe.’ Nikos gave a snort of delight and was forced to wipe his nose. ‘She knows who I am?’
‘Well, she must, because she gave me your number.’
‘I give out my number all the time but people don’t usually—especially—’ He could see how that was starting to sound, and killed the rest of the sentence. ‘How can I help you?’
May produced the sticker in its clear plastic slip case. ‘Seen one of these before?’
‘Yeah. They’re from the bar.’
‘Were you aware that it’s an early Victorian symbol denoting lunacy?’ He had promised Bryant he would ask.
‘No, I had no idea. Interesting.’
‘This one’s hand-coloured. Like the one on your bag.’ May pointed at the satchel between Nicolau’s boots.
‘Yeah, I coloured it in.’
‘Any others like that?’
‘A few of us have them, I guess.’
‘Are you some kind of a group—a club?’
‘Just friends. Some of us started on the same day. The guys are doing urban planning, I’m in biochemical engineering, ah—’ he scrunched his eyes shut, thinking, ‘—and we have a girl doing computational statistics. There are six of us altogether, sharing the same house.’
‘I can’t imagine you would have that much in common, doing different courses.’
‘The bar. We have the Karma Bar in common. It�
�s a good place to meet girls and just hang out. There are a few pubs nearby but they get too crowded with suits in the evening, and they all have TVs tuned to sports channels. None of us is very interested in football.’
‘So—what? Miss Field gave each of you a sticker? Or did one of you hand them out to the others?’
‘I don’t remember, but I can tell you why we put them on our stuff. Nearly everyone who goes in there is carrying a laptop bag. They get piled in a heap by the bar, and many of them look the same, so one evening we coloured the stickers, so that we’d be able to find our gear when we were leaving.’
‘And the girl? Does she come with you?’
‘Sure. She’s Matt’s girlfriend. He’s one of the housemates, too. I don’t really know Ruby well; she kind of keeps to herself. I think it may have been her idea to colour the stickers.’ Nicolau settled his glasses further back on the bridge of his nose. He was sweating heavily. ‘Can I ask why you’re so interested?’
‘This one was found on a dead body.’ May waited for the idea to sink in. ‘In an investigation of this kind, you check anything that’s unusual, or even just a little bit different.’
‘If I can give you a suggestion? People often chuck their coats on top of the bags—maybe it got transferred?’
‘You’re probably right.’ There didn’t seem to be anything more May could glean that might be of use. ‘Well, it was a point worth covering. Thanks for your time.’ He rose to leave. ‘Tell you what, though. In case I need to check any further I don’t want to disturb you. Perhaps you’d give me contact details for this girl—Ruby?’
‘Sure.’ Nicolau seemed relieved. He scribbled something on a scrap of paper. ‘Ruby Cates. Here’s her email address.’
May left, but somewhere an alarm had been triggered. The harder he tried to focus on what was wrong, the less sure he became. Leave the thought, he told himself, it will surface when it’s ready. The uneasy feeling stayed with him all the way back to the Unit.
Then he remembered. It was something Cassie Field had said. Too intense. Nicolau had been trying hard to convince. The look of relief on his face when May had switched his attention to the girl had been palpable.
TWENTY
Falling Idol
Panic was setting in now. What if it was too late? But there was no point in thinking about what might already have happened, and anyway, here was Matt in his crazy old rainbow-striped coat and brown woolly hat, raising a hand in greeting from the other side of the bar.
‘I’m really sorry I’m so late; I don’t know where the time went.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I bumped into an old pal from Nottingham, and we had some catching up to do. Hit a few bars together—I’d forgotten how much he could drink. Then I spent ages on the phone, and you know how that goes, right? It’s like I can’t do anything to please her. I’m like, “If you don’t want to come out with me, just say so,” right? Can I get you a drink?’
‘No, let me get you one.’ The smile must have looked painfully forced. The barman was summoned and a drink was poured. ‘Did you have a lecture this afternoon?’
‘Yeah, the architect from Bartlett, the one with the stoop. The lecture was meant to be about traffic restructuring in the late 1960s, but it was so data-driven that he lost most of us about halfway through. And I still have a hangover from last night. Then I got the nagging phone call and wasn’t allowed off the hook until she’d described everything that’s wrong with me in huge detail.’
‘Did you tell her you were coming to meet me?’ The obviousness of the question caused an inward cringe.
‘No, you know I didn’t; you told me not to. Anyway, if she thought I was meeting up with you she’d accuse us of conspiring against her. A toast to my good fortune.’
‘To winners.’
‘Damn right. We’ve got the skills that pay the bills. Just in time, because I’m seriously broke. Here’s to money, the root of all evil.’ Matt downed his vodka cocktail in one. He was drinking something that was a spin on a Smith & Wesson, vodka and coffee liqueur with a dash of soda. His version added an oily Sambuca to the mix. Matt looked even messier than usual. His tumbleweed hair needed a wash and there were violet crescents beneath his eyes. Everybody knew he was on his way to becoming a serious alcoholic, but tonight it was important that Matt drank at least another two or three doubles, otherwise the plan wouldn’t work.
‘You’re always good with advice. I don’t know what I’m going to do about her. I just think I’m a little too wild for her. Right? She always wants to do the kind of things her parents do, go to Suffolk and see the rest of her family, go hiking, stuff like that. I don’t know what she’s going to do with a degree in urban planning. I don’t think she knows, either. She says she wants to become a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute like her old man, but she’s doing it for his sake.’
‘You have to stop worrying about it so much, Matt. Take things as they come.’
‘I can’t this week, you know that. There’s too much at stake now. Look at me, I’m shaking.’
‘Let me get you another cocktail.’
They drank until the bar became too noisy and crowded. When Matt slithered down from his stool to weave his way toward the restroom, it was obvious that he was trashed. The rising temperature and the accelerating beats had conspired to increase the pace of their drinking.
Okay, while Matt’s gone you’ve got less than a minute to dig into his backpack and see what’s there. Evidence, evidence—phone, laptop, what else has he got? Now put everything back before he reappears. Done it—did he notice anything? No, he looks out of it.
‘It’s getting late, let’s get out of here.’ Matt jammed his hat back on his head.
The cold air outside was a sobering shock. It was important to get Matt into the warmth of the station before he sharpened up. They tumbled down the steps into Liverpool Street tube and made their way to the District & Circle Line.
There were no empty seats, so they sat on the platform floor to wait for the train.
Matt tried to focus. ‘I’ve got to stop drinking Smith & Wessons, nobody knows how to mix them properly. They’re supposed to taste like a liquidised Cuban cigar.’
‘Yes, you told me that before.’
Matt massaged his forehead. ‘My brain’s banging against the sides of my skull. If I still feel like this in the morning I’m going to cut my first lecture.’
‘It’s your call, I suppose, but you seem to be missing an awful lot of them lately.’
The train arrived and they lurched to their feet. Inside, unable to sit, they stood jammed against the curving doors of the carriage. Racing through the uphill tunnels toward the King’s Cross interchange it was necessary to keep a surreptitious eye on Matt. The thought came unbidden. Why did you ever put up with him? The amazing thing was that everyone seemed to idolise the guy. He was a walking disaster, yet the scruffier he looked and the more chaotic his life became, the more they hung on his every word. Especially other girls, the ones from outside the group, they couldn’t get enough—
—A buzz emanated from Matt’s backpack.
‘Damn, that’s my phone.’ Matt swung the bag from his shoulder and started rooting about inside it.
‘You’ve got a signal down here?’
‘God, where have you been for the last two years? There’s phone reception everywhere west and south of here now. Hampstead and—’ a long pause while he tried to frame the thought ‘—Old Street, still a problem because of the tunnel depth or something. I dunno. Where the hell—’ The contents of his bag were tumbling over people’s feet, a dirty ball of stained T-shirts, some books with loose pages, half a dozen plastic pens, his phone—
‘Here, let me give you a hand.’ Together they started shovelling everything back into the bag. Matt helplessly attempted to pick up the fluttering pages. Then the train was slowing and they were arriving at King’s Cross.
‘Come on, we have to change here. Zip up your b
ag.’ Matt followed, lurching from the carriage, out and along the platform.
The scabrous half-retiled tunnel led to stairs, but Matt baulked before climbing them. ‘Give me a minute,’ he protested, holding back in an attempt to steady himself, like a sailor in a storm. His chest was wheezing. Three teenaged girls passed them, heading toward the exit. A few tourists were dragging cases, a smartly dressed young couple and a drunk middle-aged man passed; after a few more seconds, there was no-one else.
‘Hang on, I have to tell Ruby—’
‘You don’t, you’re fine.’
‘No, have to do it, always letting her down, promised to say when I was on my way.’ He poked hopelessly in his bag but still managed to find the phone and fire off a text in record time. The effort of concentrating so hard nearly made him fall over.
‘It’s okay, I’ve got you. Wait, wait.’ It was time to produce the atomiser. ‘You left it in the bar. You should be more careful, Matt. You know how Ruby gets when you’ve been smoking and drinking.’
‘Yeah, she can be a pain,’ said Matt, compliantly opening his mouth and sticking out a furry tongue.
‘Put your tongue in. Come on, Matt, you know how to do this.’
‘Okay.’ He was finally ready. ‘God, it tastes like—’
‘That’s because you’ve been hammering the cocktails tonight.’ Anyone coming? No, the coast was clear. ‘Look, I have to get you home.’
‘I’m meeting—’
‘I know, I heard. Don’t worry, I can fix that.’
‘The train—’
‘Come on, concentrate on the stairs, you can do it.’
There was the depth-charge rumble of a train arriving, the last southbound Piccadilly Line trip of the night. A plug of warm air pulsed in the tunnel and lifted a newspaper. Pages drifted past as if brought to life.
Something was happening to Matthew Hillingdon. He felt himself rising, moving. Everyone likes me, thought Matt, it’s so great that everyone wants me to succeed, but they don’t know my secret. The secret is that I can’t help myself. Everything he ever did was because others told him to. Even when he could sense that their advice was hopelessly misguided, he followed it. He was like a stick in a drain, swirling around and heading for the gutter, but someone was always there to pull him out in time. She’s always there for me, he thought. Girls are great, they’ll give you, like, six or seven chances at least, if they really like you. Lately though, events had been shifting beyond his comprehension. You had to trust your friends, though, didn’t you? Otherwise you had nothing.
Christopher Fowler Page 12
