‘There was nothing else in the kitchen. Try not to let it touch your teeth.’
‘It doesn’t matter, they’re made of plastic. Did you get a chance to look into Mrs DuCaine’s claim that her other son was turned down for the force?’
‘I put in a couple of calls to Hendon, but Fraternity’s file appears to have gone missing.’
‘You think there’s been some funny business?’
‘Not sure,’ said Longbright. ‘I spoke to a guy called Nicholson, who’d been one of his examiners. He says Fraternity was a good bloke, fully expected him to pass with flying colours, doesn’t know what happened.’
‘A bit odd. Not like them to be evasive. Who was his supervisor?’
‘That’s the funny thing—nobody could tell me. If I can find out the name of the team leader, I might get somewhere. Nicholson remembered that the regular officer had been taken sick, so they had a replacement for a few days.’
‘Sounds like someone took a dislike to Fraternity and put the boot in. Keep trying, will you? It’s the least we can do for his mother.’
Longbright sipped some wine, then winced. ‘I heard Raymond was upset about one of the Daves uncovering another creepy painting in his room.’
‘The waltzing witches?’ Bryant released a hoot of laughter. ‘Poor old Raymondo is spooked because he thinks there was some kind of Satanic secret society operating out of this place. He says he keeps hearing strange noises at night. Doesn’t fancy being left alone on the premises.’
‘Was there really a secret society here?’
‘Oh, absolutely. That’s why the estate agent had trouble renting it. The Occult Society of Great Britain conducted a series of legendary experiments in this very building in the 1960s. The society was closed down after one of their rituals resulted in a death.’
‘How do you know about this?’
‘Maggie Armitage still has the press clippings. She never throws anything away.’ Bryant’s old friend was the white witch who ran the ailing North London branch of the Coven of St James the Elder. ‘She reckons the occultists chose the property because it was built on one of London’s strongest ley lines, which runs from the Pentonville Mound to Sadler’s Wells, passing right through the centre of this building. Of course, John thinks I chose the premises just to torment Raymond.’
‘Do you think he’s fully recovered from his operation? John seems a bit …’
‘He’s fine,’ said Bryant, dismissing the idea that anything might be wrong with his partner. ‘He’s had heart problems before. His doctor has started bleating about retirement again, but we both know where that will lead. I just finished reading John’s notes on the Mr Fox investigation, and I’m starting to think he’s right after all. The deaths can’t be connected. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to try and forge a link between them.’
‘So our priority is still to find Gloria Taylor’s attacker.’
‘You’d better copy Mr Fox’s updated file, the one with the new photos, get it over to Islington and Camden, and let’s hope the plods at the Met manage to pick him up on their rounds. You know how they think; if he gets rid of a few thieving junkies, it might be better to let him continue clearing the streets.’
Longbright sat back and allowed herself to relax. ‘I’ve reached a dead end with the witness statements. Nobody remembers who was walking behind Taylor on the stairs. If it had happened on the escalator they’d have been standing still, not concentrating on where to place their feet, and someone might have noticed who was there.’
‘Maybe Giles is wrong and it was just an accident. But the man has good instincts. I keep asking myself, how could it have been murder? There are simply too many variables. First, there was the risk of being seen and blamed. Then, the chance that someone else would catch her or merely get in the way and break her fall. Even pushing an old lady down her stairs at home doesn’t guarantee that she’s going to die. It’s best to test these things out with physical experiments. I tried it once before with a pig.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was very upset, jumped over the banisters and landed rather heavily on our hall table. Alma was furious. I should have used a dead one, but I was minding it for a friend.’
‘I notice Taylor’s death didn’t warrant a mention in the press. It’s been written off as an accident. And Janet Ramsey didn’t pick up on Mac’s vampire wound.’
‘I’d probably be inclined to think it was accidental if I didn’t share John’s puzzlement over these students,’ said Bryant. ‘If you were going to attempt to take someone’s life in such a damned awkward manner, you wouldn’t risk drawing attention to yourself by whacking a label on the victim’s back. Why leave a clue at all? And once you’ve pushed her, then what do you do? You can’t fight your way up the staircase when everyone’s coming down, so you have to carry on walking to the bottom. Too much of a risk.’ Bryant wiped his lips and set down his tumbler. ‘It’s no good, I can’t drink any more of that. Is there really nothing else?’ He tipped the remains into Crippen’s bullet-punctured litter tray.
Longbright poked about in one of the crates. ‘There’s half a bottle of Merlot here. You try it.’ She unscrewed the top and tipped some in his glass.
The bouquet forced his eyes shut. ‘Well, it’s got a bit of a bite. It would probably burn quite well.’ He examined the label. ‘Produce of Morocco. Why was it in the crate?’
‘Old evidence.’
‘Not the Lewisham Poisoner? Give me a top-up.’
‘When you think about how crowded the tubes get, it’s amazing there aren’t more accidents.’ Longbright pulled off her heels and put her feet up on Bryant’s desk, crossing her nylons at the ankle.
‘The guards were telling me that drunks tend to fall down the stairs or onto the tracks further out of town, away from the West End stations, because the alcohol is kicking in just as they arrive at their destinations. There are very few deliberate assaults, though. I suppose it’s the proximity of others, the lighting and the CCTV system. No, I think we have to assume the Taylor death is a one-off. The Hillingdon disappearance is bloody odd, though. You can’t disappear on a moving tube train in the two minutes it takes to travel between stops. The boy will probably turn up with some silly-ass explanation.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘As far as I know, there’s never been a serial killer with such a random MO, even in the forties, when entire neighbourhoods slept down on the platforms during the air raids. Once you go down those stairs, it seems as if there’s a separate unwritten code of manners in place.’
‘The peer pressure of the crowd,’ agreed Longbright. ‘Everyone has a go at you if you do something wrong. It’s like all these freesheets they give out at the stations. There’s an understanding that you can leave your paper folded on the back of the seat when you leave because someone else will read it. It seems to be a form of recycling that’s acceptable.
‘And this thing with the litter bins.’
‘What thing?’
‘Well, there aren’t any. Not around the station anyway, because of terrorist threats. So people tuck bottles and coffee cups in every little corner of the street. They can’t be bothered to take stuff home, but they don’t want to leave the place untidy, either. What strange creatures we English are. We make up our own rules, despite the politicians trying to control us. Remember when the mayor banned booze on the tube and everyone had a huge party in the carriages the night before it came into effect? I love a bit of anarchy, so long as it doesn’t harm the undeserving.’
‘Absolutely. It’s a bloody good idea to frighten Whitehall once in a while.’
‘Odd about the stickers being a symbol for anarchy. The mad are often seen as free instead of prisoners.’
‘I had the same logo on an old Vivienne Westwood T-shirt, back in the 1980s.’ Longbright emptied the last of the bottle into their glasses. ‘This brings me back to the old days, when the three of us would take on lost causes, the cases no-one else
believed in, like your Deptford Demon, the Oxford Street Mannequin Murderer, and that business with those glamour models, the Belles of Westminster. You should put them in your memoirs.’
‘I will if I ever find the energy,’ Bryant promised. ‘There are so many projects I’d like to embark on, I can’t imagine finishing them all. I sense a gathering darkness, Janice, not just in me but in the world outside. Perhaps it’s something everyone of my age feels. But I do wonder if anyone really cares about the same things anymore. Who honestly wants to know about the history of pubs or hidden waterways, or mysterious goings-on underneath the streets? I have no conversation about diets and celebrities or the bad habits of television personalities. Just once I’d like some bottom-feeding media slug to be caught in a criminal situation more imaginative than one involving call girls and drugs. Their world is too predictable and mundane for me, but it’s what everyone else seems to be interested in.’
‘You can’t blame people for being fascinated by their own species,’ said Longbright.
‘That’s where John comes in. He genuinely likes people. I think I’m more of an ideas man. But I do care.’ He removed his glasses and smiled at Longbright with suddenly diminished eyes. ‘I know it seems John and I disagree about everything, but we don’t about the important stuff. He has very sound instincts. I believe in him. And in you. I remember when you used to come to Bow Street with your mother. She’d leave you to play with us while she was on duty, and I used to threaten to lock you up when you became annoying. Once I even marched you down to the cells. I had every intention of leaving you there, because I’ve never been able to abide children. But even then you knew how to twist me around your little finger. I’m so sorry you lost him.’
‘Liberty? I’m sorry for him, not me. I’m still here. Don’t start getting sentimental in your old age.’ She made a show of looking stern.
‘I know everyone thinks I’m difficult. It’s just that as I’ve got older I’ve become less gullible. And that makes me harder to control. I don’t listen to my peers anymore, but that’s because most of them are either dead or have gone mad, so now I’m free to explore anything I want.’
‘Then why not apply a bit of free thinking to this case?’ Longbright suggested. ‘What’s the most unlikely thing you can come up with?’
Bryant studied the cracks in the ceiling for a minute. ‘The most unlikely thing? That Gloria Taylor was deliberately targeted and attacked by someone who thought he could get away with it,’ he answered finally.
‘Then that,’ Longbright announced, flourishing her palms, ‘should be your starting point.’
Their conversation was interrupted by a crash from above. ‘There’s no-one else in the building, is there?’ Bryant asked.
‘You stay here.’ Longbright jumped up and headed for the stairs. Bryant listened to the creaking floorboards over his head, and the chill memory of the attack on Liberty DuCaine crept up on him. He was sure he and Longbright were the only ones left in the old warehouse, but it had sounded as if someone was walking directly above.
The DS returned with a frown on her face. ‘There’s nobody,’ she said, puzzled. ‘I definitely heard someone, didn’t you?’
‘You don’t think Raymond’s ghost is putting in an appearance, do you?’ he asked, lightening the moment, but it wasn’t enough to remove her anxiety. Longbright, too, was remembering the murder of a police officer on the floor above.
TWENTY-SIX
Anarchists
Thursday morning. With the arrival of bitter blasts from the northeast, the temperature plunged, and the office roofs of central London were pearlised with late frost. In the PCU’s warehouse, Arthur Bryant had cleared away the evidence of last night’s drinking session, and was buried within a tottering fortress of soot-encrusted ledgers.
‘How are you getting on with the anarchists?’ asked May, tossing his elegant overcoat onto the armchair that sat between their desks.
Bryant had enjoyed less than three hours’ sleep. He peered over the printed parapet and rubbed at his unshaven face. ‘I’ve found a link with the missing boy, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.’ Reaching down to pull a bundle of straw from a crate, he unloaded another ledger and blew the dust from it.
‘You’d better tell me while I’m still in a good mood. We can’t keep all of those books in here. Where are you getting them from?’
‘Don’t worry, they’re on loan from the London Metropolitan Archive. They’re going back after I’ve done with them.’ Bryant raised his watery blue eyes to his partner. ‘I was having another look through the patient files for the Royal Bethlehem Hospital, Moorgate, 1723 to 1733.’
‘As only you would do.’
‘Ah, well, yes. You see, back in the early 1700s, some anarchists were arrested and labelled “incurables” because they wouldn’t renounce their beliefs. These are the ones who were banged up in Bedlam and left to die, chained to the cell walls. You see where I’m going here.’
‘The sticker.’
‘Precisely. The London Anarchists was a society formed to avenge the Bedlam Martyrs. It survived for half a century, then died out.’ He tapped the bright red paperback in his hand. ‘This is the Time Out Guide to Alternative London, 1971. Gosh, we did a lot of protesting in those days, didn’t we? There’s an article in the Agitprop section here—imagine, political agitation had its own section!—all about the revival of the London Anarchists, one branch of which was a protest group called Bash the Rich.’
May maintained his patience with dignity. ‘We had a few punch-ups with them at Bow Street, if I recall.’
‘That’s right. Bash the Rich was rather a sad little gang, not much of a threat to the established order. Their rallies rarely involved much more than some synchronised chanting, the odd scratched Mercedes and a few broken windows in a wealthy neighbourhood. I always felt we were ordered to come down too hard on them. But they used the same logo. So now we have an active symbol of anarchy with a three-hundred-year history attached to it.’
‘The bar designer probably found it in a copyright-free book, liked the look of it and adapted it for commercial use.’
‘No. I took the liberty of calling Miss Field. The symbol was suggested by someone in the bar who knew its meaning. She liked the anarchy connection and added it to the existing lettering. But she can’t remember who suggested the idea.’
‘This is really clutching at straws, even for you.’
‘All right, but in turn the symbol gets used by a group of students who all live in the same Bloomsbury house, one of whom is now missing. Have I got it right so far?’
‘Yes, but as is so often the case, I don’t quite see the point you’re trying to make.’
‘Have you considered the idea that these students might belong to a revived society of secret anarchists?’
May felt his tolerance level start to slip. ‘Arthur, what is it with you and secret societies? These young people hang out—along with hundreds of other students—in the same bar because it’s the cheapest and nearest watering hole outside the university. There are no underground organisations, satanic sects or secret societies anymore, okay?’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. There are terrorist cells.’
‘I met Theo Fontvieille, one of the flatmates, and I can tell you that the only private club that spoiled brat is likely to belong to is one that serves vodka martinis on a Soho roof terrace. The girl, Ruby Cates, is so obsessed with her future career that the only way she can relax is by running marathons. Nikos Nicolau looks like he’s been locked in a windowless library for the past decade. Students have changed, Arthur. They’re more focussed now, more concerned with personal growth.’
‘I was never a student,’ Bryant admitted. ‘I was chucked out at fourteen to work, so perhaps I feel an affinity with London’s rowdier residents. This city has an extraordinary history of anarchy, you know. In the eighteenth century it was virtually ruled by rioters. The mob was referred to as the Fourth Estate
in the constitution, because it decided which laws would be enforced.’
‘And I suppose you’d like to return to those times.’
‘Heavens, no. The lower classes specialised in public disorder, perhaps because they lived so much of their lives on the streets. They expressed violent opinions at every level, kicking pregnant women in their stomachs for begetting illegitimate children, exposing the private parts of enemies. Attacking someone’s nose in public was considered an act of defamation because you were suggesting they had a sexual disease—it was where syphilitic infections became most visible. And of course the city was filled with small businesses that existed on credit, so if you humiliated a merchant in front of his customers, you could ruin him. The crowd, the so-called King Mob, could destroy reputations. It must have been a fascinating time.’
‘Well, Gloria Taylor worked for a shop.’
‘She sold cosmetics. How angry would a woman have to be to shove her cosmetician down the stairs?’
‘I don’t know, Janice tells me she gets pretty annoyed when they don’t have her eye-liner in stock.’
‘Most of us tend to limit ourselves to verbal assaults these days. But in some ways, the cities of the past weren’t much different to the present. The main thoroughfares were just as noisy. Imagine the processions and pageants, the duels, cockfights and boxing matches, crowds jeering at prison-carts, public hangings, floggings, and everyone having their say.’
‘Hm. I can see you at a public hanging.’
‘The point I’m making is that they were there.’
‘What? Who? Where?’
‘Do try to pay attention, John. The anarchists, they shared a house in Bloomsbury. And these students of yours—’
‘You’re not going to suggest they’re living in the same building as the anarchists. It’s nearly three centuries later!’
‘No. But they were in the same street, right next door, in fact. And back in 1725, the two buildings might once have been one.’
Christopher Fowler Page 16
