Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘I would have thought it obvious,’ Bryant replied. ‘The fall of England. It’s not a theft – it’s a signal to begin.’

  9

  GIRLS AND BOYS

  Romain Curtis felt as if he’d been given a second chance.

  Even though he had managed to frighten the life out of Shirone the night before, she had waited for him to come home just so that she could invite him to the local club. With its curved white entrance and three huge portholes, the Scala resembled a boat as much as a building, thrust out on a pavement promontory into the swirling flow of King’s Cross traffic. The former arthouse cinema was just ten minutes’ walk from the Cromwell Estate.

  Shirone met him in the courtyard below the flats. She wore a lurid purple T-shirt and black tights that accentuated her long legs, and had done something complicated to the colour and curl of her hair that he was clearly meant to notice. She had been given comps because her brother occasionally worked at the club as a bouncer, although he was mercifully absent tonight. The Scala was so loud and crowded that it defied movement or conversation, so they drank and danced, and drank some more without speaking. Shirone went to the bar because Romain looked too young to get served, and she knew the staff. The dancers pushed them steadily back, until they found themselves pressed against one of the gigantic bass speakers. Above the black and red auditorium spun a matrix of green lasers, disorienting the clubbers just enough to ensure that nobody thought about leaving.

  Between sets they came out to the stairwell between the ground floor and the mezzanine, where it was cooler. ‘You’re a funny one,’ said Shirone, sitting herself on a step. ‘You don’t hang out with the others, do you? Half of your class is in there.’

  ‘We haven’t got a lot in common,’ Romain admitted, seating himself beside her. He was in a good mood tonight, and felt like talking. ‘When I leave school I want to have a career, not a job. If I’m going to do that it means saving some cash and not going out so much.’

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t talk to them at school either.’

  ‘So what? Nobody in my family ever made anything of themselves. My mum wants me to have the chances she never had. I’ve got a lot of interests. My old man was a pattern cutter. I made this T-shirt today, see? I’d be good in fashion design but I can’t tell anyone at school, can I, ’cause they’d only take the piss.’

  ‘I’m going to be a hairdresser,’ said Shirone. ‘Get my own salon and nail bar.’

  ‘How are you going to get the money together?’

  ‘I don’t know. Borrow some from my brothers.’

  ‘But you know where they get their money from. That would be well troubling for you.’

  ‘It’s my family, Romain. My brother got us in here tonight. We saved twenty quid. Does that make us criminals?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Romain did not want to say anything that would spoil the evening. ‘Come on,’ he said, pulling her to her feet. ‘I’ll buy you a drink. I’ve got enough money for that, at least.’

  They returned to the crowded ground-floor bar and let the pounding bass resonate through their bodies, and soon it seemed that there was no difference between them, nothing to worry about, nothing to be aware of except the music and the night. Romain was happy. It felt as if the whole of London was dancing.

  DS Janice Longbright – she could not remember a time when the formal prefix had not existed – looked over at her colleague, lightly snoring in the corner of her sofa. It had just turned midnight, and he had somehow managed to doze off in the middle of a dim and deafening film involving Tom Cruise and an army of aliens. Jack Renfield had spent the evening at her apartment twice in the past week, and was already developing habits: ordering noodles from the Great Wall takeaway; leaving his shoes by the front door; chucking his coat into the spare bedroom; emptying his small change into the ceramic bear on the kitchen counter.

  The former desk sergeant from Albany Street nick had settled in very well at Longbright’s Highgate flat. Habits were reassuring and natural, but she wondered why he had never invited her to visit his place in Vauxhall. She had disliked him intensely when they had first met, but now she was starting to understand him. One of six kids, raised in the roughest part of Bermondsey by a burned-out junkie mother, he’d had his work cut out avoiding jail, let alone getting into the police force. Before they realized that he might prove an asset to the unit, Bryant and May had continually made fun of him. Now he had earned their respect, and they had realized that his blunt by-the-book attitude was the result of never having had any rules to follow. He used a framework of discipline and order to insulate himself from others, and vice versa.

  She wondered at him, though. She’d modified her taste in trashy clothes, had invested in a pair of jeans that weren’t modelled on 1950s styles, had even taken the kirby grips out of her dyed-blonde hair, but he hadn’t said anything about the changes. She was trying for him.

  Still, watching his broad strong stomach rising and falling, it was hard not to feel the pleasure of sharing her life with someone decent and true. Renfield had come along only just in time. She’d started to become so independent that she had feared she might never allow another man space in her life. Deciding to let him sleep for another half-hour, she rose and washed the plates as quietly as possible, although it seemed likely that he could sleep through a storm.

  As she folded his clothes – he rarely removed his PCU jacket in public – something fell on the floor and rolled under the sofa. She crouched down and felt around, her hand closing over something that felt like a tube of mints. She withdrew her fist and opened it. It was a key ring, a clear plastic stick with a tiny photograph inside. It showed a blonde girl holding a red cardboard love-heart.

  So he has a past, she reasoned. Who doesn’t? No big deal. But as she tipped the key ring to the light, trying to see how pretty the girl was without her reading glasses, she wondered why he kept it in the pocket he usually emptied every night.

  She was still squinting at the photograph when he awoke with a start and blinked at her. ‘Hi, babe,’ he said, struggling upright. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She said nothing, but was not able to hide the key ring quickly enough. He gradually focused on what was in her hand. ‘Ah,’ he said, and then she knew that he always carried the picture with him.

  Romain was definitely woozy-headed, and when he tried to speak his words emerged in a thick slur. He knew what he wanted to say, but the sentences folded up on themselves. Shirone was looking at him oddly, as if he was attempting to speak another language.

  He made a mental calculation of how much he’d had to drink.

  There were two draught pints in quick succession, then two rounds of cheap shots, taking advantage of the club’s Monday-night BOGOF deal. Then another beer. That was it, nothing more, but he felt as if he’d been hit by a truck. Some of the kids in his class had started drinking before they had hit their teens, and took miniatures of vodka into clubs to top up their drinks. They brought home-made cocktails that didn’t show up when they passed through the knife arch, ice pops created by using syringes to draw out half their liquid, replacing it with hard liquor before refreezing. Some of the girls kept flasks in their sports bras. Romain had never been that fussed about alcohol. He could only think that tonight the bar-girl had made a mistake and mixed him a triple instead of a single, because he was becoming more unsteady by the second.

  Shirone was talking to him. He heard the words ‘all right’ and ‘sit down’ but then the music took over, filling his head with beats, and the laser contrails juddered past in sharp emerald shards.

  Shirone’s brothers, Nico and Enrico, had both turned up. What were they doing here? He pushed himself away from the bar and accidentally slammed into one of them. Enrico shoved back hard, then Shirone was angrily shouting in his face and he was lurching off towards the doors at the rear of the auditorium, the lights expanding in rainbow colours all around him.

  The street felt cooler but his black T-shir
t was soaked in sweat. He stood against the wall, felt his heart pounding against his ribs. Something was not right. When he tried to walk, the road turned into a ship’s deck that tipped away from him, sliding left, then right. A car blasted its horn and he lurched into a run, barely making the opposite kerb. Concentrate, he told himself, just watch your feet and keep moving one in front of the other. You can do this.

  The route through the darkened backstreets was as familiar as the layout of his flat. There were never any cars back here. All he had to do was watch out for the local kids, who cruised the empty night corridors waiting to pluck mobiles from the hands of drunken commuters.

  His head cleared a little, clouds briefly parting, and he thought of Shirone left behind, probably complaining to her brothers’ mates about his behaviour. It seemed unlikely now that they would ever get it on. But he had done nothing wrong. On both nights it had been someone else’s fault.

  Someone else’s fault …

  He started putting the whole thing together just as he turned into the unlit cobbled road that dog-legged over the railway tracks behind the Scala. Walking past the riveted steel slabs that lined the bridge, he remembered the face at the bar and realized what he had done. He needed to sit down and think it through properly.

  St George’s Gardens last night.

  The Scala tonight.

  But why?

  He looked down and realized. You’re an idiot, he told himself. Why did you have to go back?

  He rose unsteadily to his feet, leaning against the lamp-post. The effort of concentration was his undoing; he didn’t hear the vehicle approach, and then he couldn’t control his limbs. As he turned and tried to right himself he slipped from the kerb. The vehicle’s left-side fender caught his tibia and cracked it, whipping him around. He fell crookedly as the vehicle passed, smacking his head hard on the raised kerbstone.

  He felt nothing, but could see from one eye that the gutter beneath him was turning crimson. As he tried to raise himself, the tyres squealed as their direction was reversed. He heard the engine whine and saw the rear wheel approaching fast, and knew then that it would not stop.

  ‘Why do you keep her picture in your jacket?’ Longbright tried to sound merely curious, but something terrible had welled inside her, a fear that he was about to lie – or, worse, that he might not even bother.

  ‘I keep her there because I love her and she loves me,’ said Renfield blearily. ‘Can we go to bed now?’

  Longbright did not know what to say. Dumbly, she handed back the key ring and turned away, trying to stay in control of her emotions. As she made to leave the room, she felt the warmth of his calloused hand on her arm.

  ‘She’s my daughter, you dummy,’ he said. ‘Her name is Sennen. We named her after Sennen Cove in Cornwall, where her mother and I first met. She’s fifteen and she lives with Angie in Finsbury. She comes to me every second Saturday. At least, she used to.’

  Longbright was relieved and angry. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me before? Why do you have to keep everything so damned close to your chest? Why wind me up like that?’

  ‘I’m a bloke, OK? We don’t “share” everything. Sometimes we smell weird and make strange noises. We have issues about our daughters, and when it comes to other women, our daughters do too. So we don’t talk about them until we’re sure.’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Fine, but you could have told me earlier. You nearly got a frying pan round the back of the head.’

  Looking at Longbright’s hurt expression, Jack knew that she deserved an explanation. ‘Sennen’s got some behavioural problems,’ he said. ‘She’s smart, precocious, but a bit – unmoored. She doesn’t like living with her mother. She says she wants to be with me, but the court – well, I’m sure you know how that one goes. I’m not the best father in the world. Work has a habit of getting in the way.’

  ‘Jack, I’m sorry.’ She turned and let him take her in his arms. ‘Maybe I could meet her the next time she comes to see you.’

  ‘Janice, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Why not? Arthur and John always tell me how good I am with teenagers. You could at least let me try. I can just be your colleague from work.’

  ‘No, she’ll know. She’s really not ready to share me with anyone.’

  ‘How could she know? I’ll just be one of the guys.’ Renfield studied Longbright’s astonishing figure doubtfully. At home she toned down her outfits, but she still looked enough like Marilyn Monroe to stand out in any crowd.

  ‘Sennen and her mother are going to be nearby on Wednesday evening, visiting friends,’ he began, ‘and I said I’d see them because they’re in King’s Cross, but I really don’t think—’

  ‘That’s perfect, I’ll be there,’ said Longbright, giving him a reassuring squeeze. ‘It’ll be fine, just wait and see. Trust me, Jack. Five minutes at the station. What could possibly go wrong?’

  10

  REVERSAL

  Alma Sorrowbridge knocked again, then gave up waiting and barged into Bryant’s bedroom. ‘You’ve slept right through your alarm,’ she began, then uttered a cry. Bryant opened one bloodshot eye and glared at her over the top of the duvet.

  ‘Thank the Lord you’re alive,’ she said. ‘For a moment I thought you’d gone to meet your maker.’

  Bryant hiked up the collar of his blue and white striped Andy Pandy pyjamas. ‘Yes, Alma, amazing as it may seem I appear to have struggled through another night and am likely to survive for yet one more day,’ he said. ‘Put my tea down over there. I hope you brought biscuits.’

  ‘Ginger and mandarin, I baked them this morning,’ she said, setting down her tray.

  ‘Good God, what time did you get up? Why can’t you sleep like normal people?’

  ‘So it wasn’t you I heard walking about at three o’clock this morning?’

  ‘That’s different. I was thinking. You don’t need to think to bake.’

  ‘In all the years I’ve known you, Mr Bryant,’ Alma said, ‘I’ve never once seen you cook a meal.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve always got a bucket of something bubbling away on the stove. What would be the point of making more? Go on, bugger off and let me get dressed in peace.’

  ‘You’re a very unpleasant man first thing in the morning.’

  ‘I hope to be even more unpleasant in the afternoon. Did you iron my trousers?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ll have to buy new ones soon. I could see myself in the seat of your pants.’

  ‘I’m not buying new ones, thank you. Nobody makes turn-ups any more.’

  ‘You could smarten yourself up a bit. You have new bosses now. It’s important to stay on top of things.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to do that at my age?’ cried Bryant indignantly. ‘I’m a funny shape. I’m not fashionable. I’m not technical. I’m not meant to be there. I’m not even meant to be here.’

  Alma sat on the edge of the bed. Bryant pulled at the duvet, resenting the intrusion. ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she said. ‘You’re one of God’s children and He will not let you go.’

  ‘Why not? Most of my friends are either dead, deaf or living in the wrong part of Kent. The world is for the young. Have you seen television lately? Do you understand a word of it? Perhaps we’re just not meant to soldier on indefinitely, did you think of that? We can’t all be Cliff Richard.’

  ‘Is this what was keeping you pacing about in the middle of the night?’ She looked at him with suspicion welling in her hazel eyes. ‘Have you got a new case?’

  Bryant scratched his head blearily. ‘The night before last a man came back from the grave. And the worst part of it was, he might have been alive in his coffin. Except that he couldn’t have been. He had all the regular symptoms of death: gas in his stomach, onset of putrefaction, changing skin tone – he was going rotten, so how could he have risen again? How could he come back from the dead unless he was a zombie? You must know som
ething about voodoo. How does it work?’

  ‘I’m from Antigua, not Haiti. There must be a logical explanation. Didn’t you say there’s always one?’

  ‘But what if there isn’t? What if this time, for some reason beyond our knowing, the laws of science and logic have been upended? Then what do we do?’

  ‘I won’t have blasphemy in this house,’ said Alma. ‘The dead don’t come back to life, no matter what those Hollywood films say. If you believed in God you’d have a better understanding of the world.’

  ‘Rubbish, woman. It’s man who gives mankind a better understanding of the world, not God.’

  ‘But it’s man’s interpretation of God’s will that makes us better people. You believe in the spirit world and witchcraft and all these crazy things, yet I can’t convince you to believe in the power of goodness.’

  Bryant emerged from his cocoon far enough to reach the biscuits. He hadn’t put his teeth in yet, but he could at least suck one. ‘I believe in good and evil, but there’s no point in trying to make people believe in something they can’t successfully practise.’

  ‘That’s not true, and you know it. I’m a good person, Mr Bryant, because I practise what I preach. I don’t try to do the impossible. I think if I can save one horrible miserable old sinner and teach him to be nice then I’m doing the work God set out for me.’

  ‘It’s not going very well so far, is it?’

  ‘You’re better than you used to be.’

  ‘That’s true. I don’t dry my socks on the lampshade any more.’

  ‘And maybe you’re doing God’s work, helping to protect us all from unquiet souls.’

  ‘What do you mean, “unquiet souls”?’

  ‘Like this man you say climbed out of his grave. He wasn’t at rest. Some people die inside long before their bodies die.’

  Bryant sat up. ‘But what about the reverse? What if his body died before he did?’ He searched about for his trousers. ‘A coma. What if he’d been misdiagnosed and his brain was still alive? Alma, you may be on to a winner. I need to consult an expert.’