Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  Elspeth Duncannon, thought May, almost disinterred like Wallace before her. ‘That means there’s just one more person to go,’ said May. ‘Can you let me have their details?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Mr Rummage. ‘It’s me. End plot on the left. I’m marked out with lilacs and daffodils; you can’t miss it. But don’t expect me to fill it any time soon.’ He laughed and patted his stomach. ‘I’ve got years left in me yet.’

  Arthur Bryant tacked around the raised concrete circle above the traffic, searching for the entrance to the Museum of London. It didn’t matter how many times he came here, he could still never locate the way in. Heaven only knew how overseas visitors ever found the place. Like the city it portrayed, it was hidden in plain sight.

  Bryant had come to repay a debt, but also to ask some questions. Mr Peregrine Wosthold Merry was an academic who lectured and curated at the museum. He was also an acolyte of Ipsissimus and practitioner of necromantic rites connected to the system of Paradox Philosophy, the process of freeing yourself from the concepts of good and evil, and was said to be a very dangerous man. Bryant had recently been introduced to Mr Merry by his old friend Maggie Armitage; she had provided Bryant with a set of guidelines for dealing with her nemesis. She had even written down the ten most important rules on a scrap of paper:

  1. Do not shake his hand.

  2. Never come into contact with his person. If he reaches out to touch you, step out of his way.

  3. Don’t accept anything from him. If he tries to get you to take anything, politely refuse.

  4. If he drops anything, do not pick it up. He’ll try to trick you.

  5. If he looks you in the eye, quickly break contact.

  6. If he asks you a question, reveal nothing of yourself or your loved ones. Preferably, try not to say anything at all.

  7. Under no circumstances should you be drawn into an argument, or disagree in a manner designed to annoy him.

  8. Do not tell him a lie. He’ll know and use it against you.

  9. Keep your hearing aid slightly turned down. It will screen out anything he might whisper to you.

  10. Stay wary and alert the whole time you’re in his presence. Don’t lose your concentration for even a second.

  Of course, when it came to a man like Bryant this was a big collective red rag to a bull. He had met self-mythologizing academics like Mr Merry before, and they had failed to impress him. They got lost in their researches and came to believe in such strange, abstruse concepts that they ended up wrecking themselves and their careers. Even so, Mr Merry struck him as different. There was an aura of genuine menace around him. He was not lost in his own world, but rather looking out for opportunities to involve and absorb others. It seemed to Bryant that he would use those weaker than himself without scruples or compassion, and that alone made him dangerous. It was this quality of arrogant self-belief that united serial killers from Charles Manson to Dennis Nilsen, so Bryant was determined to watch his step.

  A receptionist directed him to the rear of the building, where he found the door to a dimly lit, casket-shaped room housing some of the museum’s crated, undisplayed items. Mr Merry was there to greet him, calmly waiting. He was as round as Bryant remembered, but still gave the appearance of immense strength. His rainbow-beaded beard was spread across his broad barrel chest, and his thick dyed ponytail hung beneath a black velvet skullcap woven with silver threads. Every finger sported a symbolic tattoo and a large silver ring; every nail was painted glossy black. His crimson tunic was silver-edged and piratical, as were his tall black leather boots. The luxuriant eyebrows might have been painted on to complement his hooded, watchful eyes. He smelled of patchouli oil and tobacco, and something unwholesome. It was as if Judge Dee and Blackbeard had been combined in one man.

  ‘I thought we might meet again,’ Mr Merry boomed, suddenly marching towards him with a hand outstretched. Bryant ignored the gesture of greeting and strolled past him, looking into the nearest crate.

  ‘What are you keeping hidden from members of the public?’ he asked cheerfully. The game had begun.

  ‘Oh, all sorts of things,’ said Mr Merry, mirroring Bryant’s casual attitude. ‘The history of this great city is full of surprises, as you well know. Civilians can’t be allowed to poke about among things they don’t understand; they’d quickly get their fingers burned. So it gets crated away where it can’t hurt anyone. Can I get you a cup of tea? I know how you English love your tea.’

  ‘No thanks, I just had one,’ said Bryant. ‘So you’re not English?’

  ‘I have no nation, Mr Bryant. I am of the world. Surely one cup? To buck you up? You’re looking rather more tired than when we last met.’

  Bryant gave a non-committal grunt.

  ‘Then perhaps a cigarette.’ He withdrew a slim silver case and held it out. ‘It’s all right, they’re herbal.’ Bryant shook his head. ‘Are you here to repay your debt, or to ask another favour?’

  ‘Perhaps both.’ He decided to take a chance and explain. It was essential to be exact. ‘Two unearthed coffins in the same graveyard, buried a few days apart. No, not a graveyard, a cemetery.’

  Mr Merry’s eyes unhooded slightly, a sign that his interest was piqued. ‘When was this?’

  ‘One first buried eleven days ago, one just under a week ago.’

  ‘Were the bodies removed?’

  ‘One was. The culprit was interrupted before he could open the lid of the second coffin.’

  ‘You say “he”. You saw him?’

  ‘One of my men did – not his face, just his form against the street lights.’

  ‘So this was here, in central London.’

  ‘I’d rather not describe the exact circumstances for the moment.’

  ‘You want to understand what this gentleman had planned, of course.’

  ‘There’s something else. The boy who witnessed the first disinterment was run down by a car the following night.’

  ‘Did he survive?’

  ‘He did not.’

  ‘I can see your problem. You seek a rational explanation but your mind takes you in another direction, towards black-magic rituals, arcane rites, secret ceremonies.’ Mr Merry shifted fussily and sighed, touching his fingers together. ‘The truth is likely to be something more mundane: boys vandalizing graves from boredom, either as dares or rites of passage. You know what lads are like without a steadying influence. You seek my counsel, but you already owe me for the last piece of advice I gave you.’

  ‘Perhaps we can find a way to wipe the slate clean.’

  Mr Merry narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m intrigued as to what drew you back to me, Mr Bryant. After the last time we met, I gained the distinct impression that you were frightened of me.’

  ‘I’m too old to be frightened,’ said Bryant, and instantly regretted saying it, for he knew that Mr Merry would read the opposite into the statement.

  ‘I see. So death holds no fear for you.’

  Bryant shifted uncomfortably. ‘No.’

  ‘The yawning grave that awaits us all. Nothing?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  Mr Merry tapped his painted nails on the desk, thinking. ‘Not death. But something like it. Interment, then. Loss.’

  Bryant fought to remain composed, but feared the struggle was showing in his face.

  ‘Loss? Abandonment. Some fear that only grows in darkness. Something that involves you being quite unaided, and afraid you might die alone. But at an earlier age, of course, when death still holds unknown terrors. When you were a child, perhaps.’

  Bryant opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. He tried to freeze any emotions from his face.

  ‘You were – what, ten, eleven? And mortally afraid. Not of your parents, from what I know of your background. A stranger.’ He kept watching Bryant’s face carefully. ‘No? Friends, then. Others the same age as you. Schoolmates you trusted. This is not fear of enclosure, not claustrophobia, not fear of the dark or even death itself. You’ve be
en in dark and enclosed places before, and it has not troubled you unduly. This is different. It’s the most primal fear of all. The fear of being left alone.’

  Mr Merry smiled, and the room chilled. Bryant could only watch and wait, and try to say no more. He had recalled his childhood terror just a handful of hours earlier, and the necromancer had already unpicked it from his brain.

  20

  CONNECTIONS

  John May had returned from the Victorian undertakers to the only slightly more modern surroundings of the PCU. ‘There’s no question in my mind that these two “unburials” are linked,’ he told Dan Banbury, drawing him along the building’s wonky passageway in his wake, ‘and that suggests the coffins weren’t randomly targeted but that there was a common purpose the desecrations. I need you to find something for me.’

  ‘What have I got to work on?’ asked Banbury, stopping at May’s office doorway. ‘We’ll never get permission to exhume Wallace a second time. I suppose we could try the old lady, but her next of kin will have to agree to it unless you have a watertight reason for forcing their hand and requesting an inquest.’

  ‘There’s a distant relative somewhere, that’s all. We won’t get an inquest without good cause.’

  ‘I’ve already been sent a copy of the doctor’s certificate. It’s Ferguson, the same doctor who attended Thomas Wallace.’

  ‘That’s hardly surprising. Come in,’ said May. He tried to close his office door behind them and failed, as the floorboards were badly warped. ‘The two deaths occurred within the same catchment area. These are tight neighbourhoods. People on the older estates still know each other. You’d be surprised how many of them went to school together. Although I’m sure Arthur would read something more into the fact that they shared a doctor. What was the GP’s verdict on Mrs Duncannon?’

  ‘Lungs. She smoked herself to death. I can’t see a link between the pair, beyond the fact that they were buried virtually side by side. There’s one odd thing – another plot staked out next to them.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the last one to be allowed in the gardens. It belongs to the funeral director, Rummage. You think we should start keeping an eye on him?’

  Banbury patted his stubbly hair, thinking. ‘Not without a motive for doing so.’

  ‘That’s just it – we have nothing. The awful thing is, I keep losing sight of the boy in all of this. Romain Curtis overheard something about a star constellation, the Little Bear. And I think he died for it. Someone kept watch on his girlfriend’s flat until they realized that we were staking it out. If Curtis didn’t die for what he overheard, this whole thing collapses. We’d have nothing but a set of odd coincidences.’

  ‘We need a way forward, John. It’s already been nearly a working week. Banks is prowling around the place—’

  ‘I know,’ May snapped. ‘Wallace and Duncannon shared the same funeral director – there might be something there, but I’m damned if I know what. Find it for me, Dan. I need forensic proof, not theories.’

  His mood of frustration and annoyance had not dissipated by the time he reached the apartment of Carmelina Domínguez, in the building which overlooked the burial plots in St George’s Gardens. May was ushered into a small, immaculately kept flat that could only have been owned by an old Spanish family. Inherited wardrobes, cabinets and dressers stood on a colourful tiled floor, but the focus of the home was centred on a great oval dining table covered in lace.

  Mrs Domínguez explained that she had stayed on here after her husband died, and often sat by the window watching the park and its users because the green space reminded her of her old home in Cadiz, but there, she said, ‘The wind, you know, it comes from every side, always the warm wind, and here it is only the rain, and the clouds so low that everything looks grey and brown.’ She sighed, hobbling to her place by the window. ‘How I miss my home. One day I will return and wash myself in sunlight again.’ She pointed from the window. ‘See, there, between the biggest trees, the graves?’

  May leaned on the ledge of the open window and looked down. Beneath the dense damp branches he could see both the Wallace and Duncannon burial plots. Beyond them, a row of plants marked the plot Mr Rummage had picked out for himself. A winding gravel path steered most casual walkers away from the corner where the graves lay. Their lichen-eaten headstones were as much a feature of a London park as fountains in Madrid and squirrels in New York.

  ‘I saw the young black man and his girlfriend on the grass late that night. I remember wishing I was their age again. Then I saw him stand and look over in this direction. I wondered what he had seen, and looked down. And there they were.’

  ‘You say they?’

  ‘Yes, two figures, standing very close together. It’s silly, for a minute I thought they were dancing.’

  You didn’t realize one was a corpse, he thought.

  ‘The boy ran at them, then the branches – when the wind rises they move and cut off the view. I could see someone lying on the ground, a man in a black suit, earth everywhere, and the other one had gone. A minute or two later, the boy came back.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing.’ She tapped at the sill, trying to remember. ‘I think he just stood there looking. He didn’t move.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

  ‘You see these things and think, It’s not my business. I know I should have.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Your people came. There was a tent, a green one. Someone from a funeral parlour came to put the earth back. I saw the van outside. Then last night it happened all over again, only I saw less because the wind was stronger. The branches moved about a lot. But there was definitely someone down there with a shovel. And this time I called you.’ She lightly crossed herself. ‘It is a terrible thing when the dead can’t be left in peace.’

  ‘Do you think you’d be able to identify the person who dug up the graves?’

  ‘My eyesight is not so good these days. A man, young, with quick movements. Beyond that, I could not say.’ A look of worry crossed her features. ‘Maybe – maybe there were others.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The first time. Other people. I cannot really remember now. Some things you see, and it turns out you only think you see. This is another reason why I did not call you before.’

  May tucked his notepad back into his jacket without writing down anything useful.

  When he arrived back at the unit, he found Krishna Jhadav waiting for him. The director of Defluotech Management Systems looked as if he hadn’t eaten for days, and took the offer of a seat opposite May’s desk with the air of a man who might never get up again.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said, twitchily checking the office’s open door. ‘When we spoke at my place I wasn’t really able to concentrate – my colleague wanted to use the room and … well, I’m used to having time to prepare, presentations and so on.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ said May, ‘we get it all the time. L’esprit d’escalier – remembering what you should have said too late.’

  ‘I told you Thomas Wallace was having personal problems. I think it was a bit more than that. There was a rumour going around that his wife had asked for a divorce. We heard there was some kind of money issue between them. You can understand why we started to worry about our business relationship.’

  ‘I imagine it must have been difficult but I don’t see what—’

  ‘Mrs Wallace won’t talk to me. She blames her husband’s mental state on the withdrawal of our business. Believe me, I thought long and hard about the situation before reaching the decision to end our contract.’

  ‘I don’t see what I can do,’ said May. Jhadav puzzled him. The man was practically shaking in his highly polished Church’s. He was perched on the edge of his chair and refused to look May in the face, and nervously picked at his knuckles as if he was waiting to find out whether he had but a few days left to live. May decided to wait and let him spe
ak.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Jhadav said after unbearable moments of silence had passed between them. ‘My girlfriend – she thinks we’re being followed. Sometimes by car, sometimes on foot.’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’

  ‘I know who it is. Her, Vanessa Wallace. She drives a Renault. I recognized the vehicle registration. I think she may be unstable, and may do something, I don’t know what—’

  ‘Are you asking for police protection, Mr Jhadav?’

  ‘No, I just thought you should know, what with all that’s been going on.’ He paused, as if the words had dried in his mouth. ‘I’m – Look, we’re all under pressure to perform these days. The last thing I need is some crazy housewife stalking me because she thinks I caused her husband’s death.’

  Shirone Estanza was in the corridor of the Albany High School, drinking a strawberry McDonald’s milkshake and waiting for her new friend to come out of class. Finally the doors to the art room opened and Sennen Renfield emerged. As usual, she was the last one out, and alone.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming in today,’ said Sennen, swinging her bag on to the shoulder of her navy jumper.

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ Shirone admitted, falling into step beside her. ‘The cremation was at eleven, but it overran. Romain’s mother had the wake in her flat. She asked me to go but I just couldn’t. I didn’t know any of his relatives – I wouldn’t have had anything to say to them.’

  ‘You sure you still want to go out?’ Sennen asked.

  ‘Yeah – if it’ll stop me thinking about him for a while.’

  ‘There’s a rom-com on at the Brunswick. Cheer you up.’