Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘Yes. Mrs Wallace wanted a fast burial,’ said Andy, ‘but we were dependent on the doctor’s paperwork.’

  ‘Was he buried in a suit of Mrs Wallace’s choosing? How does that work?’

  ‘She was too upset to choose his interment outfit, so Ron picked something from Mr Wallace’s wardrobe. Then we filed a report on his personal belongings. He wasn’t buried with any jewellery. We have to keep a note of every item. Mrs Wallace approved the outfit, and he was dressed here.’

  ‘And once you’ve brought the body here, how do you prepare it?’

  ‘We clean the skin and massage the stiffness from the muscles. Mr Wallace had a closed coffin, which makes my work simpler. In the case of Mrs Duncannon, she’d left instructions that she should be embalmed.’

  ‘Mrs Duncannon had no relatives, is that right?’

  ‘She did have a beneficiary, not that she left much money: a cousin in Scotland. This lady wasn’t happy about the arrangement because obviously it costs more, and she had to pay for it. In the embalming process, I shave away any peach fuzz from the face that will affect the application of make-up, then I place the features for viewing.’

  ‘What does that entail?’

  ‘Inserting plastic caps into the eyes and closing them – they have a tendency to sink in after death. Then I add a mouth-former to stop that withdrawn look and tie the jaw with suture string, or I use a mastic gun. Then I do the arterial injection with a couple of gallons of formaldehyde solution – that’s what gives the body shape. I suction out the cavity fluids, and pack cotton wool in to prevent seepage.’ Orton showed appropriate enthusiasm, supplementing his explanations with hand gestures. ‘There were no autopsies required in either case, but if there had been, I would have returned the viscera to the body in a plastic bag, like a supermarket chicken with giblets.’ He smiled, which was a mistake. ‘The rest is just styling and casketing. Mr Wallace would have been a little the worse for wear, as he was simply cleaned and emptied.’

  ‘I wonder anybody bothers with embalming these days,’ said Longbright.

  ‘The rules of attraction remain whether you’re dead or alive,’ said Orton defensively. ‘It’s no different to ladies putting on make-up to entice a mate. Attractiveness in death brings comfort and continuity.’ He gave her an appraising look. ‘You’ve some lovely cheekbones on you. You wouldn’t need much work at all, unless there was disfigurement involved.’

  ‘What about the dog, Prince? Why did you bury him?’

  ‘Oh, that was just a favour for someone Ron knows. I didn’t do anything to him, just put him in a nice little box.’

  ‘Was he wearing a collar?’ It seemed a peculiar thing to ask, but Arthur had insisted on it.

  ‘No, not to my recollection.’

  ‘Has anything like this ever happened before?’

  ‘Digging someone up? Well, there were cases a few years back in Highgate Cemetery, some kids carrying out dares, mostly. Unearthing a cadaver isn’t like it is in those old horror films, you know. It’s hard work getting a body back out of the ground.’

  ‘Could you do it by yourself?’

  ‘I’d say it would be virtually impossible. And it requires specialist knowledge to get the casket open.’

  Longbright ran a crimson nail down her list. ‘Can you think of any reason why someone would do this?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Cabrini and Sons. They’re down the bottom end of Marchmont Street and they’ve got all of that catchment area sewn up. They’ve been wanting to break into our territory for years. They’re trying to discredit us.’

  ‘Do you have any proof of this?’

  ‘No, but it stands to reason. Either that, or someone’s got it in for St George’s Gardens. They’ve got a neighbourhood committee run by old dears, all very officious – nobody likes them.’

  ‘In that case, if the purpose is merely to annoy them, why not commit a simpler act of vandalism like tearing up the flowerbeds?’

  ‘I think you’re better equipped to find that out than us.’

  ‘There was a death last night: Stephen Emes; you’re not handling him, are you?’

  ‘Where did he die?’

  ‘Hyde Park.’

  ‘No, that would be Rackitt and Pembridge over in Edgware Road. Unless he was Muslim, of course.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of organized criminal activity in cemeteries?’ asked Longbright, carefully avoiding direct mention of the New Resurrectionists.

  ‘No. But I’m sure it goes on in some areas. Medical students and such …’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s hard to get your hands on a body in this day and age. Students have always been ready to make a few bob.’ He studied her face again, caught by the sight of her eyes in the light. ‘If I were you, I should think of putting us down as your preferred representatives for afterlife care. And go for an embalming. You’ve far too lovely a face to waste with a closed casket. Magnificent skin tones. I’d love to get you on my slab one day.’

  Longbright took her leave and headed back to report to Bryant, glad to be out of the cloying, airless room. But when she reached the PCU’s offices, nobody knew where he had gone.

  27

  LINGUISTICS

  You can’t miss the British Library, on the Euston Road; it has an enormous bronze statue of Isaac Newton, bent over with a pair of compasses, in the centre of the courtyard. As much as he liked it, Bryant would have preferred some spreading trees, so that readers could sit under them with books. He felt strongly that libraries of any kind, even one this grand, should prove welcoming places.

  He located his quarry up a ladder behind an immense, unsteady stack of rare books at the rear of the building. Raymond Kirkpatrick was a bear-like professor of English whose love of heavy-metal music did not endear him to library users. As a result, he worked with headphones on and had a tendency to bellow.

  ‘Tristram Shandy,’ said Raymond, hurling down several exquisite volumes with abandonment.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Laurence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy. He was buried in St George’s Fields, Hanover Square, in 1768. The site’s long gone now, of course, like everything else of any bloody grace and elegance. Torn to bits by damned scumbag property developers in the 1960s. Sterne was dug up by bodysnatchers and sold to an anatomy professor. While he was lying on the slab, one of the professor’s doctors recognized Sterne and had him returned to the graveyard. That sort of thing used to happen all the bloody time.’ He chucked another book on to the pile on the floor.

  ‘Should you be treating them like that?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘They’re damaged. We’re replacing them with better copies. Edgar Allan Poe,’ Kirkpatrick volunteered, ‘creepy little git, absolutely obsessed with the idea of premature burial. There’s a theory that he was terrified of being buried alive, and wrote to try and effect a cure. I’ve got a monograph on it somewhere. Of course, we’re talking about a period which was fascinated by trance states, hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy. Look at Poe’s output: positively littered with such ideas – “The Black Cat”, “Morella”, “Ligeia”, ‘Berenice”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. His story “The Premature Burial” is worth a gander, although the ending’s totally crap. Why do you want to know?’

  Bryant expanded on the details of the case.

  ‘Sounds like a load of old bollocks to me, but you’re the boss.’ Kirkpatrick bounced down from his ladder. ‘Heavy metal has the same obsessions, of course, with the added frisson of Satanism chucked in. I can cue up a few tracks for you to listen to.’

  ‘Thank you, no. I’d rather spend time on a kidney dialysis machine than have my ears tuned to one of your favourite bands. Any other advice for me?’

  Kirkpatrick twiddled some food out of his beard, thinking. ‘Poets’ Corner.’

  ‘What about it?

  ‘Well, we know it’s in the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, and that lots of writers are buried the
re, but within that space others were also tipped in. The poet Edmund Spenser died of starvation, poor bugger, and his carcass was chucked in there, but here’s the interesting part. Shakespeare and his chums attended the service, and the story goes that they threw their own works into his plot in a kind of farewell salute. It was thought for many years that Shakespeare whizzed an unseen playscript into the coffin, until the grave was opened in the 1930s and it was found not to be the case. Now, if you’re interested in the subject of missing folios I can—’

  ‘As much as I enjoy talking to you, Raymond, this is starting to get irritating. How are you on astronomy?’

  ‘Linguistics and Naming of only, not Constellations, Discovery and Exploration of. What have you got?’

  Bryant attempted to fill in the rest of the missing facts without sounding as if he was going completely mad.

  ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right,’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘Resurrectionists, a dead witness and the Little Bear. Let’s not bother with the Jack Russell for now.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  ‘How old was the lad?’

  ‘Almost sixteen.’

  ‘Well, there’s your answer. They weren’t worried about him.’

  ‘Why not? Who?’

  ‘Well, corpses can’t talk, can they?’

  ‘I’m not with you. Thomas Wallace had a bash on his head that we think might have been caused by a misdiagnosis, so that he woke up in the coffin.’

  ‘No no no, you silly old sod. The odds of anyone coming back to life are infinitesimal. Think about it, how does a dead body stand up? There had to be two blokes holding the corpse between them.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘As much as you would like to believe that the deceased come back to life, Arthur, try the more obvious answer. These dudes are holding up the body when a surprised kid spots them. One tells the other one not to worry. Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s only a boy,’ said Bryant as the truth dawned. ‘Romain Curtis looked young for his age. Everyone said so. That’s what he overheard. Something like, “Don’t worry – he’s a minor.” He was a bit doped up and had just finished naming the constellations to his girl. The stars were still in his head.’

  ‘Exactly. But I don’t understand why you’re fretting over details. You say you know who’s behind these exhumations, so why don’t you go and bloody well arrest them?’ Kirkpatrick scooped books from the floor and chucked them in an untidy pile.

  ‘They say they didn’t do it.’

  ‘So what? People are lying, filthy, thieving pigs. Culprits proclaim their innocence all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Bryant, ‘but in this case, I happen to believe them.’

  Jack Renfield was at the Bleeding Heart Tavern, talking to the head barman. ‘Yeah, I took the call,’ said the lad, a strapping thick-jawed thing with a strong Australian twang. ‘Emes, that’s the one. He’s been in here a few times. He said he was looking for someone. He sounded really agitated. He had me running all over the pub, but I couldn’t find him.’

  ‘Do you remember who he was looking for?’

  ‘Wait, it’ll come to me. Something like – hang about, I had to write it down because it sounded Italian and I didn’t know how to pronounce it. Let me look on the spike. We keep all the bar messages ’cause customers can get stroppy.’ He headed to a cubbyhole outside the kitchen and checked through a pile of skewered notes. ‘Sorry about the wait,’ he said, returning with the paper. ‘Here you go. Roman Conti.’

  Renfield’s Neanderthal brow wrinkled. ‘You don’t mean Romain Curtis?’

  ‘No, mate. Just as it says here, Roman Conti. Why, is he wanted for something?’

  ‘The chap who was looking for him was murdered last night.’

  ‘Jeez, that’s bad.’ He looked past Renfield to the rain-spattered windows. ‘You know, I came here because where I’m from it’s all kicking off, fires, storms, the worst weather conditions imaginable. I live on the edge of a national park that’s dying, mate. So I moved to London for a better life. Murders, though. Makes me wonder if I made the right choice.’

  Bryant caught the tube at Euston Station and headed out towards the Seven Sisters Road, where he had arranged to meet Dan Banbury.

  He realized straight away that it was a mistake to take the Victoria Line to reach Finsbury Park. London’s ancient tube network could no longer cope with its one billion passengers a year, and the core of the line had become unpleasantly crowded. Nobody offered him a seat, so he was forced to stage one of his helpless-old-man-falls-into-the-lap-of-a-sturdy-young-seated-passenger routines. He went for the Oscar this time, scattering wine gums everywhere, with a beseeching look in his eyes that would have melted the heart of Genghis Khan. When he emerged from the station, he juggled his umbrella and his mobile, contacting Renfield to find out how he had got on at the Bleeding Heart.

  ‘Roman Conti? It’s too much of a coincidence,’ said Renfield. ‘The names are almost identical.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bryant replied over the noise of wet tyres. ‘I managed to waste two days on this investigation detouring down the wrong path, just because I wanted to believe that a corpse was naming the stars. There’s no room in the force for dreamers, that’s for sure. I can be a total fool sometimes.’

  ‘According to Emes, Conti was a local. It fits; the area around Hatton Garden still has plenty of Italians,’ said Renfield. ‘We’re coming up to the after-work rush here. Unless you’ve got something else you want me to do, I’m going to hang around and see if anyone’s heard of this guy.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea, Jack. Do me a favour and check on Janice, will you? I don’t trust that undertaker.’

  ‘I just spoke to her. Apparently the embalmer wanted to lay her out – in a business sense, as I understand it.’ Renfield listened to silence on the other end of the line. ‘I thought you’d find that funny.’

  ‘I don’t find death amusing,’ said Bryant, hanging up.

  You always used to, thought Renfield, wondering what had got into the old man.

  The pavements of the Seven Sisters Road were deserted. It was an area no tourist reached; Central London’s backstage, chaotic and dingy. Bryant was at home in places like this. In Chelsea and Kensington there were only shuttered bankers’ houses and restaurants, as oligarchs and hedge-fund managers built property portfolios, but Brixton, Tottenham, Aldgate and Walthamstow were where the real work took place.

  As he passed a grocery store displaying mountains of fresh pomelos, daikons, mangoes and mandarins, Bryant thought of well-heeled professionals nibbling flavourless pea shoots in brasseries while the economically pressed families of Finsbury Park enjoyed pungent stews and curries.

  There were no Starbucks here; the cafés were Moroccan, East African, Arabic. He thought about getting a Turkish shave, complete with burning-stick-up-the-nose-and-ear-holes, massage and moisturizer, but knew that Banbury was waiting for him. He checked the address he had been given for the dead resurrectionist. Banbury had installed a map application for him, but he had trouble remembering how to use it. Instead he unfolded a napkin on which he had scrawled the door number, and checked his bearings.

  Emes’s flat was in a grey, run-down terraced house with motorbikes in the front garden, much further from the tube station than he had realized. By the time he got there he was feeling his considerable age in every bone. Worse, the flat was on the top floor.

  ‘I was starting to wonder if something had happened to you,’ called Banbury over the landing bannisters. ‘I meant to warn you it was a bit of a walk. I didn’t want to come down and find you dead on the steps.’

  ‘Why does everybody think I’m about to peg out?’ said Bryant, fighting to get his breath back. He bent over and placed his hands on his knees. ‘Blimey, I think I just coughed up a tube.’

  ‘You should see a doctor.’

  ‘No thank you. I was hoping for National Treasure status by now, not National
Health. Doctors have cured old age in mice by tampering with the hypothalamus. I wish they’d get a move one. I want to be venerable, not vulnerable.’

  ‘Come up and I’ll let you walk all over my site,’ said Banbury cheerfully.

  ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? It’s not a crime scene.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I wonder just exactly what Mr Emes was up to. You’ll see what I mean.’

  ‘My God, he’s been burgled,’ said Bryant as he stepped over the threshold of the flat.

  ‘No, I think he was just incredibly untidy.’ Banbury indicated the empty beer bottles piled in the sink, the stacks of magazines and dirty tea mugs left all over the floor. ‘Medical chaps often live like this. It’s a reaction against having to be so clinically clean during the day. But take a look at his bookcase. I’m sure I’ve seen some of those volumes on your shelves.’

  Bryant stepped over a partially dismantled PlayStation and read the spines of the books. The Men Who Cheated Death, How to Avoid Resurrectionists, The Codex Extinct Animalia, Parasites that Live in Dead Flesh and Their Uses, The Diary of a Graverobber, 1811–1812.

  ‘You’re right,’ Bryant agreed. ‘I do have a few of these.’

  ‘And there are notebooks in the bedroom, dozens of them filled with his writings and drawings. He was experimenting with corpse parasites, looking at new ways to use them in medicine. It’s not an original idea; they use sterile maggots to clean wounds. You should talk to Giles about it, only not over spaghetti carbonara, as he did with me.’

  ‘Well, given what we now know about Emes, this isn’t exactly outside of his academic jurisdiction.’

  ‘Maybe not, but when you couple it with this lot – I found them under the bed.’ Banbury kicked a stack of paperbacks with his boot. The top volume was Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible. Beneath it were twenty other accounts, mostly memoirs and compendia dealing with the history of black magic and its rituals. ‘Bit of an odd combination for a medical man, wouldn’t you say?’