Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection)

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘We’ll come to that,’ said Bryant, a luminosity in his eyes suggesting that, as usual, his primary interests lay elsewhere. ‘Tell me about the sideshows – from the paintings they look like they’re originals.’

  ‘They are indeed, Mr Bryant,’ said Mills, settling himself opposite them. A large man with mutton-chop whiskers and a bay-window belly, he seemed ill-suited to spending his life in such a cluttered interior. ‘Most of these illusions date back to the early 1930s. They used to tour the seaside towns, Blackpool in the north, Margate in the south. I’ve become something of a custodian, and over the years I managed to save a lot of the original props and scripts from bonfires and dustcarts. I try to make sure that each act is performed exactly as it would have been in its heyday.’

  ‘Do the illusions still hold up today?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. We can still make the kiddies scream. Once in a while you get a few smart-aleck teenagers in who think they know how it’s done, but we have ways of scaring them as well.’

  ‘I think I saw something called The Girl Without a Head in Margate’s Dreamland when I was about six,’ said Bryant. ‘I have a feeling I wet myself.’

  ‘Can we get to the subject of Mr Portheim?’ asked May, knowing that his partner would be quite capable of discussing the sideshows for hours if he didn’t interrupt. ‘When did you last speak to him?’

  ‘We’ve stayed in touch over the years,’ said Mills. ‘He said he was having some kind of difficulty in his job. He didn’t sound happy. Before he joined the agency he used to tell me everything, but of course that was no longer possible. I spoke to him about a month ago. He wanted to come and see the show.’

  ‘And did he?’ asked May.

  ‘I believe so, but you’ll have to speak to Andrei the Great about it,’ said Mills. ‘I was up north, arranging bookings. Andrei the Great is my general manager; he’s in charge of the performances and the staff.’

  ‘Could we see him?’

  For the first time, Mills looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure if he’s available.’

  ‘It’s very important,’ May insisted. ‘If we can’t see him today, we’ll have to keep coming back until we do. You understand.’

  ‘All right, I’ll see what I can work out. It’s just that he’s very, well … Wait here.’ Mills lumbered to his feet, narrowly avoiding a collision with a ceiling lamp, and let himself out.

  ‘Curious,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Something put the wind up him all of a sudden. It’s almost as if—’

  ‘Don’t prejudge,’ warned May. ‘Let’s hear them out first.’

  After a few minutes, Mills reappeared. ‘Come with me,’ he said. His earlier cheerful demeanour had vanished. The detectives followed him across the puddled grass, stepping between guy ropes, and found themselves in one of the sideshow tents. It comprised a series of battered wooden benches placed before a small blood-red stage that was framed in yellow satin curtains.

  As Bryant and May seated themselves Mills stepped back into the shadows, as if he had been instructed to make himself scarce. The curtains opened to reveal a pastel-coloured 1960s Lambretta motor scooter with a slender girl seated side-saddle on it. She wore tight three-quarter-length jeans, rope espadrilles and a black halter top that exposed her pale neck and shoulders, but where her head should have been were half a dozen red rubber tubes. These extended up from the stump of her neck to four large glass jars set on the floor that appeared to contain her blood and organs. As they watched, the girl slowly unfolded her arms and waved to them.

  From behind the scooter appeared a squat, broad-chested dwarf with a scarlet goatee and bright-red horns. This form of extreme body modification involved the insertion of cones under the skin on his forehead, and gave him the appearance of a miniature devil. His gypsy outfit of clashing indigo and violet silks was strung about with heavy silver chains, and made him appear even more garish and bizarre. Almost every inch of his exposed flesh was covered in piercings and dense black tattoos. He was carrying a black leather whip taller than himself.

  But Andrei the Great was not dressed to amuse or entertain. He remained unsmiling and austere throughout the brief interview. ‘Do you like the lovely Headless Dolores?’ he asked in a thick Russian accent. ‘Her mortification intrigues you? You would not be human if she did not excite.’ He had a surprisingly rich and deep voice for a man of such diminutive stature.

  ‘She does disturb me,’ Bryant admitted.

  ‘That is the intention. To arouse and upset.’

  ‘How is it done?’

  ‘I cannot tell you that.’ Andrei wagged a fat index finger at them. ‘We are just poor showmen. All we have in the way of currency is our secrets, and we will never give them up. But I can tell you these displays are a mixture of illusion and physical skill.’

  ‘You mean there’s something more to them than just a few well-placed mirrors,’ Bryant said. ‘Did you show Dolores to Michael Portheim?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Andrei unhesitatingly, as if he had been expecting the question. ‘He was interested in all of the illusions.’

  ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘For old times’ sake,’ said Mills, cutting across Andrei the Great before he had a chance to answer. ‘To see me, I told you.’

  ‘Harry, I will deal with this,’ said Andrei, his voice soft with menace. ‘There are always people who want to know secrets.’

  ‘When was Michael Portheim here, exactly?’

  ‘Just over three weeks ago. A Friday night. I’m sure Harry here will be able to give you a more accurate date.’

  ‘I can check in the diary,’ said Mills anxiously. ‘I made the arrangement before I went north.’

  ‘So he didn’t come to see you,’ said Bryant. He turned to the dwarf. ‘If that’s the case, you were the last one to see him before he disappeared.’

  ‘Then I imagine he’ll remember me when you find him,’ said Andrei smoothly.

  ‘What did he do here?’

  ‘He watched some of the shows and was introduced to the performers. I imagine he left with the last audience at ten. I did not see him go.’ Andrei pulled the curtains shut with a flick of his whip, presumably leaving the Headless Lady stranded onstage until they had concluded their business.

  ‘How did Mr Portheim seem to you?’

  ‘Perfectly normal, as much as anyone can be.’ Andrei’s sharp blue eyes slowly closed and he swayed slightly.

  ‘You’d met him before?’

  ‘No, but Harry had told me about him.’ The dwarf’s eyes remained closed. May noticed that he had tattoos of fish on his eyelids.

  ‘If he sought you out, he must have had a reason for wanting to see you,’ Bryant persisted. ‘He didn’t just come here to see the show, did he?’

  When Andrei snapped back to attention the effect was startling. ‘He spoke fluent Russian. He wanted to know if I still had connections in the Old Country.’

  ‘Why do you think he wanted to know that?’

  ‘I imagine he was looking to sell some secrets,’ said Andrei with a leering wink. ‘Isn’t that what your British agents always want to do when they start to fail?’

  ‘And did you buy them?’

  ‘I told him what I’ve already told you. That all information is currency.’

  ‘That’s not answering my question.’

  ‘No,’ said Andrei, ‘I did not buy them.’

  ‘Well, that was creep-inducing,’ said May as they walked away through the rain across the deserted park. ‘I’ll be happier when we’re back under the street lights. There was something very unpleasant about that whole set-up, and particularly that little man.’

  ‘Did you notice how scared Harry Mills was around him?’ said Bryant. ‘The poor devil was leaking sweat from every pore. He may be the owner and Andrei his manager, but it’s the dwarf who’s in charge. Why does Mills need him? You heard him say he’s the custodian of the sideshows, the one with the passion. Wh
at’s the general manager for? We need to do some digging on Andrei the Great. Something tells me he’s got a lot to hide.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said May uncertainly. ‘He certainly seems keen to project a disturbing image of himself. His self-assurance worries me.’

  ‘I know what you mean. He’s confident enough to admit that he was one of the last people to see Portheim before his disappearance,’ Bryant replied. ‘I have a feeling he thinks he’s untouchable.’

  ‘Don’t take it as a challenge, Arthur,’ May pleaded, ‘at least until we know more about him. The Russian connection concerns me. What if he arranged for Portheim to defect?’

  ‘He’s a circus dwarf,’ said Bryant, digging out his pipe. ‘Not very likely, is it?’

  Back at the headquarters of the Peculiar Crimes Unit in Caledonian Road, King’s Cross, Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright had been put in the picture and was waiting for them with fresh information. ‘You were right about Andrei Federov being dangerous,’ she said, following them along the corridor. ‘He spent twelve years in a maximum security jail in Irkutsk, Siberia.’

  ‘What’s on his charge sheet?’ asked May, accepting the file as he headed to his office.

  ‘Four murders that anyone could be sure of, possibly many more. The details were contradictory and pretty hard to come by.’

  ‘Then what the hell is he doing out of jail?’

  ‘He had his sentence slashed. No reason given.’ Janice checked her notes. ‘He was granted compensation by the Russian government.’

  ‘They pardoned him?’ said Bryant, shocked.

  ‘It seems that way. So he was free to leave his homeland and enter the country. You know how that works, Mr Bryant. If you call someone a thief after they’ve served their time for theft, it’s libel. He served his time and was discharged as being safe.’

  Bryant was indignant. ‘After four murders? He didn’t exactly serve his time, did he? The compensation means he was either wrongfully accused or he did the government a favour of some kind.’

  ‘He managed to escape on three separate occasions. Yet according to his records they still pardoned him.’

  ‘Something’s not right there. And why on earth would he end up working in an English sideshow?’

  ‘He’s a dwarf, for God’s sake,’ said Bryant, poking around for his pipe. ‘It was that or panto.’

  ‘That’s not very politically correct of you,’ said Long-bright.

  ‘It’s very hard to be PC around dwarves, especially one who’s chosen to transform himself into a carnival devil. I understand the term “midget” is considered offensive because it comes from the word “midge”, but we’re talking about someone who runs a sideshow of human oddities, even though they’re mostly fake. Is it wrong to say “Headless Lady”? I mean, she has no head – what else are you going to say? If a boy has been made up to look like a caterpillar, you’d call him a Caterpillar Boy, wouldn’t you?’

  Longbright felt as if she had stepped into some kind of Pythonesque conversation to which she could not contribute. ‘We’ve just received Federov’s medical history,’ she said instead. ‘The murders were supposedly committed randomly, without motive.’

  ‘Show me.’ Bryant grabbed at Longbright’s paperwork. ‘Hm – looks like he exhibits the classic ego-signifiers of a psychopath. I was discussing it with Alma just today.’

  ‘Oh, and what did she have to say about that?’

  ‘I don’t know, something about ironing. Goodness, whole batteries of tests were conducted by his doctors, and they all said the same thing.’ He pointed to an immense list of attributes that ran down the page. ‘Emotionless, detached, fearless, dissociated from reality, exhibits a grandiose manner, total lack of anxiety, attitude of entitlement, insatiable sexual appetite, tendency towards sadism. Has no normal responses to punishment, apprehension, stress or disapproval. A risk-taker and an uncontrollable liar.’

  ‘You’re telling me the last man to see our missing man alive is a clinically certified psychopathic Russian dwarf?’ asked May.

  ‘I see what you mean. It might be best not to let the Daily Mail get hold of this one.’

  ‘We’re going back to that sideshow tonight.’

  ‘And put them on their guard?’ exclaimed Bryant. ‘What would be the point of that?’

  ‘Why don’t I go?’ Longbright suggested. These days the detective sergeant found herself spending most of her life caged up in the office. ‘You know I like getting out into the field.’

  ‘This will get you out into a field.’

  ‘I can tell them I’m after a job as an assistant, and while I’m there I’ll take a look around.’

  ‘All right, but for heaven’s sake be careful. I don’t like the sound of this one,’ said May, somewhat understating the problem. ‘You read the doctors’ reports. He’s duplicitous – an uncontrollable liar.’

  ‘I’d be happier if I came along to protect you, Janice,’ said Bryant, suddenly earnest. The sight of this shrunken, elderly gentleman with an arctic tonsure raised above his wrinkled ears and wide watery eyes swimming at her through bottle-thick glasses drew breath into her heart.

  ‘I’ll be careful, Mr Bryant, I promise,’ Longbright told him gently.

  The barkers and their charges, the Moth Girl, the Caterpillar Boy, the Headless Lady, the Mummified Princess, the Human Pin-Cushion, the Girl In the Goldfish Bowl and Electra the 30,000-Volt Girl were all on their second and third shows of the night. Most of the performances lasted only fifteen minutes, including the barker spiels, and on a good night the artistes would continue until most of the punters had seen most of the sideshows, paying separately for each in turn. But the driving rain had kept the attendance figures down for the fourth night in a row. Harry Mills paced fretfully in his caravan, no mean feat given his bulk and the doll’s-house obstacle course of the interior. Finally he could stand it no longer, and stormed outside to find Michelle, the cashier. ‘We should close it down,’ he told her.

  Michelle ran glittered nails through her frizz of dye-fried hair and puffed out over-rouged cheeks. ‘It ain’t as bad as all that. The rain’s easing off. We might get a late turnout.’

  ‘I don’t care about the bloody attendance figures, we should just end this!’ he shouted suddenly, frightening her. But of course he was in no position to explain his fear. He needed to see Andrei.

  He found the Russian dwarf seated at the back of Electra’s tent, watching as the bored girl stepped on to her steel plate once more and prepared to produce sparks from unlikely places. A third of the benches were taken with spectators, including some teenaged boys armed with cans of lager.

  ‘Now can I have a brave young man from the audience?’ called the barker, a disreputable drunk Cockney who had only joined the Arcade of Abnormalities on this leg of the tour. He worked for booze but, having spent his life in funfairs and circuses, was capable of memorizing his lines perfectly. ‘You, sir, with the racy haircut, you look like you have an eye for the ladies – would you care to step up here?’ The barker pointed so energetically and with such conviction that the boy could not refuse. His friends laughed and pushed him forward. The barker swung him up on the stage to make him look good in front of the crowd; the secret was to not show anyone up, to build expectations but then give them relief after a scare and show the volunteers how brave they’d just been, granting them a round of applause.

  The barker produced a shiny metal salver and dropped a set of keys on to it. ‘These keys’, he said, ‘are the keys to the lovely Miss Electra’s hotel room. She’s a very lonely lady and likes to have company on these long dark nights.’

  He handed the salver to Electra, who raised up the tray with a dazzling smile and a flourish for the audience. ‘Now,’ the barker instructed, ‘if you can take these keys from the salver, I think Miss Electra will be prepared to reward your bravery with a night of pleasure.’

  In the audience, a couple of families with small children looked awkward. The young man gr
inned out at his mates. To be honest, the arcade’s latest Electra had seen better days, but a challenge was a challenge. He blew on his fingers like a safecracker, and prepared to reach out for the keys.

  ‘But first,’ said the barker, ‘we must turn on Electra’s own safety shield of thirty thousand volts, which she needs to protect herself from the attentions of her many admirers.’ Someone in the audience gave a sarcastic laugh as the switch was thrown. There was a buzz and a crackle, and Electra was illuminated with tall, wavering spikes of blue-white static. The young man suddenly looked a little less confident. His friends egged him on. Stretching out his hand, he went to clasp the keys and received an electric shock. It was only a small one, but the anticipation had paid off and he yelped, jumping away as his mates roared with laughter.

  Janice Longbright had seen enough. Some of the illusions were obvious. Electra was standing on a metal plate producing a low level of static discharge, capable of lighting a neon tube when she connected it to the terminal hidden in her palm, enough to scare a punter who had already been unnerved by the spinning dials and jolting needles of the standard Frankenstein-laboratory equipment behind Electra that included a spark regulator and a Wimshurst machine.

  While she waited for Andrei Federov to finish overseeing the shows, Longbright wandered across to the other tents. The Half-Bodied Woman and the Moth Girl produced similar effects, one through judicious use of careful lighting and angled mirrors, the other via a rig that disguised her tightly contorted body beneath a framework simulacrum. The princess who turned into a mummy involved two performers with a glass scrim passing between them – although having the mummy break loose at the end was a nice touch. Lucio the Human Pin-Cushion clearly had a skin condition, and she knew that bleeding could be prevented by pinching the epidermis and folding it in such a way that it could be pierced without harm.