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

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Tricky, isn’t it?’ mused Bryant. ‘To define the exact point where sanity ends and madness begins.’

  ‘In this job, yes,’ agreed May, feeding the limbless spy from a water tumbler as his partner wondered how he could ever write up the case of a psychotic devil-headed dwarf found in a small South London park.

  This tale began life as a challenge to write a short story that would allow readers to choose what happened next. Writers hate to throw anything away, and afterwards I thought it would make a perfect investigation for Bryant and May. The core idea came from the fact that I was sent a very glamorous credit card with a private concierge number on it – accidentally, as it turns out. The bank quickly took it back when they realized I wasn’t a CEO, just a writer …

  BRYANT & MAY ON THE CARDS

  One of the lunchtime customers at the Over Easy Diner in Dalston High Street was driving Ian McFarland crazy. His beer was too warm, his burger too raw, his apple pie too chilled, his coffee too weak. It wasn’t the Ritz; they sold battered saveloys, for God’s sake.

  Ian tried to maintain his cheerful demeanour through the increasingly fractious demands. He smiled, apologized, replaced the meal, served a free beer, to no effect. The customer, a raw-faced, stubble-headed bully with small dull eyes, a Liverpudlian accent and an unpleasantly suggestive T-shirt, eventually informed Ian that he would not pay for the meal at all.

  That was when Ian lost his cool and tried to throw the customer out of the door. Not acceptable behaviour, even in a dump like the Over Easy. Not only was it not the Ritz, it was one of the least classy dining spots in Dalston, an area which defied description in terms of class at all, accommodating a profusion of dubious social strata too numerous to name. Elsewhere in London you could see drunks fighting on the street at nine in the morning or desperately bartering their last few belongings at the edge of the kerb, but Dalston had that plus everything from artisanal bakeries to Turkish lap-dancing clubs. It was supposed to be up and coming, but never did.

  The Over Easy had windows so greasy it was like looking out into a perpetual fog. One had been caved in and was covered in plywood. Inside, the pervasive fatty smell meant that you had to change your shirt after every shift, but it was a job. After his stint in prison Ian had needed something that paid him a bit of cash in hand to supplement the rubbish career opportunity his assistance officer had found for him: planting trees in an area where the kids tore them out of the ground before they’d had a chance to take root and stuffed them through their enemies’ letter boxes.

  Ian had handled two tours of duty in Afghanistan, only to return and find his wife and his home gone. Depressed, he’d started drinking a little hard, and had made the one small slip-up that had blotted his record and dumped him at the back of the queue. Before Afghanistan he had always considered himself a sanguine, balanced individual; he knew that life wasn’t fair, and that you had to face its depredations with resigned good humour, but losing his job on that Monday morning was the last straw, for the customer had called the manager over to complain about his waiter and demand that he be fired. Even in a dump like the Over Easy, the last thing the manager wanted was some Merseyside bruiser overturning tables and coming back to smash more windows, so he’d taken the cheaper option and let Ian go.

  Now the lad found himself walking the mean, trash-filled streets with anger eating his heart and no prospects of any kind in sight. Worse, the Liverpudlian was waiting for him in the alley around the corner. In the fight that followed, Ian loosened one of his front teeth but retained his dignity, repeatedly slamming his antagonist into a dustbin until he was unconscious. It was a lousy way to start the week.

  As he limped from the passageway, trying to see if his torn jacket could be repaired, he realized that the day ahead held absolutely nothing for him. It was a terrible thing to feel that you were no longer wanted or even noticed by the city in which you had grown up. He had always thought he would amount to something here. London was a tough climb, but if you could make it into a decent job you were set up for almost anywhere else.

  He thought back to the moment when he realized that Mandy was seeing someone behind his back. He’d known it was serious, and that he’d lost her. The memory made him chew at the inside of his mouth until it was filled with blood. The worst part was, she hadn’t even bothered to hide her infidelity. She had siphoned out their joint account, leaving him with nothing but debts and a note filled with such cruelty and venom that he had torn it to shreds before his eyes could finish blurring. No one had the right to call anyone else a loser. He was not a man of hatreds, but he hated his wife for that. The letter didn’t feel as if it was written by her. He wondered if her new man had put her up to it.

  Sooty rain had begun to sift down across the glistening grey streets. Checking his pockets, he found that he didn’t even have enough for the bus fare. At the end of the high street he crossed the road to a graffiti-spattered ATM and inserted his debit card, already knowing what it was going to tell him: that he was nearly a thousand pounds overdrawn. The machine did exactly that and ate the card in the process, confiscating it as though he was a schoolboy caught with a stolen Batman comic.

  That was it, then. His life, over at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. No skills, no future, no point in going on. He returned to his basement flat, to try and get his belongings out before the old cow who owned the house confiscated the lot in lieu of back-rent.

  On the mat behind the door was another handful of bills that he resolved to put straight into the bin. Except that he felt the tell-tale rectangle of a credit card inside one slender white envelope bearing his name. Ripping it open, he found a letter which began:

  Dear Valued Customer,

  As a Priority Account holder your continued custom means a great deal to us. Please remember to sign the back of your new credit card before using it. Our 24-hour concierge service can be accessed by quoting the last four digits of your account number, and may be used for any service at all. Your new credit limit is:

  £250,000.00

  The card was black and silver, faintly sinister, attached to the letter with two tiny blobs of transparent rubber cement. Ian checked the name: ‘Ian Charles McFarland’.

  His name, his address, but clearly not his card. Unusually, there was no name of a holding company or financial institution attached. It was either a dodgy advertising tactic or a mistake, a ludicrous, wonderful error made by an outsourced computer in his favour.

  What if he tried to use it? Would a fraud flag go up somewhere? Would he find the manager of the shop appearing with a pair of police officers, ready to charge him with theft?

  He finished reading the letter.

  To activate your card, call your concierge now and provide him with your account digits and the passcode we have sent you (mailed separately).

  He dropped to his knees and tore open the rest of the envelopes – damn it all to hell! There was nothing. He’d been offered a final chance only to have it snatched away again.

  But wait – there was one more envelope wedged between the mat and the door, behind the circus-coloured flyers for takeaway pizzas. The packet was so light that there seemed to be nothing in it at all. But as he tore it open, he saw the grey patch on one side that always came with pin-codes and passwords to prevent thieves from reading them.

  There it was, a six-digit figure to be quoted to the concierge. Digging out his phone, he rang the number on the back of the card.

  ‘Mr McFarland,’ said an oddly accented voice. ‘How can I help you today?’

  ‘I’d like to activate my card.’

  ‘Please give me the last four digits on the front of the card.’

  ‘6823,’ said Ian without hesitation.

  ‘And now, your passcode.’

  ‘908773.’

  ‘That’s fine. Would you like to change your code to something more memorable?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well. How can I help you today?’

  ‘I don
’t know what kind of service you offer,’ he admitted hesitantly. ‘I’ve not used this … particular service before.’

  ‘I fully understand,’ said the concierge. ‘Well, there are the usual services, of course. Car hire, theatre and concert tickets, sporting events, dinner reservations, nightclub tables. We can book flights for you, or hire a yacht. I see you have the highest priority limit, which entitles you to use our special Platinum Service.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s an exclusive private arrangement with our selected partners offering you a range of the more restricted personal needs.’

  ‘Can you give me an example of something I would be able to buy?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you are visiting a city you don’t know and require companionship.’

  ‘You mean a woman.’

  ‘The gender is of course up to you.’

  ‘And what do I get for £250,000?’ he asked.

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. He fancied he could hear the wind ticking in the wires but that was absurd; there were no wires any more. What he heard was the beating of his own heart.

  ‘We could kill your wife,’ came the reply.

  The restaurant was filled to its stripped-oak rafters, as it had been every night since the glowing reviews first broke in the Sunday papers. Of course it helped that a Hollywood legend had been seen dining there with someone other than his wife, and had returned several times while he was filming in the city. Now the bookings were full until January, four months away, and those same Sunday papers were running articles containing instructions on how to beat the restaurant’s obstructive booking system.

  The Water House was an old converted municipal swimming pool in Marylebone which Jake Finnegan and his business partner had bought for an absurdly low figure from the town council on the condition that they restored its interior. Having done so, they hired a celebrity chef fresh out of rehab and set about turning it into one of the most exclusive restaurants in London. Almost too exclusive, it turned out, for the quiet backstreet which Jake and his team had colonized was now the subject of much furore in the press, as the residents were kept awake every night except Sunday by drunken soap stars and Russians revving gold Ferraris and swearing paparazzi.

  Mandy loved every second of her new life. It was the one she had always dreamed of, but somehow she had been sidetracked into marrying a loser. Ian had survived his army years only to end up with a bad case of PTSD and a stint in jail for fencing stolen goods right across the road from a police surveillance spot. She had dumped him by text, and when that message bounced back, with a good old-fashioned letter. She had applied for the job of greeter long before Jake’s restaurant hit the headlines, and was firmly installed behind her low-lit mahogany counter by the time the journalists arrived. She was good at her work, but found she had more respect from the staff now that they knew she also occupied Jake’s art-filled bedroom overlooking the Thames, a few minutes’ drive from the restaurant.

  Tonight had been typically demanding. Nicole Kidman had lost her coat, and her minders were blocking the restaurant’s entrance so that photographers couldn’t get a direct shot of her waiting while Mandy searched the racks. She found the coat and handed it over, but not before the other diners had got a good look at the celebrity in their midst. Mandy brushed a long curl of blonde hair back behind her ear and gave Kidman the biggest, most sincere smile she could fake before the actress swept out to her waiting limo, every inch a star.

  It was raining hard again, but nothing kept the paps at bay. They huddled in the doorway of the building opposite, grabbing shots as the vehicle sped past, yelling and following on foot, hoping to catch it at the traffic lights.

  Mandy checked her watch: 11.45 p.m. Thank God. The kitchen had shut at eleven, and now all she had to do was divorce the diners from their credit cards and then ease them out into the storm-swept night.

  The man in the hall must have slipped in after Kidman and her companions had departed. He was wearing a black suit and raincoat – virtually a uniform among the Water House’s male diners – but it was topped with a black satin Venetian carnival mask. For a moment she wondered incredulously if he was part of a stag party looking for a late drink, but surely not – his shoes were far too expensive, and his left hand held a glove shucked from the right. He had removed it because it was hard to pull a pistol trigger with his fingers clad in leather.

  The bullet passed through Mandy’s brain and exited behind her left ear, smashing a crystal decanter presented by Ewan McGregor’s PR team after a memorable night at the restaurant last month. As she fell, her Lucy Choi high heels slipped on the floor tiles, ensuring that her split skull connected with the floor before they did.

  As the horrified waiting staff dropped to their knees around her, Mandy’s grand dreams flashed away into darkness and the hallway of the Water House was empty once more. The entrance door swung closed, so that even the sound of falling rain faded to a respectful silence.

  John May rested his chin on his fist as he watched his partner working. ‘How much longer are you going to be with that thing?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I need two more flat bits with sky in them and a sailor’s nose,’ said Arthur Bryant without looking up. All of the files on his desk had been moved to make room for the jigsaw. May examined the picture on the lid and compared it to the partially finished article. Bits of it seemed entirely wrong. ‘It’s Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s an interior. You shouldn’t have any bits of sky. Or a sailor’s nose.’

  ‘Well, that’s the problem, you see,’ said Bryant. ‘I thought there was only one jigsaw in the box but there seem to be two. I think the other one is Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa but this sky is bright blue and Géricault’s was a sort of orange. It might be from a Matisse.’

  The Peculiar Crimes Unit had been quiet over Christmases past, but never this quiet. May had filed all of his outstanding reports (he was more meticulous than his partner), and had called the attractive blonde he had met in the Shoreditch Hotel on Christmas Eve to arrange dinner the following week. Now he had nothing to do, and watching Bryant fiddle with mismatched jigsaw pieces was as much fun, and weirdly similar to, a severe migraine.

  Usually when Raymond Land stuck his head around the door, May inwardly groaned, expecting a sermon about excessive use of kitchen roll or tampering with stored evidence. What was it he had wanted to know last time? Ah yes, someone had broken into the confiscated packets of Old Mariners’ Wartime Naval Rough-Cut Shag Bimsley had taken away from an illegal newsagent on the Caledonian Road. Looking over at Bryant’s pipe on the mantelpiece, it wasn’t hard to work out where the tobacco had gone.

  ‘Blimey, is this what you get up to when there’s a lull?’ Land exclaimed, horrified. ‘Why not hold a bloody cribbage tournament?’

  ‘We did that. I won,’ said Bryant, clipping the nodule off a piece of jigsaw and hammering it into place.

  ‘Well, here’s another game you can try your hand at,’ said Land, checking the page in his hand. ‘A young lady who used to work in a sandwich shop in High Holborn. I want you to go and see her.’

  ‘If you’re after a cheese and tomato bap, I’m sure we can send someone down to the shop on the corner,’ said May.

  ‘This person won’t be serving you anything,’ said Land. ‘She’s been shot through the head.’

  Bryant immediately rose and reached for his hat.

  ‘Not you,’ said Land. ‘I’ve got another job for you.’

  ‘But we always work together,’ pleaded Bryant, looking pitiful.

  ‘Not this time,’ Land warned. ‘Let John handle it without your help. I need you to clean out all your rubbish. There’s a stuffed moose blocking the fire door. We could be shut down.’

  ‘Sorry, Arthur,’ said May, heading for the door. ‘I’ll take Janice and keep you in the picture, I promise.’

  It was the no man’s land between Boxing Day and New Year�
�s Eve, when London emptied out and even the Peculiar Crimes Unit was running a skeleton crew. Less than a fortnight after the Met had been forced to hold a placatory press conference about London’s unexpected and unwelcome rise in seasonal crime, a shooting in its most ambitious new restaurant was not what anyone needed. John May had only seen its interior in magazines, all gilt columns and mosaics. Now, with the lights up and the revellers gone, you could see it had once been a municipal swimming baths. It was very different from the King’s Cross trattoria where the unit’s staff could be found carb-loading on spag-bogs after a long shift. The inside of the Water House was ‘ironic’, apparently, so it had kept its changing booths and shower cubicles as a reminder of its origins. But from the corpse near the entrance it appeared that someone had high-dived without checking the water level.

  ‘Amanda McFarland,’ he repeated, checking his notes and looking around. ‘Either of the owners on their way?’

  ‘Trying to get hold of them now,’ Janice Longbright pointed out, studying the celebrity photographs lining the walls.

  ‘The smarmy one who’s always in the photos – remind me of his name?’

  ‘Jake Finnegan,’ Longbright said. ‘The deceased was living with him.’

  ‘I’ve got her down here as married. You, skinny lad, who’s the husband?’

  One of the waiters came forward. He looked very badly shaken. As you would be, thought May, to find your boss gunned down at her reception desk. ‘I believe Mrs McFarland is separated,’ he explained in an accent that confirmed his Eastern European origins.

  May’s interest was piqued. ‘Ever seen the ex?’

  ‘He came around once, making trouble.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘An army type, and a – what you say? – convict. He’d been in jail.’