Bryant & May 06 - The Victoria Vanishes

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Hey, no problem. You take care of yourself.’

  He trusts me, Bryant thought guiltily as he turned away.

  Paradoxically, the idea had come from Harold Masters himself, when he had revealed at the beginning of the week that a crystal vial containing the blood of Christ was liable to hold germs that would be dangerous in a modern environment. It had set Bryant thinking, and reminded him that they were employing a man with connections in such a field.

  Dan Banbury had done a brilliant job at short notice. If he ever goes to the bad we’ll all be in danger, the lad has a terrible knack for such things, he thought, eyeing the innocent package.

  Going to the press about Theseus would require leaving a trail back to the PCU, so Dan had suggested that an appropriate way to deal with the company was to send them a message showing that their secret was out. Inside the chocolate box was a soluble membrane filled with a colourless, odourless fluid. Banbury had whipped it up in Kershaw’s lab from ordinary household ingredients, using a recipe he had developed at college.

  It would take approximately five hours for the membrane to dissolve at room temperature, releasing the chemical through the slotted plastic base of the box. As it evaporated, the exposed oily particles would be drawn into the working ventilation system and would cling to every surface inside the building.

  The chemical components would induce mild nausea and vomiting, but would have no lasting effect. However, the offices would need to be evacuated and quarantined while everything was cleaned. In a nice touch, Banbury had thought to include the photographs of the four women who had died because of what they knew. Resignations would no doubt be tendered, questions would be asked, and new brooms would discreetly sweep clean, but ultimately the company would survive.

  As he walked away, it occurred to Bryant that the only person to get hurt by his actions would be the guard. They’ll fire Mandume and remove his security status, he thought gloomily.

  48

  * * *

  THE LAST FAREWELL

  On the following Wednesday morning, Arthur Bryant stood motionless in the rain on Gray’s Inn Road, watching the iridescent carapaces of black taxis chug past King’s Cross station.

  Beyond the railway tracks, cranes were moving girders with regal slowness, replacing the demolished Victorian housing blocks with vast glass boxes. London is becoming an alien place to me, he thought, polyglot, splintered and patchwork. But I think I’m actually learning to like it this way. Perhaps we can finally be whoever we want to be.

  Once there had been recognizable London types, ranks as distinct and separate as bird families were to twitchers. They had been replaced by fluctuating, instinctive tribes. Now, the city’s occupants seemed united by tension and velocity.

  We’ve traded away something precious, he realized. This is no longer a city in which you can ever relax. I remember . . .

  He remembered empty wet streets where the sound of clinking milk bottles acted as alarm clocks, where the clop of a carthorse was a call to bring out unwanted furniture. He remembered so much that the weight of it all made him tired.

  A faint nightscape of stars like sugar grains in the smoky dusk above London Fields.

  Ragged children running after a Bentley driven slowly through Bethnal Green, the same children who danced behind the trucks that sprayed water on roads during August scorchers.

  The rickety Embankment tree-walk, illuminated with Chinese lanterns made of coloured paper.

  Raucous chimps’ tea parties at the London Zoological Gardens.

  His mother swimming in the Thames, sunbathing on the sickly yellow artificial beach at Tower Bridge. Albert, his tragically short-lived brother, building sandcastles.

  Thomas and Jack, his uncles, mending beehives behind Southwark Bridge, delivering sacks of root vegetables for illegal sale in the side streets of Bermondsey.

  His crazy half-sister Alice, playing the untuneable piano in her dive bar in the basement of the Borough Corn Exchange, the same bar that had the channel of a forgotten underground river sluicing through the back of its gents’ toilet.

  Too much to remember. Time to let it go, he told himself.

  Nothing had yet appeared in print about the contamination of a Defence Ministry outsource agency, but two days ago he had received notification from Leslie Faraday that the PCU had been officially disbanded owing to public-spending cuts.

  The offices above Mornington Crescent Tube station had already been filled by a new department specializing in some kind of electronic fraud. Nobody had been told who comprised the new team, or what exactly they did. The old locks had already been replaced with a swipe-card system, and white shutters had been lowered over the arched windows. At least we stayed true to ourselves, he smiled. Even if it did involve poisoning a government building in an act of revenge. A small subversion, perhaps, but a necessary one.

  The tall blue shape flapping through the downpour towards him coalesced into the figure of John May. ‘Arthur, what are you doing here?’ he demanded to know. ‘I thought we were going to meet on Waterloo Bridge as usual. You’ll catch your death of cold.’

  ‘I wanted to be somewhere different today,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m very wet.’

  ‘Is there a decent pub around here?’

  The elderly detective swivelled himself about, checking in either direction. ‘That way,’ he pointed, peeping out above his scarf.

  They went to the Water Rats on Gray’s Inn Road. ‘I know this place,’ said May, pushing open the door. ‘Bob Dylan performed here in 1962. And Oasis.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a pop group of some sort,’ said Bryant, hauling himself on to a bar stool.

  ‘More of a Beatles tribute band. I thought you were going to stay up to date with popular culture,’ May admonished.

  ‘Oh, I tried but it was so boring, just affairs and divorces and who’s snubbing who. Like the 1950s, only more vulgar. I don’t understand why the young admire celebrities who possess the charm of intestinal parasites. I saw that singer in the paper, the one with a face like a boiled owl, complaining about how she hated to be recognized. In the accompanying photograph she had chosen to reveal a substantial portion of her pubic bone below a black-leather corset. Within ten seconds of finishing the article I had already forgotten her name.’

  ‘I thought you had got your memory back.’

  ‘Mrs Mandeville’s techniques worked wonders, I must say. I still tend to favour remembrance of the arcane over the relevant, but that’s more to do with personal taste.’ He held up his pint, waiting impatiently for it to settle. ‘For example, do you know why this pub is associated with music, and how it got its name?’

  May raised an eyebrow. ‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘You’ll like this one. I’m thinking of including it on my next guided tour of London. At the end of the nineteenth century, some music-hall performers purchased a puny little horse called Magpie, and used its race winnings to help the London poor and Eastern European refugees. One rainy day, a day not unlike this, a couple of the owners were returning the soaked Magpie to its stable when a passing bus-driver asked what it was. They replied that it was a trotting pony. ‘Trotting pony?’ mocked the driver. ‘It looks more like a bleedin’ water rat!’ From that remark was born the Grand Order of the Water Rats, a showbusiness brotherhood presided over by Prince Philip and Prince Charles that performs charitable works irrespective of race, creed or colour. Not bad work for a run-down boozer behind a railway station.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s important that someone should remember things like that,’ said May.

  ‘Indeed. So long as somebody remembers, the city remains alive.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the PCU all week,’ May admitted with a sigh. ‘It’s the others I feel sorry for. Where will they go? I don’t suppose the Met will want any of them back. Why are gifted individuals always forced out by the mediocracy?’

  ‘True. If you’re a woman, or senior, or Muslim, you’ll
only ever get so far. They make sure of that. But we’ve done all our best work in our later years. Men only come to their senses in their fifties, around about the time that most housewives go mad. They realize what they’ve lost and what they can still achieve.’

  ‘On the way over here I was thinking about the years we spent in the rooms above Mornington Crescent Tube station.’

  ‘I’m going to miss the place. We had some fun there, didn’t we?’

  ‘You mean when we weren’t blowing it up, hiding wanted criminals in its cupboards, freeing groups of illegal immigrants, burying evidence, falsifying documents and telling dirty jokes to members of the royal family?’

  ‘It was all for the public good.’ Bryant was wide-eyed with innocence, but it was a look that would have fooled no one. ‘Although I’ll admit I’m quite surprised that the ministry didn’t pay someone to knock us off, simply for being a constant source of embarrassment to them.’

  ‘I heard you took Dan Banbury back to the supermarket in Whidbourne Street the other day.’

  ‘Yes, I thought I’d search for signs that the pub had been installed there. He told me they were pretty easy to spot once he knew where to look. Screwdriver damage, scraps of tape and paint-stencil marks. Of course, the building had originally been converted from a pub to a shop, so it required very little effort to turn back time for an evening. They simply placed painted flats over the lower half of the extended shop windows and whacked some plant-holders on top. We can’t press charges on the store owner, as it seems he was pressured into cooperation by people from Theseus. Some kind of bureaucratic error to do with his immigration visa. I’d love to have seen the look on Harold Masters’ face when Pellew told him what he wanted next. Masters was over a barrel by that time. What could he do but comply with Pellew’s request?’

  ‘He’ll carry the can for all of this, you wait and see. He’s the perfect scapegoat, a dazed, embittered academic, trapped into compounding a series of crimes by proxy. How convenient for everyone.’

  ‘I can’t feel too sorry for him, John. He chose his path long ago. I shall enjoy writing up the case for my memoirs.’

  ‘And to think we would never have uncovered any of this if you hadn’t decided to wander home half-cut,’ said May.

  ‘I just wish I could remember what happened to Oswald Finch’s ashes,’ said Bryant, ‘because that was really where it all – oh my God.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered what I did with them.’

  ‘What you did with them?’

  ‘I’ll admit I was a bit drunk. I was standing at the bar staring at that ghastly cheap urn, thinking about how much Oswald would have hated being in it, and decided he should have a better home.’

  ‘Oh no.’ May clenched his teeth, preparing for the worst.

  ‘I unscrewed the lid and took out the contents. The ashes were in a plastic bag. I was going to transfer him to Alma’s tulip vase. I thought he’d be happier in there.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just take the urn home with you?’

  ‘I hated it. I threw it into the bin behind the bar.’

  ‘What did you do with his ashes, Arthur?’

  ‘I put them in the only bag I could find. The one Janice had bought for the office.’ Bryant tried to suppress a laugh, but it escaped and grew until May, too, understood what had happened, and found himself joining in.

  49

  * * *

  THE COLOUR OF BLOOD

  Arthur Bryant stood before the illuminated glass case containing the holy relic, and knew that he had discovered the answer to an extraordinary conundrum.

  His hands shook with the knowledge of something so incredible. ‘I’m the only other one who knows,’ he told May. ‘The only other person to figure it out, and it’s all because of something Harold Masters said.’

  They were back in the British Museum, far beneath the sound of pattering rain, in chambers filled with artefacts few tourists bothered to examine.

  ‘The mythic ancient pubs, like the Jerusalem in Britton Street and the Rose and Crown in Clerkenwell, they don’t reveal the secret. What I’m looking for isn’t hidden in either of them. The Crown isn’t a crown of thorns, just regal adornment. The so-called clues are mere puzzle-games for students of folklore. Harold knew all along, you see.’

  ‘No, I don’t see at all,’ May admitted. ‘You’re being a very confusing old man. You told me you saw him to ask about the blood of Christ. I knew the subject had been bothering you ever since we investigated that street gang, the Saladins. How – what – did he know? And why on earth would he agree to tell you?’

  As Bryant had predicted, the bewildered academic now found himself in the dock for crimes he had not committed, but with the weight of Britain’s security forces behind his prosecution, he did not stand a chance in hell of being vindicated. With the PCU closed down and disbanded, its investigating officers could give him no help.

  Bryant turned his attention back to the glittering relic.

  ‘Masters has probably known about this for quite a while, that’s what started his extra-curricular research projects and brought him to the attention of Theseus in the first place. What a terrible burden of knowledge he faced. He’d discovered the fabled blood of Christ, and knew he could never bring it to anyone’s attention. He told me why himself, only I was too stupid to understand at the time.’

  ‘You mean that’s it?’ said May. ‘That peculiar thing in the case? Why isn’t it better protected? Why aren’t there hordes of prostrate nuns around it?’

  ‘Because nobody else knows it’s here. They think it’s something else entirely.’

  The reliquary was bottle-shaped, elaborately jewelled and gilded, surrounded by enamelled angels, arches and sunbursts. May craned forward to study the inscription on the side that read ISTA EST UNA SPINA CORONA DOMINI NOSTRI IHESU XPISK. He noted the small plaque attached to the casing. ‘it says this is the Holy Thorn reliquary belonging to Jean, Duc de Berry, created between 1400 and 1410. It was built to house Christ’s crown of thorns from the Crucifixion.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a mystery behind this strange object that has never been solved.’ Bryant gave him a knowing look. He loved having the ability to enlighten others. ‘It began with the construction of an imperial crown decorated with four of the original thorns from Christ’s head, but some time later the crown was broken up and its component parts were re-used to make more treasures. The gifting and possession of such items was capable of wielding immense political influence. So four new separate reliquaries were assembled, but three of them were created by forgers. The only way to tell them apart was by looking at the enamelled backs of the doors, there, see? The fake versions don’t have those.’ He thumped a forefinger on the glass, indicating the centre of the jewelled reliquary.

  ‘Here the story gets murky, because nobody knows what happened to this thing between the time it was constructed and when it came into the possession of the British Museum in 1898. Ignore the sapphires, pearls and rubies in the setting, ignore the trumpeting angels and the rather lurid scene of the Last Judgement which surrounds it, not to mention those gruesome cherubs raising the dead, and you’ll see that there’s a crystal window at its heart. Just in case you miss the point, there’s an inscription that reads ‘This is a thorn from the crown of Our Lord Jesus Christ’. Xpisk? Why not Cristi, the Latin for Christ? Well, there’s certainly a thorn in there. Or is that what it is? Did you remember to bring your Valiant with you?’

  May dug in his pocket and produced a huge red-topped cinema torch, while his partner kept an eye out for guards.

  ‘Now, point it very carefully at the crystal.’

  May shone the torch over the centre of the reliquary. The jewels responded to light by revealing a deep lustre of indigos, ivories, scarlets. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Not the thorn itself, but the edges where it meets the surrounding encrustation of precious metals.’

  Shining the
Valiant at the centre of the reliquary, he opened up its dark heart. A glinting line appeared, like a fine molten seam. ‘There’s a defect,’ he said. ‘It looks like a very faint crack. Oh – I think I understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bryant softly, crouching beside his partner. ‘It’s not a thorn at all, is it? It’s oxidization. The air’s got to it through a flaw in the crystal.’

  ‘Oxidized blood,’ said May, awed.

  ‘Given its colour, you can see how easily the vial’s contents were mistaken for something made of wood.’

  ‘The blood of Christ. You really think that’s what it is?’

  ‘There’s one man who might hold the answers, and now I don’t suppose I’ll be able to get anywhere near him,’ replied Bryant. ‘What if the flaw is so tiny that the vial’s contents are only oxidized on its surface?’

  May found himself sweating, despite the chill in the museum. ‘My God, I see what you mean. It’s an analysis sample. We’d be able to conduct the ultimate investigation. We’d have a direct line to the heart of the Christian faith.’

  ‘Think of the uproar such a thing would create. Masters knew this, and it became his curse to know. He discovered Pandora’s Box, and not only could he not open it, he would never be able to tell anyone of its existence without destroying his entire career. He’s an expert on mythology, John. He’s one of the most public atheists in the country.’

  ‘And what do we do?’ asked May. ‘Secrets have a way of escaping, remember?’

  ‘This is one that cannot be allowed to get out,’ said Bryant, taking his partner’s arm and leading him away, just as the guard returned to the chamber. ‘We ignore it, and allow it to lie among the other treasures of confused provenance. Even as I speak, a team of very expensive lawyers is looking for ways to discredit Harold Masters. They can’t silence him, but they can stop him from being believed. That’s why you and I will escape any charges. Why would they risk having us reveal the things we know when they can simply throw the book at him?’