‘There shouldn’t be,’ said Meera, ‘it’s chicken Kiev. Normally all it does is spit boiling garlic all over you.’
‘Yeah, like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park.’
‘That wasn’t garlic. It was venomous sputum.’
‘It was a joke, Meera. Lighten up.’
They were chewing their way through mountains of carbohydrates in La Veneziana while Gary Garibaldi sang ‘My Way’, pulling at his gusset every time he hit a high note.
‘I wish he wouldn’t keep doing that,’ said Meera through a mouthful of spaghetti. ‘Why do Italians always have to play with themselves?’
‘It’s a matriarchal society,’ Colin replied, still sawing.
Meera put down her fork. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Well, they have to keep checking everything’s still there.’
‘I suppose that was a joke, too.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll never get used to you.’
‘I don’t know, you came on a date.’
‘We’re having dinner.’
‘But a dinner is a date.’
‘No, dinner is dinner.’
‘What about if you have dessert?’
‘Trust me, you’re not getting dessert.’
There was a controlled explosion of garlic sauce. Colin wiped it off his shirt with a nonchalance that suggested it happened every time he ate, which wasn’t far from the truth. ‘Don’t look now,’ he said, still wiping, ‘but John’s on the other side of the – I said don’t look!’
Meera turned in her seat. ‘Oh, he’s with the fire officer. She’s quite attractive without her helmet and gumboots.’
‘Is he on a date?’ Colin asked.
‘He’s having dinner, like we are.’
‘Yeah, but whatever you say, we’re here because I won the bet.’
Meera gave in. There wasn’t any use in arguing any longer. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘we’re on a date.’
The idea dawned on Colin. ‘We’re on a date,’ he said, jumping up and grabbing her.
‘Colin, what are you doing?’ Meera tried to wriggle free but he only held her tighter. He was like Pepé Le Pew hugging a black cat that had accidentally got white paint down its back. He gave her an over-emphatic garlicky kiss before releasing her and plonking back in his chair.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I know you don’t like PDAs.’ He looked down at his wet shirt. ‘I’m a mess.’
Meera gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘I’ve seen you covered in bits of cabbage.’
Colin smiled. ‘I’ve pulled you out of a bin.’
The thought that perhaps they deserved each other after all crossed both their minds as they ordered dessert.
In the unlit basement of 231, Caledonian Road, one of the two Daves called to the other. ‘Give me a hand with this, will you?’ He pointed his torch at the great box, approximately eight feet long and three feet wide, that they had uncovered in the centre of the river-damp floor. ‘The lid weighs a ton.’
The other Dave sidled over with a cage lamp and set it down. He took up his place at the corner of the lid and together they strained to lift it. As it was made from a single slab of Portland stone it proved too heavy to raise, so they were forced to slide it over, and even then it would only move inch by painful inch.
After twenty minutes they had managed to shift it halfway, but then it reached its tipping point and dropped, slamming to the floor, where it split in half. The Daves jumped out of the way to avoid having their toes crushed.
One of them crept forward with the cage light and gingerly lowered it over the edge.
‘Is there something inside?’ asked Dave One, straining to see.
‘Not something,’ replied Dave Two. ‘Someone.’
Before heading off to meet Blaize Carter, May had given his partner a lift home. Pulling up on the corner of Euston Road and Judd Street, he reached over to unlock the passenger door. ‘Are you going to be all right from here?’
‘Of course I am,’ Bryant replied. ‘It’s only a short walk through to Harrison Street. We won’t find Ali Bensaud, you know, and nor should we look for him.’
‘He tried to kill someone,’ said May.
‘Let’s say there were extenuating circumstances.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, bright and early.’
‘You don’t need picking up?’
‘No, I can manage perfectly well, thanks.’
The sky had cleared and diamond stars augured the first winter frost. Unable to clear his palate of the taste of the raspberry and almond cocktail, Bryant headed down into Cromer Street, to the scruffy little Irish pub on the corner called the Boot. It was always empty at this time of night.
As the wall-mounted television was showing football highlights on Sky Sports with the colour turned up so high that the entire room was emerald green, he bought himself a cleansing pint of Camden Pale Ale and took it outside. Although it was cold, a lone stranger sat at the single wooden bench table with his hands around a pint of stout.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Bryant asked.
‘Not at all, sir,’ said the gentleman, shifting his book over to make room.
Bryant sneaked a look at his fellow imbiber. He had a peculiar tonsure of dark chestnut hair swept forward and up at the sides, and a straggling, greying beard that seemed determined to fly in all directions at once. His velvet-collared jacket had the widest lapels Bryant had seen since the disco years. He was perhaps in his mid-fifties, although it was hard to tell for his eyes were young and shone brightly.
‘What are you reading?’ Bryant asked companionably.
‘Not reading,’ said the gentleman, with a look that suggested he was pleased to be asked. ‘Rehearsing, sir.’
Bryant tried to see the cover of the book and failed. The light from the overhead globes was low. ‘Are you an actor?’
‘We are all actors in the pantomime of life, are we not?’ The reply came with a knowing smile. ‘But no, too itinerant a life. I am merely a reader. At least, I shall be reading aloud, from this.’ He raised the cover of the book and Bryant saw that it was Our Mutual Friend. ‘I cannot countenance the idea of making another assault on Tiny Tim this Christmas, so I thought I would give them something of a rather more demanding nature.’
Bryant took another look at his companion, and his blue eyes widened.
He recalled that between 1868 and 1869 Charles Dickens gave a series of so-called ‘farewell readings’ across Great Britain. He was contracted to deliver one hundred in all but the strain proved too much, and after he collapsed the tour was cancelled.
‘Your most far-sighted and sophisticated work, I’ve always thought,’ said Bryant, filled with awe. ‘A beautiful combination of psychological insight, satire and social analysis, woefully underappreciated.’
Dickens barked out a laugh. ‘It is about money, sir, money and nothing but, the getting and giving of it, the raising up and falling down of it. Which is to say it is about London. I thought it would be more popular. The public prefer the sentiment of Little Nell and the death of Nancy, and who can blame them?’ He looked hard into his beer, as if staring into the depths of the river. ‘Money,’ he repeated, ‘the spread and taint and stink of it. I thought the city would change in my lifetime. I thought that the poor would rise, that injustice would be levelled like a dust-pile. I was sorely disappointed to find that the tides would continue to lift and fall on the dispossessed and those who feed from them. I tried to be kinder as I aged. Why could not my city do the same?’
Bryant knew that there was no one in England more qualified to rail against the injustices of London. Dickens had spent his life seeking social reform, only to become bitterly disillusioned by its end. He had even sought to make amends for his writing, softening the character of Mr Riah in Our Mutual Friend to apologize to critics who had misread Fagin as representative of all Jews, and what had happened? Those same critics had turned and accused him of being too kind. There was no pleasing them. The great man w
as too much everywhere at once, and needed to be torn down.
‘You’re still here, though,’ said Bryant, seeking to encourage.
‘Ah yes – well. Every traveller has a home of his own, and learns to appreciate it the more from his wanderings. I used to live down the road, you know, in Doughty Street. I was much younger then, and green.’
‘It’s a museum now,’ said Bryant. ‘You were born over two hundred years ago.’
Dickens released another alarming yelp of laughter and suddenly seemed very young indeed. ‘Then I am thankful for my longevity. And this little pub is still here! I mentioned it in Barnaby Rudge, you know.’ He cleared his throat. ‘“The Boot was a lone house of public entertainment, situated in the fields at the back of the Foundling Hospital; a very solitary spot and quite deserted after dark.” Something like that, my memory is not what it was. I only put it in because I passed it on most days.’ He pointed at Bryant. ‘But you, sir, if you are the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, tell me – does London find a way to shed its venomous skin and start afresh with a kindlier heart?’
Bryant later had time to think long and hard about the answer he gave that night.
‘I would like to say that its people have more compassion now, because they know how others have to live. I fear that for every stride forward there is always someone who would have us take another step back.’
‘But the people of London know what is wrought in their name?’ asked his companion. ‘We did not, you see. It was easier to turn away from our fellow men.’
‘They know,’ said Bryant, ‘because London is no longer a city. It is a world. We share the stories of our lives with each other.’
‘Then it must be harder for us to hide our failings from one another, and that is surely a good thing,’ said Dickens, draining his pot and rising. ‘Forgive me, but I still have many pages to learn tonight. I must be on my way. We can never afford to stop learning, any of us.’ He turned and shook Bryant’s hand. ‘An honour, sir, and my gratitude to you for indulging an old man’s foolishness.’
‘The pleasure was entirely mine,’ said Bryant. He knew that the author would succumb to a stroke after a day spent hard at work on his unfinished novel, the world’s first whodunit, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
No, he thought, his heart soaring at the thought, we must never stop learning. I’ve always felt that, but now I’ve heard it from the master.
Bryant rose to his feet and looked around but Cromer Street was deserted once more, the tops of the great dark oak trees rustling in the rising night breeze, a copy of the Metro fluttering along the pavement.
The trouble with you, Charlie boy, he thought as he twirled his walking stick and set off for the warmth of home, was that you had so much righteous anger boiling away inside you and no one to truly share it with. You were only ever the great Charles Dickens. Us, we’re Bryant & May.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the interests of playing fair, I had woven the solution to Mr Bryant’s malady into the last three books. The novels are complete in themselves and are designed to be read out of sequence without any discernible loss.
The idea for this particular novel came from talking to neighbours whom I simply regarded as Londoners without ever considering their backgrounds, and discovering that they came from countries like Iran and Bulgaria. ‘To Londonize’ should be a verb, because it’s what happens to many people who arrive here – London is a city in which newcomers are quickly adopted and can quickly adapt, to the point where their speech patterns perfectly match those of born Londoners. So this book is for them and their new lives.
As always, I must thank Simon Taylor at Transworld for his perspicacious notes, Kate Samano, and Richenda Todd for her excellent edit. Thanks also to PR Sophie Christopher, agents James Wills and Mandy Little, and to the bloggers, librarians and booksellers whose passion keeps us working through the night.
Bryant & May will return in Wild Chamber.
For advice, comment and constructive argument about writing, London, movies, books and just about everything else, talk with me at www.christopherfowler.co.uk or on Twitter @peculiar.
About the Author
Christopher Fowler is the award-winning author of more than forty novels – including thirteen featuring the detectives Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit – and short-story collections. The recipient of the coveted CWA ‘Dagger in the Library’ Award for 2015, his most recent books are the Ballard-esque thriller The Sand Men and Bryant & May – London’s Glory. His other works include screenplays, video games, graphic novels, audio plays and two critically acclaimed autobiographies, Paperboy and Film Freak. His weekly column ‘Invisible Ink’ runs in the Independent on Sunday. He lives in King’s Cross, London, and Barcelona.
Visit www.christopherfowler.co.uk
Also by Christopher Fowler, featuring Bryant & May
FULL DARK HOUSE
THE WATER ROOM
SEVENTY-SEVEN CLOCKS
TEN-SECOND STAIRCASE
WHITE CORRIDOR
THE VICTORIA VANISHES
BRYANT & MAY ON THE LOOSE
BRYANT & MAY OFF THE RAILS
BRYANT & MAY AND THE MEMORY OF BLOOD
BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE
BRYANT & MAY: THE BLEEDING HEART
BRYANT & MAY: THE BURNING MAN
BRYANT & MAY: LONDON’S GLORY
PAPERBOY: A MEMOIR
FILM FREAK
For more information on Christopher Fowler and his books, see his website at www.christopherfowler.co.uk
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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www.transworldbooks.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Christopher Fowler 2016
Jacket illustration by Max Schindler
Christopher Fowler has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526181
ISBN 9780857523426
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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