Bryant & May and the Invisible Code (Bryant & May 10)

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant held his partner’s gaze with a long, steady look, and then removed the envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it over. May took out the card and read the decoded sentence that Bryant had highlighted.

  It said: ‘OSKARKASAVIANMURDERER’.

  May went to the window and opened it wide, setting a flurry of pigeons to flight and allowing the late-night traffic noise to flood the room. ‘That isn’t possible,’ he said. ‘It can’t be him. Why would he hire us to find out what was wrong with his wife if he was secretly destroying her?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t find his fingerprints on anything. He’s made sure he’s untouchable. Think about it. He hired a thug, Terebenin, and got hold of untraceable toxins. He has all the right connections. He was with his wife every night. He’s convinced we can’t solve the case, and he’ll be ready to damn us when we fail. He’s lied to everyone. Sabira discovered something that could destroy him, and was removed because she was too difficult to manage. You know it’s true, John. In your heart, you’ve always known it couldn’t be anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Think about it. Why didn’t Sabira tell us outright? Because she was being watched, and everything was overheard and reported. Whatever she discovered about her husband was so big that she knew he’d do anything to keep it hidden. If she’d communicated with us directly, he would have found out about it and acted with even more celerity. What on earth could she do? When we met in Smith Square, I told her I was good at breaking codes, remember? I gave her the idea.’

  ‘So she used the only code she remembered from her childhood and sent you a message.’

  ‘But the two envelopes were separated in such a way that we might never have found the second one.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that we have nothing, and he knows it.’

  ‘He knows how to cover his tracks, John. Even if we did get physical proof, he’d make sure that everyone closed ranks against us. His wife’s meeting with the photographer made him realize she was on to him, so he had evidence planted in Waters’s flat to damage her reputation. And when that didn’t work, he knew he would have to get rid of her.’

  ‘I suppose Sabira’s message wouldn’t hold water in a court of law?’

  ‘Of course not. Even if we could prove she sent it, she’s on record as having psychological problems. We have evidence but no proof. If Giles can show that she was being systematically poisoned, we would still need to trace the trail back to Kasavian.’

  ‘All right,’ said May. ‘We’ll put this to the vote.’

  He walked back into the common room. ‘Listen up, everyone, I need your attention. Arthur and I have new information, but if we share it with you it could put everyone at risk. The two of us are prepared to go it alone. If you choose to abstain from taking the investigation further, your decision will be treated without prejudice.’

  Renfield was the first to speak. ‘This is a police unit, not an insurance office. We didn’t sign up for the health-and-safety aspect of the job.’

  ‘Jack’s right,’ said Meera. ‘I don’t see why we should let you have all the glory when it’s cracked.’

  ‘Hear what we’ve got first.’

  ‘No,’ said Renfield. ‘Does anybody want to opt out?’

  No hands went up.

  ‘Very well. Arthur will brief you on the latest turn of events.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bryant. ‘I just want you to know that we’ll all be going to hell for this. This is the sort of thing that can undermine an entire government.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Renfield. ‘Bang goes the knighthood.’

  36

  RUNAWAY

  IT WAS 2.30 a.m. when the briefing session finished, and the detectives sent everyone home. ‘We can’t protect them all,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s spreading fast and it’s going beyond our control. There are already too many people who know too much: Edona Lescowitz and the children, Lucy Mansfield and Tom Penry. Perhaps the kids are safe – no one would believe them.’

  ‘Then we have to wrap it up fast, before Kasavian gets wind of anything,’ said May. ‘And every step of this case has to be solid. I suggest we keep the PCU operational as a safe house for anyone who needs it.’

  Banbury had run a check on everything emitting an electronic pulse in the building, and had been able to account for all devices except Bryant’s radio, which continued working even after it had been unplugged and had had the batteries removed. It was agreed that no unknown callers would be admitted until they had closed the investigation, which needed to be before Kasavian headed for Europe, when he would move beyond their reach.

  ‘I suggest we hit the Rakes’ Club tomorrow, as soon as it opens its doors. Sequester their accounts and membership log. We’re dead without evidence.’

  They headed out to collect May’s BMW. The light rain was sheening the roads with yellow diamonds.

  ‘What’s so special about this particular club?’ asked May, unlocking the car door.

  ‘The Rakes’ was founded by a group of classically educated young Catholics who agreed to meet together on certain nights and kill the first man they met on the city streets,’ said Bryant. ‘For three years they literally got away with murder. London magistrates tried to find legal precedents to curb them but failed to do so, and of course there were no police. There’s evidence linking the ringleaders to the so-called Jesuit Treason, or Gunpowder Plot, of November the fifth 1605, after which most of them were eventually transported, but the Rakes’ Club survived. In fact, several other versions of so-called Hellfire clubs appeared in Europe, mainly in the Netherlands. Secret clubs demanded a level of loyalty that ranked above that to the Crown and the State. They terrified governments because of their ability to destabilize the population.’

  ‘But that’s the most fundamental tenet of the PCU’s remit, to prevent the disintegration of society.’

  ‘Indeed. The Hellfire clubs in their original form petered out at the end of the eighteenth century, when the old libertine ways died. The Napoleonic wars distracted everyone. But the clubs continued in new, more acceptable forms. Their members became wealthy landowners. In many ways they represented the very things that the Peculiar Crimes Unit was created to oppose.’

  May pulled out into Euston Road and turned on the windscreen wipers. ‘Hellfire – didn’t they practise Satanism and witchcraft?’

  ‘They did by the time Sir Francis Dashwood was remodelling West Wycombe House in the style of the Temple of Bacchus. They were the opposite of guilds and Masonic lodges. I suppose you could say they sought to encourage disorder, anarchy, drinking, gambling and above all promiscuity, strictly for the elite – peers, military men, the gentry. The Wig Club in Edinburgh required its members to make a toast from a penis-shaped glass after donning a wig made from the pubic hair of the royal mistresses from Charles II to George IV. It was full of lice, so they all ended up infested.’

  May laughed.

  ‘The concept of anarchic clubs still continues in other forms. For example, Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, the ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’, encouraged espionage and sabotage in Nazi-occupied Europe. I think a sense of anarchy exists deep within the English bloodline, and a good thing too.’

  ‘How on earth do you know all this?’ May asked.

  ‘Remember all those years when you were out late at night in West End supper clubs, chatting up young ladies? I was at home reading.’

  Ahead the lights were turning red, but when May applied the brakes his foot went straight to the floor.

  ‘Do you want to slow down a little bit?’ said Bryant. ‘There are several things going through my head at the moment, but I don’t want one of them to be the windscreen.’

  ‘Can’t,’ said May. ‘No brakes.’

  The BMW shot past a truck, heading towards the red lights.

  ‘It’s the big pedal in the middle, if memory serves,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Not working. Get in the back seat.’ />
  ‘Certainly not. I’m not going to leave you up here in the front. What if you take the key out of the ignition?’

  ‘That would engage the steering lock.’ The BMW raced through the lights, narrowly missing a Marks & Spencer truck and a very angry cyclist.

  ‘There are at least seven sets of lights on this stretch of the road,’ said Bryant. ‘The cabbies reckon you can hit something called a “golden run” when all of them are aligned green.’

  ‘I think we’re going to be hitting something else,’ May warned. ‘The next ones are turning red. We’re going to catch all of them.’

  ‘Wait – look.’ Bryant pointed at the ambulance in the next lane. ‘It’s heading for University College Hospital. Get behind it and stay as close as you can.’

  May swung the BMW in behind the ambulance and followed it across the next intersection, racing through the red lights. A police patrol car swung in behind them and started its siren.

  ‘Elderly detectives crushed in multiple pile-up,’ said Bryant. ‘I was planning to die in my sleep, not in the Euston Road. I don’t want to be remembered by a Sellotaph.’4

  ‘Will you shut up a minute and let me concentrate?’ May warned. They rode another red light. Miraculously, the next cross street was deserted. The ambulance was starting to slow in preparation for its left turn into the hospital. The BMW bumped its rear fender as the medics looked out of the window in alarm.

  The ambulance turned. May tried to turn with it, but felt his tyres start to slide.

  ‘I read somewhere that you’re supposed to turn into it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said May tetchily, ‘I’m trying to.’

  The BMW slipped off the wet road and bumpily mounted the pavement.

  ‘Go over there.’ Bryant airily waved his hand at the windscreen. ‘Between the lamp-post and the wall.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s enough of a gap.’

  The BMW shot into the space and was brought to a jarring, grinding stop as wall and lamp-post scraped the sides of the vehicle, dragging it to a standstill. Behind them, the patrol car halted and two officers jumped out.

  ‘I’ll let you talk us out of this one,’ said Bryant. ‘Then I’m going to go home for a cup of strong tea and a change of trousers.’

  4 A bunch of flowers taped to a lamp-post.

  37

  THE SICKNESS OF THE MOON

  ‘THE NEXT TIME you decide to go stock-car racing, you might not want to do it in the Euston Road,’ said Banbury the next morning.

  He had been called into the unit early, and still looked half-asleep. ‘I’ve just been over your car, John,’ he said. ‘The brakes weren’t cut. It looks like the shoes were oiled with some kind of industrial lubricant. Unusual molecular structure, like the sort of product NASA used to develop for the space program. Nice job, very professional. We’ll run a trace. There can’t be many people who could supply it. I think your repair bill is going to be more than the resale value. I hope you were insured.’

  ‘I don’t think my insurance covers assassination attempts,’ said May. ‘I need you to try and link it back to Kasavian.’

  ‘I hope you’re joking. There are no prints, nothing to suggest tampering.’

  ‘But you said a lubricant—’

  ‘There’s a lot of high-intensity industrial work going on in the backstreets around here. It could have been picked up from a spill. That’s the way these jobs are pulled off, John. They’re designed to leave room for interpretation.’

  ‘But you could check around the area, and if no one was using—’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Fair point,’ May conceded. ‘Giles reckoned he’d get clear proof that Sabira Kasavian was being slowly poisoned. Anything on that?’

  ‘Well, I spoke to him on the way in – didn’t see why I should be the only one up – and I think he’s run into trouble. So far all the isolated chemical components he’s had back from the Institute of Tropical Medicine are commonly found ingredients. They need to run further tests, which is going to take time and be expensive. Knowledge and proof are different states.’

  ‘But the only person who could consistently get close enough to her was Kasavian.’

  ‘That’s purely circumstantial.’

  ‘What about Waters’s death?’

  ‘That trail’s already gone.’

  ‘Then what else do we have? It sounds like O’Connor is our best bet.’

  ‘We could start at the other end, with the culprit.’

  ‘Except that he knows how we work,’ said May. ‘He’s been studying our methodology like a hawk for years, waiting for us to slip up.’

  Bryant sat up with a start. Everyone had thought he was asleep. ‘We still have a few tricks up our sleeve. There’s someone we can use: Leslie Faraday.’

  Faraday was the Home Office liaison officer, and the budget overseer of London’s specialist police units. Answerable only to Kasavian, he had carte blanche to investigate anything that failed to meet his approval. In the hands of someone intelligent this power would have been absolute, but Faraday was the sort of man whose mental circuitry had been soldered into place.

  ‘Faraday? He’s an idiot. What can he do?’

  ‘Oh, I absolutely agree. He’s W. S. Gilbert’s original “Disagreeable Man” – you know:

  Each little fault of temper and each social defect

  In my erring fellow-creatures I endeavour to correct.

  ‘But that’s the beauty of it; he’ll never spot what we’re up to. He can help us nail Kasavian. We need the Home Office agenda for the Paris presentation. I don’t think he’s just going to sign off on the initiative, I think he’s going to bury something else there, something he doesn’t ever want to surface here.’

  ‘How can he do that?’ asked May.

  ‘By placing security information under one of the Europe-wide anti-terrorism secrecy laws. If it’s neatly knotted with red tape and locked in an EU filing cabinet, we’ll never be able to get our hands on it.’

  ‘That gives us less than forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Then we’d better get a move on. We need to get into the Rakes’ Club. We’re not the only ones being set up for a fall; Stuart Almon’s card has also been marked. He’ll be our ticket in.’

  ‘Why would he agree to do it?’

  ‘You heard what Janice said. Almon is being sidelined. He’ll be there. Anyone who fears Kasavian is a potential ally. See if you can arrange to meet him when I get back. I want to be there.’

  ‘Why, where are you going now?’

  ‘I have to catch up with someone at the British Museum. I need some more specialist knowledge.’

  As always, Bryant’s thought processes were as mysterious as Mars and just as hard to reach. Gathering up his hat, stick and scarf, he set off for Museum Street.

  Georgia Standing did not look like an archivist specializing in the study of Roman lunar symbolism. She looked like a Goth who had come to London for a Cure concert and, having accidentally got locked in the British Museum, had decided to make the most of it. Her jet mane was sewn with Egyptian beads that glittered darkly as she swung towards him on high rubber boots. ‘Hey, Grandpa,’ she called, ‘you’re looking good. Still wearing my favourite scarf. Long time no see.’

  Bryant waved her hands away. ‘Don’t call me Grandpa and don’t try to do any complicated young-people handshakes with me. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Oh, you know. The female archivists try to trip me up with smart remarks and the married men have a tendency to hit on me. Meanwhile I haven’t had a decent date since the Queen Mother died. How’s the PCU?’

  ‘Still going, although at this rate we may not make it to the end of the week.’

  They strolled together across the gravelled forecourt, passing through a miasma of roasted frankfurters from the stall permanently moored at the museum gates.

  ‘I went to visit Harold Masters in the Royal Bethlem Hospital last month. The doctors don’t think
he’ll ever fully regain his sanity,’ said Standing. Masters had been her predecessor at the museum before attempting to strangle someone. ‘It amazes me how many academics have nervous breakdowns or start believing that God is speaking to them through the fireplace.’

  ‘It comes with the territory,’ said Bryant, taking her arm. ‘They focus their attention on one area of study for so long that they lose their perspective. Poor Harold. He was always rather highly strung. Speaking of madness, I need your help.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Murder victims with crimson cords tied around their left wrists.’

  ‘You’re talking about the cure for lunacy, the sickness of the moon. A very clerical concept, the evil of the mind, just as illness was to the body. Was there clovewort tied on to the red string?’

  ‘No. The cord wasn’t there as a remedy. It was a warning to others.’

  ‘Or a remembrance, perhaps. You know, madness has inspired some pretty irrational cures. Doctors tried to teach patients “therapeutic optimism” while attaching leeches to them, and when that failed they gave them blood transfusions from animals. The bloodline carried insanity, so I guess it made a warped kind of sense to try and bleed it out.’

  ‘I thought this case must be about madness at first, particularly as the victim was found underneath Hogarth’s painting of Bedlam from The Rake’s Progress.’

  ‘Was she wearing anything blue?’

  ‘You mean the colour of Bedlam? No, she offered no other clues.’

  ‘We were once the nation of the Mad Monarch, poor old King George. After that, Bedlam became a dumping ground for political prisoners.’

  ‘Well, it appears to have become so once again,’ Bryant explained. ‘Which is why I’m rather more interested in the other meaning of the Scarlet Thread.’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t believe all that old claptrap, do you?’ Standing led the way up the last flight of museum steps. ‘My co-workers keep telling me Harold Masters believed it too. Wouldn’t shut up about it, by all accounts.’