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

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I don’t think so, no,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Then why is a warden posted down there?’

  ‘Jake’s helping an American radiography unit. There’s a visiting professor analysing the bones and coffin plates.’

  ‘An American scientist,’ said May. ‘Theseus had US connections. Perhaps Pegasus does, too. As much as I’m loath to allow you to go wandering off into church crypts, Arthur, I think you’d better get down there, if you’re up to it.’

  ‘Of course I’m up to it,’ said Bryant, affronted. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Someone has to keep an eye on Stuart Almon. I wasn’t comfortable about leaving him with the Prince of Darkness.’

  Samuel Simmons was a director of the Cincinnati Bio-anthropology Research Unit, currently in charge of the Diagnostic Imaging Program being undertaken at St Bride’s. Right now he was keen to analyse an abscessed jawbone belonging to a young girl who probably died of the pain alone. Instead, a rumpled old man in a sagging tweed hat was peering at him intently from behind a stack of coffin lids.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the bearlike Simmons, extending a paw.

  ‘Arthur Bryant. Yes, you can.’ He handed the professor his PCU card. ‘I need that back, it’s my only one.’

  Simmons examined it and was clearly none the wiser. He returned it. ‘You’re a policeman?’

  ‘As amazing as it may seem, yes. I understand you’ve been working down here for over two years?’

  ‘On and off. It’s a slow process.’

  ‘Why, what exactly are you doing?’

  ‘We’re comparing the grave-marker plates found here with official death records to see if they accord. Then we X-ray the remains to see if the causes of death were accurate.’

  ‘And are they?’

  ‘Not very often. Between this and the charnel house crypt next door there must be the remains of around seven thousand bodies.’

  Bryant leaned into one of the lead coffins as if choosing something from the freezer. ‘Come up with any surprises? Found anything you shouldn’t have?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I mean before you started excavating. We’re looking for – well, I don’t exactly know what we’re looking for. Something a visitor could have left in the basement.’

  ‘No members of the general public are allowed down here,’ said Simmons. ‘Many of these coffins once housed cholera victims. There’s no risk of infection, but the bylaws require us to keep potential contaminants away from the public.’

  ‘How about visitors from within the scientific community?’

  ‘Yeah, we get a few of those. None lately.’

  ‘Have you found anything at all that shouldn’t be here? I’m thinking someone came by, used their company pass to gain entrance and left something to be collected.’

  ‘You have no idea what this item might have been?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Simmons pulled off his gloves. ‘Come with me. There’s a box of stuff in the back. Everything on the site has to be annotated, and the items that remain unidentifiable get put in a junk box.’ He pulled at a mud-stained cardboard carton and opened its flaps. ‘It’s mostly just debris, plus sweaters and books left behind by employees. But please, knock yourself out. There’s a table lamp over there.’

  Bryant picked his way through lost Tube passes, gloves, a pair of football boots, unallocated chunks of coping stone, loose change, paperbacks and folders of unfinished notes.

  He was about to give up when he saw it, a small steel memory stick sealed in a clear plastic bag. There was no label. There didn’t need to be. The bag had been tied with a strand of red wool.

  He held it beneath the lamplight. ‘Do you know where this came from?’ he asked Simmons.

  ‘No idea,’ Simmons replied. ‘People sometimes dropped in to see their partners. We had quite a number of interns helping us at the start.’

  ‘Do you have a record of their names?’

  ‘No need,’ said Simmons. ‘I remember them all. Try me.’

  ‘Amy O’Connor.’

  ‘The woman who died last week? Nope.’

  Bryant passed over the dossier on Peter Jukes and showed him a photograph. ‘Does this chap look familiar?’

  Simmons shook his head. ‘I’m just one of the guys here. I guess he could have visited while I was back in the States. The company name rings a vague bell.’

  ‘His name was Peter Jukes.’

  ‘The guy who drowned? I wasn’t here at the time, but I heard he came up from the MOD in Wiltshire to see what we were doing. Must have been soon after we started. Somebody read about his death and remembered the name.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what he wanted?’

  ‘Apparently we had a team project in common.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Blood. Yeah, I know, weird, huh? In the early days of our research we thought we might find a blood link through the bodies interred here. It seemed we might locate a hereditary disease passed through bloodlines because there were so many fathers and sons, mothers and daughters buried together. It didn’t take long for the Ministry of Defence to start sniffing around. A whole bunch of guys turned up and started asking questions. Some time later, Jukes followed them.’

  ‘What do you think they were all looking for?’

  ‘C’mon, Mr Bryant, you’re the detective, I think you know the answer to that one.’

  ‘They were interested in any biochemical discoveries you might make, particularly with regard to military applications.’

  ‘Can’t think of any other reason why they would be interested, can you?’ Simmons gave a lopsided grin.

  Bryant was amazed. O’Connor had come back, knowing that her lover had directed her to the church, but had not thought to check in the basement.

  ‘This was intended for the woman who died,’ said Bryant, indicating the wool-tied bag. ‘Why didn’t she come downstairs to collect it?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Simmons. ‘If you didn’t know about the crypt you sure wouldn’t come looking for it. You enter the church and look around, and the ground floor is all you can see. The vault door’s kept shut.’

  Given his fractious relationship with technology, Bryant didn’t trust himself to run the contents of the flash drive on Simmons’s computer equipment. Pocketing the bag, he thanked the professor and took his leave, heading back out into the rain.

  42

  THE ROOFTOP

  ‘SHE’S NOT GOING anywhere tonight,’ said Colin, looking up at the windows.

  ‘How do you work that out?’ Meera asked.

  ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? There was a Lovefilm DVD in her mailbox and she’s just gone in with a bottle of plonk. Bet you there’s a pizza delivery within the next half-hour.’

  The pair were still camped outside Edona Lescowitz’s apartment. ‘How do you know it’ll be a pizza?’

  ‘She’s a skinny European bird. They can really pack away the nosh without ever putting on weight. They eat green salads in restaurants and shovel down pasta at home, usually followed by a tub of ice-cream.’

  ‘I’ve always been amazed by your sensitive understanding of women, Colin.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I mean you don’t have any. We’re an alien race to you, aren’t we? A complete and total mystery. You’re probably aware that we share the same number of limbs, if not appendages, and that’s about it. So you and your mates down the pub can make up whatever you like about us and congratulate each other on being able to understand us. Incredible.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Meera. I understand more than you think. Especially about you.’

  Meera folded her arms and leaned back against the dustbins. She waited while a drum-and-bass-deafened teen in a pimped-up van thudded past. ‘Go on, then,’ she challenged. ‘Give me the benefit of your amazing male insight.’

  ‘No, ’cause you’ll get angry with me.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’
/>   ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yeah, just this once.’

  ‘Say it. Full sentence.’

  Meera hissed angrily through her teeth. ‘I promise not to get annoyed with Colin Marlin Bimsley when he tells me what he thinks of me, all right? Is Marlin really your middle name?’

  ‘It was my grandad’s. All right. I’ll tell you where your anger comes from. Your mum and dad favoured your sister. In their eyes she could never do anything wrong. Even though she always screwed up and let them down, especially when it came to fellas, they’ve always pretended not to notice or have quickly forgiven her, which winds you up, so they see you as the angry one. They were against you joining the force because they wanted you to get married to a nice Indian boy and give them grandchildren. When your sister said she wanted to open a restaurant they paid for it, even though they couldn’t afford to, and you didn’t speak to them for the best part of a year. Every time you try to put things right, they take it the wrong way. You try to control your anger, but you know it won’t go away until your sister gets married and takes the pressure off you, and there’s not much chance of that happening because she always picks the wrong blokes.’

  ‘That is a complete load of the most – total …’ Meera grasped for the words, fighting to control her temper.

  ‘It’s accurate, Meera. You know it and I know it.’ He pointed at her accusingly. ‘Every time you go home, you come back in a foul mood. Last time you even kicked Crippen, and it turns out she’s a lady cat so that’s not nice. And there’s only one thing that ever calms you down.’

  Meera’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Being with me. I can lower your blood pressure in a matter of minutes. You know the first thing you always do when you come back from seeing your folks? You come into the common room to find me. You hang around scowling for a while, shooting the breeze, then you go to your room. And you don’t even realize you do it. It’s me, Meera.’ He slapped his chest. ‘Ever since you joined the PCU, I’ve been the one constant loyalty in your life.’

  ‘Colin, that is so—’

  ‘Sssh.’ He held a forefinger gently to her lips. ‘Don’t say anything that will make you break your word.’ He looked up. ‘There you go, pizza-delivery man, ten minutes ahead of schedule.’

  A black Triumph had pulled up at the kerb. Its rider dismounted and opened his red pillion panier. He removed a pizza box and went to the front door.

  ‘At least she’s getting something to eat,’ said Colin. ‘I’m bloody starving.’

  Meera looked across the road in puzzlement. ‘Why hasn’t he turned his engine off?’

  ‘I guess he’s only going to be a minute.’

  ‘No, nobody does that. I should know. And it’s not the kind of bike pizza places use, it’s way too high-powered.’

  Colin threw down his coffee and ran across the road. The rider had already been admitted, but the door buzzer was still keeping the main entrance open. The empty pizza box had been dropped just inside the doorway. Colin took the stairs three at a time.

  She had already opened the door to him. Edona was in her dressing gown, money in one hand, but he had his arm across her throat. Colin’s rugby tackle was spectacularly foolhardy even by his standards. He brought them both down, which couldn’t be helped, but the rider was up and swinging something sharp in his fist. Colin was wearing his father’s old police-issue Doc Martens with steel toecaps, and punched one leg out hard, connecting with the rider’s groin.

  The blow must have been off though, because his opponent was up again, vaulting over him, heading for the staircase above.

  Each of the terraced buildings had a different kind of roof access. This one had a short flight of steps to a steel fire door, which was already being opened.

  Colin found himself faced with his worst nightmare. The roofscape before him was a darkened obstacle course of steep tarred slopes and brick gaps. He tried not to look down as he negotiated the slates, tried not to think of the spaces between objects that would recede or elongate, tricking his senses.

  Diminished spatial awareness was the inherited inability to judge heights and widths, a form of Ménière’s disease caused by the interaction of the eye, brain and inner ear. The problem had initially resulted in his rejection from the Met, but he had largely learned to control it – except at night, when everything appeared to flatten out.

  His quarry had jumped across an alleyway, landing on the next angled roof, and Colin gamely followed, but could feel a familiar giddiness starting to kick in. Screwing his eyes shut he made the jump, but barrelled into a chimney stack. Ahead, the rider climbed a slated peak with ease and jumped down the other side. Colin followed, but his left leg was burning and felt as if he had gashed it. He climbed, trying to gain purchase on the dirt-crusted slates, pushing himself up on the rubberized soles of his boots.

  On a flattened section of the next roof a group of teenagers were lounging in deckchairs, drinking beer. As Colin skittered down the rider dropped into the surprised circle and landed among them, scattering cans. Grabbing one of them, a young girl, he swung her over the edge in a single movement, as if she was weightless. He extended his arm and she screamed, trying to reach his neck.

  Colin held the others back. The motorcyclist appeared to be the same one that he and Meera had chased, although that was impossible. He wore the same riding leathers, helmet and boots, even moved with the same rolling gait. PCU members were unarmed; all Colin could do was force the others to stay back beyond the rider’s reach.

  Once he saw that they were not going to try and rush him, the rider lowered his hostage to the roof and pulled her with him towards the adjoining building.

  Colin followed as closely as he dared, but the game had changed. His main purpose now was to make sure that no harm came to the girl. She was being dragged backwards to the roof doorway, but was not making it easy for her abductor, yelling and kicking as she went.

  As soon as he saw a chance to get closer Colin ran forward, throwing himself at the pair with the same undirected energy that had got him banned from boxing matches. Crashing them all into a tangle of limbs, he tore at the rider’s helmet, trying to reveal his features, and was struck on the side of the head for his efforts.

  By the time he had recovered his senses, the rider was off again, a leather-clad rhinoceros thundering across the rooftops of Walthamstow, smashing through a washing line, then another, then – incredibly – straight through a barbed-wire fence that separated two roofs.

  Tearing the wires away, he headed doggedly on, jumping to the terrace of an apartment building where each flat was divided from the next by a wooden partition. They came down like drawbridges beneath his boot, one after the other. Gnomes were scattered. A pair of plastic herons were poleaxed and a faux wishing well went for a burton.

  What’s it going to take to stop him? Colin wondered, trying to stay close. He would have kept the pace, too, had not an angry householder burst from his home to berate the detective constable over a flattened begonia bed.

  As the old man blocked his path and threatened to call the cops, he could only watch helplessly as the rider dropped from the end of the terrace and vanished from view.

  By the time he got free and managed to make his way downstairs, there was no sign of the pizza bike.

  He found Meera in the stairwell. ‘I wasn’t close enough behind him,’ she said. ‘My bike was parked too far in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘Fine – a bit shaken. Maybe we should take her back with us.’

  ‘Take her on your bike,’ said Colin. ‘I’ll follow behind. I nearly had him.’

  ‘I know you did, Colin.’ Meera smiled at him. ‘Go on, I’ll see you back at the PCU.’

  43

  LOW CASTES

  ‘A WHISTLE-BLOWER,’ JOHN May exclaimed, ‘that’s what this is all about.’ He had examined the material on the flash drive left in the crypt by Peter Jukes and was debriefing the team
members in the chaotic common room. ‘Jukes was worried that what he knew would place him in a dangerous position, so he copied the information and left it at St Bride’s. The only person he was sure he could trust was his girlfriend. He told her part of what he knew but didn’t give her proof. I guess he knew that doing so would have shifted the burden of knowledge to an innocent outsider. Instead, he left it in the church, thinking that he could send her there to collect it if things got bad.’

  ‘But she didn’t get the message?’ said Land, confused.

  ‘Perhaps she misunderstood, or he failed to make himself clear. He’d have been under a lot of pressure by then. Arthur believes she went to the church thinking he meant it was a place where they could connect on a spiritual level, whereas Jukes had something more practical in mind.’

  ‘So what’s on the drive?’ Longbright asked, ‘or are we still being kept on a need-to-know basis?’

  ‘Theseus was developing a bioweapon for Porton Down that appears to have been banned under international law. It was codenamed “Scarlet Thread”.’

  ‘They chose the name of a biblical myth,’ said Bryant.

  ‘A mutation of avian flu that could be air-transmitted to affect everyone with a particular characteristic. Not in the blood, though – everyone’s blood is the same. Variations in race occur because of melanin and tiny differences in DNA. The idea was to develop a weapon that could be used against specific ethnic groups. For example, you could infect a town of insurgents and not harm your own people.’

  ‘Something similar was once practised here in London, albeit in a very different form,’ Bryant added. ‘People from specific Eastern European countries, most notably Romania, were employed to shift the coffins of plague victims because they were genetically immune to a particular strand of the disease found here.’

  ‘Now here’s the really nasty part,’ said May. ‘Jukes wouldn’t have known about the specifics of the bio-experimentation if it hadn’t been for the deaths of a number of low-level workers at the plant. He started his career as a journalist, and couldn’t help noticing two connected elements. Those who died were all from the Indian subcontinent, and all suffered mental problems followed by death from drowning. The more he uncovered, the more worried he became. He realized they had died as the result of testing the Scarlet Thread.’