‘Of course you haven’t. Perhaps Oskar mentioned it to me. We’re very old friends, after all. But you mustn’t let that deter you. I value an open mind above all else. Tell me the facts of the case, and I’ll see if I can offer you some advice.’ He looked around at the children. ‘Oh, don’t mind them. I’ve blocked their hearing. Your words will sound in their ears as meaningless gibberish.’
Despite Maggie’s warnings, Bryant felt himself becoming unsettled. Whether or not Mr Merry actually possessed paranormal powers was beside the point. It was clear that, if nothing else, he was a devious psychologist.
Bryant glanced at Maggie, wondering how to begin. He could feel Mr Merry’s black eyes fixed upon him, and sensed the importance of keeping the warlock within his peripheral vision, as one would an unshackled crocodile.
‘Come, sit next to me.’ Mr Merry dropped himself on to a leather bench and patted the space beside him.
Bryant felt the warning in Maggie’s glance. ‘I’ll stand, if it’s all the same to you,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you what I know.’
Mr Merry crossed pale beringed fingers with black painted nails over his tight waistcoat while, behind him, his acolytes crawled on the floor with pens and paper. ‘Please,’ he said expansively, ‘enlighten me.’
48
FINAL CALL
THE FOYER OF the Home Office was as quiet as a fish tank. A cleaner was slowly wiping a rubber plant. The receptionist sat entranced by her desk monitor. She looked up at John May. ‘It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago,’ she said. ‘His car was early.’
‘Who did he go with?’
The receptionist checked her screen again. She had very little neck and needed new glasses, so that craning forward to read it was an effort. ‘Mr Almon, Mr Hereward, Mr Lang and a team of lawyers. He’s not due back in the office until the middle of next week.’
‘I’ve tried every route across London that exists,’ said Longbright as they returned to the car, ‘including one where you have to reverse a quarter of a mile down a one-way street, and I bet I can get there before an Addison Lee hired car.’
Slapping a siren on the roof of the Fiat that they were not technically entitled to use, they set off towards the north. Longbright drove like Ayrton Senna needing to find a bathroom. She overtook trucks on the inside, slid up on to the emergency lanes and shot through traffic lights with an abandon that made May screw his eyes shut tight.
‘It’s going to be a nightmare trying to find him in the station,’ he warned.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dan Banbury. ‘I borrowed his iPhone to check his contacts some while back. I reset it so that I could pinpoint him through my phone’s SatNav. It’s accurate to under a metre.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘It was for his protection, so that if anything happened we could find him quickly. And I just wanted to see if it worked. I tried to do it to yours too, but of course that didn’t work.’ He turned his own phone on and checked Kasavian’s progress. ‘Looks like he’s a mile ahead of us on the same road.’
The traffic was heavy, and fresh squalls of rain made the going slow. The only thing more depressing than driving to St Pancras International in a grey slush of drizzle, sprayed by the cars in front, was driving away from it in the knowledge that you weren’t leaving the country.
Longbright parked on the pavement in Euston Road as a policeman ran up and warned her not to leave the vehicle there. ‘You park it, pal,’ she said, throwing him the keys and noting the ID code on his epaulette. ‘I’ll find you.’
‘He’s with a team of corporate lawyers,’ said May. ‘It’s not the ideal situation for an arrest.’
The Paris counter clerk told them that Kasavian had already checked in his luggage and had gone through passport control to the business lounge. May took the others through the side office at immigration control and they made their way to the lounge, where the receptionist confirmed that Kasavian had just passed inside.
May hesitated before the glass doors. He could see the security head surrounded by lawyers from here. ‘I’ll go in and try to do this quietly,’ he told Longbright and Banbury. ‘I don’t want it to look heavy-handed.’
‘You’re arresting him for conspiracy to murder, John, I don’t see how it can be anything else,’ said Longbright. ‘The way everyone tiptoes around this guy is incredible. This is how people like him stay in power.’
‘Yes, I know.’ May pushed open the door. ‘Try Arthur again and find out if he’s got anything. Kasavian will be only too well aware of his rights. He’ll soon see we haven’t enough to hold him.’
The others watched as May crossed the floor and approached Kasavian. The ensuing confrontation unfolded in mime.
Kasavian passed through stages of puzzlement, incredulity and fury, and then summoned his lawyers. The momentary advantage May had gained through the power of surprise was swiftly lost.
‘I don’t know what Mr Bryant is doing, but he had better come back with something Kasavian isn’t expecting,’ said Banbury doubtfully.
Under Maggie’s watchful eye, Bryant finished outlining the case, carefully keeping to impersonal facts. From time to time Mr Merry would lean forward on the bench, appearing to listen more intently to a particular detail, but it became clear that he was looking for something else as Bryant talked, a seam in the detective’s armour. Finally Bryant reached the point where his partner was heading off to carry out the arrest, and Mr Merry sat back, considering what he had heard.
‘You realize your mistake by now, I take it?’ he asked. His hooded eyes made him appear half-asleep.
‘I’m hoping you’ll enlighten me,’ said Bryant.
‘You should have trusted the children more at the outset – the young ones always see what is happening far more clearly than adults. We overcomplicate matters. These dullard fathers walking around the museum have no understanding of their children. They hold the power to shape youthful souls and alter the course of destiny, and they waste the opportunity.’ His dark eyes glittered with the thought of twisting young minds. He was Captain Hook and the crocodile rolled into one.
‘The children,’ Maggie prompted. ‘What about them?’
Mr Merry’s eyes refocused on the problem at hand. ‘The game the pair of them were playing, Witch Hunter, it’s based on the old precepts of medieval witch-finding in England. You understand how and why the creation of such witch-hunts came about?’
‘We were discussing the subject earlier,’ said Maggie.
Mr Merry was greedy for details. ‘Where was this? How did the subject arise?’
‘I don’t understand why the principles of witchcraft keep recurring in this case,’ said Bryant hastily.
‘Come here and I’ll tell you,’ offered the black magician, beckoning. ‘I shall whisper in your ear.’
A sharp warning glance from Maggie put paid to the idea. ‘Tell me,’ said Bryant.
‘Very well, but it’s nothing you don’t already know, for your mind was set upon its subconscious course when you first heard about the death of the O’Connor woman. Do you remember what the children told you of how they picked her, and why? It was there that you got your first inkling of the truth.’
They spoke quietly together for some minutes while Maggie watched, carefully pushing Bryant back from Mr Merry’s range whenever she felt they were drawing too close together.
‘And now you see it, and must finish your work,’ said Mr Merry, rising and looking down to where Bryant’s scarf had fallen on the floor. Sweeping it up in his ringed hand, he handed it back. ‘Yours, I think?’
‘Why don’t you keep it as a souvenir?’ said Bryant.
‘Very well, but if you succeed in closing the case now, I shall exact my fee,’ said Mr Merry. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t expect cash. There are other ways for you to pay.’ Patting his tricorn back on to his head and pocketing the scarf, he clapped his hands and roused his children from their torpid studies.
‘The
thought of him working with children every day makes my blood run cold,’ said Bryant. ‘Why is he allowed to do so?’
‘The staff say he’s wonderful with them, but I’m not sure about that. I keep a watchful eye on him from a distance, and he knows it. I’m surprised he didn’t affect you. You know how susceptible you are.’
‘I turned down my hearing aid slightly,’ Bryant admitted. ‘I missed everything he said in a lower register.’
Bryant and the white witch exited the museum. ‘Can I let you see yourself home?’
‘Why do all my evenings with you end the same way?’ Maggie sighed. ‘Go on, be off with you. And a word of advice, keep Mr Merry’s image out of your head tonight or he’ll worm his way into your dreams. Where are you going now?’
‘Claridge’s,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m told they serve the most wonderful macaroons for afternoon tea.’ Waving her off at the Tube station, he hailed a black cab and rang Longbright’s number as one pulled over before him.
‘Has John done it yet?’ he asked, climbing aboard.
‘He’s in with Kasavian right now. It doesn’t look as if it’s going well. The lawyers are arguing and they’ve just announced the final call for passengers on the Paris train.’
‘Janice, I need you to go in there and tell John something for me,’ he said, settling back in his seat. ‘He’ll know what to do with the information.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Tell him to let Kasavian go.’
49
WITCHCRAFT
THERE WERE FEW raised eyebrows as Arthur Bryant made his way across the thick grey carpet of Claridge’s dining room. Shambling elderly men were part of the furniture in the esteemed hotel. Many of them were waiters. The pianist was tiptoeing through the tulips and planning a segue into ‘Roses of Picardy’.
They were seated at their usual table in the corner, just where the maître d’ had said he would find them. There were three of them: Anastasia Lang, Cathy Almon and Emma Hereward, halfway through a teatime spread of tiny fairy cakes decorated with lurid arabesques of intestine-pink and acid-green icing sugar, accompanied by diaphanous leaves of brown bread, compotes, salads, savouries and glasses of thick yellow Chardonnay. They barely bothered to look up when he arrived at their table. Bryant was just another member of staff, indistinguishable from waiters, cleaners and concierges, made a necessary evil by his usefulness.
‘Mr – Brighton, isn’t it?’ said Ana Lang after a brief moment of thought. ‘What a strange coincidence. Who are you with?’
‘I’m not dining here, Mrs Lang. My wages wouldn’t cover a sausage on a stick in a joint like this.’ He took a chair from another table and dragged it over to theirs, which was something one might do in a public house but never in Claridge’s. ‘I hope you don’t mind me joining you for a minute. I’m knackered. My knees are on their last knockings.’ He peered at Mrs Lang’s side plate of cheeses with interest. ‘What are those leaves?’
‘It’s a rocket garnish,’ she said through perfect clenched teeth.
‘You know, that stuff was the first thing to grow back over bomb-sites after the war. My mum used to bundle it up by the bushel. God knows what she did with it; no greens ever found their way on to our plates. She mainly did cruel things to suet. And now I bet they charge a tenner for that.’
‘I don’t suppose you came here to discuss the cuisine.’
‘Indeed not. I wanted to let you know that the funeral of Sabira Kasavian can finally be planned, and should be able to take place next week, depending on her husband’s availability.’
‘You mean you’ve concluded the post-mortem,’ said Mrs Lang, insufficiently hiding her surprise.
‘The verdict of the inquest will be made public later today,’ said Bryant. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea? Nothing fancy, builders’ will be fine.’
‘Well, what was the conclusion?’ asked Cathy Almon, withholding her pastry-fork.
‘Oh, exactly what we thought it would be.’ Bryant waved at a waiter and failed to catch his rheumy eye.
‘What killed her?’ Emma Hereward enunciated impatiently.
‘Now, that’s rather interesting. I can’t remember these things, so Giles wrote it down for me.’
Bryant patted his pockets and located a rumpled piece of paper. Donning smeary reading glasses, he squinted at the page. ‘Basically a mix of SSRIs. Or selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors, as they’re known. She was stuffed to the gills with anti-depressant drugs. The problem with high-dose combinations of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox and the rest is that they can cause akathisia. It’s – let me quote here – “a state of physical and mental agitation that can spark off fits of violent, self-destructive behaviour”. Many of the terrible killing sprees that occur in America are carried out by people misusing prescribed drugs.’
‘So I imagine you’ll be looking to indict her doctor for over-prescription,’ said Mrs Hereward.
‘No, because her doctor didn’t prescribe them.’
‘Don’t tell me poor Oskar is under arrest,’ said Mrs Almon. ‘I knew it.’
‘No, not at all. I believe he’s on his way to Paris at this moment.’
‘Well, I don’t understand,’ said Mrs Lang. ‘Why exactly are you here?’
‘To be honest, I’ve always been a bit of a theatre buff, and sometimes we’re offered free tickets. I was given a matinée seat for the new RSC production of Macbeth today, but I couldn’t use it. People are always fascinated by the character of Lady Macbeth, but for me it was always about the witches.’
Miraculously, a waiter had heard his plea for tea and had crept over with a pot. Bryant poured and took a sip, but it was too hot to drink. ‘Historically speaking, the number three has always had magical qualities. It appears several times through the play: three witches; three prophecies; three apparitions; and the “weird sisters” repeat their incantations three times.’
To everyone’s horror he poured his tea into his saucer and slurped it through his false teeth. ‘Of course, the word “witches” is rather ambiguous. The Folio text refers to them in stage directions and speech prefixes as witches, but really they represent the three Fates of ancient mythology, weaving the threads of human destiny, foretelling the future and altering the paths of men’s lives.’
Anastasia Lang was visibly losing patience. ‘If you have something to tell us, perhaps you’d be so good as to do so?’
‘Sorry, of course. It would help if I explained my thinking a little. There’s a governing rule of investigation: lex parsimoniae, the law of succinctness. It means that the simplest and most likely explanation, the one which feels organically right, is usually most likely to be correct. In this case we had an answer suggesting itself from the outset. Given our past dealings with Oskar Kasavian and knowing how Machiavellian he could be, it seemed highly likely to me that he poisoned his own wife. Even though he hired us to look into the case, and seemed genuinely distraught when he heard of her death, everything always pointed back to him.’ The room’s background banter and tinkling teacups receded into silence as he explained. It seemed that everyone was listening.
‘But, you see, there was another, deeper level of lex parsimoniae at work, perhaps less rational, and it was something I began to realize I had sensed from the outset. A certain, shall we say, distaff element to the case. The subject of witches kept arising.
‘Amy O’Connor was reading Rosemary’s Baby, and had folded down the corner of see here, in which Rosemary opens a book called All Of Them Witches. Lucy and Tom, the children who hunted her in the courtyard of St Bride’s Church, were playing a game called Witch Hunter, loosely based on the medieval instructions for searching out witches. Sabira Kasavian told me it was witchcraft, that she had been placed under some kind of spell, but she was at a loss to explain how it worked. And whenever she talked about the cause of all her problems, she said “they”, never “he”. Which was odd, considering she knew her husband had covered up a
government-sanctioned murder. Even Oskar told me that his wife was the subject of a witch-hunt.’
Now it appeared that even the pianist had ceased playing and was watching them with interest.
‘Then, of course,’ Bryant continued, ‘the three of you told my detective sergeant you always protect your men. You described in some detail how you controlled your weak husbands from the sidelines. And yet there we were, ignoring this deeper truth for the more obvious idea that Oskar Kasavian was the culprit. After all, he had been responsible for covering up a whole series of deaths, although technically they were suicides. And perhaps Peter Jukes drowned himself too. For all I know, he may have been an unwitting part of the test group.
‘Sabira Kasavian discovered the truth about her husband, as wives are wont to do. She named him in the code she sent us, but I should have realized that she wasn’t referring to the architect of her own troubles. She was talking about his work. He had murdered in the course of duty. How did she find out about him, I wonder? Did he toss guiltily in his sleep, speaking of the terrible burden that still haunted him? That seems rather unlikely. It’s obvious Oskar sleeps pretty easily at night. It was more likely something prosaic. Sabira often went to the Pegasus offices to wait for her husband, and it’s likely that she read something she shouldn’t. Little notes that looked just like taxi receipts. She was a bright girl. She quickly realized what he was hiding. But who could she tell? Not any of you, all of whom she hated, because you were a class above – and she knew you were searching for opportunities to advance your husbands.
‘I don’t know which of you first discovered that Mr Jukes’s girlfriend was in London, but I imagine her arrival was enough to stir you into action once more. Your husbands were all on the board and in the club; any exposure would taint them. You had taken steps to hide the past before, hiring a former member of the Russian militia to remove my biographer. You didn’t even need to get your hands dirty. Such men live invisibly, work cheaply and are untraceable, so why not do it again, and close the circle by getting rid of Miss O’Connor? You weren’t to know that she knew nothing. You just knew that she was Jukes’s girlfriend, and had started visiting his old haunts.
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