‘I wasn’t aware that London had sheriffs,’ said Longbright.
‘There are two elected annually. All London mayors must have previously served as a sheriff. I have a friend at the Home Office who is currently a candidate. He always keeps an eye on Michael when I’m away.’
‘Why would he need someone to keep an eye on him?’
‘He likes a brandy or two at the end of an evening and the press are always looking for public figures with their guard down. You’re regarding this as an unfortunate accident, yes?’
‘That’s the official line,’ Longbright conceded.
‘But is that what you believe or not?’
‘We have to consider every possibility.’
For a moment her composure slipped. ‘I do so tire of the official line. Do you honestly imagine that this is how my husband’s adversaries would strike at him? Don’t you think they’d rather damage his career by leaking a memo and discrediting his opinions in the House? If they wanted to physically hurt him, why not pay someone to rough him up instead of shifting the contents of a greengrocer’s van on top of him?’
‘Has he said or done anything that would make someone want to hurt him? Does he make enemies?’
‘All Speakers do – how could they not? Enemies are to be expected. What cannot be allowed are allies. There’s something you must understand. The House of Commons is like a clubhouse for amateur model-makers: cliquey, protective and childish. My husband is keen to restore faith in Parliament, but he is not a visionary. That is not what’s required of him. The enemies he makes are not filled with the kind of passionate hatred that inspires assassins. They are people who dislike poor grammar.’ She tried to sip her scalding tea, gave up and set it down. ‘Parliament is a terrible building, falling to bits, damp, sunless, mice everywhere. There’s a strong likelihood it will go the way of Notre-Dame. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to spend a minute longer in there than is absolutely necessary. Even Michael’s enemies have called with commiserations, presumably because it’s such an odd thing to have happened. My husband isn’t ill or mad and doesn’t have a death wish. I wish I could tell you more.’
‘Were there any enemies who didn’t call?’
‘Of course. Several people on both sides of the House were unhappy with his election. They thought he would try to exert a bias. My husband is a parliamentarian, not a politician. He keeps order with utter impartiality, but of course MPs sometimes cross the floor and he finds himself with conflicting loyalties. Today’s foe is tomorrow’s friend, so it’s hard to say at any one time who his enemies are.’
‘Who else has keys to the flat?’
‘Just the two of us, the cleaning staff and the porter. Our son lives with his family in Mexico City. He’s a musician. We are not close. It’s the most extraordinary thing. On my way here people stopped me in the street to offer their sympathies. I suppose Michael is a familiar face because of the televised parliamentary debates, but they must know me too.’
‘You’re public figures and therefore subject to public ownership,’ said Longbright. ‘I’ll need a list of names from you.’
‘I used to think, This is England, things like this don’t happen here, but of course they do, don’t they? Litvinenko, Salisbury and so on? I can give you the names of people with whom he’s crossed swords at work, and a couple of muckraking journalists who spoke to our son.’
‘But if you had to suspect any one person above all others …?’
Fenella Claremont could tell that this rather extraordinary-looking police officer with her 1950s hairstyle and heavy make-up was not going to give up until she surrendered a solitary choice. She thought for a moment. ‘One above all others? That would have to be Peter English.’
‘Who is he?’
‘An extremely wealthy businessman with the kind of extravagant hobbies that keep him too busy to answer any of his critics. My husband’s somewhat exaggerated sense of fair play offended him.’
‘In what way?’
‘Michael spoke at a dinner about tycoons with political aspirations and conflicting business interests. English manages to be both crass and over-sensitive. He takes offence and never forgets criticism. You won’t get anywhere near him.’
‘We will if he becomes a suspect in the investigation.’
Fenella shook her head in doubt. ‘Not even then. He’ll take great pleasure in proving to you that he is above the law.’
Longbright checked her notes. ‘I have to ask: Could there be someone in your husband’s life that you don’t know about?’
‘I believe he’s true to me because truth is in his nature.’ Fenella gave a rueful half-smile. ‘He has certainly never given me cause to believe he has a mistress.’
‘Can I ask why you’re moving him to a private clinic?’
‘I want him out of the public eye. His condition isn’t critical. It’s a place where the nurses know how to deal with invasion of privacy. If it was an attempt on his life, I don’t see how it could have been engineered.’
‘That doesn’t mean we can rule it out.’
Fenella sat forward. ‘You have no leads, do you?’
‘We’re interviewing the building’s residents, searching facial recognition data, gathering forensic evidence.’
‘But you have nothing so far.’
Longbright did not answer. Fenella Claremont picked up her bag and rose. ‘Thank you for your honesty, at least.’
‘Wish your husband well for me.’
‘Thank you.’ Mrs Claremont lightly shook her hand. ‘Please try not to tell the Home Office every little thing you hear about my husband.’
On the other side of the ground floor Arthur Bryant was meeting with Elise Albu. The bookshop owner’s wife had made such a strong impression on him that he felt it was the least he could do.
Elise was dressed in a similar fashion to Fenella Claremont except that her clothes were from Primark, not Fenwick’s, and she was as slender as a heron. She looked as if she had barely slept in a month, and her answers arrived slowly after struggling thought. She sat with her hands pressed hard on her knees, anxiety drawing down her pallid features.
‘So all this was reported and no one came back to you,’ said Bryant, checking his notes. A scribble at the bottom of the page read: ‘Remember to be nice to people.’
‘I need some answers, Mr Bryant.’ An electric saw started above them. She looked up in concern. ‘What is this place?’
‘It’s a police unit,’ he replied, looking for a single thing that would back him up.
‘And you’re a police officer?’
Her incredulity annoyed him. He felt his niceness ebbing. ‘Yes I am. We have copies of your husband’s death certificate, the fire officer’s report and the police report. What is it that you don’t understand?’
‘The certificate says “Death by suicide”. That’s a verdict they give to people who fall off mountains taking selfies. How could his death have been accidental? It’s ridiculous. I tried to talk to someone about it but got nowhere.’
The case had been handled by the City of London Coroner’s Office. It was a bit late to start looking into it again. Bryant wondered what he could say or do.
‘My husband was from Timişoara in western Romania,’ Elise said.
He was about to ask why he needed to know this, but bit his tongue. Nice, he reminded himself. ‘Tell me about him. Something important to you.’
‘Cristian wanted to be a writer, but somehow he never settled to it. He inherited his father’s bookshop in Cluj-Napoca. The shop’s rent had been raised and it had fallen on hard times, but he made it profitable again. It became the centre of his life and the community. Everyone knew the shop and stopped by there. They didn’t always buy something but that didn’t matter.’
Bryant wondered how long this would take. He was hungry and his bunions were playing up, although these facts were not related.
‘I met him in the park because a beetle got tangled in my hair. As he
was helping me get it out, I saw the underside of his left arm. There was a curious tattoo: an elderly man’s hands, sewing together two pieces of cloth that perfectly matched. It was very beautiful, like a painting, and ran from his elbow to his wrist.’
She continued before he could stop her.
‘As he pulled the beetle free I asked him what the tattoo meant. He explained that his grandfather had been the town tailor, and under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s monstrous regime officers would call by every year and tally up the family’s belongings. If the officers felt they had two pigs too many, they would cite the Communist Manifesto and cut the allowance in half, taking away whatever they wanted for themselves. Cristian’s grandfather explained that he shared the animals with his community, but the officers never listened. They were all corrupt, and took belongings from everyone.’
Bryant opened his mouth to interject but was too late.
‘So the grandfather offered to make each of the officers a suit if they would leave the animals alone, even though it meant working through the nights.’
This was what came of being nice to people, Bryant thought. Given half a chance, everyone he interviewed would start opening up their hearts. The idea was appalling. He forced his attention back.
‘The grandfather promised that when Cristian married he would make his grandson the best suit in the whole of Romania. But Cristian still hadn’t met the right person and soon the old man’s hands shook too badly to make a suit, so Cristian had the tattoo made to honour his grandfather, and to show that some things don’t have to be finished to be appreciated and loved. I fell for him instantly and we married soon after, but by that time the old man had died, so the wedding suit was never made. But it was there, imprinted on my husband’s skin.’
Bryant found that his eyes were itchy. ‘How extraordinary,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘But I don’t see how—’
‘When he came to London he continued to follow his dream, and was able to raise enough money to open a small bookshop with a controlled rent. The shop was very precious to him. He worked late almost every night. So you see, it’s unthinkable that he would burn down his own shop.’
Bryant consulted his notes. ‘Your husband was found unconscious in an alleyway, soaked in whisky and with an emptied can of oil still in his hand.’
Elise was vehement. ‘He only ever touched beer. He had seen the damage that drinking ţuică had done to the men in his family. It’s a strong spirit made from plums; they all drink it.’
‘Then what do you imagine happened?’
‘He committed suicide because the idea of not being able to support me without the shop was deeply shameful to him. That was how he thought. But there’s something else. A customer called that evening to purchase a book. He took my husband for a drink. I asked Cristian why he agreed to go, but he had no real answer for me. I think it was a set-up.’
‘But why?’
‘I was hoping you could find out.’
‘Mrs Albu, there was an official verdict of misadventure delivered, although I assume the arson case is still open. It wouldn’t be an official investigation but I could make some inquiries. What’s happened to the shop?’
‘We forfeited the lease. Obviously the insurance won’t pay out. There’s nothing left for me here.’ She dug out a pitiful scrap of tissue and wiped her nose.
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll go to Romania.’ She caught a look in his eyes. ‘I can see you don’t understand. I’m English but I owe Cristian everything. So I’ll go there and start a new life, and run a bookshop just as he did. That way I can repay the debt I owe him and balance things out. I just want someone to tell me what really happened.’
Bryant checked his notes. ‘Unfortunately the trail will have gone cold by now, but I’ll do some asking around for you. Did anyone look for this mysterious customer?’
‘No. I was given a number to call in case there were any further developments, but I was told he wasn’t a factor in the investigation.’
Typical, thought Bryant, his sense of indignation rising. ‘Did the bookshop stock anything that would upset someone who was unbalanced? Radical political manifestos, perhaps?’ He thought of Bookmarx, the Marxist bookshop just a short walk away in Gower Street, which had been attacked on numerous occasions.
‘No, not at all. It specialized in art, design, European literature. Cristian was setting up his own imprint. He self-published some short stories but to be honest they weren’t very good. He was passionate about discovering other writers, though.’
‘Did he have any financial difficulties?’
‘There aren’t many independent booksellers who don’t. I need to sort out the accounts but they’re in a mess. I can’t find anything.’
‘When do you plan to leave?’
‘After my husband’s funeral,’ Elise replied. ‘I applied to take his body back to his family home, but it was too complicated and expensive to do so. I don’t want to wait any longer. I’ll travel with his ashes instead.’
Bryant rose and held out his hand, looked at it, wiped it and held it out again. A piece of smoking metal fell through the ceiling and bounced across the floor. Elise eyed it in alarm.
‘Perhaps this isn’t something your unit can help me with,’ she said uncertainly.
‘It most certainly is.’ Bryant’s sense of pride made him grip her hand too tightly. ‘I am going to find out what happened between the time your husband left his shop and the time he was found dead. There is one thing you can do for me: go through anything he has written down – notes, addresses, books, diaries, stock orders. Let me know if you find anything out of the ordinary.’
As he watched her leave, stepping around stacks of timber, cables and torn linoleum, he wondered if he could be as good as his word. For a moment the strangest feeling crept over him that he might be able to make a difference, and that it might finally happen because he had understood a fellow human being. Elise Albu’s story had touched him, but that was the problem.
Emotion got in the way of work. He couldn’t take another story like that, so it would probably be in everyone’s best interests if he went back to only pretending he cared. It was safer for him, and for everyone else.
12
May In Absentia
John May’s bed was not suited to long-term confinement. It was a sofa bed, and had a steel strut running down the middle that he could feel through his thin mattress. He lay watching the reflections of the crane lights dancing across the tidal pull.
The Thames was no longer obscured by wharves and ships but nor were there many signs of life. A wall of office blocks and empty apartments rose beyond the black waters like so many mirrored bathroom cabinets. London’s most spectacular views had been stolen away by people who never saw them.
His tablet lay on the bed unused. There were twenty dinners in the freezer so he had no need to think about cooking. The laptop dinged with incoming mail but he ignored most of it, only opening the file that Janice had sent him on Michael Claremont.
It was clear the Speaker had few friends outside of his parliamentary circle. Perhaps it was difficult making social arrangements when you knew that at any given moment you might be summoned to a high-level meeting.
May read on through the pages. Claremont was a man of the people who liked a beer in a Somerset pub, but he owned an Elizabethan manor and was in dispute with his neighbours. His wife’s charity had once been accused of misappropriating funds, but that turned out to be a smear which had originated in Canada. Clearly there were no white knights, but Claremont and his wife came up cleaner, fairer and more balanced than most.
Neither of the witnesses had been able to observe the full passage of the victim from door to road. Once Claremont entered the gap between the two vehicles he was briefly lost from sight. May considered the attack as a whole. It was feasible but it didn’t ring true.
Dead end followed dead end. There was only so much he could do online. Pushing the laptop aside, h
e swung his legs off the bed and sat up. The medication had dulled the pain in his chest but was slowing his thought processes. He poured himself a brandy and knocked it back. He imagined the hot bullet tearing a path through his musculature, leaving behind a shaft of cauterized tissue that would always feel like an arrow left in its wound. ‘Lucky to be alive,’ the doctor had said, but lucky was not being shot at all.
The doorbell rang. Walking to the door was easier now but raising his right arm to the latch made him cry out.
The woman who appeared before him was bent over, tying a knot in a black plastic bin bag. ‘I wonder if I could borrow your basement key? The managing agent was supposed to send one through but it hasn’t arrived.’ She straightened up and saw his bandages. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you. I was beginning to think this flat was empty. I haven’t seen any lights on.’
‘I’ve been mostly asleep.’ He pointed at his chest. ‘This is keeping me home at the moment. John May.’ He shook her right hand with his left.
‘Jenny Handler. I put in weird hours too. Work.’
‘Whom do you work for?’
‘A games company in Shoreditch. Our motto: “Nobody sleeps”.’
‘Please come in.’ He led her to the bleach-scoured kitchen.
‘Have you just moved in?’ She glanced around the bare surfaces.
‘I’ve been here six years. In the building, anyway. I changed flats.’ It felt as if he should apologize for lacking the outward indications of a personality. ‘I’m not in very much.’
‘Oh, is this your pied-à-terre?’
‘No, it’s where I live. I have a spare key here somewhere.’ He winced pulling open a drawer.
She moved to help him open it, watching his movements as if analysing them. ‘Do you mind me asking how you did that?’
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