‘Oi, have you just left me cash?’ called Niven. ‘Haven’t you got plastic? Nobody wants the old-fashioned stuff any more.’
‘And yet you have a café dedicated to it,’ she replied. ‘Figure that one out.’
26
Becalmed
‘I don’t like him,’ said Meera Mangeshkar as she changed at the staff lockers in the first-floor bathroom. ‘My mother says you can’t trust a man in tight trousers.’
‘That’s because she’s obsessed with fertility,’ said Colin Bimsley, swapping his blue PCU sweatshirt for what he referred to as his ‘evening wear’, a faded red T-shirt from the Repton Amateur Boxing Club.
‘Plus, his beard is too neat, he smells too nice and I can’t understand a bloody word he says.’
‘That’s because Mr Floris is public school. They didn’t talk like that in your Southall comp, did they? He’s probably a regular bloke once you get to know him.’
Meera shook her head. ‘He still has to report everything back to his relatives at the Home Office. Faraday’s done this to us before. What’s that awful smell?’
Colin held up a bottle of aftershave. ‘Mr Bryant gave it to me. Jaguar for Men. Price three shillings and sixpence. Also available as Soap on a Rope.’
‘It smells like Toilet Duck.’
‘Floris was pushed into this assignment by someone a lot more powerful than Faraday. But just to quell your suspicious little mind, let’s find out from the man himself.’
‘How do we do that?’ asked Meera, pulling a black sweater over her head.
‘Simple. We take him for a cleansing ale.’
‘That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?’
Colin threw his hands wide. ‘Look around you. There’s nothing going on. The investigation is stuck. The killer is dragging us around by the nose. All of our leads are dead ends. We’re becalmed. We might as well take him to the pub and pump him for information.’
Meera sighed. ‘Come on then.’
‘I don’t really drink,’ said Floris when they offered to take him to the Racketeer for a beer.
Meera was incredulous. ‘That’s a challenge. You have to come for a quencher, it’s traditional.’
‘Yeah, I could smash a pint in the face,’ said Colin. ‘And I already chose the boozer for us. A little hipster hangout, top of the topknots, Banterbury Cathedral.’
Floris eyed them both suspiciously. ‘Just one then.’
Taking a tray of glasses to the pub’s candlelit basement, Colin settled on a sofa that looked as if it had lost a fight with a bear. A fake fire flickered in the grate, washing the floor with orange light.
Janice Longbright was in the corner of another sofa with Sidney, taking her through a folder of documents. In accordance with the rules of public house society the group had split in order to make rounds affordable, although they were all listening to each other’s conversations.
Colin paid the barman to keep delivering beers until Floris started slurring. He had no meat on his bones so it didn’t look as if it would take too long.
‘I imagine it’s a bit of a culture shock, coming to us after Whitehall.’ Colin wiped a foam moustache from his upper lip.
‘It’s more chaotic than I’d expected,’ said Floris. ‘We only ever hear terrible things about Mr Bryant. I didn’t know my boss had left you with no resources.’
Meera removed a slice of orange from her rum. ‘You don’t know the half of it, mate. Faraday’s taken everything from us but old Bryant still has a few friends in government who can help out. Although I think we’re running out of favours.’
Floris sipped his lager as if he’d never tried alcohol before. ‘Perhaps you can explain something I don’t understand.’
‘Entropy. Relativity. Consciousness,’ suggested Meera, sucking her fingers. Colin glared at her.
‘I’m told the unit was founded by theorists and academics. Back-room boffins who were never meant to go out in the field.’
‘The thinking was different in those days,’ interjected Janice. ‘It was believed that crime would one day be computed out of existence. We thought we’d understand human behaviour so completely that we’d be able to predict it and stop it from happening.’
‘Your current investigation proves the theory wrong.’ Floris set down his beer. ‘You can’t explain why people are being targeted. The unit appears dysfunctional. Your detectives’ supposedly instinctive methodology doesn’t seem to get results. You have no answers and the situation feels as if it’s worsening, but you act as if it’s just another working day.’
‘Because that’s what it is for us,’ said Colin. ‘We’re not the Met. We don’t run shifts. Even street cops go home eventually. They spend their days trying to stop kids from stabbing each other but don’t go to the pub to discuss antisocial initiatives; they go to let off steam.’
‘And Mr Bryant?’ Floris checked to make sure he had not come in.
‘He’s different,’ said Janice. ‘He’s looking for the impossible. Real, definitive answers. He doesn’t like Faraday hindering us with rules.’
‘Mr Faraday has no control over me.’ Floris loosened his tie. He was overheating. Some of his words were starting to elide. ‘It was my idea to get the case to you, not his. You know the system from the ground up. This is my first job after university.’
Meera coughed rum over Floris’s trousers. He turned down her offer to mop him dry.
‘I’ve tried to tone down my accent. I think I’m starting to sound a bit more street.’
‘Mate,’ said Colin, ‘trust me, you don’t. First you’ve got to widen your mouth for vowels, lose most of your Ls and Ts, and watch Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday. He speaks proper Queen’s English. An absolute ledge.’
‘I take it you’re both from London.’
‘I’m Southall, then Elephant & Castle,’ said Meera. ‘He’s East End. It’s stamped through him like a stick of rock.’
The barman set down a cold collation. ‘Ah, my master cheeseboardier,’ said Colin, passing around plates.
‘That’s not a word.’ Meera checked out the board. ‘No pork scratchings.’
‘I didn’t mean to follow the rest of my family’s big flat feet into policing,’ Colin said. ‘I wanted to be a boxer until I got whacked in the head and was left with spatial issues.’
‘What sort of issues?’
‘He walks into things,’ said Meera, stealing a chunk of cheddar.
‘It’s a perceptual problem called Irlen Syndrome. The unit was prepared to take me.’
‘I thought I’d find you all sitting behind desks in darkened rooms staring at screens,’ said Floris.
‘When the PCU started out it was all lab coats and slide rules until somebody realized you can’t police people without talking to them. So a lot of it is still old school. Hands-on stuff, blagging your way into flats and going through bins.’
Meera could sense that Floris disagreed with the approach but was keeping his counsel. He’d never had to get his manicured hands dirty. He drained his glass and set it down. ‘It seems to me that you do all the work and your detectives get all the acclaim.’
‘The old man likes the limelight,’ said Meera.
‘That’s not fair,’ said Colin. ‘He closes the cases.’
‘So you don’t mind Mr Bryant taking the credit?’ Floris was intently gauging their reactions. ‘We only ever hear about him and his partner in Whitehall, never anyone else.’
‘We’re not looking to be famous,’ said Colin.
‘Neither are they, I’m sure. But how will you ever advance through the unit if they remain at the top?’
‘They’ll see us right.’ Colin looked to Meera for support but failed to catch her eye. The seed of doubt had been planted and the conversation quickly cooled.
Further along, Janice was struggling to understand Sidney, who sat poised and static, clutching a medicinal-looking pink cocktail.
‘You need a few years’ experience und
er your belt. Perhaps you should come back when you have more to offer.’
‘It will be too late then. I’ll be full of their rules. I can be useful now. You were young when you started.’
‘Nineteen,’ Janice admitted. ‘But it was different in those days. None of us knew what we were getting into. I didn’t go to university. I got the job because they saw something in me and took a leap of faith.’
Sidney stared down at her drink. ‘They need to take a leap of faith with me.’
Longbright sat back in the sofa. ‘And what are you going to teach us about policing this country?’
‘I can see how our history drags us down. There’s a new generation arriving that doesn’t care about the past. You can’t understand them and they won’t understand you. I can bridge that.’
‘I don’t understand. How?’
‘We never lived in any one country for long when I was growing up, so I never made friends. I lived online and studied. But I only studied the subjects that interested me.’
‘Like this unit.’
‘It became an obsession. So you see, I have a head start.’
‘And that makes you think you can bring something fresh to this case.’
‘To every case. I know them all, even the early investigations that Mr Bryant gave silly names to. The Leicester Square Vampire, the Dagenham Strangler, the Shepherd’s Bush Blowtorch Murders. One hundred and twenty-eight major homicide cases on public record, plus all the others that were never listed.’
‘OK, you’ve done your reading. But Mr Bryant doesn’t think like anyone else. And no one thinks like him.’
Sidney held her gaze until she broke away.
‘You can’t possibly. The depth of his knowledge—’
‘I don’t have that yet but I know how his mind works because mine’s the same.’
Janice tilted her head, trying to understand this delicate-featured girl in crazy trainers, one orange, one lemon. ‘How is that possible?’
‘I met him a long time ago,’ said Sidney.
Floris knocked back the remains of his beer and accepted another. He was speaking rapidly and becoming inarticulate.
‘Anything my father wanted he got, although I guess he didn’t want the heart attack, and certainly not during an embassy ball. He told my mother he wanted her but dumped her, just as he’d done with his ex-wife. He certainly didn’t want me. He once pulled a gun on a maid at a funeral. That’s when they were still living in South Africa with my uncle, who became my aunt but no one ever mentioned it. We owned a cheetah that got loose at a party. Cheers, all.’ Floris picked up his beer and drained it. ‘Actually, I don’t normally drink this much.’
‘No shit,’ said Meera, awed.
‘Admit it, you fancy him,’ said Colin after they had manoeuvred Floris on to his tube train. ‘You were all over him like a rash. All it takes is a noncey haircut and a funny accent and you come over all Pride and Prejudice. I’m surprised you didn’t get the vapours and pass out.’
‘Well, what about you?’ Meera shot back as they headed off along the wet pavement. ‘All it takes to become your bezzie is a couple of hours in the nearest boozer.’
They argued all the way home until Meera realized that she was following Colin back to his flat, and he said well as you’re nearly here you may as well stay over, and she said may as well, that’s not very flattering is it, and he said I’m sorry your royal highness you know what I mean, and she said no, what, and he said I really, really want you to stay with me tonight, and she said that’s better yeah I’ll stay over then but don’t think I’m going to stay every time you ask because I’m no booty call, and he said you got that right, and besides I can’t get the duvet cover on by myself and the kitchen needs a tidy-up and she punched him hard in the stomach.
An hour after they left the pub an event occurred in another part of London that brought their respite to an end.
27
The Shout
Script extract from Arthur Bryant’s ‘Peculiar London’ walking tour guide. (Meet at St Paul’s tube station. For details of upcoming tours consult my fully updated website. I’m joking.)
Straight ahead of you, ladies and gentleman, behold the Old Bailey, a bailey being another name for a city wall. The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales has been housed in several buildings near this one since the sixteenth century, but the current edifice was only built in 1902. Anyone can visit the public gallery and sit in on a case. It’s good fun so long as you don’t smuggle in a meat pie and open it in your lap before realizing it’s really, really hot.
The twenty-two-ton golden statue on the top of its dome is Lady Justice. She holds the sword of retribution and the scales of justice, and contrary to popular belief she’s not blindfolded, which explains a lot.
Inside, the courtrooms are all arranged the same way, with the accused standing in the dock facing the witness box and the judges. Before gas lighting the rooms were dark and shadowy, so mirrors were attached over the bar to reflect light on to the faces of the accused. The members of the court believed that studying their features would help them decide innocence or guilt.
In the nineteenth century, the courthouse was still part of Newgate Prison, and in 1868 anyone could catch the tube to see a good hanging, but Charles Dickens helped to get the practice stopped in public. Newgate was always an overpoweringly sinister place. It remained in use for over seven hundred years and didn’t shut until the start of the twentieth century.
There’s a secret tunnel running between the Old Bailey and the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, so that the chaplain could nip over with his execution bell and administer last rites without having to plough through the waiting crowds. The ritual involved him ringing the handbell twelve times and reciting a bit of doggerel.
The next morning the prisoner would be given flowers and made to listen to another prayer before getting his neck stretched. He was led along Dead Man’s Walk through a series of white-brick doorways that became incrementally smaller and smaller, a rare example of an architect practising psychological torture prior to the building of the Shard. At the end of this tunnel a huge crowd would gather to chuck rocks and rotten fruit at the condemned prisoner, and here he would eventually be buried. The church had a Watch House with windows facing into its graveyard so that the wardens could keep an eye out for Resurrectionists.
In 1670 a couple of Quakers (one of them the future founder of Pennsylvania) were arrested for preaching, and the Old Bailey’s jury found them innocent. The judge refused to accept the verdict and locked the jurors away without food or water until they returned a guilty verdict. Instead of doing so they got a writ of habeas corpus issued, and established the right of juries to give verdicts according to their convictions. A big result for democracy. A few of our present-day leaders would do well remembering that.
Take a look around. The Old Bailey, the church and the Viaduct Tavern pub across the road look a bit stranded now. Few workers scurrying past this great court of justice appreciate its notoriety as a place of vengeful punishment.
The April wind had turned suddenly bitter. London was entering the season of unpredictable weather that usually lasted until Wimbledon. During this time it felt cold enough for a jacket and warm enough not to wear it.
PC Donnalee Martin stood on the corner of Green Arbour and Old Bailey, sweating slightly, looking over at the curved façade of the Viaduct Tavern. There were few cars and even fewer pedestrians. St Sepulchre was dark, its doors locked, hardly the welcoming community church its rector wished it to be. There were still some forty churches left in the Square Mile, but she imagined the area’s residents would struggle to make up a single congregation.
It was just after midnight and PC Martin had only just come on shift. She hadn’t expected to be stationed out here tonight, especially not until 7.00 a.m., but a directive had come through requesting officers for surveillance around St Sepulchre and the Old Bailey.
Usually some intel le
aked through, but tonight they had been told nothing. One of the superintendents had suggested it was linked to the death of a woman who had fallen down the stairs of a church, but how that connected to being sent here was a mystery. She was supposed to be paired with another officer, but the shift had started and he’d yet to appear.
The Square Mile was a lonely place to be posted late on a weeknight. It felt as if it had entered a state of suspended animation that only a workforce could bring back to life. There were probably more homes here now than there had been a hundred years ago, flashy penthouses tucked behind and above the endless offices, but where did anyone do their food shopping?
The sliding of the window alerted her, and a shout. She glanced around. There was nothing at ground level. Just past the curving cul-de-sac of Green Arbour she saw a man in the second-floor window of an office building.
As she watched, he took a little skip up on to the window ledge, then on to the stone sill. He turned his head and stared down at her. PC Martin was so surprised by his attention that she froze. Before she could call out he stepped off the sill, sending himself to the pavement.
He hit a rectangular brick flowerbed just in front of the building. One highly polished shoe flew off and bounced into the gutter. From where she was standing she could not see his fallen body. She looked back, wondering if there were any other witnesses, but the street was empty.
As she rounded the end of the concrete flowerbed his right leg appeared, bent forward at the knee. Under the yellow street lighting a spatter of blood showed up black on the paving stones.
She knelt down beside him, feeling for his pulse. His head looked like someone had taken a bite out of it. Unfortunately the corner of the flowerbed had caused a compound skull fracture. Blood still pumped from opened bone. An unmoving eye looked up at her. The small shiny object she picked up from the pavement turned out to be the crown on his front tooth. Unnerved, she could only reach for her phone.
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